I've been hinting here and there about wanting to update A Very Long Rope, and I finally got off my ass and did it. I made quite a few changes, and I'll list them below, but I want to talk about the most major one in depth. When I made A Very Long Rope, my goal was to make a game with a strong story, and a lot of the other aspects got brushed aside. This was going to be my way to segue into the community and hopefully find some other people interested in working together. Since then, I've shifted my perspective and focused more on things like design and aesthetics, which this game doesn't really care much about, unfortunately.

So, the update. The chief annoyance I've been hearing about A Very Long Rope is the dungeon design--mainly, levels are way too big, and the random encounters serve to make things worse. So, this update adds an item to your inventory that toggles enemy encounters. This item was available in the game before, but the only way to get it was to beat the game (players who have done this know I'm talking about the saecelium shield). Now, this item is given to the player at the very beginning, meaning you don't have to fight a single random encounter anymore.

Of course, since bosses exist, you'll still need to gain experience. In order to incentivize getting a good amount of experience before each boss, I've made several treasure chests need a currency called "victory points" in order to open them. Basically, you get a single victory point for every enemy you defeat in a battle (other than bosses). Victory points are dependent based on the dungeon, so the ones you earn in the first dungeon will only work in that dungeon. The cost of opening chests is higher depending on what's inside the chest, so you might need to spend between 2-6 points in order to open each of these special chests.

I've also doubled the experience, gold, and item drops from monsters. The net effect here is that if you open every single locked chest, you'll end up fighting about half of the encounters that you would have if you just left random encounters on. I did a full playthrough and felt that these locked chests provided short-term goals that kept me more interested while exploring; I hope they do that for you, too!

Here's the full list of changes:

-Reduced crit damage from triple to double
-Stat cap increased to 9999 (will mainly affect buff stacking)
-Berserk no longer sucks
-One-touch Sprint
-First agricultural upgrade requires three people instead of five.
-Escape rate now a flat 60%
-Added a way to get out of the Goddess Tower if you don't have a portable transceiver
-Fixed a few typos/graphical glitches/small things I don't remember
-Rare drop rates have been increased significantly
-Gold/XP/Drop Rates doubled
-Findable equipment that could be used in recipes is now sold as recipes in your town along with the regular recipes.
-Saecelium Shield now added at the beginning of the game. Players can use their old data and find a Saeclium Shield in a number of places within a blue chest (such as the entrance to your town, on the world map, or next to the save point in Old Town); the blue chests will disappear upon opening one.
-Most chests are now "locked." Gain Victory Points from defeating random mobs in a dungeon to open locked chests. Victory Points are specific to each dungeon.
-Locked chests are weighted based on how good the item is. 2 VP is a potion, 3 VP is gold, a good potion, or monster mats, 4 VP are great potions and large sums of gold, 5 VP are stat-boosting items or rare monster mats, 6 VP are equipment.
-Chests that aren't near easy grinding spots (e.g. chests in certain puzzles, chests in towns) will never be locked. Several other random chests in dungeons will also not be locked.
-Arena fights now give experience
-Can now use saecelium shield during soul tear scenes
-Only need to find the wolf four times instead of nine (what was I thinking?!) in Marina's soul tear scene.


That's it! Oh, and make sure to subscribe to my new project: Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass.