Im making a dungeon crawler/hero management game where you set out for along journey into the wilderness. The idea was that you get further and further away from civilization and the "goal" is to get to the furthest point where the last dungeon with some very tough monster awaits. You would find hamlets and outposts even far away into the wilderness.

Problem is, if there is less and less civilization, how would the heroes buy better and betetr gear? No advanced blacksmith in far away in the wilderness right? The best gear can realistically be found in cities.

So I have to options it seems:

1. Make gear only lootable in chests and by killing monsters (who supposably killed other heroes). But this makes gold (money) sort of useless and I dont want that.

2. Cheat. Let the heroes teleport back and forth to cities already visited to restock and buy hi end gear near the end of the journey. However this makes the survival and "venture far away" aspect of the game (which I also want) very undermined. Also it feels too much like Diablo.

Any ideas?
Erik 

3 hours ago, suliman said:

the "goal" is to get to the furthest point where the last dungeon with some very tough monster awaits.

Is this like the infinite tower idea? Because it sounds like the problem is with returning and not actually finding valuable items. So maybe the path back has like a timer. When a player defeats enemies in a zone, it takes time for the zone to fill up again.

This way returning early is easy but deciding to venture too far could make the way back just as dangerous as the journey.

If it a problem with finding weapons in the wild, then you could use loot instead. Things like say a dragon heart is needed as part for trading for a new weapon; then the player has to go into the wild to find a dragon heart; or some system like that.

No advanced blacksmith in far away areas might not be true.

A few options;

Traveling Trader Caravans.

Fixed territories with at least 1 major city or trading center in them (might be difficult to get to them).

The lone hermit, smith, magician, druid; that just happens to have some stuff to trade if you get the <whatever> for them.

Bandit or Monster villages with treasure hoards.

The occasional teleport to city device that is crumbling and maybe has a couple charges left in it.  Sometimes to a destroyed city.

Adventurer villages or fortifications from the previous adventurers trying to do what you are doing now.

Wall cities or fortifications from the Empire/Alliance/Kingdom of <foo> which are trying to limit the monsters from attacking their territories.

And the ever popular roving Blackmarket.

Depends on where you're traveling.  If it's just a small dungeon in the wilderness, then there probably aren't many shopping opportunities, but you could just go back to town to sell your loot and buy new equipment.  If you're traveling for long distances overland, then you might come across other cities.  Even if these cities are largely hostile places (e.g. an orcish kingdom), you might still find some traders.  If you're traveling to a huge mega-dungeon filled with hundreds of fellow adventurers, then some of these other adventurers might be willing to trade with you.

Good input!

In the real world it has never been the case that as you travel farther from you home there is less and less civilization, it's just that the civilization increasingly differs from your own.  The local civilizations are more adapted to their local harsher conditions than you, as a foreigner, would be.  Consider how the European migrants almost died in Massachusetts until the Pawtuxet demonstrated their more advanced technology to allow survival in local conditions. The local technology for addressing the harsher local conditions would work better than the stuff you brought with you: for all intents and purposes it is "more advanced" equipment.

So, it makes sense that as you go deeper into the "unknown" the more advanced local trade goods would be.  As you travel into Orcischland, the available Orc slaying and defense equipment works better against Orcs than the suff from Home otherwise the Folk there wouldn't be surviving.  Past that in High Blorghia, your shiny Orcslayer won't work well against the Blorgh and you'll want to trade it in for a brand new Blorghbasher.  Maybe even with some friendly Orc traders in a villiage just across the frontier.

Well, if you go the furthest I see two possibilities:

- the most powerfull sources of energy are found way far from cities. That's where you find the most powerful monsters but ALSO the place where the most powerfull enchantment can be done wich means the most powerfull gear. (kind of the same as the ring in the lord of the ring. kind of). You can uses some altars/sanctuaries or summit like it.

- you can find somehow knowlege to do this through magic (it's a bit like in Skyrim when you discover new dragon shouts but here it would be aboute forge)