Overview
As of the release of The Breach, we were given multiple new Runes and two new weapon archetypes to help fulfill RP fantasies and breathe some new life into build diversity. Wands being the quicker counterpart to Staves and Gauntlets realizing the fantasy of a brawler or monk. These new archetypes have some fun Runes and weapon combos but are still falling short in a couple areas due to underlying issues unrelated to the weapons themselves.
Types of Runes
We currently have two main types of Runes: those that cost Focus and those that cost Stamina. The intent with the separation was to create Runes that fulfill the true idea of skills in your ARPGs and those that serve as moveset extenders, allowing the player to truly customize their weapon to feel different from others. While the intent is good the execution is thus far flawed.
Focus Runes
The purpose for the Runes that cost Focus are to be the skills a player is familiar with in other RPGs. Varying from powerful combo attacks, to healing yourself, or boosting your damage. They are what you would expect going into No Rest for the Wicked without in-depth knowledge. The issue we are faced with is most Focus Runes are centered around damage and not providing anything else.
It’s true that generally skills in games have a focus on damage but they do not always and even some damage skills have a secondary benefit in utility. An example of a Rune that could be utility and damage:
You jump and slam your fists on the ground, sending forth a shockwave that damages enemies and creates a wall behind them.
Now you have possibly cornered off your enemy from retreat and cut off assistance from ranged enemies, while also damage an enemy or multiple along the way. Then you have pure utility Runes such as Scream which sends out a large AoE centered around the caster that knocks down their enemies. You can even have a sword Rune that sends out an arcing wave of fire and now your weapon is Infused with Heat Damage, removing the need for an oil or gem and dealing damage simultaneously.
Stamina Runes
Stamina cost was made to bring to life the dream of allowing players to customize their movesets of their weapons which is a grand idea. The issue is two-fold: some Runes have the balance of a Rune that costs Focus and some should not be allowed on other weapon archetypes. There is a prominent Gauntlet Rune that players have been using on two-handed weapons that deal the damage of a Focus Rune but can be spammed almost ad infinitum due to the different cost type. Ideally, this type is the same as hitting an enemy with your weapon’s normal combos so it feels like it blends organically with the existing combos.
Enchantments
Affixes on gear have always been a hot topic in any isometric ARPGs. They are either too much or too little. Path of Exile is hailed as having some of the best affixes but even they generally succumb to being more about stats than large gameplay impacts. There are more nuanced stat bonuses such as:
- Adds X to X Damage to Attacks with this weapon per X Attribute
- Gain X% of Damage Type as Extra Damage Type
Ultimately, they are generally still stat boosters. No Rest for the Wicked is trying to change up the formula and separate itself from the rest in the genre so why not try do the same with the affixes or modifiers?
General Viability
The Breach introduced Enchantments with “events” being conditions. Some of them are:
- Fatalities,
- Killing,
- Damage Dodged.
Fatality and Killing are problematic, generally, since this game isn’t killing large groups of enemies. It can make sense for healing but it falls short when you don’t have more than one enemy and when you are fighting bosses. I don’t think every Enchantment should be ideal everywhere but I also don’t like having some just not work for bosses. This is admittedly a strong opinion and not objective.
Damage Dodged is effective but that is not necessarily good. Your average player will be dodging commonly even if they have a larger focus on parrying. It’s not a pure stat boost but it feels a little too free which can work if the benefit isn’t a large one.
Durability is its own can of worms that are not limited to the Enchantment itself. It’s a much larger discussion involving Durability on its own and as an Enchantment event.
There are more events but these are the more troublesome ones.
Less but More
The title of this section is probably very misleading and this is not a thought I have fleshed out fully yet. There were many forum posts on this subject when Early Access began but it’s best to bring it up again after the most recent suite of Enchantments. While events are a priority topic as well, everything else is still in the vein of simple stat boosts. The more general Enchantments are, the less expression there is in builds.
It definitely is harder on paper to make Enchantments that are true gameplay-changing effects rather than numbers but I believe it’s worth the attempt. There were some good suggestions in the past from forum posters and a couple stood out to me the most.
- Hitting a plague-infected enemy with a rune attack or charged attack heals you for a X% of the damage dealt (only applies to first hit of rune)
- Dealing damage to a burning enemy has a X% chance to cause the enemy to flare up and explode with damage
- Blocking attacks with your shield accumulates damage up to a cap of X. Parrying an attack then consumes all the accumulated damage and deals that damage to the parried enemy
- Having light armor increases your move speed by X% and allows you to ignore unit collision
- Deal “X Faith” burn damage and burn build-up in a small radius around you.
Sources: Why Gems and Enchantments NEED a boost and Enchantments and Curses - New Suggestions for more interactive Builds
Conclusion
This is not the comprehensive of everything but I think this post is long enough and ideally the conversation is started up again from this. If No Rest for the Wicked wants to shake things up from their stagnation then it shouldn’t hold back. I won’t say my ideas are how things need to go moving forward but hopefully it’s a good foundation for discussion.