Stats

Alpha-1 character sheet early concept UI.

Character stats and attributes.

• Health.
• Mana.
• Power.

• Physical Damage Bonus.
• Physical Disable Modifier.
• Physical Critical Damage Bonus.

• Dexterity.

• Physical Skill Cooldown.
• Physical Critical Rate Bonus.
• Physical Evasion Bonus.
• Physical Accuracy.

• Constitution.

• HP Regeneration.
• Physical Defense Mitigation.

• Will.
• Wisdom.
• Mentality.
• Physical attack.
• Magical attack.
• Block chance/percentage.
• Critical hit.
• Evasion.

Health

Health is a stat in Ashes of Creation.

• Players that are not in the same party or raid will not be able to see other player's health percentages or exact health bar values.
• A player's name plate will deteriorate to give an indication of how much damage they have taken.

With regards to seeing another player's health: As you know their name plate will deteriorate or give you an indication of like hey they've taken damage they're significantly injured, but you're not going to get a percentage. You're not gonna get an exact bar value, unless you're in their party or in their raid. – Steven Sharif

Mana

Mana is a stat in Ashes of Creation.

Stat growth

Stat growth proceeds in the following order:

1. The race "seeds" a player's base stats.
2. The primary archetype grows the base stats.
3. The secondary archetype (class) does not contribute to stat growth.
   • This is a revision of the earlier statement.

Different races have different stat compositions. Those stats can be important, but we also don't want them to dictate any kind of meta for what classes are best used with different races. – Steven Sharif

Choice of profession does not affect a player's stats.

Gear has approximately a 40-50% influence on a players overall power in the game.

Stats on gear

Crafters will be able to assign different skills/abilities and stats on armor.

• Master crafters will be able to influence several but not all stats on their crafted items.

Not all armor sets will be the cookie cutter kind of set. They will have the influences from the crafter available in it, if it's a crafted set. – Steven Sharif

Gear is broken down into Core Stats and Additional Stats.

Combat RNG

RNG elements pertain to combat relating to stats such as Critical hit, Evasion, Blocking chance.

• RNG plays a role in both PvP or PvE.
• Action combat is far less dependent on RNG.

RNG is always going to play a role in Ashes of Creation whether that be in PvP or PvE, but one way to mitigate that is through the action system. The action system is going to be far less sort of dependent on those you know dice rolls and there'll be far more in your own hands. They won't ever completely eliminate that but it's a way for us to sort of reward skilled play versus sort of tactical strategies type play. – Jeffrey Bard

Damage

Different damage types are mitigated by the defensive stats (resistances) on different types of armor.

• Magic damage is mitigated by cloth armor (light armor).
• Physical damage is mitigated by plate armor (heavy armor).
• There is also non-mitigated damage.

There won't be any damage dampening due to differences in levels in either PvP or PvE.

Damage numbers will not be so large as to be meaningless.

We don't see the need to have these enormous numbers that are really start to lose meaning. That seems to be an innate design issue with other games as they try to balance the damage output in PvP and in PvE; but our design system allows for a more manageable damage protocol for PvE and PvP to be shared; and those damage protocols relate more to lower numbers. – Steven Sharif

Elements

There will be elements (such as Air, Fire, Water, Lightning) in Ashes of Creation each with their own resistances.

• Other elemental influences may include Darkness, Light and Planar.

• The Mage archetype offers four elemental schools as augments to a character's primary skills.

• Elements may have more influence in certain seasons and climates. For example, frost abilities may be stronger in winter. This affects both PvE and PvP.

• There may be ley lines and strong magical places in the world that change or alter the way spells work.

We've discussed a little bit about how the seasons and biomes will react with different types of skills. Like if you have a fireball and it's summer it might be a little bit different. If it's winter and you have a frost ability it might be different. – Steven Sharif

We want to get a nice spread of abilities that that are influenced by what's going on your zone. – Jeffrey Bard

Elemental skills

The idea behind magic is you're manipulating the elements. They don't just have to be fire, ice, water and air. They can be darkness, they can be light, they can be planar; a lot of different types of "elemental influences". – Steven Sharif

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Apocalypse:Chain Lightning		Activate to charge your next attack with lightning - lightning will arc between foes, dealing damage to each one. Duration: 5 Sec. Cooldown: 5 Sec.	Activate to charge your next attack with lightning - lightning will arc between foes, dealing damage to each one. Duration: 5 Sec. Cooldown: 5 Sec.	Activate to charge your next attack with lightning - lightning will arc between foes, dealing damage to each one. Duration: 5 Sec. Cooldown: 5 Sec.
Apocalypse:Fire Potion		Generates a fire explosion.	-	-
Apocalypse:Frost Potion		Swap your explosive potion for a potion of frost. It will burst on the first bounce, leaving an area of bitter cold that slows your enemies. Duration: 10 Sec. Cooldown: 30 Sec.	-	-
Arch lightning		Launch a bolt of lightning in a forward line, damaging all within its path.	Adds damage over time to targets hit.	Chains to nearby enemies that are not hit. Anyone who is outside the line has a chance to get a bolt jump to them.
Elemental (passive)		Increases to elemental damage. The more the mage changes their element type the more damage is done.	-	-
Flame line		Shoot an arrow that leaves behind a trail of flames.	Arrow explodes upon reaching the end of its distance.	Enemies take burning damage for entering the flames.
Ice prison		Target an enemy and summon a prison of ice around them, paralyzing them.	Adds damage over time.	Snares after root breaks.
Ice sheet		Creates an area where enemies are knocked down.	Snares two targets in area.	Increases size and duration.
Implosion		Launch a powerful burst of fire (fireball) against a single target.	Becomes a burn (damage over time).	Area of effect around the target.
Quake		If your focus is at 80%, cast this spell to split the earth itself before you, launching a line of AoE damage.	Knock down those hit by your arcane might.	Reduces focus cost and cooldown for the skill.

Gear progression

Scimitar 3D render by Carson Steil.

Weapons will have their own progression paths and their own applicable types of skills.

• The weapon use combo system determines special effects that proc based on weapon progression.
  • Players can spec into weapon abilities that change what combinations are available, based on the type of weapon.
• Ancillary effects proc based on enchantment types.
• Gear enhancements (power stones) can be applied to add elemental or energy types of damage.
• A skill tree is used to grant effects: making them better or branching off into different directions.
• Passive skills will enable players to work toward mastery of a weapon.
• Weapon proficiency (based on length of use of a weapon) is not a planned feature.

Q: Are weapons balanced towards a proficiency system (i.e. the longer I use a sword, the better my damage will be), or will it be a normal RPG stat system with no long-term scaling?

A: We will not be using a proficiency system as described, but players will have passives available in their skill tree that will increase effectiveness of certain weapons. Becoming a master of swords will be something that is possible, just not in that particular manner. – Sarah Flanagan

Ashes of Creation is all about providing many progression paths... The reason why we don't like the term endgame is because with the amount of progression that's available with the amount of diversity and player agency that that impacts the world... We kind of want the the weapon system and add an element of that as well... You can determine special effects that proc from currently the combo system right; you can determine ancillary effects that proc based on enchantment types; you can power stone weapons to add different either elemental types of damage and/or energy that kind of play rock paper scissor with player defenses ... and then you can skill tree out how those effects that are granted ... you can make them better you can branch them off into a different direction. – Steven Sharif

Gear enhancement

Gear enhancements (power stones/runes) can be applied to weapons to add elemental or energy types of damage.

We are very likely going to have a rune system and then we'll have the ability to sort of enchant weapons outside of that too... That's not always going to be like a vertical progression... Some of it's going to be giving up something to get something else; so maybe I do less physical damage but more magical damage, that kind of thing. – Jeffrey Bard

• Progression in various PvP systems will unlock enchantment stones that grant temporary PvP-focused benefits to gear (via a socketing system). Performance is measured over six month PvP seasons.
  • Guild wars.
  • Arenas.
  • Caravan PvP.

It's not as though you're going to necessarily acquire these once and then you're set for your PvP enchantments, but instead you'll have to continually perform month after month in order to keep having those slotted enchantments. – Steven Sharif

Enchanting

There are two types of enchantments for items: Vertical and horizontal.

• Vertical enchantments are a power progression for a crafted item. More damage or mitigations, added effects or bonuses. Vertical enchantments include risks.
  • There isn't RNG in crafting but there may be a small amount of RNG in enchanting.
  • Over-enchanting items comes with a potential risk that the item decays or is destroyed if a safety margin is exceeded. This system is subject to testing.

When it comes to over-enchanting things, what we're going to do likely is have a safety- and this is something obviously it needs to be tested- but we're going to have a safety period of enchantment you know like in Lineage 2 I think you could enchant plus four or something. And so we're gonna have a similar system where you can enchant safely and then when you start to take risks, that percentage of potentially damaging your item either through the decay system or completely disabling it through the destruction system will be a risk that's present. – Steven Sharif

• Horizontal enchantments are more situational. For example: I'd like my sword to do force damage instead of holy damage because the monsters I tend to fight are incorporeal.
  • This doesn't make the item more powerful, but instead more applicable to different situations, and less so to others.
  • This type of enchanting assumes no risk, just time and effort.

Enchanting services are sold at player stalls.

Power creep

Power creep is a balance issue... When it comes to gear progression specifically, the idea is to create an open market that is not heavily dependent on soulbound items; and having many item sinks and gold sinks within that economy that allows for the potential degradation and loss of assets within that closed economy; and not introduce items from the market that companies put in from a pay-to-win perspective or from a pay-to-convenience perspective that undermines the economy that players have built. That is a huge mistake that companies have made in the past and that lends to the imbalancing of what designers maybe have actually balanced well. – Steven Sharif

PvX

We like to really refer to ourselves as a PvX game, because in those systems of PvP, PvE, crafting they're all intertwined: They're interdependent on each other... Our system of development really requires some interdependence there between those things. You're going to need a crafter to give you the best items. You're going to need PvPers to secure cities and castles. You're gonna need PvErs to take down those world bosses for those materials to craft. – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation is a PvX game. Players will naturally encounter both PvP and PvE elements. It is unlikely that a player could purely focus on just PvP or just PvE.

• There is a balance between PvP and PvE in Ashes of Creation.
• Some servers may be more PvP focused than others.
• There will not be different PvP and PvE gear types.
• Progression in the game might require PvE elements.
• All stats relate to a player's combat effectiveness in PvX.

We're very clear with our objective and philosophy on the game and we understand that they may not appeal to everybody. But you know it is an important reciprocal relationship between the content that's related to PvE and the content that's related to PvP and they feed off of each other. They're catalysts for change: Their progression, their development. It's things that people can value when they see something earned and they see something lost. That elicits an emotional response from the player: That they've invested time in to either succeed or fail; and PvP allows for that element to be introduced into gameplay. And we're very clear that is our objective: That risk versus reward relationship, that achievement-based mentality. Not everybody's going to be a winner and that's okay. – Steven Sharif

See also

• Combat
• Skills
• Races
• Classes
• Progression