IMPORTANT: This article contains spoilers about mechanics that you will uncover during the 12 scenario legacy campaign of Divinus.

There is this obvious dilemma when you crowdfund a legacy game. How do you show backers enough of what a game has to offer without spoiling the surprises you are cooking up for them to discover during the game?

What we did before the campaign was to offer content creators two full scenarios of the campaign to allow them to show you how it feels to play Divinus in the early stages of the campaign. We realize however that there is so much more to come in the 12-scenario campaign that we've consciously kept secret.

This article is intended for people who are keen to know more about the mechanics introduced via the Legacy campaign of Divinus and don’t mind spoiling some of the surprises during their personal journey. I’ll do my best to avoid huge spoilers and will rather focus on showing you the variety of mechanisms you encounter, but nevertheless, there will be some clear examples to describe what I talk about.

Legacy as a Journey of Playable Character Development

The foundation of the legacy experience lays in various ways to forge your playable character during the campaign. In Divinus, this layer of mechanics is supported by three pillars: dice forging, artifacts, and titles. If you want to know more details about how they work you can read this Dev Diary entry.

In this post, I want to focus on specific examples and numbers.

Dice Forging

Players will have at their disposal around 100 dice stickers in the base game campaign and more than 60 in Shadow of Yggdrasil expansion. Many of them add more valuable or flexible numbers to their dice. In the very first two scenarios of the base game players may acquire a total of 14 die stickers with either higher numbers (10,12) or choices to pick a number they need from a range (1|6, 2|4|6, 1|3|5).

Over the course of both campaigns, players will uncover 8 special abilities. These die stickers will have a symbol of an ability which, once rolled, allows players for special action. Some examples of these would be:

Fire - allows the player to set this particular die to any face.
Sword/Attack - allow the player to fight Monsters in a very efficient way or combine it with any other die to mirror its value when used together e.g fire used with 6 equals 12, fire used with 2 equals 4.

I do not want to spoil more but you’ll be able to create really unique builds of Demigods utilizing the dice forging.

Artifacts

There are more than 40 Artifacts to be discovered in the base game campaign and more than 25 in Shadow of Yggdrasil campaign. Each Artifact grants an asymmetric special power which is either a passive one that is always active or a powerful special action that is available only to the Demigod that possesses it. In the latter case, the number of uses of an action is limited.

Some examples of Artifact power types:

Dice manipulation variants: 2=3, 1=6,
Allowing to refresh or set any die to the value of your choice in specific circumstances,
Allowing re-rolling/refreshing various numbers of your dice in specific circumstances,
Abilities allowing manipulation of your map: drawing map tiles from a stack, swapping places of two map tiles in your map etc,
Abilities influencing scoring or giving opportunity to gain God’s favor in specific situations,
Abilities triggered when fulfilling a Quest or visiting a Location/scanning Location stickers,
Abilities that give you access to a unique action, not available for other players.

There will be more in the final game. I just wanted to give you a glimpse of possibilities of combo building, connected with Artifacts.

Legacy as World Forging Experience

What drives player motivation in a Legacy game is through not only their playable character development, but also how their actions impact the game world.

In Divinus, we explore this aspect of the game with Titles, Quests, and Location stickers.

Titles and Locations as a Narrative Driver

Your Demigod gains a title each time they fulfill some important Quest. Then you get a Title sticker for your player tuck box, but importantly, the app remembers everything! You never know when and in which of the further scenarios some special Event or interaction will refer to this specific Title bearer to make some important decision, receive a reward, or other opportunities. Or simply some NPCs will call your Demigod by this title out of respect for your achievement.

In the very first scenario, players may help Greeks to build the first Polis or assist Vikings with building a citadel. In the second scenario, these two Locations play a significant role when the first war consumes the lands of ancient Greece. Later on, in scenarios 3 and 4 various events will take place in these two locations and the Demigods bearing the Titles of “Polis Builder” and “Nordic Engineer” will take an important part in them.

What happens when you visit a Location depends on other factors as well. Who created or discovered the Location is not the only thing to consider. The events depend on who is exploring the Location in a given scenario and also who is the favorite of the Pantheon connected with this specific place. Imagine that Norse Gods' favorite may not be welcomed as warmly at the Greek Polis as the favorite of Greek Gods!

That’s the way the narrative intertwines with mechanisms in the Divinus legacy campaign. All your actions, choices, titles, and achievements are tracked by the app to fuel narrative events in further scenarios and make you really feel that you are forging the game with your choices.

Quest and Heroes

Quests are carefully crafted to boost specific scenarios and play a central role in Divinus gameplay. They present the goals for the players to compete for as only the first player to meet the requirement fulfills the quest. Moreover, they allow us to connect the narrative part with all new mechanisms presented over the course of the campaign.

In the second scenario of the main campaign, we have a Quest called “Places of Power”. To trigger it a player has to collect four sacred places symbols in their map. So far this gameplay element was completely unclear for the players. But when the quest is fulfilled players learn about the function of these symbols, starting from scenario 3. This way narrative helps to introduce new elements and foreshadow new mechanisms.

And there are several layers of them in the campaign. In scenario 3 players start to build temples on sacred places. These special stickers further deepen the favor “point salad” on top of Quests and Gods.

In scenario 4 heroes, represented by meeples or minis, enter the scene. Each hero has a completely unique mechanism connected with. Some of them join a specific Demigods team and in each scenario appear on their map creating new scoring possibilities, helping to overcome threats, or fulfilling Quests. Some of the heroes will change alliances over the course of the campaign making it possible to convince a hero to leave one Demigod and join the ranks of the other one.

There are also whole scenarios in the campaign built entirely around specific heroes. Imagine Odysseus ships that sail through a player map, which in this scenario will have a completely different shape than the 4x4 grid that you learned about at the beginning of the campaign. Or Theseus in Labyrinth of Minotaur where the way players add the tiles to their maps creates an additional spatial puzzle of leading Theseus through the labyrinth. Or… Ok, I guess I already may have said too much.

Monsters

Finally, we have Monsters, mythical creatures entering the scene to create one more source in this deeply conflicted world. Like two Pantheon’s fighting with each other would not be enough, right?

Each Monster, represented by a giant meeple or a miniature (if you backed The Chest of Plenty or use Pandora's Box monsters), has a unique mechanism. Usually, Monsters appear on the mainboard, blocking some of the map tile or action spots and creating a threat for all the players. Some Quests connected with a Monster show a way to overcome that threat which can give Demigods who will invest in that fight various rewards.

Often the story of a Monster intertwines with some Hero or God, making the web of connections even more interesting. For example, if a Demigod has Heracles Hero in their team when Lernaean Hydra enters the scene it may be easier for them to deal with that Monster. But if Goddess Hera, who actually sent Hydra to destroy Heracles’s city, is in play she may reward Demigods who actually let Hydra live…

That's all for this update Demigods, but please ask always add any questions or comments you have below and we'll gladly reply when we are able!

Here's to the final week of the campaign!

Until next time,

Quack!