Weapons and inventory - August 1, 2015

More progress being made on the final testing phases, somewhere in the area of 20-30% finished final testing. Characters and weapon types are being re-balanced through it all, being buffed or nerfed accordingly. One new stealth-based ability has been added in this, Calamity, which is learned through the C4 Tree: If an enemy is running to investigate a noise, they will be blind to your party or other enemies in combat.

Daily posting, on the topic of inventory and weapons.

In Gachduine, each character has only 4 inventory slots and each slot can be outfitted with a weapon. As there are 20 weapon types and 4 characters available in your party almost all of the time, that means you can have 16 weapon types active in your party at a time (17, if nobody uses Knuckles, as Unarmed is always available to all characters).

However, there is a lot to consider for your inventory. Ignoring the fact that characters specialize in different weapons, you may need to have access to a variety of weapons for a variety of strategies. Rifles and Rocket Launchers for long range, Shields to provide cover and counter snipers, Flamethrowers for Fire-weak monsters, Combat Knives for stealth takedowns, Barrels and C4 for powerful traps and noise distractions, Glaciers for Symbiote Monster debuffing, and more. With 4 slots per character and the need to tailor to both individual character strategy and overall team strategy, inventories will need to be chosen carefully.

Rare weapons obtained through completing world map dungeons don't appear in your character's inventory right away; instead, they are sent to Retrieval, where a player can click an empty inventory slot and move a weapon from Retrieval to their inventory (though it cannot be moved back). This is set up so that your team isn't forced to choose where to put rare weapons immediately on receiving them.

Later in the game, your team can gain access to Biomachines through completing character quests. Biomachines take up 2 inventory slots, but have powerful passive boosts and abilities, and is oftentimes worth sacrificing some versatility, depending on your character strategies.