Castle of Vice – Development Diary #17 (New exploration paths, equipment, and more)

Hello everyone,

For update 0.10, I have been working on expanding the available paths in the castle exploration system, as well as making additions and changes to equipment. There is quite a lot of information I want to share with you, so I’ll keep this introduction short and get straight into the details.

As mentioned, the exploration system will receive an update with two new paths being added. The first one is a type of field shop where you can spend your level points — the same ones used to obtain upgrades and items from Karidion — to purchase equipment and potions. This path functions as a safer way to prepare yourself since you don’t need to overcome a random event, and also as a faster one, as you can obtain multiple potions or pieces of equipment from a single visit, provided you have enough points.

As a side note, I think it’s fair to say this addition wasn’t entirely my own idea. I had considered adding some kind of field shop before, but it wasn’t until a player suggested it on my Discord that I seriously started developing the idea. So, thanks to that player for the suggestion.

The second path is a bit more unique: a short memory minigame centered around choosing a card. I’m not confident I can explain how it is without making this post much longer than necessary, so instead, I’ll show you a short demo in this link.

On this path, you can earn level points as rewards, which pairs nicely with the field shop if you plan to buy items there. However, choosing the wrong card may result in one of three penalties: losing level points, gaining arousal, or receiving a piece of cursed equipment.

With this minigame also comes a change to exploration events. In the current version of the game, there is a random chance of receiving cursed equipment instead of regular equipment after succeeding in an event. I decided to remove that mechanic and make cursed equipment obtainable exclusively through the card minigame.

The reason for this change was the randomness behind obtaining cursed equipment. Either it appeared too often and ruined runs, or too rarely to serve as a reliable method for farming ero XP. Now, through the card minigame, obtaining cursed equipment depends more on your skill than on luck.

A new NPC will be tied to both of these paths. Since I like connecting gameplay mechanics to the narrative, you will first need to have a short conversation with this NPC in order to unlock them.

Here is an image of the NPC in question:

Please keep in mind that you will encounter him after your first defeat in the castle, so the new paths will remain locked until you are defeated once.

I’m still not sure whether this NPC will become involved in the main story, though I may add additional side content related to him in the future.

That’s all regarding the new paths. Honestly, I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on them, since this is the first major addition I’ve made to the exploration paths since the project began.

Moving on, let’s talk about the new equipment additions, which consist of the following items:

• Uncommon — Ring of Pure Retribution: Whenever you deal damage with a skill, increase the damage dealt by half of the target’s Arousal.

• Uncommon — Scroll of Potion Making: At the end of combat, if you have 0 potions, gain 2 potions.

• Rare — Book of Good Endings: If you fail a non-unique exploration event, negate the failure and recover 150 Health.

• Rare — Potion Enhancer Dust: Energy, Health, and Explosion potions have their effects doubled upon use.

• Common — Simple Aim Ring: Increases hit rate by 8%.

There will also be three new items replacing already existing ones:

• Agility Ring replaced by Necklace of Swift Intent: Reduces your maximum Energy Points by 1. A random skill with an Energy cost of 2 or higher has its cost reduced by 1.

• Perception Ring replaced by Glasses of Narrow Focus: -5 Perception and Defense. Increases the duration of the parry circle by 20%.

• Defense Ring replaced by Stone of Bloodthirst: -12% hit rate and evasion. Increases life steal by 12%.

I decided to make these changes because I felt the old rings didn’t contribute to the progression of a run in a particularly fun way. Their replacements now offer more meaningful decision-making and builds by introducing clear disadvantages alongside benefits that can be strong on their own or even stronger when combined with certain skills or equipment.

Another new addition coming in this update is a change to the Development Status section in Annelise’s status menu. I made some adjustments to the UI to better fit the Personal Opinions section, and you will notice that some of these opinions now change to reflect Annelise’s corruption progress.

And that’s all for this post!

I managed to finish everything I wanted for this update earlier than expected, so version 0.10 will be released this Friday, May 29th, instead of next Friday.

With that said, thanks for reading this post, and I hope you have a good rest of the week. I'll write to you again in a few days!