Hello there current and future mages! Today will be the start of a weekly Dev Blog series in which we talk a bit more casually and openly to the community about the current development process, our plans, and even share some sneak peeks.
What's been going on, man?
Recently things have been pretty quiet. After 0.3 and the followup patches we've been dark for a few weeks now, save for the new rotating banner and the release of Hephaestus' Forge. As many of you know, this is because work has begun full steam on the Verdant Boughs, our first fully end-game zone. Currently we've gotten pretty great feedback about the current gameplay feel, the content available, and the overall direction of the game, so we're moving on from the levelling experience into long term repeatable content in a massive zone that rewards you for your time.
What are we doing?
Verdant is the single largest zone we've made to date. It is approximately the size of two Sapphire Paths and planned to be far more content dense. As of the time of writing we have fully completed planning for most content in the zone and have begun active development. I am focused on mapping up the place and making it pretty while the other devs help pump out of some of the progression systems and new features.
ain't she perty
Our goal with the zone is to create a long-lasting endgame area that will provide players with a huge amount of goals to work towards both short term and long term, and have a ton of fun in the process. There are a ton of new features and systems coming with this update so I'll give you guys a little sneak preview at some of the cooler things coming here!
Artifact Weapons
While memories are the core way of obtaining gear in ManaSoul, we wanted to add a more deterministic way for players both casual and hardcore to earn themselves an Ultra Rare Weapon. Artifact Weapons are a new system coming with 0.4 and Verdant that will feature 4 new obtainable Ultra Rare Weapons for players to work towards obtaining. Each expansion (X.0 Patch) will feature a new set of 4 Artifact Weapons and 1 new Artifact Questline that must be completed to access the Artifact Weapons.
In Verdan't case, the Artifact Weapons will require a *substantial* effort across all of the content in the Verdant Boughs from Rare/Epic mobs, to normal Mobs, to Dungeons, Delves, Trials, World Bosses, Daily/Weekly Quests and more. These weapons are intended to be a substantial reward for a substantial effort and as such they are *not* easy to obtain and should be viewed as a long-term goal to slowly work towards over your account's career.
Artifact Weapons also do not require duplicates for Upgrading and instead use a rare material that can be dropped from certain monsters and bosses or found in a particular banner.
Gear Upgrading
Players will be able to visit a Spellforge, like the one in Gemshine, to upgrade their Weapons, Accessories, and Runes. In today's dev blog we will cover Weapons and Accessories, as they function differently from Runes.
When receiving a new weapon, lets say Goliath's Hammer, it will start at 0/5 Stars. Upon earning or trading for a second duplicate Goliath's Hammer, I can take the extra to the Spellforge, along with some Prismatics and Gold Coins, to upgrade the Goliath's Hammer to 1/5 Stars, increasing its damage and stats. The same applies for Accessories. Obtaining duplicate copies of gear that you like will allow you to make it more powerful! There are some restrictions and a bit more details but we'll get into the nitty gritty in the patch notes for the patch when we can really dive into all the specifics.
Overall we think that this zone could be the beginning of something great for ManaSoul, as most of our playtesting and feedback has been that the current game feels great, but we need to have more content for retention. Hopefully Verdant will provide that fun long term MMO endgame feel for you guys and we can kickstart some really nice patch cadence! Thank you for reading and I'll see you guys next week o7