While this is designed around the Hero Kingdom Proposal I posted a few weeks ago, it can also stand on it’s own if needed, hence why it’s in it’s own topic, rather than being added to the other one. It also helps keep each section clear and focused. I have linked this in the original kingdom thread though.
#The Forge - Weapon Forging
Once the player has built the forge, they gain access to a new mini-game for weapon forging. This game allows players to craft a variety of weapons, while also determining their mana colours, cost and rarity (up to and including Mythic).
Cost
Each play would have a cost associated with it, similar to Treasure Maps or Arena. My initial thoughts are:
50,000 gold
1,000 souls
The cost is mostly there to discourage players from just constantly starting and abandoning mini-games to get a good board start to get a specific colour/rarity.
Weapon Types
At the start the player decides what kind of weapon they want to create from a list. 4 examples are included in the prototype but more could be added in the future (similar to how we see new weapons arriving with each new kingdom). The actual damage that these weapons deal will be defined by the rarity the player achieves during the game. (Hence why they list X as the damage in the original description.
Game Rules
Number of turns: 15 - No extra turns awarded
Match gems as you would normally in a game.
The highest mana level at the end will define the mana colour of the weapon. If you managed to get more than 1 within 2 (ie up to +/-2) of the same level, you will get a Double, Triple or Prismatic mana colour depending on how many you manage to get within the range (No quad or quint colours though, sorry).
Higher number of gems collected will result in a lower mana cost. Mana cost ranges from 30 down to 12.
The number of skulls you collect defines the rarity of the weapon.
Design Notes: I purposly didn’t want to add extra turns in to try and avoid games going on forever / a long time as we see in Treasure Hunts. I initally started with only 10 turns to play, but initial feedback suggested this wasn’t enough without extra turns. Hence, the total number was increased to 15. The overall scaling/duration of the game still needs a lot of fine tuning based on player testing and feedback. Currently I feel it’s a little too easy to get the lowest mana cost, but my previous implementation had it as too hard, so the curve will have to be fine tuned over time.
Also the damage numbers for weapons are mostly placeholders to illustrate how the damage might change based on rarity, so shouldn’t be taken as balanced examples. Other possibilities for rarity scaling could be adding a status effect when reaching Legendary or Mythic rarity
Known Bugs:
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Game doesn’t check for available moves. So if there are no more legal moves, the player is forced to restart the game (Restart button is available at all times for this reason.) Ideally the board would reshuffle itself like it currently does in the main game, I just haven’t managed to implement that in this prototype yet.
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Images for Common Scythe and Mythic Spear are not Scythes or Spears respectively. This is due to the fact the main game doesn’t actually have any common scythes or hero spear weapons (which are the only weapons with mythic backgrounds at the moment), so no art exists in the game files for those. I improvised with other weapon images.
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Skulls aren’t very “forge-like”. Ideally these would be replaced with a anvil or hammer image instead. I just couldn’t find anything I liked in the game files. The anvils from Puzzle Quest 1 are a good example of what might replace the skulls.
Download Link:
Weapon Forging Mini-Game
Link back to orginal Hero Kingdom Proposal:
i like it, its fun to make weapons and there is a chance to “eventually” craft your “perfect” weapon for the dream team 
