Nova

Nova is a player-versus-player game built around elemental abilities, mana management and customizable combat. You combine elements into Dualities, tailor abilities with talents, and harvest, craft and fight for Augmentations.

Combat and mana

Abilities have no cooldowns; instead, they consume and restore mana, so efficient use of mana helps you stay competitive in combat for longer without saving crucial cooldowns for later fights. Crowd control, healing and movement are limited. Crowd control has prerequisites, typically breaks when its target takes damage, and is often avoidable with good play. Shields are favored over healing, and healing and shielding often require offensive actions, reducing the advantage of retreating and stalling.

Most abilities require you to stand still while casting. Strafing slows your movement, and walking backwards slows it further. You can move faster by using a directional dodge every 3 seconds or by turning away from the fight and running. The game has no clones, forced movement, invincibility, invisibility or pets; mechanics are evaluated for potential abuse, and those considered likely to cause unnecessary frustration are not included.

Elemental Dualities

Combine Fire, Frost, Nature, Shadow and Storm to form up to 10 Dualities. Each element has 7 abilities, giving each Duality 14 abilities. The elements operate independently, with no direct interactions between them, leaving you to create your own combos and synergies.

Talents and abilities

You can replace each ability with different talents that change how it works, letting you strengthen your advantages or address weaknesses. For example, Inner Fire restores 500 mana over 5 seconds by default; its talent instead restores 375 mana and increases movement speed by up to 100% over 5 seconds. Thorns normally roots the target and deals damage when they use mana, while its talent roots the caster and absorbs damage when they use mana.

Harvest and fight for Augmentations

You can harvest, craft and fight for over 50 Augmentations that enhance abilities and mechanics. Harvesting resources scattered across the land grants basic Augmentations, such as increased maximum health and faster mana regeneration. You can provide skilled artisans with the required component Augmentations to craft specialized ones, or fight creatures and enemy players for powerful combat Augmentations.

Examples include Hunt and Gather, which increases movement speed by up to 100% for 10 seconds after harvesting Combathorn, Elementium, Manabloom and Vitalite; Improved Fire Whirl, which makes Fire Whirl return to the caster when it expires, damaging and slowing enemies in its path; and Mobile Mentality, which lets you cast an ability while moving if you have full mana. Vitalite increases maximum health by 50 per stack and stacks up to 10 times.