Greetings Heroes!
In todays Steam update we'll dive into the world of flinging fireballs, casting power shields and revitalizing your allies on the battlefield! We'll have a look into casting spells and ability resource (Luum) management within Evercore Heroes.
As you know, in Evercore Heroes you'll have to work together as a team of three to make it all the way till the end to achieve glorious victory. To enhance the teamwork experience, we've been looking into more ways to create moments of teamplay where players have to lean onto each other a little bit more.
One of the ways we did this is by introducing a new resource to the game we call 'Luum' (also the driving magical force in the world of Lumerea!).
Using your abilities - Pew pew
Luum is the magical essence of the world that's giving our heroes their magical properties and allows them to perform their heroic feats! Every sentinel will play wildly different and will have a different set of abilities for you to use, experiment and theorycraft with.
We quickly noticed that without any type of limitation in place, players would use an ability the moment it was off cooldown. And why wouldn't you? They are powerful abilities that have a greater effect than auto attacking (or help enhance them). There wasn't too much thinking involved, you'd cast it the moment you could or would wait on a completed island challenge until your biggest abilities were off cooldown before advancing to the next so you could use it again.
To combat this we introduced 'Luum'! Abilities will have a Luum cost attached to them and depending on the sentinel and the ability this will be higher or lower. You start the game with a full Luum bar (the blue bar under your character) but this will diminish once you start using your abilities.
Your Luum count will however not replenish between island challenges by default. This means that you'll have to start thinking about when you want to use that projectile blocking shield or stun to save your allies, as when the Luum bar is empty, you will no longer be able to use abilities that cost Luum!
(When out of Luum your abilities turn grey)
I can recharge my Luum, right?
Good question! It doesn't sound like too much fun if you can only use your abilities a few times each run. We agree and got you covered! Currently there are two ways to refresh your Luum bar.
The first is by defeating enemies! Now and then a foe will drop an essence of Luum on the floor which you can pick up at any time by walking over it. Some are small, restoring little, while others are big and restore more of your Luum bar. A small orb in the middle of a fight can mean that all of a sudden you can produce a lot more power during that fight, or if low on Luum, can just get you that boost to save your ally in a pinch!
The second way is hidden in destructible objects around the world of Lumerea, currently we have barrels in the mountain peaks of Kru. Outside of it being super satisfying to break them, they will occasionally drop Luum for you to pick up. These barrels could mean the difference between life and death when you run out of Luum!
It's up to you whether you break them all right away or keep some up during the fight in case you need them. Most of them were left empty by their previous owners, while in others you'll find other shinies... So make sure to get them all before you advance to the next island!
The Luum gathering vs usage balance is designed in a way that you get rewarded for smart usage of your abilities versus spamming. This means that if you use your abilities wisely and at the right times, you'll not find yourself short of Luum very often.
(Pick up blue orbs to refresh Luum)
Let us know in the discussion area what you think and whether you can think of other cool ideas to refresh Luum!
We'll see you again in the next article! Do let us know if there's a topic you'd love to learn more about.
~ Evercore Heroes team