Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
This does not feel like the latter.
There are many games that retained mp/energy resource management mechanic while keeping it somewhat engaging: for example, you have 100 energy, which you can restore with autoattacks 10 apiece and spend 25 for a charged attack. You decide based on the current encounter if you want to do 3 aa – charge – 2 aa – charge – repeat, weaving cooldown-restricted skills in between, or if you want to perform all 10 and then burst your charges at a critical moment, or some mix of the two. You can further make an equipment choice reducing the cost of a charged skill to 20, effectively gaining one more free charged skill cast at the cost of not boosting other character – or cooldown-restricted skill – related aspects.
In the mid-level of current test I had a bit over 1400 mana. The highest skill cost was 80-something, with the majority of the skills requiring significantly less. Can mana management with an MP pool this large even be considered management? If it is meant as a cushion for accidental PVP, then bad news: people die in less than 200 at the worst. Am I expected to cast everything nonstop for about two minutes (there are cast times and cooldowns to consider) and then plop onto my butt to tell jokes to party members? Is it meant to be fun for me? Or is it how you make your elderly party members happy? Do I want to spend 250 hours like this? Naturally, I came up with a mana-neutral rotation for continuous active gameplay, which in essence was: upkeeping hp regen at all times, casting four damaging skills and an extra restorative skill per pull in a third of pulls, casting just two damaging skills in another third and not casting anything in the remaining third, depending on the encounter. No bards, no salves, no rations. The efficiency is passable, but since when did autoattacking for 7-8 seconds become fun?
Also I checked so that you don’t have to, and you can at the same level boost your maximum mana by about 20%: the current blue-rarity equipment I can show or even gift to someone would boost maximum MP by 71 to 84 (you can wear two plus two, making it 300 or so, stats are slightly random). However, the other options for those slots include critical rate or magical power. Only some of the MP-restoration options fire by % of your max value, further diminishing the returns on this. In which scenario am I supposed to choose MP? Would it be a qualitative change if I choose it?
The other part of the boost is to MP regen, iirc, upping the natural regeneration from 1.52 per second (for physical classes it should be 1.50 exactly) to 1.56 with the same blue gear (again, with more impactful options existing for the slot). I do not believe that testing gold-rarity gear for these stats is a good idea, but if somebody did, I would love to know the boosts provided by it.
Unrelated to my point, people are forgetting to mention that in addition to rations there are mana salves, which work in combat as long as you are not casting. Very handy if you are in-game rich, right? At the white rarity lowest tier they restore whole 200 MP with a cooldown of two minutes. And it takes two minutes to craft one (or one minute plus however long it takes to run between two nodes split between 25 pieces as both the product and the ingredient require alchemy station). Was there ever a game in which crafting one single extremely mundane consumable took two minutes? Let’s be generous, one minute in the future. Still, I am sure I didn’t play any like that.
also my reason for wanting things like this and ammo for bows may seem a little masochistic but I noticed like how in the real world how wal-mart and all these guys are selling food in all their stores and the reason for this is food is the quickest and most used consumable goods a store can sell. high dollar items don't drive an economy it's all the little things adding up and moving around the money that makes for a good in game economy.
Also is there anyone who plays Tank, I don't really seem to run into mana issues like other people.
I dont think ive dropped below 90% mana ever since i swapped to that passive.
Also there mana and hp potion too that can be crafted aswell so there that option too
If you consider it to be too much, change it to 0.5%/s or less, but hopefully not an absolute value.
rations are a percentage you get like 50% hp/mana over 10 seconds so it pretty quick there
Absolutely. I usually buy 40+ rations every time I go to town, but even still I believe you should be able to fully recover HP/MP by Resting without any food. Currently, that is not feasible in my experience. It doesn't hurt me personally, I just don't think it's good design.
This is what I'd suggest as well. Flat values aren't effective, especially when they're as low as 4/s out of 1k+ mana. A minute and a half of Resting should be enough for any class to recoup most of their mana.
That's good. That makes it an easier adjustment to fix the issue. The base resting regen value just needs to be increased from 0.1% to 1%. Even 0.5% would be a significant improvement
that is the end result, it felt. Horrible.
Also, people who have no idea what they are saying, like it only takes 2 Rations for full heal or that they heal 50% each should just delete their posts. Your IQ is showing as its Factually incorrect. Rations state that its 2.5% heal per second OVER 10 seconds.. i know 1st grade math is hard and all... but thats 25% per 10 seconds. AND thats ONLY if servers are 100% smooth because if its getting lag, you get sometimes only 4 ticks of that 2.5% and then it feels exponentially worse.
So you're just gonna afk for 20 minutes as your food doesn't restore it quicker, and all you can do is listen to your Bard sing balads about how much of a pain in the ass the regen is?
Seems like most of the people defending this system are bards who know how to play their class and people who know how bards work and why they are critical to the party.
My only beef with the current system is that pensive melody is REQUIRED of bards even if there are 2 bards, which limits choice. So I agree it needs tweaking.
(and in case anyone plans on pointing out that pensive melody doesn't stack - multiple bards on pensive melody can each proc Resonating weapon separately)
discord.gg/lod
i did the same thing with ranger and no issue at all but other ranger are like it doesnt work! i dunno what there doing cause i get like 25 mana back every 3 seconds with it im feeling it a user error on their side :P
This is discussing Resting recovery, which is absurdly low for no apparent reason when it's already difficult to find areas where Resting can be done for the amount of time needed to recover mana. It's impossible to use the mana generation passives outside of combat as they're all based on weapon attacks.
Recovery in active combat isn't as much of a contended point, but I wouldn't call it a good design that the mana melody is outright required from bards. Such a clear-cut, all-circumstances Best choice doesn't fit the combat design goals as they've been laid out.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
We do they are crafted
Rations really give you 50% in 10 seconds? That's a lot faster than I expected. Manabuns used to require a full 30 seconds and usually munching on second bun before you were 100%.
I think the current mana regen pace and food setup work well within Ashes of Creation's overall design philosophy. The slower regen encourages players to take a more deliberate approach, which aligns with the immersive, thoughtful pacing that Intrepid seems to be going for.
In Ashes, stopping to rest or use rations adds depth to the experience and builds in a moment for players to strategize, rather than rushing nonstop from encounter to encounter. With this approach, player-driven resources like crafted food from taverns will actually have value, giving players a reason to invest in higher-quality rations for extended excursions. In a way, this system mirrors classic MMO pacing—WoW and other early MMOs required the same kind of patience and planning, adding to the challenge and, ultimately, the satisfaction of progressing.
Yes, it feels tedious for some, especially without the final crafting or cooking mechanics in place yet, but I think Intrepid is intentional about creating a gameplay loop that prioritizes resource management, teamwork, and pacing over solo convenience. With cooking systems and better rations coming in future phases, this mana management approach will likely feel more rewarding and balanced once we have the complete toolkit.
I should have clarified better that at lower levels it does give 50% mana. I realize that the majority of this thread, including the OP, is concerned with higher level mana regen. I do agree with your post regarding where mana regen is at now. In my opinion if players want increased mana regen they will need to stop the max level rush and start working on their cooking skills, as crafted food should provide better regen percentages. I'm not talking about the base common quality, either. This actually should be tested and in the next test period I will re-examine higher grade food stats. Apprentice level cooking should provide better regen percentages, but again we are not at that stage of node development yet to test this theory.
The bottom line is players are getting closer to max level for this phase while the entire biome does not have the crafters or buildings needed to provide better food. Until we can test the food supply from cooks those that rushed to max level just need to deal with it for the time being and then post their concerns if crafted food does not provide ample regen.
**Edited. Conversation on Discord channel confirmed higher grade novice level food does not change either regen percentages or the extra buff it provides. Will now need to wait until a cookhouse in a node village is available for further testing.
The other ranger probably isn't using their auto attack combos.
If you want to rest less then either use less Mana (more auto attacks) or increase your recovery in combat.
If you go full throttle and tap yourself out then expect to have to rest periodically to compensate.
My party rarely has to stop when I'm around unless we are fighting higher level mobs that require us to use everything, and the XP/hour is still better even factoring rests.
Level 17 bard here, my party never runs out of mana.
Yes, I realize having a bard functioning as a mana battery helps, but the issue is still absurdly low base value of regen while resting, and the lack of reasonably safe areas to rest for extended periods while in proximity to combat areas.
If and when they reduce the spawn rates to allow for more downtime without getting accosted by mobs, I'm sure my opinion will change, but right now it's an annoyance aspect to artificially bloat the time sink.
thats what im guessing or he using an ability after 2 AA so he doesnt get finisher mana regen