Plans for v7.0, aka “Elemancer 2.0”
I plan to continue playtesting v6.3 on Screentop, but I’ve been looking to the future now that the game is in a relatively balanced state. Which means it’s time for a significant overhaul!
I’m still gathering feedback from playtesters, but one issue stood out to me regarding the current state of Elemancer:
At present there is little incentive to play a multi-Elemental build outside of Water cards. In all of my personal playtesting sessions I’ve tested builds that have gone all-in on one Element, but my rationale was that such builds should represent the maximum potential damage. That is precisely what I wanted to evaluate: the ceiling of each build, as well as the average damage of such a deck. An assumption I made is that players may not follow this strategy, in which case they will fall short of the maximum damage. Playing suboptimal builds isn’t the issue, but if the game makes it relatively easy to stick to a single Element, then there’s no reason to do anything else once you realize that the ceiling is much higher on a mono-Elemental build. That restricts player agency, which is generally bad. If your opponent is playing a disjointed build, you are incentivized to play the more consistent mono-Elemental build, and vice-versa. The game collapses into a more on-rails experience than I’d like.
There are two ways I’m planning to address this: more cards that bridge mechanical synergies between Elements, and a brand-new mechanic (new to Elemancer, at least).
Stronger Together
Foremost, I want to avoid heavy-handed, explicit cross-Elemental synergies if possible. That means you won’t see a random Fire card with “+2 damage if played alongside a Water ability,” outside of a small cycle of basic Tier 1 Temple cards. Instead, I intend to find mechanical synergies between the Elements and hopefully incorporate them in such a way as to not sully their individual identities.
I laid out each Elemental permutation and noted potential abilities that could fit in the main Element that synergize with the secondary Element. Some were certainly easier than others. I’m planning to make these new abilities Temple-exclusive, and they will ideally have a higher potential damage than the average ability of that Tier. An ideal card would be good in a mono-Elemental build, and spectacular when properly supported by another Element.
Certain mechanics were easier to implement in other Elements, and certain Elements have attributes that are easier to care about. For example, any card with a Channel ability can be useful to Chronomancy. Pyromancy and Electromancy both have lock-and-key mechanics, so it’s easy to add Firestarter or Chain payoffs to other cards. Most Elements play well with each other, they just haven’t had a reason to up until now (Hydromancy notwithstanding).
A New Challenger Approaches
While coming up with mechanics I reserved some space for future expansions. With that, I restricted the number of Elements in the base game to seven: five “basic” Elements and two “advanced” Elements that appear starting in Tier 2. One unused mechanic cared about what is on the top of your deck. Offshoots of this mechanic would allow you to manipulate your deck or check the top few cards for certain attributes. While I’d like to plan ahead for future success, I also realized that this deck manipulation mechanic could help smooth out hands and allow for compelling player decisions within the base game.
Initially this mechanic was tied to Shadow, so why not just add a new Element? Well, I’m considering it! Alternatively, this could be added into Elemancer as a core mechanic. Regardless, this mechanic meshes well with existing Elements, as most have an attribute that you can check for within the top X cards of your deck.
I’m still up in the air regarding how I plan to implement this, as there’s a case to be made for adding an entirely separate Element as much as there is for simply updating all the existing Elements to incorporate this “scry” mechanic. To further complicate things, I haven’t decided whether Shadow should be referred to as Shadowmancy or Umbramancy. Both sound pretty cool.
Other Changes Ensue
A small section on other potential changes. Following from the above, I will reorganize the Tier 2 and Tier 3 zones to accommodate a potential new Element. Deck sizes in Tier 2 will change a little as a result, but this is a simple addition of 1 new off-Element card to the Temple deck if Shadow is added.
Looking ahead, the Questline will be the next component that I plan to update. Alongside this, I plan to add more player interaction in the form of more intermittent showdowns, likely tied to the stages of the Questline. We’ll test that out to see how it plays.
I may add a way to “reserve” boss monsters so that players are limited to two and prevent opponents from “stealing” bosses out of spite. This could provide an opportunity to add more boss variety as well, so each Element has 3-4 options instead of just 2.
