14 DAY TRIAL // The team at the Paradox Development Studios is delivering its weekly update about Runemaster and the subject this time around is one that’s always near to fans of the role-playing genre: loot and how it can be used in order to push the story forward and make a character more powerful than he already was.
The coming title will include a variety of items that can be obtain either from quests or from fallen enemies and depending on the category in which they slot, each can have a number of uses.
Quest Items are designed to push the overall narrative of Runemaster forward and the developers explain in an official forum post that, “These can be anything from a long lost ring to a pyramid of dwarven skulls. These items cannot be equipped by the player, but may have many uses in the quests themselves.”
Despite the fact that they can be very important to the Norse-inspired fantasy world of the game, the best way to use them is to simply finish the quest they have associated and move forward with the story.
The bulk of all the items that a Runmaster player will encounter will be randomly generated, ready to be used in one of the five equipment slots, for weapons, belt, ring, runes and amulets.
Paradox adds, “We are using a system of prefixes and suffixes for randomized items you can find. A low level weapon can be named ‘Feeble sword of…’ while a high level weapon may be ‘Glorious sword of…’. This will be an easy shorthand to know whether you are carrying something of great value or just another minor blade.”
Each item can give a bonus to one or two stats, based on the type of the loot and the ways the various character stats relate to one another.
Runemaster will also include a selection of unique items, that are designed to significantly improve the abilities of a character.
Some of them are directly inspired by Norse mythology and might be recognizable to players, while others are created by the developers.
The game will include Laevateinn, the sword wielded by Freya, and Hofud, Heimdall’s sword.
Gamers will have to complete complex and difficult quests in Runemaster to get the best tier of loot, which will not be randomized in any way.
The game is set to mix turn-based strategy elements and role-playing mechanics and is expected to arrive on the PC before the end of this year.