While development is still ongoing, thought it'd be nice to make some posts on upcoming things and how they've been planned out. Partly to give readers and excited players waiting for the game something to look forward to and an idea of how things are going to work while at the same time maybe getting some feedback or ideas for improvement.
The unique thing with our healers is that they'll be generative upon minting, this means that for every class and gender we'll attempt to make each 2d image of a healer players mint completely unique from the other of the same class and gender. This means different accessories, stances, items, background, colors (to a degree), etc. They'll also have their own rarities but will be fully cosmetical only meaning they'll all have the same stats from each other.
If you've purchased an alpha vial, you'll be able to equip a few starter items on your healer. Keep in mind that while your healer is free to be traded (with some potential cooldowns to be used) but that doesn't always mean you can trade them with any items equipped as some items may be bound to account.
Created with Sora.
While your healers will have the same stats, these stats can be improved by equipping items. Items will have certain restrictions such as, some may only be equippable by a certain class (light, ocean or nature) or they'll need your healer to be a certain level to be equipped. Some items may also become bound to that healer when equipped, meaning you won't be able to equip them on another healer later so your only option will be to salvage the item for some materials if your healer finds a better item for the same slot.
The healers will also begin with 2 healing abilities at level 1. They'll be able to learn new healing abilities as they level up while some times also upgrading current abilities. Let's take a look at the light healers 2 abilities for instance.
Sacred Shield - Places a barrier on a creature that absorbs 150 incoming damage, if the shield remains on the creature at the end of the turn it will also heal it for another base 50 HP.
Solar Flare - Sends out a direct heal at the beginning of the turn, healing your creature for base 200 HP before any creature makes any moves.
While they may learn new healer abilities, the new ones will be level 1, but at a certain level they'll be able to upgrade the existing heals, meaning they'll learn Sacred Shield level 2, which will instead absorb 300 damage and heal a creature at the end of the turn for base 100 HP.
The upgraded abilities will also cost more mana, this is to prevent healers from attempting to "boost" low level creatures in their party when they later have much better gear making mana regeneration regenerate spent mana on abilities faster than you can spend them. Meaning you'll be overhealing low level creatures and still spending a lot of mana to do so, and mana is going to be scarce and important.
Take for instance a regular day for a healer and their party of creatures, they may face 8-10 unique encounters with creatures they don't know the stats of and may attempt to capture them or simply defeat them by placing a creature type that's weaker than the creature type they're facing. All these things are going to cost you a lot of mana to keep your creatures alive, because if they faint they won't receive any XP when the battle ends. Healers won't be able to cast too many heals on their existing mana.
No worries, however, as there's ways to improve your healers mana.
If you don't have consumable items to regain mana instantly through mana potions or get a boost in your mana regeneration through mana elixirs, you'll also be able to find item materials to try your luck at crafting!
There'll be a lot of different items and slots, to craft them you'll need to find materials for them and have a profession that fits the craft. Most of the materials you'll be able to receive when defeating or capturing creatures or gathering them around the battle field after a battle ends.
Text and border created with Sora.
For gloves for instance you may need a material called Cloth, Color Dye, Leather and Holo Dust. All these material items will be "non-nft's" however when you go to craft it will also ask you to add some Zing to burn for your crafting attempt. This is how you'll be able to level up your profession skills when it comes to crafting while gathering professions will be leveled up through gathering attempts in the battle field and later in the open world.
While your craft may be successful, you may get an item for the wrong class, if you don't have that healer class or don't plan on leveling it up, you can always put the gloves on the market to see if someone else needs them since you've spent some crafting materials and zing on it it has a base price attached to it. One healers trash may be another healer's treasure.
There'll also be some RNG with all crafts, maybe the max + Mana pool these level 1 healer gloves can give you could be 40 while the minimum window may be 20, naturally getting the higher ones will be weighted against you as they'll be rarer. For healers just leveling they may not care too much but those who want to do competitive PvP at the level 1 bracket, it might make a big difference!
Either way, there's a lot to discuss about the crafting aspect and how we'll balance healer abilities and what their stats mean, I'll save that for another post as this one got a bit long already. Hope it gave you kind of an idea of what the beta of the game will be like, thanks for reading!