Lost Eidolons News

[h3]FANTASY FACTS FOR WEIRDO NERDS[/h3]



What up y'all? I'm Brandon, Localization Editor at Ocean Drive studios, and today I've been strong-armed politely asked to bring you some piping-hot Content about something no self-respecting RPG would be complete without:

[h3]L O R E 📔📚🤓 ([/h3]

For those who haven't been following the game since its wee baby days on Kickstarter, Lost Eidolons is a turn-based tactics RPG set in a fantastical medieval world which has recently come down with a bad case of mass feudal warfare.

In building the continent of Artemesia, where the game takes place, the team strove to create a setting that felt at once evocative and familiar, suggesting a world and history expansive enough to support a franchise, without burying players under a wall of made-up dates and proper nouns.

Cuz, yknow, some people enjoy a game with a good story, but they're not here for a whole fictional history lecture.

These people are cowards. I do not respect them.

Nonetheless: to satisfy such individuals, Lost Eidolons keeps the worldbuilding brisk and broad. There's an Emperor, Ludivictus. There's an evil empire named after him, staffed up with crappy little lordlings and corrupt bureaucrats. Twenty years ago, there was a big war about all this. Lots of folks are still salty about it. And now that Ludivictus qualifies for the senior discount at Denny's, they've decided to take another crack at killing him.

Isoro of House Feniche, leader of the Benerian rebellion.

But for all the sickos out there who ENJOY reading fantasy tax policy and academic arguments about the origins of magic, we've got a codex with around 150 entries that unlock over the course of the game, ready for citation in the Reddit argument of your choosing.

LAP IT UP NERDS. (It's me, I am nerds.)

There are also around 70 in-game documents written by various characters, which you can find strewn about the game's camp sections.



Heck, we even have codex entries ABOUT the in-game documents!

you LIKE that?? you FREAK???

The goal is to present a game with a story that operates like a swimming pool: a shallow end for those who just want to splash around a bit, and a deep end for the weird kids who like to blow out all their air and hang out down on the bottom. Sitting. Contemplating sunbeams. Thinking about time. It's so peaceful down there, away from the world. These mortals. The constant ping of their Jira tickets. Alas, the flesh is weak, and cries for air . . .

ANYWAY, ENJOY THE GAME

ODS ThorThor reporting back to duty.

Hope everyone’s off to a good start to the week on this fine Monday! As for myself, it’s actually Sunday night as I write this, and I am a bit tired as I sit here trying to be coherent.

Thankfully, ODS Orbit went over the big topic of the Camp so I get to zero in on the Rapport System. If you haven’t read that blog, highly recommend you give it a read so what I write here makes a little more sense.

Please excuse my breaking out the dictionary as if I were a middle schooler writing my first essay, but Meriam Webster defines “rapport” as: “a friendly, harmonious relationship. Especially a relationship characterized by agreement, mutual understanding, or empathy that makes communication possible or easy.”

So like, “friendship” but upgraded to sound cooler in-game. 

IRL or in Artemesia, life is better with friends. And when you’re Eden, a budding general tasked with somehow leading a ragtag group of misfits into battle and winning a war, life is safer with allies by your side.

There are four states of rapport: Peer, Acquantaince, Close Ally, and Trusted Friend. (Though you’ve been life-long buds with your mercenary pals like Francisco, you still start as peers. Go figure.)



There are a few different ways to build rapport. You can share meals, chat and run side quests, have spar sessions, and if all else fails you can’t go wrong with bribing...errr...gifting them some neat stuff you've collected.


Sparring is a risky proposition. You risk bruising your ego by failing super simple finger DDR.

But the other ways of escaping the peer zone like sharing meals and gifting will only cost you time, Leadership Points, and the items you had saved in your inventory.



Why should you bother with building rapport, you ask? In real life, so that people will actually like you.
In Lost Eidolons, so you can unlock things like new chats, quests, and rewards that will not only help you on the battlefield but will enrich the story. Well, some of them will anyway.

Choose your friends wisely.



It's release week for us this week. Hope you check out Lost Eidolons and stop by our Discord to build some rapport with us Ocean Drive peoples. ;)

And on that rather cringe note--bye!

ODS ThorThor

ODS Orbit here! I’m one of the newest members here at Ocean Drive Games, so hello there! I was also told that I wouldn’t get my daily food rations if I didn’t write a blog post. I’m hungry so uhhh..HERE I AM! At this point, you may have seen some of the nonsensical stuff I’ve posted on our social media channels.
I’d like to apologize for them. 🙇

I would typically be in charge of telling you to visit and add us on our social media channels like our Twitch, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages 😏, but not today (sort of)! I’m here to drop some knowledge on the campgrounds in Lost Eidolons! Don’t worry, there are no bears or mosquitos to bother you in our camps.

But fair warning. You might have to worry about mosquito-bears.

Trust me, they didn’t hire me for my photoshop skills

I’ve been a life-long fan of Tactical/Strategy RPGs so I would consider myself a veteran of the genre. This means I have played a TON of these over the years. While the turn-based combat and the character customization is the main course of TRPGs, it’s nice to take a little break from all the pixelated and polygonal violence!

“Peace was never an option” - Albrecht, probably

In Lost Eidolons, the campgrounds can be considered a “hub area” where you take on side-activities and manage your troops. Here, you have direct control of Eden and can run around the camp to speak to NPCs and merchants.

Drones were invented in this universe much earlier

However, one of the most important functions of the camp is the training grounds. Any character in the game can be ANY class in Lost Eidolons. We don’t limit your role-playing goals! Do you want to have Francisco (a “Tank” archetype) be a priest and fling around holy spells to smite your enemies? You can do that! The only limiting factor is the character’s equipment mastery level. You level up your character’s equipment mastery simply by using the assigned equipment during battles. So in the example above, Francisco would need to use Light magic spellbooks to gain experience and meet the required level to unlock the Priest class. However, you can expedite the process by placing characters in the training grounds! After a battle, the characters you’ve set in the training window will earn some EXP once you head back to camp. That’s free mastery EXP!



The single player campaign is a long and challenging one, but you can also partake in optional missions as well! These optional missions are unrelated to the main story and take you to the battlefield. It’s the perfect way to grind some levels to boost up your troops without advancing the storyline! Keep in mind that there are a limited number of optional battles. We do want you to do the main campaign eventually. 😉



As a leader, you must also look over your camp’s needs and wants. Between battles, you can spend Leadership points to initiate special camp activities with NPCs. Having meals with your allies and giving them gifts for example require Leadership points. Spending time with the various characters in the game is quite important as it ties in with the Rapport system. Rapport is quite important, so we’ll cover this more in a future blog!



The most important thing to note is that Leadership points get fully restored each time you come back to camp and any unused points will not carry over, so make sure to spend them in-between chapters!



Overall, there’s much more to Lost Eidolons than just the battles. Recruiting allies, setting up training for your troops, and completing optional battles is just part of the various activities you can do. You’ve taken on a leadership role in this rebellion, and it’s your duty to manage your troops effectively in the camp!

[h3]Breaking the Battlefield[/h3]

What up, Ocean Drivers?

…Eidol-heads? Lost-o’s? I don’t know, we’re a new company, the verbiage is still a moving target.

My name’s Brandon. I’m the Localization Editor on Lost Eidolons, which means if you open the game and read some words in English, I probably touched ’em. (Unless you don’t like them, in which case…uhhhh…I didn’t touch those ones. It was a different guy. Who lives in Canada.)

ANYWAY. Today we’re here to talk about something that will make the dorky tactics nerds out there get all hot and bothered:

🔥❄💧⚡💨🍃 TERRAIN EFFECTS 🔥❄💧⚡💨🍃

Okay, so, you know how in a lot of turn-based RPG’s, you’ve got like 5,000 different elemental spells, but mostly all they do is deal damage (and, occasionally, deal slightly more damage)?

Magic in Lost Eidolons is built different.

As those of you who took part in the betas can attest, combat in this game is suuuper melee-heavy, with mechanics designed to imbue movement and positioning with greater strategic depth.

For example, you know that silly flanking-leapfrog thing other SRPG’s make you do? Yeah, there’s none of that here.

I’m lookin’ at you, Yasumi Matsuno >:0

Making that design philosophy work means taking a slightly more reserved approach to magic. This is not a game where your spellcasters will be whipping out 9-tile Thundagas 5 hours in. In fact, players may be surprised to discover that there are very few multi-target spells in the game at all.

So, what gives? How do you make your spellcasters melt the dumb sword guys?

That’s where elemental synergies come in.

In addition to doing damage, the majority of elemental spells in the game also have terrain-related aspects, altering the battlefield as you fight.

Welcome to nightveil.

Naturally, elemental hazards will bestow punishing status effects on any enemy dumb enough to walk through them. But they also create the opportunity for clever 1-2 combos, and these serve as the primary means of doing area damage in Lost Eidolons.

Maybe that means shocking that puddle you just created, to zap a bunch of guys all at once.

Linard and Albrecht with a tag-team special.

Or extinguishing an obstacle some other jerk set.

FIRE SEASON’S CANCELED.

The result is a combat system where nuking multiple enemies with a single spell is intentionally a bit of a pain to pull off — but when you actually do it? It can swing the whole battle. And feels AWESOME.

Discovering these and other interactions is half the fun of progressing the magic classes. And in true SRPG fashion, your spellcasters become flesh-liquefying gods of death by the endgame.

That said, spells have a limited number of uses per battle, and spellcasting classes tend to be on the squishy side, so they won’t be winning the day on their own. But with a bit of clever play and careful planning, they’re a crucial tool for turning the battlefield itself to your advantage.

And trust me: you’re gonna need all the help you can get.

Greetings all. 
I’m ODS ThorThor, Ocean Drive Studio’s Communications Director, which is just a fancy way of saying I work a little bit on all the mediums used to present and talk to you about our games. Exciting, I know. But today, I’m happy to be left alone at my desk to discuss the broad topic of characters in Lost Eidolons.


I’d much prefer to be alive, please.

If you've read this far, I think it’s safe to assume you’re interested in the game so you already know who Eden is and how he’s the protagonist of Lost Eidolons. You probably also have seen him in his gold-plated armor looking very commander-like, swinging a sword, and maybe crashing a thunderbolt or two down on someone’s head. 



And yes, that is our hero Eden. However, you can just as easily swap out his armor with a mage’s robe, put a grimoire in his hand, and have him cast healing spells. Or maybe put him in the furry shorts of a berserker and charge directly into the fray swinging a battle axe. You see, in Lost Eidolons, no character is bound to any particular class. There are five different archetypes (Hunter, Warrior, Wizard, Priest, and Knight) that are split into four tiers of classes for you to choose from.



Eden, of course, has a special final class that would be easier to unlock through the advancement of the knight class but I prefer him in the berserker make myself. All the characters you add to your army, through either natural story progression or recruit by cajoling and/or bribing, may say they’re naturally this or that class. Don’t listen to them. You’re the commander of this army, they will be what you mold them to be!
The business of advancing through the classes is a serious one. You have to be a certain character level and meet the mastery requirements of your weapon and armor. Just because everyone is equipped with a bow as a secondary weapon doesn’t mean you will master it enough to become a ranger. You really have to work on it both on and off the battlefield. So when it is finally time to advance, an Advancement Ceremony is held where the advancing characters are announced and they trade in their old lowly armor to fancier duds. I must admit that Francisco and Klara are my favorite playable characters. And aside from the story, my motivation to keep playing is to have them wear the outfits of each class.
But hey, Eden glows up pretty nicely too.



Though nobody will ever out-style Lord Pompom (real name: Lord of Pomelde). The man is the embodiment of fashun.





Now, though I named Francisco and Klara as my favorite playable characters, if I were to consider the entire roster, Balastar and Chelcia will be in my top three. Sorry Francisco, but something about badassery tugs at my heart. You will see plenty of Balastar and Chelcia both on and off the battlefield even if they’re not playable characters. If Eden has Klara, Balastar has Chelcia. Eden also has Marchelle and Balastar has Elena…but maybe I’ll save that for another day. Did I mention these characters really come alive because they’re fully dubbed (in English)?
As someone who’s seen the game pre-VO and can compare to post-VO, the impact is truly amazing thanks to the talented cast I now list in no particular order.
 
There you have it–my ramblings of characters in Lost Eidolons. I wonder if I’ll be invited back to write again…

Bye!
ODS ThorThor