Magic in Valheim

[Hera_Ledro]

Okay folks hear me out on this: having some official usable magic for player characters would be fabulous, but there are obviously concerns as to how broken this can be and how it can draw away from the survival aspect of the game. So I have an idea here on how to make it work I'd like your thoughts on. I'll discuss this in stages relative to bosses since those are soft 'gatekeepers' of zones, but also be aware at how flexible that is because people can just go to zones/biomes if they want and just keep going.

The System

The system I'm thinking of is craftable tomes. Like weapons, you would make these either at a workbench or at a specialized crafting station (forge doesn't seem good for books). Tomes are associated with particular elements and can be upgraded at the appropriate workstation.

Each tome has:
- A melee attack (default attack button, e.g. left mouse click)
- A wall spell (block button, e.g. right mouse click)
- A ranged attack ('strong' attack button, e.g. middle mouse click)

Tomes can also be upgraded a number of times to get stronger like weapons. For basic tomes, this would gradually unlock each of the above attacks - newly crafted has a melee attack, second upgrade unlocks the wall, third unlocks the ranged - but for the tomes you craft later in the game these are often already unlocked, and you can choose to branch the tome after the second upgrade. Each upgrade would require rarer materials, and more of them.

For instance, let's consider a basic and advanced fire tome. The basic tome would be crafted and you would have available the melee attack, perhaps a flamethrower effect fueled by stamina with a moderately strong damage in melee range (and ignition) but which falls off the further in the area of effect it goes. When you upgrade you unlock the fire wall, which serves as a high-armour block (perhaps bronze wall shield?), but drains stamina during usage and normal stamina drain on block. Finally, the next upgrade unlocks the ranged fireball spell a-la Surtlings. This serves as effectively an AoE flame arrow, which deals some minor damage in an area and ignites the affected creatures for prolonged fire damage.

Next consider the advanced tome. These three abilities would already be unlocked, but when upgrading for the first time you are presented with three options at the workstation, one for each 'attack'. Each upgrade would increase the damage and effect (e.g. burning) of the tome, but would provide additional boons based on the chosen upgrade. For instance, you could specialize in the wall to decrease not only the general stamina-per-block cost, but also apply ignition to melee attackers (2nd upgrade), and ignite and reflect physical projectiles at enemies (3rd upgrade, arrows and rocks and stuff but not dragon magic, for instance).

As with weapons and other such things, these tomes do deteriorate and need to be repaired (flavour as reinscribed?).

The goal here is to keep it simple but customizable. This allows players to do what many do now and carry around multiple tomes to use in the same vein as weapons, and it also opens the doors for varied types. Ice magic, for instance, could have an ice blade melee attack which is basically a sword of ice, a "wall" spell which adds armour to your character rather than blocking power, and a ranged attack which is a high-stamina high-damage fast-travelling spear of ice.

Appropriately, each element (whatever they end up being) should have a skill progression line associated with it to help reduce the stamina drain. I don't know how the skill progression works under the hood, but a simple answer to this would be to make it a function of the stamina used while casting magic of that element.

The Progression

So let's talk progression. As mentioned before, we'll discuss this in stages based on bosses:

- Pre-Eikthyr
- Pre-Elder
- Pre-Bonemass
- Pre-Modur
- Pre-Yagluth

Ergo THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Stop here if you don't want to be spoiled of the boss fights.

Pre-Eikthyr

Here your options are limited. I think here is where the basic fire tome should exist. Easily craftable and upgradable (wood, resin, maybe other things but not necessary). Its damage is fairly low, not good for later stages of the game like swamp or mountain.

Pre-Elder

Now we get into more advanced stuff, since delving into the burial chambers can give access to surtling cores. An advanced fire tome would be good, and perhaps we can put things like amber and ruby to more use than selling to a merchant. This is also a good place to seed things required for a basic tome needed to survive the swamp (come with melee + block), but which can only be upgraded using materials from the swamp so that it doesn't scale too quickly. Perhaps a lightning thing, or even frost (though I feel that would be better for Mountain area).

Due to the irritation of getting copper and tin and crafting bronze, I would argue we should not require bronze to make these new tomes themselves (only basic fire should be craftable at a workbench), but perhaps you need to have bronze to craft the necessary workstation. A scribe's desk or something. As a prototype, I was thinking:

Scribe's Desk
- 4 feathers (for quills)
- 4 fine wood OR core wood (for the table)
- 4 wood (for the legs)
- 10 bronze nails

Pre-Bonemass

Either expand on the basic tome from Pre-Elder, or add a new one. Something for countering Bonemass and his ungodly amount of poison. Would be potentially good for a tome block to consume an ooze remains to grant temporary poison resistance or immunity. The advanced fire tome is useful here for damage against Bonemass.

Pre-Modur

The advanced fire tome from Pre-Elder is useful here for damage, particularly against the ice dragons, but we need a basic or advanced ice tome here to give us freeze resistance (block spell).

Ice tome should require a silver-based addition to the scribe's desk to craft.

Pre-Yagluth

The advanced ice tome will deal a lot of damage with its ranged attack, but I'm sure all of us want to rain down meteors like that jerk Yagluth. There should be a way to use Fuling remains and black metal to craft a tome that has a "ranged attack" to mark an enemy and summon a meteor. Massive AoE damage and ignition, massive stamina drain, immobile while using and it can damage you if you use it at too close a range, but it will feel GOOD.

And That's It

Alright that's all I've got for now. Thoughts?

[hazelrah]

Love the ideas! Knowledge is magical, and the scribe's table is where that knowledge comes to life. I'd suggest moving the scribes desk into the pre Eikthyr stage, and make it cheaper (maybe stone instead of fine wood for the ink well?), and have it mimic the crafting station upgrade model. It could also be the place where maps are made & shared with others, perhaps as a special tome.

[Hera_Ledro]

Originally posted by hazelrah:

Love the ideas! Knowledge is magical, and the scribe's table is where that knowledge comes to life. I'd suggest moving the scribes desk into the pre Eikthyr stage, and make it cheaper (maybe stone instead of fine wood for the ink well?), and have it mimic the crafting station upgrade model. It could also be the place where maps are made & shared with others, perhaps as a special tome.

Oh I actually really like the idea of having stone be part of it, good for grinding ink. Could be that all tome upgrades also require some form of charcoal so that you can mix it into ink using the desk grinding stone.

Devs could probably weigh in on the balance of scribes table but I felt like it fit alongside bronze age things. That being said, it's entirely possible to have the scribe's desk upgradeable with bronze attachments instead, similar to the workbench. In general I actually think that yeah, it should follow the same upgrade model. Maybe something like:

Pre-Eikthyr:
- Potentially unlock Scribe's table and ink grinder, but still think this fits more in the bronze age with nails and stuff

Pre-Elder:
- Scribes Table unlocked with bronze nails, wood, etc.
- Upgrade: ink grinder (stone + wood)
- Upgrade: Better quills (bronze + feathers)

Pre-Bonemass:
- Upgrade: Fine cabinet? (for 'storing paper', iron nails + fine wood + ancient bark)
- Upgrade: Book Shelf (doubles as tome storage, iron nails + fine wood + ancient bark)

Pre-Modur:
- Upgrade: Silver pens (for stylized etchings, silver + fine wood)