Greetings, Dragon Hunters!
It's time for another Dragonkin: The Banished DevBlog!
As we edge closer to the Early Access launch on March 6th, our team is busy preparing to ensure the best experience possible!
Part of that experience is the systems that the game is built on. Today, we’re sharing EVERYTHING you need to know about the Ancestral Grid, Wyrmlings, and most importantly, our vision and intentions for Dragonkin: The Banished!
Check out the trailer for a quick introduction and then scroll down for the deep-dive :
View game page
Our Philosophy Behind Dragonkin: The Banished
The Ancestral Grid system is the result of 2 ambitions. The first: move away from the classic concept of a skill tree, where each player has the same experience. The second: make skill progression just as important and rewarding as equipment progression.
To do that, skills are obtained in the form of Fragments, generated randomly, which depend on your progress in the game. The higher you play at a higher difficulty level, the more powerful, larger and more complex the Fragments will be.
This random generation occasionally allows each player's experience to be different, even if they have similar characters, and to be able to say "that's MY grid!".
These Fragments will need to be placed in a grid as you will discover in this DevBlog. Our intention is to provide a skill system that is both fun and accessible, but maintains depth to satisfy players passionate about optimization.
Obtaining Fragments and Improving Your Skills
Throughout your adventure, you’ll find Fragments of varying rarities (commun, uncommon, rare, legendary and mythic).
A Fragment is made up of one to five hexagons. Each hexagon can contain:
A character's skill or Wyrmling's skill : One per Fragment (a fragment can come without any skill)
One or more modifier(s): which enhance skills using a “Keyword” system.
Keywords, Placement, and Compatibility
Each class has a unique Ancestral Grid, which expands as you level up. Certain slots are subject to specific conditions, which we will reveal in a future DevBlog. Fragments must be placed in the Ancestral Grid strategically, considering their shape and potential synergies.
The Fragments you obtain are automatically stored in a dedicated drawer, organized into four tabs. However, during development, we quickly realized that it would be helpful to temporarily place Fragments around the Ancestral Grid when strategizing their placement or keeping "important" or "favorite" Fragments within easy reach.
To address this, we added the ability to position Fragments "floating" next to the Grid. These Fragments remain in place even when you close the menu.
You can equip and combine up to 5 Active skills and 5 Wyrmling skills in your skill bar.
Each skill and modifier is based on specific Keywords, such as Melee, Offensive, Projectile, Damage Type, and so on. These Keywords determine the compatibility of modifiers with the skills they enhance.
A skill is always enhanced by the compatible modifiers of its own Fragment. Additionally, any Fragment with compatible modifiers can enhance a Skill Hexagon on another Fragment, as long as the two Fragment are touching. It is not necessary for the relevant hexagons to be adjacent on the grid—only the contact between the Fragment is required, as illustrated below:
Here, the active skill Fragment of the Oracle touches one of the edges of a Fragment containing only modifiers.
The interaction of modifiers between Fragment is not limited to minor enhancements. By accumulating enough compatible modifiers, you can reach tiers that allow you to significantly customize a skill or apply multiple minor modifications. The rarer the Fragment and the more powerful the modifiers, the easier it will be to reach these thresholds.
A Fragment containing a skill with the "Projectile" Keyword can be placed next to another Fragment that provides a modifier to increase the number of projectiles. This interaction will immediately enhance the relevant skill.
The more hexagons your Fragment contain, the more modifiers you can apply to your skills by placing them adjacently. However, larger Fragments are both rarer and more difficult to strategically place in your Ancestral Grid.
It will be up to you to find the right combination for positioning your Fragments, considering their importance and compatibility, in order to optimize your skills. Finding the ideal Fragment will be a real challenge. Fortunately, a future crafting mechanic will allow you to make limited modifications to your Fragments.
The possibilities for enhancement, here are a few examples of available modifiers: adding a projectile, increasing the area of effect, generating shockwaves, intensifying a damage type, gaining movement speed, reducing the cost of a skill, and more.
More than a companion!
“Stolen Dragon eggs raised and turned into pets—Wyrmlings, weapons that will battle their kin and augment your powers."
From the beginning of your adventure, you will be accompanied by a Wyrmling. This creature also has an influence on the Ancestral Grid! Each Wyrmling has unique skills corresponding to its respective element: Fire, Electric, Toxic, and Ice, which can be combined with your character's active skills.
You can change your Wyrmling at any time by visiting a tamer in the city of Montescail.
Our goal is that each Wyrmling brings something new to the table, allowing you to customize your skills with various effects. You can think of it as a specialization for your character, one that allows further refinement of your playstyle.
Since each Wyrmling has their own abilities and influence on the gameplay, it’s worth experimenting to find out which one works best for you (or just picking the one you think is coolest)!
Wyrmlings Fragments
As you explore the world, you will discover other fragments containing Wyrmling Fragments.
Unlike your hero’s active skills, Wyrmling skills cannot be assigned to a direct key. To use them, you must trigger them by connecting them to a compatible skill of your character on the Ancestral Grid. Once this connection is established, the skills can trigger automatically.
A character skill can trigger multiple Wyrmling skills, and the same Wyrmling skill can be triggered by multiple character skills!
Just like your character’s skills, your Wyrmling’s skills can be enhanced with modifier fragments. For example, for the "Lightning" skill of the Electric Wyrmling , you can increase the amount of lightning summoned, expand the area of effect for each bolt, or amplify the electrical damage. The possibilities are vast, and each enhancement can change how the skill impacts your gameplay, depending on your playstyle.
If a Wyrmling skill is in Active Compatibility with the Shattering Shield character skill. When you cast Shattering Shield, your Wyrmling has a chance to send a projectile towards the affected enemy.
Since both skills have the “projectile” keyword, they can be upgraded to have more projectiles with “projectile” modifiers.
Symbiosis with Your Wyrmling
But that’s not all about your Wyrmling!
By placing and optimizing your Fragments in the Ancestral Grid, you can achieve a state of symbiosis with your Wyrmling. A skill in a symbiotic state adopts the element of the Wyrmling you’ve chosen, altering its visuals and damage.
This symbiosis can be achieved through modifiers on a character's skill.
The active skill Fiery Bow of the Knight, in symbiosis with an Ice Wyrmling.
Without symbiosis: 
With symbiosis:
If you'd like more information on Symbiosis and specifically: How it affects your damage output and
if you need to match my character’s base element with the wyrmling, please read our DevBlog:
View game page
Finally, here’s what an optimized endgame grid for the Oracle might look like.
This covers the essentials of how our Ancestral Grid and skill system in Dragonkin: The Banished work.
Tell us what you think about it and which Wyrmling are you most interested in! (Personally I like ice the most)
What’s next?
Next week we'll be back with more information about Dragonkin: The Banished.
In the meantime, join us on our social media and Discord for discussions and exclusive reveals!
If you’d like to support us, spread the word and wishlist Dragonkin: The Banished is the best thing you can do! Your support means a lot, and we can’t wait to build this world with you.
See you!