This series takes the Developers Journals and gives you a run down of the key information covered. While there is not much discussion here, you can head to the accompanying Journal Discussed article which will be posted later in the week.

This week is part two of looking into one of Chronicles of Elyria’s fundamental mechanics, souls. If you missed part one you can catch up here, but to dive into the part two you can head over to MMORPG.com for the full topic covering Soul Selection, Destiny, Achievements and Soul Mates or read the abridged version here.

Buckle up because with four packed topics just in the title this is going to be a wild ride.

Soul Selection

• The soul selection screen, pictured, shows you the different souls you have access to.

• You can see the soul’s age, which skills it will be good at learning if you have unlocked a talent on that soul and any achievements it has earnt along with the souls alignment (see affinity below).

Birth Date

• You choose your age and birth date.

• Age impacts on which families you can join. You must have an age that suits the family you want to be part of, i.e. no children older their parents or very old couples having young offspring.

• Adolescents have boosts to learning skills, for the purposes of experimentation. Starting out a little older gives you are a more financially stable start in the world and also more established skill trees.

Destiny

• Each birth date will have an impact on the life your character lives, and the events in the world around them. New birth date, new challenges.

• Each time you interact with the world around you (be it through getting older, meeting a new NPC, looting an item) a story might start based on the destiny your birth date set. 

• The world has a 10-year long story but the developers do not know how it will play out because players affected it and characters have destinies tied up with it. If an important character is killed the game engine might shift the world’s story. You start a town in a certain location, the engine might start a world event.

• Not only characters have a destiny in the story, souls do too. Their destiny might take many characters to realise. How you respond to your destiny, be it character or soul, is still up to you.

Affinity

• Souls are aligned to light or dark. You can choose a soul that is aligned one way or the other or you can pick a neutral soul though it will not remain that way.

• Depending on how you act in the world, how you complete the story elements of the game, your soul will gain either a dark or light affinity. As you stat to align one way the game will present you tasks more in line with that affinity, drawing you further towards that side and further effecting your story.

Achievements

• Achievements are given in relation to completing elements of the story. Being awarded an achievement will affect the world story in some way.

• They award passive (or sometimes active) bonuses be that titles, changes in social status, or new abilities.

• There are three types of achievements:
  • Open to all.
  • Open to only one person at a time.
  • Only awarded once per server, though possibly to multiple people at once.

• Your achievements are linked to your soul. Once you have earnt your soul remembers them. However, after reincarnation, they are remembered more faintly. Unless you complete the same achievement again, Déjà vu, in which case you spirit remembers it more vividly with increased effects.

Soul Mates

• Each soul has an exact copy, a twin, a soul mate.

• If your soul mate is nearby you will know, in a certain radius you will always be able to find them.

• If your soul mate has the same affinity as you then if you remain close to each other you will learn skills from each other. If you come into contact all skills are shared in full. If one dies near the other they will always be able to make it back to their body, no matter what.

• If your soul mate does not have the same affinity as you…you should probably kill them…apparently!

So that’s the sort of abridged version, my goodness Caspian does manage to get a lot into these things! Did you manage to spot the Easter egg this time? If so, or if you just want to chat about it all head to the community forums or down to the comments. Later in the week return for another Journal Discussed based on the community thoughts and developer discussion on this journal.