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Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

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Koi-Shadow

Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by Koi-Shadow »

Dreamers,

We are excited to announce a new avenue for high level character advancement. Once you have maxed orbit 89, you may approach a GM elder teacher and choose a secondary focus. You should plateau/learn any of your primary focus’s arts you wish to before beginning this process as you will be unable to until you reach 9th sphere. This process will also serve as the 9th sphere task.

“To learn a secondary focus, you must first forget all that you think you know!” After choosing your secondary focus, you will be reset to orbit 1 and given a codex from the elder excusing you from any sphere tasks. You will still be required to gain sphere supports for spheres 4+ that require them. You will then be able to start regaining your spheres and tasking for the arts/plateaus of your secondary focus. You will still have your primary focus arts, but they will temporarily go down in level to your current orbit and will automatically increase as you gain orbits/spheres. Blade/Flame/Focus do not follow this rule so lower spheres should be significantly easier to regain with 89 Blade, Flame, and Focus.

You will be temporarily unable to use arts that are learned at a higher sphere than what you are currently at. So a Soulmaster who picks Dreamseer for their secondary focus will be unable to evoke abjure until they are 5th sphere. As soon as they get 5th, their abjure will automaticly be orbit 50. Their abjure and all their other primary focus arts they had plateaued, will automatically increase to 60 once they gain 6th sphere and so forth.

Secondary focuses are not as powerful as a primary focus. You will not be able to learn the Blade, Flame, or Focus art for your secondary focus as well as some of their excluded signature arts. This does mean that picking Gatekeeper for your secondary focus will not give you any kind of damage bonus and you will still only be able to use chakrams of your primary focus.

The excluded arts of each secondary focus are as follows:

Dreamseer- Blast and Combine
Fatesender- Paralyze, Razorwind, Enfeeblement
Soulmaster- Abjure and Healing Aura
Gatekeeper- Reflect and Bulwark

If you attempt to learn any of these, they will be stripped and you will immediately be switched back to your primary focus. If you are not happy with your secondary focus choice, you may have reset where you lose all orbits/arts/stats you gained as your secondary focus and start back over from orbit 0 as another choice.

You will be able to learn every other major art of the secondary focus and plateau their minor arts to your orbit. This combination of excluded arts keeps some of the most unique aspects of each focus and helps to ensure game balance so that there are not SoulSenders instantly Abjuring and Paralyzing people, or DreamKeepers running around as unstoppable Blasting, Reflecting, Damage bonusing juggernauts. Excluding these arts should make it so that any of the 3 secondary focuses available to your character are viable options and makes it so there are now 12 distinct character class combinations at high levels.
Upon reaching orbit 89 again, you should finish plateauing any of your secondary focus arts that you wish then once you are ready, provide an elder with the support sphere tokens required and you will be granted 9th sphere and switched back to your Primary Focus so you may return to plateauing your primary focus arts to 90. Arts of your secondary focus will not be able to be plateaued over 89 because of this.

Players have long requested the ability to learn a secondary focus as well as having more high level advancement opportunities. This solution aids in both of these while still keeping the game balanced and each focus unique.

Dream On.


Koi-Shadow
Shoury
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by Shoury »

Very informative post; may the games begin!

-S
Lu Chaos
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by Lu Chaos »

Sounds good to people who are already 7th sphere. Us lower spheres are screwed we will never be able to get a 2nd focus until like 3 more years.
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coltdorsey
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by coltdorsey »

I disagree. In my experience with Clash of Dreams, advancement seems to be entirely at the pace you want it to be. You ask for a task, you get it. Higher plats/spheres take a bit of time to come up with an idea, so there are understandable delays there.
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coltdorsey
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by coltdorsey »

Question for KOI:

In terms of progressing the secondary focus, are characters eligible for bundle learn and bundle plat tasks for spheres 0-3?
Sidas
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by Sidas »

coltdorsey wrote:Question for KOI:

In terms of progressing the secondary focus, are characters eligible for bundle learn and bundle plat tasks for spheres 0-3?
Also, do you get the "primary" focal point boost for both foci?
Koi-Shadow

Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by Koi-Shadow »

Since your focus is being changed in the database, your secondary focus stat will be rapidly increasing as you rise in orbits. So somebody who picks Dreamseer as their secondary focus will have their insight increase as they regain orbits.

Secondary focuses will still be able to do bundle tasks for spheres 1-3. These will need to be a new bundle task, if they had already completed a bundle for their primary focus, that will not count toward their secondary focus. Since you do not learn blade/flame/focus of your secondary focus, and you will already have their minors platted to 20 most likely, these bundle tasks will not be a huge benefit for most secondary focuses.
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Rafael
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by Rafael »

due to how the dream is structured and how we think, there is a way to my view to change sooner that other games uses. very simple really your advancement stops in your start focus, and begins second up past the first. when that is passed then apply all the usual. its easiest to keep it simple as possible. switching is simple by simplification of structure.. sadly the coding will be more work. but end results could be a variety of unique characters. this concept merely represents a very old table top concept practiced still today in some games. i can very conceive of someone going only as high as 5th sphere then switching to another focus. We all know of those in dream that by behaviors alone qualify mentally as more than one focus. if i could do this today i would become a duel focus and stop my seer to be a dream master. how many of us have 2 or more character because we cant mix lower? a fair number think in 2 focuses now as well as having second character, often teachers too. The person that told me about the dream in the first place Charlene had 2 herself, then later became more as most here know.
The dream is out there, we can make it real
~Rafaella
OfF KiLTeR
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by OfF KiLTeR »

The arts that are limited need to be updated, I think.

I was informed that Enfeeblement and Bulwark will be restricted to Primary focus as well.
Timothylam
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Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by Timothylam »

So, youve got all the canon species of the galaxy, right? What are the chances of there being non-canon species on the sphere? Like the ones weve created ourselves?
OfF KiLTeR
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by OfF KiLTeR »

Timothylam wrote: Thu Jan 31, 2019 12:05 pm So, youve got all the canon species of the galaxy, right? What are the chances of there being non-canon species on the sphere? Like the ones weve created ourselves?
Ohh... a hybrid! I like it. Not for me... but I like it.

Take something along the lines of "you have 50 points to spend on major arts", here are the values:

Recharge 5 points
Chamele 2 points
Firestorm 8 Points
and so on...

That could be fun!
Uthanatos
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by Uthanatos »

I'd probably do a limited tier thing, otherwise you could just take a bunch of the biggies and leave the less useful ones, like Drain self
“Sometimes it isn't easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn't turn wrong into right or stupid into smart.”
― Jim Butcher, Cold Days
OfF KiLTeR
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Re: Secondary Focus / 9th sphere Advancement

Post by OfF KiLTeR »

Uthanatos wrote: Thu Jan 31, 2019 3:53 pm I'd probably do a limited tier thing, otherwise you could just take a bunch of the biggies and leave the less useful ones, like Drain self
I would buy that too.
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