Mana
Mana is a stat in Ashes of Creation.[1]
- Mana is a universal energy and keeps corresponding stats for mana pool, consumption and regeneration relevant.[2]
- All archetypes will use mana, some more intense than others.[2]
- Even pure melee players will use mana to manipulate The Essence for their extraordinary abilities.[3]
Stats
Character stats and attributes.[5][6]
![]() | This section contains information from Alpha-1 testing. It will be updated when new information is made available. |
There will be diminishing returns on certain stats, but there won't be hard caps.[10]
Most stats are contested, which means you're kind of testing your rating versus other people's ratings. So you kind of figure out what the end result is... but we're not going to go for like hard caps for sure.[10] – Jeffrey Bard
Roles
Ashes of Creation has the traditional trinity of Tank, DPS (damage dealers) and Support (healer or non-healer) roles.[11][12][13]
- Although traditional roles are present, players should not feel branded by their primary archetype.[12][13]
- Skill augments available through the class system allow characters to be personalized outside of their primary role.[12][13][14]
- Players can also double down on their archetype choice to strengthen their primary role.[12][13]
We have our eight base archetypes; and the trinity is a pretty strong influence with regards to the eight base classes. However the area in which we actually begin to play with that line between the trinity is in the secondary classes that you can pick. That's where we begin to blend those spaces and allow people a little bit of influence over their role and whether or not they fit perfectly within a particular category within the trinity.[14] – Steven Sharif
Class abilities

If from the eight archetypes whatever you choose as your secondary, you're going to receive a choice of augments that relate to some core ideal of that class. You know like a tank is about controlling the battlefield, is about surviving. The mage is about dealing damage and elements and ability in AoEs. The rogue is going to be about stealth and critical damage. So those augments are going to to play towards those identities.[16] – Steven Sharif
The idea behind the system is that you're kind of skirting the line through these augmentations of your role, right. We have the traditional holy trinity that's present in class designs for MMOs and it's often that those either are not deviated at all or completely deviated from entirely. The augment is to kind of offer a balance between that where you still maintain the semblance of that trinity system while offering the opportunity to customize your play experience towards one of the other angles in the triangle.[17] – Steven Sharif
Primary skills (class abilities) are based on a player's archetype.[18] Players can personalize their primary skills with augmentation from a secondary archetype.[19][18][20]
The design behind augments is to not just change the flavor so that it reflects the secondary archetype, but it also fundamentally changes the core components of a skill.[21] – Steven Sharif
- Each secondary archetype offers four different schools of augmentation.[19][22] Each augment school affects a primary archetype's skills in different ways.[23]
- For example: A Mage offers Teleportation and elemental schools of augments. These augments will affect a Fighter's primary skills differently than a Cleric's.[19][23]
- Each augmentation has a level requirement and number of skill points required to activate it.[24]
- There's going to be a certain threshold at which you can no longer augment your active abilities based on the decisions you've augmented previous abilities, so you'll have to pick and choose which ones you want to apply the augments towards; and certain augments will have more expense required on the skill point side.[24] – Steven Sharif
- Augments to primary skills will fundamentally change the way the ability works: Adapting what the ability once did to incorporate the identity of the secondary archetype.[26]
- The progression system for augments is very similar to the class progression system.[27]
- Changing the augmentations on your skills will require you to go to a NPC in a Village node or higher.[28]
- Some spell colors and general FX change based on augments.[29]
- Active skills could look totally different after an augment gets applied.[30]
- Outside of class-specific skills there may be a subset of universal skills, such as active block and dodge.[31]
Primary skills in Alpha-2 are expected to be very different to those in Alpha-1.[32]
The ability list in Alpha One is nowhere near what the ability list will be, especially from like a level/progression standpoint. So you can expect it to be incredibly different.[32] – Steven Sharif
Skill points

This is where players allocate skill points into either their active skills, their passive abilities- which can augment their usage of weapons and armors and health regeneration and passive stats and stuff like that-- but on the weapons side of things, that's where you will spec into certain types of procs based off of weapon groupings. So we've talked a little bit about this in the past: If you have a dagger, daggers might have a chance to proc a bleed on your weapon attack and that would synergize with an active skills' ability like let's say Backstab that does additional damage if the target is under a bleed effect. Now we have said in the past that players will be able to allocate skill points into their active skills that are more geared towards either action combat or tab targeting.[34] – Steven Sharif
Players receive skill points as they level. These can be used to level up skills (increase their rank) within their active, passive or combat/weapon skill trees.[35][36][37][38]
- It will not be possible to max all skills in a skill tree.[38]
- In terms of skill progression, players can choose to go "wide" and get a number of different abilities, or go "deep" into a few specific abilities.[39]
- Players are able to reset and reallocate their skill points.[40]
Making active skills capable of receiving additional skill point allocations and unlocking additional features so that from a player agency standpoint it's going to be up to you whether or not you want to be more diverse but less depth- wider and not taller, in some of these skill choices. Or if you want to be very very tall, that's going to be something that is up to the player in that regard.[41] – Steven Sharif
See also
References
- ↑ Livestream, 28 August 2020 (1:14:54).
- ↑ 2.0 2.1
- ↑
- ↑ Livestream, 28 August 2020 (1:15:02).
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 Livestream, 30 January 2020 (25:39).
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 Livestream, 9 February 2018 (7:31).
- ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 7.15 7.16 Livestream, 28 August 2020 (15:21).
- ↑ Livestream, 30 January 2020 (1:40:48).
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Livestream, 30 May 2017 (16:25).
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Livestream, 26 March 2021 (1:02:08).
- ↑ Podcast, 11 April 2021 (13:30).
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Group dynamics blog.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Livestream, 22 May 2017 (46:04).
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Interview, 20 October 2018 (2:40:16).
- ↑
- ↑ Livestream, 16 October 2017 (1:00:44).
- ↑ Interview, 8 August 2018 (22:27).
- ↑ 18.0 18.1
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Interview, 18 July 2020 (1:05:04).
- ↑
- ↑ Livestream, 25 July 2020 (1:47:55).
- ↑ Livestream, 9 February 2018 (41:56).
- ↑ 23.0 23.1 Livestream, 17 December 2019 (1:13:14).
- ↑ 24.0 24.1 Interview, 18 July 2020 (1:07:06).
- ↑
- ↑ February 8, 2019 - Questions and Answers.
- ↑ Livestream, 26 July 2019 (1:09:22).
- ↑ Livestream, 8 April 2018 (PM) (20:45).
- ↑
- ↑ Interview, 11 May 2018 (53:15).
- ↑ Livestream, 19 November 2021 (50:38).
- ↑ 32.0 32.1 Livestream, 24 September 2021 (1:18:06).
- ↑ Livestream, 25 June 2021 (23:08).
- ↑ Livestream, 28 August 2020 (1:12:50).
- ↑ Interview, 29 July 2020 (55:44).
- ↑ Interview, 19 July 2020 (53:59).
- ↑ Interview, 18 July 2020 (1:07:51).
- ↑ 38.0 38.1 Livestream, 28 July 2017 (19:05).
- ↑ Livestream, 16 November 2017 (30:02).
- ↑ Interview, 29 July 2020 (54:44).
- ↑ Livestream, 28 August 2020 (1:19:24).