Weapon progression, level up and customization

nilead

Hi! I'm working on a dungeon crawler in the style of the Dark Cloud 1 & 2 games and I wanted to try to make a weapon upgrade system similar to those games (more like the second also known as Dark Chronicle). In that system the weapons gain xp points when used to kill enemies and they level up, gaining points that you can use in exchange of materials to upgrade their stats. When the requirements are met you can evolve a weapon and transform it into a new weapon with a bonus in stats and a new look, restarting at level 0 with the weapon but keeping the stats added by upgrading. It is best shown in this video Any ideas how could I make a weapon gain levels this way?

Wrofir

I doubt this is the best way to handle it, but I think you could do this via battle events.

For instance, the attack event for that weapon adds XP (if you have targeting then you can have it make sure it lowers the enemies HP before adding XP) and then have a check at the end of the battle event to see if there is enough XP to level up the weapon, at which time you can have that add a status value/experience increase that the player can spend via the progression system.

gamingislove

Equipment already has a level up system available, you can e.g. Auto level up when the combatant receives experience, Spend exp on it or evel up by Uses (only happens when using base attacks and for weapons).

For anything else, you can use the event system, Equipment Variables and selected data. E.g. check out this gameplay tutorial for a weapon upgrade NPC.

nilead

In Dark Chronicle the xp is dropped as physical pick up loot by the enemies when killed that adds to the currently equipped weapon. Is that something that can be done instead of automatically getting the xp? I don't want the character to level up or gain xp, only the weapons.

Can the upgrading a weapon into another by checking if its stats are high enough also be done using Equipment Variables?

Thanks for the answer, didn't know you could already level up weapons in Ork, that's awesome!

gamingislove

Well, exp can't be dropped as loot, so you'd have to use items for that (e.g. items giving exp on use), or maybe spawn custom prefabs in the combatant's death event. The prefabs could add exp to the combatant.

The Auto level up mode will collect the (selected) exp for the equipped weapon when the combatant receives the exp. So, even if your combatant doesn't level up, you can still set up an exp status value (using the None experience type) to be used for the weapons.

Yes, upgrading a weapon into a different weapon can be done via equipment variables.

nilead

Thank you very much for your answers! This has helped me a lot. Fantastic support as always ;)