Runemaster - Development Diary #10

Paradox released the next weekly Development Diary update for Runemaster on their forums that talks about the games Skill Trees & Abilities.

Development Diary 10 - Skill Trees and Abilities

When you begin your adventure, you start with basic abilities and each time you level up you will be able to add perks, increase your stats or improve on your existing abilities for your hero. What perks you choose depends on your hero’s level and the perks previously chosen. To shape your hero and make him/her sharper and stronger in the areas of how you play is of course vital to the gameplay.

So, let's take the basics first! When you begin your saga, every class have two skill trees, one for defense and one for offense. I am more of an offensive player and tend to focus more on damaging abilities and boni when I play RPGs, but I can’t argue against having more armor or an ability that gives more protection, both for my troops and for my hero. When your hero levels up, you will get a skill point that you can use to upgrade him or her. A skill point can be spent once to unlock a perk from one of the skill trees. Each perk gives your hero either a stat bonus, a new ability or upgrades an existing ability. It is possible to mod this and it is possible to make a perk give the Hero both a stat bonus and an ability.

There are several tiers in each skill tree, and you need to invest a certain amount of skill points in order to get to the next tier.

All the three classes you can choose from - Berserker, Skald and Runemaster - start with three unique abilities. As your character levels up, you get to choose whether you wish to upgrade the starting abilities or gain new ones. Therefore you will be able to customize and choose what direction you want to take your hero. You will be able to upgrade both new and old abilities should you wish to, to make sure your hero is a perfect match for your playstyle, but naturally some abilities might be better than others…

We are still in the beginning of making abilities, and we have a lot of work to do before they are done and balanced, therefore I'm keeping it a bit brief here. There are a couple already made, but their names and their boni or abilities might get changed. We will talk about a couple of perks we have, so be aware that these aren’t the final design nor the final names of them.