FADE

Aura of Fury: Grants targeted ally Attack+ for x full turns and cures Sleep. Restores 2 MP to Rage.
0MP
A powerful Aura that is especially effective on allies with the ability to attack more than once per turn. The question here is, do you spend a turn buffing up an ally's Attack for several turns, or forget about it and just bash in the enemy's face with your axe?

Burn: Deals moderate Fire damage to target foe and has a chance to inflict Burn.
12MP
Slightly less effective than the elemental versions of his friends' Skills, due to Rage's low Mystic stat, but the chance to inflict Burn still makes it a strong choice.

Magical Flame: Restores some of Rage's MP and cures Poison.
6MP
The same as Eldin's Mystical Light Skill, and essential if you plan on keeping Rage to continuously cast Spells.

Wildfire: Deals more damage to all foes when there are more foes on the battlefield, up to a maximum of 5.
15MP
Arguably the strongest multi-target spell in the main party's skillset. Should obviously be used on a field full of enemies.

Heat to Health: Doubles Rage's HP for x turns.
8MP
Rage already has the highest base HP of the main party, but clearly that's not enough for him. Doubling his health is Rage's way to survive powerful attack striking his face. Note: When sacrificing HP, the amount gets taken off by counting from Rage's base HP value, not his doubled value from Heat to Health.

Dragon Grinder: Strikes the target foe with the power of Dragons.
18MP
Simple and to the point. Rage has no need for fancy effects on his ultimate attack. Just hit the enemy with all your might and hope they die from it. Great to use as a finishing move.

For The Greater Good: Healls all allies. Cuts Rage's HP by 20%.
12MP
Rage's way to contribute to the party in a meaningful way that doesn't involve bashing in the faces of enemies. His allies will be healed for a decent amount, but Rage himself will lose 20% HP, and can potentially down him if you aren't careful. But it's all for the greater good!

No Pain No Gain: Cuts Rage's HP in half. Boosts Attack and Mystic by a huge amount for x turns. Can be cast only once per battle.
12MP
A mighty power-up that does inflict serious damage onto Rage himself, this Skill shouldn't be used without some pre-planning. The effect only lasts for several turns, so make sure to get the most out of it!

Fists of Fury: Fists of fire and flames. Can be cast only once per battle.
12MP
Rage's second Elite Skill, making you choose between this or No Pain No Gain. Much like Thieme's Blackrock Cannon Skill, this replaces the equipped weapon with a more powerful option. In Rage's case this makes his fists burn with flames of fury, making his regular attacks stronger than ever.

Rage is built to dish out large amounts of damage, but that doesn't mean it's the only thing he can do. Applying Fury buffs might arguably be even better than attacking himself in some cases, and with For the Greater Good, he can even assist Eldin in keeping the party alive. While his Elite Skills are both geared towards offensive play, one is for a big short term bursts, the other is better for long, drawn out fights.
Rage's weakness is the ability to keep himself alive. His HP is high, but he'll burn through it quickly with his mediocre Defences and when sacrificing HP for the greater good.

Aura of Health: Grants targeted ally HP Regen for x full turns and cures Bleed. Restores 2 MP to Eldin.
0MP
This Skill is vital to survival early on, but should stay relevant throughout the entire game thanks to its zero MP cost to cast. Is more effective when used in battles with a good number of enemies on the field.

Shine: Deals above moderate Light damage to target foe.
12MP
While it doesn't have the chance to inflict conditions, like the versions Roth and his friends have, it does deal more raw damage.

Mystical Light: Restores some of Eldin's MP and cures Burn.
6MP
A very good option to allow Eldin to use more Skills more frequently. Manage her MP well using this Skill, and she can continuously blast enemies with Shine for high amounts of damage.

Glimmering Ray: Deals more damage to target foe when there are less foes on the battlefield.
15MP
Hits like a nuke with only 1 enemy on the field, definitely worth using over Shine if she has the MP for it. Has about the same effectiveness with 3 enemies around, compared to Shine.

Pure Wish: Restores x% of target ally's HP at the end of the next turn.
10MP
Unlocks: Zealous Spirit: Heals x% more to ally targeted by Pure Wish on the previous turn.
0MP
A decent burst heal, at the cost of being delayed by a turn. Its effect can be strengthened for free, but will cost Eldin another turn. Especially effective when you know target ally is going to be hit by a lot of damage a turn in advance.

Star Mines: Lays down a mine that has a chance of exploding at the end of each turn. Deals more damage with more mines on the field, up to a maximum of 5. Resets after exploding.
5MP
Eldin's best answer to dealing with groups of enemies. While an explosion after a few casts does a good amount of damage, unfortunately, Eldin has no way of controlling when the mines will explode. This might cause them to explode early on, for less damage than you were hoping for, or perhaps wait a few turns too long when the majority of enemies has already been wiped out.

Rain of Mercy: Restores 1MP to all allies at the end of every
turn for 5 turns.
5MP
A slow Skill at low cost with decent benefits. It's also Eldin's only option to provide MP regenerative support to her allies. Great to use in encounters when you're unsure what strategy to go for, and just taking it slow for a bit while slowly charging your party's MP.

Guardian Angel: Target ally that goes down while under this effect revives with 100%HP&MP. Can be used only once per encounter.
15MP
The only Skill in the game that'll allow you to bring back a downed ally. Can be used as a way to fully heal up an ally, but they'll need to go down first.

Chain of Life: Whenever target ally uses a Skill, restore 10% of that ally's and Eldin's HP. Can only be used once per encounter.
15MP
Eldin's 2nd Elite Skill, making you choose between this or Guardian Angel in every encounter. It's a great way to keep an ally (and Eldin herself) healthy without having to actively heal them, as long as they keep using Skills. Works especially great with the Auras at 0MP and Roth's Echoing Thunder, which only costs 5MP per use.

While Roth is the party's main support for MP regeneration, Eldin is the one taking care of the HP side of things. Eldin can still be a very powerful spellcaster that can deal lots of damage if you keep fuelling her MP.
Eldin's Skillset allows her to do pretty much anything you want, her main weakness lies in her stats, which are a little below that of the rest of the party members. Especially her HP stat makes her somewhat fragile, and she does require additional support if you want to play her primarily on the offensive.

Ah, the Book of Combat. A seemingly forgotten and ignored feature after its introduction already more than 2 years ago. I knew something was wrong with it, I just couldn't bring up the motivation to work on fixing or updating it. But I promised a fully updated Book of Combat for the next demo version, so I finally got off my lazy bum and revamped the whole thing.

The old Book of Combat
The first thing I noticed about the old Book of Combat was that people didn't seem to be particularly impressed with it, and they didn't seem to really enjoy browsing through it. After thinking about it for a while, I came up with a list of things that were causing this:
-It's slow and clunky. Moving the cursor takes too long. There is no way to skip from top to bottom and vice-versa. Too much clicking involved to get what you want. Text scroll taking too long. All these things add up and took away from the convenience factor that it was supposed to have.
-The information provided was using way more words than necessary, and some of it, looking back at it now, was very badly written. This, combined with the relatively slow text scroll made getting the information you wanted simply painful.
-Having to open the menu, then open the inventory and activate the Book of Combat from there everytime you want to look up something in it is just way too much of a hassle.
-Not related to player experience: the entirety of the Book of Combat was created on a single 20x15 map, and the whole thing was a clusterfuck of events which would only become increasingly more complex and harder to organise the more I'd add to it.

The new Book of Combat
After analysing the weaknesses of the old version, it was time to start working on the new one. I knew what I had to do, so this is what I did:
-The new cursor moves at a much faster pace. It is able to jump from top to bottom and vice-versa. No more clicking to get the information you want, everything is instantly shown by hovering over a subject.
-Using much less words to provide the information you need to know. Everything is made to fit in a single text box so everything can be read at a quick glance.
-The Book of Combat can now be opened by pressing the "1" key on your keyboard. There is also a mini-icon in the upper left corner of the screen that displays this (no worries, you can set to hide it if you wish).
-Not related to player experience: The new Book of Combat is made up of different maps now, making it much easier for me to keep track of where things are supposed to be. I've also created graphics templates for the important things, allowing me to quickly create the graphics used in the Book of Combat (such as monster pages in the bestiary).

Here is a video with a quick overview of the Book of Combat, showcasing all the sections and functions:


Basics
This explains the very basics of combat and is the least changed section of the Book of Combat. The original was pretty good at what it did, there simply wasn't much to improve about it. I took out a little bit of text, but the rest is still the same as it was before.

Skills
This section suffered badly from requiring too many key presses, slow text scrolling and using unnecessary amounts of text. It wasn't that appealing to look at either. The new version of this section is much faster to navigate. Heroes and skills are all on the same page now. Information on skills is automatically displayed by moving the cursor to it. The use of Skill icons also makes it nicer and more interesting to look to at.

Conditions
This one was about as bad as Skills. Fixed everything that was wrong with it and made sure all the relevant Conditions would be able to show up on one page. No more need for a key press to show the information, and using much less words in the descriptions.

Bestiary
Probably the section that got changed the most. While I think the Bestiary was one of the better sections in the old Book of Combat, it was a little too unorganised for my tastes. The original idea was to let the player look up information on every Skill each monster has access to, but I figured it would, first, be too much work to make this happen, and second, most monsters aren't complex enough to make it worth the time it would take.
The first thing I did was to list monsters under the area in which they are found. Initially, the area graphic is grey, but once you encountered every monster in the area, it'll turn colourful (hopefully the completionists will be able to appreciate this). On the monster page itself it shows the list of every monster found in the area, as well as a graphic and the stats of the monster currently selected. At the bottom it'll display some (funny) flavour text, mixed with useful information if the monster happens to have a unique skill. In some cases the information is delivered more straight-forward than in others, but it should be pretty easy to figure out what monsters do by reading these.
It is also possible to show possible alternate forms of a monster (such as transformations) by clicking on it. Text appears at the top of the screen to let you know if a monster has an alternate form to show.

Tips & Hints
This was called Advanced in the old Book of Combat, but I hated it. It was slow, boring, useless and lame. The new version doesn't open up a menu, instead it'll display a random tip or hint every time you click on it. There's a good amount of them, so hopefully you'll get some fun out of it (and learn something, too).
My rule when making the new tips & hints was to make the information fit on a maximum of 2 lines of text to make it very easy to quickly read and scroll through a bunch of them within mere seconds.

Game Settings
This one is new and lets you change some stuff in the game. Toggles for game save and equipment prompts, letting you disable repeat boss dialogues and the boss intro animations. It also lets you hide the Book of Combat map icon if you don't want to look at it while playing the game, although it'll still open if you press "1". Finally, you can now change the colour of the background in menus and dialogue boxes. Choose between 5 different colours. :)

All in all, I'm very happy with the new version of the Book of Combat. It's a joy browsing through it, especially compared to how bad the old version was. It's also so much easier for me to keep it updated from now on. I hope it'll become a much more used feature by players once the new demo releases (gonna take a while, though).

As the player will be able to visit their first village in the next demo, I had to get started on developing the Brands system I had planned for the game. Brands are obtained by visiting a Blacksmith where you can request to extract one from one of your weapons. Extracting a Brand will not break your weapon, but you can use it only once per weapon.

I wanted the interface for selecting a Brand to extract to be clean, simple, fast to navigate, and to be visually appealing. It has to show all the relevant information that the player will want to see, but at the same time also not show so much to avoid looking messy. When you enter the menu, you can select between the characters that are currently in your party. From there you can enter the weapon select menu, which shows which weapons that character owns and whether or not you have already extracted a Brand from it.



Once you have selected a weapon to extract a Brand from, and provided you can pay the cost, the Blacksmith will do the rest.
So, once you got your Brand, the next step is to equip it to a character. Most of the Brands are usable by multiple characters, but some are character specific. Each Brand contains a unique Skill, one that can not be unlocked through levelling up. These Skills are based on some of the Skills that you'll have seen monsters use against you. For example, the Forest Brand from Roth's Tree Branch will let its wielder use the Feed Berries skill, the same skill Sparrows used back in the Dusk Woods. Equipping Roth with the Forest Brand will allow Roth to play more of a supportive role.

Brands are designed to let the player change the playstyle of a certain character and to give characters access to Skills that are different than those they learn through levelling up. As Brands can be switched out at any time outside combat, they can also let you take advantage of certain enemy weak spots. For example, in an area where you face a lot of powerful melee attackers, equipping a character with the Ash Brand from Eldin's Sulphur Scepter let its wielder cast Ash Cloud, a skill that blinds all enemies.

Well, that's all I got about Brands for now. Feel free to ask questions if there's anything not clear. :)

FADE - Character Biography



ELDIN

Age: 19
Occupation: N/A
Alignment: Lawful Good
Strengths: Fast learner. Honest. Kind. Making music.
Weaknesses: Being alone. Making choices. Fear of heights.
Likes: Adventure, Helping people, Reading, Playing piano.
Dislikes: Home, Senseless violence, Being rushed, Matthew.

Eldin is a young lady from Beta Town, where she has lived in a big villa with her father since she was a child. He rarely allowed her to go outside, so she has never really gotten to know anybody else in the village. As a way to escape the prison called home, Eldin used to read many books, adventure stories being her favourites. To go on an adventure, to see more of the world and to help out people in need is her dream.
Before she came to Beta Town, her family lived in a small, peaceful village elsewhere... until the dark forces of evil took over the region and destroyed everything in sight. Eldin's mother was killed in the assault on the village, and Eldin and her father only barely managed to escape alive. All of this happened when Eldin was still at such a young age, she can hardly remember any of it.
While Eldin's dad didn't allow her to leave the house, he did invite friends over from to time. People who he had known from other places. This is how Eldin met with Matthew and Steve, the children of some her father's friends. While they didn't meet very often, Eldin still considered the two of them good friends. As time went on, and they grew to be closer friends, Matthew decided he deserved to have Eldin for himself. This jealousy eventually caused enough problems for Eldin to ask her dad to not invite Matthew over anymore. Matthew eventually caught on to this, and needless to say, he didn't take it very well, to put it mildly. He sneaked into the house during Eldin's Birthday party, knocked out all the guests and kidnapped Eldin. Luckily, Roth just happened to be around and managed to take out Matthew and get him arrested.

Eldin took an instant liking to Roth when she learned that he's an RPG Adventurer. While he wasn't exactly the heroic knight in shining armour, like the characters she had read about in her books, he was still the closest to something from her dreams standing right in front of her.
The day Roth left Beta Town on his airship to go on a grand adventure was not missed by Eldin. While she hadn't been allowed to attend the event, she had watched everything from the window in her room. She knew this would be her only chance to leave Beta Town without her father being able to stop her, so she escaped home and went after the airship, hoping that Roth and his friends would notice her and take her on board. And that is exactly what they did. This was the day Eldin finally experienced freedom. Unfortunately, there was little time for her to celebrate, since the airship soon got assaulted by the Prince of Darkness and they were forced to make a crash landing in the middle of nowhere.
Finally experiencing adventure itself, Eldin quickly finds out it isn't as easy or always as exciting as it seemed in the books she read. But she's not going to complain or give up, because to her, it's still a thousand times better than being locked up at home with nowhere to go.

In combat, Eldin is a powerful magic user. While her spells may lack the ability to inflict conditions upon enemies, she makes up for it in raw damage. And spell casting is probably what you want her to do most, since her regular attacks will have trouble piercing the defences of even the weakest of foes. Eldin also has the ability to grant health regeneration to her allies, making her an excellent support character, helping your party stay alive during tough battles.