Hello Valcartians!

   This is a very special developer blog post for yours truly, Talon. I'd like to take some time to explain some of the new details coming into Valcarta II: Awakening in this 3 part blog post.

   First off, combat. Valcarta I: Rise of the Demon saw a lot of random encounter pestering everyone left, right and center. The way of the uncontrolled random encounters, as seen in V-1 is over. Valcarta II: Awakening will be bringing a newer outlook to encounters by placing each unit on the map within a hostile zone.

   Much like above, different monsters have different movement patterns when walking on the map. Some will actively seek you out, others will move randomly through the zone. Enemies will also be moving at different speeds, sometimes even able to swarm you for up to 2-3 fights in close succession followed by a nice break. Keep in mind, that fighting at this point has become more optional, but no less challenging.

   We have also changed combat a bit from the Early video we showed off where combat was shown with 4 battle members at a time. This will not be the case anymore. After putting a lot of hours into playing the game, we determined that 4 members was making our combat too easy, and we needed to do something about it. We could either: A. Reduce the number of Combat members or B. Increase the number of enemies in a single encounter. Well, as it turns out, option a was our course of action. Option B faded out of our minds really quick when we realized that attacks that effect all enemies would still clear out an encounter quickly. Thus solidifying our route towards Option A, removing the 4 battle member.

   Despite only have 3 battle members in combat, there are more characters that you can chose to fight with at a given time. We have added a feature that will allow players to switch which combat members were available in the heat of battle. At the start of each round you will be able to sub in or out any member of the party (dead or alive). This feature comes in more handy when dealing with Boss monsters, Fay-Charged Monsters (FCMs) or even just random encounters.

   Lastly I wanted to touch on the newest changed we have made to combat as we have been messing with this a lot the last couple of weeks. With the combat party swapping mechanics, we decided to customize each character into their own role, making each one viable in different situations.

   For example: Dark Path Valak will specialize in dealing damage to foes with higher defense. As the enemy gains more and more defense per level, Valak's damage gets higher and higher.

   Where as another character, say Maria, specializes in taking out Fay related creatures such as slimes, elementals, spirits or Fay Beings!

   Overall, we want to create a fun and interesting battle flow for players to involve themselves in, whilst keeping the personality of each character predominate through every section of the game.

   That's all for tonight's post folks, stayed tuned for more this week! In part too we will discuss the games progression, how the split-path will work in V-2, and more!

Thanks,

Taylor Cox (Talon)

Blacksword Games CEO and Lead Developer of Valcarta