This post is written by Mia, our gameplay designer.
Hello there!
Two weeks ago we mentioned there will be some new abilities coming to The Hand of Merlin, today we’d like to tell you a little more about them!
There are at least a dozen new abilities (not counting the upgraded versions) coming to the game, warriors gaining the most since they needed a few more abilities in their pool to match the Rangers and Mystics.
These warrior abilities which were missing will be readily available in the ability pool right away, the other abilities however will need to be unlocked!
By saving worlds (winning) you’ll begin to unlock new relics and new abilities. This will allow further exploration of combinations and synergies, different builds and strategies.
For every hero that survives the final battle, you’ll have a 66% chance of unlocking a new skill for their role, the other 33% is getting a new relic unlock.
Should you for example already have all the mystic skills unlocked, instead you’ll have a guaranteed relic unlock (unless you’ve already unlocked everything, that is).
You can unlock abilities on any difficulty, so if you'll be in a hurry Easy Mode is an option as well.
All of this is susceptible to change if we see that it’s not as rewarding as we thought it would be.
Some of these unlockable abilities are:
Warrior - Hook
Disrupt and pull your enemies to your warrior. Set up combos with your rangers or drag them through fire. There’s numerous ways to use it, offensively and defensively.
Ranger - Partner Up
The new abilities of the rangers play around teamwork, and Partner Up is a great example of this.
Designate another hero as your rangers Partner, whenever your Partner is attacked the Ranger will shoot at the attacker in revenge.
Mystic - Incense
Most of the new mystic abilities are heavy on support duty.
Incense is an aura which applies a debuff to all enemies in its radius, lowering their accuracy and evasion. This’ll help your rangers nail those Quick Draw shots and your warriors to evade attacks.
Each upgrade of these abilities adds another function to it, giving you more ways to strategize.
We’re still ironing out some of the new abilities, as well as having our VFX artist hard at work trying to make them all look good as well. It’s a work in progress, but we’re quite happy with how these new abilities act and interact with each other and the old abilities.
If you’re curious and want to know more before the update itself is out, feel free to poke up on our Discord server where we might share more.
Mia