With a bit more finished in terms of the overworld and navigation system, I'm starting to get back to work on the character creator. The main things that I have to get done asset-wise are the portraits for the previously-touched-on Backgrounds. For all intents and purposes, they're the game's "classes;" although they don't restrict you to certain types of weapons and armor pieces, they're essentially bundles of passive bonuses and active abilities contextualized as what your character did before they set out on their adventure. There are going to be more than six, but these are the ones that I have done so far and six seems like a good number to show off.
As for the kinds of things that backgrounds will give your character, well, here are some examples. From top left to bottom right:
The Warrior - Definitely the background for you if you want to crank up the combat's pace a bit. Most of his passives and actives serve to maintain his stamina and tempo as he fearlessly battles his way through hordes of monsters without so much as stopping for a breath.
The Hunter - Basically the opposite of the warrior, but still an offense-oriented class. Aside from being more effective with ranged weapons and less effective at melee range, she boasts a wide array of abilities used for luring, immobilizing, or debuffing single targets. A Jafanak or Nagifranak with the Hunter background will also restore more satiety from eating fallen monsters.
The Explorer - Definitely the class for you if you want to crank up the pace of everything
other than the combat. With a passive stamina and move speed bonus as well as the ability to reveal new points of interest on the travel screen over a 50% wider radius, the Explorer background makes getting around easy. Certain rare setpieces will also spawn more frequently within the randomly generated overworld segments, and his list of active abilities includes a grappling hook as well as some other fun toys.
The Guard - Although his damage output leaves a bit to be desired in comparison to the Warrior or the Hunter, the Guard is a master at defense. He makes shields more effective across the board, and his melee attacks have increased knockback and stun time. Most of his abilities are used for debuffing the aggression and attack power of his enemies.
The Doctor - An expert in the fields of medicine and biology, the doctor is able to craft numerous types of healing and buffing items from common resources, as well as bottle grenades that cause negative effects to enemies that they're thrown on. Her passive "Healthy Lifestyle" ability causes positive status effects on her to count down 25% slower and negative status effects to count down 25% faster.
The Lorekeeper - One of the more interesting and unique backgrounds, and one designed to reward the players who will write my game's wiki - I mean, who want to go out of their way discover as much as they can. Although she has a base penalty on most physical stats, she gains EXP 1.5x faster. Discovering a new monster rewards her with money and experience, and also boosts her damage output and critical hit rate against any monsters that share its family. Probably the most interesting part, though, is that Lorekeepers have a special affinity for equipment with a rarity of Epic or Legendary, increasing their effectiveness and often uncovering bonus attributes and abilities that other classes won't have access to.