Hello everyone! So, this is a big Druid update! But not only this, there is some cool stuff like respec and support to switch characters inside the Resting Place. Here are the main changes:
Attributes:
New combat skills: Elemental Domains – Fire/Air/Earth, Nature Creature Domain
Mage combat skills were renamed to Arcane Magic – Fire/Lightning/Feyzir/Enchantment
All attribute bonuses from any source except from Innate Features now does not count to the cost to increase the attribute
Druid
22 new Druid unique abilities + their improvements and combat skill masteries, adding a total of 63 new abilities
Highlights:
You can now “tame” wild animals to become your animal companion.
You can acquire abilities that improve them. You cannot level up them like any other character, but this is planned for the future.
You can also temporarily recruit wild animals.
Elemental Summoning up to tier 4.
You can have more than 1 summon, according to the Nature Command Points you have
Summons consume less XP than normal companions, and the animal companion may have its XP consumption reduced to 0 with some abilities.
Summons are accessible at character creation now.
More spells for the fire/air/earth domains.
Rebalanced abilities:
Call Lightning, Stone Eruption, Fire Geiser, Boar/Bark/Stone skins, Regenerate
QoL
Character panel now shows the current XP rate with a detailed XP rate for each companion (in the tooltip)
Added support to switching party members at the Resting Place
Added support to manually level up companions
Respecialization item: you start with a respect item at storage. You gain a new one at the Deaths Pass, if you don’t have one.
Balancing:
Plasma regen when out of combat is now x3 instead of x2
Bears and Stags now dodge.
Added front dodge animation for all creatures
Increased XP cost for Sneak Attack abilities starting from tier 3. They are planned to have their mechanics rebalanced in the future
Damage caused by block defenses: reduced by half for all non-physical damages, except electrical
Reduced the chance to lose perception of an object that was already detected and has low visibility quality. This affects mages with Transparent Body mainly, so now they won’t be “blinking” much.
Slightly reduced attribute scaling of some basic mage spells
Added stamina for arganon enemies
Bug-fixes:
Sustained abilities not consuming charges
Adding combat skill points, then removing the combat skill ability that enables increasing the points was not resetting the added points
Clicking confirm button in the Level up panel with an item ability on the bar was not processing the confirm click
Kip-up not working when throwed far away
Not canceling side quests from Death’s Pass after reaching Valmsteim and having killed the dragon without Ughatar or Goblin alliances.
Wrong item count when picking some items from the ground
Conjuration visual effect was appearing alone without the mage in Deaths Pass
There may be other minor changes that were not documented.
Planned Druid features for the future
This is still not the final druid update. There are still other abilities that I would’ve included in this update if there was more time. Here are some:
Fire Domain:
Fire manipulation: manipulating existing fire on the ground, throwing fire blasts and projectiles with zero plasma cost and zero cooldown. Possibly reusing the fire to cast fire spells with a reduced cost.
Fire resistance/immunity: for self-spells and hostile spells, self-spells possibly reaching 100% immunity for self and the party.
Persistent Burning: configuration parameters to allow the burning effect to persist in 100% power for some time
Air Domain:
360º wind blasts
Wind blasts and “shots” that affect directly the enemies, being AoEs with no friendly fire
Stormbringer: a storm cloud follows the caster, striking enemies with lightning bolts. Possibly allowing the cast to freely call lightning bolts sometimes
Whirlwind: a controllable whirlwind that applies a debuff and possibly some damage
Earth Domain:
Landslide: a landslide at the enemy foot, making it fall if it doesn’t pass a skill check
Unstable Ground Aura: Unstable ground effect following the caster
Nature Creature Domain:
Destroy Elemental: attempts to immediately destroy the target elemental, or greatly reduce its HP
Command (or Dominate) Nature Creature: an “authority-based” version of the Call Nature Creature, which is based on empathy. The target creature does not consume command points (or consume less) and becomes hostile again after the effect ends
Elemental Swarm-like abilities (See D&D)
Possibility to allow to exceed command points, at the drawback of a reduced summon time or having the summon to become hostile
Poison
Remove Poison
Animal-inspired buffs: Bear’s Strength, Cat’s Reflexes, Wolverine’s Will, Magic Wyrmling Spirituality, and the like. These would give additive bonuses, and the existing mage spells Supernatural Dexterity/Strength would become multiplicative effects.
More animal skins (magical wyrmling, crocodile, elephant, etc)
Roadmap
Prepare for the new major update, which will be UI redesign and QoL. At the same time, give support to the required changes and fixes for the current update. Expected time: 15 days.
Implement the changes of the UI update. Expected time: 3 months.