Incarnation Upgrades

Posted on February 1, 2017 5:13 pm

Indivisible is an RPG, and RPGs need character progression!

Today’s update will focus on one such aspect of character progression, Action and Defense upgrades. You can think of this as our alternative to buying new weapons and armor for your party.

Philosophically, we want upgrades in Indivisible to be different and more functional than they are in most RPGs: instead of simply modifying stats, upgrades should meaningfully change and expand on the core gameplay.

Furthermore, we won’t be tying these upgrades to things you can easily grind out, such as experience or money, and instead they’ll be tied to exploration.

Ringsels
In the world of Indivisible, there are sacred relics that we’re currently calling “Ringsels.” These artifacts were scattered around the world by a catastrophe some years ago, and were filled with spiritual power when they fell. Much of that power has since faded.

There are two types of Ringsels, Crimson and Azure, which are aspected to Action and Defense respectively. In the right hands, they can be used to upgrade your characters’ abilities in battle.

We haven’t settled on a design for the Ringsels yet, but here are some early concepts we’ve been considering:

For reference, a Ringsel is a Buddhist relic, a “pearl” found among the ashes of cremated monks believed to have spiritual properties.

Finding Ringsels
Ringsels can be found almost everywhere, usually off the beaten path. While there will be a few individual Ringsels, they’ll mostly come in larger bundles.

Be warned, though, because Ajna and her Incarnations aren’t the only ones who can strengthen themselves using the Ringsels’ energies: when the Ringsels first fell, some enemies in the wild absorbed their power, boosting their strength to boss-like proportions.

Finding and defeating these enemies will allow Ajna to claim their Ringsels.

Charging Ringsels
Because their power seeped out over the years, the Ringsels Ajna finds are dormant. However, they still retain their affinity for Action and Defense, making them perfect receptacles for those spiritual energies.

You’ll charge Action and Defense Ringsels by… acting and defending, of course! Each battle will generate energy to store in the Ringsels, and the more skillful you are, the more energy you’ll produce, and the faster they’ll charge up.

Once a Ringsel is charged, it can be used to upgrade your characters.

Upgrading
Upgrades will primarily be handled in Ajna’s Inner Realm, by trading charged Ringsels to a Blacksmith or other Incarnation. From there, you can imbue the party member of your choice with the relics’ power to upgrade their Action or Defense.

In the prototype, you’ll recall that every once in a while a character would gain an additional attack. In the final game, these upgrades will come from Ringsels: “Action” upgrades will give a character more actions per turn. As you saw in the prototype, each upgrade has the potential to expand and change the combos at your disposal dramatically!

Likewise, “Defense” upgrades will increase the damage reduction and Iddhi gain from successfully blocking incoming attacks. So the better you are at blocking, the less you’ll have to heal and the more Iddhi you’ll be able to channel into super moves.

Initially, Ajna will only be able to upgrade each Incarnation’s Action to Level 2. But by recruiting more upgrade Incarnations over the course of the game, she’ll be able to take their Action and Defense upgrades all the way to Level 4.

And don’t worry – there will be enough Ringsels to max out every Incarnation, but finding them all could be tricky!

Character Resolution Quests
Indivisible has a lot of playable characters, and not every character will play a prominent role in the main story. There are just too many to give them all significant roles, so a number of Incarnations will be optional recruits.

However, we still want every character to be meaningful and as fleshed-out as possible. So each playable Incarnation will have a quest to help them resolve their personal stories and achieve their full potential, which will become available once you upgrade their Action and Defense to Level 4 with the Ringsels you’ve collected.

And that’s all we’ve got now for character upgrades!

In a future update, we’ll detail the character growth and stats systems, so keep an eye out for that!