Russell's Tera Journal Day 2: NOW the adventure begins

by: Russell - posted: 5/14/2012 6:27:00 PM

So when I last played Tera, I had completed the prologue and landed on the Island of Dawn.  I didn't mention it in my Day 1 Journal, but occasionally towards the bottom of the screen the game will flash by some general hints for some of the functions in the game.  The best was in the Prologue when the game told me how to move around...five minutes after I had been running around doing quests.  Anyway, the hints now are a little more generic and don't really mention combat and such, so it moves on from the basics.  However, the first couple areas are similar to the opening areas in World of Warcraft; they're designed to get you used to the basics of the game, and there are "guides" for everything it seems.

The maps you see on screen can tend to slightly clutter things up, but not that badly.  You have your standard "radar" in the far upper right, and a larger mini-map that you can toggle off and on.  If you've played Diablo II, it's kind of like the map you can have constantly on screen that shows your current area, only with Tera it's a lot smaller and shows the entire area you're in, plus you can track plants, minerals, quests, story quests, and monsters.  It's especially helpful when it shows you monsters that are part of your quests.  I just wish I realized that instead of wasting an hour tracking down one monster that I couldn't find.

The big thing to get used to is how to attack.  You can assign skills and spells to the number and "F" buttons like in WoW, but attacking is a bit different.  Instead of clicking a monster to target it, you use the mouse to move the reticle over an enemy, then hit one of the shortcut buttons to attack it (I have the left mouse button set to Fireball II and the right mouse button to Flame Pillar).  It's not bad once you get used to it, but it's getting used to it that's taking me time to...well, get used to it.

That about ends this journal.  I hit level 7 and am about halfway to level 8.  So far, it's not that bad and reminds me of WoW a bit.  I might play some more tonight, and if anything new develops, I'll post a Journal 2.5.