“Built in the heart of the mountains, sheltered from Dragons and their voices, lies a huge city and bastion of humanity.”
Hello Dragon Hunters!
This time, we’re bringing something special to the table, as we finally unveil one of the most important aspects of Dragonkin: The Banished ; The city of Montescail.
But before that, we're excited to reveal that we're going to launch a demo for Dragonkin: The Banished on February 20th.
But back to the topic at hand, welcome to Montescail!
[link of the video]
Multiple Heroes, One Town
If you read our previous DevBlog that featured the single-player and multiplayer, you already know that before you create your first character, you’ll need to create an offline or online city or simply join a friend's existing online city.
If you want more details on how multiplayer works, please check our previous DevBlog:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1863430/view/508445172204306551
Not only, Montescail contains various buildings that allow the player to craft various potions, train against dummies, manage their Wyrmlings, and much more, this city also serves as a hub for all characters created within it.
Each character has access to a Personal Chest, a private storage space where you can put your equipment.
All characters tied to the same city have access to a Shared Chest, a storage where you can put the equipment you gathered during your adventure.
Each character in the city benefits from the improvements and features unlocked within that city. With the group system, independent of your characters, you can progress the story or endgame hunts alone, together simultaneously, asynchronously, or even across different characters.
A City That Evolves With You
The city of Montescail is divided into several districts, each representing a unique civilization from the world, Montescail will evolve alongside your characters.
The more you progress in the story or complete endgame content, the more Prosperity (XP) you earn. Each time your city levels up, you receive City Upgrade Points, which can be spent to unlock and enhance Services and Buildings. These upgrades improve the efficiency of Services, grant passive bonuses to your heroes, and sometimes unlock unique perks.
Though you'll need to prioritize which aspects to focus on, you'll have the opportunity to unlock everything as you progress.
So, what exactly can you do in Montescail?
You will unlock a wide variety of merchants, each offering unique Services. This can be as simple as a Dark Merchant to buy items or sell your junk, a Memorialist to modify your equipment pieces, an Ornamentalist to craft ornaments for each armor type, an Arsenal allowing you to save and change your equipment presets.
You can also unlock various perks such as larger city storage, experience bonuses, damage, movement speed or even additional slots for your Ancestral Grid.
Green indicates upgrades you have already unlocked, while yellow show upgrades that are available but require City Upgrade Points to be unlocked. Some buildings have prerequisites that must be met to reveal the next bonus and unlock further upgrades.
Here an exemple with the Jeweler able to craft rings.
You can customize your ring by always selecting the desired attribute between courage, Intellect, Resilience, and Agility, followed by a primary (offensive) stat such as Cooldown Reduction, Life Drain, Summon Damage, then a secondary stat (defensive), such as Maximum HP, Barrier, or X Resistance.
As the ring's rarity increases, the values of these stats improve. Additionally, starting at Legendary rarity, you gain the ability to improve your ring further by adding a talent, which can stack with your itemization:
- Common: 1 attribute + 2 stats
- Uncommon: 1 attribute + 2 stats
- Rare: 1 attribute + 2 stats
- Legendary: 1 attribute + 2 stats + 1 Talent (1 point)
- Mythic: 1 attribute + 2 stats + 1 random stats + 1 Talent (2 points)
You may wonder what the Talents are! In short, these are earned and obtained via a points system. Each talent has several ranks with stacking effects and some even offer exclusive bonuses at the highest rank. You’ll get to know more in a dedicated DevBlog that covers itemization.
Now let's talk about the Apothecary to create special healing potions.
Here, you can customize your potion by first selecting the desired effect(s). The rarity of the potion determines the amount of healing it provides and the number of effects you can add:
- Common: No additional effects.
- Uncommon: Adds 1 effect
- Rare: 2 effects
- Legendary: 3 effects
- Mythic: 3 effects + 1 random effect
All these services and perks are meant to participate in the improvement of your character and itemization as much as possible.
A city that visually changes as you progress
Montescail evolves visually with every improvement, each building subtly transforms as you upgrade them. Upgrading a merchant enhances their shop, improving the training camp introduces new types of mannequins, and unlocking certain Services result in the development of entire streets.
For the players that participate in our Early Access
You will have access to exclusive customization options for Montescail. Here is a sneak peak of one of the city customization we plan to add at the Early Access launch.
To give you a bit of behind-the-scenes insight, our Environment Artist, Pierre, wanted to share with you more about his design process and how he shaped the look and feel of this exclusive Early Access customization DLC:
“Hi, my name is Pierre Huot, and I've been an Environment Artist at Eko Software for three years now. I've worked on several in-game environments, including the game's main hub, the city of Montescail. For this first customization DLC, my inspiration came from imagining how the people of Montescail would celebrate and honor the heroes who sealed the Rift decades ago, preventing one of the dragons, Saur Iknog, from coming back. The main idea was to decorate the city with various elements, such as banners, statues, and rooftops using a palette of white and gold, along with a unique color for each district. White symbolizes unity and neutrality among Montescail’s diverse inhabitants, while gold represents the Eternal Scales, central artifacts in the Dragonkin story that hold deep significance in each culture. That said, I also wanted to highlight the individuality of each district through certain details, particularly the statues. Their styles and symbolism are more closely tied to the experiences of each civilization and how they perceived the great Rift War against Saur Iknog."
Navigating Montescail with Ease
Given the vast size of the city, we understand that walking between the different buildings can take some time. That’s why we’ve designed a system to help you quickly access all of the city’s key locations and services. Just open the menu and click where you want to go, you’ll be able to move instantly between districts or interact directly with the merchant or store you want to engage with.
That’s it! For now…
As we wrap up this DevBlog, some of the features displayed will be implemented throughout Early Access.
We are interested to know which aspects of the town caught your interest. Share your thoughts in the comments or hop onto our Discord server to discuss with our team!
As usual, stay tuned for more updates and reveals about our game consider adding Dragonkin: The Banished to your wishlist.
And don't forget next week, you'll be able try Dragonkin: The Banished when our demo drops on February 20th.
See you in Montescail next week fellow hunters!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1863430/Dragonkin_The_Banished/
