Managing and optimizing your inventory and item distribution has always been integral to planning in SRPGs, and Gales of Nayeli is no exception. Each individual unit has seven slots in their personal inventory that they can access at any time: these seven slots can be occupied by any combination of weapons, consumable items, or held items that grant passive bonuses, which you select from your roster-wide convoy when distributing items to your party. 

Units can benefit from multiple held items at once: therefore, you should feel free to experiment with diverse and inventive combinations of weapons, consumables, and held items when deploying for battle. Most items can also be traded between adjacent allied units after the battle begins.

Here are three of the held items that you’ll be able to find and make use of: 

Swift Ring: Gives the holder 3 bonus Speed and also grants them access to the Leap skill when held. Leap allows the user to reposition themselves to any tile adjacent to an allied unit that they are themselves adjacent to. 

The Speed bonus and Leap are powerful, and have a wide variety of applications. For instance, this item can help mobile units shift themselves into even more advantageous positions than were already available to them, or it can help lower-movement units catch up to their faster allies and avoid falling behind. For any unit, the bonus Speed makes them more likely to avoid attacks and be able to perform follow-up attacks on their target, increasing their survivability and attack frequency. 

Watchman’s Rope: Allows the wielder to climb up Watchtowers without using their action, if they do not already have the ability to do so.

Watchtowers are common terrain features which increase the damage, accuracy, and range of projectile and ranged magical attacks used by anyone occupying them, but normally take a unit’s action to mount. This item expands your strategic flexibility when Watchtowers are present on a map, enabling you to position units on Watchtowers more aggressively.

Cursed Locket: Increases the holder’s Critical Hit Chance by 15%, but reduces their Critical Hit Avoid by 25%.

The benefits to increased Critical Hit Chance—such as the ability to potentially eliminate worrisome targets in one strike—are obvious, but so too are the risks of being more likely to be critically hit in turn. Clever positioning by the holder, as well as defending them with allied units, can help offset the drawback of this high-risk, high-reward item. 

This is just a very small preview of the rich diversity of items that can be found, purchased, and earned as you explore Iuven. Make sure you collect everything you can, and experiment with what you find to test new strategies and refine old ones!

See you tomorrow with more daily updates leading up to the Kickstarter Campaign!
David