Hi, I guess I'm doing a devlog? 

If you've read the title, there's one thing I want to talk about today, and that is how Skills are acquired and used within Untold Story. For people that played the Demo Version of Untold Story, you already have an idea of what skills are like, but if not I'll briefly describe how they work.

Skills are attached to the Weapon a character uses. The main character Rover, for example, use Tomes. To use his Flame skill, you must have the Fire Tome equipped, to use his Frost skill, you must have the Ice Tome equipped, and so on. The same is true for most of the other characters as well. You must equip a specific weapon to use a specific Skill. To use different skills in battle, you must painstakingly open the Equip menu mid-battle and change out weapons. Characters will get new skills when they get new weapons.

Now that you know how Skills are gotten and used in Untold Story, forget all of it. 

That's right, I'm changing how it's done (kinda). If you played the Demo far enough, you met a character named Marcus. Unlike the others, his Skills are separate entities from his Weapons. Instead, his weapons have a variety of effects, and he learns skills via key items. He can use any and all Skills he's learned in battle regardless of which weapon is equipped. That idea was kind of unique to Marcus, but no longer. I realized I didn't like the Swapping Weapon mechanic anymore. I found it tedious and cumbersome, so I opted to create ideas for the other party members and how they will learn and acquire Skills that they can use in battle, regardless of the weapon equipped.

I want to go over the characters from the Demo and briefly mention how they will be changed by this.

Rover is an Elemental Student who uses various Tomes to cast spells of different element types. I'm going by this logic when deciding how his skills will be learned. Just as before, Rover must have the appropriate Tome equipped to use certain skills (i.e. Fire Tome for Flame). This is identical to the old way, however, there is more to it. You ever study something or attempt to learn something, and the more you do it the better you are, and before long you can preform it without help. That's what Rover does. 

At first, Rover needs to have the right Tome equipped to use his Elements, but cast them enough times and he'll permanently learn them. Meaning he will no longer need a certain Tome to cast that specific Element. This should incentivize players to use different Skills but not punishing them harshly if they decide not to (as you'll still be able to use them all via weapon switching). 

Drake uses Arms as his weapon. I came up with a whole new idea for how he will learn Skills. Across the world are special stones that, when interacted with, will grant Drake a new ability. Some will be along the main path, and some will be hidden, but the player is free to seek out and interact with them all to get Drake his skills. Once he learns one he can use it forever. The intro segment in Chilriva will be modified to reflect this change as well.

Roxy was pretty simple to figure out. Her Skills revolve around using different types of arrows to inflict status ailments. So how does she get new Skills? By getting a new type of arrow, of course! Don't worry, there won't be any kind of arrow ammo because that's not fun. Instead, she'll just need to  obtain a special arrow and she'll be set to use her new skills regardless of whatever bow is equipped! How does she get them? To be honest I haven't entirely decided yet, but it may have to do with Cassik of the Purple Pirates creating special arrows for her to use at various intervals in the story.

Geoffrey is a bit of a special case. If you played the Demo, you'll know he doesn't have many Skills in the first place. Geoffrey already follows the trend of having a large weapon variety. The question is how do I explain him getting his Adjustments detached from weapons? Well, the answer to me seems clear: training as part of the Royal Guard. I don't have all the ideas set in stone, but you may learn new Skills for Geoffrey by preforming some small training tasks. It will be better than it sounds.

Lazerous uses "Magic" as her ability. The problem is nobody else in the world can do what she does, so how does she learn Skills? Put that aside and think of what else Lazerous does: craft items. The answer became clear to me. For Lazerous to get new Skills, she'll have to craft a new Magic Spell in the same vain as her items. I don't have the details hammered down yet, but that's what I'm going with her for. She makes her own skills in her own unique way. That's who Lazerous is.

Marcus doesn't change. He already did that anyway!

That's basically all I have to say! This is kind of a big change? But a very welcome one. This will add more development time, but that's just a given at this point. I think it will be worth it in the end. There's a lot more changes too, but this devlog was strictly about the Skills and how characters will learn them.

By the way, if you're wondering about other party members, most of them followed the same method of skills as Marcus. That's another reason I opted to change this as well, to normalize the skills learning between all party members.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, take care!