Gold in the Hills: Our First Real Quest

September 27, 2026

A character is only the beginning. Once your hero steps out of the Hall of Transference, the Western Lands open up — and they need things to do.

This week was about building the adventure layer: real quests with real stakes, companions you can recruit, and fixing a combat bug so fundamental it was silently breaking every fight in the game.

We’ve wired up the game’s first proper quest, adapted from “Gold in the Hills” by Ray Allen (from Basic Fantasy’s Adventure Anthology One).

The hook: Gold nuggets have been turning up in the hands of the Black Fangs goblin tribe. They lair in an old dwarven mine — and a fresh vein may have opened after a recent earthquake. But most who go poking around that mine don’t come back.

You’ll hear about it from Dusty Rennick, a grizzled prospector nursing an ale in The Toothless Dragon Tavern. He’ll point you toward the mine, warn you about the prospectors who never returned, and ask only that you remember old Dusty if you strike it rich.

What’s in the mine

The dungeon itself is a proper little delve:

• Sleeping goblin guards at the entrance — sneak past or wake them and eat a volley of arrows
• The Pit of Protection, a dwarven defensive trap with a hidden disarm lever
• A Tentacle Worm that’s made a home in the broken mine elevator
• A damaged dwarven mining automaton you might be able to repair (if you speak Dwarvish) — though its cracked drill arm has a nasty habit of exploding
• And at the bottom, Chief Xikek “the Loud” himself, with his bodyguard and shaman, guarding a trapped chest full of gold nuggets

It’s a faithful adaptation of the published module, rebuilt for our engine.

Companions: Building Your Party

You’re not alone out there. Scattered through Morgansfort’s taverns and inns are adventurers looking for work — and you can recruit them.

Right now you can meet Barthal the Rogue in the Toothless Dragon and Apoqulis the Cleric, each ready to join your cause. More are on the way. Each companion is a fully-statted actor with their own class, and once recruited you can swap your active party at any inn.

The recruitment mechanism is built on RPG Maker’s party system, proven and working — so expanding the roster is now just a matter of writing good characters.

The Bug That Broke Every Battle

Here’s a humbling one. Players reported that overworld orcs “do no damage — just a terrify attack.” They were right, and it was much worse than it sounded.

Digging into the database, we found the truth: not a single one of the game’s 238 enemies had a basic Attack action. In RPG Maker MZ, an enemy only uses the actions explicitly listed in its data — there’s no implicit default attack. Dozens of enemies (Orcs, Ogres, Gnolls, every Golem, Basilisks, Medusas) had only a utility skill like Frightening Presence or Petrifying Gaze — abilities with zero damage output. They’d cast their scary debuff, round after round, and never actually hurt you.

The fix was surgical: add a basic Attack to every enemy missing a damaging action. Now all 238 enemies can actually fight. Combat works again.

This is why playtesting matters.

What’s built

• Full BFRPG database — 4 classes, 238 monsters (124 with bespoke combat behaviour), 77 spells, 16 states, 69 items, 45 weapons, 14 armors. Every weapon, armor, item and skill has an icon.
• Card-based character creation — gender → race → class cards, 3d6 character sheet, point allocation, rerolls (docs/CHARACTER_CREATION_SYSTEM.md). Ability scores are stored in variables 20–25.
• Playable path — character creation → Hall of Transference → Gold in the Hills → Morgansfort.
• Morgansfort — all 25 module locations with named NPCs, real Trader shop, Iron Helm Inn.
• Party recruitment (M5, closed 2026-09-26) — max 4 (you + 3). Meet a companion and talk to them first; they offer to join if there’s room, otherwise they wait for you at any inn. Party changes happen only at an innkeeper (Manage Party); your own character can’t be swapped out. 8 companions. docs/party-recruitment.md · plugin Xinle_PartyRecruitment.
• Mana, spell costs, regeneration, potions (M5, closed 2026-09-26) — Magic-User mana from INT, Cleric from WIS (level × (score + BFRPG modifier)); spells cost 5 MP per spell level; everyone regains 1% × CON of Max HP per minute, casters 0.5% × INT/WIS of Max MP per minute — never in battle; the clock pauses in menus, conversations and events; Healing and Mana potions in Small/Medium/Large. docs/spell-mana-regen.md · plugin Xinle_ManaAndRegen.
• Equipment — Weapon, Shield, Head, Body, Neck, Ring, Ring (second ring slot via Xinle_EquipSlots); BFRPG class restrictions enforced.
• IconSet — 2,016 icons (stock + Clockwork Raven packs + map markers + horses), capped at 4,096 px for Android. Ranges: docs/iconset-ranges.json; rebuild: scripts/build_iconset.py.
• Battle layout — enemies auto-arranged on the left ground line, party on the right (docs/battle-formation.md, Xinle_BattleFormation; [manual] in a troop name keeps editor positions).
• Magic Garments vendor (Morgansfort) — Cloth Armor, Cloth Armor +1/+2 (armors #15/#16), Leather +1, Shield +1, Circlet +1, Ring of Protection +1, Ring of Fire Resistance.
• Compass/minimap — class player icon + 102 POI markers (docs/compass-poi-icons.md).
• Android release groundwork (AdMob/IAP plugins, APK guide) — external accounts still pending (M3).