So, items, equipment and resources are something I’ve been playing around with since I first had the idea for the game. Obviously, no RPG would be complete without a selection of neat trinkets to equip your characters with… but for a long time, that’s how it stayed in A Memory of Eternity, just mere superficial trinkets. However, now that combat is geared to play a much bigger role in the game, it also means I have the chance to massively expand what items are available.

I’m a big fan of Diablo 2. That’s pretty much a given, since I spent the late ‘90s and early ‘00s on my PC playing other luminaries such as Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, and Command & Conquer. Among all the other things that set the Diablo series apart is the extensive, spreadsheet-worthy catalogue of weapons, gem slots, and the sheer exhilaration of getting increasingly more powerful loot. There’s something so endearing about that type of gameplay loop. Not to say that I aim to imitate something so massive, but I do like the thought of building something similar.

So currently on my list of things to do is to create, and inevitably balance, a number of things to collect. These can be categorized as:

Equipment:

• Weapons: Items that increase your offensive capabilities, including firearms, melee weapons, drone parts and shaper relics. Some characters will be able to wield two weapons at the same time.
• Armor: Items that increase your defensive capabilities, including light, medium and heavy armor. Armor will be class-specific.
• Accessories: Items that will have various utility benefits, such as increasing experience gained in a fight or increasing the amount of resources an enemy drops.
• Attachments: This is only something I’m considering, not something for sure. However, I like the thought of having attachments for your equipment, like new scopes and larger magazines for guns, or more lighter alloy for swords and armor.

Items: consumable one-time use items that provide benefits either in battle or outside of battle.

Resources: the set of “currencies” in the game. In the post-singularity world, money no longer has any value. Survivors now value food, medicine, munitions and general supplies. These can be traded between survivor factions for other goods and services, or turned into engineers and gunsmiths so they could build you special items and equipment. Additionally, they are vital for upgrading your base facilities.

• Medicine – can be traded for items that heal and restore your party members.
• Munitions – can be traded for weapons and armor.
• Supplies – can be traded for accessories and general use items
• Manpower – a resource but not one that can be traded. Will be important for base building.
• Food – arguably the most important resource. Can be traded for various items and goals, but low food levels can lead to a number of serious drawbacks… including death of NPCs.

How items and resources are acquired

This is fairly straightforward. Items and resources in A Memory of Eternity are acquired the same way they are in most RPGs: from NPCs, drops from defeated enemies, as the prize for completing quest, etc. However, items and resources can also be acquired by sending out a squad of survivors (separate from the main story characters) during missions. These missions will be risky, and I haven’t entirely ruled out permadeath for non-story characters.