Magicka Recovery, it regenerates? Options

[RobRendell]

I was re-watching the video footage of the X05 guy failing to fireball rats at

http://rmjv.net/vi/oblivionx05gp1.wmv

and I suddenly noticed that his magicka was constantly regenerating. He'd fire off a fireball, and the blue bar would drop, but then it would creep up again as he continued along.

Has anything been announced about this? Do people think it was a feature that they just added for X05 to allow people to blaze away with spells, or is it part of their changes to meet their stated strategy of making playing a pure magic character more feasible?

It would certainly change things compared to Morrowind, where you only recovered magicka (naturally) through sleeping. It would also make the "Atronach" star-sign more balanced... missing out on constantly regenerating magicka is a rather more significant penalty than missing out on the ability to recover it during down-time.

(I would have searched these forums to see if this had come up before, but the search function still isn't working, whinge whinge. Although, instead of saying it's been disabled, it now says I don't have permission)

This post has been edited by RobRendell: Oct 15 2005, 11:14 AM

[RobRendell]

No replies? A subject not comment-worthy to anyone but me, apparently.

Well, I've seen confirmation that magicka does indeed regenerate constantly. This translation of the review from the Russian site that had the screenshots posted in another thread mentions that:

Magic has improved thanks to the impressive visuals and the wide fantasy of Bethesda's art team. Now it has finally become dangerous even in the hands of a novice mage, wince mana reserves are regenerated all the time - even a simple fireball can wreck havoc.

(I'm presuming the translator meant "since mana reserves are regenerated", and that "a simple fireball can wreak havoc"... I'm hoping they weren't saying that fireball spells wreck the physics engine )

So, there you go. Constantly regenerating Magicka, as if you were wearing a constant-effect "restore magicka" item in Morrowind. I think that's worth raising an eyebrow over... it'll certainly improve the viability of pure-magic characters.