#44 – SEC. SKILLS

Welcome back – and thanks for your patience in following this project!

Here are some numbers:

• On average, Spire of Sorcery’s page has 30,000 unique visitors each month;
  
• Spire of Sorcery’s official Discord server currently has over 3,000 members;
  
• The game is on the wishlists of a bit more than 43,000 Steam users.
  

Today, let’s talk about Secondary Skills.




First, let’s recall the primary skills in the world of Rund:

Here’s all the skills in the game, in one picture.

The “magic” group:
Battle Magic, Travel Magic, Social Magic, Domestic Magic, Concentration

The “crafting” group:
Alchemy, Artificing, Astrology, Healing, Literacy

The “knowledge” group:
Monstrology, Herbalism, Geology

The practical level of a skill from these three groups is responsible for the success of a specific action that a character performs, and the theoretical level of such skill is responsible for which actions are actually available to the character to try out. I.e. if you already know how to bake an apple pie, then you can try to bake it; the success of actually delivering a good pie, though, will depend on your practical experience.

Now, secondary skills are a further enhancement of the model, representing a narrow-use ability that is not related to magic.




When secondary skill is learned (“open”), it adds a bonus to the chances of success for the specific action being performed.

If you send two characters with the same level of Herbalism to collect deathflower fruits, the character that already has the secondary skill of “Gathering” will be more successful in her quest. So, if the quest is defined as “collect 20 fruits”, then she will finish it faster; and if the quest is defined as “collect fruits for 20 days”, then she will collect more.

The “success bonus” works regardless of the complexity of the action. Thus, learning a secondary skill brings positive results for both when a character is just starting out and when a character is already in the advanced stage of a particular skill.

Creating a skill icon that is easy to understand normally takes quite a few revisions.

When a character performs an individual action related to a secondary skill (such as hunting, or writing a book), the success depends just on that character’s skills.

When characters travel as a party on a quest and the party performs a group action (such as passing near a dangerous area or setting up camp), the success depends on the collective skills of everyone in the party.

Having someone with “Survival” and “Disguise” secondary skills helps the whole party. At the same time, if other party members lack these skills, then the risk of getting negative outcome concerns everyone, including those whose individual skills are strong enough not to face it if they were to travel on their own.




Characters learn secondary skills by reading books (such books will have a special indicator on their covers in addition to the primary skill, for example “Literacy + Calligraphy”) and by taking lessons (when the lesson is taught by someone proficient in such skill). The third way to learning a secondary skill is through practice: for example, when a character disarms traps while on quests, over time his skill of Domestic Magic increases while at the same time he picks up experience in the specific secondary skill of Trap Mastery.

Each secondary skill remains “closed” until it is fully learned and can only be used when it’s fully “opened”.




Hunting affects the success rate of procuring meat, skins and furs.

Fishing is about catching fish in any sort of water (river, lake, and even ocean).

Herding corresponds to the success of growing animals in the Spire’s Kennels (this is a late-game feature that will probably ship only after the game enters Early Access).




Lumbering corresponds to the success of cutting down trees to produce wood that is later used for crafting and room upgrades in the Spire.

Gathering is about any kid of foraging (wild herbs, mushrooms and berries, exotic fruits, etc.).

Farming relates to growing herbs, fruits and vegetables at the Spire (currently we don’t think that we will manage to add this part of mechanics in time for the Early Access).




Mining corresponds to the success in extracting resources like emeralds, diamonds, ore and others that require digging.




Cooking is about preparing food rations.





Knowing Diagnostics increases the success of discovering the illness behind the symptoms of a character. It also increases the chance of discovering the HEALTH stat of the character being diagnosed.

Care for sick is about helping ill or wounded characters get better, faster.

First aid helps to minimize the damage during accidents (when traveling as well as within the Spire).




Smithing, jewelry, tailoring and carpentry are all pretty obvious crafting skills: they are used to produce new items out of resources as well as to repair damaged items.




Ancient tongue is the only secondary skill that serves as a strict requirement: a character absolutely must have this skill open in order to read books that are written in ancient tongue.

Calligraphy is responsible for the success of copying and writing books with high quality.




Speechcraft corresponds to the success of communication during diplomacy, trading and negotiations.

Teaching not only helps in giving theoretical experience to students being taught, but also provides for a chance to spark in students an interest in the subject (or strengthen the already existing interest).

Pickpocketing is about stealing in human settlements from others (not from houses or chests, but from the pockets of dwellers).




Lock-picking corresponds to the success of opening locks on chests, abandoned buildings and, lastly, on houses in towns and villages.

Trap mastery is about noticing traps while out on quests, disarming such traps and setting up your own traps (in the Spire).




Streetwise helps find hidden locations in cities and towns (for example, different Guilds) as well as helps to remain unnoticed (avoiding the eyes of the guards and other malicious parties).

Survival is about finding drinkable water and safe spots for camping while out traveling across Rund.

Disguise helps avoid unwanted encounters outside of the Spire.




Ranged combat helps in the unlikely case when your disciples need to actually engage in a fight using distanced weapons (bows, crossbows, slings).

Melee combat helps in the same context but using shields, swords and axes.

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And that’s it for today! Next week, we plan to talk about setting up a schedule for your disciples (which tells them when to sleep, work or enjoy some free time – though not everyone will follow such orders!).

Once we finish the concept of a new creature, we create line art in black and white, and then start to colorize it. Here you can see different versions of colorization for Blackpaw (creatures that live in packs and like to steal and hoard items).

As always, for updates on work in progress, please check the game’s official Discord server.



ːsummer_magicː Spire of Sorcery – Character Generator (Steam)
ːsummer_magicː Official Discord server
ːsummer_magicː YouTube recordings of the development live streams
ːsummer_magicː Twitter (game updates)
ːsummer_magicː Facebook (game updates)



ːmaliceː Official Discord server
ːmaliceː Twitter (game updates)
ːmaliceː Facebook (game updates)
ːmusicː Original Soundtrack on Spotify



ːnotebookː Charlie Oscar’s developer page on Steam
ːnotebookː Twitter (studio news)
ːnotebookː Facebook (studio news)
ːnotebookː "Behind the scenes" Instagram
ːnotebookː YouTube