Golden Land Game Elements

Part 3: Skills

2002-01-27

In this series of Golden Land features we cooperate with publisher Russobit and developer Burut to tackle a single element of the game at a time. The feature is split up in an overview of the feature and a short Q&A to get more detailed information about some of the mentioned aspects.

Overview
Skills are divided into three types – magic, combat and daily skills. Each of these groups have 9 skills each.
Having achieved a new level, the hero gets skillpoints that he can distribute to any skill. Each new level takes one more point in accordance with the previous one. Thus, you will need one point for the 1st level, 2 – for 2nd level, 3 – for third and so on. The maximal level for any skill is 15.
Except raising your abilities connected with this or that skill the hero can get additional abilities (so called perks) when reaching certain skill levels (1,5,10 and 15). To get the perk you’ll have to find someone in the game that will raise your status for certain skill (“apprentice-master” system).

Magic Skills

The following magic skills are available:

• Magic of Shadows
  The spells of this school are mostly connected with creature summoning and specific defense.
  
• Magic of Nature
  Healing skills, remove curse spells and interaction with nature are part of this school..
  
• Magic of Gods
  This school uses the power of various gods.
  
• Magic of Elements
  Is one of the most aggressive schools. Mostly these are combat spells that use the energies of fire, ice and lightning.
  
• Magic of Light
  Powerful spells meant for both healing and for damaging the enemies.
  
• Magic of Dark
  Dark magicians were always inventive and able to find every means to make someones live into a a hel.
  
• Charm
  Skills that enhances magic schools and influences the speed of magic energy restoration.
  
• Alchemy
  Enables you to make new potions and create objects with the help of magic.
  
• Shrewdness
  Influences your knowledge of the nature of things. The man that posesses this skill will notice much more interesting things around.

Combat Skills

The following magic skills are available:

• Sword Wielding
  Allows using one of the most perfect weapons – blades.
  
• Crushing weapon wielding
  Enables to cause more damage with sticks, cudgels and hammers.
  
• Staff Wielding
  Seeming simple, staffs have magic powers. You will need this skill to use these powers.
  
• Shooting weapons
  The choice of those preferring ranged combat and ranged weapons like bows, crossbows and rifles.
  
• Spear wielding
  A middle-ranged weapon that will inflict even more damage in the hands of the master.
  
• Throwing weapons
  Improves your abilities with sarts, throwing axes, knives and stones.
  
• Hand-to-hand combat
  Punches can become very serious when developed carefully.
  
• Martial art
  Influences critical hits, misses and hits to certain body parts

Daily useful

The following magic skills are available:

• Tactics
  The skill that influences the amount of action points and the optimization of their usage
  
• Path finding
  Helps you to move on the global map, avoid unpleasant encounters, get more information about your enemies and to find more interesting places.
  
• Sorcery
  Increases your ability to be healed and resistance to poisons.
  
• Eloquence
  I nfluences the way you talk to other characters allowing you to get new quests and more info.
  
• Trade
  If you develop this skill properly you will be able to make better deals and learn about novices from merchants.
  
• Robbery
  Gives you the control of the most profitable but dangerous professions.
  
• Breaking in
  The knowledge of how to open doors, chests and other locked containers may come in very handy.
  
• Forgery
  One of the most interesting skills that allows you to create new things from various materials, modify old ones and repair them.
  
• Athleticism
  Influences your endurance, allowing to carry more, absorb damage partially and cause less traumas for your body.
  

Burut: When getting a new skill level the hero gets a certain amount of action points that he can distribute for skills. Every next level will require one more point than the previous one. This way, to raise your skill from 4th to 5th level you will have to spend 5 points and from 12th to 13th level you will need 13 points.
Skill level influences the hero’s characteristics and when reaching certain levels allows to get new abilities such as series of hits. They are combined from the ones available for the hero. The skills improve the hero’s abilities but the visualization remains unchanged.

RPGDot: How many perks are there? Do you get to choose from any perk when reaching the proper skill level or only perks related to that skill?

Burut: There are four perks for each skill that you will get on certain levels. We have made a lot of skills covering all fields on knowledge and that allows the player to develop the branches he needs, so there’s no need to choose perks for each skill.

RPGDot: Can you save skill points to assign them to a skill at a later stage when you have collected multiple skill points or do you have to spend them when you get them.

Burut: Since the number of points needed to raise a certain level grows and sometimes it is hard to distribute all points fully, we have made possible to save the points to use them later.

RPGDot: What are the 'costs', if any, for using a skill. Does it cost you action points for example or does it take something else or are they freely useable.

Burut: I can’t say that all skills require one certain resource because of their variety. For example, for magic skills you will need Energy, for blacksmiths work you will need various materials and for alchemy - reagents. Also there are skills that are more like passive, I mean the ones like Pathfinding or Athletism.

RPGDot: Are there skills that are required in certain parts of the game or to finish the game?

Burut: There are no skills that would be super important on a certain stage of the storyline because it would feel like we were ordering you to use this or that and this is the thing we try to avoid at all costs (why would someone learn how to break in, only to open a certain “storyline door”). The skills exist to make this or that stage of the game easier, that’s the point in them.