Brighter Shores Combat Rework Part 1 is Here, Merging Professions & Offering Flexibiliity Between Episodes

When Brighter Shores launched as an episodic free to play game, there were multiple combat professions, but only one was used as a focus in each new episode. It was a system that could seem confusing and even hard to get to. 

A couple of months ago, the team announced that there would be a combat rework that would merge the combat professions into a single one that would also intend to make progression feel smoother and more stable from one episode to the next. Part one of the combat rework is here now. 

Now, the Guard, Minefighter, Scout, and Watchperson are no longer independent combat professions. There is one profession, and you’ll find all of your progress now reflected in a single combat level and updated weapon levels. Before, you could only use a particular weapon when moving from one episode to another. Now, you can use whatever weapons or armor you want, even keeping everything the same between episodes.

To go along with the combat changes, there is now a single global combat leaderboard, and the professions interface is now split into three tabs: active, passive, and special. 

Related:

Brighter Shores Early Access Review

The original intent of focusing on a single separate combat profession in each episode was to keep things fresh and also to avoid dead content. The game is designed to be playable and enjoyable even if you have 15 minutes or 15 hours to play. They didn't want some people to just run away with everything and others to be left behind. 

With the rework, there are new combat capes, each with 16 progression levels and an appearance based on faction. Previous episodic capes have been retired and fully refunded. Obelisks are now only useful to enchant profession equipment, so no more Enchantress, but the Infusionist in the Mine of Mantuban will infuse rare combat items into epic ones. 

The Mine of Mantuban has other changes, including two new passive foes, and some changes to weapon crafting to cap max craft at max combat level x 5  New button to scale weapon level to your combat level.

There are additional adjustments, including to the prices of foraging materials, two handed weapons, and additional changes for balance to reflect the overall changes.