Overall, I’m pretty happy with how the Spell Gems system worked in Siralim 2. It accomplished exactly what I envisioned: a deep, itemized spellcasting system that had modifications to affect the way the spell works. With a few subtle (and not-so-subtle) changes, I think this system can be even better in Siralim 3.

Spell Gem Properties

In Siralim 3, there are no more properties that allow your creatures to automatically cast their spells. These properties made spells far too powerful, and since spells that are cast automatically did not cost mana, it allowed players to ignore the concept of the mana stat entirely.

In their place, I’ve added some new Spell Gem properties that I think you’ll find very useful:

% Chance to Provoke – After casting the spell, the caster has a chance to provoke.

% Chance to Attack – After casting the spell, the caster has a chance to attack a random target.

% Chance to Defend – After casting the spell, the caster has a chance to defend.

Class Swap – Changes the Spell Gem’s class. This means that any creature can potentially equip any spell in the game. In addition, bonus damage based on class strengths/weaknesses is now based on the spell itself rather than the caster, so this property allows you to strategize a lot more in that regard.

% of Potency is Based On Current Health – Instead of a spell’s potency being based on Intelligence, some of its potency will be based on the caster’s Current Health. There are already similar properties for Attack, Defense, and Speed, but since Health is typically double these stats, I’ve made this property half as powerful as those similar to it.

Generous – Your other creatures can cast this Spell Gem as well, but it costs more Mana.

Supercharged – Increases the potency of the spell by 200%, but when the gem is destroyed when it’s used. This property is extremely rare, but will be useful if you’re struggling against a particularly difficult boss. These will also be hilarious to see in Otherworldly Sigil realms.

In addition, the old “Casts 1 Additional Time” property now only has a chance to activate, rather than being guaranteed.

Balance Adjustments

Obviously, many spells from Siralim 2 will receive balance adjustments. Aside from that, though, some of the fundamentals surrounding spells were flawed. Spells that increased or reduced stats were far too powerful, so those have been toned down significantly. In addition, area-of-effect spells (which affect 6 creatures at once) have had their potency cut down to about 25% of their original values. Conversely, single-target spells are now 50% more powerful than before. The goal of these changes is to make single-target spells more appealing while slowing down battles a bit since area-of-effect spells are now less likely to wipe out enemies with one cast. I’ll probably have to adjust these values a bit during Early Access, but from my personal testing, spells feel much better now.

In addition, damage dealt by creatures has been decreased across the board – not just for spells, but for attacks and other effects as well. It will now be much more difficult for creatures to one-shot each other, which will hopefully compel players to be more thoughtful about which actions they choose.

I can already hear the vocal amongst you crying, “Ugh, but Zack, I HATE when battles last longer than 2 seconds!”. That’s why turbo mode is now the default behavior in battles, and the actual turbo mode option is now much faster than before. I’ve also made other subtle changes to reduce the number of floating battle messages that appear. I have a few other tricks up my sleeve to make battles faster, more fun, and more efficient, but that’s a topic for a separate blog post.

Crafting

The process of enchanting Spell Gems will pretty much remain the same as it was in Siralim 2. However, you’ll unlock the ability to enchant your gems much earlier on in Siralim 3. In addition, you can now acquire Spell Gem crafting materials from all sources, so you don’t need to rely on Daily Realms and tasks from Elize to gather them.