Greetings VoidBounders,
                                  It's been three months and a few weeks since we officially unveiled the game's demo to the general public and to our great pleasure, the fan response was largely positive and critically supportive. Sadly, as far as demos went, it was what it was: incomplete. The story broke away abruptly and a lot of features, that we had initially planned the game to launch with, had to be pushed away for further polishing and review balancing. 

Today, we're glad to announce that we're starting a countdown towards the expansion patch for the alpha build that will largely address issues like: 

  • Story gaps that were left in the game.
  • Addition of new systems.
  • Addition of new content. 
  • Select implementation of post demo feedback. 

There is a lot to talk about, but we don't want to lose your attention with a barrage of updates. Thus, we've broken the content down and plan to reveal information in systematic chunks over the next few days leading up to the launch of the patch proper. Without further adieu, lets begin with the new addition to VoidBound's combat system: Crafting

[PS: The following information is subject to testing and evaluation and in no way final. Subject to public feedback, this system might see further tweaks or disabled entirely if deemed so by the developer team.]

In VoidBound, enemies would rarely drop any kind of "ready to use" items. That means no chugging of suspicious liquid vials dropped by enemies or try to equip strange weapons dropped by them and expect Caly to master them immediately. Caly is a trained survivor and she relies on a specific set of skills and tools to ensure mission success. Slapping random munition accessories that are unexplainably compatible with her unique gear just doesn't cut it. Instead, enemies would drop crafting ingredients that Caly would deftly salvage post battle and by putting her engineering skills and military training to the crafting bench, she'll be able to churn out specialized items and mods that'll directly influence her combat performance. Initially, there will be nine variants of these ingredients, three dropping from each type of enemy.
Let's break it down some more.

Nestled under the ITEM section of the menu, you will find two new additions to key item category.

1) Crafting Tablet [Survival]
2) Crafting Tablet [Modifications]

Up first, Survival Crafting:
 
Survival, as the term goes, is paramount in any RPG game and is no different in VoidBound. Opening up the section further, will lead you to a multi-choice menu.
 


You'll find options ranging from creating life saving medical aids to tooling together explosives that can save Caly's ass in crunch situations. Broken down meticulously,will be the ingredients needed to craft each of these with the amount required and finally to the bottom right, you'll find a small text flavor that will describe in short what each item will do.

PPS: Be advised though, Caly can only carry so much on her slender waist so survival items will not only be laborious to collect/craft but also limited to how many of each Caly can bring along. Players will have to make a calculated decision on when to and when not to use these items for Caly will only be able to craft them aboard her ship. 

Up next, Modification Crafting:
 
Caly is no amateur space hopper. She has seen her fair shares of trials and caught alone even in the most stickiest of situations the one thing she could always count on were the tools hanging by her holster. She prefers customizing each of her weapons calibrating them precisely to match the missions at hand. 
 
Just like Survival, the Modification Tablet will contain a variety of accessory options that Caly can craft to influence her Blaster, Coilgun and Rapier performance. But unlike Survival, weapon mods once made will remain in Caly's inventory forever, ready to be swapped at the crafting bench whenever the player deems so necessary. Every mod will carry a short performance description with each weapon capable of accommodating multiple moddings. Be wary though, the mods are not all win and will carry some kind of trade off. For example, a certain X mod might increase Caly's crit rate but make her more vulnerable to incoming damage so players might want to choose the mods they apply to all three of her weapons, lest they end decreasing her stats dangerously low. Changes that these mods have on Caly's stats will be reflected immediately so players can quickly jump into the STATUS menu and check the differences themselves giving a fair idea on how to best customize combat setup.
 


PPPS: Unfortunately, we won't be able to deploy the crafting system in the way we had envisioned- at least not in this patch. What we have planned is to have a process where players will have to first dive into a dungeon, collect materials beforehand and then return to the spaceship to access Survival and Modification tablet to create these items. But for our expansion patch, we have decided to partially forego of the "ship only" requirement and given players the ability to craft items on the fly while they're exploring the dungeon. This will give them more flexibility to experiment and play around with their mod loadouts.


And that concludes our introduction to the crafting system. We hope that it was to your liking and if you have any thoughts on it, please feel free to pen them down below or drop us a visit at our Discord! 
Till next time, with the next section of the update.

Kind Regards,
Cursed-Atelier Team