Question about tavern and University.

Reply by malero on April 23, 2025

Update 8 will have the tavern, university and a bunch of other stuff. The update has turned into a massive project. All of the crafting and gathering professions are being reworked. Farming, fishing, cooking, etc. will have a max level of 100. The university will have courses you can take for each of the professions and give various bonuses.

There's also a trainer course that increases experience gained, max energy, and max pet stamina. There's an adventuring course that increases gacha coins, item drop rarity and quantity.

The tavern will be the main quest hub. There will be more towns and each town will have unique quests to complete. You will start off in a new town and after you complete all of the quests, the next town will be unlocked. Each town will unlock more places and slowly introduce players to all of the things you can do in the game. These are the towns and the places each town will unlock:

Act 1: Havenbrook, Docks, Tavern, Kitchen, Spa
Act 2: Mistfall, Barracks, Farm, Market, Endless Dungeon, Daycare, Locksmith, Post Office
Act 3: Moonhollow, Apothecary, Pet Shop, Gym, Bazaar
Act 4: Brightvale, Mines of Descent, Blacksmith, Workshop, University, Crucible
Act 5: Norton, Auction House, Summoning Shrine, Void Gate

Parts of the story also require the guild system to be finished, so that will have to be released before update 8 and be a 7.x update. There are a few places listed there that aren't out and will also be released before 8 as well. The Void Gate has a few mini games:

One is called Void Nightmare and it's a rogue-like mini-game where you select 3 pets from a random list of pets and try to survive as long as you can. They start at level 1 and you will travel through a map fighting enemies, collecting glyphs, brands, potions, etc. before fighting a boss. There will be daily leaderboards for Void Nightmares with rewards. Void Nightmares use a new map system that was developed for some of the tavern quests. The endless forest will also be switched to this new map system at some point. Void Nightmares are pretty much finished, I just need to create some unique bosses and rewards. Going through the map to the boss of each area is very similar to Slay the Spire, where you can pick between a few different options; fighting an enemy, a random story event, vendor, etc.

I haven't started working on the other void gate mini-game, but it will be similar to void nightmares and not use your own pets. It will be player versus player similar to Hearthstone Battlegrounds where you buy pets, glyphs, brands, etc. and then auto battle other player teams.

The bazaar is also almost complete. A long time ago, I made a game called Second Hand Hero for Alexa, but it wasn't really good enough to be its own game. I think it works pretty well in Gacha Pets. When you go to the bazaar, NPCs will approach you and buy items you've stocked, ask for random items or try to sell you items. You can negotiate the price or just accept their offer.

I really want to add progression systems to the Bazaar and Void Nightmares, but I haven't quite figured out how they will work yet. I may release them before adding the progression systems and get other players ideas.

The crucible will be another mini-game. Bounty Hunting and some bosses will have a new target type called savage beasts. You may find a baby after defeating them in bounty hunts and you will be able to send them to the Crucible for 3-month long seasonal PvP battles. Savage beasts cannot use equipment and will only be usable in the Crucible against other players beasts. You will be able to breed and level them up in the crucible to try and create the best possible beasts in the season. Savage beasts will be set free after the season ends. They won't be able to be given glyphs, but breeding them has a chance to pass on their skills, traits and attributes. The savage beasts will be the new bosses for a lot of different things in the game.

Update 8 is my target to release on other platforms, iOS, Android and Steam. I do not know when update 8 will be finished. I've been trying to figure out a way to release parts of it early, but a lot of it is connected and hard to separate. Void Gate, bazaar, crucible and gym will released before update 8. Void gate will start with just void nightmares since it's almost done and then I'll add the PvP auto-battler later.

I am most likely going to start selling energy packs to help fund the development of the game. Right now I'm having a hard time finding free time to work on it. I'm in a weird spot where it's making a decent amount of money, but not enough money to work on it full-time. If it was making 2-3x more each month, I could work on it full time and not have to do anything else. It would be amazing! I was also thinking about making a Kickstarter to fund a year of full-time development of the game, but I'm not sure if it would be successful. I'm also not sure what the rewards could be for backing the kickstarter.

Reply by malero on April 24, 2025

@himan1
1: There will be a new place you can go called the Portal Shrine that will allow you to travel between towns and quite a few other places. People already in Norton will have Norton unlocked at the portal shrine.
2: I haven't figured out when the arena will be unlocked. Act 4 would probably work, but even earlier would be fine too.
3: Completing tavern quests give tavern tokens.