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[TR] Free to Play until the END OF TI...TR
steejee
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
PAers play on ORION.
So do 360Aers.
Let us be like Voltron!
Guild: Arcadians
...people who can invite you...
Warscythe - Weeknights after 7est, Weekends
Enders - Mostly after 7est, whenever I'm off
Massively
Teamspeak Server
Client: download from http://www.teamspeak.com
Server: 360arcadians.net
Password: 360a
Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa
by Richard Garriott
We thought we were alone. We felt secure in our future. Little did we know that we would end up being plunged into an intergalactic war that has been raging for millennia.
So do 360Aers.
Let us be like Voltron!
Guild: Arcadians
...people who can invite you...
Warscythe - Weeknights after 7est, Weekends
Enders - Mostly after 7est, whenever I'm off
Massively
Teamspeak Server
Client: download from http://www.teamspeak.com
Server: 360arcadians.net
Password: 360a
Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa
by Richard Garriott
We thought we were alone. We felt secure in our future. Little did we know that we would end up being plunged into an intergalactic war that has been raging for millennia.
What is Tabula Rasa?
Tabula Rasa is best described as a 3rd person Action/RPG MMO. You play it like a third person shooter, but the game rules and design are that of an MMORPG. Think of it a bit like Planetside but with a more RPG bend to it (and no vehicles). Originally, TR was going to be more in line with 'traditional' MMORPGs, thankfully that version of the game was eventually scrapped almost entirely (save some of the Eloh designs).
Who is Richard Garriott, and why is he all over the game title?
Richard Garriott is the man behind the Ultima series of games (including Utima Online). After departing Origin Systems, Garriott founded Destination Games (DG), the developer of Tabula Rasa.
How do I start?
I suggest reading up on the 'Getting Started' materials provided at the official site: http://www.rgtr.com/new_player_guide/getting_started/index.html
Trials are available in the form of a 3 day guest pass you can receive from current subscribers. If you opt to subscribe, the person who gave you that guest pass gets a month of game time free. It's like a crappy pyramid scheme, only with less bankruptcy.
Upon creating a new character (don't worry about the armor section on character creation: you replace all your armor within 20 minutes of starting so it's pretty irrelevant) you will be placed in boot camp. This place serves as a pretty safe introduction to the basics of TR and nets you some useful items in the process. You can skip bootcamp if you'd like by talking to the NPC near the dropship, and you'll get jumped to level 4, but you'll only be given two grey weapons and have to find the Power logos (needed for lightning) in Wilderness.
As a recruit, Firearms and Lightning will be your two best skills to invest in. Firearms will serve you from levels 1-50, while lightning is hindered by being electric damage, which many enemies are immune to. At reaching the end of level 4, you will be given a tier advancement notice. This means you can take the first of three class branches. In this case, Soldier or Specialist. Don't worry too much if you end up disliking one path, you can always come back and go the other direction fairly easily.
Now, get to the killing...
Gameplay
As stated above, TR is played much like a third person shooter, just with some RPG/MMO conventions tied in. For the most part, you can play it without even worrying about those RPG bits and your natural shooter tendencies (taking cover, ducking out of LOS, etc) will do you well. While hits and damage are still dictated by dice rolls, your behavior, positioning, etc have a significant bearing on how combat plays out. Think of it as a bit like a more tactical shooter and not so much a twitch one.
Cover:
Instead of dodging shots completely as you would in a true FPS/3rd Person Shooter, TR instead has a cover system that factors in position, exposure, and movement when calculating damage. When being hit, your level of cover relative to who is shooting you is indicated by the damage direction markers. Red means no cover, you take 100% damage. Orange is some cover (75% damage taken), yellow is good cover (50% damage taken). At one point I read there was Green cover (25% damage taken), but I have never managed to be in green cover. When shooting an opponent, their cover is shown by a little shield in the lower left corner of the targeting tooltip. Green means clean shot (100% damage given), orange/yellow is an obstructed shot (75% damage done), and red means heavy cover (50% damage done). NPCs will make some effort to use cover and to find a spot to negate your cover, but not always.
Related to cover is the movement indicator just next to it. The more an opponent is moving (one to three arrows, colored depending on how many arrows there are) the more it impacts your damage and accuracy. The same is true in reverse though there is no visual cue for how your movement is affecting enemy shots.
Questing:
TR has the usual variety of MMORPG quests (kill this, retrieve that) and generally does a good job of keeping these entertaining and appropriate. On top of those are Moral Parable quests to make you do a little thinking as well as some quests that let you enjoy some nice fireworks as you call in airstrikes or reinforcements.
There is another type of all-encompassing quest called Targets of Opportunity. ToOs require you to do a large number of various tasks in a zone an reward titles for each small task and a clone credit for completing all tasks. Common elements of ToOs are killing so many of a few enemy types, collecting all Logos in a zone, completing all instances, completing all story quests, acquiring all waypoints, completing all CP assault/defense missions and killing all mini-bosses in a zone.
Many NPCs will change their response text after you complete certain missions in a zone, making note of your total awesomeness.
Cloning:
Cloning is a handy little feature in TR that allows you to branch off a character with the same level and class as an existing character. Ability points are reset on a clone, but you stay the same class. So when you hit a tier advancement (explained below), you should clone *before* talking to a class trainer so that you may return with your clone and advance down the other path at a later time. Each clone requires a clone credit. You receive one clone credit when you reach a tier selection or anytime you finish a Target of Opportunity quest.
Classes:
TR uses a tiered class structure where everyone starts as the same class, and as you progress you're able to branch off into more specialized and more powerful classes. There are four class tiers, which tier advancement coming at levels 5, 15, and 30. Soldier branch classes focus more on weapon usage and direct damage while Specialists rely more on special abilities, but also have the ability to resurrect, heal, repair, and hack via Tools. Spies and Guardians use melee weapons and at the time of writing this have no real money sink since ammunition is the primary cost for most classes. Due to cloning, this structure means you do not have to start from scratch every time you want to try out a new class, though I do recommend not cloning at the first tier advancement as level 5 takes all of 30 minutes to reach.
Official site info on classes, Wiki Info.
Ranged Combat:
AKA, guns. Point, click, boom. Two key bits for fighting ranged battle are cover and bead. Cover I explained above, the Bead is a trio of lines that focus in on an opponent if you target them long enough. Full bead cannot be achieved on many weapons (like cannons) without crouching. Full damage can only be done with full bead. When fighting, remember that enemies need LOS to shoot you. While you can get hit from time to time when moving out of LOS due to the nature of lag, NPCs won't fire at you if you're out of LOS unless they're bugged in some way. NPCs will attempt to regain LOS as soon as you move out of it.
Distance to target is also rather important. When you target an NPC a little bar will appear on the bottom right of the tooltip. That's the range indicator. Indicated is distance to target (in meters), with the optimal range of your current weapon indicated as a small bar within a larger dark bar. Inside optimal range, your weapon will do full damage. Outside that range the damage will rapidly fall off, with some weapons doing no damage to enemies outside that range (shotgun and propellant guns). The bar will be yellow if you're in optimal range to make life easy. Note that some manual data will talk about minimal optimal ranges (such as the rifle having an optimal range of 40-60m), there is no application of this ingame. A rifle will do the same damage at 1m as 60m.
Finally, weapons can overheat and jam. A weapon heats up as you fire it rapidly and eventually a beeping warning will go off indicating the weapon is about to jam. If it jams, it just needs to be manually reloaded and the delay will allow some of the heat to dissipate. Amoeboids can jam your weapon if they get into melee range but do not cause it to heat up. As the durability of a weapon goes down, the rate it heats up increases (at least that's how it appears based on my playing).
Weapons come in a pretty large variety of optimal ranges, damage types available, firing behavior, etc. Some also suck up ammo like a vacuum cleaner (leech gun and chaingun), so be careful about your finances with those. F
Melee:
If you're low on ammo, feeling mean, or play as a Spy or Guardian, you may end up meleeing mobs. Just run up to one and hit F to take a whack at it. All weapons list their melee damage in addition to firing damage. A word of warning though: meleeing eats up weapon durability fast. The Melee skill reduces how much damage is done to the weapon though.
Adrenaline:
Rawr! Killing mobs (or using the adrenaline booster in 1.3) nets you Adrenaline. Adrenaline lets you do cool shit. All signature moves (Tier 4 unique ability) require adrenaline, as do some abilities like Sprint and Rage.
Weapon Types:
At each tier from 1-3, a new weapon class becomes available. Soldier tree characters get an additional weapon type at tier 4, while Specialists do not (but get more abilities at Tier 4 than Soldiers).
Chart of weapon classes, Official site weapon info, and a Good guide on Firearms - pistol, shotgun, rifle (that might be slightly out of date in parts).
Damage Types:
There are 8 damage types in TR: Physical, Virulent, Electric, Laser, Cryogenic (Ice), Exothermic (Fire), Sonic, and EMP. Each damage type requires specific ammo types, results in a different finisher, and has different side effects. Different weapons have different damage types available to them. Additionally, different enemies are vulnerable, resistant, or immune to the various types. This makes it pretty important to keep a variety of damage types available to you. A handy chart of the various damage types can be found over yonder.
Armor Types:
Like weapons, each tier 1-3 gets a new armor class made available. There are no tier 4 armor classes. Higher tier armors generally grant more armor than lower tiers, though the specialist branch armors do not by much and instead have progressively better armor regeneration. Motor Assist can be useful at any tier, particularly for PvP and questing, due to the speed bump.
Enemy Types:
The Bane are a bit like the Combine in HL2: a mix of different races enhanced and modified to be more useful in war. Thrax are the backbone of the Bane and are the Caretakers, Technicians, Hunters, and the basic Grunts of Bane forces. Lightbenders are a separate (enslaved) race with a wide field of vision and pseudo-stealth. Kael are a highly genetically modified *something* and are mean as hell. The Bane also utilize Mechs (Juggernaughts, Striders, Stalkers), modified indigenous creatures (basically anything that kills you at one point in the game you'll find as a Bane variant later, aside from Warnets), and stuff like Shield Bots.
The official site has a very nice enemy guide that's worth reading through.
Of importance is to know that just because a lot of things want to kill you and other AFS, does not mean they also don't want to kill each other. Aggressive indigenous species (Miasmas, Warnets, Treelurkers, Xanx, etc) tend to also go after Bane as well as other indigenous species. Some passive indigenous species, such as Boargars, particularly dislike other species and will attack them but be fine with you. Treelurkers and Boargars seem to especially dislike one another.
Control Points:
Control Points are one of the more dynamic, and entertaining, aspects of TR. CPs are bases that can be controlled either by the AFS or Bane. In the center of each CP is a Eloh pillar that reflects the current owner: red for Bane, blue for AFS. To capture a CP, a player must get inside the base somehow (either by brining down a gate or some fancy jumping/traveling) and use the Eloh pillar without being interrupted. This is exceptionally hard to do solo, so two or more people is usually needed to take control of a CP.
In addition to taking them, CPs more or less require player interaction to stay in AFS control. While Bane assaults are massive affairs consisting of several waves of increasing numbers of Bane troops that will eventually break through and take out the AFS defenders, AFS attacks on CPs are fairly weak and rarely do more than provide some cannon fodder to help out players.
Why bother with them? Well for one the massive battles that typically result at CPs are fun as hell. 20-30 Bane at a time on screen make for an impressive firefight, as well as being pretty profitable due to kill bounties and item drops. But on top of the fun, CPs provide useful services: Waypoints, Hospitals with vendors, and Assault/Defense quests with modification recipe rewards (as well as being required for ToOs). A fair number of CPs also have quest NPCs which will only be available if the AFS controls the CP. Landing Zone in Wilderness and Hydro Plant in Divide are the two earliest examples of this. Ortho Base in Torden Incline is probably the most extreme example of an important CP: it has the largest number of quests in Incline for a base, the only Weapon and Armor vendors in the zone, and the Dropship pad is *inside* the base. Makes for an easy way to get inside if it's lost, but can be kinda inconvenient to drop in to find yourself surrounded by Bane.
Instances:
Each 'Battlefield' zone in TR (a shared area) has portals to typically two to four instances. If you've played or are familiar with an MMORPGs in the last few years you already know what these are: private versions of content. Instances in TR range from fairly typical 'kill everything' areas to more puzzle based stuff, with a lot of mixing. Almost all instances are 100% soloable, but will scale depending on the number of people in a group. While you will come across bosses in these instances, they do not have specific phat lewts like a WoW boss will, though they do have a higher chance of dropping a higher grade item than a normal mob.
Logos:
Logos are the alien language created by the Eloh which 'powers' the various special abilities you, a Receptive, are capable of. Logos can be found scattered throughout each zone and in many instances. Most logos that are required to use skills you will receive quests from Receptive Liaisons to get, complete with map marker. The logos 'Vortex', required for all signature skills for tier 4 classes, requires several logos that are not found via liaison quests. Some logos that are not required for skill use do get used in other ways. The Temporal Chamber instance in Valverde Plateau requires six logos found in the instances and zones throughout the Valverde continent. Several quests require you to either find or be able to read some logos.
One nice aspect of Logos is that the language is actually quite logical and you can often work out the meaning of a logos based on related logos, such as using the 'Today' logos to figure out the 'Tomorrow' and 'Yesterday' logos.
Traveling:
Travel in TR comes in four varieties: Waypoints, Dropships, Wormholes, and on foot. Waypoints can be found in several places in each zone and sometimes in instances as shortcuts back to the start (Devil's Den in Palisades has a mid-point waypoint and an end waypoint). They are intra-zone instant travel. Dropships exist one per zone and allow inter-zone travel to places on the same planet as you are on (Arieki or Foreas). Wormholes typically exist one per continent and allow both inter-zone and inter-planet travel. The first wormhole you encounter is in Foreas Base in Divide. On foot, you can use Motor Assist armor and the Sprint ability to speed up travel, or you can use suicide to head back to a hospital instantly at the cost of 10% damage to armor and a rather easy to deal with death penalty.
Gameplay Tips
- If an enemy hits 0 hitpoints and continue standing with a skull over his head, run up to them and hit the 'F' key to perform a finishing move. This will award bonus XP and generally looks pretty awesome.
- Use cover as much as possible. A 50% reduction in damage taken from good cover can often result in your armor regenerating faster than your enemy can drain it.
- Keep a variety of damage types and weapon types with you at all times. That pimp physical damage rocket launcher with +50% crit and +250% Armor Regen won't do much good if you shoot it at a shield bot or Kael.
- Your last name is permanent to a certain degree. If you want to change it you have to delete *all* of your characters and wait for the name to go away. So try to settle on one you like before making your first character.
- EMP Bombs are your friend. A few well timed bombs can take out just about anything vulnerable to EMP. Note I say 'well timed', as armor regen on large mechs such as Stalkers will beat out EMP Bomb damage if your timing is off and/or you don't do anything to hurt the mech's armor being hits. You can buy improved bombs every 5th level (5, 10, 15..).
- Stalkers, Predators, and Juggernauts are all extremely vulnerable to damage from behind. Use this to your advantage!
- Crouch whenever possible. Crouching not only increases damage done and is often required for full bead, but also tends to put you in some cover or max out your cover.
- Firearms is probably the most universally useful skill in the game. Put points into it right off the bat and you'll find life a lot easier.
- Foreas Base has quite a few amusing PA Announcements, I recommend putting sound on to listen to them at some point.
- Killing multiple enemies in rapid order will trigger an XP multiplier to pop up (glowing skull at the bottom of the screen). It's possible to get it up to 250%, which means you'll be netting a fair amount of bonus XP so long as you keep the multiplier going by keeping your killing speed up. So long as you're in combat against something the multiplier will stay up. It will reset if you take too long to engage a new enemy after killing the last one you were fighting.
- Howlers are only loyal to their Hunter master. If you can pick off a Hunter quickly, often times nearby Bane will attack the freed Howler, which can put up quite a fight.
- Shield bots used to deflect all damage types aside from EMP in 1.2. You can kill a Shield Bot through its shields with an EMP weapon, and as of patch 1.3 Shield Bots only absorb damage, not reflect it.
- Linkers reflect all damage when charging up their large discharge attack. If you see one put its arms in the air, stop attacking until it discharges.
- Caretakers will resurrect dead biological Bane, Technicians will repair any destroyed small bots (Shield bots)
- Radial Repair/Healing disks will repair and heal the user in addition to nearby targets, while Direct and Cone will not. Direct healing disks are used for resurrecting, direct repair can rebuild dead friendly bots and turrets (good for CP defense). Both direct tools well heal/repair the user if no one is targeted.
- Grab a cipher tool if you go Specialist. Boxes/chests that come up with the red selection triangle can typically be hacked and will often have pretty nice loot.
- Learn the special abilities and behaviors of enemies: Linkers group up to link damage, Bane troops have a wicked kick if you get too close, hunters will net you, howlers will stun you, etc. Knowing what to expect makes it easier to prioritize groups of bane (hint: generally killing any caretakers first is a good idea).
- Your footlocker is shared between all characters on a server and you can deposit credits into it for transfer to another character.
- Your weapons/armor/tools will generally be upgraded every five levels once you hit level 20. Each bump is a roughly 50% increase in damage/armor/effectiveness. Often times you may want to upgrade to a grey item from a rarer item due to the base stats bump (though that will change for blue/purple items in 1.3).
- NPCs don't have a magical 360 degree ring of aggro, they actually have to see you or detect you in some way. Lightbenders have a wide FOV, but Thrax Grunts have a more human vision range, so you can walk behind one to within 10m pretty easy.
- Learn to love your Pistol. As amazing as it may seem, pistols are among the best weapons in the game. High single target dps, non-existant reload time with high firearms skill, low ammo cost despite the dps, wide damage type selection. Only downsides to them really are the 20m optimal range and rate the heat up.
Information Resources
The first place to go, as surprising as it may be, is the Official Tabula Rasa website.
A list of fan sites and forums can be found over yonder: http://www.rgtr.com/community/fansites/index.html
Since TR does not have official forums, you'll either have to make due with this thread or find a favorite from that list. TRVault and PlanetTR seem to be among the more popular ones, but I could be wrong (and really didn't feel like cruising through all of those links).
Two major Wikis have sprung up as primary straight-info sources for the game:
The Wiki at Wikia
TRWiki.org
For some build planning, Cry More's Talent Calculator seems to be the way to go, even though it is rather slow.
Lore
The TR site has an excellent set of background on the Eloh and Bane origins. Or you can read my totally awesome synopsis/rewriting:
Long ago a species known as the Eloh discovered Logos. With Logos, they rapidly advanced scientifically and achieved interstellar space flight. Excited to go and meet other space faring species, they set out, only they discovered that they were the first to have gone so far. Stunned by this discovery, the Eloh contemplated their rather unique place as the most advanced species in the known universe. The Eloh decided to guide and teach the species the found. The ones that were advanced enough would be contacted directly and taught. Those that were not advanced enough, such as Humans, would be seeded with the ability to use Logos and guided quietly until such time that direct contact is possible. (Those seeded with Logos would become the ancestors to the Receptives you play in Tabula Rasa)
After some time, the Eloh came across the Thrax, the only other species besides Humans which had never known peace in its entire history. While the Eloh were put off by the Thrax's violent nature, they nonetheless went about teaching them. The Thrax were willing and eager students, but had no intention of simply learning in peace. When they felt they had gained all they wanted, they attacked the Eloh. While this attack stunned and hurt the Eloh, their advanced technology and mastery of Logos lead to an easy defeat of the Thrax. However, the war would lead to a far greater tragedy...
Factions within the Eloh began to form, with one group calling themselves the Neph feeling that the Eloh need to use their power to dominate, rather than teach. After all, the Thrax had proven the lesser species were not to be trusted. The other side of the Eloh felt they should continue teaching, only with more caution to prevent future incidents. The divide grew, and eventually the Neph enlisted the help of the remaining Thrax to make their view the winning one, by force, starting with the other Eloh. The Neph devastated the Eloh homeworld, killing or driving the Eloh into hiding.
In time, the Bane (the Thrax, Kael, and other species enslaved/lead by the Neph) found Earth, and attacked. Fortunately, the seeds the Eloh planted ages before had not been to waste, and many were able to escape the invasion and fled to other worlds, while Earth was left to its uncertain fate; it is not known at this point what has happened to Earth. Though it is conquered, the Bane likely did not simply wipe out all life on it. The AFS (Allied Free Sentients) was formed, with Humans at the helm and Foreans and Brann allied to fight the Bane, though the alliance is not an easy one at all times.
TR takes place on two worlds as of launch: Foreas, an Earthlike world inhabited by the Foreans, and Arieki, a protoplanet that was a prison world for the Brann, who have now lost their homeworld Erdas to the Bane. The Foreans are not native to Foreas, they overexploited their homeworld and were saved by the Eloh and have become a bit more environmentally minded as a result. The Brann on Arieki are all that's left of their species: criminals, rebels, and political prisoners. The Brann had become adept wielders of Logos after the Eloh visited, and the Bane did not want to take any chances with them, so instead of conquest, they sought genocide.
Erdas is visible in the sky of Arieki, the large volcanic planet in the sky of Foreas is not Arieki, it's just an odd coincidence that the two worlds have the proper skies for being next to each other.
Going back some, the AFS is not a particularly stable alliance, even among surviving humans. For one, the Cormans on Foreas were there first to arrive there: a bit of an accident involving a discovered spacecraft brought them there decades before. The Cormans aren't keen on direct warfare, but help the AFS as they can. The Retreads are a breakaway group of Cormans who opt for the direct approach to handling the Bane, but don't want to work with the AFS directly, viewing it as a bureaucratic mess.
The Foreans are pretty chill with the AFS however, having good relations and generally getting along swell. You'll see some Forean troops mixed in with human AFS groups at various points.
The Brann, as befitting an entire race stripped down to its criminal element, aren't big on the AFS as a strict alliance. Sure, most Brann aren't so big on the Bane, but having already lost their freedom once, tying themselves down to a giant military organization doesn't seem like a bright idea. As a result, the Brann run the gambit from a fairly friendly lot helping the AFS directly to terrorists fighting both the AFS and Bane. In between are several syndicates that act much like Mafia organizations, treating the AFS as a business associate more than an ally.
Within the AFS itself are even small factions who feel the war is being fought in a losing manner and seek to correct the path in their own way, and within the Bane are those who wish to be free of the Neph's yoke...
You are the in-between to these many factions. As a receptive, the Brann and Foreans have an extra level of respect for you, and the AFS seeks to keep you under their control.
Planned Improvements and Features
Patch 1.3 has been deployed to live Dec 11th and adds Military Surplus (TR's Auction House), two new high level instances, and some major changes to the
Biotechnician Tier 3 and 4 classes (Medic and Exobiologist).
The TR devs have discussed some other additions in the works:
- Personal Armor Units
- 'Elder Game' Content
- Re-spec outside of Cloning
- Future re-evaluation of all classes to ensure 'fun' and balance
- More instances, more crafting improvements
- Clan Capturable CPs with Benefits (Also noted in the Elder Content link)
- Attribute Changes (Ignore the replacement ability part)
Game Issues
No game is without its problems, and no MMO exists without even more of those problems. For TR the things you'll run across the most:
- No re-spec option outside of cloning. (In development)
- Confusing/poor crafting system. (Slowly improving)
- Class Balance. (Being worked on, Biotech tier 3 tree getting some love this patch)
- Post 30 class progression. (A matter of opinion, some feel nothing to look forward to. PAUs should alleviate this some)
- Lots of useless Logos. (While many of the 'useless' ones do get used, there are still many with no real purpose outside of the joys of collection)
- Not enough skill depth/variety. (A matter of opinion, as while there are fewer skills than some games, each has a significant impact on your character)
- Weapon Balance. (Blades/Staves are high damage with no ammo requirement, resulting in tons of cash for Spies/Guardians, many other classes rely on ammo-sucking weapons to kill at great cost. Improved in 1.4)
- Quest Variety, namely that there aren't enough meaningful Morale Parable quests. (Bound to improve in time as the quest writers get more experienced)
- Clan Interface/options are teh sux
- PvP Options. (New Clan PvP stuff is being worked on)
Those at least are the ones I can think of.
The Great DAMNED STEAM SALES AND WII/U Backlog
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
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Posts
Where are the official forums?
There are none. DG felt that official forums contribute little to the game and end up fragmenting into small
cliques anyways. Instead, the community reps (CuppJo and Critters being the most seen) comment on unofficial boards. Feedback is done via the Feedback Form on the TR site with some feedback replied to directly, and some responded to via Feedback Friday articles.
Who's the chick?
The chick on the box art and in the start of this topic is SFC Sarah Morrison, one of the two most important characters involved in TR, the other being General British (Richard Garriott's avatar). Sarah is often around for ingame events and story bits.
Is there a PA Forumers Clan and Server?
No, everyone is a bit spread out at the moment.
There are four servers at the moment:
Cassiopiea (West Coast, LA Based)
Pegasus (East Coast, Virginia Based)
Orion (West Coast, LA Based)
Centaurus (EU, Germany Based)
How soloable is this game?
100%. I have a lvl 42 Specialist and have done everything solo to that point. It will vary by class/skill, but generally speaking you should be able to do every instance at appropriate level so long as you play smart.
WTF is with crafting?
It's, err, a bit unrefined to say the least. You can get by fine without it or you can toss a point towards one of the crafting skills you want. If nothing changes, odds are crafting alts will be pretty popular down the line. On the plus side, paints don't require any crafting skills.
I want to paint my leetd00z0rs Black or White, where can I get the paint for that?
At the moment, you can't. DG is planning to add these colors in but have not decided how people will be able to acquire them, likely in the hopes of avoiding the situation in UO where about 90% of the population dyed all their clothes pure black.
What sort of PvP does this game have?
Presently Clan wars and duels are supported. Clan Wars don't really serve much purpose outside of bragging rights via the PvP Ranks page, and the simple joys of ganking. There are some additions planned for PvP though, as mentioned in Elder Game content in 'Planned Improvements and Features'.
Does this game have any sort of live events?
There is a weekly event called Friday Night Fights which pits lvl 4s against each other in an unarmed brawl for fun and profit. Live events are slated to happen, just no details as of yet. The end of beta saw a rather chaotic event consisting of General British clones (and mini-Britishes) bringing havoc to a multitude of locations.
So far, on the live servers there has been:
Rememberance Day - December 21nd - Remembering the day the Bane invaded Earth - TRVault Coverage
Resurgance Day - December 23rd - A sort of Bane 'holiday' where the Bane attempt to take Foreas Base.
What are these Ethical Parables I keep reading about?
Sprinkled throughout TR are quests which require you to make an ethical decision. Sometimes dealing with drugs, sometimes with who will live and who will die. There are no long term effects to these decisions, but the quest chain in the short term varies as a result of these decisions and sometimes the quest rewards. The game is really just asking you to decide what you'd do if presented with such a situation. The first one you come across is a soldier in Twin Pillars Outpost in Wilderness who asks you to deliver some less than legal drugs to various troops in the zone. You can deliver the drugs, or you can rat out the soldier to the commander of Twin Pillars, who some troops at the base feel may be abusing those same drugs... You will find a more significant diverging path quest in Divide that deals with a captured Thrax. There is supposedly a significant diverging path storyline at the top levels of the game, but I have not seen it yet so cannot comment.
Sadly, more could have been done with these paths pretty easily due to how many factions there are with different motives and goals in this game.
What is armor 'bleed-through'?
Though mentioned in the manual and online in many places, Bleed-through is no longer ingame for TR, it was removed during beta. Essentially it was a stat for each armor type that determined how much damage skipped your armor and applied directly to health, a bit like a latent 'piercability' stat. Apparently this was too confusing for players and it was removed in favor of the current, more direct system.
What's the deal with weapon and armor grades?
Weapons, armor, and tools come in four grades/rarities: Grey, Green ('Modified'), Blue ('Prototype'), Purple ('Experimental'). In patch 1.2 (current live), rarities only influence the number of mods an item has. In 1.3, it will also influence the damage/armor of an item, resell value, repair cost, and durability:
What's the deal with all the ammo types and grades?
Each damage type uses a different type of ammunition, such as Physical typically using cartridge ammo, Fire/Ice using Cannister, etc. The grades are essentially a leveling tax. As you go up in level and get better weapons, they'll start using the more expensive varieties of ammo. You start using Improved grade ammo around 20, High grade around 30, and so on.
You write too much and don't have enough pretty pictures!
Sorry =[
Wasn't there an old thread for this?
Over thar...
Patch and Update Information
Live Servers:
Patch 1.4 : January 29th (Version Notes)
Patch 1.3 : December 11th (Version Notes, Update, Update 2)
Patch 1.2 : November 29th, Updated December 1st (Version Notes, Update)
Test Server:
Forumer Character and Server Info
PA Name - Character Name
Cassiopiea
steejee - Marachus
Centaur
Sezchuanosaurus - Gough
Orion
warder808 - Raz
meatflower -
Accualt -
Tremor - Warscythe
Chrpnk - Enders
Chad Sexington - Massively
Aoi -
Hardtarget -
Pegasus
warder808 - Rok
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
I like the sound of that Elder content stuff. Especially the PAUs and the NPC squads (I've just got the Ranger and am rather fond of being able to summon an NPC AFS buddy).
Here is my info:
warder808-Pegasus-Rok
warder808-Orion-Raz
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Well, if the people who used my trial codes would upgrade their accounts to paid ones, thus freeing up my trial code allowance then I could send you a 3 day trial code.
But seriously, whats the point in limiting each person to 4 three day trial codes at a time? EVE just lets you, them and everybody hand out 15 day trial codes like candy and it works great for getting new people into the game. If me giving out a free trial code and getting PlayNC another subscriber is worth giving me a free month of play as a reward then wouldn't it stand to reason that me being able to hand out an unlimited supply of trial codes would increase the chances of someone subscribing and thus only be more valuable to them? What are they afraid of? Too many people buying their game?
My character is Chester Massively on Orion.
Also, nobody should pay full price. It is still really cheap at Amazon.
The rage nerf is pretty fair overall: gives a good benefit back (the resists) and rage 3/4 + Purple = prepatch purple with the 100% damage rage. Rage 5 + purple is more damage than it was pre-patch.
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
yeah, looks interesting, but I'm pretty jaded against buying MMORPG games to try em out. wasted a lot of money over the years for games I didn't like.
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
Ooh Ohh, patch went up with Auction House?! Do they have a mail system, or chat link system up or in the works.
I'll check it out this weekend after my finals are all done.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Is... $25 really out of your range?
fine. Less than 30$
Send me a private message with your email I think I have 1 trial left.
EDIT: Received. Thank you, sir.
It's $25 on Amazon. Unless that's not quick enough?
What would really sell me on buying TR would be an NCSoft Multi-Game Pass subscription plan.
All in all, damn good patch. The Rage 'nerf' was almost completely counteracted by the rarity changes, so Specalists get more damage/armor out of the item rarity changes same as Soldiers, but soldiers get less from Rage than before. Seems to be a lot more polish all around. Patch by patch they're improving this game substantially. Thankfully the combat and existing content make it plenty fun for me to stick around to wait for those patches
Already made a good amount of cash at the Surplus. Goddamn Spies/Guardians and their never ending wallets.
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
I have nitpicks about the UI/learning curve, but World of Warcraft has spoiled me in that regard. Really, the only complaint I'd formally lodge is that I can't run it well enough on the prettiest settings with this six year old rig of mine.
Do they die easier by compensation? Because when I was a noob character it sucked getting sent into that miasma cave for one of my first missions and basically not being able to kill them at all and having to rely on there being other people around with miniguns to be able to do what I needed to do in there.
Speaking of noob characters I took the opportunity of the spec reset to reallocate all of my level 5 character's skill points into crafting skills, thinking 'yeah, i can transfer all my blueprints and stuff to this guy for crafting and use my higher level guys for doing missions and getting stuff to craft' then afterwards realised that I now have a character who is probably to shit and weak to ever level up again and so will be stuck with pump 2 crafting skills for the rest of his life. Durr.
Now, the egg-layers...
I got all 5 of my kills on those by having someone else help. I'd do the same lightning method and inevitably end up dragging them towards the entrance by virtue of the fact they have several thousand health. Other people would start contributing, and it would eventually drop-- sometimes, though, it would get close enough to melee someone and then bam! 400+ damage in one hit, over three damage types. Insta-kill.
Still, I only died three or so times, and if I hadn't gone back to do the survey beacons quest I would've only died the first time when I realized that oh god they hit so hard
This.
I made 1.2 million yesterday selling all those purples I was getting as mission rewards for 25,000 a piece.
They added new content this patch as well. Fault Lever a lvl 50 instance. There were a ton of new quests in Mires and I heard about new quests in Palisaides. Hopefully they can keep up this pace of improvements/new stuff every two weeks.
I don't even see the point of 3-day trials for an MMO. If you start your account before downloading it, you've probably lost 1/3rd of your trial time just doing that (and it seems all the MMO trials I've seen tell you to start the account first).
The new Palisades quests are great - they have you basically blow the crap out of that Bane base in the southern part of Palisades. It's pretty cinematic too, after you do a certain number of objectives, a Class V stalker crashes in from the sky and starts pew pewing, and then a friendly dropship lands, then enemy dropships and it gets nuts. I was fortunate that a lot of people were doing the quests, so I could sneak in and do all my quests without fighting the full force myself.
And as for the NCsoft multi-game pass, Richard Garriott said at his GWU lecture the other day that they're working on implementing that sort of thing right now. Probably within a year. Not that that does you much good...
I saw on EA that some devs apparently admitted to that.
Has there been a new trial thing for early beta testers who ditched the thing and ran like hell?
Betas are not always fun all the time. The Sins of a Solar Empire devs actually put 'Should be less un-fun than Beta 3' in the Beta 4 notes. A beta should really not be used to judge a game until two weeks before release at most.
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
If I recall correctly, that was about the time period of when people on these boards were saying the game was not good at all.
I haven't noticed anything to that effect.
It's a really fun game so far -- we've got about 4-5 people over on the Arcadians forum trying to get a guild going on Orion.