| Hey gang. I've been a bit AWOL for awhile, but I wanted to check in and let everyone know where things stand with Enchanting so far.
The bad news is that there hasn't been a ton of technical progress so far, so we're still at least a few months of work away from a tangible release.
The good news is that we've made a lot of conceptual and organizational progress. I've had the chance to spend some substantial time with a couple PCs and get a feel for Kodius' fantastic Forging system and our new Mining gathering system from a player perspective. This experience has informed a couple adjustments to the way we plan to present Enchanting to the players.
A couple observations:
1. Forging benefits greatly from the logical separation between disciplines. I know exactly what I'm getting when I choose a discipline for a career or a hobby. I can be relatively certain that any advances in my area of interest will continue to fall under my chosen discipline(s).
2. Blacksmithing as a support discipline adds a lot of depth to my decisions on technique expenditures.
3. Rare metal drops are an exciting find and add some surprise rewards to mining process.
4. Variability in material choice adds a lot of flexibility and exploration possibility in the forging experience.
In order to try and capitalize on some of these positive aspects from the existing crafting disciplines, we're looking at some conceptual updates to the Enchanting discipline structure. The following is subject to change, but I thought people would appreciate hearing where we're at.
1. Discipline focus adjustment
The biggest shift is that we are no longer segregating enchantments into discipline by their underlying mechanism. This proved too vague to provide any conceptual boundaries between disciplines and meant that players would have no real idea what the enchantments they made would be able to do.
Instead, we will be dividing the enchantments into three logical categories, similar to existing crafting systems. Using some really non-technical terms here:
1. Runecrafting - tools, Founts, runes
2. Binding - Armor / Weapons
3. Invoking - Everything else
Players can expect each of these disciplines to have roughly 3 technique trees, with Binding and Invoking including appropriate enhancing trees, and Runecrafting likely containing the sigil-gathering techniques.
2. Enchantment powering and Founts
Founts are our answer to the enchantment powering variations. Rather than separating an enchantment activation mechanism by discipline, this will now be driven by what we are calling a Fount. A Fount is like an engine for the enchantment that determines how it receives its energy and is activated. Creation of a Fount will be handled by the Runecrafting decision.
3. Rare sigils, enchantment variation
In order to try and gain some of the exciting rare drops and variation found in Forging, we will be modifying the sigil usage slightly. Essentially each recipe will have some required sigils, but then optional sigils can be added to modify the underlying properties of the enchantment. This final sigil performs a similar role to the type of material used in forging and allows the enchanter to choose whether his enchantment wants to focus on duration, power, ease of use, or some other properties. Harder sigils will offer more novel property options, with rare sigils providing slightly more advantageous property configurations.
4. NMUs and enchanting
Rather than omitting NMUs from an entire discipline, we decided that it would be better to control this interaction by providing two crafting mechanisms for enchanters. There will be a tooled creation mechanism and a non-tooled mechanism. Magic users are able to invest in the Imbue spell, which will provide access to certain enchanting mechanics without the restriction of certain stationary structures. The exact details of these two options are still being determined.
Additionally, NMUs will have restricted options with regards to Fount creation. Again, details pending.
I believe these changes should help provide a much stronger cohesiveness to the disciplines and ensure that players are not penalized for picking the "wrong" discipline a few months down the road when the enchantment they want comes out in a different discipline. It should be much more clear what you will be able to do with each choice. We also have disciplines better able to support one another, with the clear segregation of tools and gathering techniques into Runecrafting, but by putting Founts into Runecrafting it also has capabilities as a potent career path on its own as well.
Feedback is, of course, welcome.
I appreciate everyone's patience with this system. I know enchanting has been on people's radar for awhile, and I have been nowhere near as productive as I would have liked. On the plus side, I finished my Master's, got a sweet new job, and moved into a new apartment over the past year, so I have benefited from the lapse and am now in a much better position to get things done.
I am once again monitoring the lore forums (at all) and hope to have more news for you all soon.
GM Lohkrian
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