Throughout the release of Lineage II, many casual players have often
complained about the time it takes to level their characters. The
tedious need to grind through levels in Lineage II is about to be
altered forever with the upcoming Gracia content upgrade. With this
release, the developers have completely changed the rules of the game,
making leveling easier all the way up to level 60 and beyond. For more
on this change, the Ten Ton Hammer staff has nabbed the latest
developer diary from the NCsoft team, along with three new screenshots.
Enjoy!
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One of our greatest assets is our fantastic group of players,
who are a very dedicated, hardcore bunch that spend a lot of time and
effort building up their characters and battling each other in big
player vs. player (PvP) fights like castle sieges. However, the process
of building and leveling characters can be a very long and frankly
tedious process in Lineage II, which may serve as a barrier for letting
a much larger group of potential customers to fully enjoy our game.
While in the past the developers in Korea have continually built the
game with this hardcore mentality firmly set, with the release of
Gracia, they’ve completely changed the rules and made Lineage
II even better and a lot more fun.
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The big change is that
leveling a Lineage II character is now extremely
easier—and we say “extremely” in a fairly
conservative manner. A normal new character that goes through the
beginning quests can gain a few levels in just a few minutes, and
players should find leveling now quite easily, all the way up to level
60 and beyond. Players that could spend several months of hardcore
grinding to get up to a competitively high level will now be able to
accomplish the same feat perhaps a month, if not less.
They’ll also be able to get to their occupation changes a lot
faster, so developing a selection of specialized characters is a much
more realistic option. Building characters is now a lot fun and easy to
do, rather than a long-term activity many players would rather do
without. This drastic change in leveling is due to several factors.
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For one thing,
experience rewards for killing creatures and
accomplishing quests has been increased across the board. This means
that you’ll gain a lot more for generally doing the same
things you always do. Running out of quests trying to gain experience,
or continual creature farming, is not nearly as big of a factor any
more. Also, new repetitive quests have been added in each race village
to help out players even further.
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We’re also
introducing a cool new Vitality system. For one
thing, you accumulate Vitality for not being logged in. You can also
get Vitality points by staying in a peace zone, or by hunting raid or
boss monsters (you’ll get a percentage of your earned raid
points in Vitality points). New characters and existing characters
before the update goes live also start out with the maximum number of
Vitality points.
So what do you do with
Vitality points? You consume Vitality when you
kill ordinary creatures and gain experience, though Vitality
won’t get spent if you’re taking on a quest
creature, if you don’t get experience for killing a creature,
or if you’re taking on a boss. When Vitality is spent, your
experience and SP bonus is greatly increased, depending on how much
Vitality you currently have. If you’re maxed out in Vitality
points (Vitality Level 4), your bonus will be 300% of the normal
experience and SP gain. If you have a few thousand Vitality points
(Vitality Level 1), the bonus is 150%. Because Vitality is so easy to
earn, players will be in the bonus consistently and the overall
experience gain can be huge.
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To help characters level
even more, the buffs available to low-level
beginning players can now be used all the way to level 62, and
we’ve even added a few more buffs for players to use. These
buffs like Haste and Vampiric Rage help out tremendously in dealing
with Lineage II’s various creatures and quests, and makes
solo play a lot easier.
With Gracia, Lineage II
is now a lot easier to play, and the level
barrier is not nearly as tough as it used to be. Players will be able
to get to the high levels relatively quickly, and can enjoy some of the
best parts of the game like PvP and castle sieges without having to
spend a huge amount of time getting there.
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To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Lineage II Game Page.
