Bullet Points

Reminder that the team is working on upgrades to the tavern and the raid system

Items will soon be listed based on their "power level"

More details on item recycling and upgrade systems

Dust is the core item needed to upgrade or "refine" items Items can be destroyed for dust A tool kit will also be needed

Cutieland updates should be coming soon

Ended with some item ideas and artwork

Building presale is being shifted to the next phase

Item Tiers

Different items already have different importance in the game. A tiered system is being added, which will make it a little more obvious and meta friendly. There are common, uncommon, rare, epic and legendary items. The tier or power level is evaluated using a complex formula. There will be five power levels.

Item Upgrade

The dust which will be generated through item "disenchantment" or destroying the item can be used to refine the item. Different items can be destroyed for different amounts of dust, and it is somewhat variable. For example, leather bracelets will give between 190 and 200 units of dust. Refinement can fail and the item can break. That item will then need to be repaired. Maxing out some items could cost over 100,000 units of dust.

A toolkit will also be needed and can be gathered. You can get up to four tool kits per day through various daily "quests." Some tool kits can only be obtained through special adventures. Normal/bronze can be used to upgrade from tier one and two, silver for tier three, and gold for tier four. Initially items that are not part of the most recent event can be upgraded. Special rule set for the special adventure: any item your cutie has equipped must have some degree of refinement.

Refinement will increase a number of stats. Level one refinement will give a 2% experience boost, a 2% reward drop boost, and will increase the power level of the item slightly. Right now we don't have a very good quality document, but a table should be released soon. The best I could do is grab a poor quality screen cap for now.

Items of different levels of refinement will be listed separately in the market. I'm rather curious as to how this feature will alter market dynamics. Economics of markets can get really interesting when different types of the same item are involved. I also have a screen cap of some of the item level graphs.

Some items will be better at farming, some at leveling cuties, etc, and so item analysis is evaluated based on the use case for each item. Again, in the full article there will be a lot more detail about the formulas and other aspects of the system. Different item types will have different bonuses per refinement level.

Potions aren't going to be part of this system right now, but "alchemy" may eventually be part of the crafting system, at which point potions may be useful. So... no way to get rid of fertility potions yet

The Forge

As mentioned earlier, upgrades can result in an item breaking. If an item breaks, it can be repaired. The more difficult items and more powerful items will take longer to repair. There will be slots so that can be filled to repair multiple items at the same time. CUTE may be used and will give a discount. Up to five slots will be available.

Overall Thoughts

Item refinement is very complicated. There are a lot of different things to consider, when deciding whether or not to upgrade a given item. Someone could dedicate a lot of time, just to learning the ins and outs of the process. I don't think that everyone will use the system. Honestly, I don't think that most people will use the system on a regular basis. And that's fine. It is going to be a system that will allow for specialization within the game. There may very well be individuals whose primary focus is on refining items, doing only what is necessary to obtain the items to engage in item refinement. Specialization is common in the real world, and it may become common within BCU as well. As for the item level system, it should help users to evaluate whether an item is worthwhile to buy and equip.

Obviously some details are likely to be changing and details will be written up in a long format post, and the system update should be coming in about three weeks.

Final Things

The podcast ended with some artwork, and a discussion of which tributes have yet to be found. There was also a discussion about the idea of giving something special for being the first to find a tribute.

Clint Eastwood inspired cutie.

Question of the week: none.