I released the last update before the German faction gets added. I decided to make a separate blogpost for previous versions instead of bundling it all in one large post and I will also use this post to talk a little about the German faction. But first, lets about previous updates released after the last blog post and the biggest additions.

Lockpicking

This is a simple minigame that replaced the previous stat-check system. While I don’t want player skill to influence certain mechanics too much, making everything just a skill-check is quite boring.

The way it works is quite simple. You use arrow keys up / down to select your lockpick. Low quality lockpicks will perform worse than higher quality one. Obviously.

After that, you press left / right arrow keys to “probe” the lock pins. Each probing attempt has a certain chance to mark that pin. Chance for this depends on your thieving skill, which is not fully implemented yet. Lockpik quality and lock complexity also affects the chance of this happening. All chances can be seen the top left pannel.

Pins marked in one solid color have 100% correct in their guess. So if you probe a pin and it turns completely red, that pin is wrong one. Now you know for sure the other pin is the correct one. If the pin is colored partialy yellow, there is a 60% chance that your guess is correct. So if your probed pin turns yellow and green, there is a 60% chance that that pin is correct.

Once you think you know which pin is the correct one, make sure to aim your lockick on that pin (just make sure you probed it as the last one) and press the action button. If your guess was correct, the pin will stick and your lockpick will move to the next row.

If you use all your probe attempts, your lockpick breaks. Stronger lockpicks will last longer. Correctly solving one row will also replenish your probe attempts. Guessing wrong MIGHT break your lockpick. Chance for that happening is again in the upper left pannel.

When your lockpick breaks, there is chance you will get sent one row back (again, you can see that chance in the left top pannel). If you are lucky, you will stay in the same row. If now, you will get sent back and the game will roll again. This means that you can get sent back one row, two, five or even all the way back.

This system makes sure that both the skill of your character and you as a player matter to some degree. Low level character will most likely break a lot of lockpicks, because you will not get hints very often and each broken lockpick will send you back by a lot. If your (the players) memory is bad, you will have even harder time, since you will have to re-do the pins you did in the past. However, if your characters skill is high, you will get hints all the time, your lockpicks will last longer and you won’t be sent back as often if you fail.

New maps

As you might have guessed, the current map of sinathir is not final. I estimate that there is roughly 1/6 of the maps I want to have in the game, not counting dungeons. The swamps to the west, mountains to the east and ruined villages together with the Red city to the north.

The German faction is situated to the east, south of the Graveyard faction base. If I want to add the faction, I simply have to add all the maps that lead towards their base. As of now, all the maps leading there were added.

Most of these maps have something going for them, be it enemies, resources, items to collect and even secret location. In the future, as I add more NPCs, factions and whatnot, these locations will get even more populated.

Shields

From what I saw, most people were using two handed weapons only and neglecting one handed weapons. That’s fine, since smaller weapons are supposed to be weaker than larger ones. To make them more useful, I added shields. These were not as good as I would like them, so I decided to make them a little stronger.

If you equip a shield, new number will show next to your health in combat. This are your shield points. When you get hit, all damage gets absorbed by your shield points first. Once it hits 0, you start taking damage as usual. Shield points refresh after each fight. Getting hit while wearing a shield will take away 1 point of endurance, even if you have no shield points left. If you use the “Wait” command in battle, you will regain 1 endurance point (even without shield) and you will also regain about 1/3 of your total shield points.

This makes shields (hopefuly) much more useful. Getting damage absorbed by shields means you lose no wellness and shield points reseting after battle can be counted as limited health regeneration. I’d like to know what all of you think about this new addition.

The German faction

The german faction headquarters are located on artificial island. South-east of Sinathir. You can only get there by crossing a long bridge.

The headquarters will have everything you might need. Quartermaster, training grounds, messhall, workshops and more.

When you join, you will get a steel helmet with identification chip, rifle, entrenching tool, some ammunition and rations. You will be expected to train often, work hard and undertake missions to achieve the goal of the German Empire, kick the Russian Union off the island and secure it for further study.

Once your sentence runs out, your performance will be evaluated. If the leadership decides you worked hard enough, you will be sent to Germany and become a official citizen, receiving a house, job and a future. If you spent all your time on Sinathir just sitting around and collecting your free rations, you will be sent back to Russia. And they won’t be happy about you joining their enemy.

To become worthy of being a German citizen, you will have to do multiple things. Do missions as often as you can, learn German language, further their goals by any means necessary and adopt their culture and values. General Keller and Captain Vogel will keep their eyes on you. Will all of this be worth it? Deffinitely. Germans are masters of bioengineering and brain-sculpting. And while the weapons they issue to newcomers are more than hundred years old, their most prized members receive state of the art equipment, like their feared powered armor or silent and deadly laser weaponry.

Mechanicaly, raising your faction standing will give you more jobs, training oportunities, new equipment and even new mechanics all together. You will be able to change your body with directed mutations and increase your skills by getting them implanted into your brain. More about those later though.

There is no ETA on the next update. The initial cutscene sequence will take quite a bit of time to do and the random mission system will also be a challenge. Adding a quartermaster will be relatively easy, since I will be able to tweak the favor system a bit to make it work.

As always, report any bugs you find and post any suggestions you have. See you later.