Why Rift Wizard 3’s Crafting System Works So Well

Rift Wizard and Rift Wizard 2 are excellent turn-based roguelike games about building an arsenal of spells and solving puzzles involving killing many monsters. So I was thrilled to see the demo for Rift Wizard 3 was out and immediately started playing it. Rift Wizard 3's biggest innovation is its crafting system, which asks players to gather ingredients to create equipment that enables powerful spell combos. Beyond the fun of set collection, the crafting system does a few things really well that I haven't seen before in crafting systems.

The first innovation of the new crafting system is that most ingredients have effects when you pick them up. Some are temporary, applying only to the current level, such as granting a damage aura for fifteen turns or freezing nearby enemies. Others are permanent, like increasing your max HP or granting one of your spells extra charges. This means when choosing the next level based on ingredients, you might prioritize their pickup bonus over what you can make with them. By linking short-term (pickup) and long-term (crafting) effects, it lets players create numerous organic goals to use the other benefit.

To further nudge the player's strategy, many crafting ingredients have bonus effects depending on the recipe. Each equipment item, spell, and ingredient has tags corresponding to elements like "fire", "dragon", "orb", "enchantment", or "slime". Some ingredients give bonuses if used to craft equipment with a particular tag. For example, Bloodrage Serum enhances any blood-tagged equipment it crafts with a bonus that buffs the user when they take damage from an enemy. Even if you weren't going for a blood build, this bonus encourages branching into that magic school.

Perhaps the most extreme examples of customizable equipment items are the Artificer's Chalice and Artificer's Rod. These allow you to re-trigger the effects of the ingredients used to craft them. Since players can use any combination of ingredients to craft them, this gives another outlet for creativity and a way to use favorite pickup effects on future levels. It transforms a temporary powerup into a permanent upgrade.

The secret behind the fun of Rift Wizard 3's crafting system is externalities, player opportunities that arise in pursuit of other goals. After seeing how it treats crafting ingredients, crafting mechanics in other games feel one-dimensional by comparison. Having ingredients do something when you gain them is not expensive; one-shot effects pair very well with tags. And modifying recipe behavior based on what you put into it is a great way to inject player creativity into an area that normally relies more on content.