TERA Online: CBT2

So, something a little different today. Mostly just a few highlights of the most recent beta from TERA Online. I’ve got a lot of footage of the first couple of questing zones for next week, so today it’s just a few fight highlights and a little demo from my Warrior’s play. The character that accidentally broke the game, so there is that. Whoops! Let’s start with something a little gutsy though, shall we?

You’ll run into these little buggers around level 20 in the Oblivion Woods. You can either come here for a quest and murder these guys like sensible people, or you can do what I did and come kill them just for giggles and the fact each one drops an insane amount of experience. Recorded this around level 22 when I started being able to completely block all damage with my shield, so I turned off the heads-up display to give the fight a little more of an edge. So much fun!

TERA: Gettin’ Started

Well, it’s that time of the week, with the next closed beta test (CBT) of the upcoming MMORPG TERA Online. Since there should be more people (and less stupid in the global channels), I figure now would be the perfect time to write a short little intro to the game, to help out all the new players who are stepping in to the beta for the first time. I’ll quickly look over character creation and then move on to the Isle of Dawn, covering quests, gems, and various other thing to do to help ease into the swing of things.

First off, character creation. See that list of races? Pick one. No, it really doesn’t matter. Elin and Popori have pretty freakin’ bad racials, but everyone is a valid pick. Next, pick a class. Again, it really doesn’t matter here, but if you’re looking for a recommendation, then it’s going to be Berserker, Slayer, or Archer. Why those three? Honestly, Lancer is a fantastic pick for new players, but the class has a very low (though very consistent) damage output. Both Lancers and Berserkers wear plate armor and have a block mechanic you can use to mitigate damage, so if you like that and want to go tank, you can find out early. Slayer is basically a higher dps warrior and is capable f teaching you how to dodge enemy attacks with finesse. A friend of mine plays this class and says it’s also an excellent one for getting into modifying the chain skill mechanic, so look into that! Finally, Archers have lots of little tricks to avoid melee like traps and skips, so they’re a great intro to ranged combat. They also have medium armor, and so aren’t as squishy as mages. But ultimately the choice is whatever you, the player, thinks will be the most fun. Dying is pretty hard early on the Isle, so go nuts!

Hardest part of some quests are just tagging the mobs.

Next off is the questing. Aside from the infuriating habit of the game vomiting up quest rewards you can’t even use yet, nearly all of the quests are very straight forward. However, there is also a different type of quest located on the Isle outside of the normal “Go collect 10 bear asses for me!” type. Repeatable quests are ones that can be taken, handed in, and then immediately taken again. Sort of like dailies, only without the reset timer. Now, while this might sound infuriating, it’s actually not a bad mechanic. As far as I’ve gotten in the game, repeatables are always given only for the area you’re already in. The first one you encounter has the items you need starting two feet away from the giver. It’s easy enough to just grab a few as your killing before handing it in with the rest, soaking up a little bonus exp. And if your going to stay in that spot a little longer (grinding, more quests, etc.) then grab it again to boost your exp gain!

League of Legends: Nautilus

So a new patch has come and gone and a new champion has been released. Nautilus was a billed as a tank, and I thought I’d play him a bit to see just how everything works on him. Almost sorry to say that 3 days and a dozen or so games, I have yet to build this guy once as he was intended. Almost sorry. Nautilus is just insanely fun to play with a variety of builds, each one having a specific style to it. So, bear with me when I say I play Nautilus in lane or jungle, and my build changes drastically. How drastically? Well, before opening that can of worms, let’s look at his skills…

Alright, I lied. First let's look at the Big Daddy.

 

(Passive) Staggering Blow: Nautilus’ basic attacks bind the target in place and deals bonus physical damage. Effect can not occur more than once every 12 seconds on an individual target.

Dredge Line: Nautilus throws his anchor in a line pulling himself and the first enemy hit together. Dredge Line can also be used on terrain, quickly pulling Nautilus along and reducing the cooldown by half.

Titan’s Wrath: Nautilus creates a shield around himself, scaling off of bonus health. While the shield holds, Nautilus’ basic attacks inflict a short damage-over-time effect on the target and near-by enemies.

Riptide: Nautilus sends out a pulsing shockwave, dealing damage and slowing anything caught in the pulse. Subsequent hits from pulse dead reduced damage and slow less.

(Ultimate) Depth Charge: Nautilus sends out a pulsing shot that seeks out a single target. As the charge travels, it will knock up any enemy it passes under, finally knocking up and stunning the target.

TERAble Points

This post is brought to you by Agonizing Puns, Inc. Anyways, today we’re going to look over a few of the things from the TERA Online beta that I didn’t like. To varying degrees of vitriol and hate. Now, do keep in mind as much caustic hate as I’m about to throw around, I do really enjoy this game. I still have footage to upload where I was playing almost four times longer than I thought, it was just that fun to play. But there is no such thing as a perfect game, and it’s utterly foolish to just ignore the bad points of a game. Gotta look at the bad as well, so let’s get cracking.

Character Creation:

So, as you know there are a wide variety of races and classes, and all of those races are very distinct from each other. However, half the races have problems differentiating individuals from the race. There is very, very little you can do to make your Elf or Human look different from the next Human or Elf, outside of tweaking the face. Which is the thing people will almost never see unless they specifically zoom into your face to check. Even then, your options are limited. While you can change the color of your hair, skin tones and eye color are completely static. You can’t change any of it to try to stand out more. Even worse though, what you can use to differentiate yourself still falls flat, because the animal ears for the Elin and the horns for Castanic are tied into specific hairstyles, so you can’t put, say, fox ears and long hair together. It will always be the one style and one ears/horns.

TERA: First Impressions

So yesterday marked the beginning of the NA TERA beta tests, and I’ve spent the better part of the past day hard at play work running around and seeing just what is what. Besides some rather… jarring graphical glitches, the game is very solid and looks to be shaping up to be a great mmo launch later in the year. Especially with one of the high-points of a fresh combat style in the way over-done market of tab-target hotkey based combat. So what does TERA look like on the inside?

Well, as we covered before, the combat is absolutely amazing. I’ve gone through and played 3 classes so far (Lancer, Berserker, and Archer) and each has a distinct, noticeable play-style. Some happen to be very slow burners, like the Lancer. If you happen to pick the good ol’ tank, keep in mind that it won’t really pick up until around level 10ish or so. However, as the game rolls along you steadily get to the point where bloody near nothing in a 1v1 environment can kill you, just by virtue of the absurd block rating on the Shield itself. Other classes like the Archer are pretty much set to go the second you log in to the game. You have a bow, and you have a jump back. Go nuts. Skills added along the line add to the fun, but the same core style remains the same.  Combat is also extremely fluid, with monsters having noticeable, but not blatant, tells so the observant can try and time out the last second of a block or dodge when the less-sure can easy just block or evade earlier, losing a bit of damage but staying safe in the process. How does combat look in TERA? Well… (Audio is kind of borked, Trying to sort it out for future videos)

League Basics

First and foremost, you may be thinking, “Kana! Why are you posting Wednesday morning?” and the answer to that is simply: TERA Online beta this week! Yes, the closed beta to my Monster Hunter-surrogate begins Friday. So, I’ve decided to push back both posts, though honestly depending on how much footage I record Friday may mean the post is pushed back to Saturday morning. Hoping to get some solid gameplay with at least 2 classes this test cycle. Thinking Berserker and Archer, but if there is a class you’d rather see, by all means let me know! I’d be glad to get some footage about more of what people want. Now then, that out-of-the-way…

Today I wanted to cover something a little different from game mechanics. Going to go over a few of the basic mechanics of League of Legends and how you, the play, can interact with them to improve your game. Going to covering a decently wide range of topics so we won’t dive into too much detail, but if there are questions I can always expand on them later.

Zone Control:

First, watch that. Yes, the video is old, but it’s still every bit as accurate now as it ever was. Zoning has the effect of controlling your opponent through what are essentially mind games. What you want to do is bully the enemy lane (most effective if it’s 1 enemy in the lane, but it can be done against 2) until they have to retreat, then moving into position to prevent them from farming. Even better, if you can hold them well while only last hitting minions, your minions will only push very slowly. For every minion of yours that dies in the middle of the field, as opposed to the enemy tower, is another bit of experience you can deny, gaining more of an advantage. Some champions have insane innate zone control; Ziggs can completely lock out an enemy mid just by using Hexplosive Minefield, though the large radius will probably wind up pushing the minion wave bit by bit.

League of Legends: Ziggs

Well, it’s been forever since I’ve done one of these first impression articles, so I thought I’d get back to it, especially for some of the more recent champions, and maybe for some general stuff. Plenty of great things to talk about in the wide world of league, but for now, let’s start with the most recent champion released: Ziggs, the Hexplosives Expert.

Ziggs is a ranged mage with an ungodly amount of zone control, however he is lacking in any short of hard crowd control outside a single small knock back (For comparison, it’s a little bigger than Maokai’s). He is extremely squishy, and lacks a reliable escape as well, so once you close the distance he’ll go splat real quick. However, unlike most other mages, Ziggs is amazing at area-denial and psychological attacks, keeping enemies from moving in specific directions, or even from leaving specific areas at all. For starters, let’s look at Ziggs’ kit and how it all ties together.