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The skills system is being torn out to make room for Runes. What are they, and why on earth is this happening?

Runes are symbols that are applied to a character in order to grant abilities. They're analogous to learning a skill, but each rune should be more powerful in general than a single skill. Due to this, each character is limited to a maximum of five runes at a time. Runes have quality indicators like artifacts (common, uncommon, rare, and epic), and are either purchased from a store, discovered from a drop, or crafted (generally by enchanters). You use a runic symbol in order to apply a rune to yourself, and inscribed runes can be discarded from your profile page.

Why runes instead of skills? The skills system was a little frustrating, and didn't really scale up well to higher levels. The rune system will allow new abilities to be added arbitrarily where there are needs, will allow for custom skill rewards from particular areas, and will make things a little more readable on the profile page. I always found the skills list really hard to read, and couldn't always make out what type of character (mage, bard, whatever) people were playing. This way, you can see very quickly what's going on.

If you can't find runes, here are the primary locations:

Runes and Relics (from Capital City)
Runes and Other Curiosities (from the Veteran's Market in Capital City)
Doc's Supplies (from the Capital City Infirmary)
The Undeath Wards (from the Capital Barracks)
Allied Contracting (from the Capital Barracks)
Enchanting Crafting Recipes

There are more in the queue, there are drops out in the wild, and you'll see some new ones showing up at the Starfall Auction Courts. It's still a work in progress, but I'd love any and all feedback, and suggestions for new runes.

One of the things that bug me, is that the cooking skills have disappeared. Which means no more cookie baking supplies nor chocolate chips...

Will those skills return by the use of runes or are they lost forever?

They'll be back! The skills interface got ripped out, but the code implementing skills didn't, so I'm trying to go through to add in the ones that still make sense. Expect more cookies in the future.

The rune system seems pretty cool. I like the idea that you can replace old skills as you get bigger and more powerful. A couple comments/questions:

1) Is there a 'rune-tree'? "You must have the Rune of Strength before you get the Rune of Hulk Smashing"? If so, what happens if you remove the earlier rune?

2) Are there preconditions? "You must at least 12 strength to inscribe the run of Rune of Hulk Smashing". If so, what happens if the precondition is later violated?

Ok, my strength is 11, equip some Bear armour to get up to 13
inscribe the Rune of Hulk Smashing
remove the bear armour
???
profit

3) Can you show in-game the maximum number of runes? I was buying them all willy nilly and didn't realize that they maxed out until i read your post

Anyway, seems like a cool idea!

Thanks! There isn't a rune-tree yet, but there is functionality in place that requires you to have certain runes equipped before adding new ones, so don't be surprised to see such a thing showing up. If you remove a required rune, it will warn you that removing it will remove the other runes as well, so you'll get some UI notification.



The only preconditions right now are level and pre-existing rune. There probably won't be stat-based ones due to what you mentioned. Keep in mind, there are base stat values that can be used instead of buffed ones, and there may eventually be permanent ways to bump those base scores up. But in general, don't expect to see "kewl rune of strength (req 15 strength) +20 strength"



Yeah, that's a good idea. I'll add that in.