Festive Rumourmill: Fire & Water Skilltree

This tree was I think the easiest one to put together from the four that I've done for beta-testing. The very earliest concepts I had of what I wanted this game to be like, were tied to and revolved around the interactions of the moons and their connection to the spheres of magic - so the skilltrees for the mage class were always going to be tied to these. The other thing that made it easy, was that I wanted the class to be different from others - in that while some other classes had an Unlock ability here or there, I wanted this class to be ENTIRELY built of of abilities that were unlocked with skills - and that's exactly what we have. There are no spells your character picks up by putting points into a skill, but rather all spells are linked to a skill needed to cast them. Scrolls and Tomes for spells you come across will show you what skills you need to cast them. You can build your character around what sort of spells you'd like to be casting in that way.

The first tree I have is Fire and Water, though if you've been reading my posts, especially around the Ebb, you'll probably already know that the other skilltrees for the Mage will be Earth & Air, Life and Death and finally Chaos and Entropy.

As the others will be, each skilltree is made up of two opposing forces, here, Fire and Water - each strongly connected to their respective Ebb phase.

In the Fire side, Fire Cantrips is the opening skill, where simple, generally non-combat incantations are unlocked. An example of this is Ember's Eyes, a common spell that is used for light: Summons the eyes of the great fire elemental snake Ember, giving it a glimpse into the realms while using its glowing eyes to illuminate the surrounding area.

We then have Personal Fire that is unlocked by Fire Cantrips where simple fire spells are unlocked. These are generally both small in size and focused on the caster directly - Flaming Hands is an early example, where a caster, can, in a pinch, cause fire to leap from their hands to attack enemies that have managed to get to them.

Area is the next unlock, using Personal Fire which then gives the caster powers to cast spells that appear over much larger areas. Flame Seeker is an example of this that new players can buy quite cheaply from Roister's Vendor - it will conjure a fire that makes its way to the target, setting anyone (friend or foe) caught in the way alight.

Moving to the centre of the skilltree are the two elemental skills, and here Fire Elemental is unlocked with Fire Cantrips and allows the caster to bring all manner of Elementals and Elemental Fire into the world.

Last for Fire, Explosive requires both Area and Fire Elemental to unlock, but contains the most powerful Fire Spells able to combine all the archtypes into single powerful spells.

Mirroring on the other side of the tree, we start with Water Cantrips where again, simple watery spells will be unlocked.

Again, moving towards the elementals in the centre Water Elemenal allows the caster to unlock spells with a focus on the elemental plane of water, either channeling effects from it, or bringing beings directly to the world. It is unlocked with Water Cantrips.

The final branch starts with Giving which is an area of magic focused on regenerative and rejuvenating spells and only needing Water Cantrips to unlock.

Above it in the branch, Ice is unlocked after Giving and allows the caster to bring forth the most frigid incantations, snap freezing and blasting opponents with icy fury.

Finally, Tidal spells are unlocked after mastering Water Elemental and Ice and grant the caster the ability to interact with the most powerful water-based spells, able to unleash the greatest powers imaginable.