Hey Venturers!

After a long hiatus, I'm thrilled to announce that the gates of Arakion will soon be open! It's been a while since my last update, so bear with me as I walk through what took so long, the first in a series of updates about all the changes, and the plans moving forward for Arakion.

What Took So Long?

In short, life and an engine change. First, life took a turn when I became a father, which made supporting my family the top priority. This limited the amount of time I could spend developing Arakion. Now, I'm in a place where I can commit to developing Arakion full-time for the foreseeable future.

Second, I made the choice to transition Arakion from Unity to Unreal. While I was already working with Unreal on other projects, I decided to bring Arakion into the fold. The switch took longer than I initially anticipated, but it’s been worth it. Unreal’s mature systems, along with powerful tools like GAS and PCG, means I can implement vast amounts of content with little effort. This makes the future of Arakion very bright!

Let's Talk about Traits

For our first preview, let’s dive into the revamped traits. First off, classes have been removed entirely. Instead, heroes now gain one of three experience types: Brawn, Skill, and Will. How a hero gains experience depends on their actions, the skills they use, the decisions they make, and more. These points are then used to learn traits (certain traits still require Traitstones found in the world in addition to experience)

Each type of experience can be spent in its respective trait branch. As you might expect, Brawn traits focus on melee and health, Skill traits enhance ranged weapons and stamina, and Will traits boost casting and energy.

To start your journey, you’ll answer a few questions during hero creation, earning a couple of experience orbs to spend right away (don’t worry, it’s color-coded with tooltips to guide you as you can see below).

These early experience points can significantly shape your playstyle. For example, you might grab Spellhands early to start your hero's journey as a spellcaster or Armsmaster to wield weapon abilities. One I like to get really early on for mages is "Gifted Spellhands". This modifies Faebolt (think magic missile) to longer require energy to cast, this allows starting mages to really focus on gaining Will experience.

This is the first set of branches in the trait tree. As you see you have two choices for each trait type immediately. As you spend points in Brawn, Skill, or Will, you’ll unlock new branches in each respective tree. Some branches even require points across multiple trait types to unlock (think Battlemage). In addition to the main tree, additional smaller trees such as race (each race has a unique tree) and crafting trees exist that can be learned.

Another thing to keep in mind when learning traits is the stats that it benefits from. In this tooltip, you can see which stats empower the ability (in this case, a Magical ability enhanced by Wisdom).

Here are some example traits (most of these names are temp names):

• Armsmaster : After countless hours of training with melee weapons, the Venturer can now harness weapon abilities.
  
• Squire Armsmaster : The Venturer wields weapons with effortless grace. Swapping weapons no longer requires stamina.
  
• Lionheart Armsmaster : On a melee strike, the Venturer’s awareness becomes heightened, granting them one toughness for five turns.

• Hidebearer : Bestows the Venturer with the ability to clad medium armor.
  
• Stalker Hidebearer : When struck while clad in medium armor, the Venturer regains one stamina.
  
• Shadowborn Hidebearer : As long as the Venturer is clad in medium armor, they fully restore stamina upon defeating a foe.

• Spellhands : The Venturer can now weave an array of spells using only their hands.
  
• Learned Spellhands : The Venturer can now weave utility magic without the use of Energy.
  
• Gifted Spellhands : The Venturer can now weave Fae Arrow without the use of Energy.

As you can see, traits now offers tangible impacts on gameplay, giving your hero a unique style. I'll go more in depth with traits in a video that should be releasing next month.

Plans Moving Forward

As mentioned, I’ll be able to work on Arakion full-time for the foreseeable future. My goal is to bring it to a point where it can be released and updated far more frequently. A detailed roadmap is on the way, but here’s a quick breakdown of the upcoming milestones:

• Bimonthly: News and videos keeping you informed about Arakion.
  
• January / February 2025: Launching a 10-level dungeon, which will serve as a testing ground for the new systems and introduce side journeys. I originally planned releasing this in December, but decided to push it back to avoid overlapping with the holiday season.
  
• Spring 2025: Releasing the Prologue, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 of the mainline series.
  
• Summer 2025: Releasing Chapter 3 and a new side journey.

And with that I'm going to head back to work, be sure to keep an eye out for a video preview that will release in the next few weeks. We’re just getting started, and I can’t wait to share more in the coming weeks and months. Your thoughts and feedback are always welcome, so don’t hesitate to drop a comment! I'll respond as soon as I see them!

Sorry if this first preview was a little clunky. I'm still dusting off the announcement skillset.
Have a wonderful day and a Happy Halloween!
Lavidimus