Hello everyone!

I thought about the way melee enemies work in the game, and they are all very similar. You smack them until the HP goes to zero, and you always use whatever weapon deals the highest damage. The situation could be more interesting if different enemies were best handled differently. To achieve this, I added an armour system to the game. Heavily armoured enemies and lightly armoured enemies will not be dealt with optimally using the same tools.

Armour in Tombs of Telleran

An actor’s armour works like a second health bar that needs to be depleted before damaging the underlying health, and there are a few ways of doing this.

Certain weapon types (typically heavy blunt weapons) deal bonus damage to armour, and some sharp weapons penetrate the armour for a portion of their total damage. Certain trinkets and environmental effects, like caustic puddles, quickly corrode armour as well.

Some enemy types have a lot of armour, and some have more health. Due to this, you will want to approach them using different weapons or trinkets. A mace with lower total damage but bonus armour damage will be better against a hostile knight, while a high-damage blade will be better against an enemy rogue.

Armour values are attached to and persist with your equipped armour piece, so what do you do when it breaks?

Restoring Armor

You can restore armour in a few ways. One is to find repair hammers and bring them to an anvil, which you can find in the tomb. This will let you restore the protection of your equipped armour. There are also trinkets which let you restore armour.

Wrap up

And that’s where the armour system is at the moment! I think it adds meaningful decisions to how you approach combat in a non-ad-hoc way. It will also tie in nicely with the upcoming trait system, where the player and enemies can gain effects based on their armour. Thanks for reading, and have a good one!