In the Forbidden Sanctum Expansion, we introduced ten new Divination Cards designed by our Supporters. For today's news post, we asked Suzu520 to share their story with us about their card "The Wedding Gift". Check out their story below!
Hello Exiles, I’m Suzu520.
Before talking about “The Wedding Gift” card design, I want to share my journey in Path of Exile. I started playing Path of Exile from the Sacrifice of the Vaal expansion. I still remember the time when I was in the Garena TW server, and people in Global chat were all asking, “Where do we find the Fetid Pool?” Such fun. There was a time where my friends and I could not beat Merciless Dominus, and a random player joined our party through the Noticeboard and cleared it with us. That was a vivid memory of Path of Exile having a very wholesome community. I have played every single league and have enjoyed the game ever since the Forsaken Masters expansion when I finally moved to the Global server from the Garena TW server.
During the closed beta of the “Fall of Oriath” expansion, the playtest was up to the end of Act 7 and that expansion of the main quest storyline shocked me to my core, especially Act 6 & 7: Nessa and Silk’s death. I love the game even more than before, I knew I wanted to design a card and give back to the community.
I am a big fan of Summoner playstyle, from Undying Evangelist Raise Spectre, 50x Summon Raging Spirits, 50x Animate Weapon, all the way up to Solar Guard Raise Spectre. One day my friend told me about the sword “The Dancing Dervish” and the respective upgrade “The Dancing Duo” back then. I had been curious about Minions that came from items instead of skill gems, so I tried it out and absolutely loved them. That was my initial idea for the card design. I wanted a card that allows SSF players to farm specific bosses for, so my original idea was a 6 White-Socketed Dancing Duo, but due to the item not being able to drop, the idea was scrapped.
During Sentinel league, I successfully reached level 100 for the first time with an Arakaali’s Fang build. The build has such a unique summoning style that I fell in love with it, and it was the first time ever I did not reroll a new character 5 days into league starting. Meanwhile, I discovered KittenCatNoodle’s Lore Series and had been listening to all her videos in the background while I was levelling to 100. That was the moment where my brain goes “Eureka!” What if I designed a card that was lore-accurate and gives my favourite summoner weapon? Coincidentally the weapon came from Arakaali, where the end of Close beta during 3.0 was, and it left a strong impression on my mind.
After finally deciding on the reward, I had to think about the art and card description. That was easy, since Silk wanted a wedding gift as we attended their fateful day. The art had to be Silk’s final moment where we and Yeena witness his union with Arakaali. Since we cannot do anything to save Silk, we could kill Arakaali as a revenge kill for Silk. As for the flavour text, people that worshipped Arakaali would be very happy about the goddess getting more human essence, hence the line “The Acolytes congratulated the lucky groom for becoming one with the Goddess.”
When the card finally got released, a few friends talked to me and said that they had always wanted to play the build but never got enough currency to do so. I’m very happy that they get to share the experience of playing Arakaali’s Fang.
That’s the end of my story, hope you all have a great New Year and may RNGesus be with you!
