Forums » Crafting and Gathering

What do you think colored mana might mean for crafting?

    • 1785 posts
    August 9, 2018 7:30 AM PDT

    Source: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content...olored-mana-still-a-thing/view/post_id/173462

    Joppa said:

    Just a bit of clarity here before speculation leads to unmet expectations :)

    Currently, we're exploring some design directions for Colored Mana to play a significant role in the Crafting sphere. If we land on something we feel really good about, that's the aspect of Colored Mana you would see the soonest.

    Regarding the Adventuring sphere, there have been a few directions we have considered/prototyped in the past that ultimately did not feel successful, being an additional layer of complexity that felt clunky and didn't harmonize with the Pantheon experience as a whole. So we're considering a different approach by using the Crafting system as the flagship incorporation of Colored Mana. If this proves successful, it could open up more clear paths on how we might incorporate Colored Mana into the Adventuring sphere more successfully.

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    Note:  I posted this on Pantheon Crafters as well.  Hopefully, we get good discussion in both places :)

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    Neph's thoughts:


    I have a poor understanding of the original concept of colored mana, but where my head wants to go is that different-colored mana represents different environmental influences. So red mana = fire, blue mana = water, and so on. You can think of elemental relationships in Final Fantasy terms (air/earth/water/fire/ice/lightning/dark/light) or in MTG terms (fire-lightning/light-protection-healing/nature-earth/magic-air-water/death).

    So with that in mind, the obvious thing is that there would need to be some way to store and inject colored mana during the crafting process. This could be some sort of fuel component (like FFXI's and FFXIV's crystals) or maybe it's an aspect of the materials and components that are used. Either way, the color of mana used would influence the result in some way. So, if you were making an armor piece, the colored mana might influence the resist boosts that the armor piece winds up with. If you were making a weapon, using enough colored mana might imbue the weapon with a special property such as a bane bonus or even (for very strong weapons) a damage proc.

    These are just my initial thoughts. I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.

    • 1315 posts
    August 9, 2018 8:03 AM PDT

    Yah Joppa’s post made my brain go “Whaaatt!” and then ran off down dozens of possible directions that did not fit any of my original guesses of how crafting would work.

    I see two primary ways this could be harnessed.

    1st:  Like you said it could have something to do with the elemental wheel.  Either the mana used in creating the item effects the item or specific mini-game moves work differently when they are fueled with different elements.  The location of crafting, gear worn and consumables could all contribute to how much of each elemental mana you had on hand while crafting.  The only issue I see with this is that mana focuses on the end product results and not necessarily on the crafting process, though it still could affect your mini-game move choices.

    2nd:  The colored mana represents different mental resources used while crafting:  If you broke down mental energies into Concentration, Creativity, Patience, and Effort/Focus you could then have the mini-game abilities use differing amounts of these resources.  Through the crafting process you manage your different mental energies by choosing abilities that consume different colors of mana.  One response may burn a lot of concentration and another may burn a lot of patience.  The key is to not run out of the mental energy that you need to use to respond to a possible failure event.  This could include taking into account different regeneration rates both while in the mini-game and while out of it.

    This could also be where group crafting comes in.  Say to make an absolutely top end item you need to use creative improvement power 10 times but one crafter only has enough creativity to do it 8 times and many of the responses also need some creativity.  One person focuses on getting the quality up while the other contributes a little to the quality but otherwise makes sure the process does not fail.

    I hope Joppa and Ceythos are able to open up a little bit more on how everything works together and the overall direction of crafting.

    • 768 posts
    August 11, 2018 6:33 AM PDT

    Well I already said my bit on the https://www.pantheoncrafters.com/threads/what-do-you-think-colored-mana-might-mean-for-crafting.171/#post-2832

    But in short, the color can vary between crafters and from the adventure class. Or the same "orb ui" for mana can be used for adventuring and just a small modification can take place when that adventurer starts to craft. So he'll just keep his own mana front, just a detail would show that it's in crafter modus instead of otherwise.

    I'm pretty sure they are not talking about putting color on an item by using the manapool color. To make imbue or dyed armor is a nice feature, could be a nice thing to add on later after launch. 

    It will depend on how shiny they want players to get. Because a hoard of golden tunic filling up the streets might be a turn down as well for people trying to stay immersed into a medieval oriented game.

    • 168 posts
    August 12, 2018 7:01 PM PDT

    So far my gut says it will have something to do with elemental resists or adding an essence to a crafted item that is crafted at a remote hard to reach area. There just isn't much of any info out there to nail it down as of yet. A tangent could be having to group with someone of sufficent specific colored mana skill to leach their aura into a crafted item.

    • 24 posts
    August 13, 2018 9:02 AM PDT

    there are only 4 things i can think of on my end independantly was y'alls comments.

    1: each class will have a different type of mana and it will promote groups crafting together to possibly affect the grade of a produced item?

    2: when you are in certain areas of the word you collect mana from the area passively, like your tapping into a mana leyline of a certain element and that will work as a resource, that way someone can buy 5,000 copper ore from the market and overload the market with a single type high grade product just to level thier crafting skill, kind of like Skyrim and making 10,000 Iron Daggers so that you can make Dragon Bone Armor.

    3: a mini-game would recharge colors of this mana or create the mana accordingly. maybe something similar to the EQ version of "Bejeweled" they had while waiting on ready-checks. and as the mana types fill the required amounts, the crafting completes. obviously doesn't have to be a game like Bejeweled, just a notable example.

    4: mana "color" might be affected by the specialization you choose and would represent an element. so say you want to make a sword. as a blacksmith you have 1 Red Mana per level (lets say you a lvl 50 blacksmith so 50 mana), but to make the handle High Quality you'd need 10 green mana from a carpenter. and to make it mastercrafted and deal increased damage to vampire/werewolves, instead of being just a normal high quality sword, you'd need 30 white mana from a Jewelcrafter. To me this sounds the more realistic and would also promote the Inter-dependency without exactly being a requirement.

    • 29 posts
    November 9, 2018 12:44 PM PST

         Crafting colored mana would be an awesome idea for magical ammunition and it would further solidify the crafting role. Along with providing a more unique aesthetic, you could also have each colored mana do various different things mechanically, for example, green mana will increase healing spells or have damaging spells heal, black mana that can leach health, red mana can strengthen AOEs or have an AOE effect on single target spells, and blue mana slow or even freeze targets. I would even suggest having it be required for certain spells. Maybe you can have different qualities of colored mana that deal more damage or heal more etc. Though it is important for these magic classes to have spells that do not require colored mana in case you run out and therefore sitting useless. Another cool idea is to have colored mana harvestable from magical monsters creating new revenue opportunities for players. It would also be awesome if you could use the colored mana to enchant certain items in the game with different attributes.