Dev Diary #2
Talent Tree Progression
Branch out and learn new Talents!
Welcome to the world of Mandragora! This series of ‘Dev Diary’ posts will take you behind the scenes and give you a more in-depth look at all the cool features you can expect from our game as we get closer to release.
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Today’s topic: Talent Trees!
In our first Dev Diary, we talked about Gear Progression, which was all about the many epic items you’ll be able to find, equip, craft, and enchant in Mandragora.
And as we get closer to the launch of our public demo on September 30, we’d like to highlight more key aspects of our upcoming game.
So today, let’s learn about another hugely important source of character power: Talent Trees.
Wait… Talent Trees, plural?
Yes! The full game will include 6 classes in total, and each have their own Talent Tree that helps shape their unique playstyle.
You are not limited to your own Talent Tree: after level 15, you are free to unlock other class trees as well, which allows you to create mixed classes. However, at first, it’s best to stick to your starting class Talent Tree until you learn all the basics. And if you make a mistake, no worries! The Talent Tree can be fully reset.
How do Talent Trees work in Mandragora?
Let’s take a look at the inner workings of the Talent Tree using the Vanguard class as an example. This class will be available in our public demo launching September 30 - so you’ll also be able to discover all its power firsthand then!
Vanguards are elite fighters within the ranks of the Inquisitors who employ raw physical prowess, massive shields, and brutal two-handed weapons.
Whenever you Level Up in Mandragora, or use an Offering Shrine, you gain Talent Points which you can spend in the Talent Tree.
Let’s take a look at how that works in practice:
As you can see, the Talent Tree contains 4 different types of nodes:
The Starting Node: This allows you to wield an item type belonging to the selected class. In this case, that’s Tower Shields.
Basic Attribute Nodes: These small nodes are fixed, and you can put 1 Talent point on them. All of your statistics are visible beside the Talent Tree, and the stats that are increased by the selected attribute are always highlighted in green.
Choice Nodes (Offensive, Defensive, Utility and Critical): Medium-sized nodes. You can select 1 of the available attribute nodes here. You can spend up to 3 points on these nodes, and the 3rd point always guarantees an extra bonus.
Talents: Big Nodes. Each class in Mandragora has 16 unique Talents in their respective Talent Tree. These powerful passive abilities can be a great help during your adventures and can also further enhance your preferred playstyle.
- Some Talents are simple, focused on making your character more powerful: like Deep Wounds, which increases your Bleed Chance by 5% and the duration of your Bleed effects by 3 seconds.
- Others are more complex and require you to pay more attention in combat: like Armor Breaker, which gives your Weapon Attacks a 1% chance per point of Armor the target has to break an Armor Fragment from them, permanently reducing their Armor by 5. Picking up a fragment grants you 2 Armor, stacking up to 25 times. Taking Physical damage removes 5 stacks.
As a Vanguard, you can choose from 3 different weapon setups in early game:
- 1H weapon + Light Shield: Allows you to Defend and (if timed right!) Parry enemy attacks.
- 1H weapon + Tower Shield: Also allows you to Defend enemy attacks, but instead of Parry, you can Charge and stun enemies with your mighty Tower Shield
- Greathammer or Greatsword (2H): Slower, but a longer attack range than 1H weapons – and it has much higher stagger potential as well. You also gain the Resonance ability. When Resonance is activated, successful weapon hits create radial shockwaves that expand out from the impact location, dealing damage to all affected enemies.
Based on your playstyle, you need to decide which Talents you are aiming for first. The 3 closest to the Starting Node in the Vanguard tree are:
- Deep Wounds: Increases your Bleed chance by 5% and the duration of your Bleed effects by 3 seconds. This is a good choice for 1H builds and against enemies with large Health, as you need faster weapons to apply it more frequently and Bleed also needs some time to deal its full damage to the monsters.
- Veteran: Killing an enemy permanently increases your maximum Health by 0.01% up to 10%. This is a good early game choice for any build as it takes some time to reach the full bonus. It also combines well with Constitution attribute nodes that increase Maximum Health.
- Lifeblood Surge: Killing an enemy generates 20 Adrenaline and restores 5% of your missing Health. A good choice for 2H builds against smaller enemies, as it provides sustain, and without a shield you’ll certainly take more damage.
Once you have decided which Talent you like to take first, you can start to unlock all nodes leading up to it, then select your next Talent. You can take any of the previous Talents - or you can go further into the tree.
What exactly are Choice Nodes?
If you reach a Choice Node, then you should choose the attribute you need the most for your build and playstyle:
- Offensive attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Spirit, Power. These increase the damage of your weapon and Skills. As a Vanguard, Strength is your main offensive Attribute. Full-unlock bonus: 1% Bleed Chance
- Defensive attributes: Constitution, Defense, Vigor. Choose Constitution if you find yourself dying too fast and need more Health. Choose Defense, if you have enough health, to mitigate incoming damage. And choose Vigor if you want to equip heavier Weapons or Armor. Full-unlock bonus: 2 Armor
- Utility attributes: Endurance, Knowledge, Constitution. Knowledge increases Maximum Mana, which is usually not a good choice for a Vanguard. Choose Endurance if you need more Stamina or you can choose Constitution in this Choice Node as well for more Health. Full-unlock bonus: -1% Adrenaline Cost
- Critical Attributes: Physical and Magic Critical Chance, Critical Damage. As a Vanguard you mostly need Physical Critical Chance. Critical Damage only becomes a viable choice once you have enough (over 40-50%) Physical Critical Chance. Full-unlock bonus: 1% All Critical Chance
Full-unlock bonuses are nice to have, but only if you really need those Attributes as well. Otherwise, go for another Talent first!
What kind of early game Vanguard builds are there?
Bleed
This early build allows you to apply the Bleed status effect and provides nice health sustain.
From Deep Wounds, you can grab Blood Craze, which heals you whenever your Bleed effect damages an enemy. And from there, Lifeblood Surge is not far away, which further increases your Health and Adrenaline sustain potential.
Maximum Adrenaline
With this build, your focus is to reach Maximum Adrenaline in combat - and remain there, if you can.
From Deep Wounds, you can also go for Eternal Rage, which increases your damage while you are at maximum Adrenaline. Then, grab Warlord as well, to generate Adrenaline for each nearby enemy in combat, allowing you to reach maximum Adrenaline faster, which will then allow you to activate Eternal Rage.
Resource
This early build focuses primarily on increasing your main Resources: Health, Stamina and Adrenaline.
Grab Veteran first to increase your Maximum Health, then take Enhanced Endurance to have a bigger Stamina pool as well. Lastly, acquire Lifeblood Surge for Health sustain and Adrenaline generation.
Defend/Parry
This build requires you to defend and parry enemy attacks frequently.
From Veteran, grab Revenge, which generates 5 Adrenaline if you are getting hit and also increases your next damage after defending or parrying an attack by 50%.
Last, acquire Versatility, which increases your damage when you are wearing a Shield.
This talent would also be good for a 2H build later, because it increases all of your Magic Resistances by 10% if you are not wearing a Shield.
These are just a few possible examples to start out with, as you can combine Talents freely and come up with your own combination that works for you and your playstyle. Experiment and find your perfect build!
What about mixed class builds?
Vanguard-Flameweaver Mixed Build
To wrap up this post about Talent Trees, let’s now take a look at a mid-game mixed Talent build. Because as we said, in the full game, there will be a total of 6 classes for you to mix and match Talents from - so here’s a sneak peek at one possibility.
In this build, the focus is on applying Bleed and maintaining maximum Adrenaline by mixing and matching Vanguard and Flameweaver Talents.
This build works best with 1H weapons and for the off-hand item you can either use a Fire Relic to use Fire skills or you can use a Shield to Defend and Parry or Shield Charge.
From the Vanguard tree, we first acquire the previously mentioned Deep Wounds, Blood Craze, Eternal Rage and Warlord.
Then we’ll move left, over to the Flameweaver tree, and get 2 Talents from there:
- Fury: Landing 4 Weapon Attacks within 3 seconds increases your Attack Speed by 15% for 6 seconds.
- Burning Blood: Your most recent damage taken is dealt to you over 5 seconds instead. Weapon Attacks against the attacker reduce the pending damage.
For the last Talent we’ll go back to the Vanguard Tree and grab:
- Initiative: Your Adrenaline is automatically filled up to 20 when entering combat.
As you can see, these Talents work well together and boost each other’s strength even further. We start each combat with increased Adrenaline, and Warlord boosts our Adrenaline generation further. With the increased Attack Speed, you can apply Bleed and also fill up your Adrenaline faster to activate Eternal Rage - and also mitigate the suffered damage with the help of Burning Blood.
You’ll see each class Talent Tree separately in the game, but for illustrative purposes in this Dev Diary we’ve combined it so you can see the full build in one picture:
You can see that the classes are ‘joined’ at the sides of each Tree - but whenever you want to create a mixed class, you can also unlock the Starting node of each class and start your Talent build from there!
We really hope you enjoyed this latest Dev Diary focusing on another key gameplay feature.
And if you’d like to try out our Talent Tree, alongside all our other cool features, make sure you don’t miss out on our demo - it launches September 30!
We can’t wait to see how you’ll branch out and learn new Talents! We’ll be rooting for you! (Sorry, we just can’t leaf these tree puns alone.)
Be sure to wishlist us on Steam, join our Discord, and follow us on social media (@MandragoraGame) to make sure you always stay in the loop!
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