Puppet Guardian

Guilds and services

There are three guilds in the game and a barbershop / hair salon. The guilds are the Warehouse Guild, where can be stored, and the Merchant Guild, which is a kind of middle-man for buying and selling items between players. All of these services are available in the tower lobbies in the form of NPC’s or non-player characters . This was the result of a game that moved these services from the “underground marketplace” to the tower lobbies in November 2008. ^[10]

Barbershop

The barbershop is called Basil the Barber and is a service that allows players to change their hair color and style their beards. This is necessary because of characters hair does grow over time.

Ranch Guild

In the Ranch Guild players can get horses , dogs , cats , and parrots. Sometimes exotic pets are featured, usually with a seasonal theme. For example, players could acquire a reindeer during the Christmas event. ^[11] A jack-o-lantern pet became available at the Halloween event.

The pets come with their own dice, so they can extend the playing range of a player. ^[12] Pets also have the ability to help the guardian characters fight monsters.

Economy

Puppet Guardian employs basic economic concepts of trade. A player can put an item on the market for sale through the “Merchant Guild”. Any other player in the game using the Merchant Guild to locate an item using Gold Coins. Originally the game did not have a Merchant Guild or middle man, and items were sold to player in the underground marketplace but an upgrade of the game in December 2008 changed this. ^[13]

Players are allowed to set their own prices for their items. Theoretically this encourages players to make an “investment” in time to produce or “synthesize” items that would be attractive on the market. In particular, the Japanesegame has seen a proliferation of healing items.

Players use their Gold Coins to purchase items. Gold Coins are the Puppet Guardian currency. ^[14] Players obtain Gold Coins by buying them with real money or by selling items.

Monsters and magic

Monsters inhabited the towers of the Castle in the Celestial Sky and provide the only opportunity for players to employ their arms and magic. The game does not allow them to compete, so they provide the game’s excitement hand. Each monster has its own unique qualities. ^[15] And each monster, ounce subdued, confers items that players must have to synthesize new more valuable items. So the point of subduing these creatures is to get more advanced and powerful items. These items, in turn, allow players to subdue ever more powerful monsters. These powerful monsters have rare and valuable items that players covet.

In most cases, the more difficult the monster is to subdue, the rarer and more valuable the item the player will be able to take.

In general, novice players will not be able to subdue advanced monsters. It is also the case that some monsters can not be subdued, even by advanced players. However teams or groups of players can succeed where individual players can not be compared to the most powerful monsters. The game is explicit about the need for players to form teams and work together. ^[16]The game design, with its limited life points (10 per day that expires at the end of each day) and dice rolls (6 new dice rolls per day in the Japanese server and 24 new dice rolls per day in the English server which accumulate) appears to force this kind of collaboration by limiting the life and range of a player. The relationship between monsters and life points is that when they fight monsters, they invariably are damaged and this damage causes the loss of life points.

Magic

Players get magic points as they get certain items that have magical powers. Items that confer magic points include wands, rods, staffs, magic books, and dresses. In general magical items and status are the most difficult to obtain; it follows that magical powers confer the greatest advantage or power in contests with monsters. Titles for characters that have achieved magical status include Warlock, Witch, Wizard, and Sorcerer.

Geography

All characters start on the grounds of the Celestial Castle outside of Tower IV where they can read the last of the Stone Monuments, which are the game’s mode of presenting the Puppet Guardian back-story. ^[17] Why the game starts in this area is not clear.

According to the Stone Monuments, the lands in each tower are a memory of Org, the game’s leading character and the ruler of those lands. Using Magic, Org has sealed recollections into the towers and they provide a setting for the game. Org’s memory, memorialized presumably because the castle is no longer in Org’s lands but floating in the Celestial Sky. All towers have their own unique setting, monsters, items, and musical theme. ^[18]

Towers and courtyard

The grounds of the castle include a courtyard which provides access to the final three towers. It is located between towers 1 and 2. There was also an underground marketplace in front of towers 1 and 2. This was the only place of the game, but the game design was changed in October 2008 to allow such transactions each of the tower lobbies at the Merchant Guild with Basil the Barber . It is now unclear what is the purpose of the original game design.

On the back of the courtyard is a stairway that leads to the castle keep. These stairs can be seen in the face of the Puppet Guardian because of the walls. It may be important to reach the top. There are Maps available in the game of each of the game’s regions. ^[19]

Titles and status

Puppet Guardian features a variety of titles and levels of status, which can be attained with the acquisition of certain items. Players reaching out by the towers and subduing monsters. Base materials are synthesized into more advanced items. There are few things that can not be solved.

A typical progression of status looks like this: Apprentice → → Master Swordsman Swordsman Swordsman → Conquering. These differing levels of status depend on the quality of the item, in this case a long sword, from which the status is derived. So a “Long Sword” might be at the bottom of the item quality and a ” Paragon Long Sword” at the top, with several levels in between. A player with a Long Sword Paragon would have the status Conquering Swordsman, eg; (Player’s Character Name) The Conquering Swordsman .

There are also titles in Puppet Guardian which follow a similar pattern of acquisition, but where the Status appears after a player’s name, their title appears before. The Player’s Character Name, the Beguiling Master Duelist .

References