Dear Denizens of Issilith!
With the new Battle Pass plans in place and all the new updates we are currently adding to the game, a question “How will all this affect my progression?” may come to mind. So today we will walk you through some of the main progression elements and how we plan for them to look like in the future.
It is important to us that you know how this is an ongoing discussion, and that we may change the final look of the player progression according to the testing results and your feedback.
Experience (XP) is the basic progression element you passively gain while playing Phageborn. Every time you finish a match you will be rewarded with a certain amount of XP, depending on your performance. There are minimal requirements for a game to count for awarding XP to prevent players from gaining XP by surrendering at the start of a match. Completing Quests gives XP as well, but more on that next time.
Gained XP is assigned to each progression element in its full amount. In Phageborn, progression elements are Player level, Faction level, and Avatar level.
Player Level may very well be the main cornerstone of the progression system. XP required to level up will increase with each level until it reaches its cap. With each level up you will gain Progress Points (PP) and Soul Fragments (SF). Once you have reached the maximum amount of PP and SF they will be replaced by various other rewards.
Progress Points (PP) are used in the Blacksmith to unlock seals from the Seal trees. Seals always cost 1PP to unlock. When you unlock a seal you acquire the cards behind it (more on that when we talk Card Acquisition).
Soul Fragments (SF) are acquired through leveling up your account. You can use 5 of them and combine them into a complete Avatar Soul.
Avatar Souls (AS) are acquired when you collect 5 SF. You can use it in the Shrine to unlock additional Avatars. All Avatars cost 1 AS.
Faction Level is increased when you collect enough XP while playing with a specific faction. Each faction has its own Faction level. Your Faction level is important for a few reasons: it allows you access to more unlockable content (cosmetics), it's tied to your range of influence (more on that when we talk Card Acquisition, it’s coming honest), and it serves as a catch-up function. The catch-up function will help a higher-level player speed up progression in any faction. This bonus will automatically start once the player reaches the point where XP required to level up the Player Level will become uniform. The bonus will be greater the larger the difference between the Faction and Player Level is.
Avatar Levels' primary function is to give players time to adapt to using an Avatar by restricting their second and third traits behind a level gate. This level gate is removed at some point, depending on the Player Level.
CARD ACQUISITION
As stated before, we will not sell card packs! In Phageborn, apart from the Battle Passes, you can acquire cards through the seals. Every faction has its own Seal tree alongside the Neutral cards as well.
There are certain requirements you need to have so you can unlock a seal. You have to: have the required previous seal, have unspent PP, and the seal you wish to unlock has to be in your range of influence.
As seen in the screenshot, every seal is positioned somewhere along with one of the 3 paths. To unlock a seal you will need to unlock the one before that is connected to the seal you wish to unlock. Unlocking the final seal on the path requires 3 seals from the previous range of influence to be unlocked. Once you start unlocking seals along the path you don't have to finish that path to begin to unlock other seals outside of it. You can unlock any other seal in a different path or even another faction as long as you have prerequisites to unlock that seal. Each seal always costs 1 PP no matter where it is situated on the Seal tree. Seals that are outside your range of influence cannot be unlocked and you'll have to level up that faction's level.
Once you unlock a seal you cannot refund it! As soon as you unlock a seal, cards behind it are added to your account and that can't be reversed. So take your time to explore all that Seal trees have to offer to you.
There are a few differences in how the Neutral Seal Tree looks in comparison to the Faction Seal trees. First, Neutral Seal trees do NOT have a range of influence. That means that you can unlock cards from it as long as you have enough PP and have the required previous seal unlocked. The second difference is that the Neutral Seal tree has an additional, separate group of seals that are not bound by any path and can be unlocked in any order. Each of them contains 3 legendary neutral cards.
There are two main reasons why we implemented this. This way we have cleared up the Neutral Seal tree, giving it the same look and amount of cards behind each seal as in Faction Seal trees. But besides the esthetic, the main reason is that it gives you more options for deckbuilding, especially if you haven't been playing for long. Since the legendary cards can be the main focus of some strategies or an extremely big help in the right circumstances, we felt that locking all of them at the end of the paths may have as a result a needless grind just so you can try out some new legendary cards and their potential synergies. So we decided to put them separately so you can unlock new legendary cards even as a new player!
Once you start the game and choose your faction you will be given that faction's base deck, starting Avatar of that faction, and 3 Progress Points. The way you want to use your resources is entirely up to you. So feel free to browse a bit and strategize, and most importantly, don't forget to have fun!
Keep in mind that during the testing we will look over data and your feedback so there is a possibility that some things may change in the future. That is why your input is important to us! Feel free to comment below or join our Discord channel (Discord) and talk with Residents of Issilith about things you like and don't like about our current player progression.
Yours truly,
Games Revolted