With Love/Loss's imminent release, there's one last thing I want to cover - the elements. There will be in-game information later on, but it's not really covered anywhere in the demo or the included README otherwise.
The array of elements isn't anything outlandish - Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Earth, Water, Light, and Dark. What I wanted to do differently is tie status effects directly to the different elements; one positive and one negative for each. Combat is meant to be fast and infrequent in Love/Loss, so all of these states fall off at the end of combat. Each positive state also prevents that element's negative state from applying; Rage prevents burn, Reflect prevents Freeze, and so on.
Fire has Burn and Rage. Burn works exactly like you'd expect poison to - it does a percentage of damage every round for a few rounds of combat. Rage is a bit of a double-edged sword; it forces the character to auto-battle, attacking enemies at random, which is generally a bad thing. What makes it a buff is that it makes you attack twice per round, with a small chance of attacking a third time, and your attacks do fire damage, increased according to your fire Affinity. While you lose control of your character, Rage does allow you to do a great deal of damage without spending the MP that your spells otherwise require.
Ice has Freeze and Reflect. Freeze replaces the stun state, preventing a character from taking action for a few rounds. It's been modified so that the state has a chance of being removed when the frozen target takes damage, but it also reduces the target's evade rate (both physical and magical) and agility to 0, and applies a multiplier to any physical damage taken. Reflect works how you'd expect it to if you're familiar with RPGs; while it's active, you reflect any magic cast at you back at the caster.
Lightning has Shock and Charged. Shock is a lighter version of paralyze; like Freeze, it reduces evade rates to 0, but unlike Freeze, it doesn't provide a damage multiplier, and can't be removed by damage. Charged provides MP regeneration, and slightly increases all of your evasion rates.
Wind has Breathless and Mistral. Breathless replaces silence, and works exactly how you'd expect it to; you can't cast spells while it's active. Mistral makes your TP regenerate while it's active, and you count as having Guard active while it lasts.
Earth has Knockout and Stonewall. Knockout replaces sleep; the target cannot act, and their evade rates, defense (physical and magical), and agility are reduced to 0. Knockout is removed if the target takes any damage, which is balanced out by Knockout lasting longer than other states. Stonewall functions largely like Protect; it substitutes you in for damage when a party member is attacked. Additionally, it reduces all damage taken (by different amounts, depending on the damage type).
Water has Soak and Flow. Soak is a status ailment that reduces fire damage and the chance of being burned, but amplifies most other damage types and the success rate of other status effects. It is also removed if another status effect is applied to the target. Flow replaces Counter; whenever you're attacked, the attack is nullified and you attack the target in return, like Reflect for physical attacks.
Light has Daze and Immortal. Daze replaces confusion, causing the target to fight automatically and treating all combatants as enemies, including their allies. Immortal does what it sounds like; as long as it's active, your hit points cannot be reduced to 0.
Dark has Blind and Conceal. Blind is mostly unchanged; it reduces the targets hit rate and critical rate, and reduces their counter attack rate to 0. Conceal is a boosted version of Hide; your target rate (the chance enemies attack you over another party member) is reduced to 0. Further, your evasion rates are greatly increased, meaning many attacks won't hit you if you end up being attacked anyway.
The demo for Love/Loss comes out this Friday, 8/12, exclusively to my Patrons. This will probably be the last time I talk about Love/Loss until it enters full development, so if you want to see Love/Loss be more than a demo, please visit my Support page here or consider supporting me on Patreon.
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