New player questions

[Melodia]

• Am I supposed to just use the Hongmoon weapon I got from an earlier quest for a long time? Is it worth it to unseal those green weapons that are dropping or are they just fodder used to enchant?
• Am I supposed to keep the Hongmoon weapon same level as my character level? I'm playing as a FM, level 13 and I got the purple weapon to level 5. I'm finding it very difficult to survive with the low damage output, nonexistent defense and lack of dodge moves (1 backdash every 16 seconds is near useless)
• Breaking through Hongmoon weapon requires a "stalker weapon" or whatever it's called. I have a stalker weapon box that requires a "brilliant viridian key". Apparently this key is impossible to get at lower levels without using the cash shop since the viridian reward chest probably has a 0.0001% chance to drop it. So how do I break through this purple weapon then?
• Why is the stalker soul shield in blue text, while the other sets like "blackram" and "dusk adder" all in green text? Does it mean it's better or something?
• What do I do with extra or useless soul shields? Half my inventory's filled with green soul shields. Just sell or discard?
• Teleporting around cost a large amount of money. I've played for hours and only have 60 copper thanks to enemies not dropping anything. Each teleport costs 14. Uhhh I'm guessing teleporting is one of those luxuries that is only available once I hit max level??

[Svolifar]

So first off, the hongmoon weapon is the only weapon you will be using for a long time. You can open the stalker box with any key, the brilliant key just gives you your weapon 100% of the time. The quality rating goes like this orange>purple>blue>green>white. Grey is always trash items. I suggest that you disenchant any thing you dont want. Keep a couple of green weapons for upgrading your weapon once you breakthrough. If you are finding it hard to survive read all your skills first.  Q and E are very important as well as the many cc skills you get.

 

Edit: Dont bother teleporting early on as it is expensive, once quests start giving you silvers teleporting will not be noticeable.

[KatHead]

Use your Hongmoon weapon, the green weapon drops should NOT be unsealed as they are fodder to upgrade your weapon and accessories. 

 

Upgrading your weapon will up your damage. Do your surveys, you should be getting free keys that you can use on the stalker boxes. You can look for your weapon in the ah, it should be really cheap ~2 - 4 silver (cheaper than key).

 

Blue / green is the quality for that level of soul shield. Purple > Blue > Green > White  Once you hit level 6 you should get the blue stalker shield and keep it until lvl 20 when you would want the viridian shield that is got from a vendor.

 

There are a lot of new player guides on youtube and I suck at explaining stuff, you should go check them out as they are very helpful. 

 

 

 

There are lots of them, this one is from before launch and has some useless info in it. It has some good stuff as well though, peruse youtube its packed with what you need to know. 

 

On your FM put points early into RMB 3 points down left hand side for chill, chill is a very op slow / 3rd hit stun and makes kiting super easy. Then throw some points into LMB and learn to animation cancel, once you have put 6 points into those. Look up the burn guides and start learning to dps (even if you are a pvper, knowing the optimal dps path is beneficial).

 

GL M8

[Eimi]

Yup, the hongmoon weapon and associated accessories you'll come across later will keep being upgraded throughout the entire game.

As such, ideally you'd want to finish up all your gear upgrades in a zone before moving on ~

 

Weapon chests can be opened with the rare keys to guarantee a class specific weapon for you, however they can be opened for a random class weapon with regular keys.

You get lots of keys early on from quests & survey rewards and once you start doing daily quests, keys become a nonissue.

 

Standard mmo item quality rules apply ~ grey named items are the lowest tier, green's a step up, blue's a step up, purple's a step up and orange is yet another step up in gear quality.

Generally higher quality shields have better stats but different sets aim to accomplish different goals, such as open world pvp, higher dps and so on ~

Some shield sets have associated achievements for collecting and equipping an entire set, some even reward titles for doing so ~

 

I'd highly suggest getting into the habit of salvaging excess useless gear instead of npcing it, worst case scenario you get scrap that not only npcs for about the same as the item itself, yet it also stacks, allowing you to effectively cut down on your needed inventory room by consolidating junk, and you gain useful upgrade materials by  doing so that you'll have need of later on. Best to start it early :3

 

Money is pretty scarce in the beginning as far as quest rewards go, however you can still make quite a lot ( for your level ) by using the marketplace and selling rare weapons you obtained for different classes & various crafting materials ~

[Luucy]

Hi,

 

to answer your points 1, 2 and 3

- Your Hongmoon Weapon will remain your main weapon all the way long to lvl50.  Later, you'll get accessories (necklace, ring and earring) that work the same way.

- You'll need to upgrade it with green and blue weapons (which you don't need to unseal ! so keep your unsealing charms ^^). 

- At lvl5 and lvl10, you'll need specific weapons (sometimes blue, sometimes purple) to upgrade further. For example, at lvl5 you saw you need the Stalker Weapon to upgrade.

- The Stalker Weapons are found in the stalker boxes as you saw it already and you don't need Viridian Keys to open it, regulars key will open the chest and let you loot a random weapon for all classes. If you want the weapon for your class, you'll have to open several boxes in order to loot the good one (or if you buy a viridian key in the cash shop it's a 100% chance to loot your class' weapon).

- To loot more boxes to get chances to loot the stalker weapon you need, you'll have to kill the Jiangshi Stalker. He will loot Stalker essences that you have to use on Fortune Wheels in order to get those boxes.

 

NB : When you need blue weapons for your upgrades, remember to check the Auction House, because they're tradable and often really cheap so it'll save you some time and lots of nerves !

 

Point 4

The colour of the soulshields (and all other items also) reflects the quality of the item like this : white < green < blue < purple < orange (later on).

So yes, the stalker soulshields are the best you can equip at this level. Next will be the purple ones in Blackram dungeon (if I remember well).

 

Point 5

Dismantle all your extra soulshields. At worse, you'll get junks which you can sell for 1 copper (same price as the soulshield itself). At best, you'll get fusion powder, which you'll keep for later. It will be useful when you'll get max level and need to fuse your soulshields.

 

Hope this can help a little. 

 

Little FM tip : Try to spam your Flame Palm and Frost Palm buttons to increase your DPS because those two spells do not share cooldown ;) Later on, you'll feel like a fire and ice machine gun ^^

 

PS : sorry for perhaps bad english at some points, this is not my native language !

[Melodia]

Thanks, Well getting a stalker weapon myself is out of the question as the world boss is impossible to kill without 3-4 people (and no one is in that area in channel 1 right now), and I have a feeling I'll just waste all my keys and get nothing in return. Guess I'll grind to level 15 then just buy a stalker weapon once auction is unlocked.

 

Is FM supposed to be this weak? I'm a veteran Tera player and the sorceress class in that game is a glass cannon. Yes you die in a few hits but most of the time you can kill enemies before they even reach you. In BnS my FM is barely scratching enemies 1-2 lowers than me and barely has any AoE other than the freeze move, which has like a 40-sec CD. I don't know what I could possibly be doing wrong as my purple weapon is the highest level I can get it at this point (level 5), training is not unlocked, I only have a few active skills and I'm using backdash as often as the 16-sec CD will allow. The gaming experience right now can only be described as painful. Each kill takes at least 30sec and I'm dying every few minutes.

[vita]

2 hours ago, Melodia said:

Thanks, Well getting a stalker weapon myself is out of the question as the world boss is impossible to kill without 3-4 people (and no one is in that area in channel 1 right now), and I have a feeling I'll just waste all my keys and get nothing in return. Guess I'll grind to level 15 then just buy a stalker weapon once auction is unlocked.

 

Is FM supposed to be this weak? I'm a veteran Tera player and the sorceress class in that game is a glass cannon. Yes you die in a few hits but most of the time you can kill enemies before they even reach you. In BnS my FM is barely scratching enemies 1-2 lowers than me and barely has any AoE other than the freeze move, which has like a 40-sec CD. I don't know what I could possibly be doing wrong as my purple weapon is the highest level I can get it at this point (level 5), training is not unlocked, I only have a few active skills and I'm using backdash as often as the 16-sec CD will allow. The gaming experience right now can only be described as painful. Each kill takes at least 30sec and I'm dying every few minutes.

You are level 13 but you haven't breakthrough your weapon to the highest level available to you now means your damage is not that high. Also you weapon probably doesn't have any gems slotted in yet which help increase your damage.

 

Not sure when you started playing Tera, but current version of Tera can't be compare to the original because they have made leveling so much easier with free crystal and easy to get weapon.

[Melodia]

I can't break through the weapon because the stalker weapon costs 4 silver on marketplace, and it would take forever to get that money at this rate. I just got to level 16 and my total wealth is 1 happy silver coin. Every single item in my inventory vendors for 1 copper, even the rare stuff. So I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to do?

- I don't have a high level char to farm for stalker boxes because this is my first char

- Ran out of boxes/keys, and you only get a few keys each day anyways from dailies

- Don't have a cash shop key

- It would take a few days of grinding to make enough money to buy it from marketplace

- Gems don't exist at this low level

I guess this is the first paywall in this game.

[vita]

You get keys from both dailies and survey, I am not sure how many keys you would get by level 16, but I remember it was plenty enough unless you really have bad random.

Certain quests will also give you some keys as well. You could also ask players around you that are farming stalker weapon to trade with you.

[Svolifar]

Do not open any cheat you see in dungeons as each cost a key to open but the game does not let you know. Switch channels a bit and you may find a couple of people farming the jiangshi. Force master are a bit slow at first but once you have access to your skill tree you ramp up really quickly in damage. They have one of the highest single target damage in the game. Best advise that i can give you is farm the boss and get the full soul shield and the weapon asap.

[RetroByte]

9 hours ago, Melodia said:

In BnS my FM is barely scratching enemies 1-2 lowers than me and barely has any AoE other than the freeze move, which has like a 40-sec CD. I don't know what I could possibly be doing wrong as my purple weapon is the highest level I can get it at this point (level 5), training is not unlocked, I only have a few active skills and I'm using backdash as often as the 16-sec CD will allow. The gaming experience right now can only be described as painful. Each kill takes at least 30sec and I'm dying every few minutes.

Dragonchar was my bread and butter and still is even at higher lvls when everyone takes blazing beam I'm still spec'd for that AOE.

It's your base AOE with no cooldown, high damage (can get just as high as blazing beam). You can mow down groups of mobs with it and use it to unfreeze party members too.

It does use up a lot of focus though so at your lvl just before focus is down switch to frost palm and hit out frost fury to recover if you need but honestly mobs are toast before I'd even need to do that anyway :)

 

What you really need though is that Stalker weap upgrade. You should have done it straight away. What server are you on? Because I'd give you the weapon myself, I know the struggle of trying to catch enough people at a world boss, my BD had to loiter for 2 days before I could farm it ? I'm Highland Gate.

[MichelleZhivago]

If you need help, what Server are you on? Certainly someone there, in your faction, clan, whatever, can take a moment to help. Recently, I went back down to help some New Players with that Boss. It spawns rapidly and we must have killed it a dozen times fairly quickly. One of the few places Bots are good as they will attack it too. Did it one time with just me and a bunch of bots!

 

As to fighting NPCs, no, you can not stand toe-to-toe with all of them. But at the lower levels, the NPCs are somewhat limited and usually fairly predictable. My main thing was to try to keep from being hit and just keep after them one at a time, slowly killing them. Most of them, you could press 'A' continuously, circling around them and spam Left Mouse Button and Right Mouse Button, occasionally changing directions back and forth with 'A' then 'D' and mixing things up with 1, 2, 3 and 4. Gets really fun when you are running around some monster at higher levels and are hitting them with 'F', 'V' and 'C', still using LMB, RMB, 1, 2, 3 and 4, constantly circling. :D

 

[Melodia]

Thanks for the help guys.

 

I'm in Iksanun, not the server I'd choose myself but my friends chose this one for some reason. They're same level as me and face the same problems, so they won't be of help lol.

 

I'm not in a guild (or clan I think it's called in this game) yet, I usually only join one once reaching max level in an MMO.

 

Totally forgot about faction chat. Guess I'll give that channel a shout to see if someone nice wanna trade a stalker wristband for something else.

 

Do you need more than 1 stalker weapon? What fodder is required to get the purple weapon from level 6 to 7 for example? Hopefully just regular run of the mill green fodder.

[LunaticAzure]

You only need one stalker weapon and one Viridian Poison, which you should of gotten from quests and surveys. Leveling weapons and accessories is always the same:

 

0-5 is regular fodder, 5-6 is a specific blue weapon/accessory(you will have to unseal this) + region specific blue/purple grade materials,

6-10 is regular fodder, once you reach 10 you can transform the item with a specific purple weapon/accessory(you will have to unseal this) + region specific transformation stone(you get a few from quests and surveys up to the 2nd region, 3rd region and beyond you'll have to craft them or buy them from the market)

Also note, starting at the 3rd region (Moonwater) upgrades are significantly more expensive, so don't be surprised if you can't afford these upgrades right away.

 

Since you're farming the Stalker Jiangshi, I'd recommend opening the soul shield boxes you get from the wheel. They come in 3,5 and 8 piece boxes, each soul shield piece sells for 1-2 copper. Manually selling them can be a little tedious but you can speed it up by right clicking to sell and pressing the "Y" key, it's an easy way to get a bit of money for transportation and to spend on upgrades. Also make sure to accept every quest you see before doing anything, quests are always going to be in the area you need to go and should add up to a nice sum of money, with 3rd region and beyond giving dramatically more money. 

[Melodia]

I managed to find a stalker bangle for 1 silver and finally got my purple to level 10. It's rather surprising it makes THIS much difference. Back at level 5 my weapon was doing barely any damage to enemies. Now I can kill enemies of the same level in like 3 hits, WAY before they even get anywhere near me. This is a huge balancing issue. I'm betting lots of players would get stuck at these "breakthrough" stages that makes the difference like night and day. Either you remain a weakling because you had a streak of bad luck with keys, or you become insanely OP if you manage to get a breakthrough fodder. What happened to smooth progression? In every other MMO I've played, those extra upgrades are entirely optional and only gives marginal power boosts. Here? My level 10 weapon literally does THREE TO FOUR TIMES more damage than a level 5.

[LunaticAzure]

All of Viridian Coast is basically an extended tutorial. Your Hongmoon stage 10 weapon is the equivalent of a lvl20 weapon. Starting at the Cinderlands, your upgrades won't feel as op.

[Munifex]

Your next breakthrough weapon will be Blight Bangle. It will be gained in a dungeon called "Blackram Narrows". You may have to play it a couple of times before you can find it!

+ if you really want to have those luxurious teleports you can sell Blight Fang, a material from Blackram narrows and gain some coppers.

[Melodia]

I tried Blackram Narrow yesterday and it was pretty fun, a bit easy compared to Tera though. Guess I'm just used to that game.

 

I managed to get 4 blight weapon boxes yesterday, but none of them had a bangle. Oh well didn't expect to get it on my first day.

 

Should I grind this dungeon until I get a blight bangle or just move on with Cinderland quests? I can't see the stats on the transformed weapon and don't know how much better it is.

[Munifex]

Yes! Good luck with that! it is not easy to get it, but it's very rewarding to have it!

[Shuchin]

I think the flaw in your case was that crazily no one at all was there to defeat the stalker with you. This must be a new thing, because at the times when the game was out the area had 50 channels and you could not get enough hits in before the boss was down. No problems to have many chests in those days.

So I feel with you - as a beginner you would not know how to solo such a boss, and need the gear upgrade that you cannot get this way. catch-22 :(

 

As for the Blight weapon, I think it's worthwhile to continue with the storyline but return there once a day. That way you have the daily quest rewards in addition to eventually the weapon, and the instance will become faster and faster with higher level.

 

Good luck with the Cinderlands ! ^_^