Triumph of Sword and Shield

Picture this: you start off in your small, picturesque hometown in the middle of the sticks, and you buy Armour 1 and equip it before you leave the village. You trek through the Forest Dungeon to Slightly Larger Town, where you purchase Armour 2 and equip it, leaving Armour 1 totally irrelevant. Not long after, you reach Decent Size Town, and you buy Armour 3, and now Armour 1 and Armour 2 are either cluttering up your inventory or have long since been sold for a pittance. To make matters worse, you now have two more party members to feed and clothe, so you need to purchase extra Armour 3s.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with this model, I've recently decided to go a slightly different route with Vermilion. For those that played the demo (which is still available, by the way), you may remember that your equipment consisted of the following items:

• Weapon
• Shard (two slots)
• Conduit
• Armour
• Other (two slots)

Shards are items that you equip to access elemental magic (fire, ice, etc.), while conduits are accessories you equip to boost your Power (magical attack). Armour was mostly for improving defense, but some items also improved other stats. The Other slots consisted of accessories that performed a range of different features, such as improving tolerance to certain stats or boosting one's Water attacks, etc.

Tools are TBC; just wanted to test things out