Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era Outlined Skills and Subclasses

Following a blog post dedicated to all things magic, developer Unfrozen is back with more details about the upcoming turn-based strategy Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era. This time, the team goes into detail about skills and subclasses. Let’s check them out!

“Olden Era, just like its predecessors, features a wide range of skills — various passive and active effects that your heroes can learn. We’ve taken a look at the way skills worked in Heroes III and V, and decided to build a system that’d effectively be a hybrid of the two by combining the classic Heroes III’s system and the versatile strength of Heroes V’s.”

The developers took the approach of “if it works, don’t break it” when it comes to the leveling system. The team wanted to keep the sense of variety when it comes to how you’d play in any different scenario, and expand on it even further. The developers stress that they’re not trying to revolutionize the game, but rather to improve it. Thus, the changes that are being done are more of the additions to the leveling system instead of its redesign.

All heroes earn experience points by fighting, visiting certain adventure sites and picking up treasure chests. Once they earn enough of them, a hero levels up and can either improve one of their already picked skills or choose a new one. Additionally, they also gain a bonus to one of their four stats: Attack, Defence, Spellpower or Knowledge.

In the Olden Era, each hero always starts with their faction’s iconic skill as well as an additional one. These starting skills cannot be changed by any means and are influenced by the heroes’ specialisation — a unique bonus specific to each hero. For example, heroes that specialise in a specific school of magic will always start with that school’s skill. You can learn a total of 8 different skills, including the starting ones.

Each skill has 5 subskills. When upgrading a skill to an advanced level, you get to choose 1 of the 3 first subskills and when upgrading it to an expert level, you get to choose 1 of the 2 last subskills, offering additional flexibility, variety and a bit of individuality. Various subskills will provide even more options and synergies now than what you might be accustomed to, making room for many build paths instead of just a “meta” one.

The subclass system had been adapted from Heroes VII, and is an optional system in Olden Era. This way, the decision of investing into acquiring a subclass is entirely in the players’ hands. The subclass system allows players to unlock further enhancements to their heroes as they progress in levels and power. Each hero class has access to 2 subclasses that require specific skills and subskills to be unlocked.