Great rewrite of the Dark Sphere and a lot of good general formatting stuff for spheres in general.

For general sphere stuff there's a lot of clarity and new formatting that has been added. Being able to read sphere effects like they have stat blocks like a regular vancian spell helps determine what the effect even actually is to begin with, in addition to range, targets, durations etc. instead of having to parse through both flavor and mechanics at once is a great change. And adding more tags to make talents types more easily searchable and uniform is also great. Obviously this stuff only applies to the dark sphere right now but it does make for a good framework for the rest of the spheres to be reworked or polished up, as it were, so looking forward to that.

As for the actual dark sphere itself, it's really cool. Following in the vein of the Tinker sphere, there's a lot of mashing together talents of talents so that picking one option sometimes opens up the door for having a bunch of options open up at all at once. While some talents give more options than others I would say the overall balance between the talents is fine, especially because the more options a talent has generally the less powerful each individual option of that is. I also appreciate that there is like an almost "glamor" and "figment" style thing in the "cloak" and "gloom" tags so you already have a much better idea of what the effect is supposed to be before you cast it, and better separates the original "dark," "blot," "meld," and "Shadow" tags.

It feels like a great AOE debuff sphere overall, and it definitely feels like if I invest into this sphere now I don't just like, pick a talent and leave it forever (which I still could if I wanted to,) but there's actual benefits to going deeper and deeper into the sphere. Especially because a lot of Advanced talents require other talents to function, making the whole thing feel like it feeds into itself which is just fun for the vibe of being a master at that specific sphere.

Also has a lot of cool archetypes. Being able to add a shadow or darkness theme to anything that I do will never not be cool to me no matter how old I get and so I enjoy being able to merge together dark and destruction sphere stuff in the elementalist archetype or be shadow/dark monster with the Shifter one.

Overall, solid book, can't wait to see more of what Diamond Polished Spheres have to offer and darkness themed stuff is cool.

The main two things in this book that I really loved were the Communication Sphere Assist talents and the center piece, the Advisor class. There's a lot of other stuff for spheres and archetypes, like a performance sphere focused Prodigy that's pretty neat, but those were the two things I cared about the most.

Firstly, the Assist talents help out with aid another stuff, giving it better bonuses, better uses and making it more useable. However, it completely side steps the issue of having the game breaking levels of bonuses that Aid Another can be traditionally stacked up to, so that's nice. And overall, it's a really nice supplement to non-magic supporting.

Non-magic supporting you - I - say? Why yes, to compliment this new category of talent there's the Advisor, a totally non-magical support that builds off the aid another stuff of the communication Sphere. That's only a small fraction of it though, as it is has some nice features to make you feel like a commander with a home base and also comes with Synergies. The Synergies are really cool and I really like them. They are essentially like Mandates from the War Sphere - two allies gain a specific benefit under certain conditions - that kind of thing, though less rigid. But the real cool part of them is the Synergized Actions where the two allies can do some kind of cool synched action by both spending their own actions.

I really the class because not only does it help fit the "Commander giving bonuses" vibe, it also really helps make your team feel more like a team and doing teamwork things, and getting cool combo actions to do.

Overall, big fan of the book, big fan of the classes, I enjoyed the talents, including the ones I didn't mention, and it was just great.

3 Archetypes for classes (I guess technically 4,) and the cornerstone of the book, Conjuration Companion Archetype the Avatar.

The Avatar is a neat concept where it's kind of like a phantom from Spiritualist in which it can possess just kind of live inside the wielder, but rather than being able to be summoned at any point and act as a full on Eidolon like most conjuration companions of the Phantom, it instead only really gets to do stuff through class features.

Both the Void Conduit and Void Dancer do stuff that I find to be pretty awesome. Without deep diving too hard into the archetypes I do love that they themselves get the ability to do stuff on their, the caster's turn, to give an action or ability or whatever to their companion, the Avatar, to do in their stead. Obviously because the Avatar is never summoned this is a necessity but I am a huge fan of being able to command summons so that as a summoner I can feel like my turn is still related to the Conjuration Companion and I'm not just off in some completely different sphere doing my own thing while my companion does another.

Void Rusher is something I absolutely adore. In addition to just loving the reference it is based on, I love the thing that Prodigy has in it where it can build up Links in a Sequence and do a cool Finisher. Void Rusher allows the Striker to do something much similar, in having a resource build up and then allowing you to ahem, engage in hype beast mode. Technically speaking Striker could already do this by spending all of its tension in one round and giving itself a +whatever to hit and damage, but the way its done in Void Rusher is way cooler. Also it can use weapons, that's dope.

Overall, love the book, the archetypes.

At around the time that this book came out I was looking for a way to play some kind of master of magic theory and making the most out of magic items rather than being a proper mage itself. And this book sure did deliver on that.

The big seller of this book is naturally the new class in the Conduit, which as mentioned above, is a caster but less about actually picking up magic talents or spells and more about using this preloaded list of Magic Sphere talent combinations that rely on casting them from Magic Items that meet certain prerequisites. A real iron mage vibe.

The class's second half of its features also rely on using Hack Magic from the Spellhacking Sphere to more easily hack magic items and also make the hacks themselves something of a resource that you spend on doing cool things like punching really hard, tanking hits really well or some other unique third thing depending on other class choices. The class is really cool overall with its only issue being that you because both hacks and the magic items that you hack for the class are like "ammo" for what the class does, in addition to the pseudo spells you use, there's a lot to keep track of.

The two archetypes for this class, Runescriber and Interdictor, both alleviate this issue at the cost of versatility but increase some other part; the Runescriber not needing to be as reliant on magic items/spellhacking, and the Interdictor eschewing the pseudo spells entirely to instead hit and shield really hard.

There are other things in this book but the main standout thing to me was also some new quality of life talents in the Spellhacking Sphere. Like being able to attempt to hack magic more than once a day per talent per target, or being able to hack things that have no magic items, or just having more useful things to hack.

Overall, really solid book, I might be a little biased because again it came out the perfect time for me but I still do really like the class and all the other nice features that were added into it.

The Death Sphere is perhaps one of my favorite spheres in the game. Mostly because I've always been fond of the ghost strikes and being able to readily debuff people whenever possible as a way of fighting. This handbook doesn't add much in way of ghost strikes, but the ones it does add are very welcome indeed. It does, however, add in a lot of ways new ways to reanimate using different sphers as well as new things to do with your undead. All in all a great addition to any necromancer. Also adds a great new slew of archetypes that bring something cool, creepy and a bit gross in the case of the Symbiat's archetype, to the table that really get the death juices flowing.

The blood sphere was something I didn't know I wanted until it had already come out. It's a very cool thematic and a very great sphere focused on bleed damage, drain tanking and lots of debuffs. At times the sphere can be a bit loaded as to how fast and easily these debuffs can stack, but also has a bit of a balancing act against itself in how fast they can also all be cleared away. Overall, great sphere and love to see more blood stuff in the future.

The Fallen Fey sphere had existed before this handbook, but it had the problem of being a sphere that was really weirdly niche and didn't do all that much even within its niche. Now it's got a lot more added and rewritten to it to make it a properly functioning and flavorful sphere for if you like Fey stuff. By itself, it's still not a sphere you would ever fully specialize in but it is definitely now a great utility sphere to dip into and pair with whatever else you're doing in your build.

Illusion has always been a bit of an awkward sphere in spheres and this helps it out considerably. Adding in clarifications, more talents, more categories of talents so you know what everything is supposed to do and also just more things to do in the form of tricks, or minor illusions. Adds cool archetypes to make use of these tricks as well. Overall, makes the illusion sphere - a very talent intensive sphere - all the more appealing to invest in.

Introducing a drunken fist monk, it brings in a new way to use the barroom sphere. Honestly, the archetype probably didn't need to be alcohol focused and the thematic might not be for everyone, but it brings about a unique method of power scaling in having a stacking system of bonuses and penalties the more drunk you are. Which is pretty unique and cool from a design perspective. It also has a feature called Eight Gates of the Drunken Master.

The weather sphere has always been a bit of a strangely imbalanced sphere given how fast it gives an incredible amount of world shaping power that affects a large area, with a safety net that is also sometimes too large to properly function. The book doesn't do anything to fix the problems with the base weather sphere, but it never set out to do that so I can't really judge it for that. Instead, it adds more options to the weather sphere that are weather themed but don't have to deal with the cluster that is the base weather sphere. With buffs in the form of Mantles and debuffs in the form of Shrouds, it gives a wide breadth of options to the player while also still being able to use the weather to their advantage. The archetypes are also cool. You can throw lighting at people. That's cool.

Probably one of the books I had anticipated the most during its playtesting life cycle. The world walkers handbook gives a bunch of new options to the warp sphere and barely any of them involve teleporting. Which is fine because the sphere basically already had all of that covered from release. Instead it adds to the "Bend" talents to add the field of manipulating space and that sweet reality fabric, a concept that existed when spheres first came out but was hardly expanded upon now. This makes the warp sphere become not just a one-trick pony in that all it does is warp, but now adds a lot more utility through buffing and battlefield control with it. The book also contains some neat archetypes including a teleporting monk, for all you warping punch enthusiasts.

It's a neat archetype for Blacksmith that as far as I understand adapts the concept of the Artisan class from DDS into a more spheres friendly class. Basically, as far as crafting is concerned, this archetype is supposed to be the best and most cost effective way to ever do crafting. As a result it suffers from not really doing that much beyond crafting and using enhancement talents, and also weirdly gets less crafting feats then the base Blacksmith class itself.

I've always been fond of poisons and was glad to see that there was some more love for them coming out in the form of Apocrypha books. And this really just helps fill in some missing gaps for conditions and debuffs, as well as still allow you to deal damage with your poisons. Overall great addition.

The talents in this book are pretty neat and very niche. They're a bunch of self buffs that can be cool in concept but aren't really that likely to come up with and can some times be a bit underwhelming. I'd be glad to see more cognition talents in the future but most of these probably just aren't going to be used.

It's literally called the Bear Sphere. It gives you bear arms. It lets you arm bears. BEARS!!!