VOD:
Design:
Design:
- Skyscale was designed to be a dragon your character could ride, whereas other mounts have been designed around their movement first.
- Its scale designs references crocodiles and cobras
- It has a much larger wingspan than the griffon, which then influenced the minimum height at which it can hover
- The base skin is not crystalline to differentiate it from Aurene's pedigree, not make it look like a Branded
- The skyscale is designed to be a "chonky" helicopter, while the griffon is more of a "speedster"
- Unlike other mounts, it has an extra "Flight bar" (filled with "flight juice") above the Endurance Bar
- The skyscale can both hover in place indefinitely, and fly with six-degrees of freedom while in its "flight canopy"
- While the skyscale can fly, it is constrained within a flight canopy (Joel's wondrous illustration)
- The flight canopy is based on the liftoff point
- The further your skyscale flies -- vertically and horizontally -- from the point of origin, the more flight juice is depleted
- When no flight juice is left, the skyscale will gradually descend
- Point of origin (and flight juice) is reset each time the skyscale touches horizontal ground
- Additionally, the skyscale has about 30 degrees of pitch control; meaning you can ascend or descend diagonally by aiming your camera
- The endurance bar is used one of two ways
- The base line allows the skyscale to dash a short, fixed distance
- The secondary use requires a mastery (see below)
- Flying into a vertical surface will cause the skyscale to cling to it
- The skyscale can cling to the same surface indefinitely
- While clinging to a wall, neither Endurance nor Bond of Vigor will recharge
- See Wall Launch mastery below
- Pressing the Engage skill causes the character to dismount normally, while the skyscale flies a little ways forward and breath fire on the ground ahead.
- This creates a Fire Combo Field for a few seconds
- While airborne, pressing the Engage skill will cause the skyscale to descend until it reaches the minimum hover height
- 12 PoF Mastery Points total, bring max Mastery Level to 295!
- Mastery 1 Air Rescue: Allows the character to mount the skyscale mid-air (just like the griffon)
- Mastery 2 Rift Repair: Following this episode's update, small rifts will appear throughout the world. Hovering near these (with the mastery) will create a flight path marked by floating Volatile Magic. Flying through these VM nodes will replenish the skyscale's flight juice, thus allowing it to exceed the original flight canopy.
- Mastery 3 Wall Launch: While clinging to a wall, you can hold down the "jump" key to replenish flight juice at the cost of endurance. Releasing jump launches the skyscale off the wall, and allow it to fly further (original flight canopy is unchanged, so the skyscale will be forced to ground unless it clings to another wall, etc.)
- Demo was conducted in Desert Highlands
- No info on next episode revealed
- No info on acquisition method for skyscale revealed
- Springers are getting a slight buff. The charge speed of their jumps will be increased following the episode's patch.