Equipment
Loot is the reason to go one floor deeper. Ponor’s item game is built in the spirit of Diablo II: random affixes, rarities you can read at a glance, sockets, and uniques with a line of folklore of their own.
What rarities can items have?
Normal, Magic, Rare and Unique items drop in the game today. Superior items and the final rules for Rares are in development.
- Normal
The base item and nothing more.
- Superior
A Normal item that rolled better: more damage or more armor.
- Magic
One or two magic properties.
- Rare
Three to six properties, at any depth, under a name of two folk words.
- Unique
Hand-made items with fixed properties and a story of their own.
What can you equip?
A character wears ten things: a helm, an amulet, body armor, a weapon in the main hand and something in the off hand, gloves, a belt, boots and a ring on each hand. Two-handed weapons take both hands. Everything else rides in a bag of twelve by six squares, where a ring takes one square and a two-handed axe takes eight.
Weapons with Balkan names
Every weapon is named for what it is in the mountains it comes from. A few of them:
- Sekira
- A one-handed axe, the Hajduk’s first weapon
- Bradva
- A heavy two-handed axe
- Toljaga
- A one-handed mace
- Malj
- A two-handed mace
- Bodež
- A dagger, the Dhampir’s first weapon
- Samostrel
- A crossbow
- Drenovača
- A staff of cornel wood, the Zduhać’s first weapon
- Yataghan
- The curved sword of the Balkans
How do item names work?
Item names tell you what you are looking at. A Magic item wears its properties in its name, like the Quick Sekira of the Ox, and each word stands for how strong its property rolled. A Rare gets two words from old folk lists instead, like Bone Howl. Rares and Uniques drop unidentified: bring them up to Svetozar in Kamenica, who reads everything you carry in one click, for free.
Why go deeper?
Depth is the only difficulty setting. Deeper floors drop better bases and stronger properties, and every item will ask for a level close to where it first drops. Every twenty floors, below each great guardian, all of your resistances will drop by twenty percent, so the fire ring you ignored on floor ten is the reason you live on floor forty.In development
Sockets and Words of Power
About a third of Normal, Superior and Magic items drop with sockets, up to six on two-handed weapons. Gems will go into them, and so will the twenty-four letters of the Glagolitic alphabet: put the right letters in the right order into a plain item and they spell a Word of Power.In development
Uniques
Every Unique is written by hand, and each one carries a line about where it has been.
The Shepherd’s Lamp
Leather Cap
Two hundred sheep came home. The boy did not.
Vila’s Slipper
Left at the spring for a favor no one remembers asking.
Follow the descent
Ponor is in development. Wishlist it, and get dev updates by email.