Heroes and Heroines,

Late last year, you had the chance to share your ideas and wishes for a new class in an in-game survey. Based on that, we created three rough concepts and asked you in March which one you liked best. The clear winner was the Blood Weaver.

Concept Phase

Here are some of your most frequently mentioned ideas that inspired the Blood Weaver:

• Lifesteal: The class can heal itself through the damage it deals. This ability helps in long fights but comes with a lower Defense stats.

• Shapeshifting: Transforming into an animal (frequently mentioned: a bat) greatly increases the chance to dodge or makes them temporarily invulnerable.

• Bleed: Attacks cause bleeding, dealing damage to enemies over several rounds.

• Rage: If health drops below a certain threshold, attack power increases sharply, while Defense decreases at the same time.

• Main Attribute: "Intelligence" was your favorite, but "Dexterity" and "Strength" were also mentioned often.

Decision Phase

Afterwards, we designed rough class profiles from these ideas. This way, you could get a good understanding of each class in the second survey without ever having played them.

You voted for the Blood Weaver with the following abilities:

• Blood Pact: The Blood Weaver can perform a ritual, sacrificing a portion of their current Hit Points to unleash an additional attack.

• Death Seal: When the Blood Weaver suffers fatal damage for the first time, his "Death Seal" activates, resurrecting him and inflicting a Damage-over-Time (DoT) effect on the enemy for several rounds. While this debuff is active, the Blood Weaver also gains a dodge chance.
  
  

The Blood Weaver will be a Strength-based class.

With this profile, we tried to combine your ideas and ours as best as possible. Unfortunately, it's impossible to include every single wish.

The following image gives a first impression of what the attacks or effects might look like in-game. Please note that the artwork is a work in progress.

Next Step: Final Game Design

Now that you've decided on a class, we're fleshing it out. This includes things like balancing, animations, and interactions with existing classes. It's important to us that new classes integrate well into the world of Shakes & Fidget.

Later Steps: Closed Beta & Polishing Phase

As soon as the first playable version of the Blood Weaver is ready, the Closed Beta phase will begin. Using the feedback, we'll run further tests until the final polishing phase. If everything fits perfectly, the Blood Weaver will move into Shakes & Fidget.

However, those steps will take some time. Our schedules depend on many factors, such as the development of other content: What can be worked on in parallel, and where do we need to prioritize?

If you want to read more info about the development, check out the article on the Plague Doctor. When that class was introduced, we also shared more details about the individual development phases.

Even though we can't integrate all your ideas and only one class could win, we are thrilled about your suggestions and active participation. Thank you very much! Who knows, maybe your ideas will pop up in another new class someday.

As soon as we have new details about the new class or the Closed Beta tests, we’ll announce them here!