Bounty quests in Swelladia are repeatable side quests, pulled from a list that rotates every three in game days. These quests will have unique objectives, and give a currency used in a special item shop, called bounty tokens. Bounties are also a great source of EXP for leveling up additional classes! There will be a minimum of six different bounty quests available per player level.
Higher level bounties can be undertaken once the player passes a special exam after completing enough bounties for each level.
Bounty Types
The first bounty type are assassination quests. These will require you to hunt down an elite target at the specified POI (more on what these are in a moment!). The target will be stronger than usual enemies, so strategize accordingly!
The second bounty type are interaction quests. As the most diverse bounty type, these will require you to fulfill the specified objective at a POI. For example, you could be tasked with spiking an entire camp’s water supply with berry juice!
The third bounty type are escort quests. These quests will require you to break into a POI and rescue (or capture) a target without them detonating. Once you’ve apprehended your target, you can escort them to any large settlement to complete the bounty! These bounties give double the tokens of a normal bounty.
Hunt bounties will require you to pop a specified number of enemies at a POI. When taking out a bandit syndicate’s leader isn’t enough, blowing up the whole lot of them will prove satisfactory!
Grand Hunts are special bounties that are much tougher bounties with special targets across the world. While not as powerful as world bosses, these hunts require special permission from Captain Arona to be initiated due to their danger.
Grand Hunts give uniquely powerful loot, and lots of gold! And who knows… maybe you’ll run into a trio of cyclops hunters along the way?
Bounty Tokens
Bounty tokens can be traded to Captain Arona in order to get unique loot.
This includes things such as:
The bounty shop will continue to expand over time, as new bounties are added.
Points of Interest
Bounty Points of Interest are the unique maps in which most bounty objectives are set. These maps are filled with secret interactions, in order to keep your repeated travels into them fresh!
If you mess around in a POI long enough, you’ll find lots of secret routes to make your stealth through the areas easier. An experienced blimp will have a much easier time reaching their target! These areas are still in development, but I am exploring items with unique abilities on these maps, such as shovels for tunneling around to different parts of the map.
POIs are designed so that sneaking, or simply fighting your way through the crowds, are equally viable options to complete your bounties! There are items available in the bounty token shop to make these tasks easier, such as a ring of temporary invisibility, only usable within POIs! As of 1.1, there are three POIs: the bandit camp, the lepin grove, and the goblin mound!
A day & night cycle has been added to the game! This includes a full 24 hour cycle, with transition periods between day and night. This currently doesn’t impact anything, but in 1.2 there will be monsters and events specifically related to the day/night, requiring you to do some planning if you wish to seek them out!
The weather system has similarly been implemented into the game! Right now it only features three types: light rain, heavy rain, and fog. As the game’s areas expand, new weather types will be added as well. More special, regional weather effects will have special effects.
Rain inflicts the WET status passively on both the player & enemies. In 1.2, different enemies will also start to spawn exclusively in different weather types. I plan on also doing systems with resources, such as “blooms” where a resource might spawn more often or give more rare drops during certain weather types.
I already have the months of the in-game calendar planned out, and most of them will also come with unique weather impacts on the map! These will be much more fantastical, and visually interesting as well. I’m very excited to share this in particular, and I think you will all enjoy it. This will be added in 1.2!
As is depicted above, the game’s UI has seen a massive overhaul! I found the previous one quite lacking, and it was difficult to add more information onto it in a way that was visually pleasing. This one includes a dynamic picture of the player character, which will change emotions depending on how inflated your character is! It will also turn blue if berried, of course!
As you can probably notice, the game’s item slot has been expanded into a full hotbar! This works the same as the old item slot, where you press “Q” to pull up the menu, but it will instead put that item in the selected slot. This should make messing around in the overworld much smoother.
The music and ambience of the game have been massively overhauled! Now there are much wider playlists of music for both the day and night time, and they will continue to be expanded over time. Additionally, different areas of the map now have ambient sounds. For example, near rivers you will hear rushing water, and ambient dripping in caves. Additional ambient sounds also exist depending on the time of day.
The sound effects of the game are steadily being expanded as well, primarily focusing on adding sound effects to the previously silent skills. This was something I simply skipped over before due to the hectic rush to get the initial beta launch out.
As you can see above, I’m steadily working on giving every in-game item a unique sprite. I’m doing this to steer away from RMMV’s overused assets, as well as to make getting new gear feel more rewarding. I personally get excited when I find a new item in a game with a cool design, so I am putting this philosophy into the game development.
This certainly isn’t something I’ll have done by 1.1, as the update is already adding so many new items. You can expect a large batch of new item sprites each update though!
The next dev log will cover the crime system, including prisons and what qualifies as criminal activity, and a few other things as well! The next one will come sometime shortly after I finish implementing & release the bounties update on patreon.
After the next WIP build, which will add all of the things mentioned above, I’ll have the following features left to add: crime & punishment, expanded puzzle mechanics & some new dungeons with specific loot, community items & NPCs, the immersive fast travel system, and that’s pretty much it! I’m not going to give an ETA for 1.1’s release, due to my own inability to stick to a consistent schedule. But currently it's about 40% done, not including bounties since I’m still not finished with them.
If you’re interested in checking out the WIP builds for the content already available, check the Patreon! (Unless you’re reading this there!)
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IMO the wax seal bounty icons up there need a bit more contrast to see what they are (the color red compresses badly too, which doesn't help). Maybe some subtle light shine here and there? or just more contrast I guess.
Thanks for the helpful feedback! I’ll up the contrast a fair bit. They were originally distinctly colored but they ended up looking like play-dough.