As part of G-Star 2023, NCsoft presented a solo dungeon, an instanced dungeon, and a guild raid of Thone and Liberty, each with specific strategies to implement to defeat their respective boss.
This weekend, NCsoft took advantage of it G Star 2023 from Busan to present some of the upcoming titles, and of the many titles was undoubtedly the most anticipated Throne and freedom. For the occasion, the developer had planned a demonstration of the game’s content, illustrating some of the different MMORPG dungeon formats: a solo dungeon, a six-player instanced dungeon, and a guild raid versus the Archboss Bitch.
Solo dungeon
Specifically, the demonstration starts with a solo dungeon in the form of a tower of 20 levels: at each level the player must face a boss with a precise strategy to thwart and the faster the boss is defeated, the better the rewards. As part of its presentation, the developer unveiled two levels of the tower (floors 11 and 18), with two Bumps have specific techniques.
The first (the boss of floor 11) does it promptly seem like a maze to the surface of the floor, before calling in a powerful area attack. In other words, the player must sneak through the maze and find the exit quickly enough if they want to avoid suffering the consequences of the area attack. To increase his chances, the character must assume his animal form to move faster and hope to reach the exit before the spell activates.
Variation on the same theme for the second level (the level 18 boss): this time, the boss occasionally launches area attacks over the entire surface of the floor and the character can only escape by flying away and assuming his bird form (the equivalent of the flying mounts in Throne and Liberty).
In either case, the player must choose their character’s two weapons wisely (for the record, weapon choice determines the character’s abilities). In this case, the player chooses the crossbow that allows him to attack from a distance, but also integrates numerous skills that improve his mobility (to avoid zone attacks) and the swordfish that deals high damage to avoid attacks between two dodges maximize.
Instantized group dungeon
We know that NCsoft has added a few instanced dungeons to the Throne and Liberty open universe following comments from early testers. The developer presents them as particularly difficult dungeons because the players who venture there can only rely on themselves, without the support of other passing players.
In this case, players must choose their weapons wiselyregarding the group’s capabilities and needs: players are needed to take on a role tank, others to harm and still others to heal or grant buffs to their allies. The presentation is limited to a boss fight and again players will have to be vigilant for zone attacks, indicated in advance – they must dodge enemy attacks in an arena that is only partially accessible depending on the skills the boss uses.
In addition to the boss himself, NCsoft emphasizes that the challenge of these dungeons relies on the cooperation of the group’s members. Each player has a specific role to play and must fulfill this role effectively so that the group can emerge victorious. The choice of weapons and therefore passive and active skills is decisive, and the developer takes the opportunity to illustrate this an evolution of the interface that reorganizes the skill trees, more clearly. Players now have more clarity about their character’s concrete abilities.
Guild raid
Finally, the developer presents a battle against Tevent, one of the two Arch bosses by Throne and Liberty – this one Bumps major players of the MMORPG, presented as the most formidable opponents of the MMORPG. An entire guild faces the colossal skeleton that can cast curses ( debuffs) against the characters.
Players can and should target multiple parts of the skeleton’s body concentrate their attack on his right arm – which is eventually dislodged, limiting the boss’s attack options and then forcing him to deliver kicks. Yet the boss did that strong magical abilities : He launches area attacks that throw characters into the air, forcing them to assume their bird form to avoid taking heavy damage upon landing. Similarly, the boss casts curses that players can purify by bathing in water: the battle arena is surrounded by moats, and if players manage to fill them, the water level rises, making it easier to purify the moats. debuffers and therefore return quickly to fight (otherwise you have to take a detour, go down and then up another flight of stairs, which takes more time).
A PvE presentation
The three gameplay phases presented are quite short (of the approximately one hour presentation, long moments are spent handing out goodies to visitors of the G Star) and the development team indicates that the difficulty of the Bumps was reduced in size for the sake of presentation – performed live, with the risk of the characters controlled by the development team being decimated by the Bumps.
However, the choice of presenting dungeon stages is not trivial. Recently, NCsoft announced that it had reconsidered the distribution of PvE and PvP content in the game universe to better respond to testers’ comments. In South Korea, the developer’s word is regularly questioned – on local social networks, some Korean players believed that the promise regarding the addition of PvE content would not be realized and justified their doubts by stating that the developer’s communication almost systematically illustrated phases of PvP games (open world confrontations, fortress sieges or guild conflicts). The fact that the presentation of Throne and Liberty at G-Star is focused on PvE content seems to clearly demonstrate that this PvE content does indeed exist in Throne and Liberty and that this PvE component is not being neglected by the developer. This should undoubtedly be seen as a show of good faith directed towards Korean players interested in PvE.
For the record, Throne and Liberty is scheduled for release in South Korea on December 7. Until then, the MMORPG is the subject of a pre-registration campaign and this week local players are invited to pre-create their character. Throne and Liberty are scheduled to launch in the West sometime next year.