I bought this game a few weeks ago, and the thing I’ve had the most fun doing is exploring the world and finding new runes and lore. I’m disappointed that 12 / 20 of the games’ runes are now in the middle of Highsteppe. Finding cool new stuff in secret corners of the map was something that I really enjoyed.
These are the basic runes, you know. At the very least, they need to have available for new players:
- Frostbolt 2
- Fireball 2
- Pushback 1
- Affliction 1
- Icelance
- Light
- Mana shield
- Decurse
Light is not necessary until you find a dungeon that requires it.
Decurse is not necessary until you enter dungeons with debuffs.
Ice Lance is not necessary,
Frostbolt 2 is not necessary. Good, yes, but not something you absolutely need at level 1.
Pushback 2 definitely is not necessary.
You could start a new player with Fireball 1/2, Affliction 1, Mana Shield, Arcane Ray, and Frostbolt 1 and they’d be fine.
This goes for all the classes. It would probably be better for the new player experience if they started new players with only a subset of their abilities, and let them unlock new ones as they leveled. It would be rewarding to try out each new ability one by one, and wouldn’t overload you at level 1 with 8 different things in your inventory, then disappoint you that there’s nothing more to look forward to.
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By not necessary do you mean ‘could be introduced later for starter players’ ?
For me as an experienced player I can tell you the use that the spells you mentioned have:
frostbolt 1/fireball 1: Used for pulling enemies from a further distance.
frostbolt 2/fireball 2: meta for spell rotations due to cost of cast to time*damage value.
frostbolt 3: used to slow mobs regularly and save your tank/not die yourself.
fireball 3: possibly useful as opening move and some big pvp deeps.
decurse: necessary quite often even for some trash monsters you are killing in the open world.
ice lance: the highest damage dealer whilst leveling. I recommend putting a frost on the enemies and using this.
light: very useful in dark dungeons. In the vanilla game it was extremely useful in maeos sanctum. we used it for the fastest times also to see enemies we need to polymorph.
pushback 2: It just takes too long to cast in the heat of a fight to actually be any use to your average player… But if you manage to somehow cast it in time… it could save you a wipe.
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By not necessary do you mean ‘could be introduced later for starter players’ ?
Yes.
From the outside, it does seem silly that any level 2 version of runes would be in the starting town. It makes more sense that you would find them in the wild while providing basic level 1 spells as a starting point for aspiring Runemages.
Think of it like this: every class has several ‘abilities’ that they can choose from for what actions to perform. If you limit the starting abilities of one class, you would need to do the same to the others, because every class has need of all of their abilities to be balanced effectively.
This is like suggesting that paladins should only start with one libram or shamans with only a few basic totems or musketeers without lifewell or shield or something
@Atropos that’s exactly what I’m suggesting. I think it would be better for the new player experience for those classes too. You dont have to delay the other skills for too long. Just give them to the player one at a time every few levels.