Compiled: Book II Complete Feature List

[King_ov_Death]

I took this from Book II's original feature list, some threads from this forum, the screenshots and the trailer.


New items

• Charm Cloud: a thrown weapon that releases a cloud which makes enemies fight for you.
• Water Skin.
• Willow Bark: former Willow Sap.
• Wormleaf.
• Yambi Berries: Consumable.

New spells

• Dense Nimbus: formerly Air Shield.
• Draw Water: allows you to extract liquids from thin air to refill your Thirst.
• Milo's Cell of Holding: allows you to trap enemies inside a field.
• Sparkling Wonder: formerly Dancing Lights.
• Summon Beast: allows you to summon monsters to help you fight.
• Toxic Element.

New enemies

• Black Mold: A darker version of a Fungal Slime.
• Brimstone Spider: A huge spider which releases a mass of burning silk towards its foes.
• Bronze Dragonel.
• Catacomb Rat: A big rat which can disease you.
• Dwarven Miner.
• Goliath Borehead: A huge beetle whose sonic blast can stun you.
• Mire Troll: A tough, big monster which can regenerate lost health during battle. Very afraid of fire.
• Sentinel Stalk: A plant which shoots spikes when it detects someone is near.
• Skeleton Marauder.
• Snow Wolf: A white wolf which resides in arctic regions.

New skills

• Foraging: you have better chance of finding food and alchemy components.
• Repair: allows you to fix worn out equipment.

New engine features

• Audio driver selectable at launch for improved hardware compatibility or the option to shut off all game sounds.
  
• Better lighting and special effects.
  
• Brightness Booster option.
  
• Improved save game function.
  
• In-game control over sound volume has been improved.
  
• Most keyboard commands can now be remapped via .cfg file.
  
• Numerous optimizations implemented which improve engine speed (up to 30%) and lower RAM usage.
  
• Numerous updates to the scripting engine and file handling.
  
• Rebuilt the luminosity function to remove exploits.
  
• Resolution increased from 800x600 to 1024x768.
  
• The game now allows in-game screen capturing.
  
• The saved game location can be alerted via a statement in the .cfg file.

New puzzles

• A "Bronze Poem Puzzle".

New areas

• Eastern Fellpine Forest: a forest with tall trees, dry land and some Goliath Boreheads.
• Fathamurk: a dungeon.
• Northeastern Thundersun (Amireth): a rather volcanic area.
• Picaroon Isle: a small island with a forest and some mountains.
• Western Kessian Basin: a grassy area in Mistfell. There is a camp.

New gameplay elements

• Alchemy recipe book.
• Explosions and fire can affect objects; more objects are usable.
• Four different combat modes.
• Normal: no advantages or disadvantages.
• Power: +30% Max Damage but -30% ToHit Ability.
• Finesse: +30% ToHit but -30 Max Damage.
• Parry: A defensive mode. Every Skill Point you have in the weapon you are holding is applied to your Armor Rating, but you cannot attack.
• Health meters for objects.
• Keyboard walking.
• Key ring: keys don't take inventory space.
• Many skills have been rebalanced.
• More save (20 total), inventory (79 total) and Quick slots (10 total).
• New difficulty modes and tracked statistics add to replay value.
• New GUI layout.
• New item generation function for thousands of unique weapon and armor variations.
• NPCs can alert nearby guards if they witness you commit a crime. Also, they will no longer just try to kill you: they will try to lock you up and take back whatever you stole from them.
• Powder kegs can now be picked up and dropped.
• Skill Feats: when you reach 10 Skill Points on a specific weapon skill you can use a special ability. As you get higher with that skill you can use the special ability more often.
• Swords: "Masterful Riposte". A guaranteed strike, and then perfect parrying of all enemy attacks in the following round. Parried enemies suffer riposte damage equivalent to Sword's base damage.
• Cleaving: "Great Cleave". Strikes primary target and adjacent targets.
• Bludgeoning: "Devastating Blow". Maximum weapon damage x2, and permanently reducing enemy Armor Rating by 50%.
• Piercing: "Double Strike". Two separate attacks in one attack round.
• Bows: "Intense Focus". A guaranteed precision attack on a vital spot delivering 3x damage.
• Thrown: "Overwhelming Volley". Up to eight weapons thrown at once, showering the target and adjacent tiles.
• Unarmed Combat: "Fury Strike". A powerful fist blow delivering 4x damage to one target.
• The player can choose a gender.
• Men get +1 Strength.
• Women get +1 Dexterity.
• Torches can now be dumped.
• Two equipment presets.
• Weather effects (rain, thunderstorms and snow): they also affect gameplay and skills.
• You'll need to eat and drink to survive.

[IJBall]

I took this from Book II's original feature list, some threads from this forum, the screenshots and the trailer.

New items

• Wormleaf..

It's unclear, but I think this may be an Alchemical reagent/reactant.

Speaking of, in Book II, it's no longer Willow Sap as a reagent, but Willow Bark.

New spells

• Dense Nimbus: formerly Air Shield.
• Draw Water: allows you to extract liquids from thin air to refill your Thirst.
• Milo's Cell of Holding: allows you to trap enemies inside a field.
• Summon Beast: allows you to summon monsters to help you fight.
• Toxic Element.

That means there's two or three more new spells we haven't seen yet. (BW said there'd be 7 new spells in Book II...)

New skills

• Foraging: you have better chance of finding food and alchemy components.

And you see some examples of this in action in the trailer...

New areas

• Brimmstone Isle.
• Eastern Fellpine Forest.
• Fathamurk.
• Northeastern Thundersun (Amireth).
• Western Kessian Basin.

From scrutinizing the world map to figure out where these places are:

• Brimmstone Isle - down in Amireth (north shore, just W of center)
• Northeastern Thundersun - down in Amireth, western half
• Western Kessian Basin - Mistfell, center section
• Eastern Fellpine Forest - [not sure, I think in Mistfell, but not sure]
• Fathamurk - a dungeon (no idea where, though!)

[AK_Marty]

From the trailer it looks like the Bronze Dragonel is a summoned creature that fights along side you, against your enemies.

[King_ov_Death]

Updated with IJBall's info!

From the trailer it looks like the Bronze Dragonel is a summoned creature that fights along side you, against your enemies.

I'm pretty sure you'll have to fight against it somewhere in the game...

[BasiliskWrangler]

Brimmstone Isle - down in Amireth (north shore, just W of center)

Brimmstone Isle was the original name we called that area during its development. Several weeks ago that was changed to "Picaroon Isle". The video clip used in in the trailer is probably 5-6 weeks old, so you see the old name.

These are the kind of changes you'll see with the final version.

and....

In the Character Editor, pressing F1-F5 now loads premade character data into the editor and allows you to modify it from there, rather than just automatically starting the game with a pre-designed character.

This has been scrapped. You can still quick-start with a premade character using F1-F5, but you can't modify the information. It made for waaaay to many exploit possibilities.

[King_ov_Death]

Updated!

Thanks for the info BW!!

[Nevermore]

Nothing about the Magic skills and abilities?

[King_ov_Death]

Nothing about the Magic skills and abilities?

I couldn't find anything.

[tungprc]

Interesting list. We see that melee combat has been upgraded but it was already way more powerful than magic combat. I'm hoping that mage skills get significant bonuses at level 10 too. I'm really interested to see if mages get their due in Book II. I've been playing Book I again and playing through the same areas with a variety of builds. Mages are the red-headed step children of Book I. They just can't compete in any way with a melee character. The most powerful character, by far, is a fighter with divination magic. That character outdamages all the others by a factor of 3-4. He also takes the least amount of damage due to buffs.

[IJBall]

Interesting list. We see that melee combat has been upgraded but it was already way more powerful than magic combat. I'm hoping that mage skills get significant bonuses at level 10 too. I'm really interested to see if mages get their due in Book II. I've been playing Book I again and playing through the same areas with a variety of builds. Mages are the red-headed step children of Book I. They just can't compete in any way with a melee character. The most powerful character, by far, is a fighter with divination magic. That character outdamages all the others by a factor of 3-4. He also takes the least amount of damage due to buffs.

I can't say I agree with you here.

I have found that my easiest playthrough of Book I was with a magic-only Mage - if you pump all of your initial Attribute points into PER, Mages are pretty much a breeze. Even later on in Book I, the only real issue with Mages is that you have to camp a little more often to re-up Mana. But, by the end of the game, you should have a Mage with 200 or 250 MPs, which is more than enough to cover you in most situations. (Even my later Mage focusing on melee-fighting was a relative breeze (mostly because he could always fall back on spells like Fire Dart), though, to be truthful, I haven't played through to the end of the game with this character...)

I'm testing the melee-fighting Healer character (very similar to the Fighter with Divination magic) right now, and I hope to have more to report on my progress with that character in a week or two.

But you know what the hardest character I ever played was? - A magic-only (i.e. an offensive magic-casting) Healer! If you want a challenge some time, try playing with a Magic-only Healer to the end of Book I!! I don't think it can even be done!!!

[IJBall]

Milo's Cell of Holding: allows you to trap enemies inside a field.

I wonder why this spell was cut. It looks very good for a tier two elemental spell. You can add this spell to your journal using an editor but it doesn't function.

I can only guess, but the two most likely reasons it wasn't added were: 1) too similar to Entangle (perhaps it was originally meant to be a replacement for the Entangle spell?...), and/or 2) too hard to implement (for whatever reason - maybe it didn't work graphically?...).