Mana and Mir, both living in South Korean had the pleasure of testing the Tree of Savior CBT last week. Mana wrote a review about Tree of Savior in an interview format. The interview covers most aspects of the closed beta testing. If you have questions, make sure to ask Mana in the forums.

Q: Tell us about yourself and your history of MMO Gaming.

Mir: Hi, I am Mir from South Korea. I have played several MMOs, mostly Korean ones. Some of them are Asugard, Laqia, Archlord, I tried RO2 out a little before the CBT started.

Mana: Hi there, I’m Mana from the U.K. (Scotland). I live in South Korea. I will be translating for Mir. I don’t have much of a gaming history. I played Granado Espada and that mobile one, Avabel. Most of my friends are gamers or programers so I know of more games than I have played myself.

Q: Introduce us to your Tree of Savior characters.

Mana: I played Rhaegar. He is a Swordsman. He remained as Swordsman throughout the game. I was going to change to Hoplite but ran out of time.

Mir: I played Mir, also a Swordsman. Later I changed him to Peltasta then Barbarian. I also played a female Wizard but changed to Swordsman around level 11.

Q: Why did you change to Swordsman?

Mir: There was no splash in the normal attack so it was not as interesting in the beginning. I am Definitely going to play Wizard next time though. I want to aim for Pyromancer that looked so good in the higher levels.

Mana: Yeah, It was impressive to watch. I heard cool time is awfully long though. This is me stalking a Pyromancer.

Q: Anything you want to add about Cleric or Archer?

Mir: People were not happy with Archer. I heard that normal attacks were not that great and compared to wizard, the skills were pretty weak. We did see someone look like they were playing archer on auto. He did not respond to us at all.

Mana: Yeah, that person was just firing away at mobs in the lower level maps. Could have been a bug, or maybe someone fell asleep at the keyboard. Just pressing zzzzzzzz (attack button). Below is a video of him auto-attacking.

Mir: I did not notice many Clerics so I have nothing to add about it, sorry.

Q: Which class do you think is most popular in the CBT?

Mir: Elementalist! They look awesome.

Mana: So flashy, Hard to notice anyone else once they get going.

Q: Tell us about the controls of the game using keyboard and shortcut keys.

Mir: Unique. There were people complaining about not being able to use the mouse in the field but I was not bothered by it at all. It is not hard. After you start, you will get used to it quickly. Targeting is not as hard as I thought it would be. At least not for Melee characters. Mastering controls is important.

Mana: I am not an experienced gamer and I am also left handed. It could be either one of these reasons that made it more difficult for me to get used to. My right hand would hurt if I played too long but It really is not that hard. You have to pay attention or you’ll miss. It is not like Granado Espada at all. Consumables and skills can be customized to any key that you feel comfortable with.

 

Mana: The first one is the normal set up where you can customize your skill shortcuts. If you press the insert button, your character will sit down and shortcut keys are toggled to building campfires and crafting. I hardly needed to use any of these yet though.

Mir: Status, Inventory, Skills, Achievements, Quests, Party, Friends, Macro, Companion, Help, Settings.

Mana: “M” key toggles the Map. Blue flags tell you where to get quests and the gray flags tell you where to go to complete the quests. Orange flags are main quests.

Mana: Backspace is the best! I love this feature. Once you have completed a quest and orange and white circle will appear and you can teleport straight back to the NPC who gave you the quest. Poses and gestures can be customized to ctrl + number keys under the Macro tab.

Q: What do you think of the graphics and artwork?

Mana: I can tell a lot of work went into making this a beautiful game. It is very stylized and pleasing on the eye. I was not sure how the graphics works since I am more used to realism in graphics but the cute style is definitely the way to go in Tree of Savior.

Mana: My only issue is that Rhaeger looks too girly! You probably guessed I named him after Rhaeger Targaryen so I wanted him to have light hair but he turned out to be too cute!

Mir: The face, it is the face! Everyone has the same face for both girls and guys. Mir and Rheager have different hairstyles but they still look too similar. I hope we can change more later. Other than that the graphics are stunning. This is my first time playing a cute game like this. The graphics are really amazing.

Mana: Choices, choices. Mir went Barbarian so I decided to try Hoplite but I never finished the quest for the costume. There were a few costume events. Things kept popping up like cat ears, owls and fried eggs.  I got the maple leaf hairband from a treasure chest.

Mana: There were a few bugs that really stole away the beauty from this game though.

Q: What about the BGM?

Mana: It was alright. I can not remember where it was, but I was fighting a boss and the BGM was so calm. It did not seem to match in some places. I do like it though. The BGM was not encoded so I imagine you can already download the whole thing from somewhere.

Mir: It is very good. I like the main theme most of all.

Q: How are the boss battles?

Mir: Too easy! Even at level 56 it was still too easy. They aren’t thrilling at all. Just hack, slash, move out of the way when they attack. They were bit boring for boss fights. I expect it will get more exciting.

Mana: I do not know what it was but there were times I did not even bother dodging because the boss (or mobs) just did not do enough damage to even scratch Rheager. It just felt weird. We were thinking maybe it was a bug. Mobs and bosses at the same level as you should be doing more damage than 1 – 10 damage points. Increasing the Vitality stat will give you more than enough HP to survive harder battles. I got to about level 30 and Rhaeger never died in the game.

There are a lot of bosses though. Field bosses, quest bosses, box bosses! All over the place. I do not understand Korean well so I was surprised. If they were just a little more challenging the shear number of them might be enough to make your heart jump.

Mir: This was the most interesting boss fight as it was a little more challenging to get close to the target. Not so much for classes like Wizard I guess. The bosses do not move around the map at all. Once they do it will definitely be a more worthwhile fight.

Mana: Why do you keep changing your equipment?

Mir: I could not figure it out why my hammer that was enchanted +25 was not doing more damage than the normal sword of the same level.

Mana: I had a feeling that developers wanted people to walk through the game quickly to get as much feedback as possible. So this may not be a good example of what bosses will be like in the final game. CBT players got at most around 38 hours of gameplay (servers went down a few times for 15 – 30 min to fix bugs) and players still made it to level 80 and higher.

Mir: We were just casually playing on and off after work. Also alternating our characters. I would play a few hours them Mana would play. I was over level 50 by Sunday evening, Mana was around level 30.

Mana: About the jumping thing. I never noticed. I remember trying it out and I do not feel much of a difference.

Mir: I did not notice either.

Q: What do you think of the Stamina System and Equipment Durability?

Mana: It is annoying. It is very important to keep your stamina up or you will be crawling like a snail everywhere.

Mir: Just attack the blue crystals in the field and your stamina will be restored or stock up on those yellow pills, lots of yellow pills. Mana crawled a lot.

Mana: Like a snail. Cry…stal…cr…ys…t….al… Sometimes there were a lot of crystals and sometimes there were not. I wonder what it will be like when there are more players. It definitely got more challenging during the weekend when the channels were reduced from around 20 to only 5.

Then there was that armor thing! What was that? Luckily Mir told me just in time or I would have lost all my equipped items!

Mir: Yeah, Your items lose durability the longer you use them. So you have to get them repaired in the city. Be sure to do that every time you return.

Mana: *sigh* But I see why it is an important part of the game.

Mir: It is a good system from protecting the server from bots. If you manage a system to play on auto the character will eventually run out of stamina and be unable to fight. Even if you manage to get by that your equipment will eventually disappear too if you don’t go to the blacksmith to fix it

Mana: Yeah,  you have to do the leg work in this game yourself. Preventing auto play seems to be a priority. It was a huge problem on Granado Espada back in the days. The game was too easy to bot and eventually the servers were overrun by bots.

Q: Can you give us a tour around Klaipeda town?

 

Mana: I had to cut this because I accidentally left the recording on. So it ended up with no sound. Anyway, The town is quite bug. Lots of people to talk to. My Korean is not good so I only talked to the important people.

First up is the Companion Trader, Kristina. You can get your companion from her but they are expensive. I did not see anyone with them till the last day. I only had about 40,000 silver on me. Not nearly enough.

Next up is the Accessories Stall who sold necklace and bracelets. Then the weapon store. Take note of the prices.

Then the tools store were you can get your potions and scrolls and different kinds of wood! NXP items include a red ox drink that looks suspiciously familiar.

Someone had built a fire. Is you press the insert key you can sit down and enjoy the fires benefits regardless of who made the fire. The fires effect on you can be seen in the top left corner.

Then there is the most important guy. The blacksmith, I think. This guy will fix your equipment from wear and tear. Visit him every time and pick “Repair” (the second tab) from the menu,  Select all, agree and confirm the price.

Take a quick look at the marketplace then the forge. The Vakarine Statue (warp portal) is at the center of the map. I ended up speaking to a cleric master I think. Then took a shortcut jumping over buildings to get to the other side of town but the gate was locked up. I do not really know what Bokor Mama is supposed to be.

That is all for now. Later, we will talk about quests, party play and other things that interested us. Look forward to it. You can see more videos of boss fights on YouTube.

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