Hey everyone!
Today’s devlog is centered around the enemies you will face in Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades!
Since there is much to cover on the various types of foes and what defines them, we will be releasing separate devlogs for each major topic to provide a better understanding of the dangerous creatures (and humans) wandering around the Stormtossed Isle! Meaning that this devlog will act as the introduction to the type of enemies that you will come across during your adventure, and what makes them different from each other!
Below, we’ll talk about the wide range of enemies, which include human units similar to the player's own roster, other hostile humans such as clansmen and bandits, and various beasts and monsters.
The humanoid foes
When developing the enemies for Pathbreakers, the goal was to provide the player with a wide variety of opponents that have diverse strengths, weaknesses, and strategies. Facing off against regular “player class” units is a known situation: the player knows what these units are capable of and where they might be weaker. But at the same time, human units have the greatest options for customization, so things might not be as simple as that.
Other hostile human (or humanoid) classes are more akin to monsters. They have a specific set of moves that is more thematized and tied to their place in the world. The most notorious ones are clansmen, mantus, or bandits. Clansmen are Neanderthal-like primitive humans that are split into 5 different main clans, each with their own units. They have distinct abilities and styles based on their tribe: some are feral beast tamers, while others rely more on magic and rituals, for example. Mantus are an insectoid race and have only one main clan, but several different units such as drones, warriors, and scholars, each with distinct styles and abilities.
The monsters
There are a great number of different monsters in Pathbreakers. Their families include plants, beasts, magical beings, aberrations, humanoids, and “mighty” types (bosses and elite units). Every monster has its own set of abilities, which are thematized and often quite powerful, but that usually come with various means of counterplay. This type of foe isn't as smart as their human counterpart, although some can have extra cunning, so they tend to be more straightforward in combat. Their powerful abilities make up for it, though.
Monsters might be a bit of a surprise to some players: while their growth over time doesn't always match that of humans (mainly since they can't upgrade to better equipment), they tend to come front-loaded with all of their available abilities from their early levels, displaying more options from the start of the game.
Your Pathbreakers journey takes place on the Stormtossed Isle, which has rich and diverse biomes, despite being an island. Monsters, clans, and bandit groups tend to gather in certain specific biomes, so as you travel throughout the land, different encounters and enemies await you. You'll need different strategies for different groups and enemy types. Plains, beaches, forests, farmlands, snowlands, badlands, rocky taiga, and the inhospitable volcanic wastes are all different biomes you will encounter in Pathbreakers, each inhabited by various types of enemies, be they monstrous or humanoids.
There is much more to unpack regarding the dangers of Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades! Follow our socials and join our Discord Server to be notified when we will drop the upcoming devlogs, where we will take a deep dive one-by-one for all of the monsters’ categories you will meet during your journey!