Hey everyone!
Hope you're all having a great week. In today's devlog I want to talk about the mechs and upgrades in Mining Merchant. Please note that everything shown and mentioned in this post is a work in progress.
👉Before we get into it, don't forget to add the game to your Steam wishlist to be notified when it launches! Helps me out too!
In Mining Merchant, you unlock mechs and companions. Every mech and companion has a set of unique stats and a unique ability, which gives each mech its own advantages. You can mix and match mechs and companions to create combos that best fit your playstyle or objective!
For example, the G0-l3m mech has an ability where it stomps on the ground, collecting all nearby resources. And there's the 3y3 companion, which has a 10% chance to perform its resource doubling ability while you're mining.
From the start I wanted to think of a new approach to mech progression for Mining Merchant compared to my previous games. You see, in Mining Mechs and Super Mining Mechs progression was quite linear, with each mech / part you unlock having higher stats than the previous one.
Now, while this gives you a nice sense of progression and feels rewarding, this essentially creates a situation where once you unlock the 'best' mech or parts, there's no reason to ever go back to old parts. And so for the entire end-game you're stuck with the same mechs.
For Mining Merchant, I wanted to figure out a way to make each mech useful at any point throughout the game. The 'best' mech is no longer the one with the highest stats, but rather the one that's most efficient in your current environment, and fits your current objective.
Therefore I've separated the mech / companion progression from the character progression. Let's dive into that.
Throughout the game, you'll unlock new mechs to purchase. Each mech has a unique set of base stats and a unique active ability. Mech upgrades are primarily focused on improving the active ability, but also slightly improve the base stats.
Similar to mechs, there's also a number of companions to unlock and purchase. Your companion autonomously follows you, providing you with buffs and they can be upgraded as well.
The main stat increases come from your character's stats. Characters earn exp with each tile and resource they mine. The rarer the resource, the more exp. Each level, your character gets a skill point which you can assign to a stat. These bonuses are applied on top of the base stats of any mech you enter!
This way you can choose your mech based on the base stats and abilities that are suitable for your current playstyle, objective or environment, without having to worry about losing progression.
If you play Mining Merchant in co-op, you'll be running your shop together with your friends. The money you earn is a shared resource, which means that players don't have an individual bank account. Because of this, all purchases are also shared with everyone in the game. If a new mech is purchased, or a companion is upgraded, all players in the game will unlock this.
Character exp and levels are the opposite, as these are entirely separate to individual players. Your character progress transfers with you to any local or co-op game you join, so you can level up your character with friends and continue progressing in your singleplayer game.
Alright, that's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed this little devlog. Make sure you don’t miss anything by adding the game to your Steam wishlist and following the Mining Merchant Community Hub. Got questions or thoughts? Drop them in the comments below or ping me on Discord!
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