Stats

Waterfall stats.

Primary attribute	Stat
Constitution.
	Max Health
	Health Regeneration
	Physical Mitigation
	Physical Disable Evasion
Dexterity.
	Physical Critical Chance
	Attack Speed
	Physical Evasion
	Physical Disable Accuracy
Intelligence.
	Magical Power
	Magical Critical Power
	Magical Penetration
	Magical Accuracy
Mentality.
	Max Mana
	Mana Regeneration
	Magical Mitigation
	Magical Disable Evasion
Strength.
	Physical Power
	Physical Critical Power
	Physical Accuracy
	Physical Penetration
Wisdom.
	Magical Critical Chance
	Magical Casting Speed
	Magical Evasion
	Magical Disable Accuracy

Stats in Ashes of Creation are derived from primary attributes (Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Mentality, Strength, and Wisdom) via a waterfall system.

A waterfall stat is a derivative of an attribute. So, if dexterity is your attribute stat and a waterfall from dexterity is critical rate, that would be considered a waterfall stat: the critical rate.

• Base stats are defined by a character's primary archetype.
  • These can be improved based on gear, tattoos, and other enhancements, such as socketed items.

• Concentration will be a primary stat for spell casters.

• There will be diminishing returns on certain stats, but there won't be hard caps.

Health

During PvP, detailed information about your opponent's HP is obscured. This means you will not know the exact HP percentage an opponent has.

Health is a stat in Ashes of Creation.

If you are targeting another player specifically, another player not an NPC. If you're targeting another player and that player is not a member of your guild, alliance, raid, or party- those are the four affiliation factors. If they're not a part of those four groups you will not have specific information of their HP level. You will have quarters of information to their [HP] level and you may progress to get that a bit more granular, perhaps to sixths or eighths. You're not going to have exact information about what amount of hit points they have available to them. That level of obfuscation protects a bit of that engagement, that TTK interaction. So you might overshoot a target if you don't know exactly if they're down to their last 20% or 25%. That I think is a very healthy thing to have in PvP, but it is not a normal game design mechanic. – Steven Sharif

• Players that are not in the same party, raid, alliance, or guild will not be able to see other player's exact health bar values or percentages. This information will instead be displayed in quarters. A player may be able to progress to see sixths or eighths.
  • Previously it was stated that a player's name plate would deteriorate to give an indication of how much damage they have taken.

Mana

Resting and mana regeneration.

As you know, a classic MMO thing to do is to sit and rest as you get your resources back. – Steven Sharif

Mana is a universal resource/energy in Ashes of Creation that keeps corresponding stats for mana pool, consumption and regeneration relevant.

• All archetypes use mana to varying degrees.
  • Even pure melee players use mana to manipulate The Essence for their extraordinary abilities.
• There are various ways to mitigate mana consumption, such as gear and set bonuses, tattoos, enchantments, and specs.
  • Sitting increases mana regeneration while out of combat.

Mana management I think, not just for mage players but for really every class, is a relevant resource mechanic that they have to take into consideration when they're utilizing their rotations; and there are going to be abilities that will sap your mana faster than others; and they're going to be situational. Now, with that blanket statement of mana is always relevant, there is also going to be mechanics and/or class energies and abilities that you can spec into to help mitigate that. There's itemization that you can utilize from a set bonus perspective, or certain types of weapons and tattoos that you can acquire. There are certain enchantments that you can acquire that might reduce the cost of mana use, that might increase your amount of regeneration, that might increase your mana total pool. There are even specs that you can build towards if mana management is your issue. So we want to make it a compelling case that you need to think about mana use because you don't just want to go 100% all the time with no downside to that. That's a very boring type of interaction. – Steven Sharif

Stat growth

• Stats can be improved based on gear, tattoos, and other enhancements, such as socketed items.
• Players will have significant agency over the allocation of their stat progression.
• Gear has approximately a 40-50% influence on a players overall power in the game.
• Artisan profession does not affect a player's stats.
• Previously it was stated that race "seeds" a player's base stats, then the primary archetype grows the base stats. Any contribution by the secondary archetype was later removed.

Stats on gear

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

Crafters will be able to 'rejigger' stat blocks; and there will be a couple of other ways to move things around to create both the look and the stat block that you're looking for. It's not always going to be easy. There will be a lot of challenges involved with that. But the goal is to give you guys the option to customize your gear the way you want them to be. – Jeffrey Bard

• Master crafters will be able to influence several (but not all) stats on their crafted items.
  • Stats on crafted items will vary based on the item's rarity.
• There will also be methods of moving stat blocks around but this won't necessarily be an easy task.
• All gear will be able to be assigned any stat.

This section contains potentially outdated information from Alpha-1 testing.

Gear is broken down into Core Stats and Additional Stats.

Combat RNG

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

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

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

Damage

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

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

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

• Augments can change damage types and values.

• Death by fall damage 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.

• Receiving damage can cause casters to fail concentration checks, which does not interrupt the spell, but can result in increased casting time.

Elements

There are elements (such as Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Electrical) in Ashes of Creation each with their own resistances.

• Other elemental influences may include Darkness, Light and Planar. The Air Strike ability has a nature based root.

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

• Elements may have more influence in certain seasons and weather conditions. For example, frost abilities may be stronger in winter and lightning might be stronger in the rain. This affects both PvE and PvP.

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

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

Elemental skills

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

Skill	Icon	Origin	Description
Ball Lightning		Mage	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		Mage	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		Mage	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.
Cone of Cold		Mage	Blasts a cone of cold in front of the caster, dealing ice damage and applying 1 stack of Chilled to each enemy hit.
Elemental Empowerment		Mage	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		Mage	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		Mage	Call forth a line of jagged earth spikes in front of the[sic] you, dealing earth damage and applying 10 stacks of Stagger to each enemy hit along its path while launching them upwards.
Frostbolt		Mage	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.
Lightning Strike		Mage	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		Mage	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		Mage	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.
Quake		Mage	Held ability: Cast a powerful earthquake that deals more damage the longer it was charged and applies 10 stacks of Staggered to all enemies around the caster. If the spell was fully charged, this applies Tripped instead of Staggered.
Thundering Shot		Ranger	Fires a lightning-infused projectile at your target, dealing 200% of your physical power as Lightning damage.

Gear progression

In-game achievable sword and polearm 3D renders.

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

Weapons have their own progression paths.

• Each type of weapon has its own skill tree that grants passive skills and proc effects and other status conditions.
• The weapon combo system determines special effects that proc based on weapon progression.
• Ancillary effects proc based on enchantment types.
• Gear enhancements (power stones) can be applied to add elemental or energy types of damage.
• Dual wielded weapons will have its own progression based on weapon type.
• Weapon proficiency (based on length of use of a weapon) is not a planned feature.

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

Gear enhancement

Gear enhancements are possible both during and after an item is crafted.

There is a combination of systems that take an item to its max potential. Players will need to contribute in a certain number of these systems to reach max. Some of the systems are an either/or situation. – Kory Rice

• Crafting recipes can be enhanced by adding higher rarity or different crafting materials into their selectable crafting slots at crafting stations.

• Enchantment scrolls and tempering allow gear to be enhanced post-crafting.

• The bulk of a weapon's power comes from its crafting recipe and the materials used in its construction.

The contribution of materials to crafting an item results in advancing the rarity of that item. Now, that doesn't exclude players who don't have the legendary or the higher quality contributed resources from progressing their common item up the rarity tree through enchantments such as scroll enchanting or through tempering the gear. Both of those can affect the quality and the rarity of the gear that you produce, but by contributing the resources during the crafting process you are getting a head start with the higher quality item and now are less dependent on those other avenues to achieve that, which might be again a different vertical space of progression that you don't have as good of access to. – Steven Sharif

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

• Runes/Power stones are a potential methods for enhancing weapons.
• Enchantment stones are potential rewards for performance over six month PvP seasons. These grant temporary PvP-focused benefits to gear (via a socketing system).

Enchanting

Enchanting is not an artisan profession in its own right. Scribes create scrolls that can be utilized by different professions to create enchantments relating to that profession.

• Enchantment scrolls can be sold on the open market.

• Enchanting does not increase an item's level requirement.

You don't really push a particular item's level requirement or the identity of that item. You can enhance it, you can add enchantments to it, but it's still the item it is. – 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.

PvX

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

Ashes is a comprehensive game. It is not a PvP focused or a PvE focused, it is a comprehensive PvX game and as a result these systems are all interconnected and have to coexist with one another with certain types of mechanisms that can provide that give and take, that push and shove. – Steven Sharif

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

Ashes is a PvX game; and so in that regard, your ability to wholesale disconnect from the PvP elements of the game are likely not going to be entirely successful. Now, does that mean that you can reduce your exposure to PvP? A hundred percent; and there are multiple play paths and progression points that players can elect instead to be more PvE focused, but by the sheer nature of risk-versus-reward, and risk including not being able to predict how other players might impact your gameplay, that is an element of the innate risk that exists in the multiplayer environment of a PvX setting. So, not everybody is going to like that and we accept that; and we're not trying to build a game that everybody is going to like, because everybody it's doing that is not going to be successful, because there're just people with different interests; and you know we accept that and we're very on the nose about what we're trying to achieve. The idea is not to create a gank fest, is not to create a grief fest. That is not what PvX is; and so because of that we have certain mechanisms and systems that govern the way players engage in PvP and the majority of those are opt-in, but there is always that element of risk that's governed by the flagging system. And so, if you're interested in that I would take a look at the Wiki and look up what flagging is, and look up what corruption is. My experience tells me- and my expectations of the system are that they will signal significantly reduce a player's exposure to non-consensual PvP, but that risk is always going to be present to some degree. – Steven Sharif

• A defining principle of Ashes of Creation as a PvX game is that PvE builds the world, and PvP changes the world.

• Around 80% of the content is open-world, where healthy competition is an instigator for player friction; for potential cooperation; for the ability to yield alliances; and the political theater that comes with it. This is an intended part of the PvX game design.

• There won't be separate PvE and PvP servers but some servers may be more PvP focused than others.

• All stats relate to a player's combat effectiveness in PvX.

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

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

• There will not be different PvP and PvE gear types.

See also

• Combat
• Skills
• Races
• Classes
• Progression