Corruption as a resource is weird. Thematically (which is an important thing to consider), the more you use sorcery the more corrupted you get and the more physically weaker you get. This also works mechanically.
Here’s where things get weird. So to cast a spell, you need reagents and the staff. Not biggie there. But to cast higher tier sorcery, you need a certain level of corruption. Ok you need to be ‘weaker’ to use more powerful spells. Alright, neat trade off. As you cast sorcery, your corruption grows. As your corruption grows you get weaker and you get access to more powerful sorcery.
So far, I don’t think this system is working in a way anyone would think is unintuitive or overly restricting. It works both mechanically and thematically. Which is a fancy way of it sounds cool and plays cool. To quote an author, always err on the side of what is awesome when it comes to magic.
Now we have corrupted attributes. These make you permanently corrupted, but give some unique benefits. Ok… for dedicated sorcerers this is good. Corrupt enough attributes and you don’t have to find ways to corrupt yourself if your corruption wore off in some manner. Sounds great. And we get some cool powers (in theory), for a permanent reduction in health and stamina.
Thematically and Mechanically that sounds good. In practice we have an issue. That being stamina. Even before the Age of War changes to stamina costs, we had issues here. Cutting Stamina to 50% of max is a horrible tradeoff and leaves the sorcerer far too vulnerable.
If the powers of a 50% corrupted sorcerer was enough that you didn’t need the stamina. Like if you were the clan sorcerer that was dedicated to sorcery and your powers were enough to devote yourself to that role would bring a benefit. Or if you were the hermit who others could seek out to benefit from your sorcery (assuming such a choice wasn’t simply a potion away from getting away from the consequences thereof). There might be a case for how this works.
But now let’s look at your suggestion. And its a suggestion made many times. Using corruption as a resource.
Well… if you look at the wall of text I just made. You can see that corruption as a resource doesn’t really work. We’re gaining corruption as we use sorcery, not losing it. We’re not expending corruption. We’re gaining it. Our resource is our max health and max stamina we are giving up. Expending that would be a boon, why not simply keep casting? With corrupted attributes, we can’t spend all of our corruption effectively making it an infinite resource.
I can say this, that mechanic is probably not going to change. From what I know in the various livestreams about sorcery and the conversations we’ve had in testing. The idea of corruption affecting the health bar and spells increasing corruption and spells requiring a certain level of corruption based on their tier, is not going to change.
Now for the idea the more corrupted you are the stronger your spells and effects. I could see this. It also makes sense. Personally I would like to see the corruption gain be something that is more gradual. Right now it is a weird ‘debuff’ that existed in the game prior to sorcery. It was meant as a sort of timer for entering areas and fighting nasty creatures.
If anyone has played Enshrouded, that’s how it kind of worked. But instead of going back to normal when you got into uncorrupted areas. It lingered. And you needed to use a Dancer or Potion to cleanse it.
But sorcery was tacked onto that. I think something more comprehensive should have been done with it. While keeping with the mandatory thematics.
This is what I’d like to see. Corruption happens much more slowly. The more corruption you gain the more it takes to push it forward. Its not something that can be grinded. For example to get the first 10% corruption you can sit in a corrupted area and tick it up or cast Tier 1 spells. To get the next 10% (and to be able to cast Tier 2 spells) you need to consume some form of item. The previous methods don’t work. To get the next 10% (30% total) you need to start sacrificing thralls. After that it takes rituals that require an activated altar of some sort (could even be the thaumaturgy bench, but a new bench would be thematically more fitting) and this altar emits a corrupting influence over a decent area (the area of creeping darkness). These rituals are costly and require significant effort and resources to do. But will allow a sorcerer to get up to 50% corruption.
Corrupting attributes is how a sorcerer can lock in their corruption. This way dancers and other effects don’t undo some of their hard work. But the requirements of doing so would be different. Right now you need 40% corruption to spend points to corrupt. I would change this to 1pt per 1% corruption you have. So if you want to have 10pts of corrupted attributes, you need to be 10% corrupted.
Additionally sources of corruption can still corrupt you beyond the limit. Sort of like how a transportory stone does. So if you are in a corrupted area or fighting corrupted foes. If they push you past the threshold, its temporary corruption that does NOT count towards sorcery. And depending on source can push you beyond 50%. This makes those areas and foes just a tad more spicy, and something even sorcerers would need to be careful about. Being reduced to 1hp 1sta would be very dangerous after all.
Cleansing corruption would also be based on how far along someone is. Requiring much of a tiered response in reverse. With higher costs associated with getting higher levels under their thresholds. You don’t simply sit at a dancer for a minute to fully cleanse. If you’re 50% corrupted then dancers would have no effect until you get down to say 10% (the first threshold) before such a mundane method has any effect.
This would mean sorcerers are something that stand out among the rest as those fully dedicated to their craft, while still allowing casual users to not fully dwell into the abyss. Resetting attributes would not be as simple as a potion for sorcerers either. This is so that players don’t simply swap back and forth between corrupted and uncorrupted builds at a whim with enough materials.
But there would be a benefit to this dedication. With it being harder to gain corruption, the idea of spells and effects having greater strengths can be explored. There would also be sufficient reason to elevate some of the powers granted to sorcerers to warrant the dedicated playstyle.
And of course something needs to be done about the stamina. In someone’s words, you can’t even get a full dagger combo off with full corruption and that is a problem. This is an issue that is pretty well known and I’m curious what the solution will be. That might be a chapter or two after Chp4 unfortunately.