DEVNOTES #3

In this episode: city points of interest, the exploration map generator, and the potion system.

City hub

As we said in the previous DevNotes, your journey in the new world starts in the City of Iron Will. It’s a hub where you craft, manage your gear, trade, and pick up quests.

Points of interest:

• Training Hall — grind XP with no risks or penalties.
• Arena — ranked PvP with stakes, plus item durability loss if you lose.
• Storage — your stash, where you can safely store your loot. If you die in Exploration or the Dungeon, you can lose some items from your inventory. Storage and inventory have slot limits, so you can’t hoard forever.
• “Blind Goblin” Tavern — take quests, play mini-games, and chill.
• Lair — tame and level up a warg. It’s not just a mount, it’s your loyal companion.
• Forge — repair, craft, and dismantle gear.
• Alchemist’s Hut — craft potions.
• Trader’s Shop — buy basic consumables and sell junk.
• Monument of Heroes — leaderboards and rewards.
• Dungeon — a network of catacombs under the City of Iron Will. Every orc must pass the Rite of the Depths to be considered a full member of the clan.
• City Gates — access to the World Map, where you choose locations.

Map generator

A big January milestone for us was finishing the procedural map generator.

Quick reminder: when you travel on the World Map and enter a location, you switch into Exploration — a hex grid with different objects and enemies. The key challenge was balancing generation complexity, simple rules, and variety. Based on our internal tests, we pulled it off: each run feels different.

Already implemented:

• 4 biomes: Forests, Mines, Ruins, Swamps.
• 5 locations: Dark Forest, Old Mines, Dead Marshes, Ancient Ruins, Heart of the Mountain.
• 8 object types: regular enemies and bosses, chests, obelisks, etc.
• 5 surface types: base ground, roads, light obstacles (bushes, gravel), heavy obstacles (swamps), water, walls.

Locations differ by biome, generation rules, size, level requirements, enemy types, and loot. In a normal run (outside quest activities), your goal is simple: explore through fog of war, loot as much as you can, and find the exit portal without getting killed. Lose a fight? You lose the loot you found, spend resources, and your equipped gear loses durability. Better luck next time.

Future plans:

Right now, Exploration is classic extraction PvE. But we want it to feel truly hardcore and risky, so later we’ll add locations where you can run into other players. That creates way more situations: fight, steal loot, run away, ignore each other, or team up to take down a boss — your call.

Alchemy

Last month we added potion crafting and using potions. This gives you tactical tools to survive rough fights. You have 3 potion slots.

Unlike gear crafting, potions don’t require a separate recipe item in your inventory — all recipes are unlocked by default.

Already implemented:

• 18 unique potions, rarity from Common to Legendary.
• 19 ingredients used for crafting.
• 3 potion types: healing, buffs, and special (for example, the Phoenix Elixir gives you a second chance when you take a lethal hit).

That’s it for now. Hope it was interesting to see what we’ve been working on.