In a recent Dev Diary, Game Director Robin Henkys unveiled the upcoming Into the Hell update and revealed its features, including a global overhaul of magical staves. In today’s video, he’s joined by Combat Designer Michael Schwan to go into detail on this massive reimagining of an entire weapon tree from the ground up.
Introduction
A line of combat gloves came with spells and skills that felt crisp, effective, and interesting Compared to the aforementioned line, staves began to feel like outdated weapons One of the larger weapon groups: 6 weapon branches: fiery, sacred, woody, cursed, mystical, frosty staves
Over 220 items and 90 spells
Magic staves make up over one-third of all weapons Most of the rework will begin in the Into the Hell update, with the rest to follow in a later patch
Review
Goals:
Take the gameplay of magic staves to a whole new level To make the use of the staff fun and high-level gameplay pay off Modify the staves so that they feel like powerful weapons on the battlefield
These goals were achieved through the following points:
Massive visual update (graphics/visual effects) Completely redesigned animations Creation of new sounds for each spell Lots of new and reworked skills
Improvements to visuals, animations and sounds
Reworked and modernized staff models Clear shapes and colors for better readability of skills Increased differences between one-handed and two-handed staves in terms of weapon size and animations: One-handed staves now face the enemy and their speed is comparable to light swords
Two-handed staves point vertically; fast attacks from off-hand weapons, and more powerful ones from a full staff Visual effects have been changed to make spells seem more effective and refined Completely reimagined sound with new audio for each branch
Gameplay Improvements
Added new spells Reworked obsolete spells: Improved underused skills
Adding deeper meaning to simple spells
Fire Staffs
Pyroblast is more directed towards the channeled spell-shotThe longer the channeling, the higher the damage
Fully ending the channel causes an additional knockback of enemies
The caster can interrupt the channel to fire a less powerful shot. Other spells: Conflagrate rework, new E-slot spell for infernal staves
Holy Staves
Minor changes to make skills more dynamicNow you can move while channeling Divine Beam
Desperate Prayer adds a buff to the caster if the skill is used on a target with more than 40% health
Magic Strike can be used on the ground to hit multiple opponents
Wood Staves
Thorns reworked into a ground spell that can be used multiple times – it slows down enemies and buffs the caster with a stackable attack buff New W-slot spell, Blackberry Seeds: deals instant damage, then knocks enemies up into the air for additional damage after a while Both skills do single PvE / PvP more interesting
Cursed Staves
Death Zone has been replaced with Anguished Soul: Summon a ghost that fears and damages enemies Added a new skill for the Q-slot, improved many existing skills
“In hell” and the following patches
Next update includes changes for fire, holy, cursed and wood staves
Frost Staffs: New Q-slot skills that are independent of casting speed
We look forward to revealing more about the Arcane and Frost Staffs once the update is released at the start of next season. Stay tuned for videos about Portal Towns, Castle Reworks and more coming soon!
