When people talk about restoring classic TERA, the usual reference point is version 31 of the game. As we moved further into content migration, we realized that v31 was itself already a trimmed-down cut: entire regions sat empty, and some dungeons no longer existed in the files at all.
In this devlog we explain the change of direction that discovery led to, and we show recent work on quests, shop NPCs, and two new kinds of reward for leveling content.
Important: we're still in development. Values and mechanics may change as we test, balance, and gather feedback.
At a Glance
- New direction: content is now restored from older versions of the game as well, not only from v31
- Island of Dawn: areas missing in v31 exist again, including Mysterious Ruins and the dungeon tied to Sorcha
- Progression unchanged: infusion, gear evolution and crystal dyads stay as planned, at the same pace of advancement
- Instanced challenges: completing the quest unlocks an NPC with their own shop and a repeatable token quest
- Valkyon Commendation: a token for leveling content with exclusive rewards
- Bounty Brokers: NPCs that sell items in exchange for tokens from the toughest monsters and challenges in each region
- Guardian Legion: not in the first Alpha release, still being reverse engineered
Why We Changed Direction on Restoration
A lot of what the community calls classic content does not exist in v31, or sits disabled in that version’s files. Island of Dawn is the clearest example: a large stretch of the map, including the Mysterious Ruins region, Leander’s Outpost and the dungeon tied to Sorcha, is simply not there in v31.
Our reading is that this reduction happened during the transition to the level 65 cap, between 2014 and 2015. We have no official documentation to confirm it, but the pattern repeats consistently across the files.
And that pattern is not unique to Island of Dawn. The same kind of loss shows up on several maps. To make the most of the regions and dungeons that were once part of TERA, we need to go looking for that content where it is still intact: in earlier versions of the client.
The Mysterious Ruins region, completely empty in v31, was the first to go down this path. Spawns and zone quests exist again, with mobs, field bosses and gathering points where there used to be a deserted map.
The Island of Dawn dungeon mentioned above came through the same process, from version 17 files. You get in at Tainted Gorge, at the spot marked Black Rift Entrance, another place v31 does not have.
It is worth being clear about the limits of this change: it applies only to how we make use of content and regions. Progression adjustments and the new systems, such as infusion, gear evolution and crystal dyads, stay exactly as we planned, including the pace of advancement.
We want to restore as much classic content as we can, within our capacity, so that players who only came in after the free-to-play model, or who never played TERA at all, can experience the game in a form closer to the developers’ original vision.
Quests, Instanced Challenges and Sorcha
Over the past few days we focused on quest development: how quests work, how they connect to dungeon objectives, and how they can add more value to leveling content.
Much of that work happened in small instanced challenges, like this Island of Dawn dungeon we restored recently.
Island of Dawn instanced challenge, restored from v17:
The challenge is called Sorcha’s Reckless Challenge: you take the teleportal to Tainted Gorge Bridge, activate the magical device, and protect Sorcha for seven minutes.
As the timer runs down, waves of enemies show up and Sorcha has to survive to the end.
In v17 the flow was straightforward: you picked up the quest, cleared the instanced challenge, and went back to turn it in. What we added was a trigger. Once you complete that quest, Sorcha becomes visible at Tower Base, on a fixed spawn.
Interacting with the NPC gives you access to:
- Sorcha’s Curios, a shop that runs on its own token, Sorcha’s Sigil
- One More Reading, a repeatable quest for earning more of that token
The items in the shop right now are just a random selection, used to validate the process. The final catalog for these NPCs should be settled by the end of the Alpha.
We intend to use this same mechanism in the rest of the game’s dungeons, including endgame. In that setup, tokens earned from clearing dungeons would give access to exclusive items and work as a kind of pity system, a cushion against a long run of bad luck on high-RNG items.
Tools: A Language for Server Changes
All of this work has also been improving our development tools, letting us repeat the same processes faster and more precisely.
We are building our own language for describing this kind of server change. With it, we want to put together “recipes” of modifications that can be applied automatically, cutting the time between deciding on a content change and seeing it working in the game.
Below is an example of that language. The recipe reorganizes a quest’s steps, removing one of them and rewiring the chain so the player goes straight to the next step.
Valkyon Commendation
Another important change this week was the creation of the Valkyon Commendation, a new token meant to make leveling more rewarding. You earn it from content below level 60, and it shows up alongside the usual rewards when you complete a quest.
The rewards focus on account-wide utility items, whose value carries past the early game:
- skins and accessories
- mounts
- bank and inventory expansions
- leveling scrolls
- other convenience items
As with the previous case, this list will still change before the end of the Alpha.
The token is not tradable between players, and it cannot be stored in the bank either. Those two restrictions exist for one specific case: to stop anyone from creating throwaway characters just to farm tokens on the starting maps and pass them to their main. Nothing against playing with alts, which have always been part of TERA. What we want to avoid is the character created purely as a farming tool.
One of the main jobs of the Valkyon Commendation is keeping the early maps and dungeons active. So that this does not depend only on players leveling for the first time, we are planning a level sync system that would let higher-level players lower their own level, run this content, and earn the same tokens.
The items bought with the token, though, can be sold or traded normally. The restrictions are spelled out in the item description itself.
Every village or major town has an NPC acting as Valkyon Quartermaster, running the shop where Valkyon Commendations are exchanged for the available rewards.
In the image below, the Ascension tab shows an Ascension Scroll, which takes a character straight to level 60. It is part of the provisional catalog mentioned above, and not a confirmed item for the Alpha.
Bounty Brokers
We also added Bounty Brokers to towns and camps near these open-world regions. These NPCs sell items for tokens, which come from the toughest monsters and challenges in each region: named mobs, elites and BAMs. Guardian Legion events will also be a source of these tokens once they are in the game.
On Island of Dawn, for example, the Tower Base Bounty Broker deals in Kugai’s Crest, which comes from Kugai the Mighty, and trades that token for gear that can be refined.
The idea is to give a clear payoff for taking on the hardest targets in the open world, instead of leaving that difficulty without a reward of its own.
Guardian Legion
If you have not run into them before, Guardian Legion is a type of event that takes place on open-world maps, introduced in the official game in 2018. There is more detail on the Guardian Legion wiki page.
These events are not part of the first Alpha release.
Even so, we are already reverse engineering this kind of content, to make it easier to create new events both on low-level maps and at endgame. The image below is from one of those internal tests, with a Guardian Legion mission active on Island of Dawn.
What’s Next
With Island of Dawn, we consider the content for the first Alpha closed. What comes now is tuning, not new content.
The focus shifts to the classes, and healers are the priority. Right now their healing is far too low and they take too long to pick up utility skills. That is why we are going to review the order in which skills are learned during leveling: this was one of the points we already had to adapt when restoring the Island of Dawn learning quests, and it is worth a broader pass now.
Shop balance and token acquisition rates are still open, and will be tuned together with the community during the Alpha.
See you next time! 🛠️