http://eu.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/archivist.xml

quest bolt xD

We're really excited to finally announce the Archivist!

His design stems from you guys, the players, so it's really about "fan service" if you will. At BlizzCon and WWI we were receiving question after question "Can we play as Deckard Cain?" and "Please let me play as Deckard Cain" and "Deckard Cain should be a playable class" and on and on. So we thought, obviously we can't have you play as Cain, he's an important part of the story already, but what if we take the essence that is Cain... 'eau de Deckard'... and make a new type of character class. And we're really proud to be able to offer a first glimpse to you today, and say thank you for your loyal support.

He has a much stronger focus on lore, learning, research, and knowledge. He's obviously quite frail but he does carry some interesting spells into battle. All of his spells, as well as discussion with NPCs is carried out through the Radial Dialogue Tree, which is one of the major game systems we've been hinting at for a while now. It allows the archivist unprecedented control over his spells, as well as the inflection of his speech, body language, grammar, and cantankerousness which all figure in to a successful conversation. It's an amazing new system that no one has tried before, and really sets Diablo III apart as the premiere action-RPG of this lifetime.

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Q u o t e:
Is there a way to prevent dying at the end of Shush? Also, are you going to include new element - paper damage?

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Shush has been extremely controversial internally, we weren't actually going to show it off because it's still so early in design, but we felt it was an important enough part of the class to give an idea of the direction the skills are heading.

It's a powerful spell. Bottom line. You can see it in the video, it causes terrible, terrible damage to anyone within view of the archivist. To balance it, after Shush has ended, you explode. You do have a few seconds to continue playing though before exploding, and that can be extended with skill points. Also any creatures killed by shush will only drop health globes. It may seem a bit harsh but I've been playing and using it for a while now, and I can say plays out really well and it's a lot of fun.

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Q u o t e:
I don't think it gives enough spell control. As you can see on the bottom of the radial diologue screenshot, it's at page 3/7, and having to click through said pages would take too much time.

f5ga95

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The arrow keys on the keyboard can be used to swap through pages quickly, and we're thinking right now about allowing some type of alt+scroll wheel option to also quickly flip through pages but that hasn't been implemented yet so don't quote me on it.

A lot of the radial dialogue menu is about learning. Much like a new language or musical instrument, it takes time to train your brain and motor reflexes to hit the correct pronunciation/note/etc. Once you learn the 'language' of the radial dialogue menu, much of spell casting becomes second nature.

For instance, to begin casting a spell you choose page 1 option "Let's begin...", this activates the spell casting sequence. Then throughout each page you'll have multiple spell options. Since we've shown off Lorenado let's go with that one. To select Lorenado as your spell cast you then move to page 4, and select "Fetch me my shawl!" which begins the spell cast. Then you select four additional options that determine the spell length, distance, strength, and effect, from the over three hundred potential options throughout the radial selection screens (potentially expanded through item drops), and finally you finish the spell cast by going back to page 1 and choosing "Let's go." So it's really an intuitive and easy process, not to mention powerful!, once you memorize the options on each page.

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Q u o t e:
Quest Bolt: I wonder if this is how random quests are implemented. If so, then everyone will want an Archivist in their party so that they can quickly look for the best quests to do...
:-)

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Obviously it's an early implementation, but again we wanted to show the general direction and flow of the archivist skills.

The design of the quest bolt skill as it is now, when you cast quest bolt at an enemy the enemy stops and becomes a quest giver (hopefully that was obvious from the video :P). You can then talk to them, and based on a few factors like their race, creature type, and gender, they have a pool of randomized quests you can accept from them.

Once a creature becomes a quest giver, it can't be killed by anyone in your party. As the quests are based around the archivist, he's the only one that can accept the quests. The quests generally don't offer material rewards, but instead give the archivist and player what the class is all about, and that's learning. You'll get far more insight into the world and past of Sanctuary than anyone else, but of course the trade off is being ill-equipped to fight or defend yourself very well.

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Q u o t e:
While gazing upon screenshots of this new class I noticed a brain floating in water where the mana orb is located. Is this an updated version of the mana orb, or is this by chance new system, such as the barbarian's fury system?

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That's the archivist's resource system, currently (and lovingly) referred to as Knowledge. It's used for most actions, same as mana or fury, and is replenished by researching the scrolls and tomes that lay around the world. One way to make this easier on the player is through the use of Book Vision, which highlights all available Knowledge resources in the area.

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Q u o t e:


Creature sex? So, sexual dymorphism confirmed? Will monsters be able to breed then, to replenish their numbers lost against adventurers?

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... I've said too much.