Agaia Online Launch Notes

Gear

Players who remember the Stormcry or Heroic Oath era of gear progression will find our gear path structure to be quite familiar. While our gearing may be based in principle on this era of gearing, we’ve combined it with some of the stats players will need to take advantage of skill passives available in this patch. We think that this kind of gearing is a lot healthier than the types of gear progression you’d normally find from this era of the game, both on retail and what you might find from other servers. Gone are random rolls and infusions — instead, we’re putting a more singular focus in all aspects of the game to allow players greater freedom and flexibility in tailoring their character to fit their own wants and needs.

All tiers of gear will be enchantable to a maximum of +9, before being able to be directly upgraded to the next tier of gear available. Players can expect to see the return of Item XP on gear, which should give you some extra flexibility in deciding how and when to enchant your gear. Don’t worry though, as that’s the only amount of RNG you can expect from our gearing; we’re not bringing back infusions.

A 3% enchantment correction is applied on failure for all levels of enchantment across all tiers of gear.

Broadly, we will have three tiers of gear equipment available on launch, corresponding to the tiers of dungeons we have made available on launch. Here’s what you can expect the gearing to look like on launch:

Tier 1: Forgotten

This is the first set of gear available to players upon reaching level 70. Accessories start at a tier lower than their equipment counterpart, so if this is Tier 1 gear, then these Faded accessories are Tier 0.

Because we are using the Heroic Oath era of gear progression as a baseline, we’ve started to reintroduce selectable lines on certain pieces of equipment. Currently, we’re using a mix of some older lines and some of the newer lines that a lot of players have come to expect. Most notably, we’re giving players the opportunity to decide if they want to use “Enrage” or “Cooldown Reduction” toplines. We’re also utilizing some of the newer versions of gear lines to aid players in tailoring the specific ratio of stats they’d like to use (for certain skill passives, for example).

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Forgotten gear is going to be what players will use in the Tier 0 and Tier 1 dungeons. This gear will start with a basic success rate of 50% for each enchantment level. The Faded accessories players receive at the start will have a fixed 100% success rate to upgrade into Forgotten accessories, but starting with Forgotten, accessories will also require Item XP in order to maximize your success rate of upgrading.

Forgotten gear can be upgraded to Awakened gear starting at +9 enchantment level, with a basic success rate of 50%.
Players can participate in a variety of content to obtain materials used for upgrading this gear, ranging from PvE dungeon content, solo Ace dungeons, Guardian Legion missions, and more.

Tier 2: Awakened

This gear set upgrades directly from the Tier 1 gear. Awakened gear is recommended to be used in the corresponding Tier 2 dungeon content. Not only does this equipment provide better stats than its Tier 1 counterpart, weapons will also start having an additional line of selectable stats available.

Awakened gear starts with a basic success rate of 30%, with -2% basic success rate subtracted for every 2nd enchantment level afterwards, with a minimum success rate of 22%.

Awakened gear can be upgraded to Elder’s gear starting at +9 enchantment level, with a basic upgrade success rate of 22%.

Tier 3: Elder’s

Elder’s gear is the third and final gear set currently available for players, upgraded from Awakened gear. Elder’s gear is what players will be using to tackle Tier 3 dungeon content, the most challenging currently available on the server.

Elder’s gear starts with a basic success rate of 25%, with -2% basic success rate subtracted for every enchantment level afterwards, with a minimum success rate of 12%.

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Curious about what these Augment sockets are for? Head over to the Talisman section here to learn more: Agaia Launch Notes

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Etchings

Players will probably notice the lack of etchings on equipment. This is because we aren’t totally satisfied with Etchings as a system and we’d like to breathe new life into it, so we’ve gone ahead and disabled etchings for the time being until we’re happy with a better implementation. For now, players can enjoy the benefits of double Energetic IV weapon and glove etchings built directly into their gear’s stats, so they won’t have to miss out on performing their rotations as fluidly as possible.

Skill Advancements

All players will receive a box upon character creation filled with all of the necessary items to level up and unlock all of your Skill Advancements freely. We don’t believe that the retail grind of unlocking Skill Advancements is currently in the best interests of our players.

Glyphs

Upon use of the Level 70 Scroll, players will instantly unlock all of the available skills and glyphs for their class, including those obtained through Awakening. No more being forced to do the Awakening questline either, because you will receive an item upon character creation that awards the 5 extra glyph points. Players can immediately jump right in to the high octane combat that is all so familiar to them, without any of the prerequisite tedium of grinding first.

Enhancement Points

We don’t currently believe that the retail way of grinding EP from scratch was very healthy for players, so all players will instantly receive all 500 Enhancement Points needed to take all of their required perks, right from the start.

Card Collection

The card collection system will not be utilized on launch. We think that the current retail implementation of cards is toxic to players and feel that it’s best left alone until we can decide what to do with this system later down the line to create a healthier and more enjoyable experience.

Dragons

Players can earn the dragon mounts that provide the Crit Power buffs simply by participating in PvE dungeon content. Vanguard Requests reward the player with Dragonwing Scales, which can be used to purchase Dragon Scrolls, which have a small chance of rewarding a mount skill book directly, or guarantee a mount after collecting 40. Currently, only the “1.5” mounts are available to earn, and we’re weighing our options and considering the best places to implement the special “2.0” mounts as well.

“Dragon procs” have been reverted to the retail system, with a random chance to activate on successful attacks to monsters.

Gathering & Crafting

We aren’t satisfied with how neglected these two systems are in the current state of the game, so we have big plans to completely revamp and overhaul how these systems are integrated into the game in the future. Some of these ideas were too grand to fit in time for launch, but players can expect to see big things on the horizon.

Currently, crafting will mostly be utilized for purposes such as crafting some materials needed for enchanting and upgrading your gear, and for things like crafting optional consumables to use for combat. We understand that some players may not feel like participating in these areas of the game, so we’ve made sure to make these kinds of items obtained through crafting fully tradeable, so you’ll never feel locked out.

Classes

Let’s address the elephant in the room:
Yes, many of you all have come to expect a certain class playstyle standard from other servers.
No, we will not initially be following blindly in the same footsteps.
But we are open to hearing community feedback and making changes from there!

We know this is inevitably a controversial topic, but after weighing our options, we think it better to try and explore more of what this game’s combat system potentially has to offer, rather than retread the same stagnant ground from retail and other server(s). Our underlying design philosophy for this server has been to strike a perfect imbalance, prioritizing enjoyment for all kinds of players, rather than trying to reach a perfect balance, at the detriment of exploring more diverse playstyles and opportunity for growth.

With that being said, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty:
This server is based on the retail patch version 100.02, so players can expect, among other things,

  • Patch 93 class skill passives, like this one:

 

  • Vanilla “burst” skill cooldowns, rather than a standardized 60s burn meta.

  • The return of random dragon crit power buffs, rather than having it synchronized on your burst skill.

While we don’t want to get into every detail about every class change we’ve made right now, we are able to mention these custom class changes:

All:

  • Every class has had all of their skill data truly equalized, so the race you choose to play is no longer a factor.\

    Feel free to choose any race you want!

  • Removed Dirty Fighting racial passive from Castanic.\

    We don’t like how Castanic innately has this advantage over other races, so we’ve decided to disable it for now. We’ll look into reintroducing this in the future along with other meaningful racial passives, so look forward to it!

Valkyrie:

  • Significantly increased skill chain & skill cancel timings for almost every skill.\

    This should help the class feel a lot more fluid, and not make players want to rely on certain disallowed third party mods.

Dungeons

The initial dungeon roster available on launch was curated through a community poll we held during CBT. Most fan favorite dungeons will be making their return, but players must understand that it’s simply not sustainable to keep all dungeons active at once, for both balance purposes and player retention. In the standard patch 100.02, there just aren’t that many dungeons available for easy implementation. That isn’t to say that we won’t ever be bringing these kinds of dungeons back in some shape or form, just that it’s not something to expect at launch or in the immediate future. Our developers are constantly working hard to both create completely custom and exciting dungeons, as well as bring old fan-favorites back.

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Here are the initial community poll results.

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If your favorite dungeon didn’t make the cut, we’re sorry! For now, we unfortunately need to leave some fan-favorites out so players can have something to look forward to in future dungeon rotations.

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With that out of the way, let’s introduce the roster of dungeons currently available for players to run on launch.

Tier 0 (425 ilvl): Fit for Forgotten gear

  • Ravenous Gorge

  • Kalivan’s Dreadnaught (Normal) 

  • Red Refuge (Normal)

Tier 1 (425 ilvl): Fit for Forgotten gear

  • Grotto of Lost Souls (Normal) 

  • RK-9 Kennel (Normal) 

  • Draakon Arena (Normal) 

  • Corrupted Skynest (Normal)

Tier 2 (432 ilvl): Fit for Awakened gear

  • Red Refuge (Hard)

  • Grotto of Lost Souls (Hard)

  • Forbidden Arena: Hagufna

Tier 3-1 (438 ilvl): Fit for Elder’s gear

  • Bahaar’s Sanctuary

  • Draakon Arena (Hard)

  • Corrupted Skynest (Hard)

Tier 3-2 (443 ilvl): Fit for Elder’s gear

  • Rampaging RK-9 Kennel

  • Sky Cruiser Endeavor (Extreme)

Adaptive : Fit for all tiers of gear

  • Harrowhold [Progression]

Raids:

Additionally, we will have a couple raids available for players to run at specific times, including:

  • Scorching Akeron’s Inferno (Tier 2)

  • Commander’s Residence (Tier 2)

  • Look forward to a future community event related to Harrowhold!

Open World Content

One of the things we want to focus on in the future is revitalizing more of the content to do in TERA’s beautiful and expansive open world. We want to do our best to curate a more immersive experience for players who wish to engage with this aspect of the game. For now, we don’t have anything we’re really satisfied with to show off, but we promise to do our best to create, revamp, overhaul, and release a bunch of new and exciting content for all kinds of players to enjoy.

You can currently expect to find all of the regular Open World content you already know, including:

  • Gathering

  • Guardian Legion Missions

  • Hunting World Bosses

  • A soon-to-be revamped Island of Dawn…? Stay tuned!

Custom Content & Cosmetics

All of the custom cosmetics that players know and love from MT: The Dream will also be available on this server. Keep a look out for the custom cosmetic reward system we have planned for launch that will allow you to choose a one-time set of cosmetics (Head + Face + Back + Body + Weapon + …) for free! We understand that many players are hesitant about spending their valuable time and money on a new server, so we’d like to reward you all with this gift as a way of showing our appreciation for choosing to play with us.

Additionally, we also have a team of incredibly talented artists working to bring you even more wonderful custom content and cosmetics in the future. Our developer team is also working hard every day to bring more completely custom content directly to the players. We’re very excited for what the future of this server has in store for all of you. Look forward to many more wonderful things on the horizon!

Talismans

Curious about what all those teasers were about in our Discord server? The Agaia Team is very excited to share this brand new skill customization system with all of you. Astute TERA players may have been able to recognize them from our teasers, but Talismans were a system initially developed between Phase 1 and Phase 2 of Awakening, back in 2017, but sadly never made it out of development hell. We have decided to revive this system in our own way, and make it truly ours.

The goal behind Talismans is to bring more freedom and customization into how you choose to engage with the game’s combat. More specifically, Talismans allow us the flexibility to fundamentally change how each class can play, without impeding on the gameplay experience of other players. It’s meant to be a free-form system where players can experiment with any number of talisman combinations to truly fine-tune their playstyle to their preferences. We hope that players will see the value in what Talismans can offer, now and in the future. While we will only be releasing with a relatively small number of Talismans at first, our developers are continuously working and exploring ideas for how we can create more divergent and unique playstyles. We’d love to hear your feedback on what you think about them after the server officially launches.

From a gameplay perspective, Talismans will function similarly to weapon and armor crystals. Various content around the game will have chances to drop Talismans, which players can equip to their gear. Talisman effects can vary from simple skill changes, like increased/decreased skill cooldowns, skill damage increases, to more fundamental changes that can affect how an entire class plays, like adding Propulsion to certain skills. Each tier of gear will increase the number of augment slots needed for equipping Talismans, currently ranging from 1 on Forgotten gear to 3 on Elder’s gear. Talismans can be equipped on both weapon and armor pieces, for a current maximum of up to 6 equipped talismans at a given time.

Current system restrictions prevent us from allowing [Weapon] talismans to be equipped on armor pieces, and vice versa. For now, each talisman will be able to be dismantled into the corresponding talisman for the other piece of gear. For example, if you have a [Weapon] Talisman, but you don’t have any more free weapon augment slots, you can dismantle the Talisman into a matching [Armor] one with the same effect.

These Talismans are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the kinds of custom content that our server will be able to offer. We hope our players are just as excited as we are to explore the kinds of changes we can make in the future together.

Harrowhold

We are excited to share the news of the return of Harrowhold! Our current version of Harrowhold is a completely custom dungeon, reworked from a raid to a 5-man group content. This version of Harrowhold has 10 “floors”, with an increase in difficulty after each one. Groups who are able to successfully free the Hold from Vergos’ terror will be rewarded with exclusive rewards! But that’s not all that Vergos has in store for players, so stay tuned for more…

Plans For The Future

We have many more plans to come that are an extreme Work In Progress. While many of the details still need ironing out and can’t be discussed in detail, we have plans for a custom Lifeskilling system coming in the future, as well as plans for a custom project to reduce ping for players. We hope that players will stick around with us for the future and be ready to explore all of these exciting projects with us when they are ready to release.

Getting Started

This section serves as a jumpstart guide for new or otherwise unfamiliar players, to help learn the ropes and know what to expect and what you can be doing in the first few hours of gameplay. This section will assume that you are choosing to skip the manual leveling process and go straight to participating in level 70 content.

Every player will start with the following items on every character they create and log-in to for the first time:

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From left to right:

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1x 7-day Everful Nostrum

A re-usable consumable that applies a series of useful buffs to aid the player in combat.

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1x Valkyon’s Supply: [Class] Forgotten Gear Box

Contains a Tier 1 weapon, chest piece, gloves, and boots suitable for your class.

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1x Valkyon’s Supply: Faded Accessory Box 

Contains a full set of Tier 0 accessories (rings, earrings, necklace, circlet, mask, brooch, belt, innerwear), as well as 5x Gear Morpher to convert your accessories between pumped <-> carving, and 2x Tier V Relic and Halidom Token to acquire a Relic and Halidom.

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1x Valkyon’s Supply: Consumable Box

Contains 10x Valkyon Health Potions and 10x Federation Supply: Divine Infusions to use in combat situations.

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1x Valkyon’s Supply: Level 70 Scroll Box

Contains a Level 70 Scroll to instantly allow your character to jump to Level 70, unlocking all skills, glyphs, and 500 Enhancement Points.

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1x Valkyon’s Supply: Skill Advancement Box

Contains all of the necessary items for unlocking all of your class’s Skill Advancements.

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1x Valkyon’s Supply: 5 Glyph Points

Upon use, provides your character with an additional 5 skill glyph points, to skip the hassle of completing the Awakening questline.

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1000x [PvP] Eternal Gear Token

Opens a token shop that allows you to purchase everything you’ll need to immediately jump into enjoying PvP content.

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You’ll need to open the Level 70 Scroll Box and use the Level 70 scroll before you’re able to open any of the other supply boxes. Here’s what your inventory should look like once you’ve opened everything (and sorted your inventory):

Your class’s weapon and most accessories will be Enigmatic, and will require you to select any roll(s) you wish to use for that specific piece of gear. If you’re unsure of what rolls are best for you or your class, ask for help, either in our Discord server, or in-game. Don’t worry too much if you choose any rolls you might regret, because you can always purchase additional Gear Morphers and Accessory Morphers at any [Magic Supplies] merchant.

As a rule of thumb, most classes would like to take 7.2% cooldown reduction as the top line on their weapon. As for the other stats, it depends on your class.

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Tank class (Lancer, Brawler, Warrior)

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Increase damage by 8.6% to the target with the most aggro toward you.

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DPS class (Warrior, Slayer, Berserker, Sorcerer, Archer, Reaper, Gunner, Ninja, Valkyrie)

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Increase damage by 6.9% when attacking from behind.

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Healer (Priest, Mystic)

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Increase your healing skills by 6%.

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As for the third set of lines, it also varies by class. Consult other players of the class or try to find relevant information on Discord if you aren’t sure. Some classes won’t need to take the additional crit factor, so consult with this chart for the other stats. The stat best matching your class’s damage type will usually be in yellow, so if you aren’t sure, it’s a safe bet to just pick the yellow ones.

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Warrior, Lancer, Slayer, Berserker, Archer, Brawler, Valkyrie

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Increase Physical Amplification / Increase Physical Crit Power

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Sorcerer, Priest, Mystic, Reaper, Gunner, Ninja

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Increase Magic Amplification / Increase Magic Crit Power

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Note: Priests and Mystics might prefer to choose Increase Crit Factor instead, to more easily reach the crit factor needed to effectively “crit cap” their healing skills.

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Accessories are more straightforward. A rule of thumb is to never choose an inefficient crit:power ratio; for all intents and purposes, 4 power is roughly equivalent to 8 crit factor. So, on all accessory rolls, it’s best to take 4 power over 4 crit factor, and simply make up the difference elsewhere.

After you’ve selected all of your gear rolls, you can turn your attention to the Tier V Relic and Halidom Token items. Opening this token will bring up a medal shop window that looks like this:

The Relic and Halidom you should buy depends on which class you’re playing. For most classes, they’re best off buying the golden Amarun’s Relic V and the golden Ishara’s Halidom V in the second shop tab. If your class doesn’t need the extra crit factor (Brawler, Warrior DPS, Valkyrie, notably), then you should be taking the blue Elinu’s Relic V and blue Karas’s Halidom V.

Here’s what your character profile window (P) and inventory should look like once you’ve selected all of your gear rolls and equipped all of your gear:

Now, let’s focus on Glyphs and Skill Advancements. We’ll first use the Valkyon’s Supply: 5 Glyph Points item, and then use the Amarun’s Wisdom item (in the above screenshot, it’s the one directly to the right of the 7-day Everful Nostrum), and then open our Skill Window by pressing (K).

If we look at the bottom right, we should see 0/65 Glyph Points. If you still see 0/60, make sure you’ve used the Valkyon’s Supply: 5 Glyph Points item. You’re free to choose whichever glyphs you like, but if you’re unsure and don’t know what glyphs your class should be taking, you can press the Recommended Glyphs button at the bottom, and it should automatically select the most commonly taken glyphs for your class.

Now if we direct our attention to the top of the skill window tab, you’ll see a tab called Advance Skills with a (5) above it. If you don’t see the (5), make sure you’ve used the Amarun’s Wisdom item in your inventory.

These are your Skill Advancements, and they provide crucial benefits for your character and skills. Because we’ve massively simplified the Skill Advancement leveling process, you can easily learn all of the Skill Advancements for your class at once.

For leveling your skill advancements, all you have to do is click on the first option for the list of materials on the right side, like this:

As for Lv.67 and Lv.69 skills, those are Skill Optimizations, which have three additional selectable effects for the skill it’s modifying. You can unlock all three of them for free, but be sure to consult with other class players or your class Discord to choose the one right for you.

Once you’ve set up all of your glyphs and skill advancements, it’s time to set up your Enhancement Points as well. The EP window can be opened either through assigning a shortcut to it via the Game Options (O), or accessed through the main menu, under My Character.

Enhancement Points are a bit of a more complex system, and there is a lack of Recommendation for EP perks to take. I would strongly advise you to ask for help from fellow players if you are unsure about your class’s EP perks. As a rule of thumb, you should avoid taking any Strengthen perks, as the damage increase is completely irrelevant. Don’t worry too much if you mess up your point allotment, because you can have multiple pages of EP presets (accessed through the bottom right of the UI window), and you can also buy EP Reset Potion items from any high-level [Merchant] NPC.

Now that we’ve fully kitted out our character with all of the gear and skill customization it needs, we can head over to Highwatch by opening the Vanguard Requests window (H) and pressing Redeem at the bottom left.

From here, the world is your oyster. You are completely free to participate in any entry level content that you wish. A good place to start if you’re unfamiliar with your class is to head over to the Training Ground to get a feel for your class. You can find the Training Ground by talking to Whurloc in Highwatch, directly across from the location you teleport to when you “Redeem” to Highwatch.

If you want to get started with entry level PvE dungeons, you can access the Instance Matching window through the main menu under Quick Match.

If you’ve fully equipped all of your necessary gear, you should have an item level of 425.3, which will unlock all of the dungeons suitable for your gear.

Additionally, you can talk to Ramull next to Whurloc, and try some solo Ace Dungeons. The Ace Dungeon UI can also be accessed through the Instance Matching window, at the top left tab. These Ace Dungeons are more suitable for new players who would like to experience dungeon content without any of the potential stress of doing it with a party.

Finally, stay on the lookout for Guardian Legion missions, which can be found periodically around the World. You can track currently active missions by opening your World Map (M) and activating Guardian Mode through the button on the top left.

Then, clicking Track will show you all of the Guardian Legion missions currently active. You can teleport to any of these Guardian Missions simply by clicking on the icon on the map.

Guardian Missions usually just involve killing some monsters, or collecting essence by riding Flying Mounts. These Guardian Legion missions will reward you with contribution that you can then use to claim up to 40 Guardian Legion Jewel Boxes per day, for your entire account. Once one character has completed all 40 missions, no other character on the account may accumulate contribution to receive more boxes until the next Daily Reset. Every reward that you claim from these missions will also award you with 100 Guardian Legion Reputation Credits, which you can use to purchase useful items from Mia, the [Master Supply Commissioner] in Velika, located near the corner of Freedom Plaza.

That about wraps up your first hour or two of gameplay, from then it’s just a matter of exploring the rest of the systems and content that the game has to offer and becoming more familiar with the core gameplay loop. Enjoy some harder dungeons, progress your gear, or try out PvP with other players. Get involved in the Discord, make some new friends!