Your goal is to collect, breed, and train the ultimate Chain (like monsters, pokemon, or whatever you want to call them, Chains are the collectable characters in this game). You are a chain-smith, and it's your job to bring your chains to be the best chains ever.
You may have a team of four chains at a time, and may carry four back-up chains with you at a time. Other chains you own stay at your Chain Forge. When in battle, your team of Chains acts autonomously, moving around the battlefield and using abilities to damage other chains. You may recall a chain and swap it with a member of your back-up team, but it takes some time for them to return to your position. You can be attacked by the other chains directly, too, and your chains may attack another chain-smith. You may move around the battlefield to protect yourself, too, and shout orders to influence the behavior of your chains ("On me!", "Attack!", "As you will!", and "Scatter!" being the four defaults, though more are avalible, like "Conserve your energy" or "Go for the Smith!"). You yourself can carry some basic armenments, too, so you can fight alongside your chains.
Chains are manifestations around magic objects which form naturally in the wild, called Links. Each link is composed of some bits of wire, some gemstones, and magic; they can be fit together in most cases, and most wild Chains are composed of two or three Links. Links can be created by breeding Chains, and newly born Chains can be taken apart to reveal their composite Links. You can then put the Links together in a process called Reforging to make new or better Chains. You can even add Links to your existing Chains to improve them. A good Chain-Smith will even know how to make his own Links out of random materials they find in the wild (Called a Fresh Link; this uses four materials, and while most combinations are not good combinations, all combinations possible DO result in a Fresh Link), or decorate an existing Link with extra materials to change it's properties.
You can use as many Links as you want to create a Chain, as long as they all fit together, though no Link provides only possitive benefites; each link also comes with a vulnerability or drawback, and EVERY link added increases the size of the chain, making them easier to hit, damage, and land a crit on (similar to decreasing their evasion or armor). It's still not uncommon to make an omni-chain using most of your Links and protect with a few smaller chains, though.
Being magical manifestations, Chains are a bit wild; each time one is reforged, it forgets most of it's training, though it's memories are stored in it's links, so not everything is lost. Sometimes reforging even helps with training, by adding only one link to a Chain, then removing that link later, not much is lost, and you have a link which can be used to give a weaker chain a much needed power boost. And chains which have not been trained can even turn on you, which makes carrying a weapon to discipline or deter your own chain a must; But once trained, a chain can be used for many tasks, from fighting to helping townsfolk with transportation, farming, or whatever menial things they do all day.
Chains are also a danger to humans who aren't trained to handle chains; fully wild chains especially. It is why Chain-smiths train themselves and their chains to hunt wild chains and protect humanity from them. You must also be careful not to let your chains harm the people you are sworn to protect.
Your base of opperations, the Chain-Forge, contains all the nessesities to raise, train, and reforge your chains. Besides a workshop where you can tinker with their magical makeup, it also includes an indoor pasture, which can be expanded, mini-pastures where you can put Chains that you want to breed (which can be expanded too to breed more pairings at a time), an arena for controlled Chain-fights, and rooms to train your chains better. While you can't take your Chain-Forge with you on your travels, every town includes a Chain-smith's Guild, where you can access your Chain-Forge from afar or even warp back to it; you'll also likely find the Chain-Forges of other chain-smiths, who would likely happily share their workshops and arenas with you (though the rest of the Forge is off-limits, hope you understand).
While battling other chain-smiths is an exciting way to get more powerful (and betting on chain-fights is a good way to earn (or lose) money), the real duty of a Chain-smith lies in the wild between towns. In the wild, you can't expect chains to stick to the rules and attack four at a time. Heck, you only do it because the guild says it's not safe for you to try and control so many at a time. You could be attacked by a few strong chains or a lot of weak ones, or a few weak ones with a bit more strong ones; there's no telling if it will be a fair fight, though you can usually get a feel for how strong the wild chains in an area are, and they'll be somewhat consistant. Sometimes a large chain will even take command of smaller chains in the wild, and they'll act much like a chain-smith during the fight! You may also be set upon by bandits or other bad humans, though it's rare to see humans and chains working together if they aren't Chain-Smiths.
Capturing a wild chain involves tiring it out, and laying a trap; there are a few different kinds, qualities, and sizes of trap, and it's best to use the same rough size of trap as the chain you want to capture. While it's also always best to use the best quality trap you can use, it's also more expensive to do so. The kind of trap is best decided upon by picking how you want to get the chain into the trap, whether there are other chains still attacking, how the chain behaves, and your location; a burrowed cage is going to be more effective in the desert or any place with loose soil than on hard rocks, and it's not going to be very effective against flying chains, for example, while a net wouldn't be effective against a burrowing chain or in a forest, but would be good against fliers and in mountains and oceans. If you're having trouble deciding, a simple Square Cage is usually equally effective in all situations. Once the chain is in the trap, it's a simple manner of making sure there are no other chains trying to hurt you or destroy the trap, and collecting the trap with the chain inside. That done, you have to bring it back to a Chain-Smith's Guild or your Chain-Forge and release it into your pasture before you can tame it; or you can just take it apart for the Links.
Lastly, money. You have to pay to improve your facilities, obtain recovery items, equip yourself with weapons and armor, and you have to pay people to help you train the Chains you don't bring with you if you want them to improve while you're away. You can do this in a few ways. You can rent out your chains to chain-battlers, who are people who can't train or improve chains, but love to watch them fight and can keep them in line, you can do favors for people, you can bet on chain fights (either between chain-smiths or chain-battlers, possibly the fights can include yourself but if they do you have to bet on yourself), you can sell the materials you find in the wild, or things that you make, or Chains, and you can help with Guild affairs.
How to assemble a Chain
How components of a chain affect the chain
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Topic: Games you wish existed (Read 929591 times)