Website:
http://www.theriansaga.comVideo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzdpyHNsFhkTherian Saga is a new Sandbox Browser MMO, where you move your character on the world map and making him do various tasks, like gathering resources, exploring, fighting, farming, etc.
The game is mostly focused around crafting and the work that goes into that. Combat is a very valid ‘profession’ due to extremely valuable drops, but there exists 1 skill group for offense, 1 skill group for defense, and about 8 different skills for producing items, so the emphasis is definitely on crafting dynamics far more than combat. A large part of the game focuses around where you can harvest particular materials, and getting enough skill to work them.
Skills, for their part, are based on your actual character’s skill, the quality of the tool you’re using, the quality of the location’s workshop, and what assisting companions you have. The drive for skill gain is not only for pure skill, but also heavily influenced by tools and workshops, placing a heavy emphasis on cooperation with other players to get access to the tools and materials you need to progress.
The actual progress of the game is slow. Many actions are measured in 20+ minutes, and depending how you set up your queue of actions, it can last several hours. Combat is a bit more ‘direct control’ but collecting resources and performing especially higher skill crafting will take hours to finish. You can fill in the time discussing plans, establishing trades with other players, and harassing others about skill levels, resource locations, and other quirks, but a lot of the time will be spent waiting for queues to finish - but that’s not exactly new for a browser game, right?
The thing that is different, is that queues are handled in real time. Tasks are set, and take time to complete, and are then finished. The current task, plus 4 in queue, can be assigned to work in order, though a larger number of queue slots can be bought from the premium shop. Instead of many games where your character collects action points while idle and then spends them to instantly complete tasks, Therian bases tasks completion time on how long the task actually takes. There is still ‘energy’ which each task uses and sleeping restores energy, but that doesn’t prove to be as big a hinderance as traditional “AP Pools” tend to be.
Now for what the game’s good at, the crafting is much more complex than many other games. Instead of having set recipes, items are constructed more as templates. You’re given the ability to produce, for example, a lumber ax. This takes some ingots of metal, and a handle. The metal can be anything, copper, bronze, steel, even silver. Some choices are better than others, so using silver isn’t really very useful, but a steel ax is pretty great. So instead of lists of recipes, you’re instead give a whole list of metal types and allowed to pick any one that you happen to have on hand. This applies to every type of crafting as well, from clothing to armor to tools and buildings. This also allows for much more complex dynamics. Materials have a set of stats, a chunk of 4-10 different attributes and produced items are generated differently depending on what those stats are - nothing is hard-coded, it’s all math based on what the material values are.
ALSO important to note, for reasons. When making a new account, it will ask you how you heard about the game. If you enter a valid player’s name, then the first time you spend money to buy premium currency, the player you referred will gain currency as well.
The premium itself is very optional. You start with room for one weapon, one tool, four NPC companions, and 5 queue actions, but can spend money on permanent upgrades for more slots of each - for instance, you can carry a tool for metal forging and a tool for carpentry, so you don’t have to switch every time you want to do either job type, both will be in use whenever each is relevant. Other premium items are a -little- exploity, like reducing a task by 1 hour, or providing 50 energy without sleeping (no skill ever lets you reduce time, but certain player-produced potions do restore energy), but these are limited to a number of uses per 24 hours and aren’t that bad. There is no ‘premium membership’ with monthly fee, there is only microtransactions for permanent slot upgrades or consumable luxuries - none of these provide any artificial skill boost either.
List of our guilds, players, and their skills:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AncW0Hp2cXFedF95bHFaXzNoa2tHQnpWSHpFdW1JeGc#gid=3NPC Vendors Items List (thanks to arezedge):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap4wnqjXVH_FdDJGOUxZUF91Mk5kSnQ4cVY5RThSbUE&usp=sharingWorld Map (Spoilers):
http://www.shinhan.name/tsmap/
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Topic: Therian Saga: Browser Based XTREME CRAFTING Simulator (Read 20760 times)