Dungeons

Welcome in a new Development Diary post!
If you haven’t read the previous posts yet, here they are:

Post 1 – Game announcement

Post 2 – World map and Tutorial

Post 3 – Event cards

Post 4 – Equipment

Post 5 – Enemies and Combat

Important gameplay change

Before we move on to a new subject, we’d like to mention a small change that we’ve done a few days ago, which was necessary for a better balance.
When playing for a longer period of time, we’ve realized that it is very easy to get a large amount of useless equipment, which can be easily turned into gold by selling it in the town. It was a matter of time to become very rich. To solve it, we’ve decided to change the way you loot the enemies. Before, a player took (in this example) 2 rare items as a reward.

Now, the icon is a little bit different:

Now the player draws 3 rare items but can keep only 1. The rest must be put back to the deck. And same goes for trinkets.

We’ve increased the number of item cards that you draw, so that you have a much higher chance to find something useful for your character. But because you can keep only 1, you won’t end up with full inventory so easily.
In rare cases and if clearly specified, it is possible to keep 2 or even 3 items, but you must defeat a very strong enemy, or complete a difficult quest.

Dungeons

Now, let’s talk about the main point of this development diary post – the dungeons. In the Descendants of Volos board game, a player collects a wide range of quality equipment and weapons. Those found in the store, or as a result of the adventures in the New Stitrir provinces, are cheap and not quite strong enough. If you want to gear up with high quality stuff, you’d have to go into some more dangerous regions like: the Wastelands, the Rarog’s Desert, Ancient Woods or the Sim-Maggor Mountains.

In the above example, a player was attacked by an enemy while moving through the Wastelands. After defeating the Poludnitsa, the player will be able to pick 3 Rare equipment cards and keep one of them. Finding an enemy is a random thing and so is the loot from it. If your character’s specialty is for example a bow, you may, however, want to plan your journey to get a specific rare bow! You can find specific weapons in the dungeons.
A Dungeon is a special location that can be found in all dangerous regions, and is marked like this:

The content of all dungeons is listed on a large sheet of paper. Each side of this sheet is divided into 2 halves, with dungeons from one region on each halve.

The above version is in Polish, as we are still working on the content and its English translation.

There are 2 types of dungeons. One marked with a symbol of a hand, and the other one marked with the symbol of a gate.
The dungeon with the hand symbol works as a static event and you may not skip it. You must stop there, draw an adventure card, and you MUST move on the next day.

In the above illustration you can see the Sulphury Marshlands area serving as an entry to the Wastelands region. Because it’s a very dangerous place, you must move on the next day (you may not rest), and you can move only 1 field due to extreme exhaustion. You’d better keep your fingers crossed not to meet an enemy the next day, when you’re so weak.
The second type of dungeons are for the player to decide whether to get in or not. Those have a special description and usually 2 stages.

If you decide to enter the dungeon, you first consider its description. Then, to begin the 1st stage, you roll a D6 die to see which enemy you’ll have to fight. We call those enemies “champions”.  They are kind of the final boss minions. As you’ve noticed, there is a small chance that you won’t have to fight with any champion to get your hands on an unguarded chest (free loot). There are 3 types of chests, which we’ll explain in a moment. Once you complete the 1st stage, your turn is over and you must put a marker on this location to indicate that the 1st stage of this dungeon has been completed and may not be raided again by any player.

The details about the champions can be found at the bottom of the dungeon book.

The loot from defeating them is the same for all, and can be found on their right side:

If you wish, you can re-enter the same dungeon the next day and begin the 2nd stage directly. This time you fight with a boss. If you defeat it, your turn is over, and you flip the marker, to indicate that both stages of the dungeon have been completed.

The loot from the 2nd stage boss is either a specific rare weapon, or a silver or golden chest.

In the above example, after defeating the boss from the 2nd stage, a player will have to find that specific shield item in the stack of the adventure cards of that region. Notice that there is a small chance that you (or some other player) may randomly acquire that item throughout the adventures. So it’s wise to first make sure if the item from the dungeon has not been found by another player. If so, going to that dungeon may be pointless. Those specific rare weapons are marked with a special icon, which means that if discarded (thrown away or sold in town), they go back to the deck, so it’s possible to acquire them again.

This solution is to prevent other players from discarding or selling your desired weapon just to make it impossible for you to get it. Remember that you can always attack another player and take an item you want (if you manage to win).
Another type of loot is the chest.

There are 3 types of chests, and the details about them are listed also in the dungeon book sheet, next to the legend.

When you loot a chest, you throw a D6 die to see what you got. The best possible equipment in the game is called Legendary and is marked with a golden symbol V. Golden chests have the highest chance to get a legendary item, although it is still not granted that you’ll get what you need. If you are extremely unlucky and fail to get a good weapon of a specific type, you may consider raiding some dungeons where the loot is a specific rare weapon. Keep in mind that if you go to the dungeon to get a random legendary weapon from the golden chest at the early stage of the game, and even if you somehow manage to win, you may not be able to use the legendary weapon yet. They have very high attribute requirements, so you should get a higher level first.

Not all Dungeons are the same. For example the Great Bazaar on the Rarog’s Desert. A shady market where you can buy even rare items.

Let’s assume that you somehow manage to get there alive through the desert (which is dangerous not only because of the potential enemies but also because events in this region demand high survivability: they make your food rations and stamina level limited or hinder your regeneration). Once in the Bazaar, you should either be wealthy (and pay for protection) to be able to safely buy some rare items, or lucky to avoid being robbed and ending up with nothing.

That’s it for today’s development diary. We hope that you’ll stay with us and keep track of our development process in the Descendants of Volos board game. See you soon.