Stoneshard Update – Magic Mastery

Ink Stains Games is looking to release the Forgotten Lore early access update for their turn-based RPG Stoneshard on August 5, 2022. When that happens, we’ll be able to experiment with a couple of new skill trees. One of them, Magic Mastery, is highlighted in this here developer update.

Here’s what it’s all about:

Hello everyone!

In today’s devlog, we’ll tell you more about the second ability tree, Magic Mastery, which will be a part of the next major update – “Forgotten Lore”, to be released on August 5th.

Magic Mastery is designed to be a highly impactful support tree, useful to any mage build. As a result, its abilities are mostly focused on two things: increasing the effectiveness and safety of your own spells and countering enemy magic.

To better understand our design choices, we highly recommend you to check out the previous devlog – it contains important details about the upcoming changes to the Magic System.

OVERALL STRUCTURE

Magic Mastery consists of 12 abilities: 6 actives and 6 passives. The ability tree can be roughly divided into two paths: the left one mostly targets pure mage builds, while the abilities on the right have a lot to offer to hybrid characters.

Active Abilities

Seal of Finesse

Activates an effect that lowers Fumble and Backfire Chances, reduces Cooldowns Duration, and speeds up the decay of Backfire Damage. When used, this spell also vents a large amount of already existing Backfire Damage.

The Seal works similarly to Weaponry stances: the number of the effect’s stacks increases with every passing turn, but decreases when your character moves to another tile.

Seal of Power

Activates an effect that grants major bonuses to Magic Power, Weapon Damage and a bit of Bonus Range. But that’s not all: whenever your character uses a specialized spell, the effect transforms into the Seal of a corresponding Magic School with its own unique bonuses and has its duration slightly prolonged.

For instance, Seal of Pyromancy grants Pyromancy Power, a fiery enchantment for your weapons, and a boost to Crit and Miracle Chances. In addition to Electromantic Power and Shock Damage on strike, Seal of Electromancy reduces Backfire and Fumble Chances. Seal of Geomancy comes with a bonus to Geomantic Power and Block Chance as well as faster Backfire Damage decay and lower Damage Taken.

Seal of Insight

This Seal reveals a few places of power in a small area around the caster. When the character occupies an empowered tile, they gain Magic Power, Miracle Chance, Energy Restoration and have their Spells’ Energy Cost reduced. The effect persists as long as the character remains in place, growing in power with each passing turn and getting weaker with each cast spell.

This means that if you plan to cast a lot of spells within a short period of time, it might be a good idea to make use of places of power along with Seal of Finesse. This tactic comes with a price though – you’ll have to sacrifice your mobility for it to work.

Seal of Cleansing

This spell allows you to remove all magical and physical effects, both positive and negative ones, from the main target and everyone adjacent to it. Additionally, the spell extinguishes burning tiles, clears puddles of acid, unholy blood, and magma, and also removes runes and other magical entities. Each removed effect or object replenishes a small amount of energy to the caster and reduces their active Cooldowns.

If the caster targets themselves with the Seal or is affected by its AoE, they gain Miracle Chance and reduced Damage Taken for each removed positive effect and are applied with reduced damage Resistances for each removed negative effect.

Using the Seal on magical creatures, such as the Undead and Wraiths, temporarily increases the damage they receive.

Seal of Reflection

This powerful defensive buff not only increases your character’s Resistances to all types of damage but also reflects* half the damage received from melee attacks. And most importantly, while under the effect of the Seal, all spells aimed at your character will be redirected to a random target within Vision (if there is one).

* – there were some tweaks to the Damage Reflection mechanic: the damage will now be reflected before Protection or Resistances are applied, which greatly increases the effectiveness of this stat.

Seal of Shackles

The ultimate Magic Mastery spell applies a powerful Seal that significantly reduces the target’s Energy Restoration and increases its Skills’ Energy Cost, Cooldowns Duration, and Fumble Chance.

While under the effect of the Seal, enemies can’t use spells, and each ability that comes off cooldown will burn their Energy (scaling with its Energy Cost) and deal Arcane Damage for the same amount.

Passive Abilities

Precise Movements

Investing Ability Points into specialized Magic Schools reduces Backfire Chance of their spells.

Remaining on the same tile gradually lowers Backfire Chance.

Dissipation

Each point of received Magic or Nature Damage replenishes one point of Energy and grants a small stacking bonus to Magic and Nature Resistances.

Body and Spirit

Spellcasting generates 20% less Fatigue. By 20% reduces Sanity loss from Backfired spells.

Lingering Incantations

Increases the duration of all magical effects – this includes Areas of Effect created by magic, such as magma or ball lightning.

Thaumaturgy

Grants all spells a bonus to Miracle Chance and Miracle Power. Performing a Miracle provides a stacking reduction to Backfire Chance and Backfire Damage.

Arcane Lore

Grants a small bonus to Magic Power for each learned magical ability*, including Magic Mastery actives and passives.

* – In the current version of the game, this effect exists as Jonna’s starting trait. It will be changed in “Forgotten Lore”: Jonna will receive Magic Power for reading magical treatises, and each learned magical ability will permanently increase her Experience Gain. This is the first of many changes to the preset characters’ starting traits that will arrive with the fully fledged Trait System and Character Creator.

That’s all for now: we hope you liked these new abilities and will soon make them a part of your newly created characters’ builds. Make sure to follow the news, it won’t be long until the update is released!