Hello, Solo-raiders! 👋
Welcome to today’s System Spotlight! And today, we’re going deeper…
To the Abyss 🌑
You picked up your trusted blade, Kitra, and started the fight. Countless monsters, countless bosses, you fought, you fell, and you rose again. Grinding for better gear and honing your skills with every battle. You forged bonds with different factions, turning strangers into allies, knowing that you might need every hand you could get when the time came. And finally, you reached the end.
But the corruption doesn't stop, even after all of this, it continues to spread. So eventually, you accept the truth: you'll have to go deeper. Where the enemies are stronger than anything you've faced before, past where any helping hand can reach, towards the very origin of the corruption.
Deeper, into The Abyss.
What is “The Abyss”?
At its core, The Abyss is a system built to provide escalating difficulty. We want the game to give you reasons to come back to content you've already beat. As you descend further into The Abyss, raidbosses won't simply become bigger health bars that hit harder. Each level is meant to introduce fresh mechanics, new challenges, and increasingly demanding encounters (As a team filled with challenge enjoyers, a system like that was just inevitable, really…)
Right now, The Abyss exists as a separate interface that you can access right next to Zal. There, you can replay two raids across two different biomes, facing stronger versions of the enemies you've already encountered. One of the key parts of the Abyss is the Affix system, which introduces additional modifiers and effects to your runs, making sure to keep you on your toes, rather than letting you completely memorize a raid and run through it on autopilot. Another one are the Sigils, allowing you to access special Abyss raids made with specific challenges and rewards in mind. More about those two in a bit.
In the full game, our goal is for The Abyss to evolve alongside your progression. Once you've beaten a raid, you'll eventually gain access to Mythical versions of that same raid deeper in The Abyss. The enemies will be stronger, the raidbosses will have completely fresh mechanics, and new ailments will be introduced to make you approach encounters much harder similar to what you’d expect from high level MMO raiding. We don't want the Abyss to simply be "the same raid, but the enemies have 500% more health and damage" because that’s pretty boring in our opinion We’re doing Abyss raidbosses to take… a second or third try to defeat, maybe even a fourth, who knows?
And, of course, going deeper comes with its own rewards. Loot will be better than the loot you'd normally get from the equivalent raid, and the rewards will continue to improve the further down you manage to go.
Affixes
Affixes are small changes that modify how an Abyss run plays, adding extra variables to keep each run feeling a little different and stop you from getting too comfortable. They can be as simple as giving enemies extra damage or defense, but they can also affect the environment of the raid, force you to change the way you move or stop you from being stationary for long. They can add effects to the map itself, or introduce new challenges you need to adapt to on the fly. Not only that, the further you go down the Abyss the more Affixes will be added to the run, so you won’t have a single moment of boredom!
Here are some examples of how they can work:
Defiled will make enemies erupt in an unholy explosion when killed, dealing damage to you if you get too close.
Mythic will greatly empower Raidbosses, adding not only big damage numbers, but also new mechanics for you to keep your eye on. This will also increase the chance of Raidbosses dropping Mythical level items.
Grasping will make sure you keep moving by periodically pulling you in with vines. If you are too preoccupied with fighting and are unable to move out of its grasp, it will eventually erupt, dealing a great amount of damage.
Sigils
However, there’s another mechanic tied to the Abyss: Sigils. Sigils can be acquired as raidboss loot, or earned as rewards from missions and faction activities. Each Sigil represents a specific Abyss level with its own set of Affixes, biome, and enemies, giving you access to a very specific kind of challenge.
Some Sigils might be designed around an obscene amount of gold waiting to be looted or a lot of xp to be farmed, while others could be owned by a specific faction, making clearing it not only provide the already upgraded loot from Abyss levels, but also a great opportunity to farm reputation with that faction. And then there are the really special ones: Sigils that give you access to specific raids, raidbosses, or mechanics that simply aren't available anywhere else - unless you have the invitation.
For example, have you tried checking out Zal’s mission on our demo? He gives you a very special Sigil as a reward. Use it and you’ll be able to visit an old friend…
Look at that, you made it to the end! Are you interested in participating in playtests and getting to know more about what the devs are doing? Check out our discord!
Thanks for the support and see you in the next one 😉