Greetings Leaders! Speaking of Leaders, let's talk about them and what different varieties exist in our game.
In terms of archetypes, it is very hard to classify all the Leaders in our game. As a result, lets group them by what their powers offer, which we can narrow down to 3 types.
Some Leaders have a power that allows you to select a specific hero, which will provide a buff. A simple example of this would be Dong Zhou, who will provide the hero you select with plus health that will increase each round. If you select a different hero, the entire buff will move to them instead.
Another example, which you can see in the video below, is Vlad the Impaler. When the selected target gets low, they will jump into a random enemy unit, dealing attack damage periodically and healing before popping out again. If you upgrade Vlad to level 5, your hero will pop out as a Vampire, gaining max health, attack speed, and lifesteal for the rest of the round.
Relic Arena doesn't have a traditional auto battler economy as most of your gold is lost every round. Having said that, Leaders can fill that void quite easily. Abraham Lincoln is the most basic example as each round he will provide a chance to upgrade one (or more) of your equipped relics.
Karl Marx on the other hand takes a different approach. He provides a chance for some relics in your shop to have 2 levels instead of 1. This power is quite interesting because it incentivizes you to pivot for things you weren't originally planning on purchasing. At level 5, he becomes quite a different monster, as instead of just providing 2 extra levels, he has a smaller chance to produce a full Juicy out of nowhere.
This is kind of a vague moniker, but if we truly wanted to classify all our Leaders there would probably be 10+ categories. This is kind of a catch-all in that it might be a Leader who is a hybrid of the other 2 groups, or something completely out of the box.
The most basic example of this is Nikola Tesla, who will passively zap enemy heroes with lightning damage periodically throughout the round.
Another example is Leonardo da Vinci's power. As you've read in our previous blog post, each relic has 3 Supers and 1 Juicy upgrade. You can only choose 2 of the 3 Supers normally. Da Vinci, however, allows you to select an equipped relic and simply choose a Super for free, which allows you to get all 3 at some point in the game. In fact, upon maxing out Da Vinci, any Relic you own that has all 3 Supers selected will automatically grant you the Juicy effect. This means that you could theoretically get all the upgrades for a relic while still maintaining it as a level 1 ability.
If you made it this far, thanks so much! Our next post will reveal the game's official release date, so stay tuned!