DanZu

This was a great read. I look forward to more updates on your progress.

Quoting Derek Paxton: "Essence is gone" Derek, could you please give your reasoning for removing essence as a game mechanic? Essence never worked right and was diminished throughout the dev process. With your creative influence you can probably come up with a workable system that honors the original intentions of the essence mechanic. BTW, I am really optimistic with the overall direction you are taking the game. I look forward to 1.1 and

[quote who="Werewindlefr" reply="154" id="2822726"]Essence points actually had a purpose at the begining of the game: it was a currency for really potent spells or abilities, something that could only be increased via leveling or maybe very rare items and that would be sacrificed to cast world-shattering spells. It should have stayed separate from intelligence and mana from the beginning; it should have been its own thing instead, with very situational (and yet gameplay-changing) use.[/q

Thats the way it worked, but now essense is just a true/false flag for if a character can cast spells. I think that essense is more.

Removing the original concept of essence and making it a boolean to determine casting ability is a mistake. The idea of the channeler being a unique and mighty being and not some mere caster of spells is a very interesting concept and has been an important part of the marketing and design of the game. Mana is like electricity existing in the land. Long in the past the titans brought the crystals which absorbed all the mana and concentrated it. Mana is colle

There is a layering issue when loading a saved game from the main screen. The main menu text shows up fully opaque on the load screen for all the available options (like skirmish). Unavailable options are greyed out and are not very distracting. This will probably be an issue when the player has a lot of save games and the text from the main menu overlaps with the saved game names.