Cryptic Studios Dives Deeper Into Workstations, Magic: Legends' Progression System

Last week, the team at Cryptic Studios introduced realms in Magic: Legends, a kind of menu system that tracks and enhance your planeswalker's progression in the game through a variety of specialized workstations. Today's dev blog offers an even deeper dive into the system, explaining how realms "capture the simplicity of popular ARPG crafting systems and blend it with the sophisticated flexibility of a skill system to provide comprehensive character advancement."

A realm's workstations are powered by Planar Mana, a resource players gain -- in the five colors of Magic -- by completing missions and ordeals or using the Mana Vault workstation. At the heart of your realm is your Aetheric Core, which limits how powerful your other workstations can be. Those include the Mana Vault, which stores and can slowly accumulate Planar Mana; the Arcane Library, used to research new spells and procure resources; the Artifact Workshop, for acquiring and upgrading artifacts; and the Cartographer, which focuses on late-game content.

Like any good real estate mogul, players can also invest in lands, which will increase reward multipliers for resources gained in the color corresponding to the lands.

Workstations will work on projects in the background, simmering to completion as players conduct their adventures elsewhere. The blog piece gives an example:

For example, if a project requires two hours to complete, a player can kick it off and then immediately return to hunting Artifacts and running content with friends. A couple hours later, they can return to their Realm and reap the rewards.

I'll bet you a Black Lotus and a set of Moxes that there's going to be some sort of cash shop item that will let that two-hour project complete instantly.