You shouldn't aim for diablo like productions. Especially if you're a one man army. You could ask yourself is it truly necessary that the player has to see his newly found Hat of a Thousand Deaths? Perhaps it is enough if he can see it in his inventory.

See, the thing is. To me this sounds like a trivial thing. I can understand that you may want the player to see every new item that he finds, but to me it would be more important to see a nicely rendered environment, interesting gameplay and maybe some nice looking effects when characters are fighting each other.
"What are nice features to have for making maps?" "How do I load my animations in the game"", "What kind of characters are there going to be in my game?" "Do I already have a story". Those should but the things on your mind right now, which tbh are far more easier to answer and to realize than the one question you have right there.