The team at Icy Veins got to party up with Chief Rebel, the developers of Fellowship, and try out the new moonlight archer DPS hero, Elarion while also running through some never before seen dungeons.
Here’s an exclusive video taking a look at the new dungeons as Elarion:
Elarion the Skystrider
Elarion is a ranged DPS akin to ranger archetypes. He has a few different types of abilities to work with which will feel familiar to bow-lovers in RPGs, such as Highwind Arrow which bounces between enemies or Starfall Volley which is your rain of arrows style attack.
Each ability has either cooldowns or stacks of charges, and also cost Focus, an energy type system which recharges slowly or off of filler Focused Shots.
Most of his bow attacks have a charge time to draw and fire, but that doesn’t make him immobile. Elarion can move while casting and even dodge roll while casting, too, giving a satisfying archer experience without sacrificing the freedom of movement people expect from the archetype.
Finally, he can also mark enemies with Lunarlight Marks, causing beams of energy to strike down on any enemy attacked with a mark.
While most of his major cooldowns are AoE, Heartseeker Barrage is an exclusively single-target channeled attack and is great at burning threats efficiently even in AoE situations.
For a full list of his abilities and talents, check out our Elarion guide here:
Ransack of Drakheim – New Capstone 3 Boss Dungeon
The Ransack of Drakheim was explained to us as the capstone dungeon for the final level of Paragon, so the final dungeon in the game people will see in Early Access’ launch until they add more.
Drakheim feels far more ambitious than the previous dungeons, and pushed the boundaries of creativity with new concepts and ideas we didn’t see in the dungeons from the open beta. The first thing we immediately noticed was friendly villager NPC’s running away and dying. Combined with the sound effects, music, and environment, the dungeon felt more real than an army of enemies standing and waiting for the meat grinder.
Despite the dungeon being scaled down to Contender +2 (A much easier difficulty than Paragon 7 or +31), the enemies and mechanics still packed a punch on our relatively geared characters. Without getting too far into spoiler territory, we got to see three new bosses and new trash mobs and mechanics.
The mobs were a mix of Stormwatch enemies and some entirely new ones specific to the dungeon, similar to Wraithtide Vault, with some new abilities despite not being in Adept to unlock their stronger ones.
Approaching the first boss, the troll gave out movement-based debuffs people needed to respond to and respect. A good idea they played with routing was introducing mini-bosses that give introductions to some of the main boss’ mechanics, as a way to effectively tutorialize through gameplay.
They also, while alive, buff the main boss. This gives the players the choice to fight them for a slower but safer dungeon, or skip and fight a harder boss to save time. Or, choose which mini-boss to kill that affects their party the worst.
After taking a diverging path (which this dungeon has a lot more of as well!), we headed through frozen waters and a destroyed, frostbitten town to the second boss. This giant water elemental didn’t have any major mechanics that we saw at our difficulty, but instead it threw a thousand AoEs at us and said: “Dodge“.
After climbing down from Meiko’s back carrying us, we headed up the hill to the third and final boss. On the way, similar to the mini-bosses encounted before, we came across a mob that introduced a new mechanic we’d see at the boss itself.
This boss demanded a more co-ordination and communication for a targeted burst and positioning attacks without clipping party members.
Results, Ratings and Rewards
After beating the dungeon, a results screen reported checkpoints on how quickly you defeated each boss, your total time in the dungeon and the rating you earned if any. This all is in part of an effort to help communicate to the players their progress, and also was satisfying to see alongside our rewards.
Part of this change is the new addition of the ‘Dungeons’ record tab on your character screen, which shows your current rating and scores without having to search for yourself on the leaderboards. Hopefully, improvements like this help the reward loop feel more clear and helps setup goals for the players to achieve, similar to the star map.
Everdawn Grove – New 1 Boss Dungeon
We had extra time during our session and opted to run one more dungeon that we haven’t seen before Early Access, Everdawn Grove. Inside this forest were the Urrak goatmen, as well as some new threats all wielding blood and shadow magic.
Aesthetically, the dungeon was brightly colored but slowly decayed into corruption and darkness as you got further in and closer to the source of the magic. Once again this showcases that despite Fellowship not having a story mode, Chief Rebel are evoking it through the content and world itself in their dungeons.
The boss fight here involved positioning AoEs carefully to not hit your allies and also protect a friendly NPC who helps you during the fight.
