This is the largest update so far. It takes the early gameplay slice and turns it into something closer to a game you can play: real skill and force combat with hit, evasion, and critical rolls, mastery that grows as you fight, equipment and buffs that actually change your numbers, parties, quests you receive and finish for a reward, portals that put each map in its own instance, force spells you learn and cast, and merchant NPCs standing in town.
Combat and Progression
- Skill and force attacks work, not only basic melee. Skill damage scales off your weapon’s physical power and force damage off its magic power, so a caster needs a staff to hit hard. Area skills and force reach multiple targets in a radius or cone.
- Weapon and defense mastery are real systems now. Landing hits trains your weapon line, taking hits trains your defense, and casting trains the skill or force you used. Mastery grows faster against tougher targets, is capped to your character level, persists across logout, and its bar climbs while you play instead of only after a relog.
- Your equipment and buffs change your damage. A higher-power weapon hits harder, armor cuts the damage you take, an attack buff raises your output, and a defense buff lowers what you take. All of it reads from the real giga4 item and skill data.
- Hit, evasion, and critical hits are live in combat. Your melee swing rolls to hit and now reads your accuracy against the target, so the level gap and accuracy gear both move your chance to connect. Critical hits roll off your crit stat, land for extra damage, and show as a flagged hit. When a monster swings at you it rolls against your evasion, so evasion gear and buffs let you dodge. At even level with no accuracy or evasion difference you still always connect; everything moves it from there.
- Skills and force spells spend the right resource. A cast now draws down your force points and updates the bar as you go, so you manage it instead of casting for free.
- Buffs apply the correct effect for the skill you cast. Earlier builds collapsed every melee buff to accuracy and every ranged buff to precision. Each skill and force now applies its own real effect and duration.
Force Spells
- The force classes learn and cast their spells the way the original works. You start with training attack spells as books in your bag; right-click a book to learn it into your force window, then cast it in combat.
- A force cast lands damage that shows on the target and starts the spell’s cooldown, both driven by the real giga4 force data. A cast that used to fire the wrong spell, or quietly do nothing at all, now lands the spell you picked.
Items and Inventory
- Items show up as the right kind now. A ranger’s arrows used to come through as crafting tools; weapons, armor, ammo, potions, force books, and the rest all read as what they are. (Characters made before this fix keep the old typing; make a fresh character to see it.)
- Merge stacks by dragging one onto another, and split a stack to move part of it. Drop items to the ground, where they appear as a box you can loot.
- Teleport items work: using one recalls you to your race’s home town and spends a charge. Town-return items with their own destination send you to that spot instead.
- Equipping and unequipping items works, updates how your character looks, and applies the item’s stats. Equip checks enforce race, level, and two-handed-weapon rules.
- New characters start with the gear their class carries in their bag, and equip it themselves the way the original hands it to you: a training sword for warriors, a bow and arrows for rangers, a training staff and attack-spell books for the force class, a mining tool for specialists.
Parties
- Full party support: invite, accept, leave, kick, disband, promote a new leader when the leader leaves, lock the party, and set loot sharing. A party holds up to eight and disbands on its own when one member is left.
- Party members share experience from kills, split by level, for everyone in range of the fight.
- A party chat channel, plus live party member status (health, level, and position) so you can see your group.
The World
- Each race starts at its home town’s real entry point now, read from the original game’s map data, where earlier builds dropped you at a fixed spot (for Bellato, up by a portal instead of at the town steps).
- The monsters in each zone are the real ones from the original map data now, in their real places and numbers, instead of the handful earlier builds placed by hand. A zone holds hundreds of them, so you only see the ones near you as you move, the way the original client works.
- Portals move you between maps, with the original per-nation ordering and race restrictions, and your location is saved across maps so you return where you left. Their destinations are read straight from the original map files, so the town portals take you where they should, and a refused portal gives the right reason instead of a misleading “you are sitting” message.
- Each map is its own instance now. Stepping through a portal to another map takes you out of view of everyone on the map you left, and you stop seeing their monsters, loot, and shops; you only see and affect what is on the map you are standing on.
- Quests track and complete against their real objectives from the original quest data now. Your starter quest is the real one (defeat a set number of two creatures and reach a set level), and it only completes once every objective is done, where before a few early kills were enough. Finishing it pays out its real reward on its own, the way RF has always done it. (Quests that let you pick from a choice of item rewards, where the game pops up a dialog to accept one, come with the item-reward work later.)
NPCs and Shops
- Merchant NPCs stand in town and every mapped zone shows its own store NPCs.
- Buy and sell against the real store stock and prices, and exchange between the two currencies at the shop rate.
Known Issues and What Is Not in Yet
A few reported problems live in the client, which we do not control: logout returning you to character select, character select remembering your last slot, and the skills window showing locked expert and elite entries. Any of those may still be wrong.
Several systems are left for later on purpose:
- Loading ammo into a bow’s socket is not wired yet. Arrows sit in your bag as normal items; right-clicking one to slot it into the weapon does not take yet.
- Item upgrading with talik and moonstone is designed but turned off for now.
- Unit and mech combat is not in, and there is no equipment repair. The original giga4 client has no plain repair, only unit-frame repair, which needs the unit system first.
- Monster evasion is set to zero, so monsters do not dodge yet.
- Only the starter quest is granted for now, though it uses its real objectives and reward from the data. More quests, quest-giver NPCs, and item rewards with the accept dialog come later.
- Monster spawns, start points, and portals are in place for the three nation towns and their reachable maps; other zones come later. Store placement covers Bellato for now.