stasis

For this week dedicated to Foggernauts, we prepared two devblogs that will give you the details about each spell available to this class. Kwoac from the Game Design team also added a few comments and fun facts about the development of the class! We start now with the spells in the 3 elementary branches available to the Fogegrnaut: Stasis, Earth and Fire…

This probably won’t come as a much of a surprise but... major changes are on their way! This devblog article will give you an overview of the changes that have been undertaken and the reasons that have motivated our choices.Today, you get a sneak peek into the future of Wakfu!A Comprehensive GameOne of the major flaws of Wakfu as it is now is how difficult it is to grasp the concepts.For testers who’ve been with us since the beginning, that probably doesn’t sound right – after all, you’ve been able to wrap your mind around the concepts - but we’ve noticed that beginners confronted to the game mechanics for the first time have a really hard time understanding some of them. You have to admit that being forced to read a gaming manual before even starting to play a game isn’t the most enjoyable thing there is.The problem applies to different gameplay features: map builds, crafts, Wakfu & Stasis, the ecosystem, citizenship, etc.The basic changes we’ve made over the last three months have been to simplify these features as much as possible, the interface and layouts have been changed for everything to work better as a whole and for the feel to be more intuitive.Breta, a breath of fresh airBreta is one of the four nations of the Bonta archipelago. It was thought up to be a welcoming environment to guide players once they come out of Incarnam.Breta, concept art v1It all starts with a newb area, divided into several low levels areas. There’s a village, fields, meadows, ruins and even a Fort and a Prison ... Everything to make a nice starting area for beginners to learn how to play the game in a safe haven, protected inside their nation’s walls.Beyond this point, the players’ exploration will be hampered by aggressive monsters and players with a feel for PvP. Well, I wouldn’t want to spoil anything, so we’ll leave you to explore it!Trade me a CraftUp to now, right from the start all the available professions and a wealth of information regarding crafts was available to you straight away – in all fairness that was a bit too much information to digest all at once.Now, you’ll have to go through a Clan Member in order to learn a profession. They will make sure that you understand the workings of the craft before you can actually move on to practicing that profession.But don’t worry - if you’re fast on your feet and use your brains like you should, you’ll still be able to learn all the professions that you’d like.Wakfu & Stasis Concept RevisedAs I hinted to in the last devblog, the concept of Wakfu and Stasis has changed and is no longer what it used to be.Now, all actions relating to planting (or refurbishing) will be of a Wakfu nature, while all destructive behaviour will be a of a Stasis nature. Wakfu and Stasis become less of an ideology and more the definition of a being. Doesn’t that remind you of anything? One of the oldest mottos of Wakfu was: "Your character will be defined by your actions." Well, that’s exactly what happens here. Your Wakfu or Stasis incline will tell the world if you’re more prone to destroy or repopulate the ecosystem.The state of your personal Wakfu / Stasis gauge will open different possibilities but will no longer make you susceptible to receiving Crime Points.Wondering what the consequences of your actions on the ecosystem will be?Citizens of the World UniteA new gauge has replaced the Wakfu & Stasis gauge that you know. This new citizen gauge shows you your status towards your nation, if you are in agreement or disagreement towards it. The more points you have, the more bonuses and rights you’ll get. Conversely, the further you are along the negative path, the more you’ll be restricted and also the bigger you’ll be on the wanted list.It is not unlike the crime points in many regards.Your actions on the ecosystem will have two consequences: increase or decrease your Wakfu or Stasis state but also affect your citizen gauge - depending on whether or not you follow your Clan Member’s wishes.As for your actions on other territories, they will not be without consequence! They will affect your citizen gauge depending on the relations and treaties between the two governments.Balancing and ImprovementsAs expected, many changes have been made during these past few months - balancing classes, interface changes, general enhancements and the list goes on and on.We’ll tell you more about them in future articles of the devblog in the days and weeks to come.

As Tonio told you in his Wakfu Dev Hour post, I'll be clarifying what he dealt with in his article this week.As you might have guessed, to not spoil you too much, he was obliged to romanticize things a bit to give it the appearance of a story, but I'll take each point of interest individually and explain things in more detail.Game System:“Growing Monsters”“Recently I managed to unlock the secrets of breeding the creatures in the world of 12, returning the Tofu in the fields to make a peaceful balance.”In order to help you achieve the best ecosystem balance possible, we’ve made it possible to "create monsters" in the last update. We wanted a simple and relatively fast way to allow effective management of the fauna. It is easy to plant Flora resources so we though it made sense to make it easy to create monsters. Note - this is not the farming system, which will come later.The principle is simple: With the help of a trapper (new name for the hunter profession), you are now able to gather "seeds" from monsters in the ecosystem. The screenshot bellow shows you what it looks like.Here are some Vials with an image representative of the monster family in order to identify which species the seed is... you can guess the family for yourself. There are also mixed seed, representing two families from the same area-ecosystem.These seeds allow you to generate a group of monsters containing creatures from the family(ies) concerned. To do this, simply put the seed on the ground... this will create a small mound. After a while, a group of monsters will appear in exactly the same way as for planting flowers and the growing seeds. Here are some seeds that have just been placed on the ground:With the ability to create your own monsters, you become the definitive masters of your ecosystem. This will help you manage to balance family of monsters and you can potentially kill a species if you're not careful.Gameplay : The events in the natural ecosystem“When the balance is perfect and the Wakfu is maintained, a celestial Tofu rides abroad and carefully protect our crops from the swarms that lurk in the doldrums of stasis ...”On each territory, there will be a very specific Wakfu equilibrium for each type of monster and resource. Depending on whether the balance is achieved or not, there will be special events like the arrival of a Royal Tofu in the fields (if balance is achieved) and the emergence of a Putrid Gobball if the Gobballs’ grasslands are exterminated. There will also be events based on the balance of the flora, but I won’t say any more, it's up to you to discover it all in game.Interface : Changes to Ecosystem InterfaceTo make things even more convenient when balancing areas, we've revised the ecosystem interface to make the various environmental indicators more precise. With the new version, you can see at a glance what the balance in an area is like currently, and also, to the nearest ten, how many resources or monsters there are and how more or less are required for the area to become balanced.Gameplay : The will of the Clan member“The world has changed a lot lately - the clan members who were once in the shadows have become more active and insistent when guiding us in our actions. Meeting their demands is often difficult and requires greater involvement in the ecosystem’s management, but it's worth it!”Now, members of the clan want to have a say in what goes on in their territory. Some, usually Wakfu adherents, prefer their territory to be balanced. Others, lovers of Stasis, don’t care about balance and prefer to arrange their territory as they see fit. Each clan member has his/her own will and you can choose to respect that or not. However, a satisfied member of the clan will give his blessing to all players of the nation that controls the territory in question, and the more satisfied they will be, the greater the bonus awarded. Moreover, a satisfied warrior is a loyal warrior – and that will show in combat. A disgruntled member of the clan dissatisfied with the controllers of the territory will be unwilling to defend and vice versa.On each island nation, the clan members will be in agreement with the ideology of the nation Ohm = Wakfu, Mork = Stasis, Emelka / Sevamor = Neutral. On Amakna there is a bit of everything. CMs will therefore be much more difficult to satisfy if they do not have the same alignment as you.The will of the CM is visible in the new ecosystem interface as well as the Wakfu equilibrium. In addition, some CMs are undemanding, needing only 2 criteria to satisfy their wills, while others will be very demanding with 3 or 4 criteria and lower tolerance.And finally, here is a screenshot of the interface. Bear in mind, this is a prototype and not necessarily the final version, it might still change in the future. When you mouseover, the number of monsters / resources present in the area and the numbers required to achieve equilibrium or to satisfy the CM is displayed.

Yeeeeha ! My first post in the devblog! I’m blushing all over!Right, let’s be serious now, and get down to the business in hand. I’ve come to talk to you about recent developments and I know you’ve been waiting to hear about them for a while. We can’t wait to get your feedback as they’re subjects we care greatly about. As everything has to start somewhere, let’s start at the beginning. At the heart of Wakfu there are areas where the flora and fauna flourishes more-or-less peacefully. We’d noticed that the edges of these areas were rather quiet. Sometimes they sheltered little heavens-on-earth, earthly paradises created in minute detail by the inhabitants of Astrub, where monsters could live their cushy lives, their numbers only reduced by the occasional raid organized by those very same Astrubians. Back in Astrub, the sound of the wind in the trees had been replaced by the cries of travelling merchants going about their business. They used the resources they’d harvested to craft various objects. Hmmm. I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything. Yeah, so, all that is very nice, but what does it really change?Er, what? Ah, the ecosystem! You’re a real bunch of geniuses, aren’t you? Yes, the ecosystem. It’s the ‘little jewel’ we hand over to you that you can do whatever you want with. But ultimately, when I want to scythe down a field, or plant a bunch of seeds, or chase a group of monsters, I don’t really appreciate the impact I’m having. I’ve already received an ear bashing for chopping down too many trees (thank you anti-insult filter ?). I have an order of 15 Bundles I need to deliver this evening and I know there’s no way I’ll be able to! But hold on, weren’t we talking about an ecoSYSTEM? Yes, and like all systems, it has rules. We all know rules are there to be respected, or better still, broken…With harmony comes beauty !Keep in mind that each environment zone will include an indication of the balance of its ecosystem. This indicator, visible next to the name of the area, will vary from green to brown, from perfectly balanced to total chaos, according to these three factors:The balance between groups of monstersThe balance between groups of resourcesEnvironmental pollutionThere's work to do to balance this area, but it could be worse…To bring the species, animals and plants, into balance, you’ll need to pay attention to the gauges next to each group. The ‘W’ Wakfu symbol signifies balance. Two upward-pointing arrows next to Thistles, for example, means the area is full to bursting with thistles and they’re becoming intrusive. It’s possible to bring the area into balance by cutting down enough thistles, or hammer the final nail into the coffin by planting more thistles, and chop down all the remaining species while you’re at it if you need to make some room. Notice as well how the different environments change as you travel through them. Certain areas suit some species more than others. In the forest, for example, the presence of a huge field of wheat would completely destabilise the existing ecosystem! Later on, each area will be visible on a map, but I’m not going to tell you about how this map works, that’d be revealing too much! :p“ I can feel something changing …inside of me!”It starts at first with a strange sensation and a feeling of power and it finishes with a complete understanding of your chosen inclination, be it Wakfu or Stasis. Of course, I’m here to tell you about the ecosystem, and I still haven’t told you the most important bit (you might notice I even managed to gloss over pollution, well done me!). Through your actions in balancing the ecosystem, you start on the long journey that might eventually lead to a daunting achievement - the complete understanding of and investment in Wakfu or Stasis. The more you undertake to bring an area into balance, the more your understanding of Wakfu will grow. Conversely, the more you work to destabilise an area, the more Stasis will flow through you. Your inclination will be represented by the Wakfu/Stasis gauge, the pointer swinging between the bewitching blue of Wakfu and the enigmatic purple of Stasis.This gauge show you I'm in tune with my Wakfu Before undertaking any action (harvest, combat , craft…) that could change the balance of an area and, as a direct result, your Wakfu/Stasis gauge, the consequences of your action will be shown : Wakfu, Stasis, or no consequence.Representations of Wakfu and Stasis are even in the URM. Your inclination is not only a representation of your actions, it’s a complete philosophy that will gradually begin to make sense and guide your future actions. Some refer to it as ‘alignment’, and it will soon become synonymous with good vibes, social adherence, and even political choice.To correct a little ‘omission’: pollution.If earlier on I managed to avoid the topic of pollution, it was because this post is already long, and talking about pollution would make it much, much longer ^^. All I can tell you at the moment is that machines for crafting pollute the environment, and using those machines increases the Stasis of the crafter. Using recycling machines rids the environment of pollution and draws the player back towards Wakfu.I’ll stop there for the moment, but bear in mind we’ve got plenty of other ideas around how the levels of pollution could fluctuate. Likewise, to balance areas, we will inevitably talk about what governors can do, or the existence of a changing climate. Anyway, that brings us nicely onto something else…Don’t worry! It’s not the end yet!So, while I’m here I’m going to tell you a bit about what we’re developing at the moment (even if it is a little bit secret). From now on, I’m no longer going to argue the following points on the forums because they’re still open to big changes on our part. :pThe more you lean towards Wakfu, or towards Stasis, the more you will master them, and be able to develop special abilities as a result. You must unlock 2 levels in an inclination before you can unlock all the abilities in that inclination. Each level conveys 4 abilities. The last 4 abilities in each inclination are obviously the most powerful.Each ability belongs to a certain category. The first category concerns monsters specifically. It will give you mastery over the families of monsters present in the ecosystem, to balance them, to reorganise them or to destabilise and tarnish them. The second category, still concerning the ecosystem, will split between creatures found in earthly paradises, and monumental destroyers of resources. The third category will allow you to specialize in the finer details of your inclination and will increase your Wakfu or your Stasis in every area that touches them. With the help of the fourth category, your combat skills will be optimised according to your inclination.Pfft, I bet it doesn’t come for free !Well, no. You’ll need a little bit of condensed Wakfu, Wakfu crystals, to trigger these powers. But that’s yet another enormous topic to discuss. All you need to know for the moment is that a sacrifice has to be made to trigger the powers, which should be used in moderation (especially the big ones ?).Remember as well that you can always move back and forth between Wakfu and Stasis to keep a certain balance. That might seem stupid given what I’ve just told you, but think a little about what could happen when other players can see you’re more (or less) inclined towards Wakfu or Stasis than they are. It’s also possible that the conduct of opposing players towards each other will render unstable those areas where Wakfu and Stasis are in total conflict. Of course, staying neutral also means staying free of those problems.We hope that these powers, as well as being impressive, will on the one hand help the struggle towards balancing an area, and on the other hand address the challenges presented by PvP (see Zeorus’ post on the devblog) and running dungeons. Not only will you have the health of the entire ecosystem in your hands, but a strong advantage over other players. Initially the Wakfu/Stasis gauge will “only” allow you to use special, powerful objects. We will integrate these powers as soon as they are ready.One final ‘little’ thing…Above all else, I wanted this post to introduce you to the tools of your inclination as a Wakfu player. Now you’ve had time to digest all this information, I invite you to check out Daryl’s posts on the devblog to soak up the secrets of Wakfu and Stasis.Beta test players will be able to see my new post about interfaces. To limit the number of bewildered souls I will be explaining the new layout, the improvements made to them and their new functionality. I just need a bit of time to sort it out, with Bouillie’s help. Well, there you go. That’s the end of my post (I think I’m going to cry). I’d like to thank Zidrune for leaving me fill up the devblog with my ramblings and for letting me create this post for you. Thank you as well to Fry for having faithfully recreated my mugshot, David and Jérôme who I hassled and who gave me the interface apps in record time, Theturtle, my co-developer, and without whom none of this would have been possible (I’ve always dreamed of saying that). Finally, thanks to you for having continued to read this far! I hope to see you very soon.Talentyre

Toot, toot on my mouth organ, mythbuilding we go.In the depths of the labyrinth, inspiration will flow. That’s what I’m telling myself at least as I sprint down Ankama’s dark corridor. My fist presses against my tightened chest, inside it a 256k USB key with an image and two low-res screen shots. I snatched them from Fulcanelli’s office when he was on break. What a gem. But we must never speak of it – at least not before September. At last! All this should have been released long ago, but my life is still hanging in the balance. The secret of Stasis. Wakfu’s fingerprint! I must try to see these things clearly, from a neutral point of view, for that is key. Oh and it has taken some time to synthetize what could not be.To hold the essence, the fluid of the world in a single phrase… to finally comprehend wakfu in its totality, as all these fragments draw towards a common centre to form the image of a teeming world, of a beta test played to the full, of activity which does not cease to grow, day after day, all this I desire. Who will defend the customised Croton fields? A concrete picture is emerging. I hope I am not wrong. If I am wrong, I am finished.It’s been almost a year since I began work on this mysterious energy, this force that almost measures up to wakfu itself - stasis. All along I thought stasis was simply an aspect of wakfu – as though I was blind to the duality that nourishes our world. Considering that wakfu is cosmic energy – the coming and going of life itself – I had concluded that stasis must be the immobile state of wakfu.Nothing but a degree of wakfu. The fact is, I believed in my naivety, or pretentiousness, that the nature of stasis was cosmic, like wakfu… worse, I believed that it was a component of wakfu. Nothing could be further from the truth. Stasis, like elementary energy, exists only in our material world. Wakfu alone is cosmic, wakfu is the anti matter of the universe and acts as a bond between concepts – it is the eternal vessel and material of creation and destruction.Only in our material world, in which man and beast exist and are capable of exercising judgement, can a double energy exist. It is WE who created stasis. WE constantly churn it out.Since the time of the flood, the World of Twelve has held Ogrest as sole perpetrator – Ogrest, the personification of wakfu, he who ascends to the very Zenith of the energy source. But it is not so. There is something else. Long before the coming of Ogrest, during the time of Dofus, men began to play with another energy, an energy which affected nature, climate, reality itself. No one knew that another energy was at hand, for them, as for us, it was just nuts and bolts.Technology is the source of stasis. The devastation wrought by its interaction with wakfu, which has already ruined Ogrest, culminated when it sealed our fate. The very birds sing the truth of the matter -Wakfu is Nature’s sap. Stasis is Machine fluid.Machine in the general sense of the word. Machine in the sense of presence. Like a tree. Machines are the trees of science. I don’t want to suggest that stasis is a solely corruptive force. Stasis is no more good than wakfu is bad. Within wakfu, creation and destruction reside. Stasis which is used according to the principles of equilibrium is to be desired – it can even prove essential.The two are entwined in a terrible dance which will prove fatal sooner or later should no one appreciate the peril. Disappearance, absence, annihilation – the Void. We must learn the ways of equilibrium before one overwhelms the other completely. We no longer have a choice. Let us learn the ways of harmony.--- many thanx to Ebe (screenshots) & Crounch (Wakfu/Stasis yiya)

Curtain up – Ogrest cracks the head of a champion against the wall of a citadel, he grunts. Before him, an army of mercenaries trembles, their hair fluttering in the breath of this mythical throat… A horn sounds. High upon his rock, Ogrest bellows and the few survivors who remain run off screaming in terror, across the broad plain, into the forest, the sea and the waiting ships. Satisfied, the ogre descends from his rocky perch and lurches towards the yellow mass of a wounded Tofu. He takes the animal in his great, pitted fist, this little yellow ball, and his eyelids quiver.Ogrest cries.*A black Eca laughs, squints towards the sun. Placing a hand on my shoulder, she says, “if you seek to understand Ogrest, you must first come to know something of his heart.”*Exhausted – panting Sweat upon my brow. Shadow.Where am I? I am in Ankama’s toilets. A high ceiling, and a mirror which doubles the sense of space. I hear the dogs bay in the hallway, my Chapka was given to them to sniff on, they weren’t long tearing it to pieces. I lock myself away in the third cubicle, I know there’s a hideout, behind the cistern, a square of PVC left loose by the workers.I slide in with my laptop, my Activebook and my torch. In the guts, the intestines of Ankama, I go on crawling, looking for a place where I can wedge myself into a corner and concentrate for a while. The entire building shook as though it was growing. I am buried. After the last post on Stasis, my situation has changed. I know they want to get rid of me. I’m too much trouble. I have this note in my shirt pocket, written on a paper tissue during my last dinner with Tot at the Portuguese place: Stasis only exists in the heart of Ogrest.I have never felt such a strange sensation of mingled terror and joy. Yes, I was wrong. They were wrong. What does it matter now? To stop me revealing the true nature of Stasis, they told me a few fairytales, gave me broken files or mould-pocked archives ruined with time and damp down in the cellar of the factory.I had been reading forged report books all along! Traitors! ‘Read it,’ they said, ‘do what you want with it.’ Faced with this mountain of paper, what else could I do? I threw myself into a void I could never broach; I believed I could hold the truth of the cosmos in a human grasp. But truth does not exist, those who lead us to believe in objectivity want us to swallow their vision of things – and me too, I was becoming like them, unable to let silence speak. All must change, all is shifting always. The very elements which we take to be many are but one. Always dividing, we arrive nowhere. All must unite.I think of Ogrest, of this terrible demon I knew from legend. The myths of the beast’s gratuitous cruelty had long been whispered down. I think of the woeful burden he must carry, of all that suffering expressed in his clumsiness – why would I not believe that Ogrest was the destroyer of whom everyone is terrified?He cries, and by crying, he ruins the World. And yet, he’s not manic-depressive, he’s not a dishcloth, he thinks and doubts, tossed from within by jolting emotions – like all that lives, Ogrest sometimes crumbles. If the choice were given him, should he let the world perish? I picture him upon his rock, I can get so close, I can almost stroke his shabby coat after so many hours of fighting.If Ogrest is sitting on the Zenith of Wakfu, after the power brought by the six primordial Dofus, and he changes the world, our world, why would he not change the cosmos, its energies, its structure? I was so pretentious to believe that one could conceive of a cosmic system without taking its point of fixation, its anchor point, into account. I did not realize to what point that aspect is important, despite the brutality, the monstrosity and the radical nature of the beast… That’s where the true order of the universe is to be found, and around this, the cosmos are structured. It is in his injured, bruised heart that the key resides.(Thanks to Crounch for the drawings!!!)

Just a word, briefly, from the edge of my desk, covered in paper, diagrams and the husks of water bottles: Stasis, this stranger. Take some aspirin, it's not obvious (we'll get to the myths concerning stasis in a future post).In the very beginning, then, there was this strange notion of moving transparency, which some slow minds took for ice - of course, on a purely visual level, a stasis effect could seize the retina and imprint on it the memory of a translucent glass. However - we know now that the Wakfu represent the sum total of energies of the universe, whether they are kept within the confines of our material plane (the elemental energies) or left to roam freely throughout the celestial layers (the cosmic energies).There are eight energies in total, four on each side of the wakfu - allow me to use this simple analogy of a two dimensional space where a left and a right exist. According to my information, given to me by a former disciple of Fullcanelli converted to Shintoism since, the cosmic vibrations are bound to subtraction, and the elemental sounds are linked to addition.Which would mean that, on either side, we subtract (we destroy), and on the other hand we add (we create). The principle of the universe, the line of wakfu, is this perfect synthesis to balance a finite universe (an egg, as I've already explained in my paper on the great cosmic omelette). The wakfu is therefore composed of an equal number of creation and destruction.Our subject is Stasis, the archetypal cosmic energy, a destructive principle. But destroyer of what? This is where the theories on a cosmic energy of ice collapse. Ice is simply frozen water. Without water, no ice (although one could argue that cosmic assemblers could carry out energy conversions whose residue could be, yes, why not, ice).I have been able to observe, on the forum, some very interesting things (you can in fact consult it _here_), but the truth seems much more complex. Stasis is an energy amongst others, and what it destroys is space.One might refer, why not, to an essence, which would allow us to bend space, but it isn't a distilled product, or a process. It's a concept, which inevitably escapes the idea that we, mere humans, might have of the principle of cosmic motion.Because indeed, the cosmos moves. At the human scale, we cannot even conceive how an infinite mass, this vast shapeless unknown, in which resides the Cosmic Egg of our universe and that we call the Sea of Oblivion, how all this could budge, move, and shift. It's subtle, it's celestial, it's beyond us and we will never know. And yet, today, all our instruments shout to us: dark matter exists, the world around us, which we think empty, is in fact full.So then, Stasis would be an expression of this movement. A celestial body which is moving seems not to move, and it's from this phenomenon that we obtain the origin of the term Stasis. Movement without motion. The applications of Stasis in the material world have always had phenomenal consequences: maintaining somebody in suspended animation, slowing, accelerating reality, putting it on pause. Xelors make great use of Stasis when exercising their time spells: they use it as a means to interact with elemental domains, restoring the states of things to preceding or later states.All this is very technical, in truth, and this is why we must consider Stasis as an extremely dangerous tool. Displacing void can create holes, rip apart the so thin membrane that lines the inner shell of the Egg, the wall between the material and ethereal planes, this buffer membrane that separates us from the astral void.But when correctly used, this destruction of space (one step after another, the motion "digests" the distance that separates us from our target) is an efficient mean of preserving those perfect moments, much like reality snapshots, which we could manipulate at will.It isn’t inconceivable at all to imagine that, once, a long time ago, when Xelor's Clock was built out of Stasis, this energy allowed time itself to stop flowing, creating an endless instant between the creation of the world and that of the vulgar, human dimension of time.This period where the mysteries of the Wakfu are formed, protected by a veil of invisible motion.Note to Fibojo: Thanks for your help with the translation.