Early Access: Eden Eternal Pre-CB Series Part 2!

by Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

 

 

I’m back with another Pre-CB preview of Aeria Game’s latest flagship game, Eden Eternal. In Part 1 I gave a basic introduction into why this game is outside the norm and hinted at the substantial content and features list that makes this game a true AAA title. Now it’s time to stop hinting and get down to the knitty gritty of character build and skill customization.

 

 

A Character All Your Own

There are four main parts that combine to make each character unique. Though the final names of these components aren’t finalized, I am going to refer to them as General Stats, Class Skills, Class Talents, and Specialization Tree.

 

General Stats

The general stats consist of your basic stats perfected in the glory days of Super Nintendo RPGs such as Health Points, Mana Points, Strength, Wisdom, Accuracy, Luck, and so on. These stats are based on your equipment and level and combine with set percentage modifiers specific to the current class you have activated. The resulting numbers are used to determine:

 

Offensive Stats

Physical Attack
Magic Attack
Accuracy (physical only, in my testing magic never seemed to miss, though longer cast times were easily interrupted)
Attack Speed
Critical Rate (physical attacks only)
Critical Bonus Damage (physical attacks only)
Cast Speed (reduces channeling time of skills)
Magical Critical Rate
Magical Bonus Critical Damage

 

 

Defensive Stats

Defense
Evasion
Weapon Parry (Reduces damage incurred by half. Has a chance of activating with certain weapons)
Block Rate (Greatly reduces damage incurred when activated)

 

Many classes deal both physical and magical damage so every stat has at least some use no matter which class you are playing.

 

Class Skills

Though some basic skills exist that are available no matter which class is active, the majority of your battle skills are class specific and cannot be accessed without switching to said class. These skills are connected to an experience system separate from your character experience bar, and you only gain class experience from combat while the class is active. This is an interesting and wonderful feature that makes it inefficient to stick with one class at all times since class experience accumulates at a faster rate than character experience but class level cannot exceed character level. Thus a level 6 Character that attains level 6 Hunter Class level will waste any additional class experience earned.

 

 

At certain class levels, you will unlock new class skills or be able to upgrade old skills. I really enjoyed the ease of this system as you simply pay a small amount of gold at any time to upgrade your skills. New skills are acquired by spending class experience points instead of gold, meaning that people with rich friends will have to grind mobs and quests with the specific class active just like everyone else to unlock the good stuff. But no longer are you plagued with having to tread back to town to acquire new skills, meaning you can surprise your friends and unleash a deadly new spell right in the middle of a dungeon!

 

 

A vital feature that I am glad was not overlooked in this system is that your hotkey bar is saved separately for each class you own. You have approximately 18 hotkey slots to work with so it should be easy and intuitive to assign a setup that works for you, no matter the class, with buttons left over for your favorite emotes. This way you can change between classes quickly without having to reslot your skills each time. Although I was unable to confirm with my pre-built character, I believe a similar situation is in place to quickly switch between armor sets upon changing class. Whew, bullet dodged!

 

Class Talents

Class talents were not fully translated at this preview but the general idea behind them is that you earn talent points from leveling up your individual classes. These can be spent on general talents such as raising your total wisdom stat by 1% + 1% per level or increasing the effects of all healing skills by 2%. This system is set up like a tree, in which the better class talents are only unlockable once a certain number of points are placed into the lower talents.

 

 

I think this was a genius feature by the development team to ensure that players who are not as interested in the one character- multiple class system can really put in the effort to make themselves excel above all others at the class they play most. It also has plenty of branching directions you can take your talents in, which are unique to each class, so you will rarely find someone exactly quite like yourself (unless you read a pro’s how-to guide haha).

 

Specialization Tree

The Specialization tree works a lot like a trading card game. Through various actions and achievements, you can unlock secret specialization cards. As your character grows and masters multiple classes, you can unlock additional card slots on your character to place within these slots. This adds a fun little game of mix and matching as by placing certain cards adjacent to each other, you can unlock powerful additional bonus powers like +12% luck. These card sets you establish are saved uniquely under each class, allowing you to customize a unique card combo to improve the power of each class to your taste. I am not ashamed to say I love this game’s character customization!

 

 

This concludes my inside look at character customization. But for those that are joining me on my hype bandwagon, fear not! I will return again with a look at the Dating System and Guilds and Guild Cities in part 3 of Early Access: Eden Eternal!