Orcthal · published
One of the nicest surprises from recent Orcthal playtests is that two very different kinds of players seem to be enjoying the same progression system. Some players inspect every number, compare scaling sources, plan tag synergies, and immediately start asking whether two separate 20% bonuses multiply. Others see a card that says MORE POTENCY, decide that sounds good, and click it. We knew this would happen, because we have exactly these two kinds of people on our team working on the game. One of us doesn’t like walls of text, the other wants everything explained and detailed.
Naturally, sorting this out and finding a balance therefore wasn’t accidental, but the extent to which it worked still surprised us. We think it comes from separating the way our systems are presented from the amount of complexity they are actually capable of supporting.
We think the following screenshot has STILL too much text, especially Goblin Dynamo, it's something we aim to work on. However, once you know how it works, you won't need to read it again.
A common assumption is that accessibility and mechanical depth sit at opposite ends of a scale. You can make a simple system that everyone understands, or you can make a complicated system that rewards optimization. Trying to do both often produces a wall of percentages, tooltips, damage types, exceptions, and terminology that players must understand before they can make a reasonable choice. We still have those, hidden away somewhere, though there is a but…
In Orcthal, the first layer is deliberately broad and readable. The most important ideas are represented by a small collection of prominent keywords:
Power makes attacks hit harder.
Potency strengthens the distinctive effect of an ability.
Size makes the affected area larger.
Duration makes an effect last longer.
Multicast makes more of something happen.
Block Chance makes incoming attacks more likely to be blocked.
Critical Chance creates more frequent critical hits.
Lifesteal turns damage into healing.
A casual player does not need to look much deeper than that. If they enjoy an ability, selecting more Power, Potency, Size, or Multicast for it will almost always make it feel better. The complexity exists underneath those words, for players who want to engage with it further.
Potency is probably the best example of this approach. We did not want Potency to simply mean “another damage multiplier.” We already have Power and direct damage bonuses for that. Instead, Potency improves the mechanic that gives each ability its identity.
For Throwing Axe, Potency increases the chance that an axe returns through enemies for a secondary strike.
For Goblin Dynamo, Potency increases its discharge rate. The baseline Dynamo pulses four times per second, while sufficiently high Potency can push that towards its twelve-pulse safety limit.
For Goblin Egg Blaster, Potency increases the strength of the slow applied by its eggs.
For Goblin Scrap Rocket, Potency increases the explosion damage relative to the rocket’s direct impact.
For Orbiting Blades, Potency affects rotation speed and the chance of triggering the much more dangerous empowered orbit.
For Goblin Buzzsaw, Potency increases how much additional damage each successive bite gains.
These effects are mechanically different, but the player-facing promise remains consistent: Potency makes the special part of this ability better. That distinction matters because consistency does not require every ability to use the same equation. What it does require, is for the player to develop a reliable intuition about what a keyword is going to do.
A player who never opens a detailed stat panel can still understand that Potency is useful. A player who enjoys optimization can inspect the exact mapping and decide whether increasing pulse rate, return chance, slow strength, or explosion ratio is particularly valuable for their current build.
Multicast follows the same philosophy. For a conventional projectile ability, Multicast can mean additional projectiles. Throwing Axe throws more axes, Egg Blaster launches more eggs, and Scrap Rocket fires more rockets.
However, for Goblin Dynamo, it means additional simultaneous channels and for Spirit Stampede, it increases the chance of generating additional lateral waves. For the Goblin Powder Keg, it can produce a second, much larger keg that deals four times the primary explosion damage.
The implementation changes because the abilities are different. The readable promise does not: Multicast gives you more of the ability.
This lets us create abilities with much stronger identities without forcing players to learn a completely new vocabulary every time they equip one.
The next part of the system is mostly invisible unless a player wants to investigate it.
Orcthal separates stat bonuses according to where they came from. Our major scaling layers include:
Character
Permanent or meta progression
Current-run perks
Equipment
Relics
Epic weapon bonuses
For many core stats, including damage, Potency, Size, Duration, and Multicast, these sources become independent multiplicative factors.
A simplified version looks like this:
Final Value =
Base
× Character
× Meta
× Run
× Equipment
× Relic
× Epic
Bonuses from the same source accumulate inside that source. Different sources then multiply one another. Suppose a player gains 20% Potency from current-run perks and another 20% from equipment. The final result is:
1.20 × 1.20 = 1.44
That is a 44% increase, rather than 40%.
Add another 20% from a relic and the result becomes:
1.20 × 1.20 × 1.20 = 1.728
The player now has 72.8% more Potency.
Nobody needs to calculate this during a normal run. “More Potency” remains an entirely valid reason to pick something. For a minmaxer, however, the source of a bonus matters almost as much as its displayed value.
This creates several interesting decisions. Stacking more bonuses inside an already crowded run-perk layer may be less efficient than finding another source through equipment or relics. A seemingly modest item can become valuable because it opens a new multiplicative factor. An epic ability bonus remains exciting because it is not simply poured into the same large additive bucket as everything selected earlier.
Equipment is therefore more than a container for random percentages.
An item can strengthen the ordinary equipment layer for damage, critical stats, Potency, Duration, Size, Multicast, cooldown, survivability, or utility. That layer multiplies with the bonuses earned from perks during the current run.
This means two players using the same ability can take it in different directions before the run even begins.
One Throwing Axe build might enter with equipment focused on Multicast and critical chance. Another might use Potency and cooldown reduction. Both players can still receive Throwing Axe perks during the run, but those perks interact differently with the foundation created by their equipment.
Equipment does not replace run progression. It changes the value and direction of the choices offered during that progression.
Relic Scaling
Relics occupy another independent layer.
A relic bonus does not merely add its percentage to the equipment or run-perk total. It multiplies those existing sources. This allows relics to provide broad build direction without making the individual perk and equipment decisions irrelevant.
A Potency relic can amplify a Potency-focused weapon. A Lifesteal relic becomes more valuable when combined with high damage output. A Size relic can make several Area abilities benefit at once. A Block Amount relic can turn an existing Block Chance setup into a much stronger defensive engine.
This also gives us room to make relics dramatic. Because they occupy a known source layer, we can balance them as part of a predictable formula instead of adding one-off exceptions throughout the combat code.
Exact Abilities, Families, and Tags
Scaling sources answer where a bonus comes from. Tags answer what it affects.
Every ability has its own stable identity tag. Throwing Axe, for example, can be targeted specifically through its exact ability identity.
Abilities also belong to broader families such as:
Projectile
Ranged
Melee
Area
Sustained
Goblin
They can additionally carry character affinities such as Warrior, Ranger, Summoner, Sorcerer, Rogue, or Shaman.
This allows us to create several levels of specialization.
A global damage perk affects everything.
A Projectile perk affects every installed ability with the Projectile tag.
A Throwing Axe perk affects only Throwing Axe.
A Ranger-affinity perk can affect abilities that belong to that broader archetype, even when those abilities are not literally the character’s starting weapon.
The narrower the perk, the more room we have to make it powerful. Our ordinary exact-ability perks are generally twice as strong as their comparable global versions because the player accepts a much smaller area of effect. Shared family perks use the normal baseline strength, but may improve several abilities simultaneously.
That creates a natural tradeoff between specialization and coverage.
Tags Also Keep Offers Relevant
Tags are not only used when applying the bonus. They also help decide whether a perk should be offered at all.
A Throwing Axe-specific perk should not appear when the player does not currently own Throwing Axe.
A Goblin-family perk should not appear until the player has installed a Goblin ability.
A Projectile perk becomes relevant when at least one installed ability matches the Projectile family. If several abilities match, the same perk can improve all of them.
This is important because a large content pool can easily become hostile to casual players. If the player must inspect every card just to discover that half of them do nothing for their current build, the depth has stopped being optional.
Our goal is for the filtering system to do that bookkeeping quietly. The player should mostly see choices that make sense, while the minmaxer can still understand exactly why those choices appeared.
A Throwing Axe Build at Two Different Depths
Imagine two players building around Throwing Axe.
The first player likes axes. They pick Throwing Axe Potency because returning axes sound useful. They pick Projectile Multicast because more axes sound useful. They find equipment with extra damage and select some Block Chance because they have started losing health.
That is already a coherent build.
The second player sees several interacting systems.
They know that an exact Throwing Axe perk is more focused and stronger than a global equivalent. They notice that Throwing Axe belongs to both Projectile and Ranged families, allowing family perks to improve it alongside other compatible abilities. They combine run-based Potency with equipment Potency and relic Potency so that each source multiplies the others.
They also consider how more axes interact with critical chance and Lifesteal. More projectiles create more opportunities to crit and more opportunities to heal. Potency increases the return-strike chance, giving those projectiles another chance to pass through the battlefield.
Both players have made good decisions. One used intuition. The other used system knowledge.
The important part is that the intuitive version is not a trap. It is simply less optimized.
Goblin Dynamo Shows How Simple Keywords Combine
Goblin Dynamo provides another useful example because its major keywords affect completely separate parts of the ability.
At baseline, Dynamo lasts six seconds, pulses four times per second, maintains two channels, acquires targets within eight metres, and allows its connection to stretch further before breaking.
Increasing Duration gives every active channel more time to deal damage.
Increasing Potency raises the pulse rate.
Increasing Multicast adds more channels.
Increasing Size expands both the acquisition range and the distance at which a tether breaks.
Each keyword is understandable on its own. When they are combined, they multiply the practical output of the ability.
More channels can attack more enemies. More range helps those channels remain active. More duration gives them longer to work. More Potency packs additional pulses into every second.
A casual player sees a lightning machine becoming bigger and faster.
A minmaxer sees several independent throughput multipliers and starts looking for the weakest part of the current setup.
We also try to avoid obvious dead ends in stats that players may want to push extremely far.
Critical Chance and Block Chance are intentionally able to exceed 100%.
At 100% Critical Chance, one critical application is guaranteed. Additional complete hundreds guarantee additional applications of the extra critical damage. The remaining fraction rolls for one more.
Block Chance follows a similar overflow rule, but each application repeats the player’s Block Amount.
For example, a player with 250% Block Chance and a Block Amount of 5 will block 10 damage from every sufficiently large incoming hit. They then have a 50% chance to block 15 instead.
A casual player only needs to know that more Block Chance remains useful.
A minmaxer can decide whether the next upgrade should increase the number of block applications or increase the amount prevented by every application. They can then look for those bonuses across run perks, equipment, relics, and epic sources.
This creates a real defensive build rather than a stat that becomes irrelevant the moment it reaches a conventional cap.
The Small Stats Are Still Important
The large keywords provide direction, but much of Orcthal’s build variety comes from smaller interactions:
Pulse rate
Return-strike chance
Projectile count
Explosion ratio
Status strength
Status duration
Acquisition range
Tether break range
Critical damage
Lifesteal
Cooldown
Block Amount
Movement speed
Pickup range
Luck
A player does not need to optimize all of them to succeed. In many cases, they do not even need to know the exact number.
What matters is that these smaller values remain available as meaningful levers. They let two builds based on the same ability behave differently, and they give experienced players reasons to keep experimenting after they already understand the basic combat loop.
The Hard Part Is Maintaining Trust
There is a risk in making broad keywords context-sensitive.
If Potency changes something arbitrary, players cannot build intuition. If Multicast sometimes means more projectiles and sometimes secretly means cooldown reduction, the keyword stops being useful.
We therefore treat every ability as having an explicit parameter contract. We decide what Duration, Potency, Size, and Multicast mean for that ability, how those values are bounded, when they are evaluated, and which visual elements must reflect them.
Some effects also need practical safety limits. Egg Slow is capped before it can completely immobilize everything. Dynamo pulse rate has a maximum frequency. Other values, such as projectile or bite count, may remain effectively uncapped because their performance and gameplay characteristics allow it.
The simple word is the interface. The detailed mapping is the contract that keeps the interface honest.
The biggest lesson for us is that depth does not have to be placed directly in front of every player.
A system can contain ability-specific mappings, family tags, exact-skill modifiers, character affinities, six multiplicative source layers, overflow chance rules, and a great many small statistics.
The player does not need to process all of that at once.
They can see Potency, understand that it improves the interesting part of their ability, and make a perfectly reasonable choice.
Later, if they become curious, there is something real underneath that word. They can learn why their Dynamo fires so quickly, why a relic changed the value of their equipment, why a Projectile perk improved three different abilities, or why pushing Block Chance beyond 100% was not wasted.
That is the balance we are trying to achieve with Orcthal.
One player can select “more Potency” because the card is green and lightning is fun.
Another can trace the same bonus through an exact ability tag, two family tags, equipment scaling, relic scaling, and an epic multiplier.
Both builds work. Both players are engaging with the same system. They are simply choosing how deep they want to go.