Developer Q&A

Heeeere we go.

This idea is still in its infancy but yes, we want to introduce a custom item enchanting systems that is available exclusively to focused sorcerers and wizards. This means that these casters can add new properties to existing gear.


To start: what do I mean by a focused caster?

We want this system to be exclusive to those who are investing heavily into arcane classes. It's not something we want someone with a dip wizard level to have access to. Casters struggle on zombie survivals and this is one of the ways that we want them to have value both to themselves and to the rest of the survivor community. So how do we define this?

The system will ignore your first multiclass level. Once that is ignored, the remainder of your class level split must be at least 80% sorcerer or wizard. Furthermore, you must not have more than one multiclass type. Some examples, to explain myself:

1 Wizard/1 Rogue can use this system.
3 Wizard/1 Rogue can use this system.
6 Wizard/2 Rogue can use this system.
3 Wizard/2 Rogue cannot.
6 Wizard/1 Rogue/1 Fighter cannot.

But Tweek, this is dumb - why can a 1 Wizard/1 Rogue use this system but a 3 Wizard/2 Rogue can't? It's not like I unlearned things.
Our rationale is thus: enchanting things takes a great deal more continued practice than just casting spells. It's making your spells permanent, and infusing them into objects in ways that are outside the norm of casting them. It's sort of like having a second language - sure, you can learn it and have it mastered, but if you don't use the language again for ten years you lose a ton of it.


Moving on: I want to enchant something!

Your mage character will need to use a Catalyst item to enchant any equipment. This is where professions (the Alchemist, in particular) will come into play.

Characters will find Catalyst Shards while adventuring around. My primary goal with brainstorming this system was to make it un-grindable. You can't spend hours searching at a search spot to find these things. Instead, there's a very small chance that you'll find one anywhere and everywhere while you're out and about. Your character will be made aware that there's a strong magical presence nearby, and will have to hunt to find it. I won't get into too much detail here but needless to say you won't be able to tab-spam to highlight it.

Catalyst Shards must be brought to an Alchemist so that the Alchemist can refine them into a Catalyst.

Once you have a Catalyst, you can cast your enchanting spell on an item to be enchanted and it will consume the Catalyst to enchant the item! Woohoo! We don't quite have a table of spells-to-enchantment-bonuses table worked out but we will certainly be keeping you posted.

Items will be restricted to one enchanted property each, in the very least. We are still working on some of the details.

Is it true invisibility is getting nerfed? I understand its a bit OP for allowing you to travel completely safely through any horde of zombies for a decent duration, but for any spellcaster invisibility kind of helps them survive. Yeah nerfing it will still allow them to use it in emergencies, but it won't have the same effect, especially if your bottled in by zombies and cant just run through them, you end up having to wait for them to move around enough themselves for you to be able to escape, and if it was short duration, it wouldn't do you any good in these situations. I understand no one wants some caster just invis'ing his whole party and just traveling like its nobodies business, but if it is to be nerfed then i suggest to solve that: make invisibility caster only, solves any ways of abusing it to easy mode a party, and at the same time still leaves the spell a valuable tool for any spellcaster who gets high enough to use it.

Some people might be like "No! not caster only! that's not cool", but honestly if its a very short duration, then no caster is going to cast that on another person, because their likely in the same situation of "getting screwed", and will only have time to cast it on themselves and escape before the spell wears out. Sorry if i'm rambling, but invisibility has always been great as it is. I'd suggest if this is not already a thing, that scavenging at all breaks invisibility, and again the caster only limitation would leave it valuable, but not easily used to abuse the crap out of its use.

Sorry for the massive delay in replying here, there's been a lot going on.

Yes, the intention is to move forward with invisibility duration nerfs. The three classes who are affected by it are going to be compensated. We don't feel that making it self-cast only and/or breaking while scavenging solves the primary issue of it being essentially a free pass through the module.

We will be revisiting alchemy parameters, yes. As of now it's prohibitively expensive. There's likely to be a lot of other Alchemy system changes as well as part of our professions revamp. Couple that with gold being likely to become a more sought-after resource as part of the professions update, which is bound to make alchemy costs even worse.