FAQ/General Design

Q. What are the core design principles?
The 5 Pillars of Design are: dynamic, heroic, skill-based, event-driven, and realistic. These are the major themes guiding the creation of Chronicles of Elyria and stand for:
 * 1) Dynamic: If something in the world can change - it probably should.
 * 2) Heroic: For characters to be heros, they must perform heroicly
 * 3) Skill-based: Any action that requires character skill should also require player skill
 * 4) Event-driven: There is a constantly evolving story-line that is impacted both directly and indirectly by player choices
 * 5) Realistic: Game mechanics should feel natural and realistic - more like a simulation than a game

Q. I read somewhere this was an RTS, RPG, kingdom management ... thing. What does that look like?
Correct! To the adventurer it's mostly an AARPG. (Action Adventure Role Playing Game) If you purchase land and start building a town it takes on more sim-like elements. Running a county or duchy will feel a lot more like an RTS, and for the Kings, it plays more like a kingdom/resource management game. At each level of play new user experiences become available help make managing your new role easier. And unlike most RTS/Kingdom Management games, in CoE, your units are the other players!

Q. What classes are there?
None! Chronicles of Elyria is a fully skill-based system, in which the skills you use determine which skills you're good at. There are, however, schools you can join which will provide certain benefits such as ranks and titles, and will help you develop certain skill sets more quickly.

Q. What kinds of skills are there?
Skills are broken up into 7 primary trees; Art, Crafting, Combat, Gathering, Guile, Lore and Survival. Within these trees are secondary and tertiary skills, such as "Defence" and "Blades" for the Combat skill-tree, and "Cartography" and "Interrogation" for the Lore skill-tree.

Q. What are the mini-games you mentioned for non-combat skills?
Mini-games relates to the ability to produce something that is better than average through skill challenges, these are an online character only mechanic.

A player, for example, might be required to cut-out a stencil of an axe head, however factors such as level of the crafter skill or more complex a shape being crafted largely determines how large a margin of error or time available to complete the stencil mini-game is available.

More information is available by clicking the thumbnail on the right.

Q. Can I have multiple characters in my account?
Yes, every account has a 'soul pool' and you can choose one of them and inhabit a character using a spark of live. Also you can use another spark of live to inhabit a new character using one of the unused souls from the poll. The other souls would be residing peacefully in the Akashic Records, waiting to be given life.