Intellect and Snaaga

Welcome in a new Development Diary post of the adventure game – The Descendants of Volos!
If you haven’t read the previous posts yet, here they are:

Post 1 – Game announcement

Post 2 – World map and Tutorial

Post 3 – Event cards

Post 4 – Equipment

Post 5 – Enemies and Combat

Post 6 – Dungeons

Post 7 – Setting up a player character

Post 8 – Character Portraits

Post 9 – Grand Changes

Snaaga

Is a word used to describe a mysterious energy. It is an element of nature that lives in all things around us. Some call it an energy of life, and some says it’s a breath of Gaia. The energy is invisible to the human eye (at least when in small amounts), and that’s why most people doesn’t believe that it even exists. Hundreds years ago, when the first people arrived on a newly discovered peninsula – Jastarnia, it became clear that Snaaga is not just a legend. A member of that expedition named Volos, discovered a rune stone that must have been created by some forgotten civilization. That rune stone was emanating with insane amount of Snaaga force at the very moment when Volos put it’s hand on it. The stone was representing a god named Rod in the three phases of life.

He spent his entire life trying to understand that phenomenon. After many years of studies and a direct contact with that energy, he managed to harness it and became one of the most powerful beings ever… Hundreds of years later, the legend of Volos and Snaaga was still the most famous story ever. Nobody knows what happened to him, neither where he is. However, the nowadays citizens of Jastarnia are seems to be affected by the increased presence of Snaaga. Once in a blue moon, one is born with an exceptional abilities. People call them the descendants of Volos, because they just like the predecessor could sense the presence of Snaaga and easily master it. Snaaga very often can be found in completely random objects. But normal people will never know it’s there…

As a player, you’re going to play one of the descendants of Volos. Regardless if you decide to become a warrior, rogue, wizard or a mixed class, you can still make use of Snaaga. From the game play perspective, we wanted to avoid using such a word as “mana”, not only because it’s too popular keyword, but also to simplify the game play. There is no mana pool that can regenerate over time. Instead, you’ll find all kind of items in the game that contains Snaaga. So to simplify the game mechanics, performing a special skill or casting a spell requires you to discard 1 item card that contains Snaaga. And that’s it!

Example trinkets, left hand weapon, and head gear with Snaaga in it.

As a bonus, every item that contains Snaaga, has zero weight. Notice, the V icon that symbolize the Snaaga is in the same spot as a weight icon in an ordinary items. It’s on purpose!

So, for example, if you’d like to use a skill that costs Snaaga, then you’ll have to discard one of your items. If the only item left is for example a helmet like on the picture above, then you’d have to discard it! A good practice is to collect the gear that contains Snaaga, but is not something that you put on, so you won’t regret getting rid of it.

If you’ve been carefully watching our previous development diaries, you might have noticed that the benefits from the intellect was increasing the Snaaga Limit. We have changed that! It was very annoying to keep track of how many Snaaga items you have, and making sure that you don’t exceed the limit, especially that some items you could put on you, some you can have in your backpack on the right hand side, and some in the trinkets on your left hand side. So right now, there is no limits on how many items you can carry that contains a Snaaga source. But what makes the wizards so special then? What are the benefits from increasing the intellect now?

Intellect

From now on, the intellect is increasing the limit of the amount of cards you can have on your left side. And that includes Trinkets, and Companions. This solves two problems at the same time. One problem was that the Snaaga limit was annoying to count, and second problem was that in a longer session, player ended up with way too many trinkets and companions on the left hand side, which became too hard to keep track of everything you’ve got. Now there is a base limit of 5. However we might make this limit down even more, 4 or maybe 3? We’ll see.

Now, player is facing very hard choices like: “I’ve found a nice ring. I want to keep it, but I’d exceed the limit, so I must throw out something else. But what?”. Perhaps you should decide to increase the intellect at some point? Despite that you’re a warrior, an extra trinkets + companions slot would be handy… You may wonder, why does intellect increase that max pool at all? Well it’s simple. Mostly it’s the trinkets that contains the Snaaga. Also, the biggest strength in being a wizard is using the magical scrolls, which are also a part of the trinkets deck. As a wizard, you might want to max out your intellect, which will allow you to keep many trinkets and especially a lot of magical scrolls.

As a warrior, with a very low limit on the trinkets and companions amount, you could try to collect the magical scrolls only. However, you’ll never be as powerful as a wizard, because every scroll has 2 versions: weak and strong. Strong version of a spell can be performed only if your intellect is a dominant attribute, but those rules are already explained on every card:

There is only one additional rule to remember, and it’s there to make the magical characters even more unique – only a character with dominant intellect can use more than 1 magical scroll per day. And we believe that it’s much easier than keeping track of how many Snaaga sources you have in front of you.

Companions

We’ve already mentioned that the pool on your left hand includes the companions cards. Companions are not a separate characters as it sounds. Instead the mechanics of companion are simplified to a short skill, or a boost to the player stats.

Portraits art is work in progress

In practice, they function like just another trinket, except there are different ways of getting them. Like for example, often visiting Taverns, where you can sometimes meet mercenaries and hire them if you can afford.

Remember that taverns are not the only way to get a companion. Sometimes they join you in a random events in the adventure cards.

To summarise. The intellect is affecting the max limit of the trinkets and companions that you may own. What does it mean from the perspective of a realm? Well… you must be intelligent to know how to convince a group of people to follow you. But also you must be intelligent enough to know how to deal with the Snaaga sources that persist in the majority of your trinkets.

I hope that you enjoyed today’s development diary post. If you did, please make sure to share it with your friends. Soon there will be more and more of cool sneak peeks of the Descendants of Volos board game…