MMO Skill Tree & Abilities

v1.0.0

1.0.0 ships active abilities for the first time. The plugin previously only granted passive stat rewards through skill trees. This 1.0 release adds 31 hotbar abilities and a triggered-passive lattice across every combat tree, plus a flat-first damage rebalance, real-momentum dashes with i-frames, the new Dodge basic, the Dodge Counterattack passive, and a sweep of bug fixes.

Active Abilities

• Unlock through the skill tree — abilities live as ABILITY_UNLOCK rewards on tier nodes, just like any other reward. The skill and level that unlocks an ability are defined by the tree, so admins can re-home an ability with a single config edit
• Bind via /mmoabilities — open the bind page, drag any unlocked ability onto hotbar slot 7, 8, or 9
• Press hotkey to cast — a cooldown pip appears on the HUD; your held item stays where it was (the slot snaps back automatically after a brief revert)
• Fully tunable — every numeric and asset-shaped value lives in mods/mmoskilltree/abilities.json. Server owners can retune damage, cooldowns, radii, projectile models, sounds, animations, on-hit effects, and XP routing without a plugin rebuild

Triggered passives — combat trees + L100 capstones

Every combat tree (Swords, Daggers, Polearms, Staves, Axes, Blunt, Unarmed, Archery, Magic, Artillery, Defense) gets:

• One promoted passive at low / mid level on each tree — fires automatically on on_hit_dealt, on_kill, or on_finisher events. Examples: Coup de Grâce (Daggers Lv 11) lands a 2× execute swing when you hit a target ≤ 25% HP; Cleaver (Axes Lv 25) detonates a 4-block ground burst on every combo finisher; Pyromaniac (Magic Lv 57) +20 damage on Fireball hits
• Two L100 capstones (Pick 1 of 2) per combat tree — augment specific abilities, apply real status effects to the victim, or drop damage zones at the kill site instead of generic % multipliers. Examples: Cataclysm (Staves) makes meteor leave a 4-second burning crater at impact; Multishot (Archery) gives every Scatter Shot pellet its own bleeding wound; Stagger (Blunt) stuns for 0.75 s on every hit; Arcane Resonance (Magic) leaves an 8 dmg/tick magic field on every spell-killed corpse

11 promoted passives + 22 capstone definitions across the combat trees (Pick-1 nodes lock you to one capstone per tree at Lv 100), on top of the 31 hotbar abilities and Wind Dancer.

Damage rebalance — flat-first, % gated to endgame

A ground-up rework of how damage stacks. Percent-damage rewards multiplied with each other and with weapon-tree bonuses, and paired with other mods the chain hit one-shot territory long before defenses could kick in. Now percent damage is a rare endgame multiplier; flat damage is the bread-and-butter at every other tier.

• Low and mid tiers (Lv 5–65) no longer give % damage. Every "Damage +X%" reward in the early/mid tree has been replaced with a flat "+X Damage" reward. Flat damage adds after all multipliers and the ability-stack cap, so it doesn't compound — your Tier 0 reward is exactly as strong at Lv 100 as it was at Lv 5
• % damage is endgame-only. Tiers 8 and 9 (Lv 80, Lv 100) keep their STAT_DAMAGE, LIFESTEAL, and COMBO_DAMAGE percent rewards, with values roughly halved
• Combo finishers and lifesteal got the same treatment — flat at low tiers, percent only at L80+
• Two new unique-passive choice tiers per combat tree at off-grid levels (Lv 11–29 lower, Lv 52–78 upper). Each is a "Pick 1 of 2" with hand-crafted passives: execute-style flat damage that scales when the target is below a HP threshold, full-HP openers that reward fresh engagements, ability-filtered specialists ("+15 Power Strike Damage", "+20 Fireball Damage"), and low-HP rage rewards

A maxed-out Lv 100 build sees roughly 12% lower peak burst vs. the old percent-stacking max. Mid-game (~Lv 40) drops more sharply because flat doesn't compound — by design.

Dashes are real dashes (momentum + i-frames)

The five DASH abilities — Leap Strike, Berserker Charge, Shield Slam, Shadow Pounce, Lumberjack Leap — write a one-shot velocity impulse that physics carries through the world, slowing on collisions and decaying with air resistance. Dashes also grant i-frames — a brief invulnerability window during the slide. Hits that connect mid-dodge are cancelled outright, and any incoming knockback is stripped. Defaults: 200 ms for most dashes, 300 ms on Shield Slam (longest, tank-flavored), 150 ms on Shadow Pounce (briefer, assassin timing). Server owners can tune every value (velocityHorizontal, iframesDurationMs) per ability from mods/mmoskilltree/abilities.json.

Dodge Counterattack — Acrobatics + Defense passive

Time a dodge so a hit lands inside the i-frame window and your next swing hits harder. Souls-style parry-then-execute, built into the skill tree as a passive you unlock and scale instead of a hardcoded ability rider.

• Generalist "+25% Dodge Counterattack" options at Acrobatics Tier 4 (Lv 30), Acrobatics Tier 6 (Lv 50), and Defense Tier 4 (Lv 30). A fully-invested generalist hits 1.75× damage on every successful dodge counter
• Specialist tiers that only apply to a specific ability — Shadow Counterstrike (Acrobatics Tier 8, Lv 80, +50% extra when you dodge with Shadow Pounce) and Bulwark Counterstrike (Defense Tier 7, Lv 65, +50% extra on Shield Slam dodges). A Shadow Pounce specialist with full investment caps at 2.25×; a Shield Slam tank tops out at 2.0×

The dodge timing window (50 ms by default) and how long the counterattack stays armed (750 ms) are server-tunable in mods/mmoskilltree/abilities.json.

Held-weapon gating

Fourteen abilities require the appropriate weapon category — Power Strike + Leap Strike + Rallying Cry need a sword, Whirlwind + Sunder hold an axe, Shield Bash + Shield Slam + Guardian's Call need a shield, Vampiric Strike + Shadow Pounce need daggers, Hunter's Mark + Piercing Shot + Volley need a bow. Hot-swap to the wrong weapon mid-fight and the cast aborts cleanly — no cost, no cooldown.

Inventory-item ability casting (opt-in)

Some players use the mousewheel to scroll through the hotbar, which causes the keypress-driven ability casting on slots 7-9 to mis-fire — abilities trigger mid-scroll, casts get dropped. There's an opt-in alternative on the abilities page (and in /settings): toggle "Cast Abilities via Inventory Item" on, and three new items appear in your inventory — one per ability slot. Use an item to cast the ability bound to that slot. The items are reusable (don't get consumed), and while the mode is on, hotbar slots 7-9 work as ordinary hotbar slots. If you ever lose an item, click "Restore Missing Items" on the abilities page (15-minute cooldown).

UI

• Cooldown HUD — pip-style cooldown bar shows your bound abilities and their remaining cooldowns. Each pip displays the ability's icon (the same one shown on the bind page) with its hotbar key above and a seconds counter below — hover to see the ability name. A subtle blue fill behind the icon drains as the cooldown ticks down. Configurable from the Admin Config menu (vertical anchor / horizontal align / X-Y offsets)
• MultipleHUD compatibility — if the MultipleHUD mod (Buuz135) is installed, the ability HUD coexists with other HUD-using mods (Coordinates HUD, Block Information, Equipment Plus HUD) instead of replacing them. Auto-detected at startup; falls back to the standard slot if not installed
• Bind page filtering — search box (filters by name or flavor text), sort buttons (Name / Level / Skill), skill filter dropdown, category chips (Combat / Gathering / Crafting / Misc), Hide Locked toggle, empty-state messages
• Distinct icons for every ability — each ability shows its own thematically picked Hytale item icon on the bind page
• Reward icons across all menus — every reward that grants an item now shows its actual item icon next to the reward text in the skill tree, item rewards, achievements, and quest menus. Stat-shaped rewards (like "+5 Max Health") get a representative icon synthesized from the reward type. Locked rewards appear greyed out with a "Lv N" badge so you know which level milestone unlocks each one. Native Hytale item tooltips on hover

Configuration

• Fully tunable abilities.json — Damage, cooldowns, radii, projectile models, sounds, damage causes, animations, on-hit effects, XP routing, and nested behaviors all live in the config
• Configurable damage cap — server admins can tune the pre-defense ability multiplier ceiling via mods/mmoskilltree/skill-config.json (maxPreDefenseMultiplier, default 4.0). Raise it to allow bigger combo numbers, lower it for tighter PvE balance
• reward-icons.json override config — server admins can remap any reward icon. Three precedence layers: per-skill overrides (highest), per-combat-target overrides, and per-reward-type defaults. Set a value to "__DISABLED__" to suppress an icon entirely

Ability localization

Active ability names, flavor text, and the dynamic damage/radius/duration summary are translated into the player's chosen language. Numeric values come straight from the ability's config, so balance changes propagate to every language without re-translation.

• Ability names — all default abilities resolve their display name through localization
• Flavor descriptions — the hand-written intro line on the bind-page tooltip is per-language
• Dynamic summaries — the auto-generated sentence describing each ability's effect (e.g. "Launches a projectile dealing 40 damage in a 4-block radius.") is built from per-archetype templates that translators can re-order to fit each language's natural sentence flow

Ground AoE polish

• Each ground AoE has its own bespoke effects — meteor (telegraph ring → cataclysmic fire burst), volley (overhead arrow streaks + real falling arrows), seismic slam (dust telegraph → rock burst), thorn patch (sprouting plants → poison drips)
• Volley actually shows arrows — each tick spawns 4 cosmetic arrows that freefall from sky-height onto random points in the volley zone
• Meteor's fireball lands when its damage hits — the falling fireball is timed against the 2.5-second drop window so the visual impact and the actual damage tick fire on the same frame
• Seismic Slam sounds like the earth moving — switched from a battleaxe swing sound (the wrong weapon) to a stone-impact windup plus a heavy earth-stomp on landing
• Thorn Patch starts with a plant rustle — the cast plays a foliage rustle (sprouting thorns) instead of repeating the same poison world hiss it uses for the impact
• Per-tick sound effects — ground AoE abilities can play a sound on each damage tick

Bug fixes

• /mmoawardxp works without a trailing world argument — the admin XP-award command no longer requires --world to be passed. Run /mmoawardxp <player> <skill> <amount> from console, in-game, or from a quest-reward command and it just works. The command picks up the world from the player sender, or from the first available online player when run from console. Old callers that still pass a world name continue to parse cleanly
• Custom Skills admin page opens again — the Custom Skills page (and its wizard) crashed silently on open with an internal array index error after the acrobatics movement triggers were added in 0.16.1. Both pages now render correctly from every entry point (admin dashboard button and help guide)
• Quest claim button refreshes after claiming a repeatable quest — used to stay visible after claim, making it look like rewards weren't dispensed. Rewards were always being granted; only the row visuals were stuck. The page now refreshes on a successful claim so the quest moves out of the active list and the row reflects its new state (cooldown, or available again if there's no cooldown)