We were recently given the chance to try out the upcoming content for TERA by the hands of Patrick Sun (En Masse Producer for TERA) and Tina Zhang-Powell (the Associate Producer). Since the release of the Fate of Arun expansion a few months ago, this is the first big patch that has been delivered to provide even more end-game content for players.
Once logging into the game we were added into Patrick’s Guild and grouped up with the guys to tackle a new instanced dungeon: the Sky Cruiser Endeavour, this design for level 65 players we were given a few buffs to make others considerably harder to kill given that we were complete amateurs to the game. Patrick told is that whilst the dungeon is on as long as others it is one of the most difficult with the final boss fight lasting between 20 and 40 minutes, all depending on how skilled the players are.
Whilst the dungeon was the first part of our tour due to the spoilers we’ve moved the walk-through to the end of this article in case you don’t want to know what happens.
Once we finished were transported over to Velica city where we could take a look at the other big feature that players will get access to and the patch: the Skycastles.
The Skycastles are the rewards acquired through the new Crusades system, a Guild orientated feature where the presumption is that at the end game most players will have hocked up with a Guild and can now start trying some of the more challenging Guild based content. The system allows Guild is to earn Ranking Points by completing two types of endgame content: PVE instances or PVP battles, the type of content a Guild will have to acquire it is based on the league they join; the PVE or PVP League, this allows the Guilds that prefer one type of content over the other to focus on doing what they love and not being forced to take part in activities they might not enjoy.
The Leagues are made up of all the Guilds in the game earning points through the Crusades system, at the end of each four-week season the top 10 ranking Guilds in both of the two leagues (i.e. 20 Guilds) will be given access to a Skycastle for the duration of the next season.
The Skycastles themselves are, as you might expect, enormous floating castles that acts as a Guild base of operations and can only be accessed by the owning Guild members themselves. The Castles are in static world and aren’t instanced based, so players can actually take a Pegasus flight to reach their Castle, to test this theory at the end of our tour the actually jumped from the balcony of one of the castles and after a 10 second drop crumpled into a heap on the road below; for science!
Once a Skycastle has been acquired the Guilds are able to develop design and features of their Castle, ranging from the ability to purchase numerous Guild NPC’s, such as specialist vendors or Guild Bankers as well as all manner of internal decorations to just make the place look nice. More impressively players can change the actual structural layout of the Castle itself, adding new levels, expansions and a whole host of flashy effects such as burning flames and the like. Structural changes come in a tiered form, with three tiers available players must purchase the tiers in order and so requires quite a lot of points.
During the season Guilds are able to keep earning Ranking Points to stay in the top 10 for their league so that they retain their current Castle, however should they lose ownership all the accessories and expansions that they have purchased for it are simply put in the Guilds Castle inventory and stored away until day reclaim a Castle in a future season so that they don’t go to waste. Skycastles will play a big part in endgame content and are a major bragging rights feature, so much so that the owners of a Castle will see their Guild name floating in huge letters around their Castle for all to see accompanied by their own Guild banner.
That finished up our tour and we were extremely thankful to both Patrick and Tina for their time and showing girls the great new content that is coming to TERA.
Spoilers ahead.
For this instance the Valkyon Federation of sent their prized airship in an attempt to fight the Archdevas, in an ambush the ship has been caught unawares and the gathered Archdeva and their Demokron abominations have managed to take control. Now the ship has a new course, heading straight towards the city of Highwatch to destroy the ship detonating it over the cities’ populous.
Via a public teleporter we were able to transport directly into the Endeavours engine room, the starting location for the instance which, thankfully, was free of any mobs and stayed that way until we travelled to the main open hall of the ship to face our first encounter. At the other end of the huge hall stored Primos, the towering Demokron known otherwise as The Fleshreaver.
Battle consisted of multiple waves of enemies spawning and attacking the group, similar to a horde mode where the mobs for the most part won’t be too challenging but are occasionally accompanied by more stronger enemies. Meanwhile Perimos fires off a chest laser beam giving you something extra to think about whilst fighting until players have survived long enough to unlock the gates that lead to the next encounter. All in all the fight should take around 20 minutes for decent players but we were able to skip through it after getting a taste of what it would be like.
The next battle was against Permios himself, fighting solo it was in general a relatively basic fight with the group are jumping on top of him and engaging him in melee, though he is an extremely heavy hitter and would repeatedly pull off his arm and use it as a club. The main aspects of this battle is that occasionally Perimos will switch targets and instead of fighting the players will try to destroy the six blue crystals dotted around the area that, if destroyed, means game over for the instance and players will fill the missions. The game, as the battle can be particularly long Patrick was able to insta-kill the big guy so that we could move on and teleport to the ships’ main deck for the final boss fight.
Our challenge was an Archdeva named Darkan, heavily armoured and equipped with a huge sword he looked like an enormous black knight stood on his own in the middle of the deck waiting for us whilst all around the clouds passed around the ship and it made for an extremely epic setting for a fight. At first he doesn’t seem like much, simple melee combat albeit he hits extremely hard it wasn’t until halfway into the fight when suddenly it with a cinematic he grows some fiery wings that the battle turns up a notch and as he starts to use his new manoeuvres and attacks we started dropping like flies (even with our God buffs). The biggest challenge here is similar to that faced against the final boss in the Bathysmal Rise dungeon, where Darkan continues to unleash abilities that show on the ground with an area of attack that players must quickly dodge, with only certain areas that are safe to stand in without getting one shot it; players will have to learn these attacks and how to best avoid them. With the final kill completed the quest, were able to get some big loot drops and also acquired Ranking Points that go towards the Crusade System (as mentioned above).
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