The end of another week means it is time to sort through the spoils. Gathering together all the news from across forums, interviews and the chat room so that you do not miss out on any of that good stuff. If you want to know what one thing I really think you should know from this week just head straight to the end for the Muster Point.

Vitality and healing are our two top topics this week. However, they are accompanied by a whole host of other intriguing tidbits such as another new name, perishable foods and unique creates. Also a quick, but meaningful, comment from Soulbound Studios on how the scope of the game might change based on KickStarter, or more accurately might not change.

Vitality

There are not really health points in Chronicles of Elyria.

Once that has settled in a bit we can talk about the alternative, vitality. We actually mentioned vitality bars last week, and the dark shadow imminent perma-death casts upon it, but what is it? Well IRC has the answers:

You can think of Vitality as consciousness. If you go too long without rest, food, water, etc. you pass out from fatigue. If you’re in a fight and are injured, you fatigue faster and pass out sooner.

It is a combination of all the various bars you might be used to in other games rolled into one. Health, fatigue, hunger, thirst, all represented as one mechanic. It is not for simplification, though, you still have to consider all those factors, it for consequences. Your actions in one area now impact other areas of your character.

It means if you’re planning to siege a castle, you have to stop and camp nearby to recover from the trip. This gives scouts that see you a chance to warn the castle ahead of time. It also means that bandits who see you leaving may want to ambush you later in the journey when you’re more tired. But this also gives you more chance to notice them as they follow you.

There are pause points. Times where you will be weaker. Occasions for attackers to be spotted before they take up their arms. It means that there is room for the story, room for exploiting the actions of others. I have to admit it is a system that appeals to me. Not only will you want to take it into account in your combat tactics, but also in your defence. I know that as a merchant on the road my guards and I are more susceptible to bandits the more fatigued we are. Do I push on to make as much ground as possible and get to safety quicker, or do we rest more frequently to make sure we are not leaving ourselves as vulnerable while on the road?

Healing

This is not a game of waving your hands at another player to make them feel better about the fact someone has stuck a spear in their side. Things are not going to magically get better. So what can we do to help out friends who are injured? Or fix the wounds we suffer ourselves while adventuring alone?

We do have a kind of first-aid medicinal skill tree that would allow you to do things like create poultices and do healing and you know, there is this collaboration between some of the skill sets. So like pharmacology and the ability to create medicines using a pestle and mortar that can help you fight off diseases or any kind of ailments you may have. [Source – YouTube Q&A]

A range of skills will be used to create first-aid and pharmacological healing. How effective these will be we do not yet know yet, though it sounds more like they help you heal rather than heal you instantly. I sincerely hope people put some serious focus into researching these early on, I think the town doctor could be very sought after.

Another Welcome

We had two new names last week so I want to throw another into the mix, Alireza. They are the level designer and technical artist over at Soulbound Studios. We do not have an introduction post by them, yet! Though I didn’t want to pass them over without a shout out because, you will know if you hang out in the IRC, their work is rather good looking!

Perishable Food

Does food go bad? It is a common problem I have with the bag of spinach in my fridge, but is that problem going to translate into the game:

[Food items] do spoil, the amount of time they spoil is a play testing exercise. There will probably technology to solve that problem, that’s really in the hands of the players. [Source – YouTube Q&A]

I think those of us looking into farming are not just going to want to research better crops and processing techniques but, storage too. Keeping our crops longer means we can give people a more constant supply. Maybe a town ice house could be a solution? Would the importing of snow from mountainous regions become a viable trade profession? We shall have to wait and see.

Creatures

Eddie ‘Heat’ Smith, Art Director at Soulbound Studios, is the one responsible for all the gorgeous imagery we are seeing. Well we now know his next project:

The first creature heat will be showing is called an Ursaphant.

Before you hit Google, that is not a creature native to Earth. However, there are some clues in the name as to what we might expect. ‘Ursa’ is Latin for bear, and ‘-phant’ well… we might well be looking forward to seeing out bear elephant hybrid.

KickStarter

It is a double edge sword. You want the company you back to do well. You do not want them to do too well though because that means 27 stretch goals and a game that no longer has any reasonable chance of coming out in the next decade. Well worry not:

We won’t be changing our scope based on funding. We’ll have the scope nailed down ahead of time. The funding will just dictate how fast we can release, and what % of the scope will be available at launch and what will come after launch.

I like the upfront nature of the game. We are going to know what they want to provide, and how much they will need to do so. This is actually a case of more money speeding things along rather than creating inevitable delays caused by feature creep. Something that I am glad to hear as there is so much going on in this game it is that adding features in on top would mean that we would not see it soon. Now we know the more we give, the quicker we get.

Muster Point

Tactics are more than just the fight. Planning your campaign is just as important be that campaign a mighty siege or simply a journey to the next town to make a delivery.