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Dev Diary #2 - Talent Tree Progression

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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Hi everyone!

It’s Dev Diary time again, where we’re highlighting various key aspects of our upcoming game to help you gain extra insight into what features to expect in Mandragora.

And we really hope you’ll enjoy getting your hands on features like this when our public demo launches on September 30!

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 today, we’ll learn about another hugely important source of character power: Talent Trees.

[h2]Wait… Talent Trees, plural?[/h2]

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.

[h2]How do Talent Trees work in Mandragora?[/h2]

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.

[h2]What exactly are Choice Nodes?[/h2]



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!

[h2]What kind of early game Vanguard builds are there?[/h2]

[h3]Bleed[/h3]

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.



[h3]Maximum Adrenaline[/h3]

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.



[h3]Resource[/h3]

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 Enduranceto have a bigger Stamina pool as well. Lastly, acquire Lifeblood Surge for Health sustain and Adrenaline generation.



[h3]Defend/Parry[/h3]

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!

[h2]What about mixed class builds?[/h2]

[h3]Vanguard-Flameweaver Mixed Build[/h3]

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!

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And that’s a wrap!


We really hope you enjoyed this latest Dev Diary focusing on another key gameplay feature.

There’s even more Mandragora goodness we’re looking forward to sharing with you over the coming weeks as we get ever closer to release, so stay tuned.

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.)

And, of course, we want to hear from you! As always, please go ahead and let us know your thoughts in the comments below or over on our Discord!

Demo news!

Hi everyone!

We have some great news for you today...

A Demo is coming!


We’ll be releasing a short demo here on Steam on September 30!

Our hope is to also get that demo included in the upcoming Steam Next Fest (October 14-21), where we could get even more people hyped for Mandragora!

We’ll be posting another update with more details closer to that time.

So if you or any of your friends, family, or cats would like to get your hands on a little Mandragora, please keep an eye out for that and help us spread the word once it’s available!



And if you backed us on Kickstarter at tier “Heretic” or above, we have more great news: the PC Closed Beta is also on its way!

Be sure to check out our latest Kickstarter update for more details: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/primalgs/mandragora/posts/4202201


These are really busy times for Mandragora, and we’re so excited to have you along with us for the ride.

As always, let us know what you think right here in the comments or over on our Discord!

Dev Diary #1 - Gear Progression

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.

•────────────────────────────•

Hi everyone!

We hope you enjoy this first post in our brand-new Dev Diary series where we’ll be highlighting various key aspects of our upcoming game to help you gain extra insight into what to expect from Mandragora.

[h2]Today’s topic: Gear Progression![/h2]

Your character power in Mandragora comes from 3 different systems: unlocking Talents in the Talent Tree, learning and upgrading Active Skills, and last (but certainly not least!) from equipping gear.

Items are a huge part of the game: you can find, earn, or craft over 350 items and 110 consumables & enchants during your adventures.

And with all that in mind, it’s time to talk about Gear Progression in Mandragora!

[h3]How does gear work in Mandragora?[/h3]



There are multiple Character Item slots where you can equip gear:

  • Main and Offhand slot for Weapons, Shields, or Relics (2 weapon sets)
  • Body, Head, Hands, Leggings, and Back slots for Armor Pieces
  • 4 Ring slots
  • 1 Flask + 9 Consumable Slots

There are various Weapon and Armor Types available for you to equip:

  • Main Hand: 1H Mace; 1H Sword
  • Both Hands: Dual-wield Daggers; Greathammer; Greatsword
  • Offhand: Light and Tower Shield; Fire, Astral, Chaos and Wyld Relics
  • Armor Types: Cloth; Leather; Mail; Plate

Each class has a default starting weapon setup - but all classes can learn to use any of the weapon types, so you can wield what works best for your playstyle.

Now, let’s look at the stats on a Weapon:



  • To equip a certain item, you need to have enough Equip Load. The Weight of all equipped items are added together to calculate this value.
  • Speed indicates the attack speed of a weapon in Hit/Seconds.
  • Stagger is the amount reduced from an enemy’s Poise with 1 hit. When it reaches 0, the enemy is Staggered. Maces are usually slower than swords - but they also have higher stagger values.
  • Stamina Cost is a multiplier of the base stamina cost of an attack. In general, heavier weapons use more stamina.
  • Damage indicates the different damage value and types of a weapon. In this case, the Flanged Mace deals 50 Physical and 50 Fire base damage. In brackets, you can see the total damage of the weapon which is Scaled by the stats indicated in the last line: Strength and Power.


And here’s a look at an Armor piece:



This is a Plate Chest armor. Just like weapons, it also has a Weight stat.

It also has a Poise attribute which increases your total Poise, making you more resistant to enemy stagger attacks.

Each Armor piece has an Armor value as well, which reduces incoming Physical damage.

The rest are Attribute bonuses: Constitution increases Health, Defense increases Physical and Magical resistances, and Vigor increases Equip Load.

All of these attributes have secondary effects as well, which you can check in the Glossary:



[h3]How do I get cool gear?[/h3]

There are 3 ways to acquire new gear in Mandragora:

  • Crafting
  • Killing enemies
  • Exploring and Completing Quests

Crafting requires a lot of materials, but this is the most reliable way to get a certain weapon or armor piece. Crafting and teaching new diagrams to vendors increases their level - and the higher their level, the better gear they can craft.

You will also find items dropped by certain enemies. Some enemies can drop their full armor sets and weapons.

So if you really want to look like a Hollowplate Sentinel, you can defeat them and take their armor:



Exploring the world, opening chests and completing quests will also provide you valuable items. So always make sure you bring some lockpicks with you!

[h3]Sweet, I’ve got some new gear. How do I decide what to equip?[/h3]

As you progress and acquire new items, you can compare them to your currently equipped ones:



You can see the new item on the left, and the currently equipped item on the right.

Green numbers indicate that the new stat is better than the current one. A plus (+) sign before the number indicates that the currently equipped item doesn’t have that stat.

Always look for stats that support your character build, and item types that match your playstyle. If you have a weapon which scales with Dexterity and Spirit, then it’s better to keep an item with Dexterity attribute, than to replace it with a Strength one.

And it’s always a good idea to keep items with special (Non-Attribute) bonuses (like Armor Penetration or Move speed) on them, which you might want to use later or in certain Boss fights.

Keeping all that in mind, let’s compare 2 late-game 1H Maces:



As you can see, Emerald Dream has better base stats (45+170 damage), but for our build it is overall weaker than Pandemonium (240 total damage vs 306 total damage).

However, if we use a different build, it might actually be the better choice, regardless of its slower speed and higher stamina consumption.

When you switch to a new weapon, always hang on to your old one for a little while - just to make sure you definitely like your new weapon better.

[h3]Can I make my gear even more powerful?[/h3]

If you acquire a new enchantable item - a Helm, a Chest Armor, or a Weapon - it is always a good idea to apply an enchant on it provided you have the materials.

Enchanting makes items even better and can mean the difference between victory and defeat!

You can enchant items at the Occultist. The higher his level is, the better the enchant he can craft for you.

Let’s take a look at an early-game Chest Armor enchant:



As you can see, the increase is quite significant, as it provides a +4 level up worth of attributes.

Now, let’s look at a late-game weapon enchant:



Applying this Astral Runestone to the right weapon makes it way more powerful. It also has negative effects on many weapons, but as you can see, the Starburnt Scepter has no Dexterity and Strength Scaling: so only the positive effects apply.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with enchantments to find the one that works best for your character!

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[h2]And that’s a wrap![/h2]

We really hope you enjoyed this more in-depth look at a very key aspect of our game.

Items are hugely important in Mandragora, and we hope a lot of you are excited to be able to find, craft, equip, and enchant all this epic loot.

And as we get ever closer to release, we’re looking forward to sharing even more details with you, so please stay tuned!

Of course, as always, we want to hear from you! Please let us know your thoughts in the comments or over on our Discord!

We’re at Gamescom!

Hi everyone!

[h2]Mandragora is at Gamescom 2024![/h2]

If you’re also attending Gamescom this year, be sure to drop by and check out our booth: Hall 10.1, Booth E021.

All visitors will be able to take a selfie with our huge Matron Layla werewolf statue as well as have the chance to play a little Mandragora!



Matron Layla is really excited to eat– I mean, meet you all!

Development Update

Hi everyone!

It’s development update time again! We’re super excited to be able to share another sneak peek into development with you, as well as a bit more info on where we’re at with various aspects of the game.

[h2]Big Bad Bosses[/h2]

We’ve shown a few sneak peeks before of the various enemies you can expect to encounter, and we’re now finalizing the rest of that gallery of villains with plenty of brutal bosses.

Our original plan was to include 10 bosses and 5 mini bosses in the game. However, in the meantime, we realized that there were way more cool beasts and foes we wanted to include to make Mandragora feel even more epic: that’s why we’re now working on including a total of 15 bosses and 19 mini bosses in the full game. Which means plenty more opportunities to try out your strongest loot and face off against challenging foes!

Just make sure you always time your attacks well, prepare your loadout, and get to know your enemy, otherwise it won’t end well… but at least the beast will be well-fed!



[h2]The Fine Folks of Faelduum[/h2]

We talked a little in our last update about where we’re at with the many narrative aspects of the game, including the various characters that populate Faelduum, the world of our game.

Some NPCs you speak to will act as vendors, so you’ll be able to buy and sell useful items and equipment from them. Others will act primarily as quest-givers, often asking for your help in defeating a great evil or simply bringing them a treasured item.

And some will have more mysterious motives…

The localization process is also now well underway, as we work with a professional team of translators to get all that narrative gold (as well as all the less “exciting” stuff, like UI buttons!) skillfully translated into other languages.



[h2]Tricks of the Talent Tree[/h2]

We know many of you love a good Talent Tree (so do we!), so it’s important for us that all the skills available there are fun, balanced, and can be used to create satisfying builds.

You’ll be able to choose which Active Skills you want to have to hand, so remember to customize your current loadout to make sure you use one that best suits the latest challenge you’re facing!

There are also different categories of Skills available - like Astral Skills, which can help you bless your weapon with powerful light to deal even more damage, among other perks!



[h2]Atmospheric Areas[/h2]

Of course, fancy skills are most useful when you can deploy them against enemies, and we all know that it’s also way cooler if you have an epic backdrop to those battles.

That’s why another core thing we’re working on right now is further improving the appearance of our existing levels. That means things like polishing the VFX and tweaking the lighting of environments while still making sure the action is always front and center!

We’ve always wanted to make sure Mandragora is a game that looks super visually appealing, and we’ve been super happy to get feedback from you that we’ve been hitting the mark so far.

And that’s definitely something we want to keep up, regardless of whether you’ll be wandering around a spooky castle or a murky swamp!



In addition to all that shiny stuff, we’re also continuing to work on getting more news to share with you regarding when you can next get your hands on the game.

There are a lot of moving parts that go into decisions on the timing of things like that, especially now as we’re working alongside our new publisher, but as soon as we have any news to share, we’ll be sure to let you know in another update!

In the meantime, we’d just like to thank you for your continued patience and support as we work on making Mandragora the best it can be.

+ In case you missed it: we were highlighted during the Future Games Show showcase, where we also announced our partnership with our new publisher, Knights Peak! If you missed it, be sure to check out the video right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpb3BvQazzI

We hope you enjoyed this development update!

Until next time!