En Masse Entertainment posted a preview of the upcoming update (which they are calling Skywatch: Aerial Island) that opens up the new level 68+ zone; which is the floating island region known as Exodor. This will be patch v86. Exodor itself is comprised of several islands containing zones with level appropriate monsters.
A character needs to be at least level 68 (to see the new quest/story that opens access to the zone) and be geared in at least Stormcry gear to survive/deal damage to the level 70+ mobs there (in order to acquire the new gear that will drop off open world mobs; the higher tier equipment will have higher drop rates in dungeons with the highest tier; yellow superior grade being much lower chance). This zone has its own specific reputation designation where daily quests done there, reward credit points (similar to Guardian Legion missions) which can then be used at NPC’s to purchase consumables including enchanting material (which are also random drops off Exodor field mobs) used for the new gear. There is a specific material for weapon and armor slots (similar to the relic and artifact enchanting materials dropped for pre-level 65 questing gear).
EME nor Gameforge has yet provided actual detailed information regarding the new gear system (level 68+) though which differs from the current system. EME did provide an introductory developers note (translated from K-TERA) which outlines the rationale for this new system (I don’t buy most of the BS in that note since ultimately, this will be a much larger time and gold sink compared to enchanting from Stormcry through Heroic Oath when it comes to the higher tiers and higher enchant levels). Existing gear (and its enchanting system) will continue to remain relevant since they will still be applicable (at least for time being) between 65-68.
I do expect over time though that Bluehole will end up depreciating it (as of patch v87 in K-TERA, no big changes have been made to enchanting rates for Frostmetal, Stormcry, or Heroic Oath, but they have increased the success rate for upgrading Daylight accessories and Frostmetal belt). The following is a short summary of what is coming (not complete) and includes some of my own opinion about this new system.
The new system adds physical and magic damage (RNG layer 1), reverts back to RNG properties (RNG layer 2), and those properties will roll within a range (RNG layer 3). There will be 3 different tiers (green uncommon, blue rare, and yellow superior). These will require new enchanting materials (from monster drops or dismantling the new gear) and gold. All of these tiers along with their enchanted levels will overlap the stats from existing Frostmetal to Heroic Oath gear.
Unlike most existing level 65 gear (which is soulbound), this new equipment is tradable (because of the random properties and roll ranges) even when enchanted. The ulterior motive behind this is somewhat obvious though; that is to increase demand for gold (i.e. conversion of premium virtual currency to gold via the purchase of cash shop items like cosmetics that are then listed on the trade broker for gold) since a lot of decisions are being made with the cash grab/milk this cow for all its worth mentality (with some regional publishers fully onboard with this).
Greens will be the most common drops from field monsters (similar to how green halidom and relics are). As a result, existing well geared players that can clear the more difficult content, will have some initial gold making opportunities when it comes to rares and superiors with non-optimal rolls (though the wrong damage type for a class is pretty much salvage for materials right away). More recent v87 patches in K-TERA have released new Exodor relevant accessories as well as physical and magic damage belts and masks.
RNG enchanting follows the usual Korean MMO design (success chance goes down with higher tier and higher enchant levels). There are breakpoints (similar to the new PvP gear) where enchanting failures can damage that piece of gear. The gear isn’t destroyed, it’s just that it can no longer be further enchanted until it is repaired (using another new material plus gold). Similar to the old masterworked gear (where enchanting failure caused it to decrease by two enchant levels), there’s a point where getting to +15 will also cause a decrease in the enchant level (along with the equipment being damaged).
The new gear (even with non-optimal properties and rolls) will have far more damage than what is capable with existing Heroic Oath gear which maxes out at +3 (though this will require at least rare tier items enchanted to at least +4 or higher). That will of course be all relative though since the stuff in Exodor will be tuned for this newer gear (and eventually, they’ll rebalance instanced content and some of the open world stuff outside of Exodor, to be more in-line with this newer gear. Some existing solo instanced content (Ace Dungeons and Celestial Arena) will have increased item level requirements with patch v86 while the Apex class awakening quest will have its difficulty reduced (since it’s a required step to unlocking the level 65+ story quests and dailies for progression through 65-70.
Bluehole/Krafton has already mentioned for K-TERA that they are working on a higher legendary/unique tier which will utilize Heroic Oath gear (I’m presuming this will borrow another one of the designs from the Korean and Thai version of Devilian but adapted to TERA; where the previous high end tier along with additional materials, was used to craft the unique tier).
The reason I said the rationale in the above linked dev note is BS is because I look at the how the acquisition of relics and halidoms are handled. Greens drop in abundance but combining them to upgrade to the next tier is like nearly 95% failure rate. And then it gets exponentially worse since you need two of the same tier to upgrade. Blues come mostly from instanced content (dungeons) and the newer world bosses (the ones without the HP bar) while yellows comes from the box for those who get the last hit (there will be a participation reward based on contribution) where there may be a chance to get yellows.
Hardcore players along with exploiters (who use a modified GPK to display the HP bar of these world bosses and time their burst damage to snipe the last hit) is why I haven’t bothered doing these. Generally speaking, the game designer pushing all of these designs through is only creating a wider gap which will eventually put an even larger wall in front of the less than hardcore grinder. There is little being done to create game play that will retain the less than hardcore player. I had been posting my level 70 progression but shortly after the update with Azart Hatchery was released, I began focusing more on Guild Wars 2 (so for most of September, I played TERA for less than an hour total). Thus I’m still only a little over 50% through level 68 (there really isn’t any incentive for me to hit 70 before this patch drops).
The basic premise with most all of these recent designs is higher fail percentages which from most players perspective, isn’t fun. My belt is still Frostmetal and I’ve failed over 8 times already trying to upgrade it to Stormcry (the success chance has now increased to the 42% range; all my Daylight accessories are maxed out on item XP but I’m going to burn through all my mats just trying to upgrade my belt, and will have to go through this torture for 9 other pieces of accessory; actually, I’m not going to bother unless they run some sort of event that increases the success rate by a larger margin). This is what I foresee for just trying to get the optimal properties on gear drops let alone enchanting. This designer from BDO needs to go back to Pearl Abyss because these designs are driving even players from K-TERA away.
I myself have reached the point where I am consciously no longer upgrading my gear (the maxed out item XP no longer has any psychological impact because the success rate is so low to begin with at this tier level). And given the way that EME (NA region) has been handling the game, I’ve locked the wallet tight (though I still have around 14K EMP left to spend). This sort of reminds me of the time where I stopped playing Devilian for a bit (frustration with Trion Worlds and Bluehole Ginno with how they respectively handled their ends of the game which also dovetailed with some in-game drama). The player population drop off there was easy to deduce; this same thing will unfortunately end up happening with TERA (the existing hardcores who oblige and quickly grind through the content will do the same with this patch as will those who throw money at virtual currency each month to sell for additional gold basically giving both publisher and developer the metrics which they are making these decisions with).
If K-TERA players pretty much are being ignored, other regions are just going to have to deal with these RNG laden designs. Up until now, I’ve been okay with small dents in progression while focusing on the activities I do enjoy. With this new “multiple layers of RNG” system, part of me feels ready to just stop (because all I see are design decisions sucking the remaining fun out of the game). I guess I’ll see what happens in NA once this update goes live.
Bolded italicized note as of October 3rd: Unbeknownst to me while I was drafting this post up and after publishing it, EME noted they would be running an enchanting event from October 1-15 which I took advantage of (sort of wish I had just given up trying my belt earlier); while the event seemed to suggest it was only enchanting and not the actual upgrade process (to get it to the next tier), upgrades were also included since all of my accessories were showing 100% success with the event running. So I finally got my belt to Stormcry and my accessories to Entropy. Now I need to see if I can get enough item XP to get some pieces to Heroic Oath though I won’t have enough enchanting materials to do everything.
