The Crowfall team is ready to reveal everything they've been teasing for the past month or so. Called "Crows & Vessels", the concept begins with players being an immortal soul that can possess various bodies like their vessels. Progression has been taken from the character level to the account level. Skills learned on one character benefit all characters.
General Skills will carry across an entire account for all characters no matter which one is being played at the time. Conversely, Archetype Skills only are credited to a character playing that specific archetype.
Vessels essentially become 'skins' that this Crow/Immortal Soul can wear, buy (along with sell and trade), craft, find and even in a few cases, loot and can be hauled around in a player's inventory. The possibilities are endless to, for instance, find new vessels to inhabit through exploration in the game world. Vessels can be changed in the middle of a siege to change the dynamics of the battle.
"Necromancy just became a new market economy." according to Tully Ackland. "Imagine building a reputation buying, selling and crafting new vessels."
Does that mean vessels can be collected? Crafted? Traded?
Yes, all of the above.
The character creation process works as it did before, only the process is now integrated directly into gameplay (not a separate process, like most MMOs).
In fact, you can think of vessels and runestones as the base materials (or reagents) that can be used to “craft” a new avatar.
Really! Vessels can be crafted?
Yes, vessels can be crafted. We have a whole crafting skill tree planned around it!
What does crafting vessels give you?
Because vessels are separate inventory objects, that means we can allow variation between vessels. For instance, not all Knights will have the exact same attributes or skill maxes. We can create variety in characters, not only with Advantage and Disadvantage runestones, but also in allowing certain disciplines (like Necromancy) to create variance between vessels of the same base archetype.
Do vessels adhere to the item rarity system?
They do! Since they are an item they follow item rules as well, meaning quality levels. Higher quality level vessels will have higher attributes and skill caps.
…and, since they are items, the drop rules are going to be mirrored here, as well. The best raw vessels are going to come from the more dangerous campaign worlds. This means that we expect a brisk trading economy of vessels and an entire market devoted to crafting and trading vessels. Crafters rejoice!
In hardcore campaigns, it is very possible that players can lose a vessel through looting -- essentially losing an entire character though this is tied directly to the most punishing rulesets and not to all.
There is much, much more to find out by visiting the Crowfall site to check out the rest of the Crows & Vessels FAQ.
