Perks

The perks introduced in Shadowlands will be a great addition to both character progression and combat in Anarchy Online. They are basically stat modifications and special abilities that will materialise both as "buffs" and special attacks, and some of those special attacks should be executed in strings between the different professions for maximum impact, enhancing the tactical aspects of team combat.

The perks will come in several different lines. Some lines will be profession specific, some will be specific to groups of professions, and some will be general and for all to use.

Each character will gain the possibility to learn a new perk every ten levels up to level 200. After that, in the Shadowlevels, you'll be able to learn a new perk every level until the cap of 220, making the grand total of 40 perks for a top level character. All perks can be unlearned as well, so there is ample room to experiment.

Examples:

One general perk line is the "Enhance Health" line. This is a simple perk line that will give you more... that's right, health!

The first "Enhance Health" perk will give you 40 more hit-points, the second will give you 80 more hit-points, the third will give you 100 more hit-points etc. The values that the perk buffs accumulate. Meaning that after training all the perks in this line you will have 1500 extra hit points. Permanent! No need to refresh any nanos, no need to get any equipment to keep them there; they will be there until you actively remove them.

"Shadowstalker" which is an adventurer only perk line, is a bit more complex. This perk line has 6 perks in it, and at level 20 you can train the first perk in the line. You choose to train that perk, and you get an immediate upgrade: +7 buff in concealment, +1 buff in duck, dodge, evade, agility and a +2 increase to damage. If you train all the perks in this line you will have the following buffs running all the time as long as you don't decide to unlearn the perk line: +90 buff in concealment, +10 buff in dodge, duck, evade, +25 buff in agility and +25 increase to damage.

But that's not by far the coolest stuff. When the entire perk line is trained you have also acquired 3 new special attacks. They are called, Shadow Stab (which was enabled by training the second perk in the Shadowstalker line), Blade of Night (which was enabled by training the fourth perk in the Shadowstalker line) and Shadow Killer (which was enabled by training the sixth and final perk in the Shadowstalker line).

Shadow stab is a backstabbing-like attack. When executed successfully you will do quite a lot of damage, but there are requirements to using it. You need to face the back of your opponent to get the max out of this special. The second special is a sneak attack buff for the adventurer. The third one, Shadow killer, is the most powerful. It will do a massive amount of damage BUT... Yes, there is a ‘but’. Like explained earlier, one of the goals of the perks is to provide more varied gameplay and group tactics. In order to successfully execute the Shadow Killer special attack, the following requirements need to be met.

1. The adventurer executing the special needs to be behind the target
2. The adventurer executing the special needs to have Blade of Night running on himself
3. The target needs to have the DoT called ‘Chemical Blindness’ running. This is another special that the Doctor, Engineer and the Trader get via the Alchemist perk line. Chemical Blindness is a special ability that lowers the attack rating of the afflicted target.

When all these requirements are present the Adventurer can attack the target with the Shadow Killer. If successful... well, the target will have a really bad day...

Other perks will have even more dependencies in order to work effectively.

In short, there will be a huge variety of perks and effects of perks, and options will be close to limitless.

Marius Enge
Designer