Michael Iantorno PhD Candidate, Game Designer, and Writer

Unearthed Update: THUNDER!

This week’s update is brought to you by the extremely talented  Starmen.net hacker HS, who worked his buns off to add some great new content to Unearthed. HS is best known for his work on the Hallow’s End and Mother Remake EarthBound hacks.

What sort of work was completed? A complete overhaul of Thunder attacks within the EarthBound rom. Exciting!

pkthunder

In the original game, Thunder abilities were multi-hit, untargeted attacks that nullified an enemy’s shield and dealt non-elemental damage. Although really fun to use, this didn’t exactly fit into the combat system in Unearthed. I wanted to have a bit more balance between the three elements (fire, ice, thunder) and more predictability.

With HS’s revisions, the following changes have taken place:

  • Thunder attacks can now be targeted in the same way as any other ability (single, row, all, random).
  • Paralysis and Thunder now share the same resistance. Before Thunder did not have a resistance and simply dealt non-elemental damage.
  • Thunder does not have any special effect on enemy shields.
  • Damage for Thunder abilities is now four tiers: 120/240/360/480. This may change in time.

In addition to the Thunder revisions, HS also made it possible for enemies to inflict the Sunstroke condition with their attacks. Sunstroke is being changed to Irradiated in Unearthed, and will be used for areas such as the Testing Grounds and Toxic Ravine. It’s a neat little change!

That’s all for this week. I’ll probably put up another Unearthed Almanac post next week, and then let you know how the item/ability/enemy editing is going the week after.

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By Michael
Michael Iantorno PhD Candidate, Game Designer, and Writer