Tanking Mage

I tried Waven with my kid, yesterday. I’m having mixed feelings about it. I think there is a great game, here, but it’s going to need some love during early access to get it to where it needs to be.

If you’ve ever played Wakfu or Dofus, you will be right at home. Waven takes place in the same universe, but they have changed up some of the mechanics. There’s enough that is similar to make you feel at home, but enough that is different that it makes you slow down for a minute to consider what you are doing.

The first, big difference that you will notice is that you don’t have all the race choices that are available in Wakfu/Dofus. Also, if you are just starting out, you’ll be presented with choices for “warrior, mage, healer, etc.” rather than the actual races. You’ll have to click the “experienced player” button to bring up a more complex character creation screen that will let you pick between races and their elemental variants.

Combat is a combination of tactical, turn-based and deckbuilding. You’ll get spells that you equip to your deck. Then, when in combat, those spells are pulled up randomly to use in the tactical part of the game. Once you have used a spell, it goes back into your deck. So, don’t worry about using all your spells at once (if you have enough action points!). You won’t run out. You get your spells either from chests, as battle rewards, or each time you level a character.

Choosing your spells carefully is pretty important. Many spells have synergies/conditions that make them far more effective than they would otherwise be. So, it behooves you to focus on one or two elements that have synergies in order to maximize your effectiveness in combat. And be sure to read all of your spell descriptions! There’s information there that is quite useful when coming up with a strategy!

You will also have skills that you can purchase. These are equipped to your deck just like your spells, but are bought with points rather than gained as rewards. Skills are not element based, like your spells. Instead, these revolve around your character class and their inherent abilities. For instance, my Cra has skills that will increase movement speed, or use ranged attacks to push away opponents.

You will also want to pay attention to your gear. You have various rings and brooches that you can equip, ranging in quality from common bronze to legendary orange. They always give your character a bit of a buff, but sometimes they can also bestow extra cards to your deck or perform passive abilities that trigger under certain conditions.

Gear is shared across your characters, but it is not unique to a character. This means that if you get an Awesome Ring of Uberness, all of your characters are able to equip that ring at the same time. I should also mention that quests are completed per your account, not per character. So, once a single character has done it, it is counted as “completed” for purposes of PQ points (which I will explain in a minute). However, if you want to continue doing the quest with other characters, you can repeat them. You just won’t get the bonus chests that you do the first time you do it.

Those bonus chests are stored outside of your character in your hotbar and can be opened by any character, regardless of who you earned it with. So, be aware of that when you are opening spell chests. It’s best to hang on to spell chests for a little bit until you decide what character you like the best, because the spells you get from them are bound to a single character, unlike the gear.

PQ points! I honestly have no idea what that stands for, but you get them for doing quests. And, those points go towards achievements, which unlock goodies for you that you can use on your Haven Island, which is Waven’s version of the Haven Bag (housing.)

One major gripe (and warning) that I have has to do with the multiplayer experience. It’s not intuitive, at all. First, you find your friends under the chat tab. It took me awhile poking around at buttons until I found it hidden, there. Be warned that you can add a friend even if they are on a different server than you and they will show up as online and available. However, you will not be able to group with them. (There is no warning that they are not on the same server.)

The other thing is that when you go to try and do a quest together, you are going to get a message that says, “You are in a group. Are you sure you want to play solo?” Well, no.. I don’t want to play solo. That’s why I am in a group! It turns out that, if you want to play together, you have to look at the character portraits in the lower, lefthand corner. You will see a plus sign on your friend’s portrait of you can invite them. (Some quests are solo only, and will not show the plus.) If you see that plus sign, click on it to invite your friend to join you.

The only other issue that I have run into is frequent lag spikes (I’m assuming.) It’s not uncommon to be in the middle of a fight, pick a spell, and then…. nothing happens. The combat timer continues to count down while your character is frozen in time, even though you have chosen your actions for the round. Most of the time, if you give it a few seconds, things catch up and you attack. However, once or twice, I have gone a round with no actions because of the freezing issue.

You know what, though? This is early access and it was just released yesterday. I expect for there to be some issues, whether it’s instances where the UI could be improved (I’m looking at you, multiplayer) or behind the scenes server/program hiccups. I am having a blast with Waven and I’m willing to stick it out and see if these are resolved.