New Dungeon Added and Mining

I added a new dungeon that I've been planning since the beginning of development. In-game, players will be able to reinforce their weapons after performing a quest associated with finding reinforcement materials. What better place than a cave in the mountains? I already have a farming system, along with wild plants that grow on their own in the surrounding forest area. Why not do the same with reinforcement materials? And then I had four types of materials that can be mined in this one cave.

Next came the design. As you can see above, this map is HUGE. Probably my largest to date. I've been branching out a bit and making much more complex maps over time. I have a whole bunch of maps I need to upload in another devlog, but right now, I'm focusing on this "Mountain Cave". I was brainstorming design ideas when I remembered all the intricate underground maps I encountered when playing Elden Ring. Since I was already planning a cave, the ideas were similar and started to jell together an interesting layout of a cave that sort of kicks off the first major plot point of the game story. It's also where the player first comes into contact with the magick element of the game, so I wanted to make this map much grander than those that came before it.

I'm introducing magick with an NPC as well, but I'm not sure when to give the players magick. So far, there aren't many enemies that would require magick to be defeated, so it will most likely come in a little later. I have another main world map planned. See that place all the way to the east with a an active volcano that realistically would destroy all wild and plant life in such proximity? For the sake of fantasy, that's not a problem here. It is, however, where villages of the clan drop infants into magma to test their fire invulnerability. The descendants of Phoenix, not surviving just means they were weak and unfit to live, like Spartans. So we're going to delve into that map a bit, but I don't want to get too far away from this plot point just yet.