Category: Tera

Tera – Time for Class Hauls?

TERA-logo

Time for Some Tera Class Hauls

No, not Class Halls, but Class Overhauls. One of the things that impresses me about World of Warcraft is that they are willing to periodically change major aspects of their classes and supporting mechanisms as changing game requirements demand. Not only have they changed Talent trees multiple times, but Glyphs, and even Class Skill Trees have changed dramatically over past releases.

I think that it’s time for Tera to consider some major overhauls to the class skill trees and this document tries to lay out some ideas for those changes and rationale for them.

Let me say first of all that I’ve been playing Tera for over two years and that I’m a severe Altoholic. I’m not even going to say how many toons I have at this point, but suffice it to say that I’ve played all the classes in PvE and also done Corsairs with all the classes. I was around before the Avatar Weapon change and the changes that made enchantment easy with the introduction of Feedstock. Also I’ve done the PvE Story content for Fate of Arun and done a dungeon there. I’m not a dungeon raider expert, but I’ve done plenty of dungeons at all levels. So I think I have the experience to know what I’m talking about to suggest these changes.

Continue reading “Tera – Time for Class Hauls?”

MMOs – Why Enjoy Playing Alts?

Some Alts
Some Alts

I enjoy playing Alts in MMOs. I find that leveling the Alts through the same old content provides new challenges if the Alts are of different classes, but also that I can hone the use and efficiency of traversing content the next time through even if the same classes are used. However, recently, over the last several months, some things have happened in Tera that have now reminded me how useful playing the same content over and over can be. One learns to do it better and better. Here is a short chronicle of my experiences in Tera since the Gunner and Fate of Arun expansion were released:

Fate of Arun

Tera at Enmasse released the Fate of Arun expansion in December 2014. This expansion provided a foothold on the as yet unoccupied content of Northern Arun and provided a path to level from 60 to 65. I did not rush into playing this expansion. I had some toons at nearly level 60, but didn’t have any that were ready to take on the new content.

I was struggling in Elenea with toons at level 58 or so that seemed to be under-powered and were not advancing beyond what looked like a strength valley in their ability to level up.

Continue reading “MMOs – Why Enjoy Playing Alts?”

Tera – Gunner Reaching Level 65

Hurray! Level 65
Hurray! Level 65

Hurray. I’ve reached level 65 with a character. No surprise, it was a gunner.

But, to be honest, the end-game story content leaves much to be desired. There is a straightforward story line to discover the whereabouts of Dakuryon, the Archdevan lord, and to take him down. The whole story line takes only about two days to play through from the Airship Docks at Velika.

The end of the story line leads you to level 65 and gives you an almost complete set of Idoneal gear. This gear cannot be enchanted, but it has extra buffs as you have more of it equipped. And you get all but the belt and brooch. The belt is available for about 4200 Vanguard Points, and at this point you may have a little more than 2000 points. A very nice brooch is available for an easy quest line at the Nakatam Tower that introduces you to the Lightbringers who created the sky castles.

Continue reading “Tera – Gunner Reaching Level 65”

Tera – Time to Balance All Classes

Warrior
Warrior

What are all those red orbs?

They make up for your class not being able to heal.

This is a warrior working Solo at level 59 in Tirkai Forest. As you can see, killing a few bears drops a ton of these orbs of two types, long term and instant heal.

As it turns out, I didn’t need them very often. But sometimes you get a ton of them, and sometimes you get none. So if you are working an area, and you don’t need them now, you might want to let them lie about on the ground in case you do need them.

But why do we need these random heal drops? In my view, it’s because BlueHole designed the Tera classes based on Dungeon activity and the Holy Trinity of Tank / DPS / Healer rather than designing balanced classes that could solo PvE and PVP.

Continue reading “Tera – Time to Balance All Classes”

Tera – Starting Fate of Arun

Scenery from Amadjuak Trading Post
Scenery from Amadjuak Trading Post

Some of my toons have reached level 60 and so can participate in the new content of the “Fate of Arun” update that arrived in Tera recently. The content begins with story quests that you are given when you reach level 60. At this point these stories begin at a new Airship Platform just outside of Velika and you begin a series of rather simple quests that lead you to the new content to deal with the new threat posed by the Archdevans. Continue reading “Tera – Starting Fate of Arun”

Tera – Arrival of the Gunner

Tera_2015_05_05_11_05_17_735

The Gunner or Arcane Engineer has arrived. Apparently the class name could not be two words, so it has been shortened to Gunner. It’s a lot of work to make a new weapon work with all the classes, so like the reaper, they chose the most popular races / gender combinations for the gunner: High Elf and Castanic, Female only. But unlike the Reaper introduction last year, the Gunner starts at level 1. And the rumor about the North American release requiring a toon with a level of at least 13 on the same server are not true.

The Gunner Was a Mess to Start

But the first day has been quite a mess really.  Rather than the appointed time of 10am Pacific, the start was more like 11am, and the servers went down almost immediately. It was more like 12 noon before they were stable.

The PVE servers were too busy and I created a Gunner on a PVP server just to see what was up, but as soon as I did, all the servers went down for a patch and were gone for about half an hour. Later I tried a RP server [ Roll Play ] which has special rules about chat language and toon names. But that server was as busy as the normal PVE servers so I gave up on that server immediately. I need to have access to my guild banks, and my guilds are only on the PVE servers.

Basically everybody who didn’t have to work, and it looks like many took vacation, started up their Gunner as soon as they could. So the servers were loaded with everyone starting on the Island of Dawn. Unlike GW2, there is only one starting area in Tera, so all 11 channels were pretty well mashed. Continue reading “Tera – Arrival of the Gunner”

Tera – New Dreadspire Dungeon and Other NonSense

Dreadspire Dungeon
Dreadspire Dungeon

In a few days, Tera will release an update with the Dreadspire Dungeon. The content of this dungeon shows that they are beginning to lose any semblance of creativity at Bluehole. This dungeon is merely an excuse to allow level 65 players to hammer things that they have to work at and to get some re-hashed gear and skins that Bluehole hopes you will find interesting.

To see what I mean, have a look at the stream that shows you the dungeon. Dreadspire Intro Stream. The dungeon is described here. Basically it is a 20 level stack up of the same circular arena over and over with a different Boss at each level. Crack the crystal in the center to start the battle. End of story.

The bosses are all those that you’ve seen before. Of course after you go through all the ones from the original game – like Basilisks and Jesters – you see the ones from the Fate of Arun expansion. Big deal. And they have all the same hack, yes hack, that makes them more challenging. The skill bar resets over and over as you fight them. These bosses need to have so much HP that a single health bar would be boring, so the bar has all the colors of the rainbow which count down as you wear down the boss to zero. Sigh…

Continue reading “Tera – New Dreadspire Dungeon and Other NonSense”

Tera – Sky Castles for the .00001%

Tera_2015_03_12_13_53_15_732
Outside Velika

Sky Castles are for the .000000001% of Tera’ns. Wonder why they didn’t make them for all, or many more, of us?

Read more to see the Enmass Twitch video that describes the castles.

Basically there are 20 castles. Two factions – PvP and PvE, but to have access to one, you must be in one of the top 10 guilds in your faction. Castles are awarded each quarter based on a complex formula, and if you lose ranking, then you lose your castle. Apparently you don’t lose all those customizations that you bought for your castle, and there are a boat load of them, but you have nowhere to display those since you no longer have a castle to show them off.

What a loser.

This is sort of like the Elitist Vanarch thing that was in force when I first joined Tera. Back then, maybe two years ago, there were a few – 3 or 4 – Vanarchs that were elected to “govern” areas of Tera. Basically the only power they had that meant anything to the vast majority of voters was setting the taxes that the NPCs charged on transactions, and Duh, everyone voted for the guild leader that promised zero taxes.

So, eventually, Tera scrapped the whole Vanarch thing.

But they seem to have this thing for Elitist features that benefit the largest guilds and their leaders rather than building in features that benefit the large populations in the game.

Continue reading “Tera – Sky Castles for the .00001%”

Tera – Fashion? Where are we going?

Manafire Plate Costume
Manafire Plate Costume

All the MMOs I’m playing are providing ways that separate how you look from the Stats of your gear. People want to dress up, Either for the current holiday, or in keeping with their character self image.

Wow added “Transmogrification” which changes gear to look like other gear. And of course then began providing “Templates” which were stat-less gear either for $$ or for achievements.

GW2 added a similar way to change the look of gear. Every piece of gear that you own locks that look into your whole account so you can modify any like piece of gear to have that look. And you can mix and match pieces of gear.

Tera had a scheme similar to Wow’s Transmog, but removed it and now has Costumes which are special templates that are overlays for your entire armor set or weapon. No mixing and matching with armor pieces for this scheme. Costumes, both weapons and armor, are purchased with points from Achievements, like the Battlegrounds [aka Arenas], with “Fashion Coupons” that are farmed from large monsters, or purchased in the store.

Tera and GW2 both provide these Costumes. GW2, it seems, cannot make up their minds about whether to have transmute or costumes. They have both. Costumes are primarily obtained from the store and cover up all your armor. Weapon and armor skins are obtained as achievements or in the store.

Elin in Wintera Costume
Elin in Wintera Costume

Here’s a particularly silly example of a costume for Wintera. An Elin dressed up in a snow suit. Don’t get me started on all the swimsuit costumes for both male and female characters. You get the idea. There’s even an achievement, in both Wow and Tera for killing a Boss in a swimsuit. Of course any costume will do to get the achievement. Continue reading “Tera – Fashion? Where are we going?”