The Stack

Recettear‘s dungeons are still the key to greatest wealth, whether through finding advanced kinds of armor and weapons that are not (yet) available for purchase, or through finding ingredients for crafting exotic and expensive stuff. But they’re time-consuming and risky. Adventurers never truly die in this game, but if you get sufficiently beat up, you automatically teleport back to town, and can only bring back one item. This includes items you brought into the dungeon with you.

It doesn’t include the adventurer’s own equipment, mind you, but sometimes you have to pack loaner equipment, because sometimes the adventurers are slow to take advantage of your incredible offerings back at the store. One of my adventurers is level 17 by now and still using a rusty dagger, so if I want to take her adventuring, I bring a better weapon, one I crafted. I look forward to the day she actually decides to buy it: it’ll free up an inventory slot for loot, and bring a nice profit as well.

But anyway, dying in the dungeon is a waste of a day, and possibly a loss of equipment as well, if you brought more than one item in. It’s probably the single biggest thing that can interfere with your ability to make your loan payments on deadline. So when it happens, you naturally revert to a previous save. (Which, naturally, you made immediately prior to delving into the dungeon.) I’ve accidentally undercharged for major items and let it slide, because little setbacks are affordable, but losing a day’s dungeoneering is too much. I think the adventurer keeps their XP for the expedition, but who cares?

So I spend a fairly large fraction of my play time on this game repeating dungeons. Which is to say, wasting real time in order to save pretend time.