ArcheAge CBT4 Preview 1st Report

As many of you may know ArcheAge CBT4 kicked off last night, with only four of three of sleep I have started to convert and upload videos of the first day which can be viewed here or at the SteparuTV Channel. Having enjoyed the previous third Closed Beta Test for ArcheAge Online you'll find lots of videos and information in the upcoming weeks. On the side note, I'm still alive and now I am dragging you along to my ArcheAge Online adventures so saddle up and join me on my adventures with my super awesome donkey mount.


During the first day of CBT I spent of my time questing and grinding in the region called Rainbow Fields. This is the starting region for the new race called Hari Haran featured in CBT4. I would imagine that this is currently one of the most popular races during the 4th CBT, the starting area was so swamped that my computer almost died running the game on it's highest settings in 1920x1080.


I tried to be productive grinding and questing wise during the first day of CBT, though there quite few times were I would run off looking for the tallest mountain or structure and just glide down for fun. It's a cool thing that they give you all these handy looking tools like a boat, portable glider, donkey(mount) and etc at such low levels. Just like the previous CBT's questing in ArcheAge is very rewarding and faster than grinding. Most of the quests are straight forward if you can read Korean, though users who are unable to read Korean may take up to one to ten minutes on figuring out what to do.


The first day of testing ended rather smoothly for me, I was able to get to at least level 10 and out of Rainbow Fields. The second region/zone looked vaguely familiar at first, until I ventured in deeper. The second area is also the second region for the Ferre race that I previously played during the previous CBT. So moving on forward, I knew that I will soon come across lots of cat peoples and quests that I have done before.


Some of the more noticeable changes that I have noticed in 4th CBT is the graphical settings. It seems like they have beefed up the graphics up slightly or maybe I haven't played the game in awhile. I ran across a graphical glitch that made my screen go all black though it was only on my side for the most part. I decided to re-dl the whole 28GB game and hope it fixes itself the next day!


Now lets get down to some of the things I hated during the first day, like the the lack of party play elements. For one thing, you can't see your party members in the mini map nor map so you have no clue where the heck they are. Even when you're in the same town it's really hard to find your own team members when there is a huge zerg army of players around. Not exactly necessary but it would be nice to have windowed fullscreen for users that like to stream and alt tab a lot out of the game. The backpack glider is nice and all but it obstructs my characters view way too much, especially because she is so tiny. Hopefully, you will be given a hide option in the future, same goes for your character helmet. Other than five random crashes I came across I can't really think of anything else atm, maybe it's because I am zombie mode.


Sadly I am unable to bring you any new information on housing and ships yet due to the fact that I am still a lowbie character. Rest assured, I will get to it when I can! It's a good thing that the servers are only up during certain hours, else I won't be able to go back to the IRL instance. Welp this is just the beginning so make sure you tune in on my channels, livestream, and website for more previews. Until then thanks for reading and see you on the 2nd Report, power nap here we gooooo!

ArcheAge CBT4 Preview 2nd Report

The 2nd report for the ArcheAge Closed Beta Test is here with good and bad news! Good news is that players who are currently in the test with a character over level 15 and playtime of five days will be able to send one invite to their friends sometime next week. So I may have a few extra coupon keys to give away, keep in mind you will still need an account. Now to bring the bad news, ArcheAge experienced massive critical server errors yesterday. The servers kept crashing and players were only able to play for a total of 3-4 hours, which left a lot of angry users rampaging about in the ArcheAge forums. I sincerely hope that they fix this problem because their server load is about to get bigger with the lottery invites sent every Friday. I hope you enjoy todays preview, as I have six new 1080p videos recorded on it's "Ultra Settings" available below!


As I have previously stated the servers were only up for a couple of hours, so I wasn't able to get much done. I did however, fixed the massive pixelated black screen bug that I was experiencing in ArcheAge Online. Recording videos should be much more easier and my livestream viewers won't suffer from crazy pixel attacks.


Questing is still easy to figure out, though I did get stuck at one point. It was the part where I had to type /wjf in Korean to one of NPC's for the mainstory quest of the Hari Haran race. Nothing exciting happened during the 2nd day of testing, just massive questing after another. It's a good thing that you don't run out of quests. ArcheAge is one of those games you would rather do quests than grind monsters endlessly due to its combat system.


From what I heard if you kill a lot players your character is sent to jail for thirty minutes. I was thinking of trying out this theory but servers is only available during certain hours so I would rather not test this just yet. There is also another new boat that's not available in CBT4, this is the ultimate mother galleon ship of all time that you or your guildies can ever build. It can hold hundreds of players in it, sounds pretty unreal but I guess we will have to wait and see how they implement it.


Even with the massive server errors that occurred yesterday, I was a bit pleased with my progress due to the fact that I made it out of the 2nd region right before the server went down. As you can see the next area looks a lot livelier compared to the previous areas I have been to in the 4th CBT. I can't wait until the servers go back up later tonight, so I can go back and rumble in the jungle! The jungle was a nice change of scenery, if I can remember correctly there was a huge Treant world boss right outside the city walls.


I won't be updating over the weekend, but do keep an eye out on my livestream as I will be streaming some ArcheAge content during the weekend. If I happen to get some coupon code invites, then I will keep you guys posted on how to obtain it. Make sure you guys subscribe to the Steparu network, especially if you want to stay informed about upcoming stuff. Hope you enjoyed reading another short preview report and see you next week on Steparu.com!

ArcheAge CBT4 Preview 3rd Report

Today's report is pretty big it features at least over ten brand new gameplay videos showcasing a lot of questing and exploration. Like usual, the videos are also recorded on 1080p and ultra settings for your viewing enjoyment. Hope you have some kind of snack ready, for this will be one of those lengthy reports that you have seen on Steparu.com. It's Tuesday tomorrow, so the ArcheAge servers won't be available. Sad? Don't be, I managed to record a lot of content and have too much information to share with everyone that I will be able to make another report by tomorrow if not the day after tomorrow!


ArcheAge's world is widely open PvP every now and then people will try to attempt to PK you randomly. It's a good idea to donate to the priest near the Goddess Nui Statues so that you can receive a self raise buff from them. You'll never know when more than one monster will pop near you or some random person decides to gank you in the middle of battle.


Skipping quests has its drawbacks in the near future. Mainly due to the fact that some of the quests aren't given to you unless you are of the right level. Which means you'll fall behind a level or two if you skip a bunch of quests after another. Seems like I would have to make the long trip back at some point, to finish up the quests that weren't available at the time. Some quests are also hidden throughout each of the regions, so it's a good idea to explore every bit of the map when you have time.


Quests start to get a bit challenging but they are still soloable, just as long as you understand the objectives. If you want to complete the quests fast and efficiently, then you better drag a duo partner around with you in your adventures. Quests aren't the only way to obtain experience points in ArcheAge Online, you can also obtain exp by harvesting. I actually managed to gain a random level up by chopping up 200 grape fruit trees that will be shown in the next report. It's a shame that labor points regen extremely slow, the only way to earn back all of your labor points is through the daily reset.


You probably think that the combat in this game is a little dull, well honestly I will have to agree with you to a certain extent. I did pick and mained paladin/tank tree and the skills look a bit dull with it's normal slash attacks and massive amounts of buffs. It really isn't that bad though, for reason I can't picture ArchAge becoming an action fast paced MMORPG. As far as P&C games go, I ArcheAge seems to have nailed it down properly. PvP'ing other players was fun too, mainly due to the fact that it's full of surprises. You do pick three job classes at the beginning of the game so looks can be really deceiving.


How can looks be deceiving? Well, there is no armor restriction in ArcheAge Online so your character can mix and match up any sets of items to wear. Ranging from light armor to heavy plate, it's all up to you on how you want your character to look. You can make your own hybrids, tanky mage, and etc. I'm not sure how much you're going to gimp your character, but it works! You're also not aware of what kind of build the other character has, they can cast one spell or skill to bluff you and just shock you with a different combo follow up after another.


I'm pretty pleased with the three classes I have for my character, it's kind of fun chaining the combos and such. My character also has a high chance to stun the enemy, so it's pretty fun knocking the enemy down over and over. I only decided to learn one skill from the Dark Magic tree, the MP leech is really awesome since it works for both melee and magic skills. One of my goals by the time the beta ends is to tank the world bosses located throughout the whole world of ArcheAge so hopefully you will be able to stick around long enough see me in super action mode.


I've got another piece of bad news for you today, it seems like they have changed the prices of making battle ships. The recipe for creating the big battleships with cannons has soared up, it went from 10 gold to 100 gold. Hopefully, the materials stayed the same or I won't be able to get a bigger boat anytime soon. Such a big a let down, but that's not going to stop me! The gold isn't much of a problem I suppose, as to collecting the materials needed to craft the great battleship. I will worry about it later, time to keep grinding and farming!


Around level 20 some of the villages had NPC's where you can job change. How does this work? Well, if you remembered at the beginning of the game you had to pick a combination of three classes. So lets say you picked Fighter, Assassin, and Paladin. After talking to the NPC, you can then replace one of the classes that you dislike the most. Lets say you want to be able to heal yourself more, then you would replace your Assassin class with Love class. You still retain the job levels and skills you had for Fighter and Paladin, but your Love would be level 1. Meaning if you want to unlock higher Love skills then you must level it up! If the Love skills doesn't suit your taste then you can go always switch back to your Assassin class. The Assassin class would be of the same level as you last left it. This makes it much easier for players to power level their alternate jobs or classes.


The servers were a bit more stable during the weekend, which was a bit of relief. Minor problems occurred here and there in the game, a lot of players in the community kept crashing. To be honest the 3rd CBT seemed to be more stabled than the 4th CBT. That's not that the only thing that has changed, I will take back the things I said on the CBT4 first report on the graphics. It may not be noticeable to you guys, but the 3rd CBT had a much more higher quality graphics settings. I'm not the only one disappointed at the changes, the previous CBT3 testers are raging hard at the CBT4 changes. Hopefully this is just a temporary thing, after all ArcheAge is well renowned for it's crazy high graphics setting and some sandbox content.


By the time the weekend was over my party and I completed most of the quests available in our continent. We had to travel across to the other side of the continent. From there on out is where the real adventure begins, mainly because that area is owned by the opposing faction and race. Heck with the thirty minutes of time playing passively in the continent, our party was forced kill a bunch of players. It's okay though, it's kind of fun baiting others players into thinking we aren't partied and such!


I've actually finished making my speed boat but I won't be previewing it until the next report, but for those of you who can't wait. You'll have to check out my livestream channel on how to build a speed boat and how much time it took. Time to say goodbye for now, thanks for reading the 3rd report of the ArcheAge Online CBT, and see you next time!

ArcheAge CBT4 Preview 4th Report

ArcheAge 4th CBT has been going on for awhile now and I haven't missed a single day of it. Some of the things that I will be showcasing in this report are the housing system, Christmas update, custom sails, sailing, questing, achium trees, and many more. If you've got a lot of free time on your hands, then read on as Yukey and I delve in deeper into the world of ArcheAge Online. Just like all my other previews, expect a lot of HD videos in 1080p max settings!


The oceans of ArcheAge still looks amazing as ever even with the graphics capped down for the 4th CBT. I am still missing the crazy good looking graphics from the 3rd CBT, from what I heard that the 2nd CBT had the best graphics out of all the CBT's.


Yukey and I have been spending most of our time hanging around the Bipa Town area, this is one of the more player populated areas in our continent as the Hari Harans. Everything you need is located inside this town, which is the main reason why we built our galleon ship at the port side of the town. This town used to lag my game out often, but it seems like they have fixed that issue so I decided to record a full run through of this town above.


We are kind of bummed out because we ran out of quests around level 33, from here on out we were forced to take things slow. Even with no more quests available there are numerous players who are grinding their heart out to the current level cap of 50. I would also be doing the same if I didn't have a limited amount of labor points, I would be happily grinding this game out by mining, chopping wood, crafting, farming, and all that good stuff. It's also in CBT so I really don't want to go all out and burn all of my stamina in real life before the official OBT release.


XLGAMES just released a big patch for ArcheAge Online containing the Christmas event and a bunch of new content. They introduce a lot of cool things like customizable sails for your galleon ship, an old school tank, new items, achium trees, new monsters, new low level quests, and etc. One of my favorite things introduced in the latest patch is the ability to customize and upload a logo on your ships sails. Instead of uploading my own website logo, I decided to upload something more awesome. Even with a bunch of preset options available for my ships sails, I decided to go with the default black to give my ship a little more piratey edge!


The recent patch also introduced new items obtainable from battlegrounds, the items looked really awesome so Yukey and I decided to jump in on the fun. After playing four matches, I have come to a conclusion that I won't be going back here for awhile. The mages and high level players were owning everyone left and right, which means they get their battlegrounds item weapon faster, then own you some more with it. Winning games nets you some points and losing a match gives you no points at all unless you successfully kill steal someone.


So with battlegrounds out of the picture, Yukey and I decided to try our luck with achium trees. Achium is one of the main ingredients for crafting in ArcheAge Online. Growing achium trees can be a bit troublesome since you need to water it twice with a special type of liquid that can only be obtained from the Northern Continent. With a very low chance you can also obtain pieces of achium from random monsters. Higher level monsters drop the higher tier types of achium which comes in a form of a cube, the cube can then be used for higher level crafting. You can also break down the achium cube, doing so will give you a lower tier achium used for a lower level crafting.


Creating a house in ArcheAge Online is very easy all you have to do is buy the recipe, chop wood, and mine rocks. If you have enough labor points, you can create a house in two days by manual labor. If you have good trading skills, then you can just purchase all of your materials from other players and build your house on the same day. Yukey and I decided it was about time we built a house and so we did, check out the lengthy video above. Everything was all good, except the area we built our home was bugged and we could not plant any trees around the area. So we contacted the GM, they said that they are already working on that area and will fix it in the upcoming patches. As far as I know you can only build your house in certain areas marked on the map, though there are some areas where you can secretly build houses like islands and such. It's not that bad because there are a lot of housing areas scattered through out the world. You'll just have to scout out the good spots early, because they will fill up very fast! Especially the hidden islands through out the world of ArcheAge Online.


I am happy to say that the GM's during the past few days have been very helpful compared to last week. Especially when our bundle of logs and barrels of water disappeared, they gladly replaced them after a quick and thorough investigation. With a little over a month left of ArcheAge Online testing, we will probably start taking things very slow. As for now our main goal is to farm enough materials and earn enough gold to make the medium size house. There are a lot of things to do in ArcheAge which require a lot of time and patience. A few ingame bugs like to pop up here and there but nothing that breaks the game complete. Hope you enjoyed reading this lengthy preview, and see ya in the next one!

ArcheAge CBT4 Preview 5th Report

I normally don't write during the weekend but it's time for your weekly dose of ArcheAge Online. A lot of players have been busy with the constant updates that XLGAMES releases every week. ArcheAge has been in closed beta test for a while now and I am still enjoying every day of it! In this weeks report, I have provided six new HD gameplay videos for you featuring open world PvP, fortress wall construction, questing, and grinding.


PvP is one of the biggest things in ArcheAge Online the developers made sure that players will often engage themselves in large scale battles. Thus the Northern Continent is one of the best places for massive open field PvP between the two nations. I've always enjoyed huge scale battles like the one shown above. Killing enemy players is easy, staying alive is a whole different story. If you end up straying away or pushing too far ahead of your alliance like me, then you'll get owned before you can run away like shown in the video above. I didn't even know I was pushed in that far because there were too many things going on at once!


As of the moment the Northern Continent is the only place where players can grind to the current level cap, it's also one of the dangerous places to grind. Every now and then, you'll see guilds PK'ing enemy guilds and ganging them for fun. Eventually they will end up calling their own guildies for back up, alliance, and etc. Before you know it, you'll get caught up in a crazy huge war going on.


There are special quests in the game that require you to kill or hunt a monster a specific number of times. Upon completion of these quests, you'll be rewarded with achium and a bunch of reputation points. It's a lot easier to complete these quests when you're a magician because of their crazy powerful spells.


By the time I logged in yesterday the Renaissance guild had most of their outer fortress walls finished. Having a lot of extra spare stones from mining, I decided to help them out so that they can finish up building their perfect defense. Creating bundles of stones eats up a ton of labor points and the amount of experience earned from it isn't 't that great.


Everything looked good so far, I just wished I was here from the start. It would have been nice seeing the whole wall construction process from the inside and out. At least the video above gives you a general idea on how the proccess may look like in the future. I'm really digging the direction of where ArcheAge is heading, I can't wait to see what else is in store for us in the upcoming patches.


I actually kind of like how the Renaissance guild fortress walls came out, the entrance has a lot of choke points going on and it takes awhile to get inside. Perhaps they will add a door at the end of the mini maze? I will have to wait and see how this turns out tomorrow! I'll try to get some siege warfare videos for you guys in the weeks to come, so I hope you'll have enough patience to wait a little while longer. *Updated* Posted two screenshots below on how the final wall defense looked like, it looks really nice can't wait to see how it will fare out when the real battle begins!