Visionary Realms Delves into Armor Basics & the Halnir Cave Dungeon

The latest newsletter from Visionary Realms about Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen has been published. In this month's edition, the team dives into the Halnir Cave that was recently released for pre-alpha testers to try out. The post goes into detail about its creation and lore. In addition, one of the team's character artists discusses design aesthetics and mechanics envisioned when creating armor for the game.

The armor interview begins with a discussion of how the armor is first created as a concept, then modeled. Developers take into account that Pantheon is a fantasy game that is packed with lore, both of which play a part in creating armor that captures the game's spirit.

The most interesting part is how the notion of gear progression will play out over the course of multiple tiers of armor:

What are the aesthetics of gear progression like? Will you be able to tell roughly how high level someone is just by looking at them?

Will: Currently we are trying out a multi-tiered system per armor set. This will give each armor set a unique look/silhouette according to tier, but also retain the general look of that armor set. We also have in-engine tools to modify the age, grunginess, amount of dirt/mold and so on.

Chris: We want players to feel a genuine sense of rags to riches in Pantheon. And so we want to be thoughtful about how quickly we roll out higher tier armors. So yes, you should be able to tell how high level someone is just by looking at them. That's the goal.

I also want to make an important point that while we are creating these Armors in sets, this doesn't mean everyone will always be in a matching set of armor. Quite the contrary I would expect. Putting together a full, matching set of armor will be a rarer accomplishment. And just because pieces may look the same, doesn't mean each piece is part of the same "set". I'll speak more on that later.

At lower levels, it will be the norm to see players in more of a mismatched ensemble of gear, since they're using whatever they can get their hands on without the luxury of going after specific pieces beyond their level range. And so part of the rags to riches equation will be seeing higher levels players getting closer to a matching set look.

From here, the letter jumps to the team behind the Halnir cave and delves into its history and lore gamewise. Halnir Cave is considered a "true open world dungeon" that players can enter multiple times. "Players may end up going so deep into the dungeon that they discover another zoneline via secret passage door, etc., but it won't be instanced".

Be sure to head over to the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen site to read the full letter.