Hello Gobbos! 

In our last devblog, we introduced you to one of these special map events called 'Unique Scenarios'. This time, we will be exploring two more adventure features that we are actively working on and discuss how these features work and how it can help improve your adventure party’s firepower through ability and weapon enhancement. So get your gears ready, and let’s dive right into it!

Weapon Enhancements

While out on an adventure with your goblin party, you may occasionally encounter traveling Orcs on their camps. Some, like the Orc Merchant, sell their wares, while others lend their expertise to passers-by and even to adventuring goblins. One of these is the Orc Smith who you will find sitting with its blacksmithing tools and offers weapon enhancement in exchange for gold.

Interacting with the Smithy will prompt you to select any weapon to enhance it. Upgrading a single weapon costs gold and increases by 30 gold with each subsequent attempt. While it is possible to encounter the Smithy early in the run before you can gain gold in the level, we made sure that you can still gain value from every encounter as the first upgrade is always free. 

Upgrading a weapon through the Smithy is a gamble. You may attempt to upgrade up to five times or until the upgrade fails. The chance of success decreases as you continue to upgrade a weapon. Fortunately, upgrading your Armory in the Lair increases the success rate of upgrading a weapon. The chances to fully upgrade a weapon is still up to your luck but when the process fails, the encounter prematurely ends. You still keep all the upgrades you've paid for, but you lose that last bit of gold you paid for that most recent upgrade attempt that failed.

Ability Upgrades

In the early iterations of the game, the way to strengthen each goblin class’ abilities is to unlock new abilities and upgrade them in the Class Guild Room within the Lair, using the ‘Ability Deck’. Our design team made significant changes with this feature as we developed the new roguelike system in the game. We wanted to give you more options when strategizing your run, so we designed a new map encounter featuring the Battle Guru that lets you temporarily improve your goblin's abilities.

On your  adventure run in Goblin Stone, you will meet another traveling Orc known as the Battle Guru. This Orc can help hone your group's combat abilities. Allowing you to customize your combat build for the current adventure.

Interaction with the Battle Guru is fairly simple. When you interact with the Battle Guru, you will be presented with three random ability cards and asked to choose one to upgrade. The pool of options includes all level 1 abilities of each class in the party.

You will be able to upgrade 3 random abilities each time you interact with the Battle Guru. Similar to the Smithy, all map events can be encountered more than once in every adventure run. If the luck is in your favor, it is possible to fully upgrade multiple abilities up to level 3. 

While all of these enhancements and upgrades are temporary, your goblin party's odds of survival and effectiveness in a battle can greatly improve by taking advantage of the Battle Guru and Smithy's encounters!

What do you think about these new map encounters? Follow us on our Official Discord Community for more game development updates. Until then, stay tuned for our upcoming devblog!