From the system section:
When you travel about dungeons and field areas, you may find material called 'Soul Essence' laying about. Some of it is hidden, some of it is in plain sight. It is up to the player to find them. You spend your collected Soul Essence on this menu here to gain stat bonuses to help your characters alongside Rank ups. Think of it as a reward for going out of your way to find them. Each character has a max Soul Rank of 20. The cost of increasing a character's Soul Rank is the number of the next rank. So advancing to Rank 13 will cost 13 Soul Essence. That is about all there is to the menu.
However, I got an Email from DBAce9Aura who brought to me his opinion on how the Soul Shaping System was kind of bare as it was. After thinking on it. I agree with him. He also gave me plenty of great ideas on how to improve it. Many of which I plan on implementing. Right now, here is what I have.
As you increase your Soul Rank, in addition to gaining stats, you get additional bonuses in the form of passive abilities based on which category you choose when ranking up. There are 9 passive Abilities. They are divided by category and rank. So each category has three ranks of passive abilities. The catch here is that there are twenty Soul Ranks. So you can only gain 3 passives from the system. What you get depends on your choices. But you can gain any combination of Rank 1, 2, and 3 passives. Here are the passive abilities planned.
-- Soul Striker --
- Fury - 10% of Max HP is added to damage when performing Burst actions. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 5 via Soul Striker.
- Ail Strike - Chance to inflict a random status effect at the end of a Burst Action. (Poison/Debuff/Stop Movement/Freeze). Gained when getting to Soul Rank 10 via Soul Striker.
- Exceed Strike - Burst Damage is increased by 50 for each EX Block the attacker has in stock. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 20 via Soul Striker.
-- Soul Guardian --
- Healer - More LF and EP is recovered from Focus and LF from LP Revival is increased. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 5 via Soul Guardian.
- Watchful Guardian - LF and EP recovered from Crisis Recover is doubled. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 10 via Soul Guardian.
- Stalwart Guard - Parry is increased by 100 Permanently. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 20 via Soul Guardian.
-- Soul Magus --
- Rejuvenate - Regain an extra 2 Ether each passing turn. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 5 via Soul Magus.
- Magus' Will - Start off battle with an additional 10 Ether. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 10 via Soul Magus.
- Mystic Power - Ether Skills gain an additional bonus damage modifier based on current EP * 3 + Soul Rank = bonus damage. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 20 via Soul Magus.
And this is it. You can only get any combination of the first, second, and third passive abilities. So you can never get Fury, Rejuvenate, and Healer together!
As a note, I've decided to cut all passive bonuses from Strike Chains. They are meant to be basic attacks only for reducing enemy barrier. Making them more useful will take attention away from burst and ether, which would mess up the real focus of the battle system in my opinion.
This is what I am currently implementing. Is this good? Should there be more passives? Is it a horrible idea and I should burn in hell for all of eternity?
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And to leave off, have some art!
Art by Sathane
