Path of Exile - Divination Card Stories - The Skeleton and The Bones

Divination Card Stories - The Skeleton and The Bones

Posted: 17 Nov 2020 03:45 PM PST

In the third entry to this series, we asked SinnerSteven to share the backstory of creating two divination cards, first The Skeleton and then The Bones.

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Starting back in mid-2016, I heard about Path of Exile when I saw some friends talking about it online and posting art of the game's unique items. I've always loved ARPGs with my first ones including Nox, Darkstone, Sacred and of course, Diablo.

Like many people my favorite class in those kinds of games was summoners, more specifically a necromancer archetype. It had been a long time since I played just a good game with a necromancer in it, so when I heard of there being one in Path of Exile I was very interested. I jumped right into the Prophecy League with some loose advice from friends playing in a party and put together a pretty terrible spectre build using the giant bonestalker skeletons. It was a hilariously ineffective build at the time, but I had so much fun messing around with the summoning skills and passive tree I didn't even care.

Naturally I got hooked in with how interesting the skill system was and went on to try dozens of other builds over the years. Grinding away with the goal of getting currency to fund even more builds to try league after league is what keeps me coming back. There is, however, one build that always pulls me back no matter how many times I play it, and that's Summon Skeletons.

For the longest time I've always adored the concept of a skeleton-raising necromancer so I played the build practically every league. From skeleton mages to the even more recent skeleton archers, I've had the most fun and success playing around with some undead bone boys. And of course, I'm always fearful of necromancer nerfs come time for patch notes.

Now that brings us to the cards, at least the very first one I did, The Skeleton. By 2019, I've supported GGG quite a bit through supporter packs and was pretty happy with that, but I always felt like I wanted to do more. Previously before I contacted support to see if I could create a unique, the original idea being an amulet that buffed skeletons and made them bigger, but they weren't accepting unique designs at the time. Of course this led me to the next best thing, a skeleton-themed divination card. The idea was simple enough, a card that gave a high quality summon skeleton skill gem, fitting for a high quality skill.

It's a pretty basic concept for a card, but it means a lot to me since I really do like skeletons a lot and summoners as a whole. The art and flavour text of the card was meant to be more of a nod to the joke of "there's a skeleton inside you", just a bit of silly fun I wanted to have with the card.
The second card I did, The Bones, was meant to be a continuation of the first card. I originally wanted the first card to be a vaal summon skeletons but I quickly decided to make another card instead as a follow up that was a higher than normal level instead of quality.

With this card I had a much more clear idea for the art and text, with it being a full skeleton now surrounded by many others. I wanted to capture that feeling I first got when I used vaal summon skeletons, since having an army of skeletons as a skill is a really amazing thing. The art for both of the cards far exceeded my expectations and I was pleased with the dynamic of the cards.

Even though they aren't the most rewarding of cards, I'm proud of the marks I've left on the game. Summoners are the bread and butter for myself and many others in this game and I'm glad I could put some love of that into these cards. I hope my fellow exiles can all enjoy the occasional skeleton friend at their side sometime, because there are plenty of them to spare in Wraeclast!