Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard - Gameplay

Gameplay

Dragonshard combines aspects of real-time strategy (RTS) and role-playing games (RPGs). Games take place on dual level maps divided into the surface world of Eberron and the underground realm of Khyber. Units travel between the surface and the underground through gateways that are fixed on each map. The surface map features traditional RTS gameplay: the player builds and develops base structures, gathers resources, and amasses and upgrades an army. Unlike most real-time strategy games, all units are available at the beginning of the game, rather than having prerequisites to allow their construction. There are three player-controllable factions in the game: the Order of the Flame, the Lizardfolk, and the Umbragen.

Armies consist of the following unit types:

• Champions: the game's hero unit. In campaign mode, the player chooses a champion before starting a map. In skirmish and multiplayer modes, the player summons a champion from the city headquarters. Each race has four champions: a fighter, a cleric, a wizard and a rogue. Each champion offers unique abilities and army bonuses.
• Juggernauts: powerful, expensive units summoned from the city headquarters. Each race has a unique juggernaut unit, and only one may be summoned at a time. They can't venture into the underworld however.
• Captains: upgradeable units trained from unit-producing structures. Captains can be upgraded to level five. As they gain levels, they get new abilities and also gain a squad of subordinate soldiers, up to a maximum of four soldiers at level five. All races have a variety of different captains, including flying units, tanks, rogues, healers, resource gathering specialists, spell-casters and ranged combatants.
• Soldiers: support troops that are automatically trained by captains when in the vicinity of one of the player's bases. Soldiers cannot be ordered individually; they automatically follow their captain, which allows for large armies to be created with less micromanagement than in typical RTS games. Soldiers always take damage before their captains, and effectively multiply the captain's health as well as damage potential. Since soldiers cannot go underground, each soldier is converted into additional health for the captain. The captain's health is converted back into soldiers when the unit emerges on the surface.

Only champions and ground-based captains can travel underground, which focuses underground gameplay on a party of individual units rather than the surface world's squad-based armies and plays more like a role-playing game. Underground maps feature party-based dungeon crawling gameplay: units must negotiate traps, gather treasure, and hunt monsters. Items are stored in a global inventory accessible to all units.

Dragonshard has three resources:

• Dragonshards: used to construct units and buildings. Dragonshards periodically rain from the sky to the surface map.
• Gold: used to construct units and buildings. Buildings generate a small amount of gold over time, but the majority of gold in the early to mid-game is gathered by exploring the underground map for treasure, completing quests and looting corpses.
• Experience points: used to upgrade troops. Experience points are gained by killing units, destroying buildings and completing quests.