 What's up everybody, I'm TheMangoose, you are awesome and today I'm going to be talking a little more about Ethereal, Clash of Souls. For those of you unfamiliar with Ethereal, it's a new third-person MOBA from Undying Games. Undying recently provided me some exclusive material in the form of artwork for their item system, as well as some information on how the item system will work. Without further ado, let's take a look at 5 of their items. We have the Reinforced Skiing, the Crimson Dragon Sword, Gloves of Redemption, Staff of Preservation, and the Rusty Ring. We currently don't have any stats for the cards that wouldn't really make any sense anyway seeing as we don't have any other kind of numbers to bounce stats off of, however I was told that the item type would correlate to what kind of stats they provide. For example, swords will grant physical power along with some other secondary stats and effects, so you know right up front that if you buy the Crimson Dragon Sword you're going to be buying physical power, so this item would be best suited for someone like Grognark or Dante. This ties into a very early statement from a theory all about their game. They want everything to be meaningful. If you have a shield you should be able to use it, if you have wings then you should be able to fly, and apparently if you equip a sword, it should increase your physical attack damage. Staves will provide magical power in addition to other attributes and effects, so the staff of preservation will be more suited to magical base myths like Icaica, Noxus, or Calia. By the way I may get in trouble for saying this, but I've seen the updated character model for Calia. They put more clothes on her and she looks much better. More clothes on a gal usually ain't my thing, but trust me, she looks cool. So we know from this information that it will be easy to know what items are going to work best with which myth based on the class of the item. We can also see from these pictures that each item has a tier assigned to it and each tier has its own color. I don't know if this means that you will buy one item and then upgrade it into a different item, but that makes the most sense to me especially with the Rusty Ring being a tier 1 item. I imagine you can polish it up to become an even better item as a tier 2. That's all conjecture though, I don't know for sure. While Ethereal strives to revolutionize many MOBA mechanics, it seems they'll be going with a pretty standard item shop. I think this is probably a good idea, keep the subsystems familiar while applying innovations to the gameplay itself. Something else I was told about the items is that they will tie into the lore of the game in some way shape or form. As always with Ethereal, they do everything possible to pay attention to every little detail in what they do. Crimson Dragonsword is a cool enough name in a vacuum that it will be even cooler if there is some meaning behind it. Speaking of attention to detail, have you ever seen items in any other MOBA that are so incredibly beautiful? All of these items will be rendered down from 2048 to 138 pixels in the game's UI. It's nice that they went into such detail with a much larger resolution so that it looks even better when you see them in game. And that's the essence of why I'm so hyped for Ethereal. No, I haven't seen gameplay and yes, most of what they have planned is over-the-top ambitious. But everything they have shown us so far has been so meticulously crafted. The level of detail and integration that they've applied to the item art isn't the exception for undying, it's the rule. The hero renders are top-notch, the map is incredibly well done, and the voice lines are better than what we normally see from AAA Studios. No, we haven't seen gameplay yet, but it just makes sense to me that they are going to put the same eye for detail, perfectionist attitude, and raw skill into the mechanics of the game. Before I go, I would like to say that at first, I was a bit skeptical that they could make some of their planned innovations work. For those of you who don't know, the main mode will be 6v6. The map has lanes that float on top of each other. There are flying heroes, destructible environments, and a slew of other off-the-wall features planned for Ethereal. But with every small announcement or teaser for the game that they release, I become more and more confident that not only will they be able to pull all of this off, but Ethereal will be the best MOBA of 2019 and possibly one of the best games we've seen in years. I know I sound super fanboy, and I don't care. Nothing has been able to satisfy my gaming edge since Paragon, and at this point, I'm almost 100% certain that Ethereal will be that game that makes me screw up at work because I'm lost and thought about item builds, or lose a ton of sleep because I keep playing just one more game until I realize that it's 3 AM. I'm excited for Ethereal, and I want everyone else to be too. Be sure to check out their social media links in the video description below, and I hope to see you all in the ether. But for now, I'm out of here. MANGOO!