Combat

PvP combat gameplay in Alpha-1 castle sieges.

Combat is the most tactile system in the game. It's the thing you will experience most often; and outside of the systems and mechanics that are going to be present for the overarching core gameplay loop, combat needs to feel responsive. It needs to not feel floaty. It needs to feel mobile. It needs to be fluid. It needs to give a feeling of satisfaction. The audio components, the effects components, the animations themselves, the types of skills and those types of things: All of those are really our objective in fine-tuning the approach for our combat in Ashes of Creation. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-2 solo PvE ranger combat.

Combat in Ashes of Creation is focused on strategy and tactics.

• Combat is the most tactile system in the game. It needs to feel responsive, mobile and fluid. It needs to give a feeling of satisfaction.

We will continue to iterate on combat until it is in a place that collectively we as a community can say 'this may not be my particular combat, but this combat is good.' That is the driving force and factor behind the development of combat; and that is how we are going to continue to iterate upon it, utilizing of course the player feedback from our community, but also keeping you guys informed and up to date as we continually iterate on combat. – Steven Sharif

• Combat is animation-driven to ensure it is impactful and responsive.
  • VFX and sound effects are an important part of selling the weight and immersion of combat.
  • Camera effects such as screen shake and radial blur are used to "sell a lot of the weight without being too over the top".

I think one of the things that helps set Ashes apart from an effects perspective is that we want VFX to be dynamically generated. We want them to interact with the world. We want them to feel like they are part of the combat. – John Kent

We're building a singular tool that all of the teams can use to build abilities and tweak their sound effects, visual effects, animation design, engineering: All using the same tool grounded in animation to build these abilities. – Keenan Reimer

A revamped combat system will be rolled out during and post Alpha-1 testing.

• Alpha-1 combat was focused on core functionality rather than combat balance.
• Alpha-2 combat will include archetypes, significant ability support, augments, split-body combat, weapon attacks, and many additional items, among other things.
• The developers will be testing whether or not to use global cooldowns GCDs on different types of abilities during Alpha-2.

• The game isn't focused around cover-based combat mechanics.

I might be on a rampart or behind a wall and that could be destroyed removing my cover, but not like a Gears of War or something, where I slide up to a piece of rock, or the corner of a wall or something. – Steven Sharif

Combat revamp

Alpha-1 split-body melee weapon combat sneak peek.

I can move while swinging on this guy. I can back up then continue to attack him. Just have complete control over my character while attacking. – Steven Sharif

A revamped combat system will be rolled out during and post Alpha-1 testing based on player feedback.

• The goal is to give more agency to the player and achieve a more fluid flow of combat with greater mobility when using abilities.
• The current hybrid tab and action combat system will remain after the revamp.
• This revamp will not represent the final form of combat, but will set the general direction that combat will be taking.
• The revamp will be iterative and will be rolled out to testers in different phases.
• The developers will be testing whether or not to use global cooldowns GCDs on different types of abilities during Alpha-2.
  • As of July 2023 global cooldowns are not currently in the game.
  • Instant cast abilities are referred to as off-global-cooldown or OGCD abilities.

The revamped combat system will feature split-body animations, where the character's upper body can be locked by weapon attack animations while the lower body is free to continue moving.

You'll be able to move forward while swinging your weapon; and this will allow you complete control over your weapon attacks for melee. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 combat was focused on core functionality rather than combat balance. Alpha-2 combat will include archetypes, significant ability support, augments, split-body combat, weapon attacks, and many additional items, among other things.

• Changes that allow templated abilities to apply to 3D positions in the air or water will be prototyped and may be included in Alpha-2.

Combat targeting

Ranger hybrid combat in Alpha-2.

Our desire has always and continues to be how we can create a mixture of tab target abilities and skill-shot oriented positional, directional-based ability usage and make something cohesive in that design. And I think that what we're achieving with that regard may not fully feel like an action-oriented game, but we've always intended to be more hybrid-oriented, leaning towards tab target. So you're going to see a mixture of abilities that require the targets and that don't; and then you're going to have an option as the player's perspective to utilize an action camera mode, which utilizes a soft target lock feature and our reticle. – Steven Sharif

Hard-locked friendly player target.

Hybrid combat refers to the choice between tab and action combat in Ashes of Creation. A toggle button (default Z, but can be re-bound to another key) allows the player to switch between action and tab combat modes.

• The action mode camera is tied to the to the player's reticle (crosshair).
  • There will likely be a hotkey that when held down will allow free camera movement in action mode.
  • In future the user will have the ability to choose from different reticle appearances.

• Targeted skills require either a soft or hard locked target.
  • Soft locking is when the reticle moves over a valid target while in action mode. The targeting plate will appear slightly grayed out to indicate that this is a soft-lock target. If the reticle moves away from the target or the target moves away from the reticle, the target is lost.
  • Hard locking is when the player uses right-mouse on a soft-locked target in action mode, or when the player selects a valid target in tab mode. The targeting plate will not be grayed-out to indicate that a hard-lock target is selected. Unlike soft locking, if the target moves out of the reticle, the target is not lost. Tab will still cycle between hard-locked targets in action mode based on proximity priority.

• Templated skills allow "blind firing" without a target while in action mode. If an entity moves into the path of the attack they can be struck.

Q: Is the development team moving away from action combat, or is action combat more prevalent with the melee classes, and the healing/range classes are more tab-target other than AoE spells?

A: We have not moved away from our hybrid approach to the development of Ashes of Creation's combat; and specifically to reiterate: that approach is incorporating elements of skill shots, fast and reactive gameplay that is situationally relevant, and incorporates the camera mode of both tab-targeting as well as action combat reticle. That's something that is still in progress. We haven't moved away from that however. To note, our approach of that hybridization is going to incorporate things like templated skill-shots, directionally relevant activated abilities, along with the ability to dodge to roll projectiles that can impact collision. Those are elements of action combat that are present. – Steven Sharif

Templated and targeted versions of skills will have different characteristics.

Skill progressions, skill point allocation is determined by the player. The player will be able to choose either more tab-target oriented skills or more action-based skills and customize their playable experience to what accommodates their preference. From a balancing standpoint for us developers, we need to make sure that certain abilities house certain functions so that there's a balance between skill shots and tab-target abilities. – Steven Sharif

• Targeted skills will be greyed out if the target is not within a valid range but templated skills will generally require the player to assess the correct range for the skill.

• Different ranks of the same skill can change the skill from tab to action or vice-versa.
  • Variables will change based on which version of a skill is chosen.
    • Damage.
    • Charge up time.
    • Accuracy.
    • Evasion.
    • Crowd control.
    • Cooldown.
    • Energy consumption.
    • Cost to spec.
    • Attack range will likely remain the same; as it is driven by the weapon or skill itself.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• It may not be possible to be able to fully spec into just action or tab targeted skills. There might be a 75% cap on choosing skills from any one type.
• For the purposes of balance, certain skill types will be either tab or action oriented skills.
  • Hard CCs may be housed in action oriented skills because they are skill shots that are more difficult to land.
  • Softer CC's would be housed in tab-targeted abilities.

As an example: Let's say you're playing a ranged class. You could have an action-oriented power shot in your skill tree or you could have a single target power shot that ramps up and does more damage. – Steven Sharif

Targeted skills

Targeted skills require either a soft or hard locked target.

• Soft locking is when the reticle moves over a valid target while in action mode. The targeting plate will appear slightly grayed out to indicate that this is a soft-lock target. If the reticle moves away from the target or the target moves away from the reticle, the target is lost..
• Hard locking is when the player uses right-mouse on a soft-locked target in action mode, or when the player selects a valid target in tab mode. The targeting plate will not be grayed-out to indicate that a hard-lock target is selected. Unlike soft locking, if the target moves out of the reticle, the target is not lost. Tab will still cycle between hard-locked targets in action mode based on proximity priority.
• Targeted skills will be greyed out if the target is not within a valid range.
• The developers will be testing additional targeting methods, such as target-of-target as well as separate friendly and enemy targets, most likely during Alpha-2.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Arcane Volley		Fires a volley of arcane missiles at your target, dealing arcane damage with each hit.	-	-
Barrage		Fires a continual barrage of arrows at your target for 1.5 seconds, dealing 12% physical damage per arrow.
Barrier		Sacrifice 25% of your maximum health to place a health shield on target ally for 10 seconds. Does not stack.
Bless Weapon		Imbues your target's weapon with radiant light, causing each of their weapon combo attacks to deal additional radiant damage and applies a mana regeneration buff to the caster. Each hit extends the duration of the mana regeneration buff, up to a maximum of 15 seconds. Has a 10% chance to proc bonus radiant damage and apply a stack of Burning to the target.
Chain Lightning		Release a powerful streak of lightning that hits your primary target and then chains outward to all nearby enemies from that target, dealing lightning damage and applying 3 stacks of Electrified to each target hit.	-	-
Condemn		Stun target enemy for 3 seconds.
Defiant Light		Heal target ally for 50% of their maximum health over 10 seconds. If that target would receive fatal damage while under this effect, this effect is consumed and prevents that target's death, healing them for 25% of their maximum health instead.
Deliverance		Held ability: Charges up healing energy that heals a target ally upon release, scaling in power the longer it is charged and the more % missing health of the target.
Fireball		Instantly hurl a ball of fire toward your target, dealing fire damage and applying 1 stack of Burning to target on impact. Burning deals periodic fire damage over time for each stack applied. When the target reaches 5 stacks, they become Conflagrated, dealing extreme fire damage over time. Hitting a conflagrating enemy with a lightning spell causes Fusion, dealing significant damage and removing the Conflagrated effect.	-	-
Frostbolt		Launch a bolt of frost towards your target, dealing ice damage and applying 2 Chilled stacks to the target on impact. Chilled reduces movement speed of the target for each stack applied. When the target reaches 5 stacks, they become Frozen, rooting them in place for the duration. Hitting a frozen enemy with a lightning spell causes them to Shatter, dealing significant damage and removing the Frozen effect.	-	-
Healing Touch		Heal target ally in melee range for a large amount of health.
Judgment		Cast a heal on target ally for a large amount of health. If this is cast on an enemy, it instead deals radiant damage to the target and applies 2 stacks of Burning.
Lightning Strike		Held ability: Charge up a bolt of lightning to unleash upon your target, dealing lightning damage and applying 2 stacks of Electrified to the target. This deals additional damage based on how long it was charged. Electrified reduces the target's magical mitigation for each stack applied. When the target reaches 10 stacks, all Electrified stacks are consumed and they become temporarily Shocked. Whenever a Shocked enemy takes damage, they take additional damage and 1 stack of Shocked is consumed. Shocked is initially applied with 20 stacks.	-	-
Longbow basic attack		A slower, powerful, longer range basic ranged attack. Tapping the basic attack button will shoot normally. Holding the basic attack button will charge the shot (and root the player) to cause added damage.
Mend		Instantly launch a healing projectile toward target ally. Each charge of this ability consumed after the first has no mana cost, and restores an increasing amount of mana to the caster based on the number of missing charges. Consecutive uses of the ability will gain bonus healing.
Protect		Intercept attacks that strike your friendly nearby target, redirecting half of the damage taken to you. Must be within 10ys to Protect. If this range is exceeded for more than 5 seconds, the effect ends.
Quick Shot		Ranged attack that applies a debuff to the target. Each additional quickshot against the same target does increasing damage but consumes one of three charges that regenerate over time.
Resplendent Beam		Held ability: Fire a beam of healing energy toward a target ally. Charging this spell allows the beam to bounce to up to 5 additional friendly targets closest to the original target, based on how long it was charged. The amount of healing is reduced for each subsequent target.
Shortbow basic attack		A fast, low power, short range basic ranged attack. Holding down the basic attack button will repeatedly fire.
Slam		Slam your target with immense force, knocking them back. Applies 10 stagger. Deals 500% additional threat.
Slumber		Applies the sleeping condition to targets affected within a small area around the primary target, rendering them unable to move or take any action. Any damage dealt to a sleeping target will break the effect. Duration is reduced by 20% for each additional target hit, to a minimum of 40% of base duration.	-	-
Smite		Smite your target, dealing instant damage and applying a stack of Burning to target enemy. Has no cast time and deals increased damage if activated within melee range of the target. This attack always critically hits on targets under the effect of Condemn.
Snipe		A powerful charged attack.
Soothing Glow		Apply a healing over time effect to target ally. Reapplying this effect extends its duration on the target by its base duration value.
Wings of Salvation		Sprout phoenix-like wings and leap to target ally, then grant a small amount of temporary health to that target on arrival. An ally is defined as any non-combatant player or non-mob NPC.

Templated skills

Templated skills allow blind firing (free aim) without a target while in action mode. If a player moves into the path of the attack they can be struck.

One of the differences between tab and action combat mode is you can launch projectiles in action combat mode as a blind fire option, and if a target or if something moves in the way between the time of that projectile launching and impacting either its max distance, or a piece of terrain, or another target, it's possible that players might move into that projectile. – Steven Sharif

• Some templated skills may have template indicators, but in general will require the player to assess the correct range for the skill.

If it is a templated ability, which means it's skill-based to use, you'll need to get a feel for those distances; and that's some skill-based learning where you get an idea for what those distances are. Some of those will have template indicators but they'll be very in-world and immersive. We're not utilizing more UI-centric looking indicators, but generally the AoE templates are meant to be skill-based. – Steven Sharif

• Basic weapon attacks from projectile weapons are capable of blind firing without having a target.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Air Strike		Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing area damage and inflicting snare to targets hit. Enemies already snared will become briefly rooted. The root effect is nature based.
Ball Lightning		Creates a large ball of highly charged electricity that travels slowly forward, dealing rapid periodic lightning damage to enemies it overlaps with and applying 1 Electrified stack to targets with each hit.	-	-
Blizzard		Channel a massive blizzard around you, raining a barrage of hail shards upon your enemies while channeling. Each shard impact deals ice damage in a small area around it. All enemies in the blizzard also acquire 1 stack of Chilled periodically. Activate the ability again to end the channel early.	-	-
Cone of Cold		Blasts a cone of cold in front of the caster, dealing ice damage and applying a stack of Chilled to each enemy hit. The blast also leaves behind a field of ice mines that explode on proximity contact, causing ice damage and 1 Chilled stack to nearby enemies when triggered.	-	-
Consecrating Wave		Send forth a cone of radiance that deals radiant damage to all enemies while healing the ten nearest allies.
Divine Flare		Place a targeted area heal on the ground that heals all targets within after several seconds. Total healing is split between all targets hit.
Fissure		Calls forth a series of jagged spikes of earth in a line in front of the caster, dealing earth damage and applying two stacks of Earthen to each enemy hit along its path, and then launching them in the air.	-	-
Grapple		Takes aim for a moment before hurling a hooked chain in a line, damaging the first target it contacts and immediately pulling them to the caster. The target suffers a tapering snare for 3 seconds.
Headshot		Deals 175% physical damage to target enemy. Deals 50% bonus physical damage if the target is below 50% Health. Cooldown is halved if it connects with a marked target. Cast time cut in half if fired within 2s of another projectile.
Inciting Strikes		Slashes twice in a forward cone while adding additional threat.
Longbow basic attack		A slower, powerful, longer range basic ranged attack. Tapping the basic attack button will shoot normally. Holding the basic attack button will charge the shot (and root the player) to cause added damage.
Magma Field		Erupts the earth at target location, forming a boiling pool of lava that deals fire damage to enemies per tick while periodically applying a stack of Burning to enemies within the area.	-	-
Meteor		Conjures a massive flaming rock before sending it hurling toward target location. Upon impact, it deals major fire damage while knocking foes flying, and then continues to roll forward for its remaining distance, dealing additional fire damage while applying stacks of Burning to enemies along its path.	-	-
Meteor Storm		Summons forth a Meteor Storm, dropping 3 meteors in the target location.	Adds an extra meteor.	Adds an extra meteor.
Piercing Shot		Fire a projectile that travels in a straight line, piercing through and damaging all enemies in its path.
Prismatic Beam		Spawns a giant prismatic beam of energy that can be aimed around you. Deals large damage to enemy targets.	Increased damage.	Snares hit targets.
Raining Death		Fires a dense rain of arrows 20 meters ahead, dealing high damage. Deals more damage to more distant targets.
Shield Assault		Bashes the target with your shield, dealing damage and applying the shaken condition. If the target is already suffering from the shaken condition, stun the target instead.
Shortbow basic attack		A fast, low power, short range basic ranged attack. Holding down the basic attack button will repeatedly fire.
Snipe		A powerful charged attack.
Thundershock		Shoots forward a beam of lightning that damages enemies in a line in front of you.	Increased damage.	Now knocks down hit targets.
Tremoring Bellow		Releases a thundering shout in a forward cone, applying the staggered condition on enemy targets. Also stomps the ground dealing damage around the caster and tripping enemies affected by the snared condition.
Vine Field		Summons 3 fields of grabbing vines, one at the target location every .5s for 1.5s. Targets hit are damaged for 10% physical damage and snared for 3s, reducing their movement speed by 40%. Targets that have more than lOs of snare duration are rooted. This effect can only trigger once per target.

Hitboxes

The developers are testing different approaches to accommodate varying hitboxes between the races.

• There may be a single unified hitbox with some exceptions or some special collision rules as opposed to having different sized hitboxes.

More than likely we'll have some sort of unified or unified-ish hitbox. But again it's going to probably have a unified hitbox with some exceptions or some special sort of collision rules based on them as opposed to just making it smaller for one and not the other. – Jeffrey Bard

There aren't separate types of hitbox categories in the Ashes of Creation MMORPG as there were in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse.

We don't have separate types of hitbox categories, for example. There's no head hit box in the MMORPG like there was in APOC. So from a critical standpoint you're not going to see a greater risk of critting for a larger hitbox. – Steven Sharif

Directional attacks

There will be directional attacks (back attacks, flanking attacks, frontal attacks) that deal additional damage depending on the positional context of the attack.

• Rogues will generally have more of these.

Cleaving

Weapon attack cone in Alpha-1.

As I attack I am hitting multiple numbers of these opponents; and that's important because all weapons, regardless of whether you are in reticle mode or tab-targeting mode will be able to have a action-based type weapon attack. Not active skill, but weapon attack. – Steven Sharif

All weapons have a forward attack cone, regardless of being in tab or action mode.

• The cone's arc and distance will vary based on weapon type.

Polearms for example will have a much wider arc and much further out. Daggers will have a more fine-tuned arc, so you have to be more precise in that regard. – Steven Sharif

This is described as a weapon attack not an active skill.

• It was previously stated that cleaving will be a class ability for some classes.

Indirect fire skills

Alpha-2 Chain Lightning arcing around an environmental obstacle.

Indirect fire skills are targeted skills where the projectiles may path around obstructions that are not in line-of-sight, so long as the maximum distance travelled for the skill is not exceeded.

• This is a prototype concept that is subject to testing and balancing.
• A limited number of these may exist throughout different class kits.

Some abilities might have indirect fire. So, if you have let's say a Archer or Ranger who has the ability to select a Mage as their secondary class; and they might want to augment a Snipe ability in order to go around a corner like an Arcane Archer might have... Some abilities might not care about that line-of-sight. They might care the distance to the target around the corner, or the path that it's taking; and if it's outside that path is too long it might not be able to reach them of course. – Steven Sharif

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Chain Lightning		Release a powerful streak of lightning that hits your primary target and then chains outward to all nearby enemies from that target, dealing lightning damage and applying 3 stacks of Electrified to each target hit.	-	-

Time to kill

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

The Ashes of Creation MMORPG will have a time-to-kill (TTK) of around 30 seconds to a minute.

• Time-to-kill in the Ashes of Creation Apocalypse battle royale testing mode was adapted for a traditional battle royale setting.
• The developers do not want one-shots in the final MMORPG.

In the MMORPG we really don't want to see any one-shots. The time-to-kill needs to be strategic and tactical. – Steven Sharif

Headshot mechanics

There are no headshot mechanics in the Ashes of Creation MMORPG.

• Headshots were a part of Ashes of Creation Apocalypse battle royale.
• Previously it was stated that headshot mechanics may be implemented in the MMORPG along the lines of a higher critical chance and that they would not be one hit kills.
  • Headshots in action combat are equivalent to a critical hit in tab targeted combat.
  • Players relying on tab skills will have a fixed critical hit chance every time they use an ability or weapon.
  • Players using action-based skills are going to rely on getting a head shot or hitting a critical spot on the opponent.

Gear inspection/ Threat assessment

You decide to gank the player, but find out that you have been ambushed!

Players will have a buff on their nameplate that indicates the gear set they are wearing. Other players will be able to see this buff by targeting that player at a distance.

• This will indicate the type of armor (cloth, leather, plate) that they are predominantly wearing.

You can target a player. You're going to see what type of armor they have based on a buff they have available to them because obviously cosmetics can change appearance. You might have different silhouettes as a result of that. – Steven Sharif

• The border will indicate the level and quality of the tier set.
  • This also indicates if the gear is enchanted, along with visual effects associated with enchanted items.
• The developers believe that inspecting gear to obtain an exact equipment list or gear score may lead to "unwelcome behavior".

When you see a player approaching you and they're wearing a transmog you don't know if that person is a high damage mitigation against physical damage or against magical damage and essentially the way we overcome that is through you being able to target a player at a distance and they will have a buff that's present on them that you will see, which indicates that essentially the piece set that they are wearing. It is important for players to be able to ascertain from a threat assessment standpoint what they're going up against if they're actively checking that, and that will be available. – Steven Sharif

Character nameplate

Nameplate in the Alpha-2 party UI.

The icon in the corner next to Steven's nameplate: that little icon is actually his secondary archetype that he hasn't unlocked. – Margaret Krohn

Alpha-2 nameplates, targeting plates, and raid frame UI.

There have been some updates to a little bit of the nameplates that Colby and the UI team have implemented, as well as some of the targeting plates as well. – Steven Sharif

Nameplates are displayed above the head.

• Player character nameplates will have first, and optionally last name (surname).
  • The name of the character's guild is displayed next to their name.
  • The character's nameplate will deteriorate to give an indication of how much damage they have taken.
  • An icon will identify the character's class.
  • Hovering over a player nameplate will show information such as level, class name, and archetype combo.
  • A buff icon will indicate the character's gear and grade.
• The size and priority of nameplates will be relate to their distance (away from the camera).
• The visibility of nameplates can be obscured by in-game objects, such as trees; by utility skills, such as Camouflage or Stealth; or through the use of disguises.
• UI settings will enable nameplates to be hidden, resized, and customized.
• Summoner summons' creature type appears in the nameplate above the summon. This cannot be changed by the player.
• Mob nameplates will have indicators that identify resistances, buffs, end elite status.
  • A star format may be utilized to indicate hit point allocation.

Nameplates in the party UI indicate the player's choice of secondary archetype.

• A padlock icon indicates that the secondary archetype is not yet unlocked.

Mobility

Revamped Alpha-1 Mage Fireball ability.

The general approach that we're taking based on a lot of feedback and just good combat design in general. You know philosophy is that we want to give more agency in the hands of the player and the antithesis of that is locking the player down for really long amounts of time. The sort of concept behind that is like you could make an animation effects as glorious looking as possible but if it's taking away control of the player, none of that really matters. Especially the 100th or thousandth time you're using the spell you're tired of that happening you don't feel powerful: You feel the opposite of powerful. So we're trying to like give a lot of control back to the player while they're using these abilities so they can still control their movements, they can react simultaneously while they're taking actions; and we just want to get overall more of a fluid flow, I guess, of combat. And that's the general design philosophy we're using to approach the overhaul. – Tradd Thompson

• The revamped combat system features split-body animations, where the character's upper body can be locked by weapon attack animations while the lower body is free to continue moving.

A lot of abilities you have the capability of moving while casting. It's going to decrease your movement speed significantly or depending on the type of ability. We do reserve the cost- and that's really what it is when you tie ability usage to mobility- we do reserve the cost of requiring the character to remain stationary on some big effect type abilities. – Steven Sharif

• Most abilities in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some abilities may slow the caster down during the cast, but only rarely will the player be rooted in place.
  • Movement speed can decrease significantly depending on the type of ability.
  • Weapon weight can also affect mobility.
  • Skills with the greatest power may require the caster to remain stationary while channeling them. This is a risk vs. reward mechanic.

Most abilities you'll find in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some of those abilities might slow your movement during the cast, but you can continue to move. Very rarely, and depending on obviously the importance of the ability or the power level of that ability, you might be rooted in place. So, for example, the AoE ability [Chains of Restraint] has a lot going on. It has damage ticking over time, it is an area of effect, it also has a status condition application; and in those instances the player character gets rooted. – Steven Sharif

• Unreal Engine 5 has enabled improved forms of locomotion, such as crouching, tilting and mantling.
  • Crouching may or may not be in the game.

• The ability to prone is not be in the game.

• Moving backward will likely not affect block and parry.

• Player movement speed during combat is balanced for both PvE and PvP.

There's a balance in the game design between your movement speed on attack and the movement speed of your opponent. When you have a game that is both PvE centric as well as PvP centric, you have to make sure that combat is blended for both approaches; and we can always run into problems where, if you're significantly hampered in your movement speed, that has an effect on how we expect player versus player engagements to interact; and we don't want to restrict a player's ability to be mobile if they're the target of an attack. And as a result of that we need to make sure that we don't restrict the movement abilities of the player who is doing the attacking as well. So we want it to be relatively free for you to stay with each other. Your opponents move around the battlefield together and if we're hampering you on the attack action, we have to then implement some type of snare, or slow, or cc effect essentially on your opposing target; and that's not the approach we want to take for for PvP. – Steven Sharif

Q: If a ranger is super mobile, what are the melee's options in order to catch them?

A: Different class kits will provide different gap closers. They'll provide different mobility skills. They'll have lockdowns. They'll have chains to pull back. They'll have a lot of different things in the rotation. That's part of what an MMORPG experience is. You're not just restricted to three or six skills, you have a rotational suite; and depending on the type of challenges you face is going to help determine which of those rotations you spec into from your skill tree. – Steven Sharif

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Air Strike		Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing area damage and inflicting snare to targets hit. Enemies already snared will become briefly rooted. The root effect is nature based.
Blink		Instantly teleport a set distance in the direction you are moving.	-	-
Caravan Speed Boost		Gives the caravan a temporary speed boost.	-	-
Caravan Trail Speed Bonus		Minor speed boost for travelling on a simple trail.	-	-
Rush		Rush toward a target; and upon reaching the target, deal an amount damage with a chance to knock the target down.	-	-
Wings of Salvation		Sprout phoenix-like wings and leap to target ally, then grant a small amount of temporary health to that target on arrival. An ally is defined as any non-combatant player or non-mob NPC.

Weapon weights

Alpha-2 shield, spear, and mace 3D renders.

Weapon weight refers to how the mass of a weapon affects its performance during combat.

• Light weapons have fewer restrictions on player agency and motion.
• Medium weapons exist on a spectrum between light and heavy weapons.
• Heavy weapons will increasingly lock the player in place during portions of the combat animation.

There is a balance between player motion and agency as we call it and weapon weightedness- that almost locked-in-place rooted position- the heavier the weapon is, the more restrictions you want to place on that player agency to showcase the rooted effect: That weight- that heavyweight aspect; and so what we've done by presenting you guys with both the dual daggers and the two-handed weapon is we've shown the range between that complete player agency: a player agency in the light weapon attacks that's the dual daggers, and the maximum range of of rootedness or weightedness that's present on the two-handed weapon; and that's the spectrum in which our basic melee combat will exist within. So if there are medium weapon groups that exist in-between there, it's going to be somewhere in between that spectrum. – Steven Sharif

Player movement

Walking and running shown in pre-alpha gameplay.

• Sprinting will consume a percentage of a character's mana pool. Sprinting will not be permitted while in combat.
  • A sprinting/dash skill with a cooldown was confirmed to be part of a class kit.

I've instructed design to incorporate a mana consumption that's percentage based for sprinting. So it'll be a similar amount of time that each class, regardless of their mana values, will have in order to sprint and it will not be accessible while in a combat. – Steven Sharif

• There is a toggleable walk/run (autorun) capability.

• There is not going to be any "go to waypoint" (auto-pathing) mechanics.

• Back-peddling (walking backwards) and strafing are slower than normal movement speed.

• Double-jumping has been considered as an option for player mounts.

• Unreal Engine 5 mantling was demonstrated by the developers.

Collision

There are player and spell collision mechanics in Ashes of Creation.

• Inertia and momentum physics will help prevent blocking doorways/access points. This is based on a character's direction and movement speed, and can be used to push people out of the way.

• Mounts and players cannot stop caravans and other vehicles from moving. Nothing can move or block ships.

Dodging

Dodging in Alpha-1 early combat.

Another thing that's important about these action combats is the ability to dodge and moving out of the way of certain skill shots. – Steven Sharif

Evasion moves such as dodging and weaving will be present in Ashes of Creation combat.

• The developers are considering the inclusion of dodging in a subset of universal skills that apply to all classes.
  • Dodge rolling type skills were previously housed in the action skill sets of agile classes such as Rogues or Fighters.
  • The developers will be testing the use of separate energy mechanics for universal skills in Alpha-2.

• Dodging will not use I-frames (invincibility frames), but it may affect accuracy and mitigation stats when used.
  • Previously it was stated that hybrid combat will likely have true evasion skills relating to action-oriented combat and also have I-frames that apply to tab targeting.

So you see an animation windup that's a telegraph on what's coming; and then you have response actions that you can take as a result of that in order to dodge, weave, move, do whatever. It is both a combination of what your rotation is but also how you have reaction abilities ready to go that you save for certain circumstances that are important. – Steven Sharif

Active blocking

Tank active blocking with a Shield in Alpha-2.

The shield version would probably be better but you'd still be able to parry or whatnot with a two-handed weapon, or even maybe a dual wield. – Tradd Thompson

Cleric active blocking with a Shield in Alpha-2.

Active blocking is a universal skill that applies to all classes.

• Active blocking is present in Alpha-2. At present the developers are using a universal stamina-based energy system, but they will be testing the use of separate energy mechanics for universal skills in Alpha-2.

Active blocking might be an ability that- it's universal, of course it's universal- but it might be consuming mana; and you'll be able to adjust that mana consumption based off of your passive spec into your skill trees. In addition, it might also consume stamina, where that's something we're going to be testing as part of Alpha-2. – Steven Sharif

• Shields are better for active blocking, but any melee weapon can also be used to parry with a lesser amount of mitigation.

Q: How are you designing encounters around active blocking? Will it be situational use, or would I expect to be laying on my block keybind for most of the fight to prevent getting deleted by bosses?

A: It depends really on the type of adversary you're facing. Some of them are going to have indicators or tells that a big attack is coming. It's an animation wind up where you'll have an opportunity to use active block in very unique situations that are based on timing and additional mitigation for those incoming one-off attacks. In other occasions you'll be able to use it off of rotational cooldowns, or if you're waiting for a particular ability or you're during the use of your Aegis. There's different situations for when active block is a relevant use-case. – Steven Sharif

• Some abilities may be able to overcome, surpass, or cancel active blocking.

If a player is in a state, such as an active block, or an active tumble state, there will likely be some types of abilities that interact with reacting to those types of states and will either overcome surpass or cancel out those states, particularly as it relates to not just active blocking, but also potentially passive blocking as well; and that would be something probably related to physical penetration values as a stat, or even CC breaks that could be relevant as well for those types of things. I think that's on the radar for the combat team. – Steven Sharif

• Previously the developers had not finalized designs for active blocking and were leaning toward using more traditional buff-oriented universal damage mitigation for the MMO, and were also considering interaction between action-based blocking and a passive block stat.
  • The Paladin's Might shield in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse had its own hit box and hit points (HP); that could actively block projectiles.

Animations

Alpha-2 work-in-progress combat animations and decals.

The intensity of those weapon trailings; how they scale based on the type of weapon, the level of weapon, that you have; but not just the trailing on the weapon per-se but also the ground decals. Like for this heavy weapon, that first strike you see that decal in the ground is- I love that look- and even on the backswing when I hit the ground behind me, it's causing that decal. – Steven Sharif

• Combat is animation-driven to ensure it is impactful and responsive.

We really wanted to build the combat system to- like i said earlier- be as physical as possible. So we have it very animation driven. Everything is handled based on a reference of animation as opposed to nebulous timings, which allows it to feel very impactful and very responsive. – Keenan Reimer

• Races will not have unique combat animations, but will have unique non-combat animations.

We're not going to be having I think unique combat animations. However we will have unique non-combat animations, such as your idle, your walk, your run cycle: things that the combat attacks do not have to blend back into. – Steven Sharif

Combat abilities

The aspiration for combat is for abilities to have corresponding counter-play abilities.

• The goal is to have special animations for parrying, blocking and evading.

They can be a challenge to implement sort of really reliably so you might not see them on every evasion or every block, but we do want that stuff to show up. – Jeffrey Bard

Basic attacks

Alpha-2 Wand basic weapon attack.

Basic attacks are triggered for the equipped primary weapon by pressing Q or left-clicking the mouse (these buttons can be re-bound by the player).

• Players can select which weapon they wish to use as their primary weapon for basic attacks.
• Different weapon types have different basic attacks.
• Weapons with projectile attacks are capable of blind firing without having a target.
  • If the player is in action camera mode and their reticle is over a target, they will be able to soft lock onto that target, causing projectiles to home to targets who are within the correct range/angle.

When you have your weapon and you utilize a basic attack, you can blind fire that weapon, if it has a projectile associated with it, without having to have a target. In addition, if your reticle in action camera mode is over a target, you will have a soft target lock and projectiles will home to that target if within the right angle of direction. – Steven Sharif

• Sequences of basic attacks trigger the combat animation montage based on the weapon type.
  • Using a skill other than a basic attack will in general reset the weapon use combo system.
• The developers are considering per-use consumables/buffs that apply certain rider effects to basic weapon attacks.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Longbow basic attack		A slower, powerful, longer range basic ranged attack. Tapping the basic attack button will shoot normally. Holding the basic attack button will charge the shot (and root the player) to cause added damage.
Shortbow basic attack		A fast, low power, short range basic ranged attack. Holding down the basic attack button will repeatedly fire.

Crowd control

Crowd control (CC/mezzing) abilities include root, snare, stun, sleep and slow.

• There will be diminishing returns on stuns, sleep and slows so as to avoid stun locking.
  • Diminishing returns on CC effects have not yet been implemented in Alpha-1 testing.

Diminishing returns in regards to crowd control and conditions like stun and sleep and slows and that thing: Yes we will have absolutely diminishing returns. I think it's a necessary component to balance out classes that have high control ability. – Steven Sharif

• Lockdowns won't likely be tab-targeted skills. This is to avoid imbalanced combos with skill shot (action targeted) abilities.

• Hard CC's are stuns, knock downs, sleeps, paralysis, some roots, some silences.
  • Hard CCs may be housed in action oriented skills because they are skill shots that are more difficult to land.

We're trying to stay away from hard locks as much as we possibly can. We want to have the system be very play, counter-play, counter-counter-play feel. – Jeffrey Bard

• Soft CC's are in the tab-targeted abilities.

• CC effects do not apply to Non-combatant (green) players. The target of a CC ability must be flagged in order to suffer the CC effects. This prevents players from opening attacks that stun non-combatant players during a pull for example.

• Some crowd-control abilities can dismount a mounted player. In that case the mount would persist with its own health pool and other stats.
  • In current Alpha-1 testing mounts are not separate from the player.

There's also going to be effects that just stun the mount or stun you on the mount. – Steven Sharif

• Summoner's summons will be able to use crowd control.

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Air Strike		Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing area damage and inflicting snare to targets hit. Enemies already snared will become briefly rooted. The root effect is nature based.
Ancestral Bolas		Throws a magical web of bolas at the target location. All enemies within are snared and build additional hate towards the tank every second. Enemies entering or exiting the radius will be tripped.
Chain Lightning		Release a powerful streak of lightning that hits your primary target and then chains outward to all nearby enemies from that target, dealing lightning damage and applying 3 stacks of Electrified to each target hit.	-	-
Chains of Restraint		Call forth spectral chains in a target area that stagger enemies within or stun enemies already under the staggered effect, then leave behind an area that deals radiant damage each second over 8 seconds.
Condemn		Stun target enemy for 3 seconds.
Fissure		Calls forth a series of jagged spikes of earth in a line in front of the caster, dealing earth damage and applying two stacks of Earthen to each enemy hit along its path, and then launching them in the air.	-	-
Grapple		Takes aim for a moment before hurling a hooked chain in a line, damaging the first target it contacts and immediately pulling them to the caster. The target suffers a tapering snare for 3 seconds.
Imbue Ammo: Weighted		Imbues your ammunition with weight. Enemies hit by your bow attacks suffer the Snared status effect, reducing their movement speed by 50%. Each application applies 3 seconds of duration to the target, up to a maximum of 12 seconds.
Slam		Slam your target with immense force, knocking them back. Applies 10 stagger. Deals 500% additional threat.
Slumber		Applies the sleeping condition to targets affected within a small area around the primary target, rendering them unable to move or take any action. Any damage dealt to a sleeping target will break the effect. Duration is reduced by 20% for each additional target hit, to a minimum of 40% of base duration.	-	-
Tremoring Bellow		Releases a thundering shout in a forward cone, applying the staggered condition on enemy targets. Also stomps the ground dealing damage around the caster and tripping enemies affected by the snared condition.

Interrupts

Abilities with a cast bar can be interrupted during the cast.

• There are abilities to counter interrupts.
• Some interrupts are better than others.

This section contains information from Alpha-1 testing. It will be updated when new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Bulwark		Bash enemies in front of you twice. The second attack temporarily increases block chance. You must have a shield equipped to block.	Additional increased block chance.	The second attack knocks down enemies.
Rush		Rush toward a target; and upon reaching the target, deal an amount damage with a chance to knock the target down.	-	-
Thundershock		Shoots forward a beam of lightning that damages enemies in a line in front of you.	Increased damage.	Now knocks down hit targets.

Aggro abilities

Threat (Aggro/Hate) is generated based on damage done, healing done, and modifiers on certain abilities.

• In PvE, aggro against player characters is based on a hate table.
• In PvP, aggro may force target switching to the Tank. Feedback on this will be sought during testing.

If we think about PVP settings and the role of taunt or hate, a lot of times for tanks in the MMOs that I've played- where you have a PvE and PvP scenario- those types of hate generation abilities don't really have cross application into the PVP realm; and that can feel bad, because typically a tank build-out can be delegated around how I generate hate; and if it has no cross application into PvP then effectively you're creating a class composition that just is not relevant in half of the game, or in that area of the game. So when we talk about how we're going to apply hate to player targets or taunt to player targets, sometimes that can move into the realm of target switching, or the ability to demand that target on the tank in a PvP scenario as well. That's something that we need to get player feedback on, because there's a lot of strong emotions around that type of mechanic. I for one am a big proponent of that. I think it's interesting. I think that it plays into the role of the tank and that it it hits a class fantasy that most tank players want to feel. And I think however on the flip side of that, it is a source of control; and anytime you're under the effects of some source of control, it's going to be a feel bad moment for the target that's being controlled. So that's why I think it generates a lot of feelings on both sides of the aisle. – Steven Sharif

• Detargeting is the act of removing hate/threat/aggro from an enemy.
• There will be a taunt skill available at higher levels than what has been previewed so far for Alpha-2.
  • In Alpha-0 testing there was a single-target taunt skill, called Hatred.

Q: There were a lot of concerns about threat [in the Alpha-2 Tank preview video]. A lot of people didn't understand how holding threat works, because you weren't holding threat at some point.

A: It's important to remember that these previews are done at a very low-level, so these are low-level skills and abilities that the archetypes have available to them; and so because of that, some of the functionality from these abilities they don't necessarily perform as well as you would want them to in a later stage of the game for that role. Now also keep in mind that balance is a perspective that needs to be incorporated also. So, threat is generated based off of a few factors: It's based off of damage done, it's based off of healing done, it's based off of threat generation modifiers that are on abilities. Now the tank in this situation I believe has two abilities that are going to generate additional threat. They have the slicing- the number two ability; and then they also have the shout ability. Both of those are creating additional threat. But with that being said, we need to tune probably those abilities up a little bit to contend with the DPS that's coming both from the ranger and with the heals that are coming out of the cleric. – Steven Sharif

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Ancestral Bolas		Throws a magical web of bolas at the target location. All enemies within are snared and build additional hate towards the tank every second. Enemies entering or exiting the radius will be tripped.
Grapple		Takes aim for a moment before hurling a hooked chain in a line, damaging the first target it contacts and immediately pulling them to the caster. The target suffers a tapering snare for 3 seconds.
Hatred		Single target that adds hate.	Add a forced target lock.	Add hate over time per tick.
Inciting Strikes		Slashes twice in a forward cone while adding additional threat.
Shield Assault		Bashes the target with your shield, dealing damage and applying the shaken condition. If the target is already suffering from the shaken condition, stun the target instead.
Slam		Slam your target with immense force, knocking them back. Applies 10 stagger. Deals 500% additional threat.

Animation cancelling

Animation cancelling will not be a combat mechanic in Ashes of Creation.

• Players will be able to cancel channeled abilities.

Combat stances

The use of weapon stances in game is likely.

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 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

AoE skills

AoE skills may have some form of diminishing returns that will be tuned based on testing and player feedback.

We have a few ideas on how we want to approach AoEs. There's a vein of thought that is regarding diminishing returns [on] maximum number of targets. I'm not a huge fan of that. There is a diminishing return as it applies to damage conveyed. There is just the fact that we're a collision-based game and there's a limited number of bodies that can be located in a particular choke point, or in proximity. There's still things that we're testing especially as part of Alpha 2 that we'll likely be testing and want to get player feedback on as it relates to curbing the AoE approach of most raid comps; and a lot of different games have done a lot of different things to achieve that. We're going to be testing a lot of these different directions and finding which works best for Ashes. – Steven Sharif

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Aegis		Instantly dispels all negative effects on the caster, then creates a protective dome behind the tank for 15 seconds, transferring 50% of all damage received by targets within the area to the tank instead. All targets within the cone also receive increased status effect resistance for the duration.
Air Strike		Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing area damage and inflicting snare to targets hit. Enemies already snared will become briefly rooted. The root effect is nature based.
Ancestral Bolas		Throws a magical web of bolas at the target location. All enemies within are snared and build additional hate towards the tank every second. Enemies entering or exiting the radius will be tripped.
Black Hole		Summon a black hole at the target location that reduces movement speed of enemies in the area.	Increased duration.	Explodes for area damage upon expiration.
Blizzard		Channel a massive blizzard around you, raining a barrage of hail shards upon your enemies while channeling. Each shard impact deals ice damage in a small area around it. All enemies in the blizzard also acquire 1 stack of Chilled periodically. Activate the ability again to end the channel early.	-	-
Chain Lightning		Release a powerful streak of lightning that hits your primary target and then chains outward to all nearby enemies from that target, dealing lightning damage and applying 3 stacks of Electrified to each target hit.	-	-
Communal Restoration		Restore health to all party members in range instantly, plus additional healing over time. Allies under the HoT also receive +10% maximum health for its duration. This can overheal.
Cone of Cold		Blasts a cone of cold in front of the caster, dealing ice damage and applying a stack of Chilled to each enemy hit. The blast also leaves behind a field of ice mines that explode on proximity contact, causing ice damage and 1 Chilled stack to nearby enemies when triggered.	-	-
Consecrating Wave		Send forth a cone of radiance that deals radiant damage to all enemies while healing the ten nearest allies.
Divine Flare		Place a targeted area heal on the ground that heals all targets within after several seconds. Total healing is split between all targets hit.
Fissure		Calls forth a series of jagged spikes of earth in a line in front of the caster, dealing earth damage and applying two stacks of Earthen to each enemy hit along its path, and then launching them in the air.	-	-
Inciting Strikes		Slashes twice in a forward cone while adding additional threat.
Lava Storm		Creates a field of lava at the selected location. Deals area damage over time.	Increased damage. Increased duration.	Increased damage. Increased duration.
Magma Field		Erupts the earth at target location, forming a boiling pool of lava that deals fire damage to enemies per tick while periodically applying a stack of Burning to enemies within the area.	-	-
Meteor		Conjures a massive flaming rock before sending it hurling toward target location. Upon impact, it deals major fire damage while knocking foes flying, and then continues to roll forward for its remaining distance, dealing additional fire damage while applying stacks of Burning to enemies along its path.	-	-
Meteor Storm		Summons forth a Meteor Storm, dropping 3 meteors in the target location.	Adds an extra meteor.	Adds an extra meteor.
Prismatic Beam		Spawns a giant prismatic beam of energy that can be aimed around you. Deals large damage to enemy targets.	Increased damage.	Snares hit targets.
Raining Death		Fires a dense rain of arrows 20 meters ahead, dealing high damage. Deals more damage to more distant targets.
Slumber		Applies the sleeping condition to targets affected within a small area around the primary target, rendering them unable to move or take any action. Any damage dealt to a sleeping target will break the effect. Duration is reduced by 20% for each additional target hit, to a minimum of 40% of base duration.	-	-
Vine Field		Summons 3 fields of grabbing vines, one at the target location every .5s for 1.5s. Targets hit are damaged for 10% physical damage and snared for 3s, reducing their movement speed by 40%. Targets that have more than lOs of snare duration are rooted. This effect can only trigger once per target.
Whirlwind		Damages targets in range and applies a stagger effect.

Primary skills

Alpha-1 preview primary skills.

If from the eight archetypes whatever you choose as your secondary, you're going to receive a choice of augments that relate to some core ideal of that class. You know like a tank is about controlling the battlefield, is about surviving. The mage is about dealing damage and elements and ability in AoEs. The rogue is going to be about stealth and critical damage. So those augments are going to to play towards those identities. – Steven Sharif

The idea behind the system is that you're skirting the line through these augmentations of your role, right. We have the traditional holy trinity that's present in class designs for MMOs and it's often that those either are not deviated at all or completely deviated from entirely. The augment is to offer a balance between that where you still maintain the semblance of that trinity system while offering the opportunity to customize your play experience towards one of the other angles in the triangle. – Steven Sharif

Primary skills (class abilities) are based on a player's archetype.

• A player may choose a secondary archetype when they reach level 25. The player can then augment their primary skills with effects from their secondary archetype.

• Outside of class-specific skills there may be a subset of universal skills, such as active block and dodge.
• Class skills are not affected by the type of weapon that is equipped.

• Primary skills in Alpha-2 are expected to be very different to those in Alpha-1.

Skill points

Alpha-1 preview skills user interface.

This is where players allocate skill points into either their active skills, their passive abilities- which can augment their usage of weapons and armors and health regeneration and passive stats and stuff like that-- but on the weapons side of things, that's where you will spec into certain types of procs based off of weapon groupings. So we've talked a little bit about this in the past: If you have a dagger, daggers might have a chance to proc a bleed on your weapon attack and that would synergize with an active skills' ability like let's say Backstab that does additional damage if the target is under a bleed effect. Now we have said in the past that players will be able to allocate skill points into their active skills that are more geared towards either action combat or tab targeting. – Steven Sharif

Players receive skill points at specific points as they level. These can be used to level up skills (increase their rank) within their active, passive or combat/weapon skill trees.

• Skill points will accrue at specific XP milestones, such as 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 progress through the level, so as to avoid creating an imbalance with experience debt.

We do have this concept of experience debt that does accrue and we don't want to create an imbalance between skill points acquired versus experience, so we're going to predicate your skill points acquisition based on benchmarks you reach when leveling through a level. So these are going to be at specific points in the level, like one quarter progress, to half progress, to three quarters progress: you're going to get an influx of skill points and then you'll be able to allocate them into your skill tree. – Steven Sharif

• It will not be possible to max all skills in a skill tree.
• In terms of skill progression, players can choose to go "wide" and get a number of different abilities, or go "deep" into a few specific abilities.
• Players are able to reset and reallocate their skill points.
• Augments do not cost skill points. It was previously stated that certain augments will have more expense required on the skill point side.

Making active skills capable of receiving additional skill point allocations and unlocking additional features so that from a player agency standpoint it's going to be up to you whether or not you want to be more diverse but less depth- wider and not taller, in some of these skill choices. Or if you want to be very very tall, that's going to be something that is up to the player in that regard. – Steven Sharif

Active skills

Alpha-1 Tank action bar (hotbar) early user interface design.

Players can build their characters with the active skills they want on their action bar (hotbar).

• The maximum number of skills a player can have on their action bar will be around 15-20.
  • Each archetype will have roughly 35-40 skills to choose from on average.
• There will be an option to include multiple action bars (hotbars) on a player's UI. For example: One Fighter will be different from another based on what active skills they have chosen.

Some people like to have a very minimalistic number of hot bars. They don't need necessarily to have three, four, five hot bars that are available; but some people do like that: They want to have all their items listed on their hotbar as well as their abilities, as well as as their mounts, as well as anything that they can essentially interact with as an icon. – Steven Sharif

• Players are not given skills as they level up, they must choose what skills they take.
• There is no spellbook requiring memorization.

There will be multiple hot-bars that you obviously have available, because you're going to have consumables, you're going to have active skills and whatnot. But the number of active skills are not going to overwhelm necessarily the character and be irrelevant especially at certain stages. – Steven Sharif

Universal skills

Outside of class-specific skills there may be a subset of universal skills, such as active block and dodge.

• The developers will be testing the use of separate energy mechanics for universal skills in Alpha-2.
• Universal skill progression may align with a player's passive skill tree.

Outside of your class-specific skill tree, there's going to be a subsection of a few skills that are universal, like active block, like dodge; and I think what we're going to do- or at least what we're going to be discussing here- is those universal skills will have progressions that might align with your passive tree; and you can spec skill points into progressing additional features of those universal abilities that you will have access to. So I think that's probably going to be the direction that we're going to take. – Steven Sharif

Ultimate skill

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Ultimate skills are very powerful skills that can be used when enough focus has been accumulated from using the Weapon use combo system.

- None -

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

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Ball Lightning		Creates a large ball of highly charged electricity that travels slowly forward, dealing rapid periodic lightning damage to enemies it overlaps with and applying 1 Electrified stack to targets with each hit.	-	-
Blizzard		Channel a massive blizzard around you, raining a barrage of hail shards upon your enemies while channeling. Each shard impact deals ice damage in a small area around it. All enemies in the blizzard also acquire 1 stack of Chilled periodically. Activate the ability again to end the channel early.	-	-
Cone of Cold		Blasts a cone of cold in front of the caster, dealing ice damage and applying a stack of Chilled to each enemy hit. The blast also leaves behind a field of ice mines that explode on proximity contact, causing ice damage and 1 Chilled stack to nearby enemies when triggered.	-	-
Elemental Empowerment		Whenever you cast an elemental spell, your weapon attacks deal additional damage of that spell's element and apply a stack of the corresponding elemental status effects to targets hit. Casting a spell of a different element switches this effect to the new element.	-	-
Fireball		Instantly hurl a ball of fire toward your target, dealing fire damage and applying 1 stack of Burning to target on impact. Burning deals periodic fire damage over time for each stack applied. When the target reaches 5 stacks, they become Conflagrated, dealing extreme fire damage over time. Hitting a conflagrating enemy with a lightning spell causes Fusion, dealing significant damage and removing the Conflagrated effect.	-	-
Fissure		Calls forth a series of jagged spikes of earth in a line in front of the caster, dealing earth damage and applying two stacks of Earthen to each enemy hit along its path, and then launching them in the air.	-	-
Frostbolt		Launch a bolt of frost towards your target, dealing ice damage and applying 2 Chilled stacks to the target on impact. Chilled reduces movement speed of the target for each stack applied. When the target reaches 5 stacks, they become Frozen, rooting them in place for the duration. Hitting a frozen enemy with a lightning spell causes them to Shatter, dealing significant damage and removing the Frozen effect.	-	-
Lava Storm		Creates a field of lava at the selected location. Deals area damage over time.	Increased damage. Increased duration.	Increased damage. Increased duration.
Lightning Strike		Held ability: Charge up a bolt of lightning to unleash upon your target, dealing lightning damage and applying 2 stacks of Electrified to the target. This deals additional damage based on how long it was charged. Electrified reduces the target's magical mitigation for each stack applied. When the target reaches 10 stacks, all Electrified stacks are consumed and they become temporarily Shocked. Whenever a Shocked enemy takes damage, they take additional damage and 1 stack of Shocked is consumed. Shocked is initially applied with 20 stacks.	-	-
Magma Field		Erupts the earth at target location, forming a boiling pool of lava that deals fire damage to enemies per tick while periodically applying a stack of Burning to enemies within the area.	-	-
Meteor		Conjures a massive flaming rock before sending it hurling toward target location. Upon impact, it deals major fire damage while knocking foes flying, and then continues to roll forward for its remaining distance, dealing additional fire damage while applying stacks of Burning to enemies along its path.	-	-
Thundershock		Shoots forward a beam of lightning that damages enemies in a line in front of you.	Increased damage.	Now knocks down hit targets.

Balancing

Balancing in Ashes of Creation is group focused not based on 1v1 combat.

• 1v1 matchups will have a rock-paper-scissors dynamic, where one class will be superior to another.

There will be match ups in 1v1s where one class will be superior to another; and that application should be a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. We want there to be counter-play between the different classes... Instead it's going to be a group focused balance, where as long as you have the diversity of classes present, that's going to be an equal level playing field. It's going to be very dependent on skill and strategy. – Steven Sharif

• Alpha-1 testing was focused on core functionality rather than combat balance.

• Alpha-2 testing will begin to focus on balancing once populations and encounters have been put in place and are deep in testing.

From an engagement or encounter perspective, obviously we do a finger-in-the wind balance pass, but a lot of that stuff from our encounters team doesn't get done until populations are in place and those encounter designs get a little bit more time to bake. – Steven Sharif

The sixty four (64) classes are partitioned into eight primary archetypes. Balancing of active skills only relates to these eight primary archetypes.

• There are four primary groups of augments assigned to each base archetype. Balancing of augments relates to the four augment groups for each of the eight archetypes.

Even though augments do radically change the way your active skills provide you abilities, there's still a primary focus on the base archetype itself and not the 64 whole classes. – Steven Sharif

We're not really talking about 64 true classes, we're talking about eight classes with 64 variants... There isn't as much variance between the 64 classes as you might expect. It's not like there are 64 different versions of... radically different classes. – Jeffrey Bard

• Certain secondary archetypes are capable of "bridging the gap" between their counterpart.

Certain archetypes are capable of moving the gap between their counterpart per-se. If I am a Tank archetype and a Mage is my counter, I can take a Mage secondary and bridge the divide slightly; and then move my identity that direction ever so slightly. – Steven Sharif

Roles

Ashes of Creation has the traditional trinity of Tank, DPS (damage dealers) and Support (healer or non-healer) roles.

We have our eight base archetypes; and the trinity is a pretty strong influence with regards to the eight base classes. However the area in which we actually begin to play with that line between the trinity is in the secondary classes that you can pick. That's where we begin to blend those spaces and allow people a little bit of influence over their role and whether or not they fit perfectly within a particular category within the trinity. – Steven Sharif

• Although traditional roles are present, players should not feel branded by their primary archetype.
• Skill augments available through the class system allow characters to be personalized outside of their primary role.
• Players can also double down on their archetype choice to strengthen their primary role.

Synergies

Synergies exist between class skills, weapon skills, passive skills, proc effects, and status conditions. These synergies also apply to active skills from other characters.

Q: How much do you intend for those sort of synergy things to be done within one class, one character's kit, versus how much do you intend for them to be working with the other characters, the other archetypes and specializations to promote their things, or to also make sure you don't step on their feet and accidentally promote something they're trying to maximize?

A: When we talk about status conditions or keyword conditions and the promotion of those effects, there is going to be the bread and butter that each class kid has access to; and when they're creating the type of rotation with their ability system, they're going to want to emphasize those interactions that amplify or promote a particular type of status condition. So they'll have within the kit to their own interactions that they'll be able to leverage. But then in addition to that, they're going to have keyword status effects that help to either promote other classes' keyword status effects, or are the executed promotions of other classes initial status conditions. And when you think about the intent of the design: the intent of the design is that players are servicing themselves from a solo perspective when they want to go out and solo grind and solo experience and fulfill the quests. But when they come together to form a party to encounter group content, or a raid to encounter raid content: that the interconnectivity between those classes synergizes with these keyword promotions and/or effects; and there's a way to execute on that, that is successful and is effective, or a way that's not. And that's the skill ceiling/skill cap that requires interaction and cooperation and synchronization between, because there are limited time windows in which those keywords can get emphasized or executed upon when utilizing the ability. – Steven Sharif

When you think about it, it's very much a musical endeavor. When you think about a symphony or a concert, those instruments working with eachother to formulate this highly effective and very visceral experience of this music chain. When you accomplish that in combat, it's going to be noticeable; and that's the desire, is let's reward- let's dopamine hit when players are effective in their skill when executing on these ideas. – Steven Sharif

Meta

A goal of Ashes of Creation is to emphasise micro metas that work for specific encounters, and de-emphasize macro metas that work for everything.

What we're doing with this approach is we're de-emphasizing a macro meta and instead emphasizing a micro meta. And the difference between the macro/micro is that on the micro level you have metas that might form based on each individual type of encounter or experience. And in those senses, yes, there's going to be a most optimal: There's going to be a best in slot. There's going to be whatever that pertains to that particular challenge rating. But there won't we there will not be an overarching meta that says from a macro level, hey, if you got this shit, you're good to go for everything. That's boring, that's unfulfilling, that is not interesting; and it is just something that that dumbifies the experience. – Steven Sharif

• The effectiveness of classes, skills and gear is going to depend on the adversary or the encounter. There will be optimal builds for different challenges and difficulty ratings. This design aims to avoid any obvious meta or "cookie-cutter" builds in Ashes of Creation.​

• Different challenges are presented dynamically to players based on node progression and destruction. Situations that are based on a rock-paper-scissors design will inspire a horizontal gear chase. These dynamic challenges will change from month to month, causing a shift in demand in the economy as different builds are required by the new content.

• Increasing difficulty ratings inspire more of a traditional vertical power progression that is common in other MMOs.

Oftentimes you just have a very vertical power scale and that determines chase, but when you have a variety of relevance across certain types of adversaries and that variety changes over time because of player activity- and then that affects the economy and the crafter system and who was producing what for what demand- and everything gets shaken up. That's a very fun environment to exist in. It presents a more dynamic situation rather than a quote-unquote cookie-cutter type selection. – Steven Sharif

• The intricacies of how nodes interact with predicates in the world means that it may be possible but difficult to achieve meta server builds.

Q: Do you have any concerns on players eventually discovering a meta server build with nodes due to players heading to specific nodes and regions because they find that content more enjoyable; and if so how would you go about getting players to shift around the world to break up the meta?

A: I think it's interesting if players have a concerted effort across a server to interact with one another, learn from their actions, mistakes, successes, and effectuate that on the server. That's interesting, but I don't believe we'll see a meta form. I think that the intricacies are too great when it comes to how predicates are formed in order to elicit world state changes. – Steven Sharif

Power creep

The developers intend to limit power creep via item sinks, the lack of gear binding, and the absence of pay-to-win or pay-to-convenience in Ashes of Creation.

Weapon use combo system

Alpha-2 Mage demonstrating a Frostbolt, Lightning Strike, and Wand weapon attack combo.

This is a single Target projectile attack that applies two stacks of Chilled to the enemy; and then after that hit him with a few wand attacks. Now you'll see that you've gotten a Frozen status effect on him and then he timed that really well there... in that very last frame you'll see that he hit him with a lightning effect... So that's a good way to get your burst damage if you're rotating your spells and your elements the correct way. – Keenan Reimer

Work-in-progress Alpha-2 basic weapon attack combos.

The ability for for a spell Caster or just any player with their archetype having the option to weave in-between those rotations and those spells and to create successful combinations within their kit that you amplify the DPS or the status conditions or the control effects, or whatever it is your is your end goal. Having a rotation that emphasizes your ability to succeed or fail in those combos I think is compelling from a gameplay perspective. – Steven Sharif

A weapon use combo system (also referred to as Weapon attack combo, Weapon combo, Combo system, and Weapon use ability) is utilized instead of a traditional auto-attack ability in Ashes of Creation.

• The combo system consists of a sequence of combat animations based on the weapon type, referred to as a combat animation montage.
  • Combos are triggered by performing basic weapon attacks (default Q or left-mouse-click).

Let's say for example you're using a two-handed warhammer or something and you have a number of weapon combos that play animation style based on how many combos deep you go into an attack with that warhammer. So the first is going to be like a forward swing. Second is going to be a back swing. The third is going to be swing down and the fourth is going to be some twirl that you do; and that's what we call the combo animation montage. – Steven Sharif

• This system plays heavily into the weapon skill trees, which are planned for Alpha-2 and beyond.

The way that the weapon skill tree works is that at different stages of that combat montage you have available procs that can occur. The first swing might be a small stagger that decreases your opponent's accuracy by 15, that could be a proc that you could that you could spec into that decrease in accuracy- might be a status condition called stagger or bewildered or whatever- and that might exist for three or four seconds. Your second option from a skill tree perspective might be on the swing back. You have some type of tapering slow effect that lasts over three seconds- some type of tapering snare; and then the third step strike down might be some potential one second stun status modifier; and each of these you can spec into additional points to increase the chance that these proc. – Steven Sharif

• Depending on class skill choice these effects will have synergy with the combat montage.

Depending on what your class skill choice has been those are going to have synergy effects with the weapon skill tree. So my skill called spin-to-win might do 30 additional damage on a staggered target. So I see when my proc occurs with the stagger effect on my first swing, like for me as a player I might be only interested in landing that first swing, so every now and then I'm gonna swing once and then I'm gonna use a skill and then I'm gonna come back and swing again because that'll play my first swing montage, because it's been interrupted. So I won't move to the second one because I'm really just wanna hit that stagger effect. So that's going to be how my rotation lines up. However I might have some skill that on a stun target it might be an immediate cast and it's like some power you push or power hit; and that does- it knocks back a stun target. So if the target's stunned when this skill plays, it has an added effect of knock down and now they're gonna get knocked down for an additional two seconds. Now I might spec into that and as a result I want to finish through: swing, swing, and then knock down. So I get my chance at stunning that target with that weapon skill. – Steven Sharif

• Weapon progression such as set bonuses may change at what level any proc effects occur and therefore enable different combo rotations.

You may have items or set bonuses that change at what level those proc occurs. So I may have a full set of battle armor that changes all third hit combo procs to second hit requirements and now I have a chance not only on my second hit to land that tapering slow but I also have a chance to land my one second stun proc because I have the full set that changes my weapon progression. So that's the way itemization works with your weapon skill tree, is you can enhance when those weapon skill trees become available in your combat montage and that can be a relevant factor in how your skill rotations come to play; and mixes with your weapon attacks.

• Weapon skill choices and rotations will vary based on whether the player is more focused on PvP or PvE.

Right now some people might just say, "I don't care at all about my weapon attacks. I'm not going to invest a lot of points into that. And if I do, it's going to be primarily PvE focused where I'm more comfortable using just swinging my weapon, and I may not use them as much in PvP. I'm just going to be focused on skill rotations." That's okay, but the reason for those skill montages- back to your question- is they have a very relevant role in when certain procs come online from a weapons skill tree perspective. – Steven Sharif

• Using a skill/ability other than a basic attack will in general reset the combo.
  • The developers are considering specific abilities that might be able to be used without resetting the combo system.

It acts similar in the sense of the core loop of what an auto attack is so to speak; where typically your other skills have a cooldown period, they have a rotation or whatever: Our combo system is a repeatable skill effect that you can continually attack with but it's a little bit more involved than what a traditional auto attack is; and it has components from a from an advancement standpoint when it comes to the types of procs that your weapon can have during that combo system... It's not going to have the quick time event that you guys saw early on in PAX and gave great feedback on, but it is going to have development with regards to the power of the weapon the type of weapon you're using, the additional proc effects that you can skill into: Those types of things are going to make it a little bit more complex of a system capture. – Steven Sharif

Classes of weapons

Weapons 3D renders. These are depicted in the Threads of Fate cosmetic costume but are not part of that set. Models by Eli Hurst.

Weapon classes (also referred to as weapon types and weapon groups) in Ashes of Creation may deal different types of physical damage.

• Blunt weapons
• Slashing weapons
• Piercing weapons

Weapon swapping

Alpha-2 Mage swapping from a Greatsword to a Wand while in combat.

• It is possible to store and swap gear loadouts with a single hotkey button press when out of combat.

There will be a loadout system that you can use in your inventory to help manage those different types of set that you can customize. So you can do a simple hotkey press and be able to swap your armors, out of combat of course, with a single button click. – Steven Sharif

• Artisan gear and adventuring gear do not need to be swapped for either to be effective when they are equipped on a character.

• Weapon swapping is possible while in combat but armor cannot be swapped while in combat.
  • Previously it was stated that swapping weapons (from inventory) into a hand or range slot is not possible in combat. Prior to this, weapon swapping was said to be subject to a cooldown period (in the range of a few seconds) following any damage taken or done by the player.

You may not swap armor when you're in combat, but you may swap your weapons; and there's obviously a few reasons of why this can be important: We're a itemization agnostic class design, so players equip with items that there are most necessary based on the adversary or the challenge that they're facing; and so we want that to be available for players to swap with weapons. – Steven Sharif

Raid mechanics

Boss fight concept art.

Boss fights will have fairly intricate mechanics.

Combat itself will be pretty intricate mechanics-wise. We're going to have different phases of the bosses, there's going to be a lot of adds stuff, there's going to be random oriented skill usage. We're not going to have telegraphed templates on the ground, but we will have telegraphed animations, so it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid, but has a variance between the combat, so raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet. – Steven Sharif

• Multiple phase fights.
• Adds.
• Random skill usage.
• Fights will require location, mobility and strategy.
• Boss mechanics may be affected by changes in climate or time of day.
• Telegraphed animations, but no obvious telegraphed templates on the ground.
• Players can utilize boss mechanics against other players.

Anytime the boss is telegraphing an ability, that is an opportunity for you to direct the location of that effect; and so in that sense, yes you could use a boss's mechanics in an interesting way to affect an enemy raid. – Steven Sharif

Telegraphs

In specific circumstances there will be telegraphs (tells) to communicate something that's happening.

• Animation tells.
• Templates.

List of raid bosses

This section contains information from Alpha-1 testing. It will be updated when new information is made available.

• Brood Queen
• Elder Dragon of Flame
• Elder Dragon of the Tundra
• Elder Dragon of the Wood
• Negalith
• Tumok the Wretched

Player death

Player death in an open world dungeon in Alpha-1.

We don't have deleveling, instead what we have is experience debt. Now the more experience debt you accrue, the greater the detriment to your character; not to the point where you can not get out of the debt. There will always be a way forward to remove your debt. – Steven Sharif

When a player dies they disintegrate into ash. The ashes contain any items lost by the player due to applicable death penalties.

• These ash piles are immediately lootable by any player.

• Player flagging is not triggered by looting.

• Certain bags may have reduced PvP looting times.

It might even be the case that their particular bag space doesn't have available location for a three-by-one log; and you're a lumberjack and they see you just chopping down these trees and you're like, there's no point in me engaging with this person, because I have nothing to gain due to my capacity. – Steven Sharif

• There will be a period of time following a player's death before their mule despawns. Other players must kill that player's mule to be able to loot it.
  • If the mule dies its corpse will contain the same percentage of lootable items according to the player's death penalties.

• Players do not lose gold upon death, no matter their corruption level.

• Glint looted from a dead character by any other player, regardless of affiliation, becomes stolen glint. Character's who loot their own bodies will recover their glint in its non-stolen state.

• Death by falling is possible.
  • Fall damage that occurs while mounted will be first applied to the mount; and if the mount dies as a result, then the remaining damage may overflow onto the player, but this will be determined based on testing.

• Death by drowning is possible.
  • Players that drown will respawn on shore.

Death penalties

• Non-combatant (green players) suffer normal death penalties, which include:
  • Experience debt (negative experience). Experience debt scales to approximately 2 or 3 percent of the total XP for a max level player. These numbers are subject to change based on testing.
  • Skill and stat dampening.
    • Lower health and mana.
    • Lower gear proficiency.
    • Reduction in loot drop rates from mobs.
  • Durability loss.

  When players die and they take durability loss, our durability loss isn't like other games where it's a gold sink so to speak. It's a combination of both a gold sink and a material sink. So in a sense, even if you only have completed items, when you take that durability loss you are losing out on materials. It's just a debt to the materials that you are losing instead of the active loss of that material in your inventory. So now you are accruing a material debt if you want to repair and increase again the performance of those particular items that take that durability loss. – Steven Sharif

  • Dropping a percentage of carried gatherables and materials that are used in the generation of something else.
  • Items made for final consumption are not dropped, such as consumable items created by the Cooking and Alchemy professions.
  • A percentage of the glint a player is carrying are also dropped.

• Combatants (purple players) suffer death penalties at half the rate of non-combatants.

• Corrupt players (red players) suffer death penalties at four times the rate of non-combatants.
  • Corrupt players also have a chance to drop any equipped items based on their current corruption score, including dropping weapons and armor.

  Any amount of corruption allows a player to drop equipped gear upon death. The higher the corruption the greater the chances. – Steven Sharif

  • Corrupt players respawn at random locations in the vicinity of their death, not at regular spawn points. Non-corrupt players always respawn at the closest active respawn point (to their death).
  • Corruption penalties occur as the corruption is gained (not just at death).
  • Death penalties for corrupt players apply in every location, including naval PvP zones.

Death penalties (mostly) do not apply to objective-based PvP (also called sanctioned events).

There will not be death penalties applied to event-based deaths. The penalties are in the outcome of the event. So your number of deaths is likely going to impact your ability to win that particular event and that's going to be the penalty. This is it to encourage players to opt in to the events right because the more participation we have the more fun it can be; and we understand that the community at large- there's already a risk versus reward component to these events. We don't need to stack on additional risk versus reward to inhibit kind of- to increase the barrier to entry for players who may not be as interested. – Steven Sharif

• Gear degradation applies on death during Caravan PvP.
• Previously it was stated that death penalties do not differ between PvP and PvE.

Non-corrupt players suffer reduced death penalties in naval PvP (open seas) zones.

• These penalties will be less than those for a green player.

Mounted combat

Certain mounts will have combat abilities.

• Players can't use their class skills while mounted.

Mounts will have a variety of effective pvp abilities, some viable in larger scale encounters when organized correctly. – Steven Sharif

• Mounts will have combat skills based on the breed and rarity. There will also be some RNG to the mount skills.
  • Charging through opponents (to knock them down).
  • Abilities to create a lance while mounted have been discussed as a potential design idea.
  • Specific weapons systems may exist on different riding points on group mounts.

• Some crowd-control abilities can dismount a mounted player. In that case the mount would persist with its own health pool and other stats.

There is danger to traversing areas with enemies nearby; and there are specific abilities that knock a rider off of their mount should they venture too close to enemies. – Steven Sharif

• The intention is for players to gain knowledge about mount abilities through observation rather than having that information provided to them in advance.

Q: How will it be evident to players in a PVP scenario what types of abilities they might anticipate from an enemy's mount if its owner has a skin of another breed applied to it?

A: Mount abilities are really meant to be a learned information source. This is not meant to be something that I can look at a mount and know without interacting with that individual- that player what that mount is capable of doing; and as such, when they have skins applied, whether it be through in-game earned or through cosmetic purchase, you will get a learning for what that mount does by observing its use-case and taking that knowledge that you have learned forward with you. – Steven Sharif

Mounts can be killed by players, but can be resurrected after a certain cooldown period.

• Potions obtained from the Alchemy profession can be used to reduce the cooldown.
• Mounts that die a certain number of times within a set period might gain a debuff that requires a different material component to assist with their resurrection.
• Fall damage that occurs while mounted will be first applied to the mount; and if the mount dies as a result, then the remaining damage may overflow onto the player, but this will be determined based on testing.

Mounts can be targeted separately from the player while mounted.

• If a player dies there will be a period of time before their mule despawns. Other players must kill that player's mule to be able to loot it.
• If a player's mule dies its corpse will contain the same percentage of lootable items as the player.

Mount abilities and stats

Noble Warhorn Sprint mount ability.

All mounts will have certain types of abilities: Whether those abilities are utility, or sprint, or some type of combat charge through that knocks down players or something. It just depends on the type of mount and the skills associated with that mount. That's also one component of the animal husbandry system is in creating these mounts you can have unique skill sets associated with them that obviously creates an economy for mount types and and puts some relevancy on the profession of animal husbandry to present unique mounts. – Steven Sharif

Mounts have different core abilities, utility skills and stats that are based on the rarity of the mount and the mount's tier.

• Mount abilities may provide either horizontal or vertical power gains.
  • Mounts can have up to four abilities, including speed boosts, offensive and defensive abilities.
  • Mount abilities are unlocked via the animal husbandry profession.

Tier one mounts will have certain type types of abilities that are unique to the tier ones and the tier twos will have certain abilities that are unique to the tier twos. In some cases those will be horizontal; in other cases they'll be vertical power gain. So it just depends on the situation. It's a situational element. – Steven Sharif

• Based on skill choice, mounts can be used as initiation vehicles, escape vehicles, utility vehicles, and traversal vehicles.
  • Jump abilities.
    • Double-jumping may be possible for certain mounts.
  • Terrain-specific capabilities.
  • Gliding abilities.

Mounts have obviously many different applications and that's also going to speak to its identity when it has a skill selection choice too. Like do you- are you more aggressive in initiation with your mount? Okay well you probably want the ones that are going to be able to charge through and do some type of CC effect on players in front of you. Are you more about using them out to dodge and avoid different types of things? Well then you probably want some type of invulnerability skills or some type of protective skills that you can activate at certain times. Are you going to be more traversal and focus on speed you use your mount just go around the world and you don't really care about the combat aspect? Well then you probably want some skill sets on your mount that reflect that. – Steven Sharif

• Mounts will have resistances.

• Mounts will have varied speeds.

• With some exceptions, mounts are able to be summoned during combat in the open-world.

There's definitely a difficulty from a balance perspective obviously on the design side when you're having to incorporate speeds that are so radically different from the normal player movement speeds; and mounts do have a obviously a significantly faster component there. But that's why you build into the to the skill sets that players have obviously those types of cc's which can either, as we spoke about previously, knock the player off of their mount, kill them with some massive damage, or stun the player. Those are components that are taken into account when balancing out these skill selections. – Steven Sharif

• A player can dismount and have their mount follow them.

Dragon abilities

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Dragons are flying mounts with strong battle abilities, such as AoE breath attacks, swooping flyby attacks, and others.

• Dragons have PvP capabilities relating to Castle sieges and Node sieges.

The dragon will have a lot of capability in PvP. It's primarily its purpose, because as it relates to Castles and the sieges they're in, or Nodes and the sieges they're in. We want dragons to have large scale ramifications against player raids. – Steven Sharif

Combat pets

Combat pets (also referred to as Item pets or Universal combat pets) may be acquired by any archetype.

• Combat pets generally have a horizontal progression, not a vertical one. Unlike Summoner summons, combat pets do not increase a player's power, but instead require a sacrifice from the player.

It’s important to note, combat pets are primarily horizontal in nature. Where as class pets (like summoner) are a very vertical mechanic. – Steven Sharif

• Combat pets may be tamed from certain creatures in the world.
• Combat pets are categorized by class and will adhere to a simple trinity structure (Tank/DPS/Support).
  • Tank pets will maintain threat against enemies independent of the pet owner.
• Combat pets will also be categorized into different rarities.
• Combat pets may not be able to be summoned in certain dungeons, instances or other spaces.

It will participate in combat. It will allow you different options sometimes, but it won't necessarily increase your power and... you'll be sacrificing something for it. – Jeffrey Bard

Naval combat

Tea transport PAX East 2018 exclusive cosmetic ship skin.

Sailing will be pretty in-depth and it's going to be based on the size of the ship that you're using. So there will be components for seamanship that other players you will need to have on board if you want to operate a vessel to the best of it's abilities: Let's say in combat or traversing just the world. – Steven Sharif

Ships are vehicles in Ashes of Creation. Ships are owned by the player who has the ship item in their inventory. Only that player can summon the ship.

• Ship creation is generally delegated to players. There won't be many non-player-owned ships.
  • Quest lines may have NPC driven ships.
  • NPC ships will be present on the ocean that are adversaries or monsters that will be targets for players to try to raid or hunt for treasure.

For the most part all ship creation will be delegated to the player. You have to build up a ship or find somebody who has one if you want to get across the seas. – Steven Sharif

• There won't be mechanics for players to hire NPCs to carry out tasks on ships.

• Ship owners are able to grant permissions to allow other players to navigate their ships and access certain ship functions.
  • Ship navigators receive a significant defensive buff while they are navigating the ship. This reduces CC effects and increases damage mitigation significantly.
  • If the ship navigator is killed or otherwise removed from the ship then any player will be able to navigate the ship for a period of 15 to 20 minutes before the ship despawns and becomes a wreckage.
  • Other ship permissions may include operating weapons, anchors, and utility items.

• Players will have quests that lead set them on a path toward creating a personal vessel at around level 10-15.

• Player merchants will not be able to be placed on ships.

• Nothing can move or or block ships. Ships have the ultimate priority.

Alpha-2 Negalith naval raid boss.

This is one of the Alpha-2 raid bosses that are going to be in the ocean. That'll be interesting when you come across that, what might happen. Good luck. We should have added a scale there because yeah, it's a big boy. The number of ships needed for that one's going to be a lot. – Steven Sharif

Naval combat involves different types of Ships with varying capabilities, armaments and roles to play out on the high seas. There will be a balance and counterbalance between ships from PvP and PvE perspectives.

• Naval PvP is between ships.
• Naval PvE includes open sea raids and sea-based bosses.
• Certain ship classes and components may support ramming of other vessels or raid bosses.
• Ship weapons can damage both players and structures.
  • Damage done by ship weapons such as potion launchers will generate threat.
  • Characters can also use ranged skills during naval combat. Taunts and other threat generation skills can be utilised for tanking at sea.
• Coastal points of interest, such as harbors, offer objective-based naval gameplay during node sieges.
• There is a castle located on an island that is only able to be affected by naval combat.

Battles at sea will be epic. They will have some supreme rewards and/or losses if the battle succeeds or fails. – Steven Sharif

• Naval combat allows ships to be hijacked, destroyed and looted, but it doesn't allow the attackers to permanently keep the ships.

Q: Will there be a way to produce enough experience for a node for those who want to spend the majority of their time on the open seas?

A: The open seas have have a good amount of content; and that content when completed will give its contribution to a nearby node; and that is something that people who live on the sea, or desire to live on the sea, will be able to um contribute in a way. – Steven Sharif

Addons/ DPS meters

Addons, DPS meters, and threat meters will not be supported.

My decision is not to allow DPS meters nor add-ons. I feel we have adequate measures in place to prevent a majority of potential third party trackers. I know this subject has passionate voices on both sides and I respect the various opinions and positions many of you have expressed. – Steven Sharif

• The developers do not want addons/mods to be necessary to experience the game.
• The developers believe that DPS meters (parsers) can cause toxicity and other negative behaviors.

What role DPS meters provide in online communities that I've noticed in the past my experiences: they can be a bit toxic, they can be a bit exclusionary; and that's why we don't want the DPS meters. – Steven Sharif

• Threat meters will also not be present in the game. There will instead be visual in-game queues to indicate threat.

Meters in my opinion are a removal from the game immersion; and what I mean by that isn't necessarily even the fact that having the meter takes you out of the game per-se, but it is- there's a lot of diegetic approach that you can take that doesn't rely on UI elements like a meter to indicate how you should do a thing; and when you're not utilizing those types of meters you can do different types of strategies and encounter design. You can have things that can be more subtle and aren't going to be immediately given away by a meter indicating something; and that's the type of gameplay that we think that I believe we want to emphasize; and for that reason, we're not going to be including threat meters. What we will be including however are animation indicators. We're going to be including ability indicators to show the tank "hey I might be losing aggro here." I'm observing in the world these immersive elements that are not tied to any specific type of UI, but indicate to me that this monster might be moving off to attack somebody else in a very immediate future; and now I should be using the abilities that I'm saving to regain that aggro, or to lock them down with a taunt or something. That to me is a bit more representative of the type of gameplay we want to to bring in our encounter design. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• There will be integrations available for streaming services such as Twitch and a few other services, but it's not something that will be exposed through an API just yet.
• The design of the game API is still under consideration.

Combat logs

There are combat logs in Ashes of Creation.

We will be providing combat data for individual players in their chat window, that players can filter and analyze for themselves. The goal is to mitigate and make the practice less prevalent through the ease that DPS meters provide. Also to place actionable enforcement for players who attempt to circumvent the decision by use of 3rd party programs, for which we will be monitoring. – Steven Sharif

Floating combat text

Alpha-2 Floating combat text work-in-progress UI.

Damage you take, which is indicated in this red number, floats towards your left-hand side; and when you do damage to a target they float to your right-hand side. Now one of the very important aspects of these floating texts is providing the player with customization options that they can adjust the size of the floating text. They can adjust the color composition on how these texts are represented. They can also include damage icons to indicate the ability that's used for those floating texts; and importantly we also call out the crits that you do in a separate way: how they pop in they're slightly above the other number; and then more so, we also have additional functionality for cumulative damage. – Steven Sharif

Floating combat text shows damage taken, damage dealt, cumulative damage, crits, heals, XP gained, and other important combat indicators.

• Damage taken appears in red and floats to the left.
• Damage dealt appears in yellow and floats to the right.
• Crits appear larger and are slightly above the other numbers.
• XP appears in white and is slightly lower on the UI.

Floating combat text is able to be customized by the player.

• Color composition.
• Text size and boldness.
• Damage icons to indicate the ability used.

Providing maximum flexibility and player customization options for these floating texts I think is super important. – Steven Sharif

Factions

There are no predefined factions in Ashes of Creation.

It's important to note that Ashes of Creation is a non-faction-based game. What that means is you're not told who your enemy and your friend is. You are not restricted with the players that you can participate in content with. Instead that choice is left to you, the players, and that is an element of the sandbox environment that we're trying to create with Ashes of Creation. – Steven Sharif

Because we are non-faction-based, you want to grant the user the ability to either do things that are "evil" or "good", so there has to be a plethora of choice on the evil side for them to participate in. – Steven Sharif

• There are pseudo-factions (temporary factions) in Ashes of Creation.
  • Node wars flag the citizens of the warring nodes and their allies as enemies for the duration of the node war.
  • Guild wars flag the members of the warring guilds and their allies as enemies for the duration of the guild war.
  • Social organizations offer quest lines to assault other organizations.

We present the player with these soft friction events and then that determines who your friends and your foes are. – Steven Sharif

Videos

• 2018-04-04 Video - PAX East Pre-Alpha Gameplay
• 2018-08-17 Video - Ashes of Creation Apocalypse - First Look at Action Combat
• 2018-09-01 Video - Ashes of Creation Apocalypse Alpha Gameplay
• 2019-03-08 Video - Ashes of Creation Apocalypse Castle Siege Gameplay
• 2022-06-30 Video - Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Basic Melee Weapon Attack Update
• 2022-09-30 Video - Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Basic Ranged Weapon Attack Update
• 2022-12-02 Video - Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Night and Day and Other Heavenly Things
• 2023-01-27 Video - Alpha Two Tank Preview
• 2023-03-31 Video - Alpha Two Story Arc Systems Preview and the Lore of Carphin

Community guides

• Ashes101 - Combat

See also

• Archetypes
• Classes
• User interface
• Looting