The Way of the Monk

The Monk will be a melee fighter capable of supporting and healing allies while using martial arts and mystical abilities to defeat enemies. The great truth seeker will have some very special features, such as harmony, virtues or serene. A Monk can be played in a very special way and, at the same time, is expected to integrate seamlessly into the Tibian world. In fact, one of our main goals was to ensure that the new vocation holds a unique position without undermining the value of others or rendering them obsolete. We are very happy about the arrival of the Monk and hope you are just as eager to experience what it is like when they spring into action.

Artwork 

For the promotional monk artwork, we had two artists from our team working on that piece. We used this opportunity to bounce ideas between those artists, as both worked on thumbnails for the first draft. Once we had an overall direction, the artwork was passed back and forth until the idea was finalised. The painting would focus on the upcoming monk class but carry an air of mystery to foster interest and curiosity in the viewer upon revelation. When rendering the artwork, one artist prioritised working on the foreground while the other worked primarily on the background. It was a total blast!

Item Design

Creating a new vocation also came with the challenge to create new weapon classes and armor which often had to be integrated into existing sets. New weapon types were, for example, nunchakus, sai forks, claw gauntlets, katars, or battle staffs. From simple training weapons to animated best-in-slot items in the Sanguine or Soul sets, the content team had quite a long wish list we had to work through. A lot of equipment sets from recent years now needed to be expanded by monk weapons with similar design elements.

This prompted questions such as: How do we differentiate new weapon types like sai forks or katars from existing daggers and swords? In this case we changed the orientation of the item. While swords generally are pointing towards the upper left corner, the sai forks and katars are positioned from the upper right to the lower left corner. A new dual-wielding feature was also introduced, and pointing to the lower left corner looks like the natural holding position when the sais and gloves are mirrored in the weapon hand slots of the inventory.