As touched upon in the previous update, the Ring system is a significant feature in this quest and one what will set this quest apart from the others among other features like the enemy AI and an improved events system.
The power of rings are high and mighty, giving you powerful buffs or abilities that help you on your quest. They stack with each other too, allowing you to give yourself an impressive array of buffs that turn you into a formidable threat to even the intelligent enemies like Darknuts and Wizzrobes.
This comes at a big cost though: Their effects are temporary and are generally expensive to buy. The current prices, while subject to change once I have everything laid out and have set up the Rupee economy, are between 75 and 250 Rupees with the average being 100 Rupees while their durations range from 1 to 10 minutes based on their effects.
Like in the Oracle games, the protagonist has limited space for carrying rings. At the start, he can only carry one ring in his inventory once he is handed the Small Ring Box from Vasu himself. Later on in his adventure, he can find larger ring boxes that can carry up to two and eventually even three rings as the game progresses. This, in conjunction with the prices, forces you to decide which abilities you want and wherever you have to grind up for them or not. They are entirely optional though, so you can easily play through the quest without ever touching them. Just expect it to be harder, especially in the possible Hero Mode where some enemies even use rings themselves
There are still a few things I need to work out. Primarily, bosses will have to be balanced around the rings so they won't be super easy with them or be almost unbeatable without using them considering that they are easily spammable in those situations to make them super easy (Red Ring + Blue Ring + Heart Ring = RIP boss).
Finally, on one last note, I would like to acquire some feedback from the community about one of the aspects of the rings system:
When a ring is activated, it is removed from you inventory and an icon is displayed on the screen showing that you have a particular buff/ability until the said buff disappears.
I have made two sets of icons that reflect these buffs:
Here is some examples to show how they are shown on the screen:
Top row icons:
Bottom row icons:
Which set of icons do you perfer? The top set, which show icons based on what the buffs do, or the bottom set, which shows the rings themselves?
Edited by Orithan, 18 July 2014 - 05:49 AM.