Last week we were invited to a preview event with Hotta Studios, the team behind the popular cross-platform MMORPG Tower of Fantasy. The prerecorded preview teased some of the game's upcoming features and was followed by a short Q&A session. The focus of the event was the mysterious Domain 9, a sector located within the Aida Spacetime Singularity of the Vera Grand Sea. Here’s our impressions of what’s in store for Wanderer’s in update 3.0.
The Secretive World of Domain 9
Domain 9 is a realm trapped in a walled-off state, isolated from the outside world for over a century. The world and its inhabitants, known as the people of Domain 9, are stuck in spacetime barriers and despite not being able to contact the outside world, they’ve survived and thrived in this unique environment, developing a series of technologies based on timestamps discovered at the Black Jade Ruins. Over the past few updates, we’ve been clued in to Domain 9 and some of its inhabitants, but this is the first time we’re going to get to step foot in this new world.
Among the four major zones of Domain 9, each are inspired by the Four Symbols of ancient culture, Ignisville is the first to be opened. The power of Zhuque, symbolizing the element of fire is prevalent here, and the people of Ignisville, are largely considered the backbone of the battle against the Darkness. Despite that, the land of Ignisville is actually quite beautiful, with serene lakes and mountain ensconced temples. To explore Domain 9, players will be introduced to new relics, one of which will grant players the ability to run up walls. There’s no doubt that this will come in handy in a number of different situations, but climbing could be a thing of the past with this ability, and I couldn’t wait to try them out.
There are also several new puzzles and rewards to earn in Domain 9. We were introduced to a pathway memorization puzzle, where you have to follow the invisible path as it lights up, but it moves extremely quickly, requiring you to memorize the path that it moves in, or else you’ll fail the puzzle. These new puzzles will give players plenty of additional things to do aside from just exploring and battling, and the variety is always welcome in games as big as Tower of Fantasy.
New Simulacrums: Liuhuo and Yulan
The preview also introduced two new Simulacrums, Liuhuo and Yulan. Liuhuo wields the Pine Comet, a flame element weapon. What is actually quite unique about Liuhuo is that the Pine Comet acts more like a paintbrush, which makes her moveset quite satisfying, with wide strokes of AOE damage that will be a welcome addition to your weapon sets. Yulan, is a martial arts star from Domain 9 that wields the Unity, a frost element weapon. Her powerful attacks don’t appear to be as fluid as Liuhuo, and instead the team appears to have pushed Yulan into a more powerful, impactful style of combat. Whether you decide to choose Liuhuo or Yulan, you’ll have a powerful new Simulacrum in your roster. In addition to the new characters, you’ll also have a new Smart Servant system, where a tiny servant will aid you in combat through buffs and damage, adding to your capabilities.
You’ll need the added power with the new boss that Hotta plans to release with the 3.0 update. Zhuyan will be a new boss with a new set of moves requiring players to stay on their toes, and hopefully, off the ground, unless they want to be hit by some powerful flaming shockwaves. The new boss will also allow players to pull weapons from its flames to use against it, but doing so will be at their own risk.
Leveling in Tower of Fantasy for new players will also get a bit of a boost with the new Mentorship system. You can become an apprentice to a powerful friend, or invite other players to join you as you play the role of Mentor, granting them some of your strength while also getting some rewards for clearing “Mentorship Missions”, so even if you aren’t usually a social butterfly, you might want to get to know some fellow Wanderers and either become a mentor, or a mentee.
Finally when it came to the Q&A, we wanted to know what the process was related to keeping older characters relevant when new characters release so frequently. The team addressed this by stating that they know that some players do have concerns over power creep especially with the new characters being so powerful. That’s why Hotta has been working to add new styles of combat rather than just create more powerful iterations of Simulacra that already exist. They wholly take player feedback into consideration on those matters and plan to do this as they continue to release new content in the future.
The other question that we often asked, especially on the cusp of a new update centered on how new players will be able to catch up and experience Domain 9, if they’ve never logged into the game. This is equally important for players that may have only played the game at launch but have since moved on to something else, yet they’re curious on when they should return. While I expected some sort of catch-up program to fast track players to Domain 9, Jihoon actually stated that players shouldn’t rush through the content. As this is now the 4th area that is available in the game, there’s so much content for players to enjoy, and rushing through it all simply to get to Domain 9 will make new players miss out on all of the content up to this point, and might even leave them a little underpowered if they don’t spend some time exploring the world. But the team pointed to the Mentor program as a way to help players speed through some of the older content.
The Tower of Fantasy 3.0 update goes live tomorrow, and we’re looking forward to learning more about Domain 9, and seeing all of the secrets Hotta Studios has for us to uncover in their land lost in time.
