Infinity Stones Saga

Two overhauls in one release. The stones: every stone has a fourth power, every one of the eighteen older powers does something it did not, the stones look like the films' stones, and the Snap can be stopped. Nidavellir and Stormbreaker: the forging is cut again from its first frame to its last, with effects and sounds of its own for every beat of it, and Stormbreaker is a new weapon: a new shape, and nearly everything it does is new.

The forging at Nidavellir

• It opens on a dead star. Take the arms of the iris and for two seconds the great rings are dragged round a star that is still dark; then it catches, and a shell of fire comes down the rings at you.
• The full force of a star. What goes through whoever holds the iris is one column of white fire from the star's heart to the crucible, with plasma winding round it. It breaks on their body (light thrown off to every side, embers torn away down the forge) and draws together again to land on the Uru. It grows for as long as they hold. The whole forge trembles, and a shot that looks their way burns out toward white.
• Every shot is new or recomposed (18 on the forge, 4 that follow someone): the rings from the forge floor, straight down them on a long lens as the star catches, dead ahead on the catwalk as it comes through, as close as a camera goes on what it is costing, the crucible going over seen from beyond its lip, the fall from the floor beside the mould, the weapon hanging with the storm waking in it, and its crossing seen over the shoulder of the one it is coming to.
• The star, the rings, the metal, the mould and the weapon are all drawn anew: a star with a ragged corona and arches of fire standing off its edge; rings with index marks alight and two heads of fire chasing round them; ingots that glow and then slump; a pour that is one stream with a head you can watch down the channel and into the mould; hammer blows that throw sparks with weight in them; Groot's arm as five lengths of wood that wind across to the mould, close round the heads and are cut; a mould that breaks with light coming out through the cracks; and a new weapon that hangs spitting lightning, crosses the forge trailing it, and lands in a hand as three strokes come down out of the sky.
• A title card worth the moment: the weapon's name set letter by letter, a rule drawn under it, and where it was made.
• Every sound of the forging was made again (the star has a voice, the iris is a shutter of six leaves, the pour is one five-second sound cut to the pour, the handle's sound has the cut in it, the music is rewritten to the scene as it now runs), and eight are new: the star catching, the ingots singing and then giving way, the wall of fire, the lever, the storm waking in the weapon, its crossing, and the sky answering.
• The rules of the forging have not changed: three peoples, the same cost, the same hired hands. The star now catches two seconds after the arms are taken, and the weapon hangs a little longer before it goes.

Stormbreaker

• A new shape, the film's: a great bearded crescent of a blade ground to a bright edge, engraved, with the lightning's channels cut into its cheek; a blunt hammer behind; and Groot's arm for the whole handle, crooked and knotted, closed round both heads in fingers of wood. Its inventory icon is drawn from the same outline. In first person the blade leads, where you can see it.
• Hold use to draw it back, let go to throw. While it is drawn the storm gathers into it: arcs out of the air into its head, its channels and edge alight. A touch throws it as it is; held for a second, a stroke comes down into it and it goes with the thunder in it.
• It goes through everything in its path, out and back, instead of stopping at the first thing it meets, and each creature takes a stroke of lightning that leaps on down the line. It follows your eye for as long as it is going away, so a throw can be bent round a pillar or swept along a rank. A full-drawn throw goes further and harder, and where it turns for home or meets a wall the thunder breaks on everything near.
• It cuts the Gauntlet's beam in two. Thrown down the line of Thanos' beam, the beam ends at the axe: nothing behind it is burned, and it lands half again as hard on him.
• Skyfall: in the air, sneak and use. You come down like a bolt along your look, and where you land the lightning runs out along the ground: everything within seven blocks is struck and thrown. The higher you start, the harder it lands.
• The Bifrost comes down. Sneak and use on the ground: the axe goes up, a ring of runes burns into the ground, the sky opens, and a second and a half later a column of every colour lands on you. It takes everyone of yours standing within three blocks, sets you all down where you were looking, and lands there like a hammer: everything within six blocks is struck and thrown. The same runes burn at the far end first, and the bridge leaves its knotwork in the ground at both. Raised to the sky it still goes to Jotunheim and home.
• Its flight is its own: eight seconds (Mjolnir's is four and a half), wreathed in lightning; the air breaks as it reaches full speed; at that speed it goes through whatever is in the way; and flown into the ground it lands like a stroke of lightning.
• Its lightning is its own: a rope of strokes out of the sky, thick arcs that crawl from one enemy to the next and hold each where it stands, with their own sound. Come to Me is answered with a stroke onto the axe where it lies.
• Its tooltip lists what it does, one line to a power, and the Field Guide has a Stormbreaker page. 17 new sounds for the axe and the Bifrost.
• Mjolnir is as it was.

Overcharge: hold use

• Tap use for the stone's ordinary power; hold use and it overcharges. Light gathers in the hand (each stone its own way), a hum climbs, a ring fills round the crosshair and the lens draws in. Let go for a power of its own, stronger the longer you held. While the overcharged power cools down, a hold gives the ordinary power instead.
• Power, Rend: a line of three to five blasts marching away from you along the ground, a fissure of violet light running ahead of them.
• Space, Singularity: a black hole where you look. For up to three and a half seconds it drags in creatures, arrows and dropped items, grinds what reaches its heart, then collapses and throws everything out.
• Reality, Aether Grasp: tendrils of the Aether seize two to six enemies in front of you, lift them, crush them for two and a half seconds and dash them against the ground. A boss is bound where it stands.
• Time, Age to Dust: years land on one creature (eight blows of time; what dies of them blows away as ash; a young animal simply grows up), or on a place: stone cracks to cobble, brick mosses over, copper goes green, grass dies back, leaves wither, whatever grows ripens. Reverse Time undoes it.
• Mind, Sceptre Volley: three to seven bolts of the sceptre's blue, each finding a target of its own. The Mind Beam still starts the moment you press use; hold it all the way and the volley follows it.
• Soul, Soul Chain: the soul you look at is chained to those near it for twelve seconds: what one suffers, each of the others suffers six tenths of. Each chained soul that dies heals you a little.

What a stone does in your hand, unasked

• Space: no fall hurts you. Mind: nothing clouds your mind (nausea, blindness, darkness) and nobody takes it. Soul: every life you take heals you a little. (Power's strength in a gauntlet, Reality's bubbles and Time's loop on death are as before.) Each stone's tooltip says what it does.

The older powers, all eighteen

• Power Blast: its force goes on through the one it strikes, and violet fire burns for four seconds where it went off. Shockwave: tears up to twelve blocks out of the ground and throws them. Infinity Purge: drags enemies in while it gathers, hits for 70 (bosses 36; were 60 and 30) and looks like the stone's own fireball and wall of fire.
• Blink: cuts every enemy you blink through. Wormhole: a closing portal cuts any creature standing in its mouth. Moonfall: the moon pulls enemies up off the ground before it falls, and comes down in two great pieces (three from a full gauntlet).
• Rewrite Reality: spreads to the creatures standing beside the one rewritten. Illusion: the decoy bursts when struck down or when its time is up, hurting and blinding what had closed on it. Unravel: what is unmade stands as a heap of coloured cubes for ten seconds.
• Stop Time: you move and strike faster while it holds. Reverse Time: every ordinary power of every stone you were waiting on is ready again. Dormammu's Loop: each turn costs more than the last (2, 4, 6...).
• Mind Beam: held longer while you hold use, and ends in a burst where it lands. Take a Mind: the mob is made whole when taken, and a thrall that dies breaks in a burst that hurts your enemies. Enthrall: reaches 24 blocks (was 20) and holds for five minutes (was three).
• Soul Rip: a creature of 24 health or less dies outright and feeds you. Soul Sight: every enemy soul in reach is laid bare: seen through walls, and your blows land a third harder on it. Soul Harvest: each soul taken adds to the blow on a boss.
• Each of these has an effect and a sound of its own (a portal shutting like a blade, shafts of light under the moon, glass that was never there breaking, runes running backwards, a bell lower each turn, a crown of blue closing on a taken mind, a lance of souls...).

How the stones look

• The stones are the films' stones: small rough crystals, white-hot at the heart and their own colour toward the edge, instead of jeweller's cuts. They are lit where they are, so faces flash and darken as a stone turns.
• The inventory icons and the jewels on the gauntlets are drawn from those same shapes.
• The 3D gauntlet is rebuilt: jointed fingers, each stone a low dome in its own housing, the Mind Stone in a framed setting, polished plate instead of the old pattern of small seamed squares. It sits higher and larger in first person.
• Holding the bare Power Stone is a vortex: six great rings of smoke stacked in a funnel, each turning against the one below, a column of violet light from the stone into the sky, lightning from the column to the rings, and pieces of the ground carried round.
• The shared ring and burst that many powers use are redrawn.

The Snap

• The stones gather for two seconds before the fingers meet (it was under half a second): one stone to a beat, lightning in its colour tearing from the gauntlet into the ground, the ground shaking harder each beat.
• A snap can be broken. A snapper who takes 8 damage while the stones gather loses the snap: the power bursts back out of the gauntlet at them, everyone is told, and they can try again after ten seconds.
• When the fingers meet, everyone near has their sight drawn in and held until it lands. The dusted leave as ash on the wind.

Changed

• A stone's ordinary power now goes off when you let go of use, not when you press it (the game has to know whether it was a tap or a hold). The Mind Beam is the exception: it starts on the press.
• 46 new sounds in all (21 for the stones, 25 for the forge, Stormbreaker and the Bifrost), all synthesised; texts in English and Brazilian Portuguese.