We had the great opportunity to partner up with En Masse Entertainment yesterday for a livestream demo of the newly launched ‘Rising’ F2P conversion of TERA and its accompanying new content, the Crucible of Flame dungeon.
If you weren’t able to catch the stream live, we’ve got you covered. Below you’ll find an embed of the stream VOD and our recap for those of you impatient folk (or those stuck at work).
The demo kicked off with a short overview of what ‘Rising’ players can expect today as far as the bonuses Elite players (essentially, subscribers) will enjoy and a quick peek of the item shop. Keep in mind that the item shop is not launching today with TERA ‘Rising’ due to a number of issues but En Masse plans to have the shop up ASAP.
As far as the item shop goes, En Masse will be offering a bevy of options for players to either permanently buy or rent. Options will include:
- Costumes
- Weapon skins
- Accessories
- Mounts
- Elite-exclusive items (Ex. Snowdrift mount)
- Character Slots
- Appearance, Name, Race, and Gender Change Vouchers
- Bank Expansion
- ‘Grab Bags’
- Consumables (Ex. Experience boosts, Dyes, Suites, Quick-start Packs, etc.)
Elite members will also receive special discounts on some of the above items as well as a number of other bonuses outlined below:
Monthly Account Rewards:
- Two Valkyron Responses from Instance Matching
- Twice as many available daily quests
- Instance access twice as often
- Nexus warhorse
- Up to 50 items active on brokerage
- Exempt from earnest money requirements on brokerage
- Brokerage fee of only 10%
Monthly Single Character Rewards:
- Fiery halo
- Village atlas
- Ten strongbox keys
- Traveler’s insurance scrolls
- Boosts that replenish daily
En Masse’s Brian Knox noted that these rewards can be changed out and that they’d like to offer Elite members something different every once in a while.
Crucible of Flame
The ‘Crucible of Flame’ is a new competitive dungeon that is being introduced to the game today with the launch of TERA ‘Rising’. The dungeon is designed for level 60 players and can be entered once a day for non-Elite members or twice a day for Elite members. You’ll also need tier 13 gear to jump into the dungeon using TERA’s Instance Matching feature.
The dungeon features two stages and begins once a player initiates the timer. Once initiated, the party has to split up into a number of nearby rooms connected to the central hub. The main goal on this stage is to defend the central spire from being destroyed. The monsters killed in any of the rooms will respawn as stronger versions of themselves in the central hub and it looks like Knox was tasked with the duty of holding back this horde. Not to worry though, as each member finishes their room (they are locked in there by themselves), the door to that room will open and allow them back into the central chamber to help whatever poor sod was left to deal with the mess.
Players who manage to successfully defend the spire against the horde of monsters and BAM can then take flight upon a dragon and land on the upper level of the dungeon.
Once at the upper level, players can select a difficulty and fight a gauntlet of BAMs, with each BAM dropping tier 14 gear. A rain of gold coins will occur between each BAM fight and players will improve their score by grabbing the coins. The main goal here is to defeat as many BAMs and accrue as high a score as possible within the dungeons 30-minute time limit.
Once the dungeon is over, scores are tallied and tracked across the server with the top players earning a reward at the end of the monthly campaign. We were shown one such example of a dungeon reward; an impressively massive demonic looking lion mount.
Q&A Highlights:
- Elin maid outfit shooting for early March.
- Nexus changes coming to deal with zerging and lagging.
- BAM nerfs still in discussion. En Masse prefers to keep BAMs as party monsters in response to player feedback.
- Raids in April or May.
- Events and drops will ensure players can earn Valkyron Alkahest without having to purchase it from the store.
- Village Atlas will allow players to pick any Pegasus location within the game world to go to.
- Elite buffs can be used once every 24 hours.
- EMP will not be available for in-game gold (at this time).
- No Elite-specific customization options.
- Working on making equalized gear more available; no ETA.
- Winter outfits available at store launch
- Transfers limited to original three servers. More restrictive.
- Subscription time (regardless of acquisition source) will be converted to Elite status time and rounded up.
- Game time cards and additional payment methods coming.
- Masterwork Alkahest will not be available in the shop at launch.
- Strongbox keys will be tradable.
- Chronoscrolls for Elite time “on the list”.
- Party XP Buffs not in today’s update.
- Outlaw system needs a revamp. Alliance system will help to address open PvP issues.
- Boosts not stackable. Hourly boosts are game time. Daily boosts are real time.
- No new information on cloaks.
- No South American server at launch, but En Masse will monitor things and go from there.
And that’s it! We’d like to thank En Masse Entertainment for doing the event with us and all of you who came out to watch it!
- Be sure to catch the video of the whole presentation here.
