Magic: Legends details Difficulty Options and Rewards
Publisher Perfect World Entertainment and developer Cryptic Studio have revealed details about difficulty options and rewards for upcoming free-to-play online action RPG Magic: Legends. This follows a recent update detailing character customization and equipment.
Magic: Legends will have four difficulty modes in total, with everyone starting on Normal to start. Harder difficulty options will be accessible once a player reaches certain thresholds for their progress. These more challenging modes will begin to introduce unique dangers in the game's playable zones, such as more potent world hazards. exploding enemy corpses, or other restrictions placed on player abilities. By raising the game's level of challenge through Regional and World Enchantments, better EXP and rewards can be earned.
A video, description, and screenshot set detailing these game options can be found below. Magic: Legends is set to release in open beta for PC on March 23, followed by a full launch later this year on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
During your adventures across the Multiverse, expect to encounter numerous enemies ranging in size from small to large, each with different power levels and special abilities -offering varying degrees of effort to overcome. We designed the difficulty systems in Magic: Legends so that you can choose your path and make the game as challenging or straightforward as you’d like.
DIFFICULTY IN MAGIC: LEGENDS
Magic: Legends has four difficulty levels to choose from: Normal, Hard, Expert, and Master. Planeswalkers will start their journey at Normal difficulty by default. Hard, Expert, and Master become unlocked through reaching different level milestones through gameplay. Hard unlocks upon completing the full tutorial. Then, Expert and Master difficulties unlock as soon as you’ve gotten a character to class level 30. By increasing the difficulty level, you face more potent and demanding enemies in terms of health pools and damage output. You can further augment your missions and ordeals through Regional and World Enchantments as well. These changes and the challenges they introduce will encourage the experimentation with and assembly of new Loadout builds to adjust moment-to-moment gameplay on the battlefield. Of course, with higher difficulty comes more and better rewards!
REGIONAL ENCHANTMENTS
Beginning at the ‘Hard’ difficulty and harder, each of the game’s regions and their corresponding overworld and mission maps can have a Regional Enchantment. While on Hard difficulty, Regional Enchantments are optional, whereas, on Expert and Master difficulties, these enchantments are automatically applied. Regional Enchantments modify combat in that region in various ways, and the active enchantment(s) rotate every few weeks. For example: Burning covers enemies in that region in mystical flames, dealing damage over time to you and your nearby allies. Final Explosion causes the deaths of enemies to trigger massive, damage-dealing blasts.
WORLD ENCHANTMENTS
In addition to the four base difficulties and the above-listed Regional Enchantments, World Enchantments add powerful, world-altering effects that can add further depth to the gameplay. They are consumable, single-use items that attach to story and ordeal mission maps. The World Enchantments system is in the Prophetic Quill structure of each Planeswalker’s Meditation Realm or through the Guide menu once you’ve completed missions in the Overworld. You can craft these World Enchantments with earned materials gathered through gameplay or purchase them at the Broker, an auction-house style system that we’ll detail soon. There are three different tiers of World Enchantments as well, with each tier increasing raw enemy and map difficulty, while the enchantment enhances the complexity of your encounters. These effects stack with difficulty level and Regional Enchantment selections, resulting in a series of augmentations that up the ante for plenty of challenge.
Examples of Regional and World Enchantments can be found on the official blog.
REWARDS AND PROGRESSION
Naturally, increasing the difficulty and complexity of missions and overworld activities in Magic: Legends results in reward bonuses to make completing them worthwhile. The benefits of increasing difficulty and applying enchantments include: a higher quantity of drops such as Spell Pages and Relic Fragments, Equipment rewards with more effective Mods, and more significant XP gains. You should choose the difficulty that makes sense for you, based on how strong your Planeswalker is. Prior to taking on these greater challenges, consider a combination of your Class level, Planeswalker level, Spell and Artifact ranks, Equipment, and overall build synergies. With over 25 risk/reward combinations at launch, you can consider a variety of playstyles, classes, deck themes, and more to survive. For example, with the Attenuation Regional Enchantment that reduces ranged damage, you likely want to select the Geomancer or Beastcaller class, and make sure that any creatures in your deck are also melee attackers. Using the Overarching Magic World Enchantment for another example, you may want to include 3 or 4 enchantments across your deck color(s) so that you have a higher likelihood of drawing one, and being able to deal full damage while it’s active. If Attenuation is on-rotation as the Regional Enchantment, and you apply Overarching Magic to a mission, you will have to consider both of these modifiers and their ramifications at once.
