Entering the game, Hao appears in the centre of a city before taking in his surrounding; feeling very giddy, Hao cannot help but smile at the feeling. The town itself seems to be run down and has a very depressing mood, but what would genuinely grab most people's attention is the dark sky that appears to glow slightly red.
'Yep, this is dark faction beginning zone, alright.'
The first thing Hao does is open his character screen to see his character sheet.
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Name: Actuallyfiend
Level: 1
Class: Rogue
Sub-class: None
HP: 100/100 | MP:10000/10000
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While everything looks alright, some people who just began playing this game might take notice of the MP or the mana stat, which is unusually high for players who just started. The reason is that the mana stat is fixed, meaning it cannot go lower or any higher. So no matter how strong you become, the amount of mana will stay the same, and the only thing that would matter is the regeneration rate.
'Let's see my stat...'
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STR: 10
AGI: 10
INT: 10
VIT: 10
SPI: 10
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For the stat, it is simple enough for new players to understand. Strength or STR is for how hard you attack; agility or AGI is for how fast you can move, cast your spells and attack. Intelligent or INT is for how strong your spell damage or how much you can heal. Vitality or VIT is for how much maximum health you have.
The last one is spirit or SPI; this is for how fast your health and mana regenerate, both in and outside combat.
All of the stat have the same formula on how much X amount of stat would increase or boost your combat ability, meaning that the boost in combat would not be too drastic with a massive amount of stat.
Another thing to note is that AGI would reduce the casting speed of a spell, but the spell casting time or any casting time in that matter would never be an instant cast unless the spell states otherwise, and the casting time of a spell would never be less than 0.5 seconds unless you have an item that would reduce your casting time.
As for how to gain stat points, it is to level up, and every time you level, you will earn five points that you can spend on your stat. Currently, the game max level is 70, meaning you can earn up to 350 stat points, and the maximum of stat you can have is 360.
But one thing about stat is that there is a stat that will increase naturally, and that is vitality stat, which will always increase naturally every time you level by 5 points, meaning that your health will always increase.
While the number seems small, the other way you can earn stat points is by your gear that you can equip to increase your stat even further. This is why, when it comes to loot, GEP loot is significant for the player because it is the only X factor that can be used to increase your stat manually.
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Equipment|
Helmet: None
Gauntlets: Leather gauntlet
Chest Armour: Leather Armour
Leg Armour: Leather leg armour
Weapon right-hand: Steel dagger
Weapon left-hand: None
Accessory 1: None | Accessory 2: None
Gem 1: None | Gem 2: None
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''Hm... Steel dagger. I never really tried to use it before. I know the basics, but it's time to learn." Hao muttered before making his way to his first quest game in game.
A tutorial quest. Of course, some exceptions exist, but a mechanic is a must in online game learning. After all, if an MMO game suddenly drops you into the world without learning the game mechanic, that is just a bad game design.
While there is also an option to skip tutorial quests so that you don't need to do the tutorial for those who are too impatient, it was highly advised in-game to do tutorial missions so that you will not go out and die pathetically because you don't know how to play the game.
This is not soul type game, after all.
Arriving at the very run-down adventure guild, Hao quickly greets the female NPC, who is giving away a tutorial quest for a rogue search. While many players inside the guild are coming in and out, making it very lousy, there seem not to be a lot of people doing the rogue tutorial quest.
Maybe it is because rogue is not that popular class in this game, but another factor might be because there are not many people in the dark faction.
"Hello, miss," Hao said toward the female NPC, who looked up from her note with a frown.
"Are you here for the beginning quest? If not, then go away?" The NPC response.
'Quite rude for an NPC, but I should not be surprised considering what faction I'm in.' Hao thought before responding.
"Yes, I am. The hell you think why I'm here for?"
"Hm! Good, go toward that door; your teacher is ready to teach you." The woman points toward a door before looking down and starts to write who knows what.
Hao didn't verbally answer, seeing how the NPC no longer paid attention to him and made toward the door that the NPC pointed at.
Entering the room, Hao was greeted with a blue portal, which Hao didn't question before entering that portal immediately.
Opening his eyes again, he seems to be in a gladiator-type arena of sorts, and standing inside of him seems to be a man wearing all black clothing with a hood on with a face mask covering his face.
"You're the new rookie? Good, since you are-"
"Skip all." Before the NPC could even finish his sentence, Hao cut him off.
By saying skip, a player can skip dialogue; if they are said to skip all, that would mean they skip the entire dialogue. Some critical dialogues are, of course, unskippable.
"Now then, go show me what you got." The NPC said that appearing in a batch of smoke in the arena is a wooden dummy.
Tip: A rogue is a class specialised in sneaking around and interrupting important actions of an enemy. A good rogue is a rogue that no one sees coming.|
Tip: When entering combat, a rogue's most important asset is the weapon; you should never reveal it until you are certain you can kill the enemy.|
You have learned a new skill 'Disappear'|
Dissapear /Type: Active/Cooldown: 20 second/Cost: 100|
When activated, you turn invisible for 10 seconds. The enemy cannot see you unless you enter a 1-meter radius in their field of vision.|
A few menus appear in front of Hao, causing him to annoy a bit, but it's nothing wrong with him.
'I guess that is what I get for skipping tutorial dialogue.'
Fighting technique in this game is crucial for both PvE and PvP. People can swing their weapons, but there is a difference between blindly and skillfully swinging in this game. Regarding combat in this game, it is straightforward, considering that you only need to swing your weapon, but it gets more complicated when you learn how to swing it properly.
So it is essential to understand the fundamental of this game first before going for more complex stuff.
Next is skill or spell, or whatever you want to call it. There are two different types of skills, and those are active and passive, which are self-explanatory. Only active skill activation would cost mana. Some skills are both active and passive types. These skills would lose their passive effect when activated and during cooldown.
As for how to learn a skill, there is no skills tree, and the only way to learn a new skill is you doing it manually or by finding a class spellbook that would give you a class skill. It might sound stupid to now have a skill tree in MMO, but the game developer wants the game to be "realistic", so they decide to do a skill system.
Hao didn't say anything and simply made his way toward the dummy. He knows that all they want is to destroy the dummy, but for Hao, this is a perfect time to learn some skills for his class.
Standing behind the dummy, Hao starts to hit it repeatedly with his dagger. It was a slow and painful process, but it would be worth it for Hao.
After quite a while, with Hao swinging his dagger, the dummy HP finally reached zero, which completed the first part of the tutorial.
Tutorial complete 1/3!|
You have learned a new skill 'Backstab'|
Backstab /Type: Active and Passive /Cooldown: 30 second/Cost: 500|
Passive- Striking an enemy behind will give a 100% critical chance.|
Active- Teleport behind your target in your field of view of a 15-meter radius. If the target were an enemy, they would be stunned for 1 second.|
No matter how many expansion and new skills were added to GEP, backstab had always remained a top-tier skill. This is one of the best skills in the game, in Hao's opinion. Due to it being simple to use and very versatile, every rogue that plays this game must have this skill, no matter what.
A passive that gives you a hundred per cent crit chance, AND also be used to teleport toward a target, whether allied or enemy, is probably one of the most broken things in this game. After all, not many classes have that kind of movement skill.
The requirement to get backstab sounds simple but is quite hard for a high-level player. That requirement is to kill an enemy level equal to or higher than you solo by only striking them from the back without using any potion.
It might sound simple, but those who play games, mainly MMOs, might know hard this is. In a 1v1, enemies would always have their faces turn toward you no matter what, and to be killed solo as a rogue can be very hard to do solo, and due to level requirements, you can't go back and kill a low-level enemy.
This leads to you needing to do it on a player who probably gives you a better chance than the enemy AI in this game but probably not by much.
So, the best way to do it is in a quick burst of damage and hope the enemy dies instantly, which can be very hard without using any buff potion for rogue.
Of course, people found a loophole, and that is in the tutorial. While in the tutorial, the dummy still counts as your enemy and will always have a level equal to you. The dummy is usually indestructible in the game, but in the tutorial, it wasn't.
So with that, people quickly discover that you can get this skill very easily by doing, but the only problem is that only low-level players have access to tutorial quests. Those who struggle must start a new account and level it over again.
Of course, this quickly got patched when the developer found it, making it that you need to kill an actual living to earn this skill, but those who already have it would still keep it.
All Hao did was simply used that exploit that people found to earn that skill in the easiest way possible.