Commercial District Info (Patreon)

Greetings! As you probably know, 10.3 will see the last of Ogremarsh’s districts, the Commercial District, reopen. Most of the other districts have a rough, frontier outpost sort of feel, but the Commercial District is supposed to feel different. It’s supposed to be a bustling, busy place - a lot of shops, a lot of things to see, and a lot of people to talk to. 

The Commercial District is also pretty big. Not only in size - though I think it is physically the largest district - but also in the amount of stuff that’s there. There’s way more buildings than in the other districts. This means there’s a lot of mapping work involved and a lot of work in populating it with NPCs so that it feels alive.

Since “Chapter 11” is being done by incremental releases, in the interest of not taking an excessive amount of time to get the release out I decided to split the Commercial District into two releases. The first, 10.3, will have the district itself and most of the buildings, but a few of them will remain closed until 10.4. (Bloodfist’s guild hall is the only one that will likely remain closed longer.) The district should still feel alive, but I wanted to put off opening a few locations, especially those that relate to characters you’ve met before (since I want to put more thought into writing them.)

Aside from all the shops and NPCs, 10.3 will consist of 3 quests: the first is to visit POIs in the district, similar to the Military District quest. The other two quests will have to do with your companions - one for Ana and one for Emily. 

I’m probably also going to write another plugin for 10.3, this one for relationships with other characters. It’s intended to help me keep track of details - different choices you’ve made with Ana, for instance - as well as higher level things, like a general “friendship” or “romance” score. This plugin will be mostly transparent to you, but it will help me create more meaningful interactions with your companions and other people in the world. 

As an aside, I’ve been pretty good about keeping a record of choices you made, even if I don’t do anything with them right away, but I think I lost a little information about a couple of choices you made with Ana along the way. I’ll be fixing this in 10.3, but don’t worry if you have old saves - I’ll find a way to get that information in there. If I can’t find it any other way, I’ll have to directly ask you. Maybe I can find some non-4th-wall-breaking way to do it, like in a conversation with Ana if I need that info.

As far as progress goes, I’m still trying to wrap up the mapping. I look forward to being done with that - it’s kind of tedious, and I’m not an architect - though I’ve gained an appreciation for what they do! I just wanted to let you know what’s going on - thank you for your support!