How to Play,
For download game go to Home Page
Being new to a game like TERA can be difficult for newer players, especially with its innovative combat system and politics system that can catch you off guard and make you scratch your head. That’s why Ten Ton Hammer has put together five tips for the new TERA player that is sure to answer those questions meandering around in your head and help get you on the path to victory.
TERA assigns a hard role to each class and each class adheres strongly to that role. For instance, a Lancer is a tank and is dedicated to drawing the attention of the enemy and mitigating the damage. Lancers, due to being the only tank, receive near instant queues in the instance finder but also have the lowest DPS and a very difficult time questing.
On the other side, DPS classes are frail and fragile, only capable of outputting DPS. Support characters, while capable of soloing, will find that it’s easier to join a group and use their support skills to level and PvP.
Bringing in the previous tip, it’s also important to understand each classes specific role. For instance, Warriors are evasion tanks; they shouldn’t be hit while tanking. This also means that picking a race with a smaller hitbox is fine because they shouldn’t need much healing in combat.
As for as the best class in TERA, it’s hard to say, each one has its own niche role and details about each class are given at the character select screen. Play the class that sounds the most fun to you, but do understand a few caveats. As mentioned, Lancers and support classes are hard to play solo and Warriors are very difficult to play well because they need to physically avoid attacks in order to tank.
It’s important to understand the different kinds of servers. PVE servers do not allow any non-consensual form of PvP. You’ll need to seek out PvP with other players and agree to fight one another before you can start fighting it out.
PvP servers allow consensual PvP anywhere in the world (except for cities, instance entrances, and a few other areas) as long as a player flags themselves as an outlaw. One thing to keep in mind is that a player needs to tag themselves for PvP before they can attack another player (by becoming an “Outlaw”). Outlaws can not only attack other Outlaws, but other players as well, meaning that you can find yourself in a PvP battle even if you’re flagged yourself. Players below level 11 are not capable of being attacked or flagging themselves as Outlaws.
The RP server is for roleplayers and includes a set of specific rules that prohibit OOC (out of character) dialog and strict naming conventions. Those who enjoy roleplay will find the RP server to be a welcoming home. The current RP server, Celestial Hills, is also a PvE server.
Gearing yourself out in TERA isn’t simple, you’ll need to work hard to get all of your equip slots filled with valuable loot. You’ll need to work even harder to make sure your Stamina is at 120%, that you have as many buffs up as possible, that your broken crystals get replace, and that your skills are properly glyphed.
Stamina: Stamina is regenerated at campfires and provides an increase to damage, damage reduction, health, and mana. Stamina can be purchased from NPCs in town instead of being regenerated at a campfire (just idle near a campfire and it will go up). Death will cause your stamina to drop to 0% (20% for Baraka). Stamina is also drained during combat. At or above 100% stamina allows for the use of talismans at a campfire which gives you an additional buff. The timer on the buff won’t start until you enter combat.
Buffs: Buffs come in lots of different ways, like the talisman on the campfire, from gathering materials, from mystics, and from items. You’ll want to be buffed so that you’re as tough as possible in the world, because each buff helps immensely with health/mana regeneration along with combat. Be sure to gather as many resource nodes as possible as you explore the world and use a talisman every chance you get.
Crystals: Enhancement crystals allow you to customizer your armor and weapons with additional stats. However, on death, there is a chance your enhancement crystals will break. Always keep tons of backups in your inventory whenever you’re doing an instance or active on a PvP server because you never know when you’ll die and one of your crystals will shatter.
Glyphs: At level 20 you’ll be able to glyph your skills to improve them. Make sure to get this done as soon as possible because the boost is impressive.
The last and most important tip is to practice aiming and movement. Combat is different in TERA. Enemies do not “lock on” to you (well, some do, but it’s their special skill). Most enemies will face the character with the highest threat, charge up their attack (which will show some kind of warning, each enemy has a different way of showing it) and then assault the direction that they are facing. It’s up to you, the player, to relocate yourself away from their line of attack. The only exception is the Lancer, who is the only class designed to take the blows.
Along with movement, it’s also important to learn how to aim properly. Failure to aim properly can drastically lower your DPS, put your allies at the risk of dying, or waste important mana. Melee attacks have a “cooldown” period after you swing in order to regain control of your character to move and turn. Spells generally have some tricky ways of launching themselves out (like x meters in front of you). So it’s always good to know how your abilities work and the best way to utilize them.
Aiming comes in a few flavors. The first is the general “launch” attack, where you either swing your weapons or throw elemental destruction in front of you. These attacks can sometimes also move your character forward. The second is the ground targeted spells; these give you a targeting circle on the ground to use to determine where you cast. The final is the “skill shot.” These skills have an advanced way of aiming/targeting, like x meters in front of you, and require you to be on you’re A game to utilize correctly.
There are also lock-on abilities, but these require you to use the skill and “target” allies with your targeting reticle. Some abilities will even allow you to charge them up for additional distance or damage.
Oh, finally, looking for where to redeem your TERA preorder / collector items? Press ALT or ESC on your keyboard, go to Activites > Item Claim > Account Items. Oh, and one more final tip. Did you know you can play with a controller?
Need some bare bones basics? Check out My Ten Basics Every TERA Player Should Know, you just might learn something!
1 - Fixing the tiny font size
If you've stepped into TERA and everything’s looking great, go ahead and skip this step--you’re golden. But if you’re like some, you might find that text is too tiny to read, even with your dorky reading glasses on.
TERA’s UI is scalable and somewhat customizable, but figuring out what makes it tick can involve some trial and error. Hopefully, we can save you the hassle.
Hit O to bring up the options menu and then go into “UI Settings” (so far, this is intuitive)
Move the slider under “Scale All UI” until things look big enough to read
Unfortunately, you’ll probably find that making the UI scale larger has made the chat box enormous. Before you mess with your UI options any further, save your current settings and back out of the options menu
Click on the little gear icon in the upper left corner of the chat box. Select “Current Tabs,” and then “Set Font Size.” Adjust the font size so it isn’t enormous.
You may notice that your chat box still bleeds into your other UI elements such as your hot bar. There’s an app…er, a fix for that. Hit O to go back into the options menu, then back into “UI Settings.”
Under “Scale Combat Elements” you can adjust the size of your hot bar and other screen elements so that everything fits and is readable. More or less.
Word on the street is that this particular problem is on the developer’s list of issues to address. Until it’s fixed, however, you’re welcome.
2 - I see gold spammers
It’s inevitable, isn’t it? You’re going to encounter players spamming general chat trying to get you to buy gold from some hinky site. In fact, you might even see them from the moment you reach the Isle of Dawn. Do yourself and everyone else a favor--report them.
Simply left click on the spammer’s user name in the chat panel, click “Report,” and then use the drop-down menu to select the nature of your report. Once you’re done there, you can go ahead and click the user’s name again and select “Block.” Until a GM is able to ban the spamming evildoer, their annoying text will not darken your chat again.
3 - Find your pre-order/Collector’s Edition stuff
So, you pre-ordered TERA but you don’t know where to find your promised goodies. No problem! Hit ALT to bring up the Activities Menu. Select the Account tab, then look for “Item Claim.” Voila!
4 - Take a screenshot
TERA is a gorgeous game, so you’ll no doubt want to capture some screenshots. You can turn off the UI by hitting CTRL + Z. Take a screenshot by pressing PrtScn on your keyboard. After you’ve taken a screenshot, TERA will post the file’s location in your chat interface. Take note of it, because those screens can be a little challenging to find later on.
5 - Gathering can get you buffs.
Gathering has a benefit besides yielding you crafting resources--you also have a chance to get a random temporary buff when harvesting a node, and those buffs can stack up to three times granting you things like boost to your healing or attack speed. You also get XP for gathering.
Although there’s a quick gathering tutorial early in the game, you don’t have to train for gathering, so you can start from the moment you first spot a node. To make things even easier, nodes are marked on your mini map as a cluster of three dots. A yellow dot at the top of the triangle means its a mining node, green is for plants, and blue is for essences. [Thanks to a Ten Ton Hammer reader for the color coding tip!]
6 - You gotta break some eggs…
After you’ve completed some quests, you might see eggs (Lucky Eggs, Destiny Eggs) appear in your inventory bag. Right clicking the eggs will crack them open and net you a random consumable item. Or, if your inventory space allows for it, you can buy Ovomeld from a general merchant and collect eggs to combine them into Fortune Eggs, which yield even better consumable items.
UPDATE: Eggs were recently removed from TERA, so they're no longer available, although a few players may have eggs in their inventory leftover from beta/headstart. So since this tip is no longer valid, we've added a bonus tip at the end of the guide.
7 - Get in the first hit
The first hit tags an enemy, meaning if you're part of a queue waiting for a quest mob you'll need to whack the mob first to get credit. This gets difficult when you're a melee class with a long windup, such as the Berserker or Lancer. And if that becomes a problem for you, proceed to the next tip…
8 - Too many players on the dance floor…
Occasionally, you’ll run into an area that happens to be overrun with players who are all looking for the same quest mobs you are. Fortunately, TERA allows you to switch channels if an outdoor zone is overcrowded. You’ll find a drop-down for channels in the upper right of your screen. Select a channel with a low population and you’ll be back to smacking down monsters in no time…with a lot less competition.
9 - Be careful what you shoot at
Remember Captain Ramius’s line to Jack Ryan as they’re deep in the belly of a nuclear submarine reactor chasing after an armed saboteur in The Hunt for Red October?: “Be careful what you shoot at; most things in here don’t react too well to bullets.”
Similarly, if you’re not careful with your aim (especially if you play a ranged class), you’re likely to find that most gentle mobs become angry if you ping them with a stray spell or arrow. If you’re unaccustomed to combat that requires you to aim with a target reticle, flailing around while holding down your left mouse button may cause you to bite off more aggro than you want to chew. At lower levels, this amounts to nothing more than some temporary irritation. As mobs get more difficult, though, you’re going to want to be careful to tick off only the monsters you’re actually trying to hit.
10 - Set up chain skills
Gaining levels means gaining skills. (Duh.) You can access your skills menu by pressing K, and then click and drag skills to your hot bar. (They won’t automagically appear there as they do in other MMOs you may have played.)
You can (and should) also create chain skills, where using one skill automatically triggers another follow-up skill. To set up chain skills, hit K to open the skills menu, then select “Chain Skills.” Click and drag your trigger skill to the box marked “Skill,” and your follow up to the one marked “Chain skill.”
To use chain skills, activate your trigger skill. You’ll see a notification appear telling you that you can use your chain skill. Trigger your hotkey (the default is the space bar, but you can change it in the skills menu), and the chain skill will activate.
Bonus Tip: Stamina matters!
As you engage in combat your stamina will degrade, which also degrades your maximum health and mana pool. Keeping your stamina up is important, and for that TERA has campfires. You'll find them scattered around the game--you can stand beside them to regenerate your stamina. You can also get campfires as dropped items or purchase them from general merchants. It's a good idea to have some on hand for when you're far away from civilization.
While you're standing by a campfire, you can burn different types of charms (open your inventory and right click them) for random combat buffs. Charms of the same type don't stack, so be careful not to overwrite something particularly useful.
For download the game go to Home Page
For download game go to Home Page
Being new to a game like TERA can be difficult for newer players, especially with its innovative combat system and politics system that can catch you off guard and make you scratch your head. That’s why Ten Ton Hammer has put together five tips for the new TERA player that is sure to answer those questions meandering around in your head and help get you on the path to victory.
Racials are not super important in TERA because they are all normalized and useful to all classes. This isn’t 100% true, for instance your armor type determines how easy it is for you to be knocked down, so the Human racial is a lot better for squishy characters. Castanics have a movement speed increase, which is great for slower classes as well, but the cooldown is 30 minutes, so not that super huge of a deal.
What is more important than racials is a character’s hitbox. TERA is an action based game which means you’ll need to aim the targeting reticle over a character in order to damage or heal them. This means that characters who want to receive heals (Lancers) will want a bigger hitbox while squishy characters will want to pick Elin or Popori for the smaller hitbox.
Of course, you can pick any race you want and be viable, but be aware that in PvP and in PvE, the size of your character is relevant to your role. It’s very hard for a healer to heal a smaller character and likewise, it’s harder for an enemy to target a smaller character as well. So just be aware that size matters in TERA.
TERA assigns a hard role to each class and each class adheres strongly to that role. For instance, a Lancer is a tank and is dedicated to drawing the attention of the enemy and mitigating the damage. Lancers, due to being the only tank, receive near instant queues in the instance finder but also have the lowest DPS and a very difficult time questing.
On the other side, DPS classes are frail and fragile, only capable of outputting DPS. Support characters, while capable of soloing, will find that it’s easier to join a group and use their support skills to level and PvP.
Bringing in the previous tip, it’s also important to understand each classes specific role. For instance, Warriors are evasion tanks; they shouldn’t be hit while tanking. This also means that picking a race with a smaller hitbox is fine because they shouldn’t need much healing in combat.
As for as the best class in TERA, it’s hard to say, each one has its own niche role and details about each class are given at the character select screen. Play the class that sounds the most fun to you, but do understand a few caveats. As mentioned, Lancers and support classes are hard to play solo and Warriors are very difficult to play well because they need to physically avoid attacks in order to tank.It’s important to understand the different kinds of servers. PVE servers do not allow any non-consensual form of PvP. You’ll need to seek out PvP with other players and agree to fight one another before you can start fighting it out.
PvP servers allow consensual PvP anywhere in the world (except for cities, instance entrances, and a few other areas) as long as a player flags themselves as an outlaw. One thing to keep in mind is that a player needs to tag themselves for PvP before they can attack another player (by becoming an “Outlaw”). Outlaws can not only attack other Outlaws, but other players as well, meaning that you can find yourself in a PvP battle even if you’re flagged yourself. Players below level 11 are not capable of being attacked or flagging themselves as Outlaws.
The RP server is for roleplayers and includes a set of specific rules that prohibit OOC (out of character) dialog and strict naming conventions. Those who enjoy roleplay will find the RP server to be a welcoming home. The current RP server, Celestial Hills, is also a PvE server.
Gearing yourself out in TERA isn’t simple, you’ll need to work hard to get all of your equip slots filled with valuable loot. You’ll need to work even harder to make sure your Stamina is at 120%, that you have as many buffs up as possible, that your broken crystals get replace, and that your skills are properly glyphed.
Stamina: Stamina is regenerated at campfires and provides an increase to damage, damage reduction, health, and mana. Stamina can be purchased from NPCs in town instead of being regenerated at a campfire (just idle near a campfire and it will go up). Death will cause your stamina to drop to 0% (20% for Baraka). Stamina is also drained during combat. At or above 100% stamina allows for the use of talismans at a campfire which gives you an additional buff. The timer on the buff won’t start until you enter combat.
Buffs: Buffs come in lots of different ways, like the talisman on the campfire, from gathering materials, from mystics, and from items. You’ll want to be buffed so that you’re as tough as possible in the world, because each buff helps immensely with health/mana regeneration along with combat. Be sure to gather as many resource nodes as possible as you explore the world and use a talisman every chance you get.
Crystals: Enhancement crystals allow you to customizer your armor and weapons with additional stats. However, on death, there is a chance your enhancement crystals will break. Always keep tons of backups in your inventory whenever you’re doing an instance or active on a PvP server because you never know when you’ll die and one of your crystals will shatter.Glyphs: At level 20 you’ll be able to glyph your skills to improve them. Make sure to get this done as soon as possible because the boost is impressive.
The last and most important tip is to practice aiming and movement. Combat is different in TERA. Enemies do not “lock on” to you (well, some do, but it’s their special skill). Most enemies will face the character with the highest threat, charge up their attack (which will show some kind of warning, each enemy has a different way of showing it) and then assault the direction that they are facing. It’s up to you, the player, to relocate yourself away from their line of attack. The only exception is the Lancer, who is the only class designed to take the blows.
Along with movement, it’s also important to learn how to aim properly. Failure to aim properly can drastically lower your DPS, put your allies at the risk of dying, or waste important mana. Melee attacks have a “cooldown” period after you swing in order to regain control of your character to move and turn. Spells generally have some tricky ways of launching themselves out (like x meters in front of you). So it’s always good to know how your abilities work and the best way to utilize them.
Aiming comes in a few flavors. The first is the general “launch” attack, where you either swing your weapons or throw elemental destruction in front of you. These attacks can sometimes also move your character forward. The second is the ground targeted spells; these give you a targeting circle on the ground to use to determine where you cast. The final is the “skill shot.” These skills have an advanced way of aiming/targeting, like x meters in front of you, and require you to be on you’re A game to utilize correctly.
There are also lock-on abilities, but these require you to use the skill and “target” allies with your targeting reticle. Some abilities will even allow you to charge them up for additional distance or damage.
Oh, finally, looking for where to redeem your TERA preorder / collector items? Press ALT or ESC on your keyboard, go to Activites > Item Claim > Account Items. Oh, and one more final tip. Did you know you can play with a controller?
Need some bare bones basics? Check out My Ten Basics Every TERA Player Should Know, you just might learn something!
1 - Fixing the tiny font sizeIf you've stepped into TERA and everything’s looking great, go ahead and skip this step--you’re golden. But if you’re like some, you might find that text is too tiny to read, even with your dorky reading glasses on.
TERA’s UI is scalable and somewhat customizable, but figuring out what makes it tick can involve some trial and error. Hopefully, we can save you the hassle.
Hit O to bring up the options menu and then go into “UI Settings” (so far, this is intuitive)
Move the slider under “Scale All UI” until things look big enough to read
Unfortunately, you’ll probably find that making the UI scale larger has made the chat box enormous. Before you mess with your UI options any further, save your current settings and back out of the options menu
Click on the little gear icon in the upper left corner of the chat box. Select “Current Tabs,” and then “Set Font Size.” Adjust the font size so it isn’t enormous.
You may notice that your chat box still bleeds into your other UI elements such as your hot bar. There’s an app…er, a fix for that. Hit O to go back into the options menu, then back into “UI Settings.”
Under “Scale Combat Elements” you can adjust the size of your hot bar and other screen elements so that everything fits and is readable. More or less.
Word on the street is that this particular problem is on the developer’s list of issues to address. Until it’s fixed, however, you’re welcome.
2 - I see gold spammers
It’s inevitable, isn’t it? You’re going to encounter players spamming general chat trying to get you to buy gold from some hinky site. In fact, you might even see them from the moment you reach the Isle of Dawn. Do yourself and everyone else a favor--report them.
Simply left click on the spammer’s user name in the chat panel, click “Report,” and then use the drop-down menu to select the nature of your report. Once you’re done there, you can go ahead and click the user’s name again and select “Block.” Until a GM is able to ban the spamming evildoer, their annoying text will not darken your chat again.
3 - Find your pre-order/Collector’s Edition stuff
So, you pre-ordered TERA but you don’t know where to find your promised goodies. No problem! Hit ALT to bring up the Activities Menu. Select the Account tab, then look for “Item Claim.” Voila!
4 - Take a screenshot
TERA is a gorgeous game, so you’ll no doubt want to capture some screenshots. You can turn off the UI by hitting CTRL + Z. Take a screenshot by pressing PrtScn on your keyboard. After you’ve taken a screenshot, TERA will post the file’s location in your chat interface. Take note of it, because those screens can be a little challenging to find later on.
5 - Gathering can get you buffs.Gathering has a benefit besides yielding you crafting resources--you also have a chance to get a random temporary buff when harvesting a node, and those buffs can stack up to three times granting you things like boost to your healing or attack speed. You also get XP for gathering.
Although there’s a quick gathering tutorial early in the game, you don’t have to train for gathering, so you can start from the moment you first spot a node. To make things even easier, nodes are marked on your mini map as a cluster of three dots. A yellow dot at the top of the triangle means its a mining node, green is for plants, and blue is for essences. [Thanks to a Ten Ton Hammer reader for the color coding tip!]
6 - You gotta break some eggs…
After you’ve completed some quests, you might see eggs (Lucky Eggs, Destiny Eggs) appear in your inventory bag. Right clicking the eggs will crack them open and net you a random consumable item. Or, if your inventory space allows for it, you can buy Ovomeld from a general merchant and collect eggs to combine them into Fortune Eggs, which yield even better consumable items.
UPDATE: Eggs were recently removed from TERA, so they're no longer available, although a few players may have eggs in their inventory leftover from beta/headstart. So since this tip is no longer valid, we've added a bonus tip at the end of the guide.
7 - Get in the first hit
The first hit tags an enemy, meaning if you're part of a queue waiting for a quest mob you'll need to whack the mob first to get credit. This gets difficult when you're a melee class with a long windup, such as the Berserker or Lancer. And if that becomes a problem for you, proceed to the next tip…
8 - Too many players on the dance floor…
Occasionally, you’ll run into an area that happens to be overrun with players who are all looking for the same quest mobs you are. Fortunately, TERA allows you to switch channels if an outdoor zone is overcrowded. You’ll find a drop-down for channels in the upper right of your screen. Select a channel with a low population and you’ll be back to smacking down monsters in no time…with a lot less competition.
9 - Be careful what you shoot atRemember Captain Ramius’s line to Jack Ryan as they’re deep in the belly of a nuclear submarine reactor chasing after an armed saboteur in The Hunt for Red October?: “Be careful what you shoot at; most things in here don’t react too well to bullets.”
Similarly, if you’re not careful with your aim (especially if you play a ranged class), you’re likely to find that most gentle mobs become angry if you ping them with a stray spell or arrow. If you’re unaccustomed to combat that requires you to aim with a target reticle, flailing around while holding down your left mouse button may cause you to bite off more aggro than you want to chew. At lower levels, this amounts to nothing more than some temporary irritation. As mobs get more difficult, though, you’re going to want to be careful to tick off only the monsters you’re actually trying to hit.
10 - Set up chain skills
Gaining levels means gaining skills. (Duh.) You can access your skills menu by pressing K, and then click and drag skills to your hot bar. (They won’t automagically appear there as they do in other MMOs you may have played.)
You can (and should) also create chain skills, where using one skill automatically triggers another follow-up skill. To set up chain skills, hit K to open the skills menu, then select “Chain Skills.” Click and drag your trigger skill to the box marked “Skill,” and your follow up to the one marked “Chain skill.”
To use chain skills, activate your trigger skill. You’ll see a notification appear telling you that you can use your chain skill. Trigger your hotkey (the default is the space bar, but you can change it in the skills menu), and the chain skill will activate.
Bonus Tip: Stamina matters!As you engage in combat your stamina will degrade, which also degrades your maximum health and mana pool. Keeping your stamina up is important, and for that TERA has campfires. You'll find them scattered around the game--you can stand beside them to regenerate your stamina. You can also get campfires as dropped items or purchase them from general merchants. It's a good idea to have some on hand for when you're far away from civilization.
While you're standing by a campfire, you can burn different types of charms (open your inventory and right click them) for random combat buffs. Charms of the same type don't stack, so be careful not to overwrite something particularly useful.
For download the game go to Home Page
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