Hi everyone,

Last week we talked about replayability of Terra Randoma. One of the most important factors that ensure replayability is the overworld, so this week we’d like to elaborate more on that.

Travelling in Terra Randoma is fun! There is a chance of an adventure with every step you take. You need to plan your route carefully. If you want to travel safely, you can. In order for you to determine that, we have the danger levels shown with exclamation marks at the top of the screen. There are ten red exclamation marks which indicate the danger level of the tile you are on. So if you are on a plain tile in the middle of the day, the danger level is one. It increases as night starts to fall. If you are on a mountain area after midnight, danger level becomes nine.



There are four types of tiles on the overworld: plain, forest, mountain and water tiles. The plain tiles are less dangerous than forest tiles, which are less dangerous than mountain tiles. The water tiles are neutral right now, but we will add pirates and aquatic monsters.

When you are near a water tile and you move to water, your character hops on a boat and you start to control the boat. That is of course if you have at least 10 coins in your pocket. Then every hour you are travelling, you pay 10 coins to the boat owner. That means with every step you take on the water tile, your coins automatically drop by 10. So what happens if you run out of coins in the middle of the sea? With every tile you go without paying, your reputation in all towns drops. If you have negative reputation you will be unable to enter that town.

There is also a day and night cycle. It is safer at day time than at night. So if you want trouble, you travel at night and face the consequences. If you want a peaceful journey back home, however, then you’d be wise to travel at day time through the plain tiles.

The chances of a friendly encounter, for example, with a travelling merchant, or discovery of a hidden treasure, are slim on more dangerous tiles. Likewise, the chances of a hostile encounter, like a bandit ambush or beast attack, are slim on safer tiles.

We have many different incidents and we will add many more. This is one side of the game immensely open for continuous development. We aim to ensure that travelling is always interesting and a unique experience every time you play.

There are alternative ways to deal with a hostile encounter other than fighting. Through making a skill check, you can turn an ambush to your advantage by intimidating the bandits, or pickpocketing them and pay the ransom with their own coins. If you however decide to fight, you will emerge into a procedurally generated battlefield screen.

Another issue about planning your route is hunger. Every step you take on the overworld takes an hour on the plain tiles, two hours on the forest tiles, and three hours on the mountain tiles. We are adding rain to the game and it will further affect the travelling times. If your Survival Skill is high, you will be able to travel faster. In any case, you may run out of food while you travel, so you may want to camp to do some foraging and hunting (Interested? Just scroll down to read the article about camping for further details).

In this dev-blog, we will talk about the most important aspect of Terra Randoma that we would like to achieve: Replayability. We want people to play the game again and again because they know it will be a different experience each time.

The first step is the very beginning. It is a new island each time you start. A lot of effort was put in the development of a procedural map generation. We tried our best to make the map appear natural. It can be mountainous, full of forests or balanced. It can be one big land mass or more fractured. They all mean different experiences.

Towns have random prosperity levels and every now and then there is a chance that something good or hazardous happen to them. Like an epidemic or a royal marriage.



There are different character backgrounds and starsigns you can choose at the beginning of the game. A Retired Gladiator plays very differently than a Fire Acrobat. They have different starting stats, equipment and talent stones.

As we explained before in detail, the battlefields, dungeons and items are all random. We used procedural generation as much as we can. Even a mundane item like a comb you find in the game can be in different materials like bronze, gold etc. (and have different icons accordingly) We want a game that we can play ourselves and have fun. It must surprise us too.

Dungeon crawling is an important aspect of the game but it also has wilderness crawling, equally important and adventureous. Like the tabletop hex crawlers of the old times (but squares instead of hexagons). With every step you take at the wilderness, a dice is rolled and checked against a random table according to the tile you are on and the time of the day. And then something may happen or not. So wilderness is not only a place you travel from town to dungeon. If you are in a hurry though, you can choose the safer tiles and time of the day to avoid danger. If you want trouble, you can go to a forest at midnight and see what happens.

You will meet several NPCs in Terra Randoma. There is a shop keeper, a tavern keeper, a tavern patron and a lord at each town. You may also meet traveling merchants, or common folk randomly on the over-world. The human enemies, like bandits are lurking around as well. The gender, appearance, clothes, occupations and the defining characteristics of Terra Randoma’s people are all procedurally generated.

The quests you receive from the NPCs are also randomly generated. Combined with who gave you the quest, this helps generate amusing stories in the player’s mind. Irisa “The Sophisticated Actress” asks you to retrieve her porcelain mirror, looking all smart and charismatic in her woven green suit. You wonder what it means to her. Who stole it and why? And then you meet the notorious bandit Calamitus “The Sorrow Bringer”. Once you deal with him, you find the mirror, but also a love letter in his hidden chest. Wouldn’t you wonder for a moment what exactly happened here?



In Terra Randoma, your journey emerges as you play, as a combination of procedural generation and your own imagination. There are numerous meta-goals you may pursue but they are not mandatory. It's kind of a tool to live your own story.

Hi everyone,

In earlier dev-blogs we talked about weapons, equipment, armor, consumables and materials in Terra Randoma. But we didn’t discuss in detail how you carry these around. So let’s cover inventory management this week.

First things first: One of our favorite things when playing an RPG is managing our inventories. But we also know that it can ruin all the fun if it’s not done right. So this was one of the most important aspects of game development for us from day one. It's been worked on over and over until we could call it user-friendly. It is optimized for keyboard and mouse.

When you open your backpack, you can see not only your backpack and yourself but also your character statistics. So you know exactly what happens when you wear or take off an equipment. It takes only seconds to optimize, tidy up and get going.



The system is weight-based. How much your character can carry depends on Strength Attribute and in particular, Athletics Skill. Weight of each item is easily seen when you hover on the item and by looking at the bottom right corner of each item card.

Every character in the game has a sprint ability. When you sprint you spend some stamina and move two times faster for 3 turns. The heavier your backpack is, the more stamina you have to spend to sprint. In certain situations you may have to drop your precious loot to use your sprint ability and manage to escape.

If you get diseased, then you lose strength and hence can carry less. So you may end up over-burdened. It is important to keep your belongings organized. From time to time you may need to make rather noteworthy decisions like "do I really need to keep this 8 kg weight rusty helmet or should I just drop it?"

If you have lots of precious items and you don't want to drop any of them you can choose to travel to the nearest town while over-burdened. But you will move at half speed and get hungry very fast. With some strategic route planning and bit of luck, you may arrive to the town with your hard earned loot just in time before you die of hunger. Then you will have the opportunity to eat and rest at the local tavern and make inquiries about your next quest.

Hi everyone,

In this blog post, we will talk about the materials in Terra Randoma.

This is the category of things you can loot but not immediately consume or wear. You can find them in chests, alchemy tables or altars. And some enemies drop them. Each enemy has a different material specific to its kind. The ghosts may drop a vial of ectoplasm while a spider may drop precious spider silk. Now materials seem to be treasure only. But they are actually the foundation of later to be implemented potion crafting system.



This week, we added the Alchemist’s Tower to Terra Randoma. The tower has a shop that sells potions and books. Potions are cheaper in the tower. Since they sell lots of potions they are always in need of materials to craft them. So you can get the best deal for the materials you gather.



Alchemist's Tower always spawns at the mountain area of the map. It is a bit dangerous to travel there but it is always worth it. You will have the opportunity to sell your hard earned materials and if there is a town which struggles with disease you may buy cheap cure disease potions here to help the town as well.

Hi everyone,

In this blog post we want to talk about weapons in Terra Randoma.

There are no class restrictions in the game so every character can use every weapon. But weapons have weight and consume stamina when used. Heavy weapons use more stamina, so for example while a lightweight thief character can use a heavy hammer, he won't be able to use it efficiently; he will run out of stamina and will be slowed.

Melee weapons are swords, maces, hammers, axes and clubs. Ranged weapons are bows and crossbows. We will add potions the character can throw like acid, oil and fire.

When using weapons, your character instantly changes his weapon to ranged or melee weapon according to enemy position. One of the things we wanted to achieve with this game was to provide a smooth and fast experience. We believed that, the game, while turn-based, should also be played fast and fluid. So this auto weapon change feature serves that purpose well.



Arrows have their own indicator on the bottom left of the hud. So they don't occupy valuable space in the inventory.

There is an item generator in Terra Randoma using prefixes and suffixes that can produce hundreds of thousands of different weapons.

The weapons can be made of different materials including but not limited to wood, steel or aquatril (an ore uniquely found in Terra Randoma). The weight and the damage of the weapon depends on what material it is made of. While basic materials can be applied to all weaponry, there are also special weapons like Amber Blade, Midnight Sword or Whalebone Blade. These are specially crafted rare weapons and usually have better base stats.

The prefixes include descriptions like “reliable”, “unforgiving”, “ruthless”, “blazing” or “enigmatic”. They give bonuses to all sorts of stats including critical hit, attack, resistance or health.



The suffixes include descriptions like "of fire", "of the vicious viper", "of the smiling phantom", or “of the chilling touch”. They give powers like fear, stun, poison, drain or fire.

Weapons are also color coded like in action RPG's. Commons are colorless, uncommons are green, rares are blue, elites are yellow and legendary weapons are purple.

We know everybody likes to find items so we put great emphasize on item generating system to ensure there is always a possibility of a better item in the next chest.

Hi everyone,

As mentioned last week, we are taking major steps towards completing the vertical slice of Terra Randoma, and one of them was incorporating all the status effects.

If you read our dev-blog on monsters, you already know that your character in Terra Randoma will have many opportunities to be inflicted all kinds of status effects by our determined monsters. You have three kinds of resistance to counter these effects: Mind, elemental and nature resistance. Note that you can inflict most of these effects to monsters too. The monsters have resistances as well. Like snakes have poison resistance etc.



Confused: Mushroom Men can confuse you. You lose sense of direction. Back becomes front and left becomes right. Your aim becomes worse.

Poisoned: Snakes and some spiders are poisonous. Also some archers use poison arrows. Poison reduces your health every turn. You can use a Cure Poison Potion to heal from it.

Diseased: We used to have a Diseased Rat as an enemy. But we then thought it would be more fun if Disease comes as an enemy modifier. So now, you can meet all sorts of enemies that can contaminate you: Rats, Boars, or even Bandits. Disease reduces your strength and dexterity (so your defense and attack). Disease lasts much longer than Poison. You can use a Cure Disease Potion to heal from it.

Slow: Some spiders spit web on you that make a Slow effect. This means you can move one tile per two turns. They still move in their normal speed, so by slowing you down, they can hit you twice. Also ghosts may slow you down by consuming your stamina. You have a Sprint ability that can save you from it for three turns, but this ability further consumes your stamina.

Overburdened: This happens when you carry too much loot. You are slowed untill you reorganize your backpack.

Burning: This is a new status effect brought to Terra Randoma by the notorious Skeleton Archers. Simply, you are on fire and you lose health every turn. You can extinguish yourself at the pools. But pools can contain dangers too.

Freezing: This is in development as we speak. Freeze stuns you and reduces your health at the same time.

Petrified: This is like freeze only it lasts longer but doesn't reduce your health.

Bleeding: You lose health and move slowly.

Despair: You feel hopeless. Your defense and resistances suffer.

Starvation: This is something we always had, since there is hunger in the game. As explained before, each step on the over-world plain tiles takes 1 hour (and twice as much on the forest and mountain tiles), so hunger is an issue when planning your route. You also need to pay attention to hunger during combat because your character gets hungry faster when his stamina level falls below the half. If you starve, you lose a small amount of health on each turn. Cure is of course eating. The news here is that we decided to add a Vicious Spirit that will drain your food level and eventually make you starve.



But it’s not all dark and gloomy. We have lots of beneficial status effects too, that you can gain by drinking potions like Potion of Strength or Potion of Invisibility. You can move faster with Potion of Speed or can find better loot with Potion of Search. Then there is the Potion of Heroism that boosts all your stats and simply makes you a hero for several minutes...

Hi everyone,

Last couple of weeks, we took a major step towards completing the vertical slice of Terra Randoma by introducing a new dungeon and its dwellers: the Undead Faction. It is still work in progress but a lot has been implemented.

We mentioned in last week’s dev-blog that your character will be able to take on a special quest from the Lord of a settlement, once he reaches 25 reputation points. The Lord will again give you quests at 50, 75 and 100 points, completing which will mean completing the Meta Goal of the game. Each of these quests will take you to a different dungeon with different enemies and goals.



The first step is the Forsaken Dungeon (actually this is a code name because the names are procedurally generated) where you meet the undead faction and aim to retrieve Relics of the Forsaken Knight. If there are Relics in an RPG, there has to be some ancient evil guarding those relics, now, hasn’t it? So please meet the wonderful new folks:

Draining Ghosts: They drain your stamina. With the enemy modifiers we have, you can also come to meet a Pickpocket Draining Ghost who drains your pocket as well!

Starving Ghosts: These ghosts drains your food and makes you hungry.

Freezing Shadows: These ghosts inflict ice damage and slow you down with their freezing breeze.

Phantom Warriors: Tormented souls of ancient warriors trapped in the ancient dungeon. They can break your equipment with their nice big ethereal warhammer!

Skeletons: They come in different ranks like captain or commander. Melee fighters are strong and hard to hit, while archers use fire arrows which set you on fire. Luckily you can extinguish yourself at the pools.

We will add the Vampires later on, for now you have to settle with vampire bats. They drain your health and add to theirs, which make them one of the most difficult enemies in the game. Note that all Undead are fearless and immune to poison.



As mentioned before, enemies in Terra Randoma drop all sorts of loot, including “materials”. Each enemy has a different material specific to its kind. For example, the ghosts may drop ectoplasm once you beat them, and the skeletons may drop bone dust. These materials can be quite valuable to sell at the market, and even more so if you sell at the Alchemist's Tower.

Actually, let’s talk about Materials in a separate dev-blog. At the later stages of development, we will introduce potion crafting and these materials will be a more crucial factor to surviving in Terra Randoma.

Hi Everyone,

In this dev-blog, we will talk about the quest system in Terra Randoma.

As we explained before in previous dev-blogs, you have complete freedom in Terra Randoma to go wherever you like and the overworld is full of curiosities that will enable you to follow your own emergent story. You can go to any town and take quests from an NPC at the tavern or the town's lord. There will be missions you can take while travelling too.



There is a tavern patron in each settlement looking for help. She or he may need you to rescue someone close to her, to retrieve an object stolen from her or to escort her to another settlement. The gender, looks, names, aliases and occupations of these NPCs are randomly generated and the quests they give evoke interesting stories in the player’s mind. Maybe a retired tailor wants his stolen porcelain scissors back. Or a loving housewife is worried about her kidnapped husband.

The quest you take will be marked on your map. It may take you to a single battlefield like a bandit camp or a dungeon. Its place and content will be random and you will be offered a reward based on the distance and difficulty of the task. Dungeons are more difficult than single battlefields, and equally more rewarding.

You will need to beat the boss, rescue someone or retrieve something and go back to the settlement to report to the NPC to complete your mission. Or you can abort it and then your mission will fail. Completing missions will not only give you XP, gold, but also increase your reputation in that settlement while failing missions will decrease it.

There is also a Lord in each settlement, who will see you worthy of a mission only if you gain 25 reputation points. They have more special quests for you, paving the way towards achieving a meta goal which we will talk about later. You get the opportunity to take on another quest from them at 50, 75 and 100 points.



Each time you follow one of these special quests, you will go to a different dungeon. These dungeons will have more treasures and will be harder. For example, the mission you take at 25 points takes you to a dungeon ruled by the Undead Faction and you will find the valuable relics of a forsaken knight. The others have different themes and goals.

Each special dungeon you beat will be marked in your Journal. So you will be able to see all your accomplishments in one sheet of glory!

Hi everyone,

In this dev-blog, we will talk about resource management in Terra Randoma.

One of the greatest funs of playing RPGs is managing your resources, isn’t it? Well, you will have your abundant share of that in Terra Randoma. There are three nice and shiny bars we put at the left bottom of your screen, so you can always keep an eye on your well-being, meaning your health, stamina and hunger. There is also the number of arrows and lockpicks shown there which are also resources for your adventures.

Managing your health should require no explanation, of course, just mind those blows from the enemies :) But we need to mention that you rely on your athletics skill for higher constitution. Your stamina also depends on this skill.



Weapons and armors in Terra Randoma have weight, and heavy equipment consumes stamina faster. Like a heavy hammer uses more stamina than a short sword. If you are heavy, your sprint ability uses more stamina. If stamina drops below 5, you will be slowed, meaning you will be able to move one tile per two turns (compared to your normal speed, which is one tile per turn) This also means your enemies can hit you twice every turn, so it’s something really important to pay attention to during combat. Stamina regenerates every turn but health doesn't.

Talent stones (special attacks) consume stamina too. There are also several weapons, armors and accessories that can add to your health or stamina points, produced procedurally thanks to the item generation system.

Resting fills your health and stamina (while it increases hunger). You can rest at taverns for a rather affordable price. As we explained in detail in an earlier dev blog, resting through camping is also possible.

If you are low on health or stamina, you can also use potions which come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. You can buy potions from the shops at the settlements, or from traveling alchemists you meet on the way. Note that if there is an alchemy festival in a settlement, the potions will be abundant and cheaper. If, on the other hand, there is epidemic, no potions will be sold at the market.

We will add an Alchemist's Tower that will sell potions cheaper and buy certain materials at a better price.

You may find pools in the dungeons or battlefields which restore both health and stamina (but may also hide enemies). You may also sometimes find potions at chests, barrels and more probably, alchemy tables. But these containers all appear randomly at battlefields or the dungeons and every self-respecting adventurer knows that it is unwise to count merely on luck. Well, of course, luck isn’t pure luck in Terra Randoma, add more to your search skill and you will find more items at containers. Nevertheless, we advise you to stock potions whenever you can!



Like we mentioned before, your character in Terra Randoma gets hungry. Each turn on the over-world plain tiles takes 1 hour (and twice as much on the forest and mountain tiles) and every turn at the dungeon is 2 minutes. So you get hungry faster when travelling over-world and you need to carefully plan your route. You also need to pay attention at hunger during combat because your character gets hungry faster when his stamina level falls below the half. So when you start a journey to a far place or a quest to a dungeon, you need to make sure you have room for food in your backpack.

You can buy food at the settlements and the adventurer’s guild. You can eat at the tavern as well. You may also come across farmers or hunters along the way willing to sell food at more affordable prices. If there is a good harvest at a settlement, food will be abundant and cheap. If there is however famine, then no food will be sold at the market.

You can also earn your food through foraging and hunting at camp. With good enough survival skill you can earn your own food and even make some coins out of it.

If you are lucky, you may come across an abandoned cart full of food or potions. But beware! It may well be a trap at which you spend more resources than you gain.

Hi everyone,

Your character in Terra Randoma has three attributes: Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence. He also has twelve skills categorized with respect to the attributes. Attributes affect the governed skill and enable your characer to use that skill more efficiently.



Your starting background and star sign gives you some points on certain skills but then you have complete freedom to choose how to customize your character. You will gain 1 attribute and 1 skill point each time you level up and you are free to distribute them the way you see fit. You can also buy skill points from the adventurer's guild. This allows you to develop very unique characters. Skills can be developed till 20. They will have some bonus benefits at milestones 5, 10, 15 and 20. For example if your athletics is 5, your sprint ability will develop and you will be able to sprint for more turns.

Now let’s look at these skills in detail though they may be kind of self explanatory.

Melee Combat: Governs melee combat, gives boost to attack and damage.

Athletics: Determines your health and stamina points and how much load you can carry. It also helps in dealing with some overworld incidents. Like when you need to help a travelling lady whose wagon's wheel is stuck in mud.

Intimidation: Gives you the ability to intimidate enemies, and encourage them to avoid fight with you altogether or fear easily during combat.

Mining: This skill is yet work in progress but the idea is that you can mine big rocks at Terra Randoma to find precious metals and stones.

Ranged Combat: Defines the range of your bow, and also your shooting accuracy.

Defense Mastery: Defense in Terra Randoma does not require that you be strong, this skill ensures you use your shield well or can evade attacks easily.

Critical Focus: Increases your chance of a critical shot, both for melee and for ranged attack.



Thievery: This skill is also work in progress. For now, it allows you to pick pocket certain NPCs and enemies you meet at incidents on the overworld or avoid certain dangerous situations by sneak passing them. We will add lock-picking to the game and ensure that some chests can only be opened using this skill.

Speechcraft: A very important skill if you want to boost your finances. Shop keepers tend to like you more and offer you better prices. You can also require better payment for quests and avoid certain combat encounters with talking.

Search: Increases the chances of finding more and better items and equipment at various containers you will see at Terra Randoma, like chests, barrels and weapon racks.

Alchemy: Another skill yet to develop, it currently increases the benefits of potion consumption and makes easier to find potions in witch's cauldron or alchemy tables. At the later stages of the development, we will add crafting and this skill will be more beneficial.

Survival: Increases your chance of survival in the wild. You find tracks of the animals for hunting more easily, and you travel faster through the forest tiles, which normally reduces your speed. Also you will find safer places to camp and be able to forage more food.