Jungle Biome and creatures

A few words about the goblins in the Jungle biome.

Goblin Headhunter

This is a Tier 3 unit, which means it "costs" 3 leadership points to lead (the maximum is 9, so the Goblin, while not the weakest, is relatively weak). It has quite a few "tags" (namely: Living, Tiny, Ranged, Melee, Humanoid), these are used in various skills. For example if a knight gives bonus ATK to all your Humanoid troops, the Goblin gets this bonus too. Another thing to note that this gobbo has both the tags Ranged and Melee, usually an unit is either this or that, but this unit is both.

The Goblin's basic attack is a simple strike, but it costs 0 AP (as all basic attack skills). It is a melee attack that triggers counterattack (if the enemy has it).

His AP gathering move is Hide, this gives him 1 AP and some ATK points, and a small amount of heal. This will be important later.

The Goblin's third move is Javelin, which also costs 0 AP. This is unusual, as 3rd skills usually cost 2-4 AP, but for the goblin it is free. He throws a poisoned javelin to a single enemy, dealing small-ish damage but also poisoning it. This is also a ranged attack so even if the enemy could retaliate, it won't.

His ultimate is Vodoo, which only costs 3 AP. It gives the Goblin a large ATK buff while also poisoning him. Remember that Poison does a current life percentage based damage and cannot actually kill the goblin. But, here is the trick. The goblin can heal himself (through the Hide skill), and all healing removes poisons!

The goblin (being an agile scout) also has a common passive skill, "Spot Weakness", which reduces the DEF of a random enemy unit at the start of combat.

Bosses

As mentioned in the previous post, Bosses are large units that can only be fought, but not recruited. They usually have some special mechanics that need to be countered in order to win (also having a strong army is a must). Generally it is far easier to fight bosses if you can debuff them well, or buff your own creatures.

Lets take this boss for example (the rightmost adventurer is there for the scale):

The Jungle Boss uses totems to unleash his fury. His totems gain 1 AP per turn, and at 5 AP, they explode, dealing huge damage to your whole army. Obviously this must be avoided. The Boss also poisons your units, and the totems themselves buff and heal the Boss.

Now you can combat this several ways. Killing the totems quickly is a possibility (Some units, like the Mining Robot or the Tiger excel at a single decisive strike near the start of combat). Draining them from their AP is also a way (Red Cultists, Bears, and some other units also can do that). But then you still have to fight the boss himself.

Countering the poison is also a possibility: any unit with an AOE heal will do (High Priest, Monk, even the Faerie). For the boss himself you will need either strong debuffer units (Vampires would be ideal, but most of the undead have debuffs), or units that buff your army (Flagbearers, Enchanters, and many other).

Don't panic if you don't have the ideal army, since after all a very strong army will defeat this boss even if you don't care about any of the above (well, maybe killing the totems first is a good idea anyways). But if you don't want to grind and level up, spending precious time, employing tactics like these is a great  idea.

Grand Skills

Though Grand Skills aren't special gameplay-wise, we decided that some of the more notable skills will have their own special effects. Here is a Bansheee's Hymn of the Dead skill. It gives all your undead units bonus stats, bonus AP, and also heals them.

Currently it is a bit bugged, as it plays 3 times instead of once, but we hope it really adds to the wow factor of these stronger skills.

And here is a Water Elemental's Acid Rain skill, it deals some damage, and reduces the defense of the enemy units.

Not all skills will have their own effect, in fact most of them will be relatively general, but we try to give all of the larger skills their own small graphics. Anyway, that's for today!

Combat, part 1

    A huge part of Bounty of Pixels is battling other monster packs. Now I already wrote an article at IndieDB why we choose the JRPG system, but a quick repeat:
- We wanted combats to be quick, so we removed the "moving in battle" element
- But that dumbed down combat too much for our taste, and made "not losing units" impossible, that forced players to go back to recruit units after every combat
- Thus, JRPG combat system gives us both the option that units regain all HP after combat (no more "I lost 3 goblins, I have to go back" feeling), and gives more depth by adding abilities and energy.
Now this is clear, but what about the details?

    We have a pretty vanilla combat system, so units have HP, Damage, Attack and Defense. This is pretty much self-explanatory. If you read this blog, then I pretty much assume you know what these do :)

    Units also have "tags" that affect which spells affect them and what are they vulnerable to. For example an Inquisitor's skill is stronger vs the tag "undead", while a hunter is stronger vs "beast". Some tags also have an innate trait, like undead are stronger at night, flying has some chance to dodge, living is affected by healing more but also vulnerable to poison.

Seems simple this far, right? Trust me, it gets more complicated :) More about the skills next time.