Party Play & Turn Order - now in Beta

Party Play & Turn Order (Beta)

Dungeon combat in Crystaria is now something you do together. It's already live — nothing to download, the game updates on the server — and it is a beta, which we'll come back to at the end.

One battle, one turn order

Start a fight in a dungeon and every partymate within three tiles is pulled into the same battle. Above the combat log sits a strip showing who acts next, then who follows — your friends' turns and the enemy's, in one queue. Quicker characters come round more often.

• Your turn is yours. Fifteen seconds to choose a command. Let it run out and you defend instead, taking 10% less damage until you next act.
• The enemy waits its turn. It acts between yours, a few seconds after the last action — not inside your click.
• The battle remembers you. Step off the tile and your place in the queue is kept. Come back late and you join at the end of the line.

Threat: the enemy chooses

Every point of damage you deal is threat. Healing a friend is threat. The enemy strikes whoever holds the most, and the strip tells you who that is before it moves. Threat fades a little on every enemy turn, so nobody can bank it — attention has to be held.

That one rule is what turns four people fighting side by side into a party.

Every class has a role

Twenty-six new abilities, one or two per class, recharging in rounds so they're used every fight:

• Tanks taunt — the enemy turns on you and you brace. Fighter, Gladiator, Paladin, Lancer, Death Knight, Runesmith.
• Healers heal the whole party, no targeting, each member by their own maximum. Paladin, Astromancer, Minstrel, Tamer, Mimic, Warlock.
• DPS expose the enemy so everyone hits harder, and shed threat when they've pulled too hard. Rogue, Archer, Skypirate, Magician, Necromancer, Hexblade, Pugilist.
• Buffers shroud the party so the enemy looks back at the tank. Minstrel, Astromancer, Warlock — and party songs and party magick now reach everyone in the battle.

Your party stands beside you in the arena, and you watch their moves play out as they happen.

Everyone gets paid

A dungeon kill now shares its EXP and gold with every nearby partymate, with the party bonus on top — the same rule the overworld has always had.

Why "beta"

This is a new combat system and this is its first public build. The turn window, the defend value, how fast threat fades and every one of the new abilities are first-pass numbers, and they will change based on what you tell us. It runs in dungeons only for now; solo fights and every other mode are exactly as they were.

Play it with a party, break it, and tell us what your group wishes it could do. Feedback in Discord or in-game Talk goes straight into the tuning.

The full write-up, with every class's new ability, is on the Wiki.

— Arkius