Hello hunters! Been a while hasn’t it?
In today’s DevBlog, we’d like to introduce a brand-new system !
Nowadays, post-50 progression in ARPGs feels mandatory, as it gives a goal beyond just better items. Everyone wants to feel like they’re making progress when they clear a hunt, even if they don’t get a shiny piece of new equipment.
Once your character hits level 50, you'll begin accumulating experience towards ancestors, which bestow permanent statistics increases and unique passives to activate.
Past level 50 for your character OR your wyrmling, any further experience you earn from any source will begin to level up the chosen Ancestor
There are 14 Ancestors to level up
Leveling up an Ancestor reward you with:
Statistic bonus, such as Critical Damage, Elemental Damage, Loot Quality, and Thorn Damage
2 unique passives:
one unlocked automatically with affinity activation
the other requires both reaching the Ancestor's maximum level (level 20) and
affinity activation
Whenever both the character AND the wyrmling reach maximum level (level 50), the experience earned for the ancestors is doubled.
It’s worth mentioning that only one ancestor can be leveled up at a time, but you choose which ancestor to level up at any time.
In a new location within the Cathedral of Montescail, players can interact with the Tribute Wall to check the tributes they have earned so far and manage the affinity activation of the character’s ancestors.
The basic principle of the Tribute wall is rather simple!
Throughout the story and end-game hunts, players will be rewarded with Tributes: powerful artifacts that are defined by their affinities.
There are a total of 8 affinities that enable the activation of the ancestors, and 4 elemental affinities + 1 Physical that are used to enhance certain effects:
Each tribute has 2 affinities (+ an elemental affinity).
Each ancestor requires 4 specific affinities to be active in order to grant their passive skills.
Placing a tribute on the Tribute wall activates its affinities.
Players will initially have 2 tribute slots available on the wall.
As they progress through the story and endgame hunts, players will be rewarded with additional tributes with different combinations of affinities and 2 more slots, allowing for more flexibility.
Players will need to find the right combinations of affinities to not only activate 1 ancestor but multiple at the same time!
Some Ancestor effects scale with the number of affinities earned so far and therefore tributes owned.
We initially planned to add our post-50 progression system at the full release.
However, since the multiplayer update was delayed, it gave the team extra time to develop and implement this feature.
Some of you may have noticed that the Augmentations tab is gone, and that certain effects from it resemble the augmentations you could previously unlock through the Hunting Board.
In fact, as we’re introducing our post-50 progression, and reworking all Hunting Board rewards, it felt natural to remove augmentations and moved most of their effects into the Ancestors.
Players familiar with unique passives, such as the Divine Hammer periodically dealing damage, will now see these effects on Ancestors.
Our most attentive players will also notice that some effects have been reworked or enhanced in the process.
Phew…
The Ancestry & Tributes system is a fairly big addition to the game, and one we’re pretty excited about.
Our system is pretty flexible, allowing players to add and remove tributes freely. While some ancestors provide simple stat boosts, others are similar to talents or add a gimmick you can play around.
On behalf of the entire Dragonkin development team, we hope you enjoy the changes we’re making!
We hope it will give a fresh feel.
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