Infusion

"Infusion" is a spell that I've wanted to include in LifeWeaveR from almost the very beginning. Basically, it allows Cecelia to infuse (hence the name) arrows with either Fire, Ice, Wind, Lightning, or Holy magic. The purpose of this should be obvious, but here it is anyway:

In most RPG's (at least the ones I've played such as Persona 4, Final Fantasy 7, Dragon Warrior, Lunar, etc..) there are some enemies that are element-sensitive. They might take massive damage against some elements and no damage whatsoever against others.

This enemy takes no damage from ice, but double damage from fire.

The three types of arrows from Ocarina of Time were the initial inspiration for the Infuse spell. I liked how Link could change arrows depending on whatever enemy he was fighting. Although it's common for certain weapons to have an element attached to them (such as a flame sword) I didn't want to go that route if I could avoid it, largely because I wanted something a little different than the usual/normal way.

To solve this, I created the "Infusion" spell and attached it to a new weapon called the Elemental Bow. When Cecelia is equipped with it, the Infusion skill appears in her list of available magic. Once cast, the player is given the choice of which element to fuse her arrows with.

When an element is selected, the screen will flash the appropriate color for that element (blue for ice, red for fire, green for wind, yellow for lightning, and white for holy). A small icon will appear on screen to show what element is currently infused (see picture on right). Infusing another element will remove the effects of the previous one, thus the player can infuse only one element at a time.

What's New - 11/22/2016

*After much debate. I've decided that I DO want LifeWeaveR to have enemies in it's oceans. However, there will only be 2 or 3 types of enemies and instead of covering the whole ocean in region tags, there will be "zones" instead. This is so players can still earn coins and EXP while sailing, but not have repeated random battles slowing them down.

*All weapons have been revamped. Some have had changes to ATK and price, some were renamed, and some changed function entirely. Now, each character has at least 7 equip-able weapons that can be found or bought, not including weapons in the Universal class.

*Cordova Castle now has a training area that players can participate in for extra EXP. To prevent this from being exploited, the following limit has been imposed: The player can select what character will participate in training. Whether that character wins or loses, the guard will tell the player "We'll fight again sometime" if he is talked to after training is over. The player must then wait for training to become available again before he can be challenged again. I'm still working on how long a time period there will be until it becomes available again.

*The pieces of the Fate Glass Mirror have been tweaked slightly and must now be collected in numerical order. Originally I was going to let them be collected in whatever order the player chose but this has proved to conflict with scripted events and has therefore been changed so that the chests containing the pieces won't even appear until the previous piece is collected. (I.E. The chest with piece #2 doesn't appear until piece #1 has been collected and given over to the vault).

What's New - 11/3/2016

*Added animation to the Repel spell, glowing blue orbs now encircle player for a few seconds as an indicator that Repel is in effect.

*Added custom bow and arrow attack animation for Cecelia, as well as a new sword animation for Ami.

*Aesthetic changes made to exterior of Life Weaver's temple.

*There is now a sliding scale of sorts for enemy HP and EXP that steadily increases as the game progresses. For example, if the enemies in dungeon A average about 100 HP, the enemies in dungeon B will have around 150-200. Following along, the enemies in dungeon C could possibly have HPs as low as 175 and as high as 300.

In addition, EXP will also increase in a similar manner so that each dungeons enemies give progressively more than the one before it. This kind of ties into a dilemma I was having where I was having a hard time finding an acceptable middle ground between how much HP and time it takes to kill enemies versus how much damage they inflict on you.

As an example, lets take the games first "Boss" Ageus. If you can kill him in 3-4 rounds it doesn't really feel like much of a boss, but if he can kill YOU in the same amount of time, it feels like he's overpowered. On the other hand, dragging it out to 10+ rounds feels like it's taking too long. So then you have the problem of tweaking his DEF so he takes less or more damage per round, but if you get carried away with this, a boss with only 250 HP becomes a chore to beat because you're only hitting 30-35 damage points at a time.

After a lot of trial and error, I concluded the best thing to do was increase their HP. To compensate for this, all party members HP has been boosted also. Now a boss that hits you for 60 or so damage per round isn't such a problem because your starting HP (Not actual stats, just an example) goes from 225 at level 1, to 415 at level 1. Again, this isn't finalized, it's just a trial solution to see how well it works out.

*Added "Evacuate" spell. Then, turned around and had to create custom "BossFight" switches that can be turned on and off because Evacuate was letting me skip boss battles. Now, if "BossFight" is switched on, Evacuate gives you an error and doesn't work until the boss fight is over.