Greetings denizens of Agon,

Today we reveal the list of our first wave of titles.

The focus of this first wave is to make crafting titles a meaningful choice while allowing players to specialize and drastically reduce the perception of grind.

As a reminder, a title is meant as a perk that strengthen one aspect of your character while weakening other parts of it. It can either be purely statistic bonuses or unlock new abilities. The purpose of the system as a whole is to serve as a form of skill cap without the caveat of being a class system.

Darkfall historically forced all players to level every single skill, be it crafting or combat, and this created a massive perception of grind through lack of choice.

More importantly, it made all characters self sufficient, which made the niche available to crafters non existent.

This first wave will consist of 52 titles spread in: 16 Magical Titles, comprised of all magical schools and some general magical perks.

15 Physical Titles, comprised of individual weapon types and some general physical perks.

19 Industry Titles, everything crafting and harvesting related. It is the category we’ve spent the most time on.

2 General Titles, category we’ll expand the soonest with more creative titles.

Magical and Physical titles cannot be picked at the same time unless using a Combo title. General and Industry titles do not have such overall limitations.

We won’t be going into much details regarding the changes of individual skills, but some long standing balancing issues tweaks should come along too, or close after, the introduction of titles.

This includes looking into all signature spells to make them worth their titles.

General mechanics:

The implementation we’re going for is a bit different than initially planned, but the core principles are the same: Players can have 5 titles active at the same time.

Title “slots” are shared among all types of titles.

Titles level over real time.

Titles buff aspects of a skill like the current sub-skills do.

Titles can have an exclusion list of titles they cannot be picked with.

There is a combo title that allows an excluded title to be used for 2 slots.

Some of the changes we’ve done is that there is no cooldown to change titles, but a flat loss in title level.

For combat titles it will be by 10 levels, for crafting titles it will reset the title to level 1. The idea being to allow newer players to experiment various things early on before committing. On the other hand, titles now have skills they unlock that are only accessible at a certain level in that title, meaning that at a higher level, swapping is losing access to signature abilities.

Crafting is also very different to what we had initially planned, and is a lot more focused on buffing dedicated crafters: First and foremost, a crafting title will be necessary to craft with a specific crafting skill.

Processing skills and harvesting skills depend on the same title. (ex: Mining and smelting)

Harvesting is still possible without a title, but weaker.

Recipes will unlock both through traditional leveling and through the title’s level.

Enchanting is only available to crafters for items they have the title for.

For more details on enchanting, the way it works is that as your title grows you unlock recipes, but also a bit later, the ability to enchant that recipe at various qualities of enchant.

Enchanting as a skill will remain something to level, but it will only be usable through having another crafting title at the appropriate level and enchanting itself leveled at the appropriate level for that quality.

Now on to the list itself.

We are giving numbers here as an illustration of of how things will interact with one another, especially with how bonuses can be negated or stacked through various combinations. All numbers are in percentages

The name of titles are also early and up for debate if the yare clear enough to illustrate the idea of the title. We are open to suggestions.

1 – Magical Titles:

Magical titles cannot be used alongside physical titles unless enabled by using a combo title.

Scholar: Cannot be used with other magical titles.

+6 Overall magical potency

-4 Overall physical potency

Potent mage: +8 Overall magical damage

-4 Overall physical potency

Quick Caster: +8 Overall magical casting speed

-4 Overall physical potency

Magical Conduit: +8 Overall magical mana efficiency

-4 Overall physical potency

Alteration Master: +8 Overall magical duration

-4 Overall physical potency

Conservative Mage: Current reagent conservation skill

-4 Overall Physicall potency

10 Individual magic schools:

+12 Titled magic school potency

-4 to all other magic potency

-4 to Overall physical potency

Unlocks two signature spells

Signature spells:

Fire Magic Explosion

Magma Storm

Air Magic: Stormblast

Comehither

Water Magic: Delayed shot

Slow

Earth Magic: Earthquake

Meteor strike

Necromancy: Eye rot

Life leech

Arcane Magic Wall of Force

Reflect spell

Witchcraft: Witches brew

spell curse

SpellChanting: Healing chant

Mana Blast

Raw Magic: All arcane damage spells Missile Fury

Burden

Infliction Magic: All infliction damage spells Toxic rain

Flesh curse

2 – Physical Titles:

Warrior: Cannot be used with other physical titles.

+6 Overall physical potency

-4 Overall magical potency

Veteran Brawler: +8 Overall Physical Stamina efficiency

-4 Overall Magical Potency

Bruiser: +8 Overal Melee Damage

-4 Overall Magical Potency

-4 Archery Potency

Duelist: +8 Overall Melee Speed

-4 Overall Magical Potency

-4 Archery Potency

Archer: +12: Archery potency

-4 Overall Magical Potency

Unlocks disabling shot

Sniper: +8 Archery damage

-4 Overall Magical Potency

-4 Overall melee Potency

Quickhand: +8 Archery drawing speed

-4 Overall Magical Potency

-4 Overall melee Potency

Individual melee weapons, except sihtras: +12 Titled weapon potency

Unlocks whirlwind, seize and power attack for Titled weapon

-4 Overall Magical Potency

-4 other melee potency

Individual weapons having a title: 1h swords

1h axes

1h clubs

2h swords

2h axes

2h clubs

Polearms

Knives

Note that Sithras do not have a title as we prefer to leave them as they are now, beyond addressing the infliction damage one.

3 – Industry Titles:

As we explained earlier, Industry titles do not have any exclusions and the gathering skills share a title with their closest processing skill.

Here is the list: Weaponsmithing

Staff crafting

Bowyer

Heavy Armorsmithing

Light armor crafting (leather + bones)

Tailoring (Robes + bags)

Shield crafting

Herb gathering/Herbalism/Alchemy

Mining/Smelting

Logging/woodcutting

Skinning

Artillery

Shipbuilding

Warhulk building

Construction

Taming

Digging/Fishing/Cooking

4 – General Titles:

This category is the smallest one in the first wave, but will be the category that will see the most evolution over time.

For now it has only two titles: Combo:

Allows to use a title that should not be possible to be used with other titles. You can have 2 combo titles, for example: Scholar, Combo, Warrior, Combo, Spellchanting.

Allows to use a title that should not be possible to be used with other titles. You can have 2 combo titles, for example: Scholar, Combo, Warrior, Combo, Spellchanting. Armor Master:

Increases the protection of a character. This is not in the physical group despite having good synergies with it as we want it to be more easily mixed.

Conclusion:

In the end, we have a good amount of possible combinations that will lead to interesting theory crafting of builds.

We’re lucky that InDev ended up lasting long enough to prepare the foundation for combat titles, which will be a great bonus point at release.

Though, most of our testing/energy is focused on getting crafting right prior to release to have Industry titles shape the early days’ economy.

We expect most of the debate to be centered around signature spells and what we chose to lock.

We see them as defining spells that separate the school from others, or spells that are potent enough in principle to limit their presence on the battlefield. Some will see buffs, others will see nerfs, so please share what combinations interest you, and why!

As an advanced warning, we fully expect that InDev will turn into a post-apocalyptic world after local banking and titles are introduced.

A lot of the old habits will be broken, clans may not be as self sufficient as before, and we recommend already preparing a plan to continue supplying the troops.

Have a great evening, and see you in the discussion!

Link to the discussion thread