• A cool action combat system based heavily around combos and contextual actions. Rather than have a “hotbar” where you place your skills, your skills are assigned to specific keys. These keys will change to different skills based on the state of your character and/or opponent (e.g. airborne, knocked down, grabbed, other class-specific mechanics). It winds up being a very fluid and flexible system that sometimes feels more like a fighting game than an MMO.
  
• Wuxia-inspired Qinggong techniques that enable you to dash quickly, jump super high, run across water, and glide through the air. This allows for a greater sense of vertical mobility in the world and lets you cover a lot of ground quickly. You do have a stamina bar though so you can’t do it forever, but it regens relatively quickly. As you level up you’ll do stupid fetch quests for a dumb old man and he’ll teach you even cooler techniques like diving from the sky and running up walls!
  
• Interesting and well-designed PvP options. The core of this lies at the 1v1 and 3v3 tag-team arena options. These arena matches use equalized stats and do not take gear into account, making them almost entirely skill based. The PvP combat is heavily based around positioning, matchup knowledge, smart use of escapes, and mindgames. Many matchups come down to baiting the opponent into making a mistake and blowing their escapes at the wrong time so you can CC them and get off a big damage combo without them breaking out of it. The only caveat is you WILL want to be max level or close to it as your skill points from leveling are not equalized. Some classes can get away with lower levels through good play, however. The arena PvP is very popular as an esport in the other regions.
  
• There’s also consensual open-world faction-based PvP, where equipping specific faction outfits will flag you to attack/be attacked by players wearing the opposing faction’s outfits. Players compete to gain points by killing opposing players and NPCs, which they can then turn in for reputation with that faction. However if you are killed, remove your faction outfit, or teleport out you will lose any points you hadn’t turned in for rep yet. Korea also has 6v6 battleground style PvP but I don’t think we’ll have that by release. It’s worth noting that unlike 1v1 and 3v3 arena, your gear DOES matter in open world and 6v6 PvP.
  
• Interesting dungeon experiences and relative lack of a “holy trinity” in PvE. While there are still some classes that are more suited to holding aggro or providing party support, there’s a lot of overlap between classes with these sort of abilities and party makeups tend to be pretty fluid. Any class can “tank” using their evasion, moves with invincibility, or damage absorbing abilities, every class has DPS capabilities, and there are no healers, though some classes can spec their skills to provide some minor health recovery. Dungeons come in 6man and 4man flavors. 4mans are considered the “hard mode”, as the mob damage is higher and attack and aoe indicators are removed compared to 6man.
  
• A robust skill specialization system. Just go to https://bnstree.com/ and look at that poo poo. Almost every skill has its own skill tree that adds different effects to the base skill or might even change it entirely. You gain skill points while leveling and can respec your skills at any time outside of combat. Once you hit level cap, you will eventually be able to get “Hongmoon levels” which take much longer to get but will grant you more skill points, thus enabling even more flexibility with your builds. You’ll also be able to do quests to unlock ~secret Hongmoon arts~ which will enable you to choose the final tier in many of your skills, giving them powerful additional effects.
  
• A relatively non-lovely F2P system. The cash shop is entirely convenience and cosmetic items. If you want to play it COMPLETELY FREE ALWAYS it’s definitely possible but it’s going to get pretty grindy later on. If you’re willing to put a few bucks in you can make them go quite a long way, however. If you don’t mind paying what is essentially a sub fee for premium then you won’t have any issues at all, unless you’re like super obsessed with all the cosmetic stuff on the cash shop. More details on cash shop currencies in the “Hongmoon Coins” section later in the OP.
  
• Story is pretty cool as a wuxia-inspired revenge tale. It gets a little cheesy at times but seems pretty self-aware so it’s fun if you don’t take it too seriously.
  
• Leveling PvE is pretty standard questing stuff, but it goes by pretty quickly especially if you make use of the xp food you’ll inevitably get. There’s lots of really amazing scenery too.
  
• Buff dudes and big booties, also furry midgets if that’s your thing. There’s also a “skin glossiness” slider if you want to oil yourself up and run around all shiny. As one goon put it, you can make yourself "grossly incandescent".
  

• You need to be wearing an outfit to gain stats from your soul shields. Swapping outfits won't change your soul shield configuration, but running around naked won't give you their benefits.
  
• Soul Shields come in 8-piece sets, and you get set bonuses for equipping 3, 5, and 8 pieces from the same set. Its usually worth it to go for the full set.
  
• Most soul shields you find are pretty mediocre at best. I found that for leveling it was just easier and more efficient to focus sets with HP and Crit. This seemed like the most useful stats to focus on, but feel free to prove me otherwise.
  
• Using the salvage button on the bottom of your inventory UI, you can break down unwanted pieces and gain fusion powder. Using the upgrade button on the same UI, you can use other unwanted soul shields to increase the stats of the ones you plan to equip.
  
• By joining the Soul Shield crafting guild, you can just directly make pieces with the stat you're looking to add. Want to stack more crit? Just make crit shields! If you're not a crafter, you can always find them on the marketplace as well. As a bonus, you'll be able to craft the transformation stones needed for your various hongmoon equipment upgrades.
  

• Rather than finding or making items yourself, crafting and gathering is done by placing orders. You pick up professions by forming contracts with their respective guilds, and then place orders for either raw materials (gathering) or finished products (crafting). Gathering requires a small fee, while crafting requires the recipes materials along with a fee.
  
• Orders can be placed directly and picked up through a guild NPC or long-distance through your crafting UI. Distance orders and pick up will incur an additional fee that may be a little pricey for the level you are able to first start crafting, but becomes negligible over time.
  
• Professions can first be acquired in Jadestone Village. You can have up to 2 gathering and 2 crafting professions, for a total of four. You can drop a profession at anytime at the cost of losing your accumulated experience with that profession.
  
• To gather, you must first locate a sample of the item you wish to gather in the world. The UI helpfully lets you know what region and subzone of the map they can be found on, as well as giving you directions towards the sample. There are multiple places to find an individual sample, but you only need (and can only ever interact) with one.
  

• Crafting and gathering items earns you guild points towards their respective professions, which you need to rank up. The UI helpfully informs you of your current guild points, the total needed to reach the next rank, and how many points each order provides.
  
• Higher ranks allow you to craft and gather new items. There are a total of 4 ranks, each with materials corresponding to a different region in the world: Rank 1 - Viridian Coast, Rank 2 - The Cinderlands, Rank 3 - Moonwater Glade, Rank 4 - Snowy Peaks. (Forgot the actual name.)
  
• As the ranks of your orders go up, so does the time needed to fulfill them. For example, crafting and gathering for common materials and items takes 30 minutes at rank 1 and 40 minutes at rank two. Rare crafts and gathers are 1 hour at rank 1 and 6 hours at rank 2. Taking all the steps into account, Rank 3 crafts can take almost 48 hours from beginning to end.
  
• You can perform special crafts as a clan! Deposit the required materials into the clan vault, and the leader can place an order for items that cannot be obtained in any other way, including customizable clan outfits. They also require certain professions to be learned among your clan members. At the extreme end, some crafts will need at least one of every crafting profession maxed out within the clan.
  

• Quartz and water are special resources that can only be gathered out in the world directly by players. Mining picks allow you to gather quartz from rock formations, and jars allow you to collect water from wells.
  
• The icons for wells and rock formations are always visible on the map, but it does take time for the actual node to respawn. It’s intended to be a limited resource, so don't be surprised if it takes some time to find a node.
  
• You can find more recipes out in the world to unlock new items to craft in your UI. The majority of these are drops from dungeons.
  

• Most professions remain useful even at level cap, both for selling your crafted items on the marketplace and for your own personal use.
  
• Talismans and Medicines will remain relevant for providing consumables. There will always be a need for potions and unsealing talismans.
  
• Jewelry finds its niche in producing gem boxes. When opened, these give a random gem that could be potentially very valuable or...not so much. As one of the main sources of gems at endgame, you can either try for the worthwhile gems or just sell your unopened boxes on the marketplace and leave the risk to the buyers.
  
• Soul shields provide the fusion fodder needed to add stats of your choice to the soul shield sets you collect from dungeons and other sources. Transformation stones remain relevant as you better believe equipment upgrading doesn't stop just because you've hit level cap!
  
• Pottery will continue to provide materials for the above professions, especially as the focus moves on to the more material intensive recipes.
  
• Cooking and Blacksmithing, uh, you need them for clan crafts! Hey, they can't all be winners.
  

• East Fleet Supply Chain (Poharan 24man) dailies. This is an "open-world" instance so you just run in and kill stuff and the bosses will respawn on a timer and such. There's a dude outside who gives a ton of dailies, then go in the instance and follow people around or try and find a group and get the dailies done. Poharan herself takes a bit to spawn, I believe you have to kill each of the other bosses 3 times. You can easily get like 3 gold from all of these dailies.
  
  
• Blackram Supply Chain (Poharan 6/4man) daily. 6man is easy mode, so do this for awhile to get used to it and farm up the purple Blackram soul shield set. Try to get crit on as many pieces as you can, all of them should be able to roll it except 3. Then you can do 4man if you want for a chance at some cool costume stuff off Poharan herself. 4man is "hard mode" and has much higher damage though, and removes all the aoe indicators and boss ability timing help, so you gotta get good. Just hop in dungeon lobby (F8) and get it done, you should be able to get the daily in the staging area before entering after your group is formed. The daily gives almost a gold.
  
  
• Misty Woods PvP dailies. Put on your faction outfit and head to your side's base in Misty Woods (once you put on the outfit you can see PvP dailies on your map as well as PvP specific windstride points at the bases). You'll need to be at least rank 2 in your faction to get these, so you may need to go back to the desert in Cinderlands and do a few pvp dailies there to rank up first. The reason these dailies are so important is they provide Soulstones, which you will need a TON of for both weapon evolution and crafting. At any rate, do all the Misty Woods quests you can (the Blackwyrm one is kind of impossible to do right now on Mushin because red side is completely uncoordinated). The quests will give you a choice between a set amount of soulstones or a "soulstone pouch" that gives a random amount of 1-4. If for whatever reason you get off on RNG then I guess you could get the pouch, but it usually fucks you over so it's better to go with the set amount. Then go to the base on the beach in Hogshead Pastures and there will be 2 more dailies to do there for more soulstones.
  
  
• (Optional)At some point you may want to look for a group on your faction that is farming the named enemy base NPCs that spawn every 10 minutes or so in Misty Woods if you're killing the quest NPCs in the base. These guys drop seals that you can use to buy the Moonwater Arena Soul Shield set which is a great world pvp set as it has a ton of health and defensive stats. It costs 160 seals for the whole set. Piece 2 is guarenteed crit, Piece 6 can roll crit. You can also get your faction's elite outfit (like the fancy fur coat for Red) for 100 seals.
  
  
• The "Big 4" dungeon dailies. These are the four level 45 blue dungeons: Skittering Tunnels, Brightstone Ruins, Hall of Ogong, The Pigsty. Same with Poh 6, just hop in the dungeon lobby, grab the daily there, and run em. If you get lucky the Merry Potters recipe will drop and people will bid out of their fuckin minds (we're talking 30-50 gold and sometimes higher) and then you can GET MONEY. Or if you're a potter you could try and get the recipe so you can make the refiners for Moonwater Transformation Stones but in that case I hope you have money in the first place. These dailies also give a fairly hefty amount of silver, about 35 each.
  

cathead fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Feb 22, 2016

cathead fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Jan 4, 2016