Experience points and levelling ?

[karolinerna2000]

Are there any experience points or levelling in this game ? Any skills or tratis ? How do you improve ?

[Two Bits Kid]

Thanks for asking!

AoS was developed similarly to the ancestor of this genre, "Dungeon Master", without usual levelling and experience points.

In AoS, you improve during play by the choices you make in the story, by combat and by items you equip. You can view your improvement in the character stats screen.

1.)
Your story choices have an impact on what event you might get into and what then allows you to advance your character depending on loot and combat.

2.)
Traits can advance when you use weapons or cast spells from 0-100%. One trait stands for one "type of weapon/magic".

Traits

sovereign (melee combat)

• when critical (max-damage done to target) hit, trait is advanced and influences/increases the minimum damage of a weapon (up to maximum damage)
  
• also a character with great STR can better advance in sovereign.

accuracy (range combat)

• when critical hit, the trait is advanced and increases the hitchance of projectiles
  
• also a character with great AGI can better advance in accuracy

concentration (elemental magic)

• when an effect is successfully cast on a target or a damage spell does a critical hit, trait is advanced and influences the duration of spells and effects
  
• a character with great INT can better advance in concentration

focus (auran magic) - is special, we don't want to spoil here.

3.)
We have over 300 unique items in the game. All of them can be used to form you character in one or the other way, as each item has positive and negative effects on the character stats.

You can equip items to define a strong spellcaster, or you can equip other items to just have a great melee fighter with lots of stamina.

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The underlying system is complex and calculates everything as in any other RPG. Opponents have their own status values and so on.

But in the end, when you put all your items back...you are still Setrani, the main character of this story, a nap-loving clerk.

---

If you like a more linear experience...xps and levels( D&D-like)...without story and without world-building...this game is not for you.

But if you want to have a different experience than from what you know...but still get a fun and playable game...from start to finish... without all those statistics screens, skills, xp and level stuff...then you should give Aeon of Sands a shot!

[karolinerna2000]

Thanks for a thorough explanation. Bought the game and playing right now!

[Perrin]

What is 'abs'? I've seen it mentioned on several items, but I can't figure out what it is.

[marcuz]

it stands for absorption, the *maximum* quantity of damage that a character or a NPC *can* possibly block out when receiving getting hit by an attack.

This absorption / blocking values is added to characters "physical protection" (you can see this in the characters states screen)

[Claws]

Hahaha, I thought "Abs" was referring to the character having strong abs this whole time which allowed him to take more damage!! LOL

[marcuz]

Lol, for sure, Setrani should exercise more XD

[Perrin]

Honest to god, I thought 'abs' was in reference to strong abs too, like, making them stronger, but I couldn't figure out exactly how that worked. Maybe this should be specified in the game? Cause I looked and looked and looked, and I couldn't find anything about it.

While I'm at it, what does it mean when an item is called a 'backpack'? Like, I got some centipede drop that I couldn't figure out how to use called a 'backpack'.

[Two Bits Kid]

Hello Perrin,

we'll look at it, maybe rename it to make it clearer.

The article "Category" only indicates where you can hold, wear or equip this article. Basically "backpack" means...you can only have it in your backpack and not equip it.

Weapon' is weapon hand (right), shield' is shield hand (left), etc. . That's all there is to it.

[Perrin]

Oooooh. I figured that out with the shield part, the rest didn't seem obvious to me. But even the shield thing seemed really confusing at first. I really think that could have been better explained. I love old-school games like this, but there's a reason that all the originals had massive manuals.

[Two Bits Kid]

Many people have told us the tutorial is a bit too long. We are working on a small update to make this clearer :).


Yes, we also loved the big boxing games and game books and manuals. We would also like to have a boxed version of AoS :-D