Spire of Sorcery News

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The Spire is your home, and the way it looks reflects your strategy chosen to complete the main campaign. Between two different campaigns of the same player, the Spires may very much differ: one may boast expansive underground caves while another may be crowned with a ring of levitating gardens. There's no plan for "the perfect" Spire, as every time you will start the main campaign, you'll be making decisions unique to your own situation: the disciples at your command, the resources available within reach, and the unique events that may have happened on the global map of the world.




At the start of the campaign, your Spire looks pretty much like any other player's Spire – the differences in the starting setup, if any, will depend on the character generation quest at the start of the game, and as such will be minor (if any).

• Every Spire will have MAGE'S QUARTERS – the place where your mage character resides, where he or she sleeps and receives guests. By type, it's a combination of a living room and a small warehouse (to store the most dear / valuable items). It is important to note that this room provides comfort for the mage and lends prestige to the mage's office (you will read more about purposes of rooms later in this blog).
  
  Imagine coming to see your master as one of the disciples, and finding yourself in a room full of ancient artefacts, with a ball of fire suspended in mid-air as a sort of a fireplace. Wouldn’t you pay a little more attention to the mage’s instruction? Or it could work the other way, of course, where a disciple with ascetic traits would actually sneer at a lush office, while a small bare room would impress her the most.
  
  
• The other room (or rooms, in this case) present in every Spire at start, are LIVING QUARTERS – this is where your disciples will rest after their day’s labor. At the start of the main campaign, you will already have enough Living Quarters to accommodate all of the disciples that join you in your campaign.
  
  
• Then there’s CLASSROOM, a place of study where you (or another teacher) will work with the disciples to increase their theoretical experience across a whole range of disciplines.
  
  
• Finally, every Spire at the start of the campaign will also already have a small WAREHOUSE used to house resources, items, ingredients and whatever else you’ll possess at that point (we’re covered the topic of resources in the previous blog post).
  

The Spire is made of rooms, with one room being the minimal unit. You can expand the Spire by adding rooms and floors (see below). Smaller rooms can be merged, to make larger rooms; and larger rooms can be split into smaller rooms – it all depends on your needs, and nothing here will prevent your progress by becoming impossible to change; since the Spire is a creation of magic, changes are always possible (though they’ll come at a cost).

When adding rooms, you will be building these to the left or to the right of the central staircase on the selected floor. There is a limit of having 5 rooms maximum in each direction. The further the room from the central staircase, the higher the cost of its construction. And if you don’t like the currently available floors, you can build new floors, which at minimum consist of a central staircase with one room to the left plus one to the right.

When adding floors, you can build either upwards or downwards. The further the floor from the ground (either up or down), the higher the cost of its construction. There is no limit to how much the Spire may expand upwards or downwards, except for the cost – however, do keep in mind that the higher the Spire becomes, the higher visibility it attains in its surrounding area, increasing the chance of attracting attention of the travelers passing by.

The cost of adding a new room (or a whole new floor) consists of resources (stone, wood, clay, iron) and magic energy of your mage. If you lack a specific resource, you can make up the difference by spending more magic energy. As such, you are always able to expand the Spire, the only question is – how taxing this will be, for the pool of your magic energy, which is by far the most valuable resource in the game.

One more thing: while regular rooms can be built by a mage of any skill, there are certain special types of rooms (such as levitating, or rotating ones) that require an advanced skill of Astral Carpentry and some research done before becoming available for construction.






Once a room is constructed, it will need its purpose set. Is this a warehouse, a lab, or a prison cell? The good news is, the purpose of each room can be re-assigned at a later stage, so if you ran out of space to keep your prisoners, you can always convert your greenhouses into more cells – if this is what you’re after, in the current campaign.

There’s no limit on having multiple rooms of the same type, so that architecturally, rather than having a huge warehouse that will keep on expanding, you may end up having 5 smaller warehouses spread across different floors, which will serve your purpose equally well.

There are certain limitations to consider when assigning a room’s purpose: some types need to be strictly above the ground (for example, a GREENHOUSE); some – strictly below (for example, a CAVE). In other cases, the relative position of the room towards the ground floor will not prevent you from assigning the chosen purpose, but would rather add a positive or a negative modifier to its effectiveness (for example, the higher up the greenhouse is, the more natural light it receives – the more effective it is for growing plants).

Now, once you’ve built a room and set its purpose (from what’s available at your current skill level), you will want to make it active, and here each purpose has its own set of requirements in terms of what furniture you’ll need to install there, before it can start functioning as intended.

To start functioning, LIVING QUARTERS will need beds; a LIBRARY will need shelves; a WAREHOUSE will need cupboards; and so on.

This furniture can be either crafted or traded (as well as simply found somewhere and brought back; or received as a gift), but if you lack a chance to get it the “physical” way, you can always cast it, spending your magic energy. Initially, casting furniture instead of crafting it will be less efficient. But with time, as the Astral Carpentry skill of your mage and/or your disciples increases, you may be able to use your magic energy to cast such items that are simply impossible to craft in a regular way.



Each room has two main characteristics that determine how well it serves its purpose: the room’s effectiveness and the room’s prestige.

The effectiveness defines the direct function of the room, and can be increased by adding optional furniture or fixtures. For example, adding a glass roof to a GREENHOUSE significantly boosts up its production due to increased natural light; while adding candleholders to a CLASSROOM allows to study around the clock, whether it’s night-time or not; other things that increase the effectiveness of a CLASSROOM are learning tools, mounted exhibits and blackboards – all of these are optional items that make the room more efficient at serving its purpose.

As to the prestige of the room, this influences the motivation of disciples to spend time there. Items like portraits of famous mages of the ancient times will make a CLASSROOM more special. Items like elaborate candle-stands will have a similar effect on a WORKSHOP, or a MESS HALL.

It must be noted here, that some of the furniture and fixtures will come in the form of artefacts. For example, you may locate and bring back to the Spire something like a Magic Shelf, which would take the space of just 1 slot, but will provide 5 slots worth of storage; or, perhaps, you’ll receive as a gift a Candle of Concentration – a regular-sized candle that speeds up any sort of process happening in the room where it’s placed, be it study or mediation.



Each piece of furniture and fixtures requires special placement. For example, you cannot add daylight windows to a room that’s located underground; similarly, you cannot fit a huge Grand Alchemist Table into a small, basic Lab.

Each such item takes a number of slots and bears certain requirements as to where it can be placed – on the floor, on the walls, or on the ceiling; correspondingly, each room has a present number of slots that it allows to use for furniture. In this respect, smaller things offering the same effect / prestige are always better, as they leave more space for other decorations.





Below is a list of some of the purposes that can be assigned to a room. Please note that this list is neither final, nor complete:

• MAGE’S QUARTERS – this is where your mage lives.
  
• LIVING QUARTERS – this is where your disciples live.
  
• CLASSROOM – a place of study, where characters gain theoretical experience from being taught by another person.
  
• LIBRARY – a place of study, where characters gain theoretical experience from reading books available in the Library.
  
• LAB – a place of research (theoretical experience in multiple fields) and crafting of potions and elixirs (practical Alchemy), where characters produce new items, gain practical and theoretical experience and advance in research.
  
• PRACTICE HALL – a place of experimentation, duels and battle magic where characters gain practical experience.
  
• WORKSHOP – a place where things are crafted (everything except potions/elixirs, which are produced in a Lab).
  
• WAREHOUSE – a place where you keep resources, items, ingredients and artefacts.
  
• TREASURY – a version of a Warehouse that is more secure (so that valuable artefacts, for example, can be less of a temptation for some greedy disciples – or visiting thieves).
  
• GLASSHOUSE – a place where herbs and plants grow, whether for use as food of as ingredients in creating potions.
  
• KENNELS – a place where monsters are kept/raised.
  
• PRISON CELLS – a place where characters (disciples or captives/prisoners) are kept.
  
• HOSPITAL – a place where characters are healed, whether with the help of someone with medical skills or not (though without a medic, this is going to only stop the outbreak but not address the cause).
  
• OBSERVATORY – a place where characters can observe the sky, read star signs, foretell the future, discover special spots on global map, and prepare horoscopes.
  
• WATCHTOWER – a room that increases the zone of directly visible part of the global map surrounding the Spire.
  
• MEDITATION ROOM – a room that allows to increase / use the skill of concentration, improving mood, health and restoring energy (mage’s or that of disciples).
  
• KITCHEN – a place where food items are crafted (e.g. field rations).
  
• MESS HALL – a place where disciples and mage consume food and socialize; without a Mess Hall, characters can still eat in their quarters, but without the social aspect and with less control of mage over the mood of disciples. As this is a room that every character visits daily, the level of prestige of this room carries a big impact over everyone in the Spire.
  
• GAME ROOM – a place where characters relax and socialize.
  
• DISTORTED ROOM – a room that cannot be constructed; this room may appear as a result of an accident during one of the experiments.
  
• PORTAL ROOM – we’ll talk about Portals, and Portal Room, a bit later in the blog, as this is a late-game feature that’s still being designed.
  
• MAGIC ENERGY ROOM – possibly, a room that may store and release magic energy; it’s not 100% confirmed yet that this room will be present at the launch of the game in Early Access.
  

These topics are together because both of these things deal with the space outside of the Spire. We’re not yet certain how the actual farming will happen, except that it will be through a special type of quest, where you’ll command a party to go out and, say, plant, care for, and later harvest a specific crop.

As to the defense of the Spire, our current plan is to allow construction of a separate section outside (“the barrier”), which will include such things as:

• traps (physical and magical)
  
• moats and similar defensive constructs;
  
• monsters and animals planted to live in the space surrounding the Spire (i.e. between the moat and the actual walls of the Spire).
  

Whenever a party is detected outside of the Spire (having a good WATCHTOWER greatly helps with early detection), a quest marker appears, which allows you to send a party to confront the guests. Perhaps your disciples may prevent the attack by using magic to scare them away. Perhaps they may overpower the intruders, using battle magic. Or perhaps they may bribe them with gifts, and convince them that attempting to enter the Spire is really a pointless undertaking.

If prevention fails (or you don’t even want to try sending a “meet & greet” party), the incoming party has to best the barrier before they can set foot into the Spire. Maybe some of them will be wounded by the traps. Maybe some won’t be able to cross the moat. And maybe some will fall prey to the monsters and animals living by the gates.

Once the party (or the surviving part of it) crosses into the Spire, something called Close Encounter. Close Encounter is an obligatory quest that you cannot reject. If you fail at this quest, the campaign is over, as your mage will be imprisoned and burnt by the Inquisition – or simply killed on the spot (unless the intruders are thieves, in which case they’ll plunder but won’t kill, unless attacked). This is also the only combat quest where your mage may become a part of the party.

As this part of the game is still a work in progress, we’re certain that we’ll cover it in more detail in a few months, once our working prototype includes these areas.



With this, we wish you all the best – and see you next week! (or sooner, if you join the official Discord server of the game ːgreengemstoneː).

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ːsummer_magicː Facebook (game updates)



ːmaliceː official Discord server
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ːsummer_magicː OTHER ISSUES OF THIS BLOG
ːQuestionsː CONSOLIDATED Q&A THREAD

Welcome back! Thanks to the discussion on the project's Discord server as well as on Steam forums, there's no lack of topics to address. Which is great news! Spire of Sorcery is many things at once: it is an RPG, it is a survival game, and it is also very much a strategy. So today we would like to address one of the issues that are directly relevant to the strategic component: ːgreengemstoneː resources.



Whenever we say resources in Spire of Sorcery, we mean something at this level:

• wood;
  
• stone;
  
• iron;
  
• clay;
  
• food; – and similar
  

These are the resources that you can source (for example, by sending a disciple into the forest to cut down a few trees); or trade (with one of the settlements, human or non-human); or receive as a gift (if you enslave a settlement or if you successfully promote Cult of the Spire).

These resources occupy certain space in your Spire's warehouse, and as such, as your ambitions grow, you will need to either expand your warehouse, or take a certain risk by storing the resources outside of the Spire (where they might get stolen by passersby or damaged by weather).

Important: if you're taking an action that requires certain resources, you may use your magic energy to fill in the gap of any of the missing resources. It is a pretty expensive way, and to be honest – a real waste of the precious magic energy, but still, it is possible. For example, if you're constructing a new room, let's say, a cave to grow crystals, and you don't have enough stone in your warehouse... you can still carry out the action by spending more magic energy to make it happen.





Whenever we say items in Spire of Sorcery, we mean something at this level:

• chairs, candles – and furniture in general;
  
• potions, field rations – and ready-made consumables in general;
  
• cloaks, boots – and equipment in general.
  

These are the things that are produced by humans, or non-humans, from resources, and can be consumable/expendable (e.g. a potion) or lasting (e.g. a dagger). You can craft them, trade them, receive/give them as gifts, or find them (for example, going into the ruins of abandoned town to bring back whatever your party can salvage).

The items that belong to the class of furnitureare used in the Spire. This is what you will decorate your rooms with. And why do you need this? Because the function of each room is affected by its quality and prestige. Let's take a Library as an example. If you add more light, you increase its effectiveness, allowing the disciples to study faster as they have such an easy time reading all the books even during the night-time. If you add beautiful paintings on the wall, and decorate the windows with crimson curtains, you increase its prestige, improving motivation of disciples to go and study there.

By the way, in one of the later blogs we will talk about the Spire itself, but for now let's just note that in addition to decorations and light, your library will also need two kinds of spaces: space to keep the books; and space to study (i.e. chairs and tables). So you can have a small but very effective library, that will drive disciples like a magnet; or you can have a huge and bland library that would allow a dozen of disciples to study at the same time, but might so lack anything special, that the process of study will be rather taxing.



Whenever we say ingredients in Spire of Sorcery, we mean something at this level:

• special roots, rare mushrooms and plants;
  
• crystals, gems and precious minerals;
  
• animal products like horns, beaks, hair, skins and such.
  

These ingredients are used for Alchemy and cannot be replaced by magic energy. In other words, while you can still build a cave even if you lack stone, you absolutely cannot prepare a painkiller potion if you lack the specific mushroom that is required by the recipe.

The way to source the ingredients is to trade, to harvest – or to grow. To grow animals, you can construct a farm, or cages; to grow plants, you can construct a herbal garden; to grow crystals, you can construct caves; and to grow monsters, you can construct kennels.

Important: while the recipes in the game remain the same across all the campaigns, the specific properties of each item (e.g. mushroom, root, flower, etc.) are generated anew each time you start a campaign. It is highly unlikely, that the same mushroom, for example, will have the same properties in two different campaigns. The way it works is that a recipe for poison, for example, requires 2 different ingredients with the property "poison". And dried & crushed wings of fluter have 1 rare and 1 common properties. So in one campaign, the "rare" property will be "poisonous", and it can be used to make poison; while in another, the "rare" property of the same wings will be, for example, "energy boost", and thus, while this ingredient will be useful elsewhere, it won't fit the recipe for poison anymore.

As you probably understood by now, the availability of specific resources and ingredients close to the Spire at the start of the campaign will be one of the major influences on the strategy you choose in the game: it makes little sense to spend time and effort looking for a specific ingredient that you need for potion X, when you can already have potion Y made from ingredients safely harvested nearby.





Whenever we say artefacts in Spire of Sorcery, we mean unique items that may be obtained (found, traded, stolen) or constructed (requires advanced skill of Arteficing), that may affect ːnotebookː STATS, ːnotebookː TRAITS, ːnotebookː SKILLS, and otherwise cause permanent effect on the owner.

In the world of Spire of Sorcery, there are hundreds of artefacts. Oftentimes these will lend advantage in one field and disadvantage in another. Some remain from the times before the mage wars. Some belong to non-human creatures. Some are owned by lords in the region close to the Distorted Lands, where the need for their use is stronger than the fear of the Inquisition.

Important: whenever you come across a new artefact, you won't really know what it is and what are its effects – until you properly research it, using qualified disciple/your mage, and sufficient time. Of course, you may always just start using the artefact... with unpredictable consequences.



There's the inventory of the Spire – what you own and control, and what is accessible to the disciples (e.g. books in the library, or potions in the pantry); and the private inventories of each of the disciples – what they own and control, and what lies beyond your reach.

Depending on the traditions that you install in the Spire, and the traits of individual disciples, you may see outcomes where a party sent to look for treasure brings back an amazing loot and freely gives it to you upon return; or where the same party comes back with their private pockets full of gems, and reluctantly gives you only a small share of the finds, because they are greedy – or because this is what you promised to them, or for some other reason, based on how you reached this point in the campaign.

The inventory generally is split between equipment (clothing, weapons and such) and consumables (food, drink and potions). A sidetone on potions: there are no "healing potions" in the world of Spire of Sorcery. A potion may sustain a character's energy, or improve their mood, or take away the pain symptoms, but a magic may never truly heal a broken bone – for this, you will need someone with a Healing skill, spending substantial time to mend things.

It's also worth noting that most potions do have side-effects. A bout of energy may lead to exhaustion; a painkiller may slow a person down to a crawl, and so on.

Finally, one last note: each item in the equipment range can generally be in one of the three states:

• good
  
• damaged
  
• broken
  

A skilled character may repair or mend items, given enough time and resources for fixing it up.



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That's it for this week – and thanks for being a part of the community! Our official Discord server now has over 400 members, and we look forward to seeing you join the conversation there! We'll be back in a few days with a look at another part of the game.

–––



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ːsummer_magicː Facebook (game updates)



ːmaliceː official Discord server
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ːnotebookː Facebook (studio news)
ːhypnoheartː "Behind the scenes" Instagram
ːfireappleː YouTube

ːsummer_magicː OTHER ISSUES OF THIS BLOG
ːQuestionsː CONSOLIDATED Q&A THREAD

Welcome back to the dev blog of Spire of Sorcery! It's been an intense week and a half for us here at Charlie Oscar (moving forward on a lot of different fronts at the same time, from global map to the way the Spire will look like). Today we will talk about something that is very likely to make you win – or lose – the campaign: the skills of your mage, as well as the skills of your disciples.



All the skills in the game are split into two groups: :turnon_lightning: Major and :turnon_lightning: Minor. An example of a Major Skill would be Alchemy. It is a big area and once a character reaches advanced stages, it will make many things possible. An example of a Minor Skill would be Lockpicking. It's a fairly specialised activity that doesn't branch out much even when it's at a very high level.

There are three ways to increase character's skills in Spire of Sorcery:

• THROUGH TEACHING
  
• THROUGH THE ACTUAL USE OF SKILL
  
• THROUGH READING BOOKS
  

Important note: Major Skills can be increased in all of these three ways; Minor Skills can only be increased through the use of skill and through reading books – but they cannot be taught. Generally speaking, Minor Skills are the skills that your disciples already possess by the time when they arrive to the Spire, they are a sort of a bonus (which, nevertheless, can become crucial at certain times in the campaign).

Like in other areas of the game, a character may have a specific ːnotebookː TRAIT that would make her more or less interested in working on a specific skill, which would boost or decrease their motivation and speed of their progress. Someone who loves animals will progress fast with the farming, while pushing an honest, justice-seeking disciple to practice thievery is only going to get him or her depressed.

From early on in the campaign, you'll face a tough choice: your mage's teaching impact on the disciples is limited by his or her own skills; so it's essential to invest time and efforts into increasing them.

On the other hand, any time that your mage spends learning... is the time that the mage does not spend teaching the disciples! ːF1timeː

Another key point: in the game, there are no "levels" that characters may attain. Each Major Skill has its own specific experience axis that consists of Theory and Practice, while each Minor Skill has a single Experience value that will increase throughout the game.





Characters gain theoretical experience by:

• ATTENDING CLASSES
  
• READING BOOKS
  
• CONDUCTING RESEARCH
  

Characters gain practical experience by:

• USING THE ACTUAL SKILL
  
• STAGING EXPERIMENTS
  

It is possible to have more theoretical experience than practical experience – the exact gap that is possible, is limited by the character's ːnotebookː MEMORY stat.

It is not possible to have more practical experience than theoretical experience, and if your Theory and Practice values are equal, then by accumulating more practical experience, you will be pushing both values up, but doing it very, very slowly.

Each quest that you assign to a disciple (or undertake through your own mage) has different skill requirements. You cannot assign someone a quest that requires a higher theoretical skill level than they currently have, simply because the character wouldn't event know what to do and where to start (for example, what if someone asked you to prepare some fresh うに ("uni"), but you had no clue where to get it and how to cook it? You'll gain nothing by sitting and staring at the wall :locked:).

Following the quest, the character's experience grows regardless of whether the action was successful or not. The lower the required skill compared to the character's practical experience, the more certain is the success of the undertaking – but there is less experience to be gained, right down to the situation where a simple candle-holder made by a master blacksmith would yield no experience at all.

The higher the required skill level compared to the character's actual practical experience, the more likely the action is to result in a failure – especially when the required skill level matches the character's theoretical experience, but falls behind the practical experience.

Does this mean that attempting actions at the edge of character's current skill level is the best way to progress? Sure, but please be aware of the drawbacks: firstly, you are likely not to receive what you wanted, e.g. making a long sword above your blacksmith's practical experience may result in waste of good metal and nothing to arm your disciples with; secondly, most failures carry a chance of accident, and in the case of blacksmith shooting above her skill, you may end up with the Spire's whole wing burning down to ashes in the process.





Below are some of the Major Skills. In the brackets are the stats (major, minor influence) that affect the pace of improving the skill.

ːnotebookː LITERACY (MEMORY, INTELLECT) – how fast and how effectively a character studies books; how well a character writes books and manuscripts; how good are character's foreign language skills.

ːnotebookː CONCENTRATION (WILLPOWER, INTELLECT) – minimizes loss of progress when a character is distracted in the middle of current action; increases the efficiency of sleep and meditation. Decreases magic energy costs for all Rituals. Makes learning from other characters more effective. Opens access to advanced meditation techniques, increases speed of recovery for magic energy, allows to store more magic energy.

ːnotebookː HERBOLOGY (INTELLECT, MEMORY) – defines the effectiveness of gathering herbs and mushrooms in the wild, of growing herbs and mushrooms in the Spire (in the garden and in the mushroom cave). Defines knowledge of recipes of potions made from herbs and mushrooms. Allows to be better at seeking paths in the forests.

ːnotebookː MONSTROLOGY (CHARISMA, WILLPOWER) – training animals and monsters, taking care of captive animals and monsters. Knowledge of behaviour and anatomy of animals and monsters. Hunting for game and effectively processing and preparing killed game, capturing live animals.

ːnotebookː GEOLOGY (INTELLECT, INTUITION) – knowledge of Stones and minerals, ability to find rare stones. Knowledge of precious stones and gems, and their effects. Knowledge of special liquids (mercury, acids, etc.). Allows to be better at seeking paths in the caves.

ːnotebookː ALCHEMY (INTELLECT, MEMORY) – preparing potions and elixirs, effectiveness of using potions and elixirs. Cooking.

ːnotebookː ASTROLOGY (INTUITION, MEMORY) – forecasting future events based on the star alignment in the sky, being able to reveal the coordinates of special locations on the global map. Preparing horoscopes for disciples that reveal their character traits. Being able to find one's way based on the stars in the sky.

ːnotebookː HEALING (INTELLECT, INTUITION) – healing wounds and taking care of wounded.

ːnotebookː ARTIFICING (INTELLECT, MEMORY) – ability to recognise and create magic items.

ːnotebookː ASTRAL CARPENTRY (WILLPOWER, INTELLECT) – being able to create furniture in the Spire, building new rooms and floors.

ːnotebookː COMMON MAGIC (MEMORY, INTELLECT) – spells used in everyday life.

ːnotebookː SOCIAL MAGIC (CHARISMA, INTELLECT) – spells that affect minds and feelings of humans and non-humans.

ːnotebookː BATTLE MAGIC (WILLPOWER, INTELLECT) – spells used in battles.

ːnotebookː ADVENTURE MAGIC (INTUITION, MEMORY) – spells used for adventures and travel.

ːnotebookː RITUALS (MEMORY, INTELLECT) – the rituals that allow for control of energies and living creatures.

ːnotebookː RESEARCH (INTUITION, INTELLECT) – determines the speed and efficiency of discovering new spells and alchemic formulas. Also determines the ability to discover characteristics of unknown items by study and experiments.





Minor skills cannot be taught, but are obtainable and upgradeable through experience and through books. Unlike Major Skills, they don't have separate Theory and Practice experience values, but have just one general Experience value.

The most important Minor Skill is Teaching –

ːnotebookː TEACHING (CHARISMA, INTELLECT) – this skill defines how effective is the teaching when undertaken by this character; a high skill not only allows for more effectiveness, but may also kindle in the student an interest to the subject being taught.

Some of the other Minor Skills are:

• Culinary Arts
  
• Farming
  
• Woodcutting
  
• Reading footprints (of any creatures)
  
• Streetwise
  
• Thievery
  
• Lockpicking
  
• Survival
  
• Archery
  
• Melee
  
• Carpentry
  
• Blacksmith
  

Finally, there's one last piece of information about skills that we would like to share with you in this edition of the blog: every Major Skill includes a set of "special knowledge", which character gains once they accumulate a certain experience.

For example, for all magic-related skills, these are specific spells; for Herbology, these are specific types of plants; and so on.

At the start of the campaign, most special knowledge items are unavailable and need to be researched by reading books or performing research. All of the disciples in the Spire have access to the special knowledge accumulated in the Spire once their skills pass the required experience level.

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With this, we wish you a great week, and look forward to seeing you in our Discord community – or here on the forums!

–––



ːsummer_magicː official Discord server
ːsummer_magicː Twitter (game updates)
ːsummer_magicː Facebook (game updates)



ːmaliceː official Discord server
ːmaliceː Twitter (game updates)
ːmaliceː Facebook (game updates)



ːnotebookː Twitter (studio news)
ːnotebookː Facebook (studio news)
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ːfireappleː YouTube

ːsummer_magicː OTHER ISSUES OF THIS BLOG
ːQuestionsː CONSOLIDATED Q&A THREAD



Earlier in this blog, we discussed the stats and the traits, mentioned the skills – and went over the current states of human characters (the mage and his/her disciples). Today, we'd like to take a closer look at the traits they affect almost every aspect of the game, and are an extremely important part of its mechanics.

Let’s start with the summary of what we already know:

Your mage character (and every disciple in the game) is generated with certain ːnotebookː STATS. These do not change through the course of the game, and define the character at the structural level:

• HEALTH
  
• INTELLECT
  
• MEMORY
  
• WILLPOWER
  
• CHARISMA
  
• INTUITION
  

Is your mage smart? Does he have an exceptionally good memory? Is she healthy, with an immune system that will withstand most of the viruses? The same applies to every disciple in the game: they arrive to the Spire with the stats in place, and this is something that will significantly influence your decisions as to whom to accept and whom to reject.

Your mage character is also generated with certain ːnotebookː SKILLS. These will develop over the course of the game, increasing as character gains theoretical and practical experience.

There are multiple skills, ranging from Healing to Monstrology, and we will talk about them in detail in one of the future blogs. Meanwhile let's just note that screening your disciples for skills and teaching them selected topics to increase the skills that you consider essential to the survival and growth of the Spire, is a key part of the game.

When a wounded party returns from a quest, it’s whether or not you have the required medical skills in the Spire, that determines if you keep those valuable characters as a part of your Spire team – or add new tombstones to the Spire's graveyard.

The next group that affects your human characters is the ːnotebookː STATES: things like mood (happy or depressed), current health (sick or full of energy) and loyalty (abandoning the Spire at the first sign of trouble or sticking with you through their last breaths). Character states change all the time.

Current character states are influenced by character traits (what the character likes or hates), game events (a discovery of a horrible undead creature, for example) and your own actions (which to the character actually seem like events, for example arresting someone, or giving them a wonderful gift to keep).

And now, the ːnotebookː TRAITS: these fall with the same group as the stats. They do not change through the game and represent a part of what makes each character special. If you know the Stats and the Traits of a person, you know how to use them most efficiently. Skills and States are the layer that is based on such foundation, and something that you can influence to a great degree over the course of the whole campaign.






There's a pretty large number of possible character traits. On average, in Spire of Sorcery a human has from 3 to 5 traits (but of course, "average" is just that, some will have fewer and some will have substantially more).

Below are some of the possible traits, grouped in pairs:

• Lucky – Unlucky
  
• Cruel – Kind
  
• Inventive – Conservative
  
• Greedy – Generous
  
• Lively – Gloomy
  
• Attractive – Repulsive
  

A character can also be Talkative, Attentive, and so on.

It is important to note that character traits can be Hidden and Revealed, depending on your mage's knowledge of that person.

Some traits, like Handsome or Ugly, are revealed from day one – whenever a disciple with such traits knocks on your door, you will immediately notice them. Some traits will take some time, and effort, to become revealed.

In modern life, banks have a rule that's abbreviated as KYC – "know your customer". In Spire of Sorcery, a similar rule – "know your disciple" – is essential to success: if you send a greedy disciple to extract treasure from ruins, you may lose both the disciple and the treasure, with which he will run away; whereas if you send a lucky disciple to attempt diplomacy with one of the (rare and powerful) supreme magic creatures, your chances of success will be rather high.

There are three ways to reveal character traits of your disciples:

• through events
  
  For example, someone might steal a valuable item in the Spire, and when caught, this will reveal his/her trait that lead to the theft.
  
  
• through horoscope
  
  By building the complete horoscope of a character, you are able to access full knowledge of his/her traits.
  
  
• through a special ritual called Mind Reading
  
  This ritual is the fastest way to reveal character's traits, however it requires advanced skills and consumes valuable resources. So it's more of a late-game tool.
  

Generally, it is the stats of your mage that determine how fast you can reveal hidden traits (it depends on your Intellect and Intuition values).






At the start of the campaign, your mage already has a few disciples. The exact number of followers depends on the way that you complete the character generation quest. You are very likely to know all of the traits of these initial disciples, since they would have a story of personal relationship with you that goes a long way back.

There are three ways in which new disciples may join the Spire:

• by joining your existing party when out on a quest
  
  This is a rare occasion, and happens only when everything aligns in the right way.
  
  
• through the Seek Recruits type of quest
  
  This is more common: you will be sending your disciples predisposed to such quests (e.g. charismatic, beautiful, convincing, lucky negotiators) to settlements (villages, towns) in order to specifically seek out potential recruits and convince them to come back to the Spire with the party.
  
  
• through the Call of the Spire ritual
  
  This is another common tool to gain more recruits: you will be performing a magic ritual, that consumes energy on a daily basis, spread across the world the call that only the magically talented will hear. Think of it as sending "radio waves" through the world, that only the potential disciples can hear.
  

Once the potential recruit reaches the Spire, you have the option to Accept or Reject the character. If you don't have enough living or teaching space, you can Accept via Exchange, expelling one of the existing disciples and taking in the new person. Or you can just immediately add living space (and extra food supplies, if necessary) and accept the additional person (though adding food by magic is a pretty costly endeavour, and it makes more sense to find a disciple who would become a good gardener, and will supply the Spire's food in a regular way).

Before you decide to accept or reject the recruit, you will want to know as much as possible about that character – from stats to traits, and to skills. There are four solutions for this:

• through observation
  
  Certain things will be obvious from the start, for example if the potential disciple is a great-looking tall woman with a strong build, you will already see all of that in revealed stats and traits. Or take a cripple – there, certain things will be immediately clear after initial observation.
  
  
• by looking at the character portrait
  
  The generator that we use to create disciple portraits, associates certain facial features with certain traits. It is not a 100% reliable way to understand the character, however it would be enough to give you a certain "hunch" as to what traits the recruit may possess – and knowing ahead could be really advantageous.
  
  
• by reading character's auto-biography
  
  Sometimes, this is a helpful tool. But bear in mind that characters can, and will, lie about themselves, and so someone who describes his/her great adventures and achievements may have in fact spent all of their life sitting at home.
  
  
• by interviewing the recruit
  
  Conducting an interview takes time, but it's a good way to reveal more about the recruit. Especially if your mage's intellect and intuition are high enough so that you get a lot out of such interview.
  

If at the start of the campaign you're likely to have 3-4 disciples, in the late game this number will be closer to 30-40 (depending on your strategy, of course).

One of the features that we plan to actively test during the Early Access phase is how much of a hierarchy there will be in the Spire.

While initially, your primary focus is in teaching disciples and advancing their skills, later on there will be major events that require your full focus. For the late game, we currently expect to create a hierarchy of disciples, where you are able to appoint several advanced characters to the Council of the Spire, and to delegate to them day-to-day management of activities like teaching and supplies.

In terms of user interface, the settings for such delegated operations will require actual live tests to find the level of automation that allows full control over the major events – while taking off your hands the minutae. In just a few months, we'll see how it goes! We'll start with the closed beta, and then progress to Early Access as we confirm more and more of the UI solutions.

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With this, we wrap this week's blog – and welcome you to join the game's official Discord server, which already has a population of 300+!

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ːsummer_magicː OTHER ISSUES OF THIS BLOG
ːQuestionsː CONSOLIDATED Q&A THREAD



Today we're going to talk about a number of things, including sleep deprivation, stress and euphoria, viruses and curses, locking disciples in their rooms (or jail cells), and the way that laws and discipline work in the Spire.



Let's start with the sleep: among other things that you define for your mage, is his (or her) sleep schedule. The more you sleep, the less time is left to use on moving forward in your research and exploration. But the less you sleep, the higher the toll on your character's current state.

"Current states" is a group of values that affects every human character in the game. A schedule that cuts short your mage's dozing hours will lead to the temporary effect "lack of sleep", which in turn will start to affect your character's mood.

Generally, it is advisable to provide your mage with enough sleep – whenever possible. However, in some cases it might prove very challenging: for example, when there are sick and dying in the Spire's hospital, who may expire if your mage takes some time off; or when there's an army knocking on your doors, and you need your mage's superior powers to repel it.






The concept of ːnotebookːMOOD is central to managing your characters. Mood reflects the current state of a person, and can fluctuate from depression (low end) to euphoria (high point).

What defines a person's mood? Do something that your character likes, and the mood improves. Do something that your character hates, and the mood plummets.

Mood changes based on two things:

• events that happen to the character
  
• actions that the character undertakes
  

But what does a character like or hate? This depends on their ːnotebookːTRAITS, which we covered in one of the previous blogs.

Here's an example of a Spire event that you will decide on:

ːfire_fire_fireː A disciple is caught stealing a book from the Spire's library, and is brought to you for your judgment. Your actions:

1. Forgive this disciple.
2. Explain to this disciple why this is wrong.
3. Publicly criticise this disciple in front of all other disciples.
4. Order a punishment of 20 leashes.
5. Place this disciple in the Spire's jail for a week.
6. Expel this disciple from the Spire.

If one of your mage's traits is "Cruel", and your mage's willpower is low, the list of choices will look like this:

1. Forgive this disciple.
2. Explain to this disciple why this is wrong.
3. Publicly criticise this disciple in front of all other disciples.
4. Order a punishment of 20 leashes.
5. Place this disciple in the Spire's jail for a week.
6. Expel this disciple from the Spire.

The first two options are unavailable because forgiveness goes against the grain of your character, and his willpower is low enough not to allow to force him to take actions that he clearly does not agree with.

The fourth option is underlined because this is actually what will please your character the most. Follow this suggestion, and his mood will improve. Follow the opposite, and the character's spirits will go down.

Important! In the example above, your decision will affect not only your mage's mood, but also the mood of your other disciples. Cruel characters will rejoice at the "right" decision, while characters that despise violence will get depressed.






Whenever you have a decision to take, like in the event above, you will have an option to "codify" it, making your current choice into a law.

Generally speaking, laws are good for keeping disciples organised and in check. Laws prevent abuse by informing potential abusers of the consequences.

However, this only happens when you actually follow your laws. If you declare, for example, that the punishment for theft is 20 leashes, but then in another case go for arrest instead (because 20 leashes may kill that character outright), you will be sending a message to your disciples – a message that the laws are not really meant to be followed, which will harm your Spire's ːnotebookːDISCIPLINE.




The two extremes of running your Spire are what we call "Rule of Fear" and "Rule of Love". If you follow the latter path, then you don't really care about your Spire's current discipline since the motivation of your disciples is that of deep affection and loyalty to your mage personally. So no matter what the law says, they will follow what's best for your mage.

If you follow the "fear" strategy, though, a strong discipline is a must to keep your little "army" under control. The level of discipline shows how strictly your disciples follow your orders – inside and outside of the Spire. Having a strong discipline has its own drawbacks, though: your disciples will stop acting on their own, stop inventing and trying new things, and may miss some excellent chances of improving their lots when out on a quest.





When we spoke about sleep and mood a bit earlier, we mentioned that lack of sleep may lead to stress and then to depression, which will have serious effects on several levels. One of the consequences will be a decrease in ːnotebookːCURRENT HEALTH.

What is current health? There's your basic character stat, called HEALTH, which ranges from 1 to 20, and will not change once a character (mage or disciple) is generated. Think of it as character's constitution, and his or her immune system. This is what the character is born with.

On top of this, there's the current state of your character. For example, he can be wounded and very weak. Or she can be sick with a cough. Or, following some romantic interlude and a walk in the forest, the character may in fact rank a bonus in this department, being so healthy as to improve on the expected default result.

The common causes of weak current health are:

• sickness
  
• curse
  
• poisoning
  
• combat wound
  
• stress
  

Let's review some of these in more detail.





A disciple went out to the nearby village on a regular trading quest, caught a cold while there, and came back coughing. Within a few hours, several other disciples are falling sick around the Spire. What's your response?

Generally, a good strategy is the early detection. Anyone coming back to the Spire may be a source of danger to the others, so it makes sense to be cautious – especially when people return from afar.

If you have a hospital already built in the Spire, you'll place the sick character there, and assign a Spire quest HEAL SICK to someone with good medical skills.

if you do not have a hospital yet, you can still try to prevent the spread of the virus by isolating the sick person in their room; or even losing them up in the Spire's jail.

Dealing with viruses is easier than dealing with curses, though.




Several disciples traveled through an ancient forest. In the middle of the wilderness, there was an overgrown ruin of a house, next to the miraculously clean and welcoming drinking well.

Everyone in the party was careful enough not to touch it, except for one person who went and drank his full. Since that day, this disciple started to behave in a strange way. When he returned back to the Spire, you could see that his stats are affected: IQ is substantially lower than expected, and memory is real bad.

If you have a hospital, a good strategy would be to isolate this disciple there, and assign someone skilled to a Spire quest called OBSERVATION.

Through such observation, you will learn that the character got cursed after he drank from the forest well. That house, and that well, were created by an old mage, who placed a spell on them: anyone who drank from the well or stayed at the house, became obsessed with becoming that mage's slave. Since the mage is long-dead, the curse results simply in manic behaviour.

Following the completion of the OBSERVATION quest, a HEAL SICK quest becomes available, and you're finally able to restore that character's health to its default state.

By the way, any Spire quest can be assigned to your disciples or be handled by your own mage. So if your mage is great at healing, then most likely you will be spending some time in the hospital, dealing with the restoration of your returning parties to their best states.






This is a topic that our game designer does not like to elaborate much on, but which is definitely confirmed as one of the game mechanics in Spire of Sorcery.

Disciples may have relationships with each other. Doing something together with a person you like (like going on a quest, or studying) boosts your mood. Being stuck with someone you dislike, does the opposite – to the level where two enemies sent on a quest together may end up trying to kill each other father than following your original orders.

Sometimes, friendship and love is good: two friends in a fight will defend each other with a higher commitment. Sometimes this is not so good: if one of these friends will be mortally wounded, the other may not leave her but stay there, and get killed just as well.





As we write these weekly dev blogs, we typically share their topics a few days in advance on the game's official Discord server. If there are any specific questions there, we try to answer them with the next blog. This week's Q&A is below:

ːQuestionsː Are all disciples human, or there could be also non-human disciples?

All disciples are human. Since non-humans were created by mages, the mages did not see any good reasons to also share with them their magic skills. The only exceptions are the "super-creatures" like the Many-handed, who possess certain magic skills, but strictly as something they were created with, and not something that they can learn or develop.

ːQuestionsː Do disciples sent on a quest have their own inventories?

Yes. You can equip your disciples with things like protect them, and facilitate their travel. You will also deal with expendable supplies like food and drink (in some cases)

ːQuestionsː Can characters be wounded to the degree that they cannot recover (e.g. become handicapped)?

Since potentially, your mage's power is unlimited (provided that you reach your potential), putting back a limb or an eye is a possible feat. However, the harsher the wound, the higher skill and knowledge will be required to put it right.

ːQuestionsː Are there any mind-altering substances like narcotics or hallucination-inducing food in the game?

Yes, there are all sorts of things in the game, a lot of which can be dangerous when used by unskilled persons or consumed without the proper recipe. Especially so on the edge of the Distorted Lands.

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With this, we wrap today's blog – and we look forward to welcoming you on our forums or on the game's official Discord server! See you next week, when we will talk more about events in the game.

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