Realms Beyond - Hand-Crafted Items

The latest update from Realms Beyond focuses on the hand crafted artifacts to be found in Argea's History.

In the grand library of Galkarru, you’ve read a story about an ancient city in the middle of the desert, situated near a fertile oasis. It was once a prosperous city of tall minarets and flowering gardens, ruled by a proud sultan who decreed that everything within his city’s walls belonged to him and him alone. When he saw a priestess of Aliltu who visited the city, he was struck by her beauty and wanted to have her, so he instructed his men to take her to his palace. But when she was brought before him and realized he wanted to make her a part of his harem, she cursed the sultan and his city: she doomed all who lived in the palace to live eternal lives, their bodies preserved at this moment in time, no longer aging – and unable to leave the palace grounds. The rest of the city she cursed to turn into scorpions, as they were as deceitful as scorpions, first showing her hospitality then allowing the sultan to take her as if she were his property. And so, the legend says, the dreaded scorpion people came into the world.

The story also describes the sultan’s scepter: a precious thing, made of gold and silver and a dozen jewels, and enchanted with powerful spells that enhance the wielder’s beauty and grant him a presence inspiring to all who are near him. The story is widely believed to be a legend, the city a mere symbol and warning of what happens to those of great arrogance. And yet, you set out to search for it. And there, deep within the territory of the scorpion people, you find the ruins of an ancient city partially buried by the sand. When you enter the palace, you are attacked by armed guards, nimble harem dancers, and the sultan himself – their souls driven mad by centuries of being cursed to stay within the palace. You fight them off, your blades granting them the sweet release of death, and when you examine the body of the sultan – there, in his hand, is the legendary scepter, just as it had been described in the story.

Scepter of Awe

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More information.

Sweet…. very excited for this. Is there an ETA or time frame for the game?

According to the KS campaign release is planned for 02/2020.

But i would not be shocked if there was a year or two delay given the stated scope and suggestion that large amounts of the game are unimplemented. [If they were further along in development i would have expected more game-play videos].

Originally Posted by Morrandir
According to the KS campaign release is planned for 02/2020.

Originally Posted by you
But i would not be shocked if there was a year or two delay given the stated scope and suggestion that large amounts of the game are unimplemented. [If they were further along in development i would have expected more game-play videos].

Yes, of course. However it doesn't look like they'll reach a lot of stretch goals. So the current ETA might be accurate.

Given the track records of many other projects, and looking at the scope of this project, I wouldn't be surprised at all if a delay or two happens.

Yes, they could be delayed, but my understanding is most of what remains to be done is fleshing out content, which is far less time consuming that implementing and testing systems.

And most notably time consumption is a lot more predictable.

Small team, small budget; delays are probably inevitable. Perhaps an early release version plus DLCs for whatever they don't have the budget to implement initially.

This is exactly what I wanted to read! No randomly generated loot with just mixing pre- and suffixes. This was my main complaint about Divinity. The hunt for incrementally better equips gets old very fast. Give me some hand-placed loot with backstory and maybe trade-offs any day.

I also thought this was a very good update. Hand placed treasure, and hand made treasure, not pre-generated crap -- that is always the way to go. And finding artifact pieces also sounds cool. Like a mini collection game.

Yea the scope of this seems like 2021 or even 2022

Random-generated loot isn't always bad. Would you want to buy a kinder egg knowing what you always get? ( love those things)

Originally Posted by Saxon1974
Yea the scope of this seems like 2021 or even 2022

They've already been working on this game for over a year, and I think some of the assets are carried over from the old Chaos Chronicles? It's not like the project is just starting.

Originally Posted by BoboTheMighty
Random-generated loot isn't always bad. Would you want to buy a kinder egg knowing what you always get? ( love those things)

Randomized loot is sold as increasing a game's replay value, but how often do most people even replay CRPGs anyway? With the exception of something like AoD which is very short / meant to be replayed because of divergent paths, I'd bet most RPG players will play through a game once. IIRC there's even stats suggesting the majority of people who play longish RPGs never even complete them once.

I've played my favorite RPGs a few times but often long periods of time passed between playthroughs so I wouldn't necessarily remember exactly where handcrafted loot was anyway.

Originally Posted by daveyd
Randomized loot is sold as increasing a game's replay value, but how often do most people even replay CRPGs anyway?

Yeah, this is a false hope. Randomized loot is the most boring thing there is. It takes away the main incentive to go exploring. What good does it do, if your new sword just does two more damage and is even called the same as before?

When I started playing Witcher 3 and found my first new sword I was thrilled, then a while later I found the same sword with just slightly (level-scaled) better stats. Same with Divinity. I love both games, but the loot was a major bummer.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
Yeah, this is a false hope. Randomized loot is the most boring thing there is. It takes away the main incentive to go exploring. What good does it do, if your new sword just does two more damage and is even called the same as before?

When I started playing Witcher 3 and found my first new sword I was thrilled, then a while later I found the same sword with just slightly (level-scaled) better stats. Same with Divinity. I love both games, but the loot was a major bummer.

Yes, and I will say that even though I'm not a big fan of BG in general, the one thing Baldur's Gate games pretty much nailed was the loot. Lots of magical weapons with unique lore behind them. While there's still a fair amount generic +1 weapons, at least you're not constantly tripping over fire swords that deal 1% more damage.