Rivals of Aether

Rivals of Aether

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Melia
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30 Sep @ 11:52am
1 Oct @ 12:44pm
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Melia

Description
The crown princess of the High Entia steps into the battlefield, using her powerful spells and mastery of ether to forge a new era.

Melia is a highly versatile character, equiped with a lot of spells to help her control the battlefield.
Her zoning tools are numerous and varied! It might look overwhelming at first but I promise, its straightforward in practice.

She has a good set of normals, allowing her to rush at her opponents, but be careful! She is quite light.


Make sure to check out her home stage made by ATalksToSelf here!

Character mechanics

Aside from the ability to float, Melia can create elemental orbs using her mastery of ether. Those orbs serve two purposes:
-While on Melia, they will grant her small buffs. (Buff effect depends on which orbs she has)
-They can be thrown with Nspecial to act as varying projectiles.

She can carry up to 3 orbs at once. No new orb can be gained until she has less than 3.

The buffs are individually small, but can add up and become quite powerful. They are stackable, which means that if you have multiple orbs of the same type, the corresponding buff will be stronger.
Mix and match your compositions to fit your playstyle!

Orb effects

-Flare: Increases knockback.
-Bolt: Increases damage.
-Aqua: Periodic healing. (additionnal Aqua orbs increases the healing frequency)
-Wind: Increases air mobility.
-Earth: Increases weight and reduces damage taken.
-Ice: Reduces ground friction.

(I recommend trying out the triple ice or triple wind orb compositions, they are pretty funny)

Notable moves

Nspecial - Elemental discharge

Pressing Nspecial allows Melia to throw her most recently acquired orb like a projectile. Of course, you lose that orb in the process.

Each orb has its own properties and trajectory:
-Flare: Goes straight and far. (Kills decently)
-Bolt: Goes straight forward and follows a set path after a delay. (Higher hitstun)
-Aqua: Bounces depending on launch height and slows down with each bounce. (Good for area coverage).
-Wind: Goes straight and slows down over time, remains for a decent time. It also knocks opponents straight up. (Can be thrown in advance to launch opponents in it)
-Earth: Goes in an arched trajectory, explodes on impact with terrain. (Powerful on hit)
-Ice: Advances slowly for a moment before speeding up. (Covers horizontal close ranges)

Note that releasing orbs fills 1/8th of her meter. When the meter is full, you can press attack + special to unleash Mind Blast!

You can also hold the move to open the orb selection menu. It works like Smash Shulk's monado arts wheel.
This lets you freely select orbs!

Mind Blast

Mind blast is a powerful but situationnal move, it has a big charge time, but deals enormous damage when opponents are right in front of her. She can move around during it to adjust her position.

The meter will gradually get drained during the startup portion until its empty.

Fair

Forward air is in two parts. The second part will throw the most recent orb at a slightly higher angle than Nspecial.

Uair

Up air is also a two part move. The second part is an ether blast that is stronger when directly touching the cross shape.

Dstrong and Ustrong - Summon Earth and Summon Aqua

Dstrong and Ustrong respectively grant Melia an Earth and Aqua orb.

Fspecial (ground) - Summon Flare

This move release a flaming tornado in front of Melia. Holding the move will push the tornado's spawn location further away. It will stop if it reaches an edge.
You can walk freely around while holding the move.
Grants Melia a Flare orb.

Fspecial (air) - Summon Ice

Melia creates a large icicle that quickly turns into a spiky mass of ice. It will remain on the field and slowly fall down if left untouched.
It will damage anything it comes into contact with. After a short duration, even Melia will become hittable by the icicle.
It can be pushed around if attacked, and will instantly shatter if it touches solid terrain.
Grants Melia an ice orb.

The icicle does a great job covering air space.
Note: The flaming tornado will push the icicle away.

Uspecial - Summon Wind

Melia summons a powerful upwards windstream. This windstream pushes any player up, aswell as her projectiles.
By holding the move you can delay the activation slightly. During that time, you may press left or right to influence the windstream's push direction.
This is a very powerful recovery option, you can stay inside off-stage to delay your recovery, or throw projectiles in it to change their trajectory.
Grants Melia a wind orb.

Dspecial - Summon Bolt

Summon Bolt creates a small electric ring on the field. This ring can be destroyed by foes who attack it.
It will create a purple static area around itself.
By itself, it does nothing... However, if a thrown orb comes into contact with it, the ring will detonate, casting a thunderbolt on the closest foe, within the area of effect.
Grants Melia a Bolt orb.

You may notice that the ring appears above Melia. It can be difficult to hit with an orb straight away, but the trajectory of the Bolt orb that you will receive (if you're not already full) will line up perfectly with the ring, if thrown at the same height as the move.

A tricky pressure tool, meant to deny space or to extend your combos with well timed strikes.

Nair

When Melia has orbs on her, said orbs will rotate around her during Neutral air's use as active hitboxes.


Closing thoughts
Woooh! This grind is finally over!
Melia took me a long time to make, even with experience. The amount of stuff to set up and sprite was larger than any prior project I did. Regardless I'm pretty happy with how she turned out and I hope you enjoy playing as this weird amalgam of Zelda, Palutena, Lucina and Peach!

A decent amount of liberties have been taken when designing her. I wanted to incorporate the aspect of casting and releasing orbs regularly based on the situation. That said, I had to get creative with how each summon move acted to create a diverse a cohesive kit.
In that sense, I tried giving each move use cases that would fit their original intent in Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Obviously, the ice orb's friction property is nowhere close to the original, but I don't see a good translation of ether defense into Rivals (and also slippery ground is funny).
Anyway, more mods coming in the future!

Credits:
-Character belongs to MonolithSoft
-Animation DoomyWoomy
-Code: DoomyWoomy

Special thanks:
-ATalksToSelf, Aperson, Cyrano du Sud: for detailed feedback throughout the dev cycle
-ATalksToSelf: several alts, dual release with the stage
-Rix: Heavy contribution on Uspecial's animated visual effect
-JPEG warrior: The cool after effect with variable colors idea
-People who supported the project during its developpment!
13 Comments
Vessdl 1 hour ago 
my girlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll is hereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!
God Damn It 3 hours ago 
I can't fair 2 or bair 2 with c stick
JackFrost777 9 hours ago 
This is great I like the way that Melia plays in Xenoblade 1 fits in Rivals with the different summons.
Doomy Woomy  [author] 13 hours ago 
Thanks for the feedback, I'm gonna work on it right now.
And yeah fair's followup should give her meter, I just forgot about it oops.
ultracyber 21 hours ago 
melly...
Paciel 23 hours ago 
Oh I forgot another thing actually, wish I could edit the comment instead of posting another, sorry.

Was it an oversight that fair's followup doesn't contribute to building her meter? Because it seems weird that it doesn't since she is throwing out her orb like she would with nspecial, which does build meter.
Paciel 23 hours ago 
To follow up on my previous comment with some constructive criticism after having played around with her more, by myself and with others, I do think dspecial could use a longer cooldown, because it is a very large area it threatens the opponent with and if they destroy it, Melia can just throw it out again pretty much immediately.

Dash attack's sweetspot and her flare nspecial feel a bit too strong in terms of kill power, more-so dash attack's sweetspot.

Her ustrong is very inconsistent in whether or not the initial hit will actually lead into the second hit, which feels kinda bad.

Lastly, her pain sounds are pretty repetitive and it gets especially annoying during multi-hits against her hearing the same sound multiple times in quick succession, maybe a longer cooldown between pain sounds if there's a system in place for that or more varied pain sounds.

That's really my only criticisms though, overall great character, lots of sauce, for sure staying in my roster!
Paciel 30 Sep @ 4:53pm 
Epic stuff, amazing seeing how far you're coming from your first mods. There's tons of depth here from just how her tools, simple on their own, can interact with each other and flow with each other. Great work, and blessed the workshop be with more Xenoblade content.
Aperson 30 Sep @ 4:32pm 
But we cannot be reckless
Doomy Woomy  [author] 30 Sep @ 3:51pm 
Thanks! Glad you like her.
I'm actually planning on giving Rex & Pyra a complete redo to bring them up to speed. While Glimmer will get a big update, some re-animated/changed attacks, a couple changes in specials and mechanics, streamlining gamefeel.
In hopes that I can use what I learned over a year and a half to make them way better.

Still don't know who I'll make next because I have so many ideas!