Reborn Spotlight: Airship Dungeon, New Talents, and New Mounts
The final Beta Test for OrbusVR: Reborn will begin on Monday, March 25th and last until April 8th. We'll be previewing all the fun content and new features that we're busy working on leading up to the start of the test in a series of posts in the coming weeks. Without further ado, here's the first!
Airship Dungeon
The final Beta will see the addition of 2 new dungeons, bringing the total available at launch up to 4. The first two, which were previously already in-game were designed around Level 10 content, while the final 2 are designed for Level 20+.
The Airship Dungeon is a unique dungeon in that it doesn't take the traditional form of a dungeon with a layout that you delve down through, fighting packs of monsters as you make your way to the boss room. Instead, you'll take off on an airship and soar high above the land of Patraeyl. During your journey, the ship will be attacked by enemy creatures teleported on-board by a hidden, nefarious foe who sees a perfect opportunity to take you off the playing board.
After entering the dungeon, the group will have a small amount of time to get ready, and then the first portal will open with an enemy pack. Subsequent portals will open on a set timing, so you must be quick and decisive in defeating these foes without major mistakes in order to maintain a pace that will allow you to make it through the dungeon successfully. After several packs of lesser mobs, a Boss Portal will spawn in a boss. Once the boss spawns in, no other portals will activate until the boss is defeated, so you still have the ability to make mistakes and wipe and try again until you are successful. After the boss is dispatched, the second phase of enemy mob portals will begin on a timer leading up to the final boss encounter.
In addition to the mechanic around the enemies spawning on-board the ship, the bosses themselves feature several new and interesting challenges for your party. The first boss will test your tank's ability to position the boss, as well as your party's ability to react to the multiple mechanics that will keep you on your toes and moving around the battlefield. The second boss is all about team coordination, and you'll have to deal with not only projectile patterns marching down the battlefield that you need to avoid, but also make sure everyone is in the right spot to deal with a nasty debuff called Impending Doom; finally the boss features a self-enrage buff that needs to be interrupted on-cue by the party, otherwise the fight will quickly get out of hand.
Both of these dungeons really center around team positioning and coordination. The tank needs to be on their toes to deal with tankbusters and interrupts, the party needs to be doing their job to position themselves and respond to mechanics throughout the fight, and the healers will need to be prepared for some nasty surprises and to help the party recover from mistakes.
New Talents and Tweaks
Beta 5 will see the introduction of talents and supers for all of the new battle disciplines, as well as talent changes for all existing classes (as well as some tweaks, mechanical changes, and balancing changes where appropriate). Here's a quick overview of what you can expect to see for each discipline:
Musketeer
Has received a complete re-work of the firing mechanism to bring it in-line with the new system introduced for the Scoundrel; this should result in much more accurate firing even while moving, as well as orbs exploding precisely where you'd expect them to on the ground at all times. There are some quality of life changes, such as the ability to pull the Trigger while holding the turret to change its mode of operation.
Finally, we're adding new talents to the class which allow you to further empower your heals for players inside of your Lifewell effect, or add additional utility to your Turret.
Ranger
Like the Musketeer, has received a re-working of its firing mechanism and hit detection which will make your firing feel more responsive and accurate. This should also solve the "hidden wall" collisions that were a problem during previous Beta tests in the dungeons.
Talents-wise, the Ranger will be receiving a new mechanic centering around exploiting precise shots on targets which appear on monsters. This is in line with our overall design for the class this expansion which centers around it being the "long range precision" class as opposed to the short and medium range DPS of the Shaman and Scoundrel. We're also looking at some additional changes regarding quality of life and utility for the Ranger which aren't done as of this writing, but should be in for the Beta (and we'll discuss them further as we get closer).
Scoundrel
The Scoundrel will see the addition of its talents, including one talent tree focused around burst damage, culminating in a Level 30 talent which allows you to continue "rolling the dice" as you stack crit bonuses, but at the same time increasing the damage that you are taking. The other talent tree focuses around steady and sustained damage with a capping talent of guaranteed crits every sixth shot from your gun.
The Scoundrel will also see the addition of its Super Ability, Deadly Accuracy, which when activated will cause your bullets to track toward the closest enemy target, allowing you to go crazy with curving them and getting high-ranking buffs while knowing that the bullets will still find their target.
Runemage
The Runemage saw the addition of new Level 30 Talents in the last beta test; during this test we've spent time re-working the way that spellcasting and missiles work. You'll see things are much more responsive now, allowing you to more accurately guide your spells as well as eliminating the second delay between successfully casting a spell and seeing that spell cast off your wand for higher latency players.
Warrior
The Warrior will see the finished implementation of the Level 30 talents we introduced in the last Beta in the form of Bubble Shield, a stationary protective barrier you can place on the battlefield to absorb projectile damage and boost your party members.
In addition, a quality of life fix has improved Shield Bash detection to require you to hold the Trigger button to activate it to prevent accidental use.
Paladin
The Paladin has seen some changes to its basic kit in addition to new talents. The Paladin's Taunt is now part of its Libram of Blessing; this has an appropriate cooldown and has the added benefit of keeping your party buffed with your blessing during combat. Instead, now when performing the Call Lightning move, the Paladin receives a short internal buff which allows them to absorb increased damage for a short period of time (around 1.5 seconds currently). This is meant to be used as the Paladin's tankbuster protection.
The Paladin's talent trees focus around more Selfish or Selfless actions in combat, culminating on the Selfish side in an additional offensive ability and additional survivability for the Paladin, while the other tree focuses on sacrificing the Paladin's health to heal nearby party members and the ability to rarely grant a one-time self-resurrect to a target, but it cannot be the Paladin.
The Paladin's Super, Lay on Hands, is a massive long-cooldown heal which by default can only be used on the Paladin themselves, but there are talents to increase its utility for the whole party as well.
Shaman
The Shaman will see the introduction of its talents, which include additional options for increasing DPS such as guaranteed critical strikes for the first orb generated by a totem, as well as a more mobility and utility oriented tree which can allow the Shaman to teleport directly to their totems throughout the battlefield and get "do overs" for thrown orbs that miss hitting a target. The Shaman's super is Ghost Wolf, which summons a wolf which will remain on the battlefield for a short time and attack enemies on behalf of the Shaman.
Bard
The Bard has received a major overhaul of its base kit as well as the introduction of talents and a Super ability. To start, the number of notes on the Marimba has been increased from 5 to 7, not only increasing the variety and challenge of playing it but also allowing for a full octave of notes which can be played outside of combat. The music that plays while the Bard is in combat has been removed in favor of just keeping the basic notes played from the keys of the Marimba itself.
We've added quality of life fixes, such as distinguishing between hitting an activated instrument (which does nothing now if it's not ready to crescendo) or swiping your baton fully through the orb which will de-activate it. We've also greatly improved note hit detection for better playing accuracy. All of the notes of the "songs" that play when activated have been re-worked to provide more variety. And the Instrument of Cure Wounds has been implemented, providing a passive boon to nearby allies which increases their incoming healing from all sources, and a crescendo which greatly heals one nearby ally.
Bard talents have been implemented which focus around either increasing the effect from playing your Marimba well and boosting your primary healing, or around your ability to support others on the battlefield by increasing healing from all sources. You also have the option of choosing capstone talents which provide Empowered Notes to more quickly gain crescendos, or instead add a 4th instrument which is active (providing more effects but at the cost of more notes to play more quickly).
Finally, the Bard's Super Ability, Inspiration, is a battle-changing effect which gives the entire party a major boost to both damage done and healing received for a short period of time; perfect for burn phases of bosses. However, this effect will only grant its boost to a given player once every 10 minutes, so you must use it wisely.
New Mounts
Finally today we've got some new mounts to show you that we've been working on. In general we'll be adding new mounts to the game which are available as rare boss drops, some which are rep rewards for the mission vendor, some of which are available for purchase on our in-game cosmetic store, and one of which is simply really expensive, costing 1,000,000 dram to purchase. Here's a preview of a few of these new mounts:
Shield Mount, reputation reward for Battleground Missions
Cauldron Mount, available in the In-Game Cosmetic Shop
Nature Mount, reputation reward for Salvaging Missions
In addition to the new mounts, you'll be able to acquire unique looks for your Selfie Bot, Harvester tool, Teleportation Device, new dyes, full transmog gear styles, and of course titles; earned via boss drops, mission rewards, and more. There's a lot to acquire even once you hit Level 30!