This week we’ve implemented a couple of quests, and as a part of that, we also created a quest tracker! It’s nothing too fancy, and does pretty much what you’d expect.

When you’re looking at the list of active quests, you can press Tab to focus the tracker on that quest. Yes, this particular quest is an old fashioned “fetch quest”. We’re showing it here because it demonstrates the quest tracker well. Don’t worry, we’ll have other types of quests, too! :)

When tracked, a shortened version of the objectives will be stickied to the top right corner of the screen, which helps a lot in these types of quests. We’ll probably enable tracking for crafting recipes as well, so you can keep a list of ingredients on screen while farming!

Apart from creating the GUI for quest tracking, Vilya keeps up with the tradition of handing out portraits to the poor!

Here’s a sprite of the guy on the bottom left made by Fred:

Here’s the death animation for another enemy from our beloved Pumpkin Forest, this time it’s the Scarecrow’s turn to bite the dust.

Besides keeping up with the death animations from last week, Fred took the time to work on the sprite for a new enemy in the game. Aside from being cute and round, this fierce piggy will have the ability to charge the player with incredible force, not even stopping when smashing into the otherwise very useful shield!

Above is a patchwork of the different iterations he went through before we settled on a little more juicy version. The last three are different color variations of the same sprite. Since we already have another brown cuddly creature hanging around in the same area (the Rabby) we figured it would be good to separate them a bit from each other! We might still go with brown and just not have Rabbys and boars in the same zone, though.

Meanwhile, Vilya has been going strong in her portrait factory:

One of the few problems with a magic bag full of loot is figuring out what to do with all your junk. Luckily, there is a great remedy for this issue: turning your junk into new kinds of junk, also known as crafting!

In Grindea, you can visit certain NPCs which will help you craft items close to their expertise. Mr Fabulous, the Evergrind hatter, will let you craft hats for example.

The screenshot above is the crafting view at his shop. You don’t need to unlock recipes in order to craft stuff. Instead, any recipe with at least one item that you already own will appear in the list. The little bar below the item icon is an indicator on how close you are to being able to craft this item! If you don’t have enough ingredients to craft an item, it will show up only as a silhouette. When you’ve gathered all the items required, the bar will turn green and the real icon will appear.

When you press on an item, you will be able to view more detailed information of what the ingredients are, how many you need, and how many you own of each ingredient. Of course, you can view this information even if you haven’t collected all the ingredients yet! If you have all the required parts, you can craft the item. In this case, a sweet slime hat!

Another crafting feature we implemented at the same time was the ability to browse recipes based on ingredient directly from your inventory!

When you press on an item that’s a part of any recipe, you’ll get an option called “Recipes”. Selecting this option will take you to a nifty little recipe browser, listing all items in the game that can be created using that particular item.

Note that even if you don’t have all the ingredients for an item, you can still see what type it is, as well as what stats it will have when you craft it. We don’t want players to farm blindly for an hour to make a new sword, only to find out that the weapon they had used to bash all those slimes had been better all along!

(…of course, a true collector will want to craft everything just for the bragging rights) :3

Crafting, like much else, is not mandatory in order to complete the main story. Neither will it be a breaking powergaming feature like in some modern RPGs, where crafting makes even the rarest of unique drops obsolete. We’ll try to create a balance where both crafted equipment and rare gear are equally powerful. Now, if you craft something from the rarest of components, however…

New week, new update. So what have we’ve been up to?

Vilya’s been busy remaking portraits and building items for the item shops. Here’s a bunch of familiar faces:

Besides those good looking chaps, Vilya has also managed to squeeze in some sprites for a few of the potions we have available in the game!

Speaking of potions, we could probably do some explaining on what role they will play in the game.

Beginning with everyone’s all time favorite, the health potion! Health potions are one of two ways players can use to regain lost HP. Besides the good old potions we also have healing orbs that enemies will drop every now and then that players can pickup to regain some health.

Now, we are not going for the potion spam found in Diablo 2 and such. We wanted players to use the health potions tactically and sparingly and such they have a cap for how many you can carry around with you. What we wanted to achieve with this setup was to have players refilling health when fighting regular enemies mostly through the orbs and saving the potions for more challenging encounters, like boss fights and such.

Worth mentioning is that we used to have three ways players could use to regain health. We had a healing spell that unfortunately got cut due to the changes we did to our mana system. It basically allowed for players to regain full health after every encounter with little to none risk. We felt this turned the game too easy, as well as forcing players to always spend skillpoints on heal since it was by far the most efficient way to regain health.

Besides your trustworthy healing liquid we have a bunch of potions that will temporarily boosts your characters stats. You will only be able to have one of those potions activated at the same time so you have to play your cards right and use the right potion for the right situation!

In the animation department, we have gone back to our lovely inhabitants of the Pumpkin Forest and supplying them with some proper death animations! Here’s how the Lantern Jack looks like when defeated:

Next week, we’ll turn up with more of the same and be even closer to an official release of the beta!

What would a parody on the RPG genre be without some good ol’ fishing?
Not much, if you ask us!

As such, the past week we’ve been adding a little fishing mini game (among other things)!

Checking for a good spot!

You’ll be able to fish from most bodies of water in the game. When you stand on a spot where you can fish, a little emote will pop up above your head, and pressing the action button will make your character enter the mini game. For as long as you’re fishing, monsters won’t try to harm you, so you don’t have to worry about some ninja respawn ruining your day!

Soon…

Click image to view animated gif!

After you’ve thrown your fishing float out, you’ll just have to patiently wait for a bit for a fish to bite. Fish in Grindea is always hungry though, so you’ll probably not have to wait for long!

When a fish does bite, you’ll enter a little mini game that’s inspired by the one in Suikoden II, and sort of reminiscent of the arm wrestling game in The Witcher 2. You’ll control a little bar, that’s attached to a larger bar, and your goal is to keep a randomly moving fish inside it. If the icon leaves your bar, the fish will escape! If you want to see it in action, click on the image above for an animated version!

Yes! A fishie!

You win the battle when the fish reaches the shore. For your hard work, you’re awarded the fish itself! Of course, fishing is also a reliable way to acquiring some solid boots…

The fishing game is part of an effort to give players a reason to stay a while and enjoy the scenery, while also adding even more mileage for the hardcore fans and the completionists. Players won’t have to stay and fish, but for those looking to just chill out a bit after a long day of adventuring, it’s good to know there are other things to do!