Now that a little over a week has passed since the new fishing, gathering, and crafting system patch went live, I’ve also spent this last week getting a better idea of how all the pieces fit together where I can build on my initial impressions post (parts of which were critical).
The new gathering is fundamental and brings that activity back into relevance. Unlike before where nodes were pretty much based on gathering skill level and thus also associated with zones that were higher level ones (and where most of the collected material was irrelevant due to obsoleted crafting designs), nodes are now all over the game world where some locations offer certain ones in more abundance than others. As someone who really enjoys exploration, the effect of this change has me heading off into those far corners of the map. I also kill several birds with one stone in the process by gathering nodes that are offered in the guild quests (which rewards guild experience and guild gold).
Furthermore, heading off into these not often visited locales has allowed me to tick off additional achievements including soloing two level 68 world bosses that were just sitting there (and seeing why they are normally uncommon to come across since guilds tend to go out hunting for them, and then monopolize them given the materials they drop).
These weren’t trivial to take down solo (20+ minutes for the first one and then 40 minutes for the next one though 10+ minutes of that was me messing around since another player showed up when I had it down to around 24% and they didn’t mention anything/ask to join the fight, and so I wasn’t sure if they were planning to try to reset the boss for their guild or were just a curious onlooker – so I just ended up whittling it down to 5% over a 10 minute period where they must have been thinking this elin ninja is crazy, before I just DPS burst it down at the end). It was extremely satisfying taking each down and then the blaze of lights from some of the higher end materials (haven’t had this sort of dopamine fix in a long time).
I realize a large raid party would burn these down really quickly but I’ve always enjoyed this self-imposed solo play with tackling bosses with way too much health/defenses (along with dealing/getting annoyed by their crowd control spams with the stuns and knockdowns) since the satisfaction comes from that last hit when they go down and hopefully (like in these two cases), drop a bunch of loot. And without this new gathering and fishing system, I wouldn’t have ever come across these in my travels (and they were untaken yet since a lot of players are still preoccupied with the AFK fishing).
Digressing, the fishing aspect is itself a grind (since you need to build up enough tokens to upgrade your fishing rod along with other gathered materials). The higher tiered rods are a huge gem sink (specifically for emeralds and the much more difficult to acquire/expensive diamond). The highest tier rod (VIII) requires 48K angler tokens, other gathered/processed materials, and 100 diamonds. The good thing is that this is a 100% success rate system and the fishing rod isn’t soul bound (so you can pass it to other characters in order to run the daily Vanguard quest).
The higher end gathering tools (which reduce those times) are also a huge sink since upgrading them uses the old “needs two of the same tier item” in order to upgrade them with chances to fail (the same goes for upgrading the Angler’s Whiskers which also help to reduce the wait time on manual fishing and reduce the AFK fishing timer; these also need two of same tier in order to upgrade with chances of failure the higher tiers you go).
The newer refined crafting system as noted in my other posting is now very relevant and for some professions like alchemy, much easier to progress; I finally hit artisan on my gunner (artisan and mastery is still one profession per character) so I can begin crafting my own sapphire and then emerald (once I purchase the design) as I intend to master cooking on my ninja (which I previously was artisan in etching since I was planning to master that eventually). Being self-sufficient means having at least 5 level 65 alts (being max level helps due to the costs involved with some crafting materials or in the case of cooking, ingredients from the NPC since most of the Vanguards that give decent gold are for level 65 content).
As I noted in my first impressions post, this life skilling addition has drastically increased the amount of time I’ve been spending in TERA (mainly as a fishing/life skill simulator). The new systems objectives are designed to help reduce the long wait times for fishing and gathering. The biggest criticism I have is the premium bait that is cash shop only. The craftable bait (4 tiers of them) can only stack 40 at a time while the premium bait can stack up to 1000 (and the more expensive of the two types has much better chances at higher grade fish and BAF’s). The advantages are huge once paired with at least a tier IV or higher fishing rod. Thus there is this much more blatant pay-2-fill_in_the_blank element (still not anywhere close to ArcheAge or Black Desert Online levels…. yet) when it comes to fishing.
I’m personally trying to not let that get in the way of my actual enjoyment of these new systems in the game though since there aren’t many MMO’s out there that don’t have some sort of contrived monetization in it. Even though I have a lot of praise for MapleStory 2, the AFK fishing there requires a small amount of Merets for 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 3 hour intervals of AFK fishing (though they do run events or provide rewards for the occasional 30 minute AFK fishing coupon) since they have to make money (after having removed most of the blatant “P2W” cash shop items). Like gear, I don’t expect to go chasing after the higher tier fishing rod, tools, or whiskers. But everything done now progresses something (progress EP, progress item XP, gain enchantment materials for future tries at upgrading, etc) which will eventually translate into some upgrade/progression of my characters (albeit in smaller steps compared to those who are constantly pushing to upgrade gear/these new life skill items). While I’ve been critical of some of Bluehole’s design decisions with TERA when it comes to combat related systems (specifically gearing), I think they did a decent job with this overhaul of the crafting/gathering/fishing system.
