After further playtesting and getting some very valuable feedback, I’ve been back to making changes, applying fixes, and adding things for v0.8.2. The next update will be focused on balance changes and some re-organization. None of the mechanics are getting an overhaul this time.
Exploration
One of the biggest changes is how Exploration Encounters are balanced. Previously, they were a bit random, and the difficulty could swing wildly. They were actually scaled based on your result (with the option to reduce your result) but not in a way obvious to the player. It also wasn’t strictly controlled, allowing characters to get just about any encounter of any difficulty level, it was simply easier to get lower-difficulty encounters.
In the coming update, Exploration will be broken down into four difficulty levels. Land Encounters are level 1, Coast is level 2, Seas level 3, and Special Encounters (from all areas) are level 4. So whether you get a Mishap all the way up to Rare when exploring Land, the encounter should be of the same level of relative challenge (obviously, depending a lot on your character’s preparedness and Skills). You’ll have a much clearer idea of what area you should explore and what to expect from it. The rewards will increase slightly from one tier to the next so you are still rewarded for getting rarer encounters over trivial or common.
I’m also taking this opportunity to fill in the remaining encounters, flesh out the “temporary encounters” as well as reorganize them so that the results of your choices are placed elsewhere so you can’t see what happens next.
Resources
Another change is how resources are balanced. It might not be as immediately dramatic as the exploration changes, but resources (such as wood and iron) will be slightly easier to gather. Over time, I’ve added new ways to use resources, but this made the tight economy of resources too tight and grindy. What you collected didn’t go as far as it once did. I’m making small adjustments to help alleviate the issue while hopefully not making anything too abundant.
Fame
As a smaller change, there are new Fame levels added between previous ones (going up to 12). These new levels won’t have requirements but instead offer small rewards. This will make it easier to earn Fame back-to-back without the risk of hitting a requirement before you had a chance to meet it, and it will even out the pacing of the campaign.
It’ll still be a while before the next update is ready, the encounters always take a long time to work on. But, v0.8.2 will be the most complete version, finally featuring all encounters and events.
Thomas P. King, author and game designer 