🧭 Quests, 🕳 Dungeons, and 👑 Loot

🧭 Devlog: Quests, Dungeons & Loot – The Core Loop of SoD

Every dungeon crawler has one thing at its heart: LOOT.

This devlog will cover how Quests, Dungeons, and Loot all work to deliver a fun engaging system with less down time and less organising time.

📜 Quests – Story, Rewards, and Discovery

Quests are how you progress the story, unlock new areas, and uncover hidden lore.

There are several types:

🧑‍🌾 Story Quests

• Drive the story with longer quest steps and broader objectives.

🧩 Side Quests

• Optional but rich with lore and npc backgrounds.

• Often reward skill XP, items, or new systems like new shop stock or a unique utility item.

💠 World Events

• Dynamic objectives found while exploring

• These can include:

  • Skill enounters

  • Rare monster hunts (Eventually when monster hunting is implemented)

Quests may reward:

• Unique enchantments

• Skill experience

• Dungeon keys

• Crafting items

🦇 Dungeons – Progression Meets Chaos

Dungeons are the primary challenge content of Dragonholde. They're used for:

• Leveling

• Lore exploration

• Endgame replayability

How dungeons will look:

1. Enter a dungeon and defeat enemies within

2. Encounter random events, such as:

   • Defeating a horde of earth wisps that are protecting a rare ore.

   • Regenerate a water wisp by fishing essence from nearby pools.

   • Feed a fire wisp rare bars (WIP).

   • Random events will be a good way to earn skill experience while earning combat experience.

3. Defeat the dungeon boss

Dungeons will be opened with keys, obtained through random drops. You'll be able to insert up to 7 keys into the monolith at a nearby hub to open a string of dungeons one after the other, you are rewarded for completing more in a row. You won't be able to leave without closing the string, and all loot is accumulated and displayed at the end. You'll be able to send any loot directly to your stash to avoid overcrowding. I wanted dungeons to be fast repeatable content. Less downtime means more loot and dopamine!

🎯 Dungeon Features

• Built-in loot filter at the end to quickly sort:

  • Gear with specific stats (e.g., Crit + AOE)

  • Crafting items

  • Reagents, flasks, food

• Skill actions tied to your progression:

  • Resources scale with your skill level. If a mining node is spawned it will be the highest available rock for your mining level.

• Bosses drop loot from unique tables, making target farming possible

• Enemy density scales with the player

• Different tiers of dungeons as you progress (Not sure how to tie it in yet, let me know in the comments!)

👑 Loot – Gear, Rarity, and Progression

Loot is the ultimate payoff in SoD—and I wanted it to be fun, customizable, easy to understand, and chase-worthy.

Gear Rarity Tiers

Common - 2 Modifiers - low tiers

Magic - 3 Modifiers - slightly higher tiers of modifiers

Rare - 4 Modifiers - Even higher tiers of modifiers

Legendary - 5 Modifiers - Can have all tiers of modifiers

Unique - 5 Modifiers:  2 Unique mods, 3 random mods (Boss exclusive)

Equipment comes as equipment bases, each with unique base modifiers. Weapons also come with type modifiers, for example a poison weapon might increase poison damage by 5%.

Modifiers are assigned to the item based on the weight of the modifier. The type of armour base slightly influences the mods on them, and when smithing gear you are able to pick from 1-3 modifier influences to apply to your gear.

✨ Unique Items

Unique items in Dragonholde are designed to act as power spikes that define a build—or open the door to the next tier of content.

• Dropped only by unique bosses in dungeons, raids(TBA), and quest bosses.

• Feature 2 global unique effects, like:

  • “35-50% more damage to enemies in close proximity”

  • “1% Increased damage per 1% of health missing or reserved”

• Also include 3 random modifiers, all rolled one tier higher than usual

• Some Unique Tools offer skill-altering perks:

  • "Send all gathered resources straight to stash"

  • "Tool durability does not degrade"

Hopefully the unique items you find will help propel your build to the next tier of content.

🎲 Loot System Design

The game uses a multi-table loot system:

• When an enemy dies:

  1. Rolls to see if loot drops

  2. If yes, it rolls for a loot table:

     • Gear (50% Chance)

     • Flasks (20% Chance)

     • Food (20% Chance)

     • Crafting items (5% Chance)

     • Skill reagents (5% Chance)

  3. Rolls quantity and specific item

• If the enemy is a boss, it rolls its own drop table of items.

🎒 Inventory & Reagent Management

You have three storage systems:

• Inventory: Gear, flasks, food, idols, and quest items

• Reagent Pouch: Ores, herbs, fish, logs, and raw ingredients

• Stash: Everything goes in here. Gear is found in the primary stash tab with 100 slots. Reagents have their own tabs and can be stacked infinitely

Flasks and food that are already equipped are automatically collected and added to the stack to ensure you aren't defeated while stopping to pick up some spicy tuna! If you have an empty food or flask slot it will fill that. Otherwise they are collected and added to the end of the dungeon as per usual.

World drops are always dropped on the floor where the enemy was slain.

That's all for loot for now!

If you have any questions, join the discord and ask away!

Got thoughts on the loot balance? A unique item idea? Drop it below—I’m still shaping this system and would love input! 🛠️👑🗺️