STATUS

For skills I tend to think about the character and what kind of skills they would use. For example, say I have an elf, usually people would think Bow for a weapon, but what if she uses a glaive instead? She suddenly doesn't have bow skills. Now, is she a veteran or a novice? Does she have magic or not? Perhaps she'll use magic to enchant her glaive. If she has magic, what kind? Is it status effects or healing or elemental or something altogether different?

So now we have an Elf who is an apprentice at wielding a glaive and uses status effect magic. Her skillset would revolve around that, so stuff like a skill that slices the enemy for decent damage, or casting poison on her weapon to deal lasting damage. Perhaps some straight status attacks as well. She'd probably have basic attacks, too, so I'd look up stuff like glaive formations/attacks and then build a base of basic attacks from that and find ways to combine it with her status magic.

Let's try another one - An old man who uses a war fan. Perhaps we could give him powders to coat his blade with and while it doesn't do much damage because of his old age, it's a very precise weapon so it'll hit more often. Then he could use powder to spray an enemy with status effects to weaken them for the others in the group. So he'd have AoE, non-damaging skills as well as precise but not-heavy damage skills that could deal particular kinds of damage (like immobilising enemies for a turn).


As for dungeons, I tend to take a general idea then mash it with something else. So say a forest of daisies or a cave of spirits. I also go with paths and the like which make sense to the plot. So say I need to find a way to slow progress between two towns, I might have a forest where you get lost so that the villain can get ahead of you. In that case, a forest of fog would make sense and be a good idea.
But what if I need to find a magical mcguffin? Then it'd be sealed in a dangerous area, more than likely, so I take two dangerous things and meld them. Cactus forest, anyone? Perhaps a flame swamp? How about a bottomless pit cave where one slip would mean game over? Or a gas-filled catacomb where areas are cut off via deadly gasses?

You can have a conditional branch check if the item is in your pack when you use the skill and have it fail if there is not item, just by using the normal eventing abilities of battle pages, or depending on which engine you're using, having the skill turn on a switch that triggers a Common event. If you have on-map battles you could use a called Common event to run a check before each battle to see if the item is in the pack and if not, switch the skill out for an identically named one that won't trigger in battle (or just remove the skill altogether).

As for dungeons, try to use things that make sense in the scope of the dungeon. So for sewers you wouldn't have ice sliding puzzles, unless it was a frozen sewer.

Personally I try to encourage people to explore by placing chests they can see but can't reach without going 'off track' (that is, I have a main path that will lead you through but then have offshoots that lead to treasures and the like). If it's a dungeon you'll later have to wander through again you can have shortcuts that you open the first time you go through so you don't have to wander all the way back through a maze.

If you do have puzzles, don't have encounters in those areas. It's annoying to try and figure out a puzzle when you're having to battle over and over at the same time, losing the thought that might have lead to solving it.

Overall themes works out well, too. Say you have a dungeon that's mechanical in nature - let's say a drawbridge - keep the puzzles similar in design so that it feels like part of a whole.

Of course, you don't have to have puzzles. You might have a non-boss rush where you have to fight a bunch of monsters to make it through or have the choice of a few paths - the intelligence route where you have to think your way through or the brute force route where battles are the challenge.

Also, it helps to make each area different so that your player knows landmarks to look out for, especially in an area where you have to backtrack a lot. Is this the room with the broken fountain? Is it the one with the overgrown ruins that look like a fish? Is it the one with the torches or the one with Link's grave? This way they add something to the story of your dungeon (let's say a forest with different shrines that lead to different areas, the shrines are monuments to the people who used to live there (and still might! ooooh~)) and give players a hint as to where they are.