Elixir Emporium devlog #1 - An infinite crafting RPG

[@anthraxaddict7431]

Love this! I'm a big modded terraria guy, especially Fargo's souls where practically everything is a material, so this scratches a big itch I have. A few points of criticism I thought as I was watching: 1. Inventory management - if I'm gonna have a million different materials from using my tools on every little fucked up boat or deer I've hunted, there's no way I'm gonna be able to keep track of them all. Especially when the materials are AI generated, there's gonna be "Gloves of frost" right next to "Gauntlets of frost" and only one of them gets the material I want to experiment with - I see myself inevitably getting confused and not remembering which does which. 2. AI's great for randomly generated content like this, true, but I fear it could be *too* open ended - that is, since nothing is really specified, the player could disagree with the AI over what an item should combine into and what properties it should have. "Why shouldn't making this metal cold make it brittle?" and so on and so forth. There's also the risk of arguing with the NPCs over an item you're SURE should work - maybe the AI is making a mistake, or the problem it generated is a little too esoteric and the solution is a little too interpretive. 3. I - and I suspect many players with a completionist itch - am GOING to use every single tool I have on that random bush. And the ground. And ground of different areas, in case they're different. That's a lot of wasted time doing boring grunt work in the slim chance that something interesting will pop up. The research system is kind of boring as well - it's just an extra few clicks when you first use a tool on something before you actually get to use it. Perhaps instead you could study an item and it'll say "this ember axe burns and infuses items with the warmth of hearth as it cuts!" so now players can think "fuck, I wonder if I can get some burning bush?" - I feel this would drive peoples' curiosity more and keep them from getting as frustrated when they know an item shouldn't logically do anything interesting with certain aspects of the world. 4. Completely subjective opinion here - I don't think the leveling stuff fits. I think it'd be cool if you instead made better and better tools to do alchemy and forging with, to see if certain items have different reactions when made with a cauldron made of ice vs one made from the bark of the world tree. In a game that seems determined to make crafting its selling point, I feel like time gating harvesting certain materials behind levels is counterintuitive. Maybe make it more of a puzzle, instead? "the energies in this stone make it too hot to handle, I need something cold to break it up!" for example. Or you could get your own fire resistant gloves and bag, or something. I really like this, over all! Liked, subbed, and I joined the discord :) looking forward to more

[@cj2k867]

This shit looks dope! Good job guys

[@ChromaGolem]

Thanks fam, love you

[@hextris9887]

keep it up (: its looking great

[@ChromaGolem]

Thank you so much! Definitely gonna keep it up. :)

[@ivyjuicegames]

The current prototype look gives me a vibe of Gothic or Risen. Is something like this the visual plan for the future?

[@ChromaGolem]

A lot of our assets right now are just placeholders until we figure out what visual vibe to shoot for, but I do love the look of Risen/Gothic. We've got some inspiration from Runescape/Skyrim/Warcraft, but I think we'll end up going a little more high-poly eventually though!

[@ivyjuicegames]

@@ChromaGolem Gotcha! Looking forward to seeing more!