Moonchild Devlog 2- Enemies and Attack Patterns.

Today, I have a major milestone to report- every single enemy and boss that will be in the demo has their graphics done! Both the enemies themselves and the animated battle backgrounds associated with them are all done!! This is a big milestone that I was busy working at, and I'm glad to report it's finished!

In total, there are 66 different foes to face in the demo. The biggest task ahead of me now is programming all these dastardly foes, especially the bosses. But, to give you an idea of what kind of challenges you'll be up against, I'll use one of the early-game bosses.

This is the boss of the second dungeon, Ellie the Elephant. At this point, you'll only have Max and Sophie in your party. Max is the balanced one, not excelling too much in any one area, but very versatile. Sophie is more fragile, but has MUCH more powerful psychic abilities.

At this point, you're up against a big, fairly tough enemy, that almost exclusively uses physical attacks.

So, there's quite a few ways to tackle this boss. -Use Max to apply Barrier (which increases physical defense) to Sophie while she whittles it down, keeping up her health when necessary. -Try to put the elephant to sleep with Somna I to give yourself a chance to recover. Bosses may be less susceptible to status effects than regular enemies are, but there's still a chance for them to work, so try it anyway! -Even when you're at lower health, you'll get boosts to things like critical hit rate and speed, allowing for more damage and being able to move before the enemy does.

But! Once you've gotten into a rhythm, the Lunite that's controlling it will show up! Unlike the elephant, its attacks are all psychic. Thankfully Sophie will have Shield by this point to raise your psychic defense, but this will throw a wrench into things. -Do you use Sophie's Shard I to hit one random enemy, hoping that it will hit the Lunite, or use Max's Lumen I, which is more reliable but also weaker? -Do you spend a turn trying to put the elephant to sleep in order to get some pressure off you, or continue beating on the Lunite to get it out of the way? -Sophie's Hide move enables you to remove her from being targeted by all attacks for one turn. You can use it to get yourself out of a jam temporarily if Sophie's hurt badly, but that means Max will tank all the hits.

This is a fairly early-game boss, yet there's already a fair amount of variables I've set up for the player to consider. And this isn't even taking into account the fact that enemies can miss their attacks, random critical hits, or a bunch of other things. There's no real "right" way to beat the bosses- only a bunch of tools for the party to use. Once you have all four party members, it'll only get more complicated- which is something that makes designing enemies a bit difficult, but it'll be more engaging.

Stay tuned next month for another update!