Melia

The crown princess of the High Entia steps into the battlefield, using her powerful spells and mastery of ether to forge a new era.

Melia is a highly versatile character, equiped with a lot of spells to help her control the battlefield.
Her zoning tools are numerous and varied! It might look overwhelming at first but I promise, its straightforward in practice.

She has a good set of normals, allowing her to rush at her opponents, but be careful! She is quite light.

Make sure to check out her home stage made by ATalksToSelf here!

Aside from the ability to float, Melia can create elemental orbs using her mastery of ether. Those orbs serve two purposes:
-While on Melia, they will grant her small buffs. (Buff effect depends on which orbs she has)
-They can be thrown with Nspecial to act as varying projectiles.

She can carry up to 3 orbs at once. No new orb can be gained until she has less than 3.

The buffs are individually small, but can add up and become quite powerful. They are stackable, which means that if you have multiple orbs of the same type, the corresponding buff will be stronger.
Mix and match your compositions to fit your playstyle!

-Flare: Increases knockback.
-Bolt: Increases damage.
-Aqua: Periodic healing. (additionnal Aqua orbs increases the healing frequency)
-Wind: Increases air mobility.
-Earth: Increases weight and reduces damage taken.
-Ice: Reduces ground friction.

(I recommend trying out the triple ice or triple wind orb compositions, they are pretty funny)

Pressing Nspecial allows Melia to throw her most recently acquired orb like a projectile. Of course, you lose that orb in the process.

Each orb has its own properties and trajectory:
-Flare: Goes straight and far. (Kills decently)
-Bolt: Goes straight forward and follows a set path after a delay. (Higher hitstun)
-Aqua: Bounces depending on launch height and slows down with each bounce. (Good for area coverage).
-Wind: Goes straight and slows down over time, remains for a decent time. It also knocks opponents straight up. (Can be thrown in advance to launch opponents in it)
-Earth: Goes in an arched trajectory, explodes on impact with terrain. (Powerful on hit)
-Ice: Advances slowly for a moment before speeding up. (Covers horizontal close ranges)

Note that releasing orbs fills 1/8th of her meter. When the meter is full, you can press attack + special to unleash Mind Blast!

You can also hold the move to open the orb selection menu. It works like Smash Shulk’s monado arts wheel.
This lets you freely select orbs!

Mind blast is a powerful but situationnal move, it has a big charge time, but deals enormous damage when opponents are right in front of her. She can move around during it to adjust her position.

The meter will gradually get drained during the startup portion until its empty.

Forward air is in two parts. The second part will throw the most recent orb at a slightly higher angle than Nspecial.

Up air is also a two part move. The second part is an ether blast that is stronger when directly touching the cross shape.

Dstrong and Ustrong respectively grant Melia an Earth and Aqua orb.

This move release a flaming tornado in front of Melia. Holding the move will push the tornado’s spawn location further away. It will stop if it reaches an edge.
You can walk freely around while holding the move.
Grants Melia a Flare orb.

Melia creates a large icicle that quickly turns into a spiky mass of ice. It will remain on the field and slowly fall down if left untouched.
It will damage anything it comes into contact with. After a short duration, even Melia will become hittable by the icicle.
It can be pushed around if attacked, and will instantly shatter if it touches solid terrain.
Grants Melia an ice orb.

The icicle does a great job covering air space.
Note: The flaming tornado will push the icicle away.

Melia summons a powerful upwards windstream. This windstream pushes any player up, aswell as her projectiles.
By holding the move you can delay the activation slightly. During that time, you may press left or right to influence the windstream’s push direction.
This is a very powerful recovery option, you can stay inside off-stage to delay your recovery, or throw projectiles in it to change their trajectory.
Grants Melia a wind orb.

Summon Bolt creates a small electric ring on the field. This ring can be destroyed by foes who attack it.
It will create a purple static area around itself.
By itself, it does nothing… However, if a thrown orb comes into contact with it, the ring will detonate, casting a thunderbolt on the closest foe, within the area of effect.
Grants Melia a Bolt orb.

You may notice that the ring appears above Melia. It can be difficult to hit with an orb straight away, but the trajectory of the Bolt orb that you will receive (if you’re not already full) will line up perfectly with the ring, if thrown at the same height as the move.

A tricky pressure tool, meant to deny space or to extend your combos with well timed strikes.

When Melia has orbs on her, said orbs will rotate around her during Neutral air’s use as active hitboxes.

Woooh! This grind is finally over!
Melia took me a long time to make, even with experience. The amount of stuff to set up and sprite was larger than any prior project I did. Regardless I’m pretty happy with how she turned out and I hope you enjoy playing as this weird amalgam of Zelda, Palutena, Lucina and Peach!

A decent amount of liberties have been taken when designing her. I wanted to incorporate the aspect of casting and releasing orbs regularly based on the situation. That said, I had to get creative with how each summon move acted to create a diverse a cohesive kit.
In that sense, I tried giving each move use cases that would fit their original intent in Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Obviously, the ice orb’s friction property is nowhere close to the original, but I don’t see a good translation of ether defense into Rivals (and also slippery ground is funny).
Anyway, more mods coming in the future!

-Character belongs to MonolithSoft
-Animation DoomyWoomy
-Code: DoomyWoomy

-ATalksToSelf, Aperson, Cyrano du Sud: for detailed feedback throughout the dev cycle
-ATalksToSelf: several alts, dual release with the stage
-Rix: Heavy contribution on Uspecial’s animated visual effect
-JPEG warrior: The cool after effect with variable colors idea
-People who supported the project during its developpment!