The Ninja class has finally arrived as of the May 17, 2016 Patch. Another race / gender locked class and the second one for the Elin lovers out there. And the forth in a series of Over Powered classes.
In spite of the cloth armor she wears, she’s a bad-ass DPS dealer. Mostly this is because, like the brawler, once she gets started, it’s easy to keep the target[s] from getting a spell in edgewise or any other wise. Like the Brawler before her, many Ninja spells elevate and silence the target[s] doing very effective crowd control on all but the bosses.
After being away for almost two months, I came back to Tera about a week after Ninja was released, and things calmed down a little, to she how she plays and to see how other things level, so I have almost finished leveling a Zerker as well as finishing the Ninja and a Brawler who was at about 40 to 65. Here are my thoughts on the current state of Tera.
Update at bottom: How to level 60 – 65.
The Whole Game has Changed
The whole game has changed over the past year or so. Starting with the update that basically made “zone” quests obsolete, all the XP was moved to the Story quests with some minor XP left in the Vanguard Requests – which are pick-up quests that you get from the Vanguard dialog rather than an NPC. VR Quests give about 5% per quest, but Zone quests give about 2% or less, so there’s no reason to do Zone quests at all until you reach 65 and either want achievements for finishing quests in an area, or you need Rep, which the zone quests still provide. There is no reason to delay your leveling by wasting your time with zone quests except for some strange cases.
Another thing that has become largely obsolete is Dungeons below level 60. You can skip all the dungeons except Necromancer Tomb and Sky Garden, which are a good idea so you can get the follow on quests. The “Fate of Arun” quest line is locked out if you don’t finish NT and that’s a major problem for leveling from 50-55. Sky Garden allows you to complete the Fragment of Hope quest line to attempt to assemble the staff of Saleron. These quests are easy to solo and give good XP as well as good gear. Sky Garden is popular. I’ve never waited very long to do it when I show up. And it’s beautiful. Don’t miss it.
Once you reach about 58, put on your woolies and you can go to Habere and complete the “Into the Furnace” quest line up to the point of the dungeon. No need to complete the dungeon. You’ll probably have trouble finding a team to do it, unless you bring your own. Not sure why, but I never get into these. There are 3 in the area and I’ve only done them once. The only problem with this quest chain is the Escort of the Popo engineer, which can be easily soloed by Ninja, Brawler, Reaper and Gunner, but all other classes at 56-58 will need help. Fortunately folks out there know this and an Area chat request can usually bring a 65 player to your aid. The rest of the quest chain is easy to solo once you work your way through the fortress to the forge entrance. That’s confusing to find and you’ll be fighting 58 mobs as a 56-57. But once inside the instance, the mobs are easy. Even the boss there is nerfed for solo ease.
This brings up another odd thing about the adjustment of the game for Story Quests. The mobs surrounding the Story quests were not adjusted and so are sometimes a higher level than the mobs in the story quests or instances themselves. This means that you may have to go grind some zone quests or a dungeon to get to the right level to move on.
Once you finish “Into the Furnace” quest line, you may need to do zone quests surrounding Habere until you reach 59 so you can continue with the “Cleansing Tirkai” quest chain at Pathfinder Post. If you can do the Dungeon “Labyrinth of Terror” that will work too. But you should be 59 before you move on, even with an OP class.
Once at Pathfinder Post, it’s an easy matter to follow the “Three Towers” story quest chain and reach level 60 and once there, move directly to the Fate of Arun Quest chain to reach 65. No reason to complete the Argon quest chain. You can come back and do it later. If you have not quite reached level 60, doing a few quests of the “Fire for Effect” quest chain will put you over the top and ready to move on. After completing the Three Towers, Fire for Effect is a “Face Roll” as they say.
Once you reach 64, you may have trouble pushing it over to 64. Stop and do a couple of runs of the Sabex Armory to get to 64 1/2. The Vanguard Requests give out either due to level or after you do more than so many per day. But you can do dungeon runs to make up the difference. At 64 you can do Macellarius Catacombs, which can be quite exciting.
The last few quests in the Story Chain to 65 are challenging for all the non-OP classes. But Ninja, like the other OP classes before her, can easily do this chain. I’ve complained before about my experience with the other classes. Mysic / Priest are fine. Slayer and Warrior are harder but possible. And Archer and Sorcerer are downright an issue, and this is before the final push into the fortress. I’m sure some folks know how to do this, and I could level those classes up to 60 with no real issues. But I hit a wall at 62 with both of them. Guess I should just grind dungeons with them to get them over the top.
Flight is not all it’s Advertised to Be
Flight is an easy quest to get a frog. You’ll see. Anyway, the problems with Flight in Tera are:
You can’t fly very long. Your mount quickly tires out. Sigh. Well, another way to make money. Can you blame them?
And you can’t fly where you would like to. You can’t fly in dungeons of course, and you can’t fly in the “Old World” which are the two places you are going to go play now that you are 65.
The only places you are likely to want to play are either grinding dungeons at the highest level to get that fanciest gear, or if you are like me, grinding Rep in the level 60 or lower areas to get Rep for some goodies, like that panther mount. Look it up. It’s sweet.
But you can’t fly in either of those places.
I’m not much in favor of Flight in Tera at this point.
Photos in Highwatch get old pretty quickly.
So I’ll play for a while, but then I’ll probably get pretty scarce again in Tera. If I could fly to do that Rep grinding, that would stay fresh a lot longer.
Update: How to Level 60 – 65
Some classes are hard to push through the story quests from 60 to 65. All of them can easily ride the SkyCrusier and get new 60 gear, but after that thing get tough for the older classes that have not had updates. Specifically:
Archer who is overwhelmed with less than adequate closeup damage and crowd control. She just can’t do enough damage quick enough to keep the baddies at bay and she gets overrun.
Sorcerer has better crowd control and does better, but still can’t do enough damage solo to make good progress.
Berzerker does ok for crowd control of small groups, but has much lower DPS than you wold hope.
So for these and any other classes, just go grind Sabex Armory and then alternate between Sabex and Macellarius Catacombs as soon as you can run that. You should get new gear in Sabex, so be careful and pick up a complete set of armor and accessories as you go. No new gear in Macellarius, except of course your level 64 Avatar weapon, which is your last.
You will get glyph boxes in these dungeons. As you apply them, you are safe to just accept the popup that says you are replacing a similar glyph. This is just really warning you of an upgrade, never a downgrade as far as I can tell, so always accept it. Some glyphs will be saved until you are 65, and many are duplicates which you sell for gold.
At level 65 you will get a set of new quests including Fresh Arms and Legs. This is your complete set of Idoneal armor and accessories. You used to get a weapon too, but now you don’t. Just continue to use your level 64 Avatar weapon. Morick’s Research Paper is the quest to get a flying mount. But as above, it only flies in Northern Arun.
The Sky Castle quest to escort for a brooch is gone. I guess you grind some high level dungeon for your brooch now. No worries. Just ignore that if you don’t want to grind all those dungeons.
Ominous News takes you to Island of Dawn for the new level 65 content there, which mostly requires more than one person to complete.
Enjoy. At least you have a reasonable path to level 65.
If you want to grind dungeons, there are plenty:
:ww
Windy Weather 