Artwork Thursday (a day late!): Runemage Rituals

For today's Artwork Thursday (err...Friday) I wanted to share an in-progress look at a Runemage Ritual (this one is for making portals!)

Rituals are longer spells that take several steps to cast them. They also require a reagent be present in your inventory before you can begin the ritual. Right now we're planning to have a ritual to summon a portal (and there are different steps/runes you have to draw depending on where you want your portal to go...), and also a ritual that the mage will want to do to empower the entire party before heading into a difficult battle. We'll keep working on more as the game progresses, I'm sure.

Regarding traveling in general and portals in particular, we want traveling to be something that is a part of the game. We don't want a situation where everyone is constantly just teleporting between major hotspots and making the rest of the world feel totally empty. That's why we are going to have an Airship "taxi" service which will take you between zones, but really once you're in the zone you'll be getting around mostly on foot.

Keeping with that philosophy, we want mage portals to be available, but expensive enough (in terms of the reagent required) that it's a luxury, or a special treat. If you've traveled halfway across the world and need to get back to the other side, it's probably worth it. But it's not the type of thing you'll be doing just to save yourself 2 minutes of walking back to the quest hub.