Here's some information about the desert campaign, it's still a while before this is done, but at least you know a little more!
This could be seen as a major spoiler both on some graphics, but also how the entire campaign works, so people who really cares should not read below this.
The campaign takes place around and inside the Sun Temple just outside the town Sunspot in the arid desert of Aridara (I'll show you the "HW-world map" sometime in the very very distant future).
Ok, so the
primary themes you will be playing inside are, the
Desert (h),
Temple (g) and
Cave (e) settings. You start out in the desert, this is also where all vendors will be located, most npcs and such. Caves uses these zelda-ish flowers instead of barrels and vases, there's much more vegetation and it uses raisable bridges instead of doors. The temple design is compared to the cave more similar to the original hw campaign, it uses much more traps and difficult enemies. These themes are shown below.
The
level progression isn't as linear as it was in the old campaign, it's more free now and you will be returning to levels already completed, later in the game, both by choice and as a requirement, there will not be any such thing as a block that will prevent you from returning to a previous level after you completed a boss - if you forgot something you can go back and get it. The picture below describes it better, where the red ones are natural progression, dark red are shortcuts activated later and blue are teleport shortcuts.
The teleports that takes you to back from the hub level needs to be activated from the level you want to travel back to, for example, if you want to go back to the second cave level, you need to find and activate the teleport there, if you don't you will need to walk the long way back through the first cave level. Teleports are activated through a special teleport rune key, you are never required to activate them, but it will make it much easier for you!
Difficulty level is higher, for several reasons, both because it's less levels and also because it's more free. Less levels means that enemies gets more difficult faster and things deal more damage earlier.
The second factor here is how you choose to level up your character, the vendor system in this campaign is completely different from how it was in the original, where you met vendors as you went along and they always became better and better and you could just buy whatever you wanted when you found them. Here you collect minerals that you use to level up the vendors, you are free to level them however you want, so you could just level the damage vendor to level 5 as soon as possible, however, while this will grant you possible excessive damage, it will also hinder you from gaining walk speed, armor, health, mana and combo, so you unless you plan on taking little to no damage, this might be a bad choice, also, money is still a restriction, leveling something to level 5 will most likely keep you from buying all those level 5 upgrades anyway. There's not gonna be minerals to level up all vendors to level 5 and there's not gonna be enough money to buy everything in the game - so it's a bit trail by error here for people playing it the first time (I had a small idea about refunding and reusing minerals, but I don't think it's such a good idea in the end).
The
HUD will represent some of these changes, like the mirrors that are part of the quest inside the temple, the teleport rune keys and the minerals used to level vendors, the bronze key has been removed completely.
Some other
random information is that it's going to be two bosses, new traps, new enemies with new behaviors, a new bonus level, a stronger story and lore and more randomized sections and parts, new achievements and some easter eggs.
Things not attached to the campaign itself is the two
new classes of course, with first and foremost the thief (he was the rogue before), he has smoke bombs and throws daggers, he also gathers more gold than other players, but also spends gold with some of his skills, those skills are really good but you might want to save your money too and not over use them. There's really no information about the priest, other than that I want him to redefine how you heal other characters and also reflect this into scoring, but it's up to myran to design them, the graphics isn't made yet, but it's underway, at least I can show the thief, the design is based upon the Defias from wow.
