Greetings, fellow Vampires!
In today's update, we're going to talk about one of the main systems in the game. In Bloody Hell Hotel, you'll get to make your own weapons from scratch and take them for a spin in the procedurally generated, monster-infested dungeons to gather resources for your hotel upgrades. Since the announcement, we've increased the scope of the system quite a bit. Here's a little sneak peek of what awaits you.
Your blacksmithing workshop is conveniently tucked away in the caves beneath the hotel. It's a pretty cozy place, especially after you've put some work into renovating it (there are plenty of upgrades to unlock).
The process begins with smelting ores into ingots. You can buy ores in the nearby village or find them in the dungeons. Some ores are incredibly rare and mysterious, hidden in the deepest parts of the dungeons. Getting your hands on them won't be easy, as these areas are crawling with dangerous foes. Here's our current line-up:
- Copper Ore: Ideal for beginners, offering basic durability and sharpness, but limited in combat effectiveness.
- Tin Ore: A reliable choice, with improved durability and a sharper edge, suitable for standard combat needs.
- Iron Ore: Offers a longer-lasting sharp edge than iron, making it a solid choice for more durable weapons.
- Gold Ore: While not the strongest for combat, gold ore adds a touch of luxury and significantly increases a weapon’s value. Ideal for ornamental weapons or enhancing other ores to create visually stunning and more valuable blades.
- Eclipse Iron Ore: A balanced metal for both durability and magical enhancement, perfect for versatile and enchanted weapons.
- Shadowstone Ore: Ideal for stealth-focused weapons, allowing for blades that excel in sneak attacks and subtle magic.
- Fiery Vein Ore: This fiery ore allows for crafting weapons imbued with fire enchantments, enhancing their damage and special attack capabilities with searing effects.
- Frostvein Ore: Adds frost effects to weapons, enhancing their durability, special attacks, and compatibility with ice enchantments.
- Blood Ember Ore: Infused with vampiric magic, it's ideal for crafting weapons that drain life from enemies, combining strength with dark enchantments.
- Soulgem Ore: Rare and powerful, this ore enables the creation of weapons that can trap the souls of defeated enemies, enhancing their abilities and making them fearsome in battle.
- Black Diamond: The rarest and most formidable mineral, perfect for forging near-indestructible weapons that excel in damage and harness dark magic enchantments.
Smelting ores in Bloody Hell Hotel isn't as simple as pushing a button—this is a simulation game, after all. You'll get the chance to mix ores together to create unique metals with different properties. This process requires not just experimentation but also careful management of the furnace's temperature.
* A big thank you to @Brock Stones in the comments below who pointed up an oversight on our part: Iron is a stronger metal than Tin. The descriptions and the order of the list has now been corrected. It's thanks to the community like this we're able to make a better game.
Now that you've smelted a handful of ores into various ingots, it's time to choose your weapon's design from the blueprint desk.
Blueprints, unlocked as the game progresses, let you craft increasingly superior blades, including daggers, short swords, and long swords. The choice of metal is yours. A blueprint allows you to turn ingots into a billet, but that's just the start. Crafting it into a finished weapon demands careful planning, skill, and strategic thinking. You'll need to manage the forge, work the anvil, perform quenching and sharpening, and choose the guard, handle, and pommel. Each step affects various parameters of the blade.
Every interactive component in the system, including anvil, bellows, grindstone, and quenching tank, can be upgraded – and the forge is no exception.
Upgrading the forge unlocks the use of new fuels and improves temperature control.
There are multiple kinds of fuel that you'll be able to use in the forge. Each type of fuel has unique properties affecting how different metals heat up. For instance, charcoal heats up quickly but burns out fast. It’s ideal for simple metals like copper and iron but less effective for the advanced metals you'll unlock later in the game. Our current fuel lineup includes:
- Charcoal - A basic fuel that heats up quickly but burns out fast, great for simple metals but less effective for more complex ones.
- Coal - More durable than charcoal, it provides a steady heat, suitable for a wider range of metals, balancing longevity with efficiency.
- Eclipse Coal - A mystical coal that lasts longer and heats metals more evenly, ideal for intermediate metalworking.
- Dreamsmoke Coal - Infused with enigmatic properties, it heats metals faster and is perfect for advanced metals.
- Soulspark Coal - Rare and powerful, this coal supercharges the forge, heating the toughest metals efficiently with a spark of ancient magic.
- Inferno Coal - The ultimate fuel, harnessing hellfire itself, it heats any metal to perfection and sustains incredibly high temperatures, embodying the pinnacle of vampiric forging power.
As you upgrade your forge, controlling the temperature will become easier, particularly with more advanced fuels and metals. Achieving even heat distribution across the blade when heating the billet is key.
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The bellows in our blacksmithing system play a crucial role in the art of weapon forging. With multiple upgrade options, they allow for precise control over how quickly the billet heats in the forge. The bellows enable you to adjust the heating speed of individual billet segments in real time, which is essential for the anvil work that follows. Here are just a few of available upgrades:
Each upgrade varies in air consumption. If the air supply is fully depleted, you'll face a cooldown period while the air replenishes in the bellows bag. It's best to avoid reaching this cooldown, as it temporarily stops you from controlling the heat distribution across the billet segments.
Each upgrade of the bellows comes with multiple nozzles, adding an extra layer of sophistication. These nozzles, with their varying air consumption, enable precise heating of specific billet sections or broader areas as needed. Some even come with a cooling function, cleverly designed to slow down the temperature rise in targeted parts of the billet.
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This detailed control is crucial for even heat distribution, preparing you perfectly for the next key step: shaping the uniformly heated billet on the anvil.
Anvil work is a crucial step in forging a blade. After heating the billet in the forge, it often emerges with various deformations. This is where the anvil comes into play. You'll need to meticulously inspect the misshapen billet and skillfully reshape it on the anvil using a hammer. There are two key modes of operation on the anvil:
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This stage is all about correcting bends and other deformations. It’s a delicate balance - each hammer strike, regardless of its strength, uses up some of the heat in the billet, reducing its malleability. If you're too gentle and repeatedly hit the same spot lightly, that area may become too cold, making further shaping difficult and risking damage to the blade. Conversely, striking too hard could also damage a segment that needed a lighter touch for realignment.
*(sped up footage)
Refinement: In this phase, you'll lightly tap the billet to give it more definition and harden it. Each tap still draws a small amount of heat from the billet. A mini-game adds an extra layer of challenge, especially for more advanced blueprints.
When you begin the game, you'll start with just a basic hammer. As you progress, you'll unlock a variety of more advanced hammers, each uniquely suited for shaping increasingly uncommon metals. These hammers vary significantly in their attributes: they consume differing amounts of heat depending on the chosen metal, cause varying degrees of damage if the billet is struck incorrectly, and some excel in alignment while others are better suited for refinement. Below is our current lineup:
Once the billet has been meticulously shaped and refined on the anvil, the next crucial step is quenching. Initially, your workshop will be equipped with a basic quenching barrel filled with water, essential for cooling the billet and hardening the metal.
As you progress in the game, you’ll unlock a variety of quenching tanks filled with different oils and special liquids. These advanced quenching options not only cool and harden the metal but also allow you to imbue the billet with unique perks, tailoring the final properties of your blade to suit various combat styles and preferences. This step adds another layer of depth and strategy to the weapon crafting process.
Almost at the finish line! After quenching the billet, the next step is to bring it to the grindstone for sharpening. This stage requires a steady hand and careful attention: you must continuously spin the wheel while evenly pressing each side of the blade against it. But beware, the friction from sharpening can cause the wheel to overheat, potentially limiting the maximum sharpness your blade can achieve. This delicate process demands both skill and patience.
Moreover, different metals have varying susceptibilities to friction damage, necessitating upgrades to your grindstone - yes, everything has plenty of upgrades :)
While this is not a complete overview of the blacksmithing system, it gives you a taste of what we're cooking up in our game forge. More updates are on the way, so keep your eyes peeled. We realize you're eager to dive in and are anxiously awaiting a release date. We're itching to announce the release window, but we're not quite there yet. We're trying to make a very special game, and making something special really does take time. Your patience means a lot to us as we're trying to make the game bloody awesome. Stay tuned for more updates (we'll try to post updates more often).
- You can see behind-the-scenes screenshots of the making of Bloody Hell Hotel on our Discord server.
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