Question on food consumption

[Thaxlsyssilyaan]

I've tried the super demo, and noticed the food bar doesn't deplete, which make me think it was not yet implemented, but i noticed that, due to various factor (going back and forth to sell item, random encounter, high stamina consumption) i had to sleep regulary, and, i imagined what would happen if i need to eat, since there is no renewable source of food.

First, food seems quite rare, and second, since monster don't drop food, and merchant don't sell food (at least, i haven't seen any), and third, even if they would sell food, will they resplenish their stock.

So overall, how is food handled in final version?

[GOLDEN ERA GAMES]

This is V1. Food is one of the things I just ignored. I've had a million implementations of things for that bar. At present there will be no food entropy. It might get turned on in V2. That bar at various times has represented morale, anger and mental health. They all got canned as I found they didn't add much. Chances are in V2 that food bar will start to decline and when it hits zero it will begin to burn vitality.

[Thaxlsyssilyaan]

Nice to hear there is no food right now. If you plan to add food, then don't forget to make some drop from mob, or to give us a merchant that sell unlimited amount of them for gold, so there is no "countdown" to play that game until we have eaten all the food on hyperborea and unable to progress.
Non renewable amount on food is like a limited time to finish the game, and i think it is bad on a game of that scale. (very long game, like the M&M series)

Ps: i like the mental health idea, some sanity meter remind me of the Cthulhu ambiance.
Seeing undead or seeing demonic spell at work (both foes and player's ones) could eat up the sanity meter. That would be a cool way to have a school of magic that is powerfull but eat everyone sanity if used too often. And since you have many brain focused spell, (brain rot, confusion etc..) that could give them a new utility beside basic damage + chance of random action.

[GOLDEN ERA GAMES]

I can see you know about the problems with food. They are really a damper on the fun. So until I could implement it in a way it was not a major drag I disabled it from doing anything.

[Thaxlsyssilyaan]

I agree with you, food need damper the fun is badly implemented. Only multiple way of having renewable food (looting mob, merchant, harvesting bush and tree that regenerate every few days, etc...) may make such a system fun. (and make some new skill like hunting/harvesting usefull)

Btw, i edited previous post with idea on a sanity meter, maybe it will interest you.

[GOLDEN ERA GAMES]

I actually think that is a good idea you had and it could help balance out the Eldritch magic and Necromancer death magic with some penalties. If implemented I would then have to produce some way that sanity could be restored but not easily.

[GOLDEN ERA GAMES]

At present when you try to learn Eldritch books you get penalized with disease, insanity and paralysis by just trying to scribe them.

[bfg9001]

Are there shrines or anything like that? That seems like a good location to restore sanity.

[GOLDEN ERA GAMES]

Shrines is a V2 idea as well. You've got plenty of good ideas, I was thinking something similar - when somebody really goes crazy you have to find the shrine of that GPCs patron and "pray" (usually means sleep in Grimoire) in order to recover. It is not going to be in V1 but the "patron" that identifies the shrine has been in there 20 years. Will definitely get on to this in V2. It's hard enough to make it difficult to locate the shrine, also adds another item of information that an NPC could give you. I have a cruciform monument now that I was planning to use for shrines, they just didn't make it into this version.

[Thaxlsyssilyaan]

As long as those shrine are reachable soon by low level player, in case one of your group member goes crazy, and you did not yet gone far into the game (unlocking area etc..) or have multiple way to regain sanity.

Btw, what is the lastest demo? I find screenshot of different version.

Mine says v1.50b with a lonely crusader on the right side, but i seen other picture where the menu displayed the group of differents characters.

[Thaxlsyssilyaan]

I have some doubt about curing sanity into a specific shrine tho. I mean, in a dangerous dungeon full of eldritch creature, all your char will take sanity hit. Let say you need a break to recover, then you have to go out of the dungeon, and visit all eight shrine for every character to recover then go back to dungeon.
Shrine could be used for somethings else. Perhaps a use for destiny point? A temporary buff that each char could choose from a multiple choice. Each diety could offer various buff depending on their domain. The buff you choose would last a long time depending on your destiny attribute. Or you could take 2 buff, but they last less time.

Example: A cleric could take a "Mind refuge" buff, that would increase sanity resistance, that would take 4 destiny slot per use, taking the same buff multiple time would increase the duration.
Taking it two time, would make you use 8/10 destiny point. When the buff wear off, you go back on 0/10 destiny point used.

Recovering from sanity could come from various entairning village activity like in Darkest Dungeon, where you would pay and spend some time. Meanwhile, you could loot some alcohol in loot/dungeon or buy them from merchant, and act like sanity potion, but with some accuracy debuff the more you drink to prevent going from 0-100 sanity in one go. Drinking too much could give disease or confusion sickness.

[bfg9001]

Cleve, in your idea what exactly would sanity entail if you did decide to add this sort of feature to V2?

[GOLDEN ERA GAMES]

I was thinking spiritual health would be good for that bar. Various corrupting influences make it start to drop and this affects other things in game. Necromancers would suffer from this the most and if they did not regularly go to shrines and bath in magic pools they would eventually begin to fall apart with disease, blindness, insanity, etc.

[lor1keet]

Originally posted by GOLDEN ERA GAMES:

I was thinking spiritual health would be good for that bar. Various corrupting influences make it start to drop and this affects other things in game. Necromancers would suffer from this the most and if they did not regularly go to shrines and bath in magic pools they would eventually begin to fall apart with disease, blindness, insanity, etc.

I think this would make it extremely tedious to run a Necromancer though.

This would probably tack on another 400 hours to an already impressive 600-hour game. ;)

[bfg9001]

Originally posted by GOLDEN ERA GAMES:

I was thinking spiritual health would be good for that bar. Various corrupting influences make it start to drop and this affects other things in game. Necromancers would suffer from this the most and if they did not regularly go to shrines and bath in magic pools they would eventually begin to fall apart with disease, blindness, insanity, etc.

I like that idea a LOT Cleve. Would you balance it by making Necromancers more powerful to offset this fact?