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As you already know, with the previous patch came a spell experience lock for characters that reached level 105, in order to prepare the implementation of a new spell experience system.
This Devblog will explain, as clearly as possible, all the changes brought with this new feature that will be implemented in a next update.

The current spell experience system works as follows:

• The more you use a spell in a fight, the more experience you gained to level it up
• The experience received in the fight corresponded to 10% of the experience gained by the character
• Once the level cap was reached (currently 105), you could keep on leveling your spells up without any limits, allowing you to level all your spells to the maximum.

On paper this system might look appropriate, but in reality it quickly appeared to be creating imbalance in the game.
In order to better control the overall balance and prevent characters from being powerful in all trees (harming the tactical aspect of WAKFU), we decided that we had to change the current spell experience system as soon as possible.

However, we wanted to keep the basics of the feature that we all like and the makes our MMO so special. That’s why we tried to keep the following functionality, from the start:

• The more you use a spell in a fight, the more experience you gained to level it up

For the rest, here are some explanations!

Here are some of the main objectives of the new system:

• Make it more interesting to specialize in Multi-elements/Multi-spells strategies. Spell experience earned in combats will now be between 20 and 30% of the character experience earned (10% before), depending on whether you used a mono-element (20%) or multi-element (25 to 30%). Spells will therefore receive more experience than before, with a bonus to multi-element strategies.
• Stabilize spell evolution and allow re-specialization. There will now be a spell experience cap that cannot be exceeded. Once you reached level cap with your character (currently 105), you will be able to gain spell experience until reaching a specific cap. Once this cap is reached, you will no longer be able to make your spells gain experience. However, you will be able to redistribute this experience by transferring it from one spell to other ones. We will come back to this later in the devblog.
• End the reign of mono-spell. The level of a spell will no longer be able to exceed the level of the character. During the time in which the spell experience will be locked, the experience lost will be made up for, thanks to a bonus provided to the next levels of the spell.
• Coordinate characters efficiency. From now on you will all have at best, at character level 100, one element tree with 2 spells at maximum level, or the three element trees with each one spell at maximum level. All in all, if you prefer a mono-element strategy, you will have less spells maximum level than with a multi-element strategy. This matches with the objectives we set earlier.

You read it right: when this new system will get implemented and you will all have to redistribute your character’s experience, you will see that you will have more spells higher level than before, since the experience provided changed from 10 to 20-30% and that this experience gain will touch all characters. This means that everyone should be more powerful, and a global re-balance should be seen.

Implementing this new system will lead us to offer a “reset” of your spell experience points. This reset will happen in the same time as the new system.

When this will happen, you will receive all the spell experience points that match your character level, according to the new system. This means that the players who reached level 105 way before the “lock” added in the May update will see their experience rebalanced with the other players, maybe leading to a decrease. This is a necessary step to bring back the community on the same level: we cannot leave imbalance as it currently is in the game.

During this reset, you will be able to redistribute your spell experience freely between all of your spells.

Please note that, as it is the case for ability points, we could provide this reset further in the future, following important modifications of a class or a spell. We will then adapt the reset in order to limit it (or not) to a specific element tree, depending on the situation.


If this were to happen, we will inform you beforehand.
 
Once you reached the spell experience cap, you will be able to respecialize. You will be able to adapt the spell experience distribution, all trees included.

This will happen through a dedicated interface that will be available once you reached the spell level cap (we will give you more details on this interface in another statement).

All will work according to the communicating vessels principle. You will be able to transfer experience from a spell to one or more others of your choice, as many times as you want.

You will just need to place the spell that you which to remove experience from (one at a time) into the dedicated interface. Then, you will just have to fight. The spell experience generated during the fight will not be earned, but taken from the selected spell, and redistributed to the one or those that were used during the fight.


Note: a spell cannot lose more than one level per fight. However, the spell(s) receiving the experience can gain more than one level per fight.

Spells improved this way will also benefit from a small bonus since they will need less time to level, compared to the classical leveling. We don’t want you to spend as much time to respecialize a character as you would need to level a new one.
Note however that the balance rule that we announced earlier (2 max level spells with one tree, or 1 max level for each tree) will also apply to respecialization. You will never be able to exceed this rule thanks to respecialization.

We added a simple limitation to the complete system: an element tree with more than 1/3 of the total spell experience (your most powerful tree) will earn twice less experience than the tree(s) that received less than 1/3 of your spell experience.

This limitation is very important as it is the basis of our new system. It will allow us to avoid high level characters having more spells level 100 than other characters.

Here are some of the last details concerning the way your spells will gain experience in fights. They are not needed to understand the overall system, but should answer some of your main concerns:

• Spells gain more or less experience depending on how many times they were cast in a fight, the total cost in AP/MP/WP during the fight, and their level when they were used.
• The experience calculation linked to the use of a spell doesn’t take into account spells level 100 (max level), spells transferring their experience (see the part about “Respecialization&rdquo, and spells with a level equal to the level of your character.
• Starting from level 72, the experience % will lower along your progression.
• You cannot access the respecialization interface before reaching the spell experience cap (and character cap level).
• Concerning the balance rule “2 spell max level in one tree or 1 spell max level per tree at level 100”, this means that when your character reaches level 200 (the day we reach this point), you will have 4 spells max level in one tree or 2 spells max level per tree.
• Spell experience being based on your character’s experience, XP scrolls will now give you an indirect spell experience bonus during the next fights of this character.
• Spell level scrolls earned during dungeon achievements will be removed and replaced with dungeon tokens.

 
The explanation is now finished! As you can see, the new system shouldn’t be too complicated! On the contrary, we wanted to make it clearer compared to the current system. However, it required some details to be communicated in order to let you understand it correctly.

Of course, if you have any questions, our team will answer them the best they can!