A whole bunch of icons for new items and perks is needed, as well as two new housing items you can unlock by completing Arcade Mode and trading in your golden essence, featuring two different types of Grindea statues:

 Shadier Merchant is another character that will get his very own designed room in Arcade Mode, so let’s give him a bit of a spicier background, shall we:

 Maracus will make an appearance in Arcade Mode as well, and as such, it’s time to tweak his room a bit to make sure it can be integrated into Arcade Mode, allowing for exits in three directions:

Finally, let’s take a look at the first phase of the Grindea battle!

Now we’re winding down for a Christmas break (this is a recap so the posts actually ended on the 24th!) Happy holidays to you all!

We will now have a short christmas break before being back to work as normal on the 3rd of January! See you all then :)

This week it’s time to start finishing up Grindea’s battle area, so let’s take a look at how that’s going! In this first part, I’m adding the basic area, the stones and some green details around it:

 And here, we’re adding some more details in the shape of a bunch of isles surrounding the area! Of course, there will be clouds and stuff as well:

Something that’s not quite the Grindea battle floor but closely related is the bazaar that you’ll reach right before it, where you’ll get one final chance to purchase some new things and swap stuff around. Let’s take a look at what that will look like:

Now, with one of the Golden Essence rewards being that our very own musician Riley comes to town to let you pick and choose what music is playing, we of course needed a new interface, including a new shop title! Let’s have a look:

And now, a first sneak peek at the cutscene introducing Grindea to the player! We’re still tweaking this, but it will give you an idea of where we’re going with this:

This week, we’re starting off by adding a new currency!

This is golden essence, which like normal essence can be traded for rewards at Bishop’s in Arcadia. We’re also thinking you’ll be able to trade a (big) amount of regular essence for one of these. The reason we came up with this currency is because we thought it’d be a better reward to get in that final floor chest, rather than getting the rewards themselves. This way you can pick and choose whatever rewards you want in any order (except for some that you will need to unlock by completing Arcade Mode in all difficulties), and it seems a bit clearer that you always get a reward of golden essence rather than an arbitrary number of rewards only to suddenly not get any more.

This way adding new rewards is more streamlined as well – if we decide to add more rewards, Bishop will simply update his shop rather than you having to complete arcade mode once again to see what sort of item(s) we’ve added!

Next, we wanted to add something fancy for when you manage to finish off one of those new and spicy floor-wide bets, so I threw together a little background for a room in Bishop’s realm where you get sent once you’ve cleared the floor:

Next up, we wanted a wagon for the potion salesman that sells you Super Potions, so I made some tweaks to Remedi’s old thing in Arcadia to better fit the salesman we have in mind:

And here we go, the second attempt at that bad-ass fae, Badasu! This one looks a little more badass, no?

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, it’s all about hands! Grindea’s hands, to be precise! Have a look:

This week is all about the shop, which will now get a proper indoor map, where it’ll share its space with either Little John, Farmer Oak or a potion salesman that allows you to change which pots you have equipped. For now though, let’s start with the regular shopkeepers part of the room:

And here’s what it’ll look like what the shop is shared with Little John, who will let you upgrade your bow:

Next, what the shop will look like when it’s shared with Farmer Oak and his pet taming-item store:

And finally, this is what the shop will look like when it’s sharing its space with the potion changer:

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, he’s been working on a pretty epic animation featuring giant Grindea opening her eyes! Let’s take a look: