Hey everyone!
As the demo release is drawing closer I want talk more about the game's mechanics. Today's focus is the Black Market Arena. A rather unique feature for a shop-sim game since it's basically it's own self-contained autobattler game. I say "self-contained" because it's pretty independent from the shop part of the game. You could just make weapons and try them in the arena if you'd like. Who cares about the realm and their need of swords.
Without further ado, let's do a deep dive in the Black Market Arena.
Well, in short, it's the place where you can see your creations in action.
You select a fighter, assign them a weapon and then watch them fight another fighter wielding a randomly generated weapon.
Side note: the randomly generated weapons are built so that they're actually possible to craft in game!
You can participate in the arena once a day at night, after all customers leave. There are 4 rounds, each one getting harder but with better rewards!
As you progress through the rounds, your rewards collect in a pool, and you claim them when you leave. If you lose at any point, all of it is gone!
The arena becomes available at level 5 and you can actually try it in the demo!
We've established that your weapon goes head to head with another weapon but what actually happens in the fight? Let me enlighten you!
The fighters have 3 main stats:
Health : (pretty obvious)
Block Chance : the chance to block a hit and take only 25% of the damage
Dodge Chance : the chance to dodge a hit and take no damage!
Each is shown at their poster when you select them. They are all equally important but I guess that really depends on your build.
In the arena weapons stop being just a product you place on display to sell but they become lethal tools with every attribute point and characteristic counting.
That's right, all attributes and characteristics actually do something in battle. They are not there just for show.
Let's start with the characteristics every weapon has:
Weapon Characteristic
Effect
Attack Speed
How frequent attacks can happen
Durability
With every attack chance to lose 1 durability. If at 0, weapon gains “Dull”. Durability is not reset between fights
Weight
Affects dodge chance. Higher weight, less dodge.
As you can see all three characteristics are really important. Attack speed lets you attack faster, higher weight can detrimentally reduce your dodge and durability lets the weapon last longer which is really important since your weapon's durability does NOT reset between the 4 rounds of the arena.
Moving to the available attributes in the demo, below you can see their effects in battle:
Attribute Name
Arena Effect
Neutral Damage
Deals 1 damage per point
Slashing
2% chance per point to inflict “Bleed”
Staggering
2% chance per point to inflict “Stagger”
Piercing
if attack is blocked, 2% chance per point to deal 75% damage instead of 25%
Fire Damage
Deals 1 damage per point. 2% chance per point to inflict “Burn”
Personally I like Piercing since it's like it nullifies the opponent's block
As you can see, many effects have a chance to apply a status effect. Below you can see what those do:
Burn
Deals 1 damage per second
Bleed
When dodging, deals 1 damage per stack of Bleed
Stagger
Take 50% more damage for 3 seconds
Dull
Deal 50% less damage
Be careful with your weapons durability since if it reaches 0, your fighter gets the 'Dull' status effect!
Let's take a look at a weapon and determine if it's worth taking into the arena
Attribute-wise it deals 16 damage per hit and has 32% chance to apply Burn. In addition, every hit the opponent blocks has a 24% chance to deal 75% of the damage instead. I'd say that's pretty good!
The characteristics are a bit harder to judge from the raw values alone. Thankfully, you can hold [alt] while looking at a weapon to view its combat characteristics
And there we go: a fast attack speed means hitting every 1.21s, brittle durability lets the weapon land around 15 hits before it goes dull, and weightless weight means no dodge reduction at all!
That's not bad at all but we may have a problem if we want to play multiple rounds...
Remember durability doesn't reset between rounds, so 15 hits for 4 rounds is just not cutting it. (well at least with the current mechanics :)...)
Thanks for reading my devlog about the Black Market Arena. Did you find it interesting?
I'd love to hear your ideas for possible attributes and what they could do in combat.
Would you be more interested in running the shop or crafting weapons for the arena?
Take care and make sure to wishlist the game!