Development thread for My Little Darkness Beta.
Upgraded Pony FeaturesDeveloped Earth, Pegasus, and Unicorn Tribes.Earth Ponies are notably stronger, tougher, and enduring that the other two castes. Their close connection to nature and the earth allow all earth ponies an increased awareness of themselves and their environment. They gain improvements to their abilities in many skills involving nature and the earth; however, their hooves and mouth do not permit them to perform fine tasks such as surgery or weaving.
All earth ponies are capable of experiencing an adrenaline rush in the midst of battle, temporarily enhancing their strength, agility, toughness, and focus, allowing them to more effectively fight or flee. However, this comes at the cost of a longer duration of exhaustion afterwards.
Pegasus Ponies are faster than the other two castes, with greater reflexes and senses of movement. Without an earth pony’s attunement to nature, or a unicorn’s deft manipulation, however, they will find many skills somewhat difficult to perform. While their stewardship of the weather entails cooperation in order to properly shepherd cloud formations, many have discovered that keeping a personal cloud provides a fun mini-weather factory of their own, though few will master their cloud enough to create bolts of lightning or gusts of wind.
Weather spells may be learned at the Weather Factory.
Unicorn Ponies possess superior analytical abilities and focus, as well as the ability to manipulate objects with their telekinesis, allowing them to perform many of the finer skills their brethren cannot. While most lack particular skill or talent in magic, they still have access to apprentice-level spells, though few will be able to muster the months of effort necessary to learn to learn them While such spells will be available upon embark through tomes, more powerful spells will require extensive research.
Five schools of magic, listed below with example apprentice-level spells so far created.
Alteration: Telekinetic Bind, Horn Light
Conjuration: N/A
Destruction: Pain, Fever, Sunder
Illusion: Fear
Restoration: Turn Undead
A magic research and development system has not yet been implemented, so all spells will currently be available in the Spell Archives building.
Completed Special Talent and Cutie Mark Functionality60 career family talents and associated cutie marks. Possession of a talent boosts skill gain rates and reductions in rust rates for a select few skills within its family, along with minor boosts to less closely associated skills. (Boosts to attributes are planned but have not yet been implemented) Furthermore, many talents are limited to specific castes, or have a caste alignment which leads to greater numbers of that caste possessing them. Examples include;
Hunters, with boosts to sneaking, observation, trapping, tanning, and butchery (Earth aligned)
Farmers, with boosts to growing and herbalism (Earth unique)
Comedians, with boosts to comedy, speaking, flattery, persuasion, and conversation. (Universal)
Surgeons, with boosts to surgery, suturing, wound dressing, and diagnosis. (Unicorn unique)
Cheesemakers, possessing the secret mastery of…umm…, making cheese (Earth unique)
And many more!
Over twenty prestige-tier talents with unique combinations of skills and better boosts to mental/physical attributes, at the cost of being rarer than ordinary talents. Examples include:
Warrior Monk (Earth aligned)
Fashion Designer (Unicorn unique)
Ninja (Pegasus aligned)
Sheriff (Universal)
Adventurer (Universal)
Master Smith (Unicorn and Earth unique)
Priest (Universal)
Extremely rare caste-unique prestige talents. While all Earth, Pegasus, and Unicorn Ponies all possess the innate abilities of their caste, the select few possessing these cutie marks are able to take full advantage of their tribal heritage.
Cloudlords and Skylords alone may learn the secrets of wielding the greater cloud formations and weather patterns, Chain Lightning and the Sonic Rainboom, respectively.
Master Sorcerers capable of learning the adept-level spells of their particular school of magic, as well as being able to easily grasp the apprentice-level spells. Time Dilation and Paralyze are currently the only available adept-level spells out of the examples listed below.
Necromancers (Conjuration): Dead Thrall
Alchemists (Alteration): Time Dilation, Paralyze, Self-Levitation
Espers (Illusion): Psychosis, Fury, Terror
Clerics (Restoration): Circle of Protection, Greater Ward, Greater Healing
Warlocks (Destruction): Implosion, Torment, Affliction
Earthlords attune completely, becoming one with themselves and their surroundings, the resulting self-discipline and external awareness dramatically increasing their physical and mental capabilities.
While talents are innate, the cutie marks which are the only outward indicator of talent do not appear until a foal becomes an adult.