Coming Soon(ish): Relic Wraiths

The next build coming up is going to be a bit of a long one, but with good reasons: not one, but two new systems are being in Demon. :D Tonight, a brief peek at the the first of these: Relic Wraiths, Demon’s version of the “player ghost” mechanic you may be familiar with from other roguelikes.

But, on the chance that you aren’t, a brief explanation: starting with the next build, when you lose a game of Demon, ghost data for your character and their party will be saved locally, as well as sent to the score server. Making certain choices during the game will cause ghost data from these sources to be used to generate Relic Wraiths.

Relic Wraiths function as enemy summoners that use a slightly modified copy of the deceased player’s party. The main changes you will see in the conversion from a player to a Relic Wraith are as follows:

  • Relic Wraiths use their own resistance tables based entirely on the relic chosen, not whatever resistances the summoner had. If the summoner had Soul Armor, the Relic Wraith’s resistances will be improved to a degree based on character level.
  • Particularly lopsided stat distributions will be smoothed out somewhat, matching the limits imposed on designed enemies.
  • Unique demons will be removed from the summoner’s party, however, modifiers granted by uniques to other demons via Fuse Demons will be allowed to carry over.
  • Significantly higher level demons will be adjusted in some way I have not yet sorted out yet, but basically, you won’t run into a Tower:4 ghost that got lucky and managed to nab 3 Raiju from Ccoa’s Sanctum. :P
  • Any empty slots in the summoner’s party (whether from removed uniques, deaths, or other mishaps) will be filled from the “coffin” that stores targets for Restore Demon, starting with the most recently killed.
  • Like enemy summoners, Relic Wraiths do not possess, nor can they use, items.
  • The floor a Relic Wraith appears on is not necessarily the floor it died on: this is particularly true in cases where you die on a level containing a branch *after* completing that branch. In some cases, a Relic Wraith’s summon method may make character level the main factor rather than the floor they are haunting.
  • Otherwise, everything carries over as it was: abilities, party, relic upgrades, etc. Note that many relic upgrades (those related to gaining additional Credits for example) will have no further affect on the Relic Wraith, since it is assumed the ghost data already reflects the benefits these abilities provided.

Finally, let’s have some art. :D Geminimax has put out some awesome sprites for the Relic Wraiths, so I thought I’d share those with you now too. :)

CrownWraith EyeWraith FistWraith HandWraith HeartWraith MaskWraith OrbWraith

That’s it for now on Relic Wraiths! I’ll post again at some point about the other major feature of the next build: Interactables!

4 responses to “Coming Soon(ish): Relic Wraiths

  1. AWESOME. Loving the designs of these wraiths. I honestly thought the relic designs were a little unsettling from the beginning, and this just brings their concept as a parasitic relationship to its completion.