Preview of Magic in Elemental

from JoeUser Forums

We’ll be talking about this a lot more soon but I wanted to alleviate some concerns on how magic will work in Elemental.

There are over a dozen different books of magic in the game.

When a player selects their sovereign (their sorcerer, channeler of magic), they can choose which books of magic they want. Each book will have a cost to it. So you can spend a lot of points on having lots of books or use those points to make your channeler more powerful.

In addition, based on what race you are, you will get a book of magic and based on which allegiance you choose (Empire or Kingdom) you will get a book.

Example: The Empires get the book of death magic. The Kingdoms get the book of life magic.

Then there are books of magic you can research in the research area.

There are also books of magic spread across the world that you can find via quests and other events.

I won’t even get into how many spells we have. I’m not even sure myself as there are currently many pages of spells.

Some spells are for tactical combat. Others are used globally.

Obviously, what spells you can learn are based on what spell books you have in your possession.  Over time, we plan to keep adding more and more spells to existing books and release additional spell books for free after the game is available as players help us think of new and interesting spells.

We’ll talk more soon about how the magic system works in detail but hopefully this gives you an idea of the direction we’re going.

122,727 views 46 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Man, they just keep on comin'! Any idea how many spells per book? And how are they organized (Book of Fire Spells / Book Of SpeedBuff Spells / Book Of Moderately Powerful Spells / Book Of Moderately Expensive Spells / Book Of Spells Whose Names Add Up To Between 100 And 300 In ASCII)?

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

This sounds great!!  It has the potential (as does a number of other things in the game) of making each game unique!

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

In a way, this reminds me of the magic system in Dominions (2 and 3) - but maybe it is the other way around, dominions might remind me of Master of Magic.

One thing that was interesting about dominions is that it can handle large scale battles (1000+ units) - however, you don't get to interact much with it.  One thing I liked about Master of Magic was that there were so few heroes that you really paid attention to them.  In Dominions, you end up with so many "heroes" that they stop being really unique.

Of the two, I hope Elemental is more like Master of Magic when it comes to # of units, and hero specialization (even if it is mostly through custom items).  I'd rather see small, interesting armies instead of large masses of units.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting MindALot, reply 3
Of the two, I hope Elemental is more like Master of Magic when it comes to # of units, and hero specialization (even if it is mostly through custom items).  I'd rather see small, interesting armies instead of large masses of units.
I'd like to see small, interesting armies versus large masses of units.  Ideally, both are viable to accomodate magic usage and specialization.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Tons of spells separated into numerous books? What's not to love?

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

This is great news - Tons of truly different spells will really set this game apart I think - as long as there are also really good animations. O:)

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Everything I read about this game makes it sound better and better. Hope it finally makes me uninstall Master of Magic :) I'm kinda hoping something can finally beat it. I'm also hoping there's TONS of magic spells, because that's what MoM did best.

IDEA: How about for a very few number of spells, they require 2 separate books of magic (i.e. Magic the Gathering gold cards, maybe requiring black and blue together to cast). That would be awesome;  sorry if the idea has come up before.

EDIT: nm, just read the old post and this is exactly what they're doing :)

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

When a player selects their sovereign (their sorcerer, channeler of magic), they can choose which books of magic they want. Each book will have a cost to it. So you can spend a lot of points on having lots of books or use those points to make your channeler more powerful.

Can you buy any book you want? Likewise, can you find any book that you didn't buy during game setup later in the game?

Basically, can any single player hold every spell book in the game (and thus be able to learn every spell in the game)?

 

 

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Sounds fascinating. What about a custom spell editor so players can make their own spells either by having the Editor separate from the game or working it into the game. This would be a awesome touch :) .

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Raven, reply 10
Sounds fascinating. What about a custom spell editor so players can make their own spells either by having the Editor separate from the game or working it into the game. This would be a awesome touch .

Isn't it already planned ? I think I remember reading that the spell creator would be in the vanilla game.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

I really like being able to research spell books and being able to find them on the game map. So you can skimp on them when you create your sovereign but then regret it later.  \o/

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

This sounds excellent - I think diversity is one of the key areas that made Master of Magic so good.

I have a request though: I really hate to have obsolete spells that I never use cluttering up my spellbook. Could we have it so that weak spells either get replaced by newer ones, or otherwise get better as you get more powerful and thus continue to have a use?

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Denryu, reply 6
This is great news - Tons of truly different spells will really set this game apart I think - as long as there are also really good animations.

 

Are you an alternate account for Hortz? Do I need to report you?:P

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Honestly, the more like Master of Magic with tweaks and better graphics and sound and effects, the better...  As soon as I read the part about different spell books that you can choose from and assign to your Channeler I practically squeeled with glee.  :P

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

Master of Magics magicsystem with books and perks was grand and still is. Nothing I've played has beaten it yet.

 

Things look better and better :)

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Please oh please oh please have summonable monsters and creatable constructs (golems)

Oh yes.

Couple examples:

From the Book of Revival:

Summon Wisps.  

There is also an entire book called the Book of Curses. You can turn a target unit into a sheep for N turns.

 

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Micshoop, reply 17
... creatable constructs (golems).

Now that would be a true superior scion of MoM item creation. (Plus it might help enable sentience as a possible trait for artifact-level magic items.)

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

As long as I can create in game organic "artifacts". New living beings. Fallen v2.0, there I go!

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Reply #23 from Demigod Forums Top

You can turn a target unit into a sheep for N turns.

Do they explode if you click on them fifty times? That's sort of a priority for me :D

Reply #24 from Elemental Forums Top

The Sheep spell is in Kings Bounty Armored Princess too. I love it!

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top

Will there be spell combos, perhaps using two different spells from different books? I'm thinking along the lines of the oil/fire combo in Dragon Age. This would give greater tactical advantages to selecting a variety of books at the beginning, and allow different strategies for different players. Can't quite think of any examples on a global level but I'm sure it would work somehow :) Maybe fill a pit with water and freeze it with ice.. then... wait till the enemies go ice skating on it and melt it with fire...

or something like that :\