We've had a lot of questions about the faction system, and how it affects things in-game, so for this Dev Diary I thought I'd talk about how faction is worked out, and how you can use it.

Most characters in Tactica Online owe an allegiance in some way to one of the important factions of the time: the ideologies of science, magic, and faith. How closely aligned you are with a particular faction is called fanaticism.

The faction a character is allied with is determined by which skills and equipment contribute most to that character's total Point Cost, while their level of fanaticism is determined by the difference between that amount and that of the next highest faction.

To determine a character's allegiance, we simply add up all the points added by the skills and equipment of each faction, ignoring skills of the Melee, Ranged, and Hunting lines which aren't aligned with any particular faction, and see which one added the most: that's where this character's allegiance lies.

For example, let's take the Mystic Knight Guillermo. Guillermo has:

Shield at expertise 5 (21 points)
Stone Form at expertise 5 (20 points)
Sacrifice (15 points)
Sustained by Faith (15 points)
Plate Armor (25 points)
Long Sword (4 points)
Heavy Shield (6 points)

For a total Point Cost of 106.

Only Sustained by Faith and Stone Form are affiliated with factions, so they are the only skills that count when considering which faction the character is affiliated with. Stone Form, a Lore skill, contributes 20 points to the character's total Point Cost, while Sustained by Faith contributes 15, so more points come from Lore than any other line. Lore being the line of magic skills, this means Guillermo is allied with the magic faction.