Hey Everyone,
I hope summer goes well and that you can find shelter from the scorching heat.
Battle traits were one of the cornerstones of GemCraft since Labyrinth, giving you control over how difficult challenges to take on and what path of progression to take. Traits will be there in GCFW as well, 15 of them, each adjustable at 12 levels (or left turned off).
Each battle trait adds a unique difficulty boost to battles, giving monsters more hit points or shields, luring greater enemies to the battlefield, or giving monsters an armor boost based on the number of other monsters on the battlefield.
The more and higher level traits are selected, the higher rarity talisman fragments can drop (more about that in the next blog post), and a higher xp multiplier applies to the battle total xp.
In the previous GemCraft, there were also three difficulty buttons. They are now blended into the palette of battle traits, and instead, there are three battle mode buttons.
Journey mode is the baseline experience. Any field that wasn’t played yet automatically starts in Journey mode.
Endurance mode now starts from wave 1 (in GCCS is started after finishing a regular battle), and initially lasts 50 waves. In this mode you can’t lose, you’ll get the xp you gather even if your Orb gets smashed. Beating at least half of the total waves though gives endurance wave stones that will make all future endurance runs longer.
(The achievement icons shown in the outcome panel loot row are still work in progress.)
Wizard Trial mode is similar to vision fields from GCCS, but this time all the fields have this challenging mode, putting your true gemcrafting skills to the test. Skills and battle traits can be obtained by winning trial battles. In trial mode, you can’t use your skills, the starter mana is set for each field, as well as gem types, buildings and spells to use, and battle traits too. (See the greyed out battle trait icons in the traits panel screenshot – in trial mode, the traits panel only gives you info about what to expect, but traits can’t be changed.)
All three modes have their own unique field layout variant and give their own xps for each field.
In trial mode, since the battle traits are fixed, there is no battle traits xp multiplier, calling in waves early will give a generous xp boost instead. Doing so is very risky though in the already challenging trial mode, so be careful.
Lastly, a minor change to the grid of skills shown in the previous post, I realized the new building called lantern didn’t have its own skill that would make it buildable, so I added one and took Masonry out (and used its graphics for the Dark masonry battle trait). I was afraid that lantern would become too overpowered, as well as lagging the game with its AoE damage, but not giving it a skill wouldn’t work. The skill itself still puts some harsh limitations of the building, but it’s sure to change a lot during later playtests.
Have a great August! Next time I’ll write about the new talisman system.
