Adepts - Making the Most of Them

A few weeks ago we introduced you to the Orders of Aelion, where you learned about your most loyal followers called adepts. These adepts are more than your biggest followers; they’re a major source of your personal power and utilizing them to their fullest will be the key to maximizing your potential as a god.

With that in mind, we wanted to delve a little deeper into the Order system today in order to talk about the differences between each adept and the exact ways in which players may influence their adept’s progress. To begin with, let’s take a look at the types of professions adepts can possess.

Professions

One of the key differences between one of your normal run-of-the-mill followers and an adept is its profession. Currently, each adept comes with one of the following eight:

  • Engineer – a technical genius
  • Templar – a guardian for the order
  • Sorcerer – a preserver of old rituals, ancient runes and traditions
  • Mystic – a master in all things “magic”
  • Preacher– an evangelist for your order
  • Healer – a capable physician
  • Envoy – a diplomatic representative
  • Agent – a paranormal investigator

Depending on the group, certain adepts are better suited for specific missions you assign them. For example, if you have a mission to curb an epidemic outbreak – you can send any of your adepts on that mission, but if you send an adept who’s also a healer, they’ll be much more effective at completing the task. For this reason, it’s important that you balance your order to include enough adepts to cover each type of mission you might have for them.

Adepts who return from successful missions bring back valuable rewards, including gifts and additional followers. Adepts can also fail missions – returning with only a small percentage of their rewards. As players increase the strength and rank of their adepts, they’ll be able to send them on more difficult missions with larger rewards.

After completing a mission within a designated province, your reputation within that province will increase for a limited period of time. Once your reputation with the province rises above neutral, local citizens will begin to show their gratitude by awarding you with a steady stream of gifts.

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Developing your Adept's Power

Managing your adepts involves more than just merely ensuring you pick the right one for the job. In addition to a profession, each adept who joins you also has a personal level and rank which affects their overall power level - as well as your own character’s power. As an adept completes missions they’ll level up; gaining more stats along the way and eventually becoming eligible for a rank increase.

Once an adept has reached its max level, you can carry out the rite of enlightenment; raising the adepts rank at the expense of resetting the adept back to level 1. However, the adept will now begin with higher base stats and when they level up they’ll gain additional stats per level proportionate to their new rank. Aside from an adepts rank, they’re also distinguished by their degree of talent. Talent determines a particular adept’s capabilities and ranges from Able (grey) to Talented (green), Skillful (blue), Gifted (purple) and finally Legendary (orange).

The more talented the adept is the more additional stats (such as critical chance) are provided to your character. Having more talented adepts is obviously preferable, but they do require players invest more time and resources to level them.

If a player happens to have two adepts of the same rank, level and talent they can choose to have one of the adepts mentor the other in order to increase its talent - at the expense of losing the mentor.

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Benefiting from Adepts

In order to gain the stat benefits from a particular adept you’ll need to assign them as patron to one of Aelion’s eight provinces you can unlock. Once a particular province has been unlocked, local citizens will erect a temple in your god’s name. Temples provide a direct stamina boost to your character and can be upgraded to increase this bonus.

After the temple is erected, players can use special relics earned to construct up to 8 chapels within the province. Each chapel provides unique bonuses to certain stats such as your critical strike chance. Once each province has been fully unlocked, players may select up to 8 unique stats from a total of 64 potential bonuses; providing players with ample opportunities to mix and match stats dependent on their current playstyle.

Like adepts, chapels are also distinguished by their relic’s power, which plays a part in determining your overall bonus from that province. Common relics can be obtained through adventures, but the rarest relics come from raids, invasions and other end-game activities.

It’s important to note that if you wish to maximize your benefit from a province, you’ll need to use both an adept and a chapel with a relic of the same quality. For example, if you have a “blue” adept, but select a chapel with a “green” relic, then your additional bonus stats will be limited by your chapel's relic.

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Missionaries – Putting Adepts out to Pasture

After you've spent some time amassing a healthy group of followers throughout each of Aelion’s eight provinces, you may find yourself with an excess number of adepts. If that’s the case, put those adepts to work! Followers who've overstayed their welcome can be converted into missionaries and sent out into the fields, permanently.

By doing so, these missionaries will bring you an impressive amount of followers and gifts. The more talented and higher ranking the adept was, the more followers and gifts you’ll receive. The downside is you’ll lose that adept from your roster forever, so it’s important you only convert those who you no longer need.

Practice Makes Perfect

The Order system is a vast wonderland filled with flexible choices for you to make as an immortal. While daunting at first, we encourage you to experiment with your adepts as you plan out your progression path, in order to properly maximize your strengths as a god. By putting in the time to improve your adepts and tend to your follower’s needs, your character will be rewarded with additional power and prestige befitting such a mindful and just god.

11/03/2014