Bluehole unveiled a new pet partnering/companion system as an ongoing evolution of the recent level cap increase in K-TERA.
These new companions are akin to combat style pet systems available in other games including Astellia (with its Astelle summons). An interesting twist is that these companions have a small interactive ability where they can speak to both the player character as well as other companions.
This new partner system become unlocked at level 66 via a “Quest of the Spirits” quest where you can earn a companion. Additional companions can be obtained via a new pet combination and growth system (part of this will involve drops from field mobs).
These pet companions also have various skills which allows them to aid the player in combat.
What should not be surprising is there will be a grind element when it comes to enhancing the skills and capabilities of each companion. Bluehole will release another note on January 24th (Korea local time) providing more details on those skills.
These new companions do not have the abilities which are available on existing pets (like auto looting or auto gathering). There is a new “training” system which allows taking an existing pet, and transferring its functionality to a companion.
For reference, a very small portion of this system (Pet Appearance System) was implemented by Bluehole Ginno in the NA/EU version of Devilian where pets could be combined for both appearance change purposes as well as combining their abilities in order to get enhanced functionality. As I mentioned before, Bluehole is probably going to begin pulling from a “folder of ideas” that had been planned or partially implemented for Devilian back into TERA now that Krafton has seemingly decided to put that franchise to rest).
There will also be a “gifting” system for these companions as well as a new user interface for registering and managing them (pets will no longer be registered via the Skill menu but will instead move to its own interface as part of the Social menu).
The rest of the note covers additional details of this new system which in some regards, will also be a mini-game where players can try to “collect” all of the different pets and spend time enhancing their capabilities. I’m expecting this to also have monetization avenues associated with it (because Nexon KR).
