Apeiron Battle Design Primer 1: The Bare Necessities

Greetings Godlings! It’s been a long time coming, but today we’re thrilled to finally be able to introduce to you all some of the details…

Greetings Godlings! It’s been a long time coming, but today we’re thrilled to finally be able to introduce to you all some of the details of our battle system! We’ll be unpacking more and more over the course of the month as we lead up to the release of our gameplay demo, so there’s a lot to look forward to! And indeed, there’s a lot to cover today, so without further ado — let’s get to it!

Before we dive in, a quick mention that today we have our Summer Spectacular Exhibition Match against our friends from Guildfi (14:00 UTC)! Come on down and join us for what is sure to be an incredible game of Arena of Valor, cheer on our Apeiron Apostles, and snag some Foonie Emblems!

We’ll start with the big picture stuff and then work our way in from there. Apeiron’s battle system is a variation of a card auto-battler. You’ll take control of your Avatar, while your Dood Apostles will fight around you. Key to the flow of the fight will be using your skill cards. Precisely controlling the timing and position of these skills during the chaos of battle is what will separate the victor from the defeated!

There are a few key concepts here:

• The Avatar — Fully controllable, and the most important unit on the battlefield — loss of the Avatar means losing the battle.

• Apostles — Semi-controllable units that assist Avatar. Will move and auto-attack on their own, but will respond to players using skills.

• Battle Team — A full team consists of one Avatar and up to four Apostles.

• Battle Deck — A combination of skill cards from the Avatar and Apostles. Each unit is able to bring 3 skill cards into battle, resulting in a 15 card deck (3 skill cards for Avatar, 12 for the four Apostles).

Once a battle has started, players will be whisked away to the battle map, and the battle will commence. There are 3 phases to each battle:

1. Deployment Phase
   a. Draw 4 cards from shuffled deck
   b. Position units strategically on your half of the battlefield
   c. In PvP, you can see the enemy team composition, but not position

2. Battle Phase
   a. Lasts for a maximum of 6 minutes
   b. Cards in hand are played by spending mana
   c. Issue move and attack commands for your Avatar while timing skills

3. End Phase
   a. The end of the battle will happen when either the opposing Avatar is dead OR the timer counts down to zero.
   b. If the timer counts down to zero, the team with the higher health Avatar wins!

Now let’s explore some of the battle mechanics in more detail, starting with…

Mana — Mana is shared among all five units, and is used to play cards from hand. Each team begins with 5 mana and has a maximum capacity of 10. Mana is regenerated at a rate of 0.5 mana per second, doubling to 1 mana per second at 3 minutes (halfway into the battle).

Every card has a mana cost — if you don’t have enough mana to pay the cost, you can’t play the card. Additionally, when the mana bar is full, any new mana generated is lost. Make sure to spend your mana!

Energy — Each unit has an energy bar beneath its HP bar. It starts at 0 and goes up to 100. Every auto attack generates 10 energy, while every instance of damage taken generates energy equal to 20% of damage, capped at 50 energy per instance.

Once a unit has reached maximum energy (becomes energized), it will auto-cast a special ability. Once the ability has been used, energy will go back to 0.

Deck and Skill Cards — A deck consists of 15 cards, each card corresponding to a specific unit. Players draw 4 cards from the shuffled deck at the start of the battle. They will also be able to see the next card on top of the draw pile.

After a card is played, it is immediately replaced in the hand by the next card on top of the draw pile. If the draw pile is empty, then the discard pile is shuffled into the draw pile.

Players looking for a specific skill at a key moment may choose to discard a card. Discarding a card costs 1 mana, and then a new card is immediately drawn from the top of the draw pile.

Apostle Death and Respawn — When an Apostle dies, its corresponding skill cards will be greyed out and disabled until the Apostle is respawned. These cards may still be discarded. The Apostle may be respawned by spending a certain amount of mana.

Finally, let’s take a look at some of the statistics that units will have. Units will have Primary and Secondary stats. Most skill cards scale with primary stats, but some perks and passives could improve secondary stats.

Primary Stats

1. Health
   Unit starts with its maximum HP. Taking damage reduces HP. Reaching 0 HP results in death. When an Avatar dies, that player loses the game. When an Apostle dies, it is withdrawn from the battlefield and can be respawned later.

2. Attack
   Determines the power of basic attack. Many physical skills also scale with attack. Units with higher ATK deal more physical damage in general.

3. Attack Speed
   Represents the number of basic attacks made per second.

4. Intelligence
   Determines the power of certain skills. Many magical skills scale with intelligence. Units with higher intelligence deals more magical damage in general.

5. Defence
   Reduces physical damage taken and is related to a concept called “damage modifier.” Damage modifier = 100 / (Defence + 100). 0 Defence means taking direct damage without any damage reduction, 100 Defence leads to a damage modifier value of 0.5, hence taking only 50% damage compared to 0 Defence.

6. Resistance
   Similar to defence. Reduce magical damage taken.

Secondary Stats

1. Attack Range
   Determines the distance at which a unit can initiate a basic attack on an enemy. Units can attack without moving as long as the enemy is within range.

2. Movement
   Determines how fast units move across the battlefield.

3. Critical Chance
   Probability of triggering a critical strike via basic attack, which deals higher damage than ATK. Default is 0.

4. Critical Damage
   Represented in % of ATK. It shows the damage of a critical strike. Default is 150%.

5. Tenacity
   Reduces the duration of most crowd control status, in terms of percentage.

6. Health Regeneration
   The rate at which a unit’s health is naturally restored.

7. Energy Regeneration
   The rate at which a unit’s energy is naturally restored. Default is 0.

8. Vamp
   Percentage of the damage done that heals the damage dealer.

Alright everyone, that’s all we have to share with you for now. We hope that this little taste of the battle system has whet your appetite for more, because we’ve got a lot more coming soon! Next week we’ll be taking a closer look at skill cards and all of the deadly effects they can bring to the battlefield to turn the tide in your favor.

Any questions? Let us know! We have an awesome community who are happy to answer any and all of your gnawing questions about Apeiron, life, and everything in between. Come on down to our Discord, sign up for our Telegram group, and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date!

And as always, thanks for reading, godlings. We’ll see you next time.