Seren Quest Rewards – Spells and Prayers
I’ve decided to release some details about our plans for the Seren spells and prayers in the
hope that we can gather some useful feedback. It is important to stress that these are ​not
guaranteed to make it into the final release, but they are examples of what we’ve decided
upon initially and started to prototype. We may not manage to implement them all or we may
manage to implement more, but remember we are developing a grand master quest
alongside them.
General
Spells would be put on the ancient magicks spellbook. Rune costs would be high where
appropriate, forming a sink for those that need it. Combat/skilling could use different sets of
runes but stay limited within those sets to not require large amounts of inventory space.
Prayers would be put on the ancient curses prayer book.
Accept aid would need to be turned on to benefit from most of the effects from other players.
Combat
My intention is for the combat spells and prayers to focus on support/tank roles, staying
thematically appropriate to Seren and filling a niche that is weak (or non-existent) in
RuneScape at the moment. The aim will be for them to function most effectively in team
situations, given the scenarios high level players find themselves in; Vorago, Rise of the Six,
Araxxor (duo) and the upcoming raids especially are where they will flourish.
Spells
Crystal totems – Create and place down crystals that have different effects for people within
a certain radius. Possible ideas include: restore summoning points, reduce damage taken,
break incoming stuns, cleanse poisons, slow/bind/provoke enemies. Totems would require
management (such as charging them with runes to keep them active longer) and have
diminishing effects the more you have active at one time.
Shield dome - Create a dome that absorbs a percentage of incoming damage for all players
inside. Must be channelled, using a shield increases its effectiveness. If I enter someone
else’s dome it also puts mine on cooldown. Has diminishing returns so they cannot be
chained efficiently.
Intercept – Leap/teleport to a friendly character and absorb the next X attacks/damage
against them. X is increased when wielding a shield. Would require line-of-walk, operating in
a similar fashion to barge/surge/escape.
Prayers
Fortitude – Large increase to defence, lifepoints and regeneration, possibly at the cost of
some offensive stats. Specifically designed to be the definitive tanking prayer. Should share
activation with other prayers i.e. turmoil.
Light/dark forms – Whilst in light form the effect of Seren spells is amplified (dark form for
Zaros spells). Using a spell/prayer from the other school removes the form. This encourages
picking a particular role within ancient magicks/curses, further defining specific tank/support
roles.
Soul link – Allows you to link to another player sharing damage, healing and
prayer/summoning points between you. The link would be shown graphically in the game
world and would break over a certain distance.
Another idea we’re considering is a set of protection spells that amplify for the amount of
people using them within a small radius (up to a cap).
Skilling
With the skilling spells/prayers we need to be careful not to make benefits that are too niche;
where possible they should be broadly useful. Our game is saturated with boosts, auras,
rewards and costumes, so it makes sense to aim for areas of the game that are newer and
the ground is less trodden. Some examples of this content are divination and things added
with the elf city. It also gives us an opportunity to introduce new styles of gameplay to skilling
such as rewarding co-operation or promoting social and lean forward mechanics.
Spells
Enrichment – Enrich an inventory of divine memories (rune cost per memory).
Rapid growth – Skip a growth stage for a plant/tree/herb once.
Crystal mask - When cast it creates a crystal mask that reduces the chance of being caught
pickpocketing when worn. Turns to dust after X minutes. This spell is rune intensive and can
only be cast once per day.
Crystallise – Turn a skilling location crystalline for 30 seconds. More XP is gained but no
resources are received. This is the kind of flat increase we'd ideally avoid, but it would help
the economy so can be considered a worthwhile trade-off.
Crystal tree locator – Tells the player the direction of the active crystal tree (similar to the
‘look at’ op on an inactive tree).
Crystal harvest - When cast this reasonably expensive spell resets the daily limit on
harvesting your crystal tree in Priffdinas, thus meaning you are able to harvest twice per day
instead. The spell can only be cast once per day.
Prayers
Gatherer form – whilst mining, woodcutting, fishing or divining the chance of various procs
are increased. Effect increases the longer it is active (up to a cap), interrupted by combat.
Lean-forward skilling - Prayers that occasionally cause something to happen which the
player can react to in order to gain extra rewards. Specifics for what these could be are still
open for design.
Social skilling - Similar to the protection prayers which encourage grouping up, these skilling
prayers (having effects such as gatherer form) would have their effect amplified when other
people nearby also have them activated. This promotes some form of skilling teamwork.
Chronicle absorption - all chronicles are immediately converted into divination XP equal to
90% of what the druid would give (could be a spell giving a shorter buff).
Conclusion
Hopefully these ideas excite everyone. We really like the idea of introducing new kinds of
gameplay that enhance your experiences (as well as XP) in high level content.
Once again I must reiterate that these are in no way set in stone and we can’t guarantee that
we’ll manage to develop them all, we would love to hear your feedback though. Have any
ideas for tweaks/additions that would make something way better? Think one of these is
totally boring? Let us know.
Mod Ollie