The Muscle Archetype is made up of Skill Trees that emphasise brute force and explosive power! If you're a fan of kicking down doors, blowing stuff up and smashing things, these trees are for you. Today I'll be previewing three of these trees and some of their signature abilities - remember these trees are still in development and are likely to change. Starting off with a classic from StarCrawlers : the Soldier.
The Soldier is a Class Tree - these trees are primarily made up of active abilities that, in addition to weapons, will be your main way of dealing damage. Soldier abilities are cooldown-based and are all about blowing stuff up. Their abilities involve bombs. Lots of bombs.
- Frag Out is a ranged area attack with a short cooldown that deals damage to the target and minor damage to nearby targets. All abilities improve as your character does and you can see Frag Out improves with the Savvy attribute.
- Bomblets is a passive ability that has a chance to spawn a Bomblet whenever a Soldier ability deals damage. Bomblets deal minor area damage when stepped on or their timer expires. With a Perk Point applied, Bomblet explosions can reduce the cooldown on a random ability by 1 turn.
- Magnetronc Bomb deals minor damage but really shines when you have lots of Bomblets laying around as it pulls them closer to the impact point. Bomblets pulled to a target explode!
Next up the Support Tree of Bodybuilding. Support Trees are a mix of passive and active abilities that do everything from providing stat boosts, to dealing damage, to aiding in exploration of the environment. Bodybuilding is focused on Strength and Toughness - important stats for both dealing damage and surviving.
- Pack Mule is a passive ability gained at the start of the game that increases your inventory size by 6 slots so you can horde more junk.
- Pump Up briefly boosts your Strength based on your current Strength. With no cooldown and a small stamina cost, you can spam Pump Up several times to deliver a big hit to an enemy or a massive Bash to a locked door or container
- Wall Puncher boosts success chances when attempting to Bash a locked object. No need to mess about with lockpicks when you can just wrench the lock off.
Lastly we have the Weapon Tree of Big Guns. Weapon Trees improve your attacks and give extra abilities when using weapons of a certain type. Big Guns supports using Heavy Weapons such as a shotgun, assault rifle, or sniper rifle. Heavy Weapons deal high base damage, consume lots of ammo, and require a steady hand to operate.
- Suppression is an active ability with a short cooldown that can pin down enemies by consuming extra ammo for a chance to inflict Stun. Stunned targets can take no action and miss their turn.
- Assault is a passive ability that doubles (!) the base damage of your weapon attacks against Stunned targets. Great for mowing through lesser enemies and mitigating the increased ammo consumption of Heavy Weapons.
- Shock and Aww Yeah! is an active ability with a short cooldown that will always Stun or Knockback (or both!) the target.
I hope you've enjoyed this preview of the Muscle Archetype and some of the Skill Trees and their abilities! There are lots more trees and abilities to be revealed... soon... :D