First of all, AHAHAHAHAH I HAVEN'T POSTED ANYTHING SINCE JULY OTL
I revel in my guilt and shame. Have a photo of a grumpy baby turtle to stare at while I compose myself.



ANYWAY. Today I'm here to talk about AWESOME THINGS AKA hey I am working on this and here is some stuff!

I just sank way too much time into eventing a title screen because I suck at eventing wanted it to look perfect, but it looks pretty and it works! It's a small thing, but I'm very happy with it. It wasn't too difficult, and it just adds that little extra bit of oomph, y'know?

I've also been sticking in the awesome tutorial nonsense! It's all optional, of course, since WHO LIKES A FORCED TUTORIAL STAGE, AMIRIGHT OR AMIRIGHT? B)

Either way, writing up all my cute "how to play" nonsense has got me thinking that HEY, maybe I should actually talk about gameplay other than "you can avoid encounters" on this blog, since I've actually had it planned out and hanging in the database for eons now! Soooo, today, I'm gonna talk a wee bit about statuses, elements, and Piper's functions in battle.

The first thing to know about battles is that they're really straightforward. One of my goals for this game was to make something vanilla, but fun, simply so I could practice working with Ace, sticking to a work timeline (AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHHAHAHA *dies*) and actually making something without having to worry about Custom Everything Systems! So yeah, no worrying about Junctioning the right Espers to your Sphere Grid and crafting a Broken Sword of Buttkicking here: just good ol' fashioned elemental Rock-Paper-Scissoring and slamming your enemies with states.

With that in mind, let's talk about those!

States
States in Riftwalker are pretty simple. Here's a list of what you'll be dealing with:

• Death-- You're dead. You can't move, you can't fight. You can do nothing but lie there and decompose, and maybe twitch a little. Should go without saying that this is a thing, BUT HEY MAYBE YOU'RE A NEWB TO RPGs I DON'T KNOW

• Bleed-- Patch that shit up; you're bleeding out! You take 10% damage for every turn you don't put a band-aid and some Polysporin on that.

• Dazzled-- Your accuracy goes down about 60%, making it a lot harder to hit things! Get your head in the game, girl, there are monsters to slay.

• Migraine-- You ever had one of these? They hurt like hell, and you can't concentrate for shit. No skill-usage for you!

• Confusion-- You forget who is your friend and who is your foe, and are overcome with the urge to punch anyone and everyone in the face.

• Sleep-- Dude how are you sleeping there are monsters trying to murder you right now. You can't move and you can't fight, until someone slaps you awake.

• Stun-- You can't fight and you can't avoid anything for a turn or so! What a pain in the ass.

On top of those, there are also buffs and debuffs. These affect your basic stats: Attack, Defence, Magic, Resistance, Agility, and Luck. You can also buff or debuff elemental resistance, making enemies weaker to certain elements and allies stronger to others! Be careful, though, since enemies can do the opposite to you (the same to you? AUGH GRAMMAR).

Elements
There are only four of these, but they're important!

• Solar-- The light, warmth and energy of the sun. Although firey moves fall into this category, it's important to remember that Solar =/= Fire! Solar opposes Lunar, meaning that it's strong against Lunar aligned creatures, but vulnerable to Lunar attacks. Too much sun scorches the earth, so it is also effective against Gaia. The Dazzled state is frequently associated with the Solar element.

• Lunar-- Dark, cold and harsh. Lunar attacks cover all things frigid and shadowy! Lunar opposes Solar. The harsh cold of the shadows blot out stars, making it effective against Sky. The Bleed state is frequently associated with the Lunar element.

• Sky-- Air, wind, gusting. Sky opposes Gaia. Clouds cover the sun and reflect it's light, so it is effective against Solar. The Migraine state is frequently associated with the Sky element.

• Gaia-- Earth, nature, life. Gaia opposes Sky. The warmth of nature and life overcomes the cold shadows of the moon, making it effective against Lunar. The Stun state is frequently associated with the Gaia element.

To have an elemental alignment means to have your attack change to a certain element, but also to have its weaknesses. I wanna go into more with this, but first I'm gonna talk about Piper's moveset, and how that interacts with elements.

Piper's Moves
Piper is a damage dealer, first and foremost, and has the ability to switch elemental alignments through the Aura command. Piper's Auras are:

• Solar Aura-- Changes elemental alignment to Solar and adds Resist Lunar for a short time. Has a 50% chance of inflicting Dazzled when a hit is successful.

• Lunar Aura-- Changes elemental alignment to Lunar and adds Resist Solar for a short time. Has a 50% chance of inflicting Bleed when a hit is successful.

• Sky Aura-- Changes elemental alignment to Sky and adds Resist Gaia for a short time. Has a 50% chance of inflicting Migraine when a hit is successful.

• Gaia Aura-- Changes elemental alignment to Gaia and adds Resist Sky for a short time. Has a 50% chance of inflicting Stun when a hit is successful.

So, you have three things to think about when switching auras. 1) What element do you want to resist? 2) What element do you want to attack with? 3) What state do you want to inflict?

Piper also is the only character to have TP, and has access to the Brawl command. Basically, you build up TP in battle, then select Brawl and pummel your enemies until they die or you run out of TP. Since Piper has access to all auras from the beginning of the game, you'll primarily focus on getting better Brawl skills as you level up. These are mostly physical skills with hilarious descriptions, and won't be the meat and potatoes of your every day battle strategy.

To Sum Up
So what does this all mean? Well, let's talk about this mofo, AKA the first guy you fight:


The Pufftrio is Gaia-aligned, meaning its normal attacks will be Gaia element, but it will be very weak against Sky and kind of weak against Solar. What Aura would you want to use against this bad boy? Would you switch to Sky and take it out before your Resist Gaia buff wears off and you become weak to its attacks, or would you play it safe and use Solar Aura to do less damage, but prevent any elemental weakness? You'll have to gauge the situation and see if it's worth the risk!

(SPOILERS: Use Sky Aura on this guy. Its a pushover.)

Anyway, I hope this makes some sense...? I feel like I rambled a little and was a little confusing (I'm bad at explaining things OTL), so if you have any questions, please ask away! I'll be glad explain things in more detail. :3

Oh, and as far as other characters go: I miiiiiight do a post on the other three party members, but Piper is the only one that has something resembling a non-traditional moveset! The other peeps have skills and spells and things like every other RPG character ever, and might not require a post of their own.

BUT HEY. MAYBE I WILL WANT TO WRITE IT.

Either way, here you go! PEACE. 8D

(Oh, also, in other news, if you follow Origin at all: if the game page mysteriously disappears in the next little while, DON'T BE FRIGHTENED. I'm gonna give it a serious overhaul at some point in the future, when I have more... stuff that can be shown. It's very WIP looking at the moment, but when it's more polished, I REALLY wanna show it off to you guys, and I want to unveil everything all at once! >w<d )