It’s been a while! I have been extremely busy so I haven’t had time to update the blog. I also haven’t played much recently, though I have occasionally logged in during these past few days.
I was originally going to put these in a blog post with its own topic, but I thought I’d just make a post about what I’ve been up to instead! Well, it’s mostly about real life and computer science stuff that belongs elsewhere (certainly not in this blog). It’s been a while since I last played so these are quite dated now, but nevertheless I wanted to share them.
An Eventful Start to the New Year
If I remember correctly, there were two events running during that time simultaneously. There was a lot to do!
The other event was the Golden event!
Challenging the Cave of Trials
I also tried to challenge the Cave of Trials at some point to see how far I could go. Here’s how it went.
I conquered the 6th level quite easily!
The 7th level was a bit harder but it was manageable. You can see a red Reborn Ogre above. It drops a chest that you can open to get an item to tame some rather interesting creatures. I unfortunately did not open one because I didn’t have enough money to register the pets…
Phew! That was a lot harder than the other two. I needed warmer clothes for the next level…
Now it was time to go further. Hopefully, the next one wasn’t as cold (and it actually wasn’t!)
There were trolls and large frogs. Everything was going relatively well, until I forgot about one specific type of enemy in this level…
I encountered these large man-eating plants and another red Reborn Ogre. However, this was when everything went wrong…
And it was all over for me. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten further than the 11th level yet. It was a good try, though!
Imaginary Towers! The Epic of Antiqua Magis
My last update on this “series” (which I don’t think can be called that anymore) was a few years ago. I have actually done quite a lot since then, though it still hasn’t finished. I had hoped to at least finish the map, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish it. I hope I can, someday!
I’ve been thinking up and drawing these “imaginary stages” since I was a lot younger (a lot, lot younger). It really brings the nostalgia whenever I think about those times. I played a lot of Puppet Guardian, probably more than I should have, but it has played a huge part on my life and I wouldn’t be where I am now without it. It was one of my only pastimes back then so I actually had a huge stack of papers, each detailing different “imaginary stages”. I wish I still had them now because my imagination back then was really something lol.
By the way, I managed to think up of a name for this imaginary new season: The Epic of Antiqua Magis. It’s quite longer and doesn’t fit the style of the second season, Splendor Mythos, but I suppose it can be shortened down to Antiqua Magis.
Anyway, my last post was a preview about a stage that continues on from the Cave of the Land. This stage certainly received a lot of my attention. I’ve put in a lot more detail than the others, and it’s still not finished. I wasn’t on planning to make a whole design document on the stage, but it ended up like that anyway lol. It’s still not finished, and I’ll probably change some of the details. I thought it’s quite a waste to just leave the documents and the images stored on some server somewhere, so I decided to share what I did here.
Here’s what the (unfinished) map looks like:
For comparison, here is roughly what the finished map is supposed to look like:
It’s a really messy plan, isn’t it? I was actually thinking of changing the gate because it looks really out of place. I wasn’t sure what to replace it with, though.
While I’d like to write more details about the stage in this post directly, I think it would be impossible to put everything in. Instead, I decided to share the link to the document directly. Click here for information about the imaginary stage. It also includes some other information about the entire season, such as the BGM inspiration for each stage.
The main motivation for the stage is that I wanted to think of some way to remove the dependence on critical hits. I also wanted to force players to have to use magic and give players a way of roleplaying a magic-user not just from their clothes, but also during fights. The synthesisable wand/staff weapons are also ways for new players to use magic easily and reliably. It’s not a stage a stage that new players can just go into at all, of course. It’s a really hard stage, and it’s probably extremely unbalanced (and impossible to conquer), but it was fun to think about. You can see that I was really inspired by MMO mechanics (particularly at sections of the document describing the boss fights).
I also thought it would be fun to add new mechanics, so I did. For example, maps can now have diverging paths and players can choose which way they want to go when travelling. Some of the stages are also “sealed stages”, meaning that players will need to use special dice to travel through them. I thought that this would encourage players to team up and pool their special dice together. They could also try to farm these special dice as a team! (By the way, there is no team limit in Antiqua Magis).
Additionally, here’s how I thought the stages in the new season could be linked together. The final stage is “The Crystal Heart” which has a really powerful superboss. The “Arcane Clock Tower” linked to the final stage is like Helheim, but instead of a single boss, it has a timer much like the one during the ending of the first season. This timer actually repeats, so this stage is basically a player’s room in Magicaloss, but in Puppet Guardian (lol). It would have powerful enemies that drop valuable loot, but not a boss. Who knows, maybe the enemies could even change during story events!
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