@Riley_D you got that hype train ramped up in the discord! Super stoked!
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It was neat to see a group of people always in the starting area practicing the spells. I think next test il give this class a go.
Of all of the classes, itās the one Iāve seen the most peer learning on (maybe because itās got more learning than any other class). But I would definitely recommend giving it a try.
Itās a ton of fun- you may have trouble making the right spell sometimes, however Iāve found that after several hours of casting they get really reliable based on your increased skill in casting.
No pressure! Haha.
So in the game world itself, the use of this type of runic magic is actually outlawed by the Order. As I said in the tweet above, weāve got over 20 spells that we are planning on the Runemage having, but of those we might only initially reveal the runes for say 10-15. The rest (including some of the highest-level spells) will need to be found by players in books and ancient ruins throughout the world the have escaped the touch of the Orderās Inquisitors.
One of the things weāve talked about that we actually really want to keep going along with that is the peer learning thatās been going on for the Runemage. So basically as a new Runemage, you would know some basic spells (like the ones that are already in the game) which makes you able to hold your own in a fight. But if you want to truly master the discipline, you will need to hunt down those other spells, or have other players in the game teach them to you.
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This sounds really cool, I am excited to scour the world for ancient symbols.
Based on the lore, will Order guards react aggressively to runemages casting spells in their vicinity?
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Awesome. Just so our expectations donāt get completely out of line with reality, do you mind clarifying how much of this will be available in the next test? Will there already be more of these runes hidden in the world for us to discover? 
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That sounds awesome and exactly like what I hoped for when I backed Orbus. Has anyone been thinking about ways to keep the novelty of finding spells once the game has more people? One of my concerns was that once there are enough people that have found them, searching for the spells becomes less an adventure of discovery and more of a ātravel to point Aā for X spell.
Once someone makes a map with all the spell locations I could see it becoming a thing in game where once a wizard hits a certain level (so that they can travel to the spells easily), they went on a āPilgrimageā a.k.a. a speed run to collect all the spells.
The pilgrimage method might be fine as is. A lot of MMOs have something similar you do when you reach endgame; but, it does detract from the wonder of exploring a new world.
One idea would be to change the location of the spells seasonally; but, that requires a lot of manual, semi-constant grunt work for minor payoff (30 minute rush where everyone searches for the new locations each change?). It might not even be feasible if the lore or challenge of finding the spell are tied into the environment.
Sounds like a lot of work to police people from spoiling the fun of adventure for themselves. Iād rather get new content.
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Yes, the idea I suggested would be a lot of work and probably not a great one. It was an example of the trouble in finding a solution. I was brainstorming, its why I asked if anyone else had ideas. Do you?
I tend to ramble so I might not have been too clear in my first post. xD But this is an MMO; itās going to attract certain a type of people, the type that are likely to optimize their characters, take the shortest path to leveling, and so on. The natural conclusion of this is that at some point, someone is going to make a quick guide listing all spell locations, it probably wonāt even be hard once everyone has been exploring the world for a few months.
Now you could say that a person could choose to not look at the guide and continue to play the purist way of finding everything on their own, but thatās not what the majority will do. And once the majority have access to all the spells by default (because the spell locations have become common knowledge or through spell trading), everybody will be expected to have them, purist or not. Itāll become the new standard to have all the spells at max level or whenever and people who donāt have them will be less effective than those who do. This would heavily discourage purist behavior.
Why would I just cast my frost-bolt over and over when my buddy next to me is casting Super-Scary Death Beam, Fire of a Thousand Suns and Make My Enemy a Chicken all while telling me to just look at the guide and go to this temple so I can do it too?
Everyone going to look at a guide then running through a puzzle to get a spell could be the natural conclusion of this system, which is fine. But it would be interesting to examine other possibilities at least.
This is a concern that has been tossed around a couple different times and no one has really come up with a good solution that I can think of. I believe it has been asked to keep these sort of secrets off the wiki, but that wouldnāt prevent any third party sites from covering the content.
One idea Iāve mulled over that may work particularly well in this situation is an apprenticeship system. It doesnāt have to be anything overly complex, maybe just allowing for the creation of a spell scroll that would teach another player the known ability.
The scenario would play out something like this:
- Player A finds cool new spell out in the world.
- Player B learns of the discovery and wants to know how to learn the spell.
- Player A creates a spell scroll that Player B can use to learn it.
- Player A trades the spell scroll to Player B for x amount of coin, sheep wool, dragon dung, etc.
This offers the typical master/apprentice relationship found in a lot of games, but allows other players to be the master instead of relying on NPCs to fill that role. It also allows the apprentice access to someone who can help them practice the drawing of the rune and give tips on how to improve.
Obviously this doesnāt actually solve the problem, but it does discourage the free sharing of this information. Anyone who was lucky or dedicated enough to find these abilities on their own would be choosing between a potential gold mine and being a āgoodā person. Iām banking on people being greedy 
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Awesome! Iām looking forward to playing Runemage more! I finally started to get a hang of casting spells in the first Alpha test. Never could successfully cast spells during the stress tests. It was amazing being in a party of runemages just learning how to cast our spells, then going out to take down more difficult enemies as time passed!
I think that it would be interesting if new runemages needed either see the runes in the world (Find a scroll/book in a hidden library, or to actually look at the teleport totems), or be taught how to cast the spell by another runemage. Like what @Damage_Da_Mage said above, also much like how players have been learning the runes during the stress tests & Alpha test.
The big downside of requiring players to find the runes for certain spells in the world / requiring a teacher/tutor to show them the spell would be that players wouldnāt be able to find those spells just by trying out different symbols, which would really suck, though it would probably make the runemages do more exploration.
Maybe have some spells that can only be learned by the above methods, and also have some spells that arenāt listed anywhere, and will only be found by trying different runes/combos of ruins?
In the end, the methods on how to learn the spells will end up online, the methods of learning new spells will just change what the guides say. One upside of VR, following a guide is more difficult here than following a guide for games like WoW, where you can have the guide on a secondary monitor. In standard SteamVR, you will need to keep on opening the dashboard to see a web browser if you were following an online guide. Not too difficult, but it is a little slower. 
On another note, I agree with @Draven, Will there be any places that Runemages may have trouble, due to the fact that the Runes arenāt exactly legal in order controlled lands? Or is it more of a āYou arenāt allowed to write this rune on paper & pass it around. Destroy that paper now.ā type of scenario?
I donāt want to give away too many surprises. Itās not going to be addressed to the point where like walking around as a Runemage makes you an outlaw, but we are planning to address it.
Honestly, my thought here is that we in the community can keep things fairly clean in terms of official sources, and thatās probably good enough. If someone wants to go out of their way to spoil the game for themselves and read a 3rd party site, then thatās their decision. My main goal is just to make it so that you have to make a concerted effort to spoil it for yourself, rather than it being really easy to stumble across without meaning to.
I had thought about having the system actually āenforceā this in the sense that you would need to āseeā another Runemage cast a spell before you could successfully cast it, or āseeā it in a book or on a ruin or something. But I think that would be quite a lot of work for a system that would be at best a moderate deterrent. The type of player who would look up every spell on a 3rd party site is the same type of player that would just gather in a group and quickly have a single mage show them all 20 spells in rapid succession. Iām not saying thatās the āwrongā way to play, if thatās your cup of tea thatās fine. Iām just saying, it seems like a lot of work that wouldnāt actually be more than a minor speed bump.
I kind of like the idea honestly of the Runemage being a class where the what you can cast isnāt artificially restricted by the game. If you yourself can draw the spell correctly, then you can cast it. If that means you know 25 spells at Level 1, so be it. Of course, that would make you a savant, haha. And honestly even as the person who came up with these runes, knowing them is really like 20% of the battle. Your skill as a Runemage really comes from your ability to consistently, quickly cast them. Even if you know what they should look like because you looked them all up, if you donāt have any practice at them, itās a moot point ā you probably wonāt be able to really utilize them well.
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Also, watch while I Polymorph this Wererabbit into a chicken! Haha.
https://gfycat.com/AnyAcclaimedAmberpenshell
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There will beā¦at least 5 new spells in the next test, plus all of the runes in the game have been re-worked to their (hopefully) final forms. Fireball, Frostbolt, Mana Shield, Arcane Ray, Polymorph, Arcane Explosion, Affliction, Pushback, Ice Lance, and Decurse will be the ones that will definitely be in the next test. All of those are considered ābasicā spells so the runes would be easily attainable in-game once the quests are all in, and for now the runes will be given out for those on the Wiki.
Fireball, Frostbolt, Mana Shield, Arcane Explosion, Affliction, Pushback, and Decurse all have more than one level to them. The Level 2 (and in some cases Level 3) versions of those spells will not be given out.
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Question. would it be posible to put in a spell book that we can Write in?
that way we can keep a personal record of spells we learned and how we cast them.
and if we need a reminder we can look into it .
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Huh, Wererabbitā¦ TIL. Players were calling them the āStrange frog thingsā. Itās nice to know the actual name of that creature.
I really like that thereāll be some backstory / Lore for the runemage discipline. Iām looking forward to seeing what comes out for the other 3 combat disciplines as well.
The final question is: Will you be able to polymorph other players?
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I like the idea of putting spells into scrolls and trading to other players.
Instead of (or in addition to) using scrolls to teach other players spells, how about creating an economy by selling spell scrolls to players?
You could create a scroll parchment, draw the spell onto the parchment to create a āclosed scrollā and name it (or the scroll takes the name of the written spell), and then sell the scroll to a player.
The buyer would not be able to see the spell as written; they would just be able to see the close scroll and the name of the spell. To use the scroll, a player could transfer the scroll to their non-wand hand and then presses the activate spell button to cast the spell.
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Not currently, no. Iām going to wait and balance some of that PvP stuff until we have all of the combat discipline abilities in. For example, the Ranger is also getting a āSleepā arrow, etc. So the question is really, will we allow hard CC (as opposed to just āslowā/āstuck in placeā style CC) in PvP, and Iām not sure what the answer to that question is yet. Iām leaning towards no, but weāll see.
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I canāt wait to see the spells written down in game, from the developers, because I was under the impression the fireball was suppose to be an F like symbol. You were drawing a Y like symbol and casting fireball.
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