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Feature: Flux's E3 2006 Cabalist Report
Date: May 18, 2006
Source: The Unofficial HGL Site

Contents 1 Cabalist Report 2 Cabalist Skills 2.1 Summoning 2.2 Evocation 2.3 Mastery

Cabalist Report

Going into E3, my opinion of the cabalist wasn't real high. From the one bit of gameplay footage we'd seen, she looked like a poor man's Necromancer, with weak summoned creatures and ineffective attack spells. I therefore played a Templar first, and only tried a Cabalist out of duty. Imagine my surprise when I actually enjoyed the Cab more, and spent more total time with that character than the Templar?

The Cabalist started out with a Harp Pistol and an anomalous focusing device in the other. Focus devices are basically gloves that take up one hand's weapon slot, and enable the Cabalist to cast higher level skills. You'll see it noted on her skills if a given one requires a device or not. In addition to that spell casting aspect, the focus devices basically double as pistols of a sort. The starting one in the E3 build fired purple balls that did 16 spectral damage, which was comparable to a powerful one-handed weapon. These balls were fired at a good rate and without power cost, and when teamed with the immobilizing HARP pistol, a Cabalist with the beginning equipment could kill faster than a Templar with two pistols. (Though not as fast as a Templar with two swords.)

The basic gameplay for the Cabalist was pretty easy; map both weapons to fire off the left click, run close enough to monsters to get the in range of your focus device (it had greater range than the HARP pistol), and start shooting. The spectral balls did excellent damage, killing all level 1-3 monsters in 1 or 2 shots, and while the HARP pistol did very little damage, it stopped anything you shot with it. I had no trouble dispatching charging packs of a dozen zombies with these two weapons, simply by moving side to side and backing up a bit. The lead zombie would constantly get stopped by the HARP, and as I kept moving my aim would change to the next lead zombie that ran past it, and then the next, and so forth. Meanwhile, my focus device was pumping out a steady stream of killing spectral energy orbs, which hit the zombies in front and basically never missed, when a mob was coming straight at me.

Once I leveled up a bit I'd put a point into some summoning skills to add tanks or artillery support, and also into the Spectral skills, which hurled spectral energy that did more damage than my focus device alone, at the cost of some power.

Cabalists gain power (mana) substantially faster than Templars (think of a Sorceress' mana gain compared to that of a Barbarian); with level ups and with points in concentration, but my Cabs still used up their power far faster than it regenerated. Power potions helped, but I always had to moderate my spell use to my power levels. The anomalous focus device fired without power costs though, so it could be used constantly, while I saved my spells for situational use. The Spectral Bolt skill was a lot of fun, and it hurled out about a dozen balls of purple energy that spread out over distance. All of them would hit targets at close range, and while they didn't appear to do 12x damage, it would certainly drop any single monster at point blank range.

Before you think the Cabalist is too strong, consider that this was the E3 build, and that monster damages were turned way down. Even with that, I nearly died several times with a Cabalist, simply because her hit points were much, much lower than a comparable Templar's. When playing a Cabalist, I found myself sticking almost all of my level up points into stamina, simply because with under 100 hit points, the Cab could die to just a few hits, even in the nerfed E3 build.

Also, I believe the Cab's starting focus device did substantially more damage than the one you'll start with in the real game; I was never able to find or buy one with higher damage, and when I did see others of the same type, dealing 16 spectral damage, they were 500 or more gold, comparable to other weapons that were substantial upgrades from the very first weapons I found from monster drops. Theoretically, you'd start with one doing something paltry like 4 damage, and by level 6 or 8 you'd find or buy one doing 16 or so. Which is why the Cabalist felt easy from level 1-5, and then needed to use her spells and upgrade her equipment to continue killing quickly once the monsters got to level 6 and higher.

Cabalist Skills

Since the info about the Cabalist's E3 skill trees got out, there's been some excitement amongst the player base as people wonder at the changes. The most recent info before E3 appeared to listthe Cab's skill trees as Summoning, Evocation, and Transformation. Yet at E3 Transformation was gone; replaced by Mastery. Some players have taken this to mean the various planned transformation skills are gone.

They might be, but it's also possible they're just not ready yet, and rather than having a skill tree called transformation that had no transformation skills in it, they elected to change the tree's name, and move some other skills around. Or perhaps the transformation skills will go into the Mastery tree once they're ready, without changing the name of the tree. Time will tell.

Summoning

Flagship has said (or at least implied) that it will be possible to make a fairly-powerful character focusing in any of the skill trees/menus in the final game. That might be the goal, but it wasn't a reality at E3; at least not at the low levels we were playing at. Summoned creatures were nice helpers, but waiting for them to do all the killing for you would have been very tedious.

The (level) listed is the level required to enable this skill. These values do not display in the E3 build, so they're taken from my memory, and are approximate. (And will surely change in the final game anyway.)

Summon Fire Elemental (level 2)

Summons an elemental creature of fire to fight for the caster. The demon is bound to serve until slain or released.

• Fire Elementals do 20% additional damage per skill level.
• Power Cost: 15

Summon Physical Elemental (level 3)

Summons an elemental creature of physical force to fight for the caster. The demon is bound to serve until slain or released.

• Physical Elementals do 10% additional damage and gain increased knockback ability per skill level.
• Power Cost: 15

Summon Carnagor (level 5)

Summons a Carnagor to fight for the caster. The demon is bound to serve until slain or released.

• The Carnagor gains an additional 20% health and damage per skill level.
• Power cost: 88</span>

Summon Shrieker (level 8)

Summons a Shrieker demon to fight for you. The demon immediately targets a foe and sacrifices itself in a spectacular attack.

• Power Cost: 15

Spectral Lure (level 8)

• Creates a spectral light that attracts demons and damages them. Fades out after 10 seconds.
• Power cost: 10

Summon Fire Elemental was pretty much everyone's favorite low level Cabalist skill. Just one point got you up to three Fire Elementals, while more points increased their damage (which did not display, but seemed about half of what a player could do with a low level fire weapon). Fire Elemental was tied to Physical Elemental, once you had a point in both skills you got 3 total Elementals, of either type. You could have 3 of 1 kind, or 1 fire/2 physical, or vice versa. Casting a 4th caused the oldest one to vanish.

The Fire Elementals were low hit point ranged attackers. They looked like walking magma demons, glowing red from cracks in their stony flesh and hurling rocks of fire that left long, glowing red trails across the screen. Very pretty. They had to be managed to remain useful, since they tended to hang behind you, and would not come close enough to be in range of a monster if you stopped as soon as you saw it. You had to run closer, then retreat a bit, to bring the Fire Elementals in, or entice the monster into their sight/firing range.

Physical Elementals were basically golems; small guys that were identical to Fire Elementals in appearance, except that they glowed white instead of red. They tanked for you, but weren't very powerful and had to be replaced regularly, if they ran into anything much stronger than a zombie and you didn't kill it quickly.

Summon Carnagor was a step up in power from the Physical Elemental, and it brought forth a pint-sized Carnagor. It looked like the game monster (none of which were seen in the E3 build), but much smaller; about the size of a large dog. They moved more quickly than the Physical Elementals, charging forward in a front/back, front/back running style, but didn't really seem a whole lot tougher or more damaging. I never saw anyone use Summon Shrieker or Spectral Lure.

Evocation

Like many of the other skills in the E3 build, these were not fully-documented. There's no damage listed for Spectral Lash (it did a lot of damage, but cost even more power) or Spectral Bolt, nothing tells you how much damage Drain Life/Power do to the monsters targeted, and you don't even know how fast Drain Power refills your power bulb. All details that will be ironed out before the final release, of course.

The (level) listed is the level required to enable this skill. These values did not display in the E3 build, so they're taken from my memory, and are approximate. (And will surely change in the final game anyway.)

Spectral Lash (level 2)

Unleashes a tendril of spectral energy against a single enemy.

• Each additional skill level reduces the Power drain of the Lash by 5 Power per second.
• Requires a Focus Item
• Power cost: constant drain of 30 Power per second.

Drain Life (level 2)

Singling out a healthy foe, the Cabalist drains away its life to add to his or her own.

• Each additional skill level increases the amount of health gained by 25%
• Requires a Focus Item
• Power cost: Constant Drain of 2 Power per second.

Spectral Bolt (level 3)

Fires a bolt of spectral energy that splits several times.

• Each additional skill level adds 25% extra damage to each bolt, but increases the cost by 2 Power.
• Requires a Focus Item
• Power cost: 11

Drain Power (level 3)

The Cabalist tortures a single enemy and gains power from its pain.

• Each additional skill level increases the amount of power gained by 25%
• Requires a Focus Item
• Power cost: none

A play style I meant to try was going simply with Drain Life, Drain Power, and the two spectral attacks. Would it be possible to use Spectral Lash/Bolt for killing, while alternating Drain Power to refill your power orb? I never got to try it, but I didn't need to, since I saw Flagshiper Ivan Sulic doing it while running a press demo, and it seemed to work fine. It might have worked too well, really, since just a few seconds of Drain Power would nearly kill a monster, while completely refilling his power bulb, giving him enough power to kill several more monsters with the Spectral attacks, before he'd refill again from the next monster.

Both Spectral Lash and Bolt were definitely fun to use, and worked somewhat like weapon switching to big rifles with huge single target damage, or a nice spread fire pattern. You had to pause in your regular fire rate with the focus device to cast spells, but the delay wasn't long, and the damage more than made up for it, even with the spells just at level 1.

Mastery

The (level) listed is the level required to enable this skill. These values did not display in the E3 build, so they're taken from my memory, and are approximate. (And will surely change in the final game anyway.)

Sprint (universal skill, no level requirement)

After sipping a bit of Ravager blood, the Cabalist can move at great speed for a short time.

• Power cost: 10 [minus 3 per level]

Blood Link (level 2)

Sacrifice some of your health to partially heal all of your summoned creatures

Word of Fear (level 5)

This command causes demons surrounding the Cabalist to temporarily flee in terror.

• Power cost: 5

Blood Surge (level 8)
Exchange some of your health for power.

Enrage Companion (level 8)

Your major summoned demons are filled with dark rage, growing bigger, stronger and faster for a short amount of time.

• Each additional skill level increases the enraged duration.
• Power cost: 25

Sprint is not a skill that we'll see in this tree in the final game, since it's been made a universal skill. Like attack or "fire both weapons," Sprint is something every character can do at any time, simply to move around the levels more quickly.

Other than Sprint, I never saw anyone use any of these skills at E3, and never had a chance to get into them myself. They're all very high level sounding stuff, since at the levels we played at E3, you never needed to control monster behavior, and it was easier to just summon new minions than use a skill point and fumble through your hotkeys to heal or power up your existing ones. Presumably, later in the game you'll have more powerful minions, or will want to keep them alive and in the battle, rather than letting them die and recasting them.

Also, like many of the spells in the E3 build, the descriptions for these are clearly unfinished. We're not told how much health is lost or healing is done with Blood Link or Blood Surge, and while the hover info for Enrage Companion advertises increased duration at higher levels, we don't even know how long it lasts to begin with. These gaps in the info will be filled in for the final game, of course.