Well it's Tuesday, so time for another progress report.

This week's progress report is even less exciting than last week's.

I added Grayscale Armor (made from chitin (from Greatleaf Beetles), leather, and trollskin) which is a light armor that's about as protective as somewhere between iron chain and steel chain, and has Magic resistant properties (note that means the specific 'Magic' damage type, not all magical damage). I added the ability to make it from the requisite components, leveled up till I could hunt those components, found them, made it, fixed a bug where I couldn't equip it.

Since then I've been testing the Northstar mine. 1F is manageable with partial Grayscale, partial Studded Leather, Flare, Cauterize, Recurve Bow and a liberal helping of potions, elixirs, and poisons. B1 is still very, very tough on the lightly armored archer. Particularly the gremlin enemies (flighty, agile mages that go down in one hit, but are hard to hit and have many powerful spells) but I think they'd be tough on any build. I did some bugfixes on B1, since I set up some of the switches wrong for the monsters and ore veins. Makes sense that I screwed up; last time I worked on this game was last year, IIRC.

After Northstar B1, it's B2 and the Greater Demon there. Then it's Ilandria City. Then Gloaming Grotto. Then Addison Plantation. That's all the content I'm planning on including in the Normalgame. The final two dungeons/mines, Wintermute Cavern and Ancient Nadir, and the final "friendly" location (Frostpointe Tower, a wizard tower that is your starting location as Epic Gordon) will be reserved for the Epic Game. The next public release of the game will probably coincide with the completion of the Normalgame content, including various new quests and the endgame gameplay, which I didn't mention in the foregoing list.

Even though all the mapping is thankfully done for me (before the project even began), populating all of the content seems like a long, insurmountable road before me. Just got to try to do it one step at a time, even though I will still almost undeniably fail. Always I think a project I've conceived is manageable, reasonable, self-contained, "aiming low". Always it turns out to be a dauntingly, unrealistically epic endeavor.

I think what I really enjoy is starting games, not necessarily finishing them. It's a shame, completing a game is a great sense of accomplishment, but the process of getting there is hard work, plain and simple.

Making fun games really ought to be fun, since it's a non-paying hobby, an avocation, but all too often it's unrelenting drudgery.

I've also hit a snag with regards to controlling the regrowth of some harvestable plants due to poor planning early on. I've asked for help here and it looks like...received it.