Hi everyone! It’s Alan again, and I’d like to talk about content that we’ve been working on at Wolcen Studio.
As we’ve previously stated, pushing out quality updates is now a priority for us, and update 0.5.0.3 includes many bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements on top of the new features (defense, protection and arena mode).
What you may not know is that a much bigger part of the changes are happening under the hood to prepare for future updates. A lot of these are quite cool and will increase the quality of the game, so we’d like to share some:
Arena
The arena is new game mode that is accessible in dhur. Choose between a variety of challenges with unique scenarios, including traps and special objectives like surviving waves of enemies. When you’ve mastered them all and got the rewards try the infinite arena, which provides increasingly difficult waves of monsters to defeat.
The arena will come with update 0.5.0.3.
Sockets and Gems:
The sockets and gems system has been in our to-do list for a very long time and will soon make its way into the game. Without a class system, the number and complexity of possible magical effects on items can be overwhelming and the chance of getting the item that you want being really low.
Gems will fix that issue, as some of the most common affixes will now roll on gems of different types, which will lower the pool of possible affixes on items themselves (and will make way for new affixes). Want a flaming sword? Put a Fire Gem in a weapon socket and your sword will start emitting flames! Want Fire Resistance? Put that same Fire Gem in an armor socket and you will get slightly more resistant to fire. The effect of each gem type will change depending on where it is socketed-in: weapon, armor or jewel. There will be a minimum of 14 gem types, each coming with 3 affixes.
The jeweler NPC will offer to de-socket your gems from an equipment piece for a price, or you’ll be able to recover them for free by recycling the item using the crafting system (when available).
We’re even planning to add gems combining at the jeweler!
Attributes refactor
One of the last pillars of core gameplay to be added to the game. I’ve been thinking about this for a very long time, and with Nyhlus’ help we came up with a nice system that will allow players to shape their character even more.
The effect of each attribute on stats will change in way that makes every attribute viable no matter your playstyle. In addition to this, a formula will determine the range of the effect depending on an external factor: monster level, item level, …
This will make things like crit-chance based builds possible right from the start of the game, and will determine how fragile and powerful your character is at certain tasks.
This system is already coded into the game but not activated, as we still need to balance it and more importantly, make a UI interface for points attribution that is clear and easily understable for players. This feature will be part of update 0.5.0.4 and we’ll have more to share about this soon.
The Archivist
Previously in Wolcen, reading a tome of a spell you already knew granted you 50% of the skill’s required xp to level it up, which was easy to abuse and not an elegant way to do things. Reading a tome twice will not be possible anymore, but books will not be consumed anymore when read.
The archivist is a non-playable character that will exchange skill tomes for a special currency that you’ll use to level-up the skill of your choice. This will add more freedom to the leveling experience, as you’ll be able to exchange tomes of skills you do not intend to use to improve skills you do intend to use. This experience currency will be shared for all your characters, so rerolls will get an easier time training their skills.
Shrines system
Shrines will soon be ready, and will allow us to randomly spawn (or not) interactable objects that will grant a variety of buffs and debuffs. Shrines can be autels that grant temporary bonus to attributes, experience points, give loot or other random effects. They can spawn monsters (cursed chests), teleport the player to a random location and even create short term objectives for a reward.
New monsters and monster behaviors
New bandits are coming to Wolcen, and they are as savage as they look. The bandit chief in particular will give you some trouble!
Various monsters are also being designed, modelled and animated as we speak!
Existing monsters are receiving new attacks, like the ogre’s ground smash.
Cadaver mechanic
In order to prepare for the Necromancer tree, monsters will start dropping corpses that can be consumed by both players and monsters in a variety of ways. The maleficent tree will have skills that make use of cadavers, and the Ghoul will also be able to devour them.
New weapons and armors
A lot of cool new weapons are ready to be added. Expect some of them in update 0.5.0.4!
New Active Skills
Many new skills are being designed and some of them will make their way into the game. This includes the melee dash that you’ve seen in the 0.5 trailer and an arcane beam skill!
New Passive Skills Classes and PST improvements
Existing trees are being improved, with new Signature Skills, and new classes like the Maleficient are being worked on!
All of these features will soon be added to the game and will improve the quality and variety of the gameplay. There’s also a lot more features being worked on, but they are too early into production for us to talk about in detail. These include crafting, pets and mercenaries, apocalyptic forms and more. We’ll be sure to keep you posted as we make progress.
Stay tuned!