What To Expect From Trove's Mantle Of Power Expansion

Trove’s Mantle of Power expansion went live today for players that purchased a head start package. I got the chance to sit down with Trion yesterday for a walkthrough of the new features the expansion is adding. Mantle of Power is described as an expansion that is made for “players that have played a decent amount of Trove, maybe ran out of things to do, [or] maybe want more to do.”

Here’s what you need to know.

The hub world has been modified slightly. A new, “ much more majestic” adventure tower has replaced the old one, now able to hold all of the game’s adventure portals.

Adventure portals now cap at Uber 9 instead of the previous cap of Uber 6. The level cap has been raised to 30 to match.

There are four new worlds, each of which represents a “full new procedural [ruleset].” The four new worlds are an air world, a fire world, a water world, and a shadow world. The team has spent time working on the world generation technology to create “more expansive feeling worlds.”

The shadow world is an all-new world with some of the hardest content that the Trove team has ever made. It contains new enemies and “rivers of spikes,” “dangerous exploding blue things,” and a new type of quest. It is not a place you can go to farm. You obtain a key from a different part of the game and then take it to the shadow world and use it to complete the new type of quest. The specific quest I was shown was a wave quest that required the player(s) to defeat three Shadow Golems and survive for sixty seconds while smaller mobs spawned continuously. It is not designed to be taken on alone.

A new type of boat has been added that allow players to safely sail across lava. If they try to sail across lava with a regular boat, their boat will be set on fire.

A new level of equipment called “Stellar” has been introduced. Stellar equipment is not only more powerful, but provides a small aura around the wearer when equipped.

A new set of three “Primordial Dragons” corresponding to the three elements of the gem system has been added. Each dragon gives a “10% increase to power rank” from the gem of its element. The air dragon is the fastest mount in the game and it will share its speed with any mounts that fly with it. The water dragon fires projectiles that create waterfalls and lakes in the open world. The fire dragon shoots faster than any other mount and can fire continuously if the fire button is held.

You can unlock each of these dragons by obtaining a Diamond Dragon Egg from an Empowered Gem Box—which also contain empowered gems. Empowered Gem Boxes can be obtained through the Shadow Tower or contests. Contests will be weekly leaderboards that allow you to compete for a chance at empowered gems and dragons.

The aforementioned gems are a new type of equipment that are being introduced in Mantle of Power. There are three types of gem—Air, Fire, and Water—to match the three elements of the new game worlds. Players can equip three of each type for a total of nine gems. Gems are obtained by killing monsters and completing dungeons in a world of the same element as the gem.

There are two types of gem—regular and empowered. Each element has two regular gem slots and one empowered gem slot. Empowered gems provide an “additional ability or ability modification” more than regular gems would. All abilities and modifications provided by empowered gems are automatically activated under specific circumstances. Examples given include the Spirit Surge gem, which, when you get hit, has a random chance to spawn a “ring of projectiles” that applies a DoT to all enemies it hits based on your maximum health and the Pyrodisc gem grants a random chance at turning into a “flaming ball of fire” temporarily upon killing an enemy.

There is a special type of empowered gem known as a “class gem” that will modify your class’ powers. When a class gem is equipped, a frame is placed around the power in question in the hotbar to denote that it is being modified by the gem. The example given was the Scoop n’ Gloop gem for the Candy Barbarian, which modifies the its Sugar Crush power. When equipped, using the Sugar Crush power will cause the Candy Barbarian will launch into the air, crash down, pull enemies towards it, and snare them temporarily.

Gems can be leveled up with a combination of gem dust obtained by deconstructing other gems and flux. Gem dust is element-specific, so you would have to deconstruct water gems to get water gem dust to upgrade another water gem. The max level for each gem depends on its rarity. Stellar gems are the highest rated with a max level of 25.

As you level gems there is a “beefy amount of randomness.” In addition to randomness in terms of drops, stat upgrades on a per-level basis are randomized within a specific margin. The example I was given was that you may have a gem that gets between 10 and 20 additional attack power for a specific level upgrade.

The Trion representative that I spoke with stated, “I never expect to see anyone completely max gems ever.” I was told that you can get better gems as you progress, but the true best in slot may never be reached, much less for nine different gems.

Mantle of Power is designed to give players new ways to progress and new content to explore. There is a decent amount of difficult content included, as well as a new type of gear that may always have room for improvement. My initial impression is that the new content will be quite the grind, but perhaps that is exactly what Trove needs right now.

You can get access to the Mantle of Power head start now for a minimum of $14.99. The update will be available to everyone on April 26th.