Is this MMORPG really that newbie-unfriendly after all?

This is a reply to an old post that grew in length and to prevent necroposting, I created a new thread.

In response to an old post from 2018: The Only MMORPG that isn't newbie friendly at all. (https://toramonline.com/index.php?threads/the-only-mmorpg-that-isnt-newbie-friendly-at-all.44758/)

In case anyone else stumbles upon this age-old post again like I did, and wondering whether to play this game or not.

As of now 2020, completing current MQ takes a new account close to lvl 150 (with a little grinding at Mino at early levels), so acheiving the popular (and powerful) tier 4 skills is not that much of a problem (and should be first priority for the first character). You may face problems with MQ boss, but the only one I found really tough was Pillar Golem because ignite and how merc runs straight towards red aoe. Look for a kind soul to help, and check that you're running boss on easy mode (escape and challenge again) with a lvl 205 friend 2h merc with high atk. Optimally, you will reach Venena Normal with Tier 4 skills, and start killing it with Magic: Finale.

IMO, your first character should be a mage using staff. It is the only class that gives easy mp with mp charge (and maximizer at tier 4). Get MP charge immediately to 10 and support skill: recovery and heal to heal your merc. Focus on moving out of red aoe and let merc-sensei do their job. From levels 40-80, farm Minotaur Skin and level, merc kills minotaur easily, and people will be happy to help you with 6 seconds kills as you give them free rank. Put first 200 points in Int, remaining in luck if you want.

To aid you in earning your first few spinas, you might want to learn storm lvl 10 and make it a luck mage. Nisel Wood and Nightmare Crystal would be your best bet to safely one-hit-kill farm or when you get to those areas in MQ.

Generally speaking, the attitude described by in the old post is unavoidable in most games. If you're nub, likely no one wants a deadweight on their team. Party finding is always a hassle, but there will be some parties who are op and kind enough to carry the team, or appreciate some amount of damage.

I do admit the newbie slope is quite steep, without good boss dropped equipments, though time-consuming. But from someone who consider themselves a middling player, with high level, boss-dropped equipments and tier 4 skills, you can only still do middling damage. To actually deal huge damage and solo bosses still requires a lot of grinding, you will need to get your +S refined player-crafted weapon. So this difference in power or op-ness is not unique to newbies, but to intermediate players as well. Getting to advanced/or late-game equipments requires a whole other commitment of time and spina-making.

We do understand how tough it is early on, but most players dislike it when newbies beg for spina and free stuff, or sometimes help in the form of leeching off a party, literally just standing there while you press impact-storm. This post probably explains why most players do not respond to new players. (https://toramonline.com/index.php?threads/false-shouters.47512/#post-490831) IMO, being new should not be a justification that you deserve people giving you spina or free stuff. Everyone has started off from zero once before, and most of us did not have someone fund our beginning adventures. What you can do, is ask about things you don't know in Shout (where to farm materials, where to level); many players will gladly give you an answer. Although before you start playing, best that you bookmark the website coryn.club.

In summary, for a beginning player,

- early game is actually, easy with friends
(add an advanced player to friendlist and you can use a dumb version of them, for free!)
- killing mobs feels good -> go farm not ask for freebies/spina
(be happy if people give you stuff, but don't expect them to)
- have toxic and friendly players
(IMO english server will have friendlier players because players who want to rush levels quick will stay in int)
- get kicked from some parties, but some are chill with it
- block toxic and carry on (^-^)b

It's not the best mobile game, but what I love is how it is open world and not P2W. In exchange, it is tough to grind. But if you ever feel drained, feel free to rest or chat in Say. The people staring at the Government Office fountain in Sofya, the players giving free weapons for newbies at Land Under Development, or players sitting around at Hora Diomedia or El Scaro, surely wouldn't mind a chat or two. (=w=))

 

Okay first off, it's a matter of perspective. It is indeed hard for a newbie because skill descriptions and mechanics are quite vague until the lord and savior dataminers shared them all. Back to the perspective when comparing the experience of old veterans and newbies you can see the difference:

Newbies:
- A lot most likely came from a different game with auto combat or afk mechanic. This makes them incredibly lazy when they go to toram online.
-Thinks leveling is hard enough. Thinks main quest is hard enough. Since most came from a game with afk mechanic, they hate running around.
-Wants to make spina immediately. Some resorts to begging, others use bots, while there are a handful that degenerates into scammers. All of it because the prices in the board are sky high. To most of them, spina first before everything else.
-Remember what I said when most thinks spina first before everything else? That's because they just want to flex with their equipments and damage and other stuff that there are also a handul of them who buys spina via RMT. And then they get incredibly disappointed if they don't hog ranks especially after they watch some YouTube video. That's the height of stupidity.

To us veterans:
-Farming is a part of our Toram life. A lot of us have been here for long so we know how to dispel boredom, multitask while farming, and find fun in whatever stuff that looks interesting enough.
-Leveling is both easy and hard. Easy if we find a suitable party, and hard if we can't solo it. If we can solo it, sometimes it becomes time or resource consuming for those who still lacks experience.
-Remember main quest? Back then we can't even reach level 40 with main quest while the level cap is above 70. And guess what? Farm Nisel Woods and Bitter Nuts for hours. Grinding exp from mobs, mini boss or bosses are a waste of time. Now, because there is bonus exp within ±9 levels, a newbie can practically grind from level 1-37 in less than an hour. And guess what, we don't have mercs back then. We don't have tier 4 skills. We don't have manual evade. All we got is Revita, our reflex, and our brains.

Personally, a newbie who is open about not having tier 4 skill is better than leechers. Just no begging. If begging for spina is bad enough, don't think that begging to join a party is any better. It just makes you look incredibly unreliable and too reliant on other players. True, this MMORPG isn't meant to be soloed. But if you stop improving yourself that you end up relying on others most of the time then you're gonna have a big problem in the late game. Big numbers are good, but if your character is incompatible with others that big flucking numbers you see in YouTube is not commonly achievable in a random party. Those are mainly highlights of the builds.

Another thing about a newbie is that most of them don't know where to start. Starting with mage as main dps character is hard enough when you reach higher levels before 150. If you start adding Luk stat then it's even harder. With that said, it is much easier to start with bow, halberd or katana and then create a mage later on. Mages tend to lure unnecessary mobs which pretty much kills them if they're not careful. As for why the three, it's simple: Bow because Fatal Shot crits everytime and is superb for non 100 crit builds when not facing crit resist bosses or Snipe because you can't go wrong with it. Halberd can use either Grand Buster Lance or Strike Stab which is tried and true. And katana for easy MP recover and high survivability while having decent damage even without tier 4 skills.

Using +S equipments aren't a requirement but an option. Damage isn't everything in toram. If you die, the damage also dies. I once tried using +C equipments and joined a lot of random parties for several days. Guess what, I pretty much carried most of them. It's not a requirement, it's an option. If you don't know how to maximize your damage, even with a +S you're probably just gonna spam mindlessly and kill yourself along with proration.

Since most newbies do not know where to start, I recommend them going to this forum and visiting coryn.club. Sometimes I guide them a bit, sometimes directly criticize their fantasy and guide them on the right way. Correct misunderstanding and clear out shitty rumors they've heard. But I'm not all knowing. From that point on, it's their choice.

 

*levelup* let's learn a new skill.
oh, cool! a magic circle to defend myself.
*casts magic wall*
*dies*

those were the days
and mages are terribly slow.
when you get to a new area, you can't simply kill everything with explosion magic if the mobs are the same level as you.
you have to carefully shoot them one by one with magic arrows and it takes forever.
if you weren't a fan of magic before toram, then you certainly won't become one if you start with it.

forcing an unwanted playstyle on new players is the worst you can do in a game that offers freedom and customisation.
i want to slap all those "newbie guide" posters because they obviously have no idea what it is like to start the game from zero.

the "difficulty" for weapons on the character creation screen is very accurate.
mages are hard to play and you must like it to play them.
as for those who don't know where to start, always recommend swords.
they have equally balanced stat growth and the most possible choices of skill trees.
easy to use, can't go wrong with distributing stat points and you can build them into almost anything.

 

Int2 and int3 servers are not bad, int1 is actually bad due to players want to fast grind out there.

I don't feel early game is easy after all, consider a level 150 now still cannot beat most Nightmare/Ulti boss and back in the old day, there is no way to run fast enough from boss. But I don't feel end game is any easier cause even you have all the top gear out there, the boss still can slaps you to death in a few hits. So compare a player with top gear to dominate where newbie player struggled like compare newbie player to bully Boss Colon :V

I would strongly recommend to newbie players that slowly get yourself comfortable with the game first. Any high reward you want often comes with higher risk, which is unbearable for most newbie to keep up.

And no, you don't need to be dps to get yourself up faster (your dps do almost nothing, like almost nothing when you leveling raising faster than your gear). You don't need have +S gear, bunch of xtals or massive stats to be useful, stick with basic game knowledge of proration, skill builds, boss elemental weakness, boss physical/magical weakness,.... They even help experienced players massively. You don't even need to fight boss to level up as well, there is quest leveling all the way to 205! There even people doing waifu service to get boosted up and free gear :\/

 

waifu whaat? I never thought there's a lot of ultra thirsty weebs on the game to need such a service. Most of them probably TRAPS

 

This is 100% true, but what about crt and getting 100 crt gear for newbies? Assassin garb is the only gear that offers crt and it lacks HP. They'll be missing auto attacks on Venena Nightmare without crt and can't ampr. Get Seele armor or Tapir armor and they won't have high enough crt.

In my defence I don't intend them to actually playin parties with that mage except after they get finale, which in this new age of manual evasion is easier to finale (if you know where to stand). The base damage of finale is HUGE, but still they would need to invest 200 points in INT at least. Levelling to get finale could be relying on healing their merc only, because high chance MQ bosses will tumble flinch you when you try to storm. But this is only my opinion "IMO".

Oh cool, didn't know that. I guess they could do that if they don't need 100 crt. But there's also the part that I'm addressing is getting kicked from parties for NOT having tier 4 skills.

This is news to me since I only saw the biggest damage jump when refining my equipment to plus B. I was assuming that +S would be a greater increase in damage. Could be good to have. Well, depends on your party, if they all have insane damage and know prorate, then you'll be rank 4 on attacker rank.

This made me laugh XD. Never thought of it this way XD. Still, sad fact that some of the players who get their 2s +S . top gear and always get Attacker rank would leave their party if they are doing 90% of the damage. And they easily do, especially if you don't have good gear. (In int 1 channel)

THIS IS AWESOME WHERE CAN I FIND CUSTOMERS AND WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO UWU

xDD

 

The learning curve of toram is steep, which is beautiful and harsh at the same time. Thankfully amino and coryn sites gives a lot of insight , also with that there are many yt that gives some cool ideas but take it with a pinch of salt. Talking about youtubers don’t copy their builds, simply because they made a build that suits them, it may not be the best way to do that particular build and you’ll quickly realize that the high also damage some do cannot be made on nightmare and intimate difficulty bosses.

The starting build is your choice imo, however whatever you choose I suggest you add a decent amount of vit to it so you can survive, this may sound unconventional to what others may suggest but with hp you live longer as well as it gives you a buffer to learn boss patterns and give you some security when errors are made. After you get comfortable then you can always utilize the free resets we get approx once a year and tweak your character to suit.


Events are your friend , player made weapon are nice but depending on your build event stuff would be better, they are definitely cheaper and they are solid overall, not op but solid. In my start here I loved event stufff because it was always better than my current stuff and even now some of my builds use event stuff over player made because it’s better, this howeve doesn’t apply to all event stuff but some are.

Hate the grind? Don’t play an rpg then, all rpg games have that same mechanic it’s at the core of the gameplay. You want good stuff you gotta work for it, toram is no different in that respect. People just need to be patient and stop being fooled by players boasting of 1mil+ dmg, it’s beat to learn the game and find ways to enjoy the grind...... I normally trash talk during venena runs just to make it less boring yeah I die at times while typing but who cares? It’s a game and it needs to be fun so make it fun.

As for those who rmt or bot or whatever that’s your choice and if you get banned or whatever it’s your fault. Together with that if you’re new to the game even if you have 2s everything with the best equips and xtals , they knowledgeable player with +c ns gear can possibly bet attacker over you because they know the game, so don’t expect you’ll be top dog because you invested irl money for op gears there is more to the game than that.

 

Why would a newbie fight at venena nm mode in the first place? For leveling purpose, isn't your char lvl supposed to be at least around 165 - 167? At that time it shouldn't be a problem to get enough crt from equip or food buff.

 

Not necessarily if they are new they may not fully understand the importance of crt nor how it works, I have seen players near cal with little to no knowledge of the game , simply because they got to that point via leeching which venena is famous for.

 

Then they will still realize that they need the crt thing and look for a way to get enough of it.
What I mean is at that lvl you should be able to make a physical build with enough crt (after knowing about the importance of it); saying that you should stick with a mage bc you couldn't get enough crt at lvl > 165 is just...

 

Initially?
•we knew almost nothing (not talking bout Alpha/beta players)
•Income was mostly from :
1) Small article : 7k/stk
2) bnut n nisel wood..
3) decel drops
4) Roga skins :3
• when defeating following alone was a feat :
1) Eerie
2) Decel
3) Forestia
4) Ooze
5) Demon gate
6) Roga
• when the best equips around were :
1) drops from decel (arm n sword)
2) drops from roga (staff n arm)
3) drops from ooze (arm)
4) demon gate (sword)
5) that ..golem..thingy (its swords n shield) ..in those zoktzda ruins
6) forestia (arm n arrow)
Since statting wasnt very popular or well known..
• when fighting following mini boss was somewhat awesome :
1) Crimsoch
2) Dark(?) mushroom
3) Silver roar
4) Stone knight (demon gate map)
5) That stone mini boss in Zoktzda ruins..
6) Seltirios
7) Golden skeleton
8) Violacoon..
• players used to be spread out rather than in one place..
1) Debackcy channel
2) Athema ruins
3) Aulada ancient tower
4) n almost all maps..
• Players didnt have eb, we have revitas :b healed 1k..
• Players being fools and trying for ‘all rounder’ builds since they wanted to be jack of all trades..
• when lvling was restricted to +/- 3 to players own lvl..
• mob farming was a thing to lvl Owo)/
• Upgrade arms of newbies?
Leather arm > Straye garb > ooze arm > Killer coat..
• When all we could do was .. walk .. everywhere..running wasnt an option xD
• An era when Grecia’s xtal was sold for 10m ..ahm..that was..years ago @.@)
• Mq was hardly a thing that was looked upon as opportunity to unlock new maps n bosses rather than lvl..since exp was low x3
• Players used to lvl till 50..? When cap was 70-100 n spend rest of time chatting..n enjoying..
• Side quests had to be submitted turn..by..turn..(horror bgm)
• Forums or youtube had almost nothing like guides or ways to earn .-.)
That was life before x3
That...was hard time -w-; ) to lvl n earn mostly..



..things are waaaaaay easier now..
• Fully established forum with almost all info mere clicks away,
• Youtube n thousands of guides...
• A lovely (Skippable) Mq that takes to 144+ easily
• Decent NPC n boss drops that are actually good ..all ya need is will to farm :b
• Exp quests..that give 1000s..exp
• STACKABLE exp quests owo)....that give millions exp
• Eb..no need to say more..
• Easy (albeit needing will power n patience) lvling.. 0-150 MQ> 150-200 Venena -w-;;; )
• ...Running around *^*; )
• ...Teleporting..! (Like alot of teleports, initially they were limited)
• BS stats n Locks :v before u were stuck looking like a cute warrior who was bloodthirsty..or a indecent player..ahm..(eerie crystal arm, ooze arm mostly applied to females) [Sea Shell arm..rip..thats a whole new thing]
• House, pets, mercs, cb, maaany (3) towns
• +/- 9 lvling system..
• items/drops to earn atleast 100k per day..or millions if free nuff x3
• Players to guide ya around (if u ask around that is)
• Food buffs...
• alot more but l am lazy to type anymore
-w-; )

PS :
Guides advice mages to start with since mages dont need crt..
Newbies have almost no concept, or way to reach crit..(fine, astute, base crit, okie, EVEN berserk...but what bout arm? What bout wpn, add n ring? Not all have access to DECENT crt arms, wpns, n friends with those buffs)

PSS:
Eventually repeating stuff gets boring..so many players take break

 

lv170 is hardly a "newbie". even if you leech through the main quest you'll only get to lv140+.

just because there are many doesn't mean they are good.
most of them are the same anyway, the only difference is the annoying music and clickbait title.
most of the spina beggars are there because of those guides. they see you must have hdjfgh6969 equipment, they look at CB, it costs 2 billion spina per piece, they start begging random people for money, because according the spina farming guides we all have trillions of spina in our pockets and don't know what to do with it.

 

While u have a point, l meant that in such a perspective that they have ‘guides’, good or bad, few or many, atleast they have directions,
Did we have such as newbies :/ ?
I sure as hell woulda appreciated knowing stuff rather than going through that trial n error (who would honestly) avoiding mistakes such as using books, selling expensive stuff stuff cheap, buying stuff without knowing much, discarding.. etc (admittedly a mistake 90% of majority makes as ‘newbie’ anywhere)
Not that there was much to make guide on then..but still

 

Yes I agree , everyone should stop playing this trashy game , only trashy people will like to continue it .. (by trashy I mean people like neets and pedophiles who are not highly welcomed in society ^-^))

 

I didn't get too into toram until lvl 150 cap released. By that I meant I struggled really hard to make anything out of the game other than farming NC to either sell them or use them myself. I had a hard time mainly due to the lack of level range exp boost which makes leveling a real huge chore. I didn't even think much about the game mechanics and simply played for the aestethic of an anime mmorpg and try to cap at least one of my character.

I started just a little before Halberd was released, strike stab was the stuff at that time aside from the usual storm mages. I mainly played 2h before level cap released due to its great ampr skills in trigger slash and rampage, paired with sword tempest for the ever increasing damage with the magic proration. It was really fun on its own but the game definitely hasn't matured in term of overall features and dynamic. Due to both irl activities(I was studying for uni entrance exam) I took a hiatus from the game and also due to the stagnation of the game. There were simply not much feature that helps new players or those that doesn't spend hours of grinding and playing casually.

Came back to play gain after I got a stable uni life and it just happened that lvl 150 cap was released. I capped my 2h char and then comes the seemingly overpowered skill im finale which makes me switch onto mages to do everything. The level range boost was implemented too so it was a leveling fest, players surge and go to battle every minibosses along the way and no one was complaining about not having tier 4 skills, good times. This is what's likely the current newbies won't experience, growing together as the game and the playerbase matures. I understand how it'd be a strugle for newbies to not having experience these stuff and pressured to get better quickly due to the state of the game where older players are miles ahead and newbies are forced to do the same with so little time and so much stuff to learn, it could be really overwhelming. So as far as a newbie friendliness, there are two sides of the coins to it.

First off, the positive one. Newbies now can enjoy the game as a whole with all the features they could get into. Theres less disparity when it comes to being able to be "good" at the game given enough knowledge, its no simple matter of grind time as i used to. The game is also more feature rich too with all sort of builds and activities you can do without slaving yourself and grind endlessly.

Then the struggle of today's newbies. Its more about the peer pressure and the impatience it brings from all the stuff you ought to do to be as good as others. This is due to how easy(yes despite the complains of newbies) to level now that you practically can cap your character in a matter of a week. Level is more obsolete than ever, unlike most classic mmorpg games that use that level grind as one of the main thing to do in game. But with how the game is designed for you to make as many unique builds as you can, its understandable that they give a concession regarding level. But its really a double edged sword more than anything.

Then onto what I think the main problem of this issue. Its the lack of both end game feature and mid game feature. Newbies and veterans are forced to have the same level of achievement, with the veterans that gets into the vicious cycle of spina grind and repetitive events. And the other side, newbies are also sucked into the meta of the game without a mid-game progress due to the obsolescence of level, theres no insentive of getting high level. It also includes how gears can be used at any level. But retracting this level issue is something thats hard to solve since its really due to the inherent design of the game, you could argue that they go about this issue wrong in the first place, its a badly designed leveling system paired with the lack of supporting features. They need to add a more progressive mean of playing from a newbie to a "expert/pro" at the game. So in this case of badly designed level system, I don't think you can ever fix it, Toram is done. Onto the next game and hopefully they learn something about it from Toram.

To sum it up? The game have become way too easy in general. It lacks that punch and sense of achievement from the grind and I would love to have a much better insentive from the process, not the goal. Its badly in need of an early game, mid game and finally endgame content. That is not to say the game is not worth to play, new players still have a decent stuff to experience untill they possibly get bored. Imo the game is at a weird spot where it feels like its reaching its limit, yet also feels like a young game with a whole lot more potential if the devs dare to go outside of their comfort zone and actually produce a good content to the game. As to how to improve the game at this point, I could give some suggestions but this post would be far too long than it already. So I'll save it for another day.

 

Well, I'm kind of revising that statement after I'm reading my post again. The game have no future direction if devs keep stagnating like they currently do. The rollback might have a big impact tho. As of now they're basically going auto-pilot as a developer and just spew out repetitive contents. Looking back at it for the last few years, they did add nice features, but not fixing the big issue I mentioned regarding level system and end game feature, it can still be saved as long as they keep the playerbase decently populous.

 

I hate how every youtubers who post their videos that contains solo bossing with mostly op gears and even survivability. Which makes even more players uncomfortable (although it said don't watch if you're not feel good at watching solo).
It's just imo tho, don't go rant on me. I already know that some bosses that can be easily sololed as long as they're have a true knowledge of bosses mechanics.

 

Valid point. I understand where you're coming from.
How about "choose mage if you want to progress fastest and cheaply/easily", without worrying about crit or ampr. Otherwise as another poster mentioned, 3 tier skills or other ways to work around non-100 crt builds is another method.

Honestly, a person could be still be new to the game at 170. Since currently most people can farm Venena from 144. So it's straight out of MQ into loli-land. If they haven't done any bossing aside from MQ, it will be a new experience, how to dodge meteor, how to dodge the loli slap, etc. If they do level completely at Venena then at nightmare they'll realise they need crit (and ampr). But if you're a mage you don't realise that.

Again, this is assuming they started the game intending to get the furthest in the shortest time, without any spina to buy player made equipment, without food buffs cause they got no friends.

The alternative is to take it slowly and I guess it's just a matter of different opinions. The players who want to make their own builds and enjoy the game by their own ways wouldn't bother listening to guides anyway. Most times it's the min-maxers or perfectionists (like me) who go crazy researching stuff before playing.

I've still got to find food buff friend for my new account XD. It's quite fun and a new experience playing halberd, since my main is mage. (which also explains my bias for mage sorry xP)
Anyway, I've figured out the cheapest way to get full crt,

Base 25
Lil Emp Weapon +25
Lil Emp Dagger +10
Additional: some crt add gear to get from CB +20 at best
=> 80 crt, need food buff

So it isn't really THAT hard after all, so no not really newbie unfriendly. Just farm.

I feel the punch when my party ends up dead and I spend time holding aggro, dodging red aoe at venena and manage to survive = sense of achievement. Ironically, maybe disadvantage makes things fun. Next time try solo a boss with Weaken Talisman xD.

----

But yeah, this was originally a thread about how the attitudes of players makes the game newbie unfriendly, me suggesting mage and ways to reach 150 is only my opinion of the easiest way to reach tier 4. As of current game, it is super easy and players are expected to reach tier 4, but is there a problem of OP members leaving or kicking weaker damage players from parties?