So, everyone knows we have moved into our 3rd year of Early Access. I am going to highlight features and things that were mentioned for EA and what we're missing.
Larian promised ALL 12 classes would eventually be available in EA. Therefore, we are missing two classes.
In the past, no more than 1 class has been released per patch. That is not a hard rule, so maybe Larian would dump both in one patch but it seems unlikely based on hints from dataminers.
A dataminer claims that most of Monk assets had been loaded, while Paladin had been largely untouched for several editions of updates. This leans toward Patch 9 introducing Monk and Paladins coming thereafter.
Multiclassing was a feature discussed for EA. Larian said it would not be available at EA launch, but would come later.
We have not heard much, if anything, from Larian about this feature since 2020. Please share if you have something different.
NickP: Multiclassing rules will follow closely the 5e DnD. On level up characters will be able to continue with their current class or choose a new class, provided they meet the requirements. Multiclassing is not going to be available in Early Access at launch, we're planning to add it later.
Reaction re-work has been mentioned by Larian staff. We have no idea what a re-work means or what it looks like.
They have not explicitly said it will be aligned with Solasta or anything close to that, only that they are working on overhauling the system. It's been teased and mentioned sparingly throughout 2 full years with no new footage or further explanation.
Reactions are a really important part of D&D 5e. A lot of classes have features that revolve around them, there are a ton of really important spells that are reactions (shield, counterspell, absorb elements, etc.). Are you making changes to the 5e reaction rules, and if so, how are you implementing these crucial features/spells?
Swen: While it’s not going to be in EA immediately, the features and mechanics that allow a character to perform an action as a reaction will trigger automatically. The players will be able to control which reactions they want to enable in anticipation of enemy actions. E.g. a wizard would disable their Attack of Opportunity but enable their Shield spell, which will be cast automatically whenever the wizard is targeted by an attack or Magic Missile spell.
We also still cannot select any Origin character during character selection. We can only add them to our party.
This feature, along with customization for Origins, was said to come later in EA.
Can I play as an Origin character during Early Access?
You will not be able to play as an Origin character at the start of Early Access. You will be able to recruit three of our five Origin characters into your party, so you can experience them as a companion to start off with.
Can I change the class of the origin characters when I recruit them?
Not at the beginning of Early Access, but we are planning to provide that option later down the line.
We've also been promised the game will release
sometime in 2023. That said, it might still hit another full year of EA if it releases after October 6th, 2023.
"It's something that we think a lot about," Vincke says. "The biggest risk is that there's a certain amount of fatigue that might pop up, certainly among the press. You can imagine that people say: 'Hey, it's been in early access for forever, when is it going to come out?'
"I think the most important thing I can say about that is also what I say to the team: it doesn't really matter how long it's going to be in early access, what's going to matter is what the result will be. If the result is going to be the experience that everybody expects it to be, then it will be fine, because people are going to have a tremendous amount of fun when they're going to be playing it. That is the end goal so we keep that in front of us, and then the time it takes is the time it takes.
"Making games is complicated and this is a complicated game, so there's little that we can do about accelerating it. We are scaling up, we're putting a lot of resources into it -- a lot more than we expected -- to give the game the development that it deserves, so we can't do much more than what we're doing. It just takes time."
What do you think of Year 3 of EA?
Do you think Larian will fulfill all of the above? Will some things be left out and incomplete?Will the release date be pushed further back than 2023?Will we get another patch this year?Will we hear anything from Larian officially?
