Mechanics
Characters
To begin with, there are only 2 classes to pick on Astonia, A Warrior which is a melee based class, using physical damage to kill enemies most commonly wielding either a sword with a torch or choosing to deal more damage by using a two handed weapon which removes their ability to hold a torch. The other starting class is the Mage, using mana as a resource to cast a variety of spells to defeat their enemies. There is however a third character class which can be unlocked by completing the 5 Labyrinth quests and choosing to become a Seyan'du when battling the Gate keeper. The Seyan'du is a hybrid of the 2 classes, having access to both melee abilities and spells.
As part of the games character progression, each class will have to face the Gate keeper, which once defeated, will allow you to increase your stats beyond the initial soft cap base of 50, along with each class gaining a unique ability once the Gate keeper has been defeated. Warriors gain access to the ability Rage, which increases their Offense/Defence values the longer they are in battle, Mages gain access to the Duration ability, which will increase the length of time their spells are active for per cast, allowing for more efficient used of their mana pool and finally the Seyan'du gain a level based duration on their spells, becoming longer lasting the higher level you achieve.
Although the choice in classes may seem to be limited compared to the conventional MMOs out today, Astonia has a subclass system which unrivalled, The games levelling system works on the basis of you gaining experience from killing enemies and completing quests and it allows you to pick and choose every stat you want to raise and by how much, giving 100% of the control to the player also means that even though characters will specialise into similar sub classes, it actually means that no two characters would have the exact same build. Creating a competitive environment particularly in the PVP scenario of Build vs Build.
Attributes
There are 4 attributes in the game, that are present for all 3 classes, Wisdom, Intuition, Agility and Strength. Each one, affects certain other skills allowing you to indirectly increase your main skills by applying experience to these attributes. Often referred to in the game as your WIAS, Certain attributes are more beneficial to a specific class.
As a melee class, the Warrior & Seyan'du will have a focus on Intuition, Agility and Strength, all 3 adding +1 to your main skills for every 5 mod of the attribute. E.g 20 Intuition will covert to +4 main stats
As a caster class, the traditional Mage or a Magic Seyan'du will have more of a focus on Wisdom & Intuition as these 2 attributes will add skills to your magic spells, With casters you should prioritise Intuition over Wisdom as it provided +1 skill mod for every 2.5 Intuition mod, compared to Wisdom which provided +1 skill mod for every 5 Wisdom mod.
Although certain attributes are more beneficial to certain classes, none should be ignored entirely, as they will all provide some small benefit to your overall characters stats.
Professions
Combat
Equipment
In Astonia all gear is general found as a drop, meaning you kill something and it leaves behind a piece of gear for you. There are some chests located around the start zone with some starter items that can be obtained but for the majority of the game, its a random drop chance from killing an enemy. The gear can drop as either a Single stat , Dual stat or Tri stat increasing in rarity as you add additional stats to the piece of gear.
It can drop on a soft slot or on an weapon/armour slot, The Soft slots are shared across all 3 classes and can be worn by all, The Weapon slot, will be specific to the weapon skill that you choose to raise on your character (and you should only be raising one, either Hand to Hand, Dagger, Staff, Sword and Two Handed Sword) This means if you raise Sword on your warrior, you will not be able to wear a higher level Two Handed weapon.
Both Weapon and Armour slots require a minimum base to equip and generally provide more Damage/Damage mitigation the higher the skill is, Mages are not able to wear any Armour slots, instead they gain a small amount of armour value for every spell mod they increase, meaning that their entire gear set will be soft items apart from the weapon.
Gear can range from +1 to +20 in power, each having a minimum required level to wear. See Below.
| Power Level | Minimum Level | Additional Comment |
|---|---|---|
| +1 | 2 | |
| +2 | 3 | |
| +3 | 5 | |
| +4 | 10 | |
| +5 | 15 | |
| +6 | 17 | |
| +7 | 20 | |
| +8 | 23 | |
| +9 | 26 | |
| +10 | 30 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +11 | 33 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +12 | 36 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +13 | 40 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +14 | 43 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +15 | 46 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +16 | 50 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +17 | 53 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +18 | 56 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +19 | 60 | Requires Arch to Wear |
| +20 | 63 | Requires Arch to Wear |
Enhancing
Along with the 100% customisable character stat choice, Astonia's Gear system is also the same. Giving you complete control over what stats you put on your gear. There are several items in the game that can be used to enhance your gear in one way or another.
| Item | Effect | Requirements | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silver Units (SU) | Increases your current piece of gears stats by +1 | The Next Power level x100 | For Example a +1 piece requires 200 SU to become +2 |
| Gold Units (GU) | Increases a currently Silvered piece of gears stats by +1 | Item must currently be Silvered & The Next Power level x100 | For Example requires a +2 Silvered item & 300 GU to become +3 |
| Silver Bar | Reduces the base skill requirement of an Armour/Weapon slot | 10000 SU converted into a Silver bar in Grimroot zone | For Example a Weapon skill (WS) 90 Sword, can become WS 80 |
| Gold Bar | Increases the base skill requirement of an Armour/Weapon Slot | 10000 GU converted into a Gold bar in Grimroot zone | For Example a WS80 Sword, can become a WS90 |
The other option for enhancing your gear, is using Stat orbs, These can be obtained on any character, at 10 level brackets between Lv10 - Lv90 from the Orb Hall at the north west of the Aston City map. Orbs will respawn every 30 days, so once after making a few characters, you will start to build up your own resource pool every 30 days. The below table shows how many orbs are available.
| Character Level | Number of Orbs |
|---|---|
| 10 | 2 |
| 20 | 3 |
| 30 | 6 |
| 40 | 6 |
| 50 | 6 |
| 60 | 6 |
| 70 | 6 |
| 80 | 6 |
| 90 | 8 |
| Total | 49 |
Welding
As mentioned previously, when gear drops, it has a chance at dropping as a Single stat, Dual stat or a Tri stat piece of gear. There is no difference in level requirement between wearing a Single stat piece of gear or a Tri stat piece of gear, so once you have established yourself on the server, you will be looking to make yourself a Tri stat gear set, to get the most amount of mods for your character available. One way of doing this is by using the Weld shrines, that are available in the below Random Dungeons.
| Random Dungeon | Minimum Level |
|---|---|
| 18 | 13 |
| 27 | 20 |
| 32 | 24 |
| 46 | 36 |
| 52 | 40 |
| 62 | 48 |
| 72 | 56 |
| 81 | 64 |
| 98 | 77 |
| 100 | 79 |
| 110 | 87 |
| 120 | 95 |
| 130 | 103 |
What these weld shrines do, is they allow you to Combine the stats of 2 individual pieces of gear by moving one stat off its current piece of gear and onto the second piece of gear. Now this can be a gamble, unless you do something called force welding. Even though Astonia lets you create completely customisable gear, with up to 3 stats on each piece of gear, You cannot have the same stat on a piece of gear twice, which works in your favour when trying to make sets. Below is an Example of how you would Weld a Tripple Stat ring a Attack/Parry/Immunity.
| Item | Stat1 | Stat2 | Stat3 | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring | Attack +7 UE | We want to make the Ring +7 UE (meaning Un-Enhanced) Attack/Parry/Immunity | ||
| Cape | Parry +7 GE | We have 3 Single pieces of gear | ||
| Boots | Immunity +7 SE | |||
| The First weld, we want to add the Parry stat, to the Attack ring. To do this, we know that a piece of gear
cannot have the same stat on it twice, so Force welding is a method of blocking certain movements of stats, to only leave 1 move possible. We do this, by using an orb, to block the movements we don't want to occur. | ||||
| Ring | Attack +7 Ue | |||
| Cape | Parry +7 GE | Attack +1 | ||
| By adding an Attack orb to our Parry cape, it means that when we try to weld these 2 pieces of gear together,
The Attack cannot move off the Ring, because the stat is already on the Cape. This means the only move possible, is for the Parry to move to the ring. | ||||
| Ring | Attack/Parry +7 ue | |||
| Boots | Immunity +7 SE | Attack +1 | Parry +1 | |
| Repeating the same method, We can add the 3rd and final stat to the ring, by Applying an Attack & Parry orb
onto the Immunity Boots, Blocking the Attack & Parry stats from moving off the Ring onto the Boots leaving the only move available, to be the Immunity to move to the ring |
Weld shrines are only available once per character, so you will need to choose wisely the stats that you wish to weld.