Tera Online Guilds

Guild's in Tera Online have existed since the start of the game. People join guilds for different reasons whether it is to have fun playing with other people. To enjoy end game content or to enjoy the various PvP aspects of the game. What ever the reason each guild will be built differently and will have different things that motivate the players that join to continue to play. Some newer players may not see a purpose in joining a guild because they might prefer soloing over being a social type of player. And while soloing might work fine in most games Tera's guild interactions do make the game much more fun.

Originally when I first joined Tera Online during the open beta test which was a week before the game was released I had no intention of making a guild at first cause I really was not the leader type of person. It was more my friend Prozac who really wanted to make a guild and she wanted to make our old guild from conquer online which was called Dragonfury. I went along with the idea since it was the three of us and she was really excited to play the game.

Then once it released she did not have the time to invest in building a guild so she gave me guild leader and was like you recruit people I'm antisocial and you know I won't talk to people. Most of our old members of Dragonfury only joined out of the fear that "Daisyanne" her old character name would kill them over and over if they did not join. So the method of recruiting could not stay the same because in Tera you never really lose anything when someone kills you and you can hide in towns conquer online was not like that it was a free for all except in the market place.

At first I had no idea how to recruit people so I pretty much kept it simple and just did all my recruiting person to person. I always found it annoying to have to spam global chats trying to recruit people. Not to mention global is always filled with trolls and people that have 5th grade educations who usually spam like "LF GUILD!!!!" and usually don't want anything other then just being in a guild without much of a reason why they want to be in it. Some people might think this method of recruiting is a slow and one doomed to fail but believe it or not I've not just built a guild. I have put together a family of players which come from all different places and have strong bonds because of the valuable personalities I gathered along the way.

Even with the guild's success a guild is still a revolving door and people will leave because ideals change the demands of a player will also change. And then there's also the guilty by association players who associate with people that make them change in some negative way such as having a problem with helping new players, feeling that they are better then the rest of the guild, or wanting to be in a try hard guild. These try hard guilds feel that they need to have perfect players and try so hard to be the best but in the end these are the guilds that are filled with the most drama. Players who join and do not realize the type of guild it is then die in PvP get kicked or insulted without never knowing the reason. Many of these types of guilds are sexist to the female players thinking they are some lesser of a player just because they are female.

Ever since wow came in most players have developed some sexist feelings towards female players and while global would say something like girls do not play on the internet Tera Online has many more female players then most mmorpg's in past years at least many that will admit to playing as a female which no girl should be afraid to admit.

Dragonfury will always be that unique guild that enjoys the company of female players treats them just as good as any male player and continues to be the atmosphere of open minded friendly players like no other guild on Tera will be like. It makes me sad to see so many other guilds humiliating female players or so against helping and teaching people how to play Tera. But our guild will always offer to teach people who are willing to learn.

Don't get me wrong this article is not meant to recruit people since in the end whether people apply to the guild or not they still end up going through me to see the kind of person they are in the first place we never just auto accept people into the guild without first talking and seeing the type of person and what expectations they have. This is more of a what to watch out for type of article and reasons you might want to join a guild in the first place. And I figured what better way to explain then use the experience of my own guild.

Usually the type of guild is one of the biggest ways of defining the type of guild your looking to join some of these might be:

Social Guild's-These Focus on social conversation being the main purpose most people login to do nothing but sit and chat with other players.
RP Guild's- These guild's enjoy role playing with other players whether its on a guild wide basis or whether its individually.  RP can also extend to the more adult content type as well depending on the guild.
PvP Guild's- PvP guild's main focus will be the fighting of others in GvG's open world PvP or battlegrounds they usually do not stress any PvE and are usually pretty strict when it comes to rules.
PvE Guild's- PvE guilds are the type which either don't allow PvP get upset when someone PvP's and are more dungeon and raid based guilds ones which place little or no interest outside of player vs monster. 
Leveling Guild's- Leveling guilds are usually based mostly on helping low levels level. In Tera Online questing is hard to accomplish without being the same level so not many guilds like this have a purpose in Tera Online.

A guild can be more then one of the above depending on the guild. For example Dragonfury is a PvP, PvE guild that is non elitist and casual. What that means is we don't turn Tera Online into a second job we don't tell you that you have to show up at a certain time or during different parts of the day and don't force participation in things. We are not a strict guild its more like a group of people that enjoy running dungeons doing pvp and having fun together. Every guild will have there own rules our guild rules are more simple then most. Such as needing to at least be able to listen in Teamspeak for certain dungeons like MC or KN raid's since explaining is much better done over microphone and much better when you can call out taking buffs in MC or skip of buffs. The only other rule that we have is that people have to be nice cause we don't recruit elitist people that won't help or teach others not so much of an unreasonable request.

Most people that don't fit into our guild's type usually will not last long. Elitist types usually think we suck or want something more strict even if they really are not great players cause most elitists only think they are really good when they usually are the ones just looking to be carried by other guilds. The people who are mean, or cause drama usually end up getting kicked out. And the antisocial people players who never chat with anyone or never speak up to go on any dungeon runs usually leave thinking they are not part of the guild. But that is your own fault our guild is not a static everyone is willing to run with anyone that's interested if your a nervous person I will usually end up telling you to whisper someone if you do not feel comfortable. Like talking to an officer or letting me know as a guild leader.

If the guild leader does a poor job at running his guild then that guild will reflect poorly if your a guild leader that does not do anything but insult his members then chances are your guild most likely has a terrible reputation or no reputation at all if no one really knows your guild. A good guild recruits members itself without having to spam global chats.  Some of the guilds in my own server have some pretty poor quality guild leaders one example is that of Royalty who's guild leader has even on quite a few occasions called his own guild members crap. But part of the issue that many of these guilds have is they will recruit anything and everything they don't care the quality of the players so they have many trolls, bad players, and people that are just mean.

Other guilds can be so strict that if you die during a GvG its an instant kick out of the guild or require you to put gold into the guild bank for each kill you give out like Asylum was or Man Up some others will put people they feel suck in the recruits guild and only allow the best of the best in the main guild like for example Shatter or Overpower. Another great example of a terrible guild is that of Forte that the members will actually insult female players or attempt to sexually harass them maybe can't speak for everyone but I think most people wouldn't want to join a guild like that.

Some of the reasons you would want to join a guild might depend on what your interested in and the type of guild you pick will depend on that as well. But guilds in Tera only have one main purpose outside of the friendship and company of other players and that is the vanarch system. It's not really worth mentioning much because it will be replaced with the alliance patch sometime in the next few months. But if your interested about the vanarch system you can find it here. I will make a newer post to explain about some of the new alliance patch changes which we can expect.

Guilds can still be a great way to get the dungeons and raids completed since the new KN10 and 20 man raids require some smart players to avoid all of the abilities and be able to iframe out of them. Not to mention when your in a guild you will not have to pug with the retarded players who could not get in a guild because they usually get carried all the time and lack all the skills a real player has. And then of course there's the alliance patch which will really end up stressing the point of being in a good guild and having ally's and putting daily work towards doing dailies everyday which includes PvP dailies too. The GvG system currently has no rewards for winning so until the alliance patch is added PvP is mostly just about epeen and has no major point currently.

But hopefully some of the information above will help you in trying to decide on which guild and also be some good information about reasons you might want to join a guild. I will eventually add some information about the alliance patch and some of the nice updates we will be getting.  But until then good luck with Tera and also enjoy this weekends double drop's.

Full break down of S1Engine.ini

So I've done a few graphical guides to improve how Tera Online's performance works and also explained why the client is so terable. I figured it would be a good idea to provide a full break down for people that are looking for more ways to modify performance or for the players that want to try and mess with max quality and max out the game even more on current computers.

If you've used other settings from the other guides your S1Engine.ini file will be read only you need to take that off to modify it further and also keep in mind that each person's card and the effect that some of the settings will have on your computer might differ person to person. But this will at least educate you to what each of the confusing settings do.

MaxParticleResize=0

While set to 0 this allows an unlimited number of particles to be displayed for medium performance this number would range between 1000 and 10000 depending on your video cards abilities. Setting the value to below 100 effects will disappear all together.

If you notice the size of the effect is shrunk while setting it to 3 setting this to 1 will crash the game.





MaxParticleResizeWarn=0

Adds a log if particle's go higher then this number.

bCheckParticleRenderSize=True

When set to true it will perform particle checks for size.

bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport=False

This setting is related to enabling / disabling  PhysX Hardware on video cards not sure what this will do for older cards which have no PhysX support but if it is set to True with a newer card this will cause issues.

bInitializeShadersOnDemand=False

Change if you experience crashes using a nvidia video card leave it to false for performance otherwise.

DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks=True

This is an ATI troubleshooting option and should be set to false only if you are having issues.

UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=False

When set to true this can reduce stuttering on geforce 6 and 7.

PumpWindowMessagesWhenRenderThreadStalled=False

This is related to cut scenes and how they are rendered not sure whether this will do anything
and I have no cut scene problems so I have no reason to change this. But if you're having issues
this might be an answer.

bSmoothFrameRate=True
MinSmoothedFrameRate=22
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=62

The max frame rate for tera online is capped and the value gets determined by the MaxSmoothedFrameRate which is by default is set to 62FPS. Developers have done this to prevent FPS spikes. If you set this to false you would remove the FPS cap. If your FPS jerks often you would be best setting it back to True. By uncapping your FPS you will not increase overall performance. While set to True the settings MaxSmoothedFrameRate and MinSmoothedFrameRate will be enforced this allows you to smooth how the FPS will look usually it is best to set the cap to match
your computers refresh rate even with Vsync disabled frame rates above your refresh rate for the monitor will be partial frames. You can experiment with this setting to see if using a higher frame rate cap is better over smoothness and performance but keep in mind a low performing video card will most likely prefer smoothness and performance because that card will not hit much higher FPS in that case. Also keep in mind the engine itself has a cap of 90FPS regardless of settings and cannot be uncapped.

bClearAnimSetLinkupCachesOnLoadMap=True

This while set to true this will clear all animation set linkup caches while a map is loaded this needs to be set to true otherwise skeletal meshes will not load properly.

[System Settings]
StaticDecals=True

Static decals are posters markings in game that are decorations by the map designer these are not created by players. Setting this to false will make these not noticeable and can improve performance but it may not be that noticeable of a change.

DynamicDecals=True

These decals are the marks left by players using weapons on surrounding when set to false weapons will show impact but will not leave marks on scenery. Turning this to false can improve performance mostly in combat.

DynamicLights=True

This effects how realistic lighting is shown if you want a noticeable increase in performance especially during combat you can set this to false.  This will increase FPS 2x but the game looks darker.

My FPS in ZF is normally 15-25 but turning off dynamic lighting brings FPS to 50 to 62 FPS but makes it darker as you can see. This is with the 9000 series graphics card Nvidia 9800GT.


DynamicShadows=True

Controls interactive objects in the game and casts shadows on them disabling this can improve performance at the cost of realism. 

LightEnvironmentShadows=True

This setting controls whether sunlight creates shadows when set to false this will disable shadows for many objects.

CompositeDynamicLights=False

When set to true this enables a less accurate form of dynamic lighting that might improve performance but at the cost of image quality.

DirectionalLightmaps=True

This setting allows improved image quality and makes it so surfaces have additional depth and detailing setting this to False can increase performance but reduces quality made by surfaces making them appear flatter.

MotionBlur=True

This effect uses motion blur which adds blurring when turning or moving quickly you can disable this by setting it to false and you will gain performance while moving.

DepthOfField=True

This is an effect that simulates how objects are focused and are sharper then objects outside of the direct field of focus. Setting this to false can be used to improve performance.

ParticleLODBias=0

This will set the particle detail -1 is for the max but this can be lowered from 0 to 10 as well.

SkeletalMeshLODBias=0

This determines the character quality 0 is the highest and 4 is the lowest.

AllowD3D10=False

This when changed to True would force the game to play in direct x 10 but this will not work in tera when tried it the game would not load.

DropParticleDistortion=False

When set to True the particles based on the world are dropped if this is allowed. The effects are reduced and game performance will be increased while it is on.

Distortion=True

Adds distortion effects when something explodes or smokes.

Bloom=True

Makes the game look more realistic adding extra lighting.

UseHighQualityBloom=True

When enabled uses a higher quality of bloom effect turning this to false can improve game performance without too much of a notiable difference in quality.

bEnableBranchingPCFShadows=False

Controls soft shadow rendering known as PCF when set to false it removes soft filtered smudged edges for shadows which may increase performance but makes the shadows look more block like.

bAllowBetterModulatedShadows=True

Increases the quality of shadows turning this off will decrease shadow quality and increase performance.

bEnableForegroundShadowsOnWorld=True

This will allow fore ground shadows setting this to false will remove all of the shadows and increase performance.

bEnableForegroundSelfShadowing=True

This enables fore ground self shadows for your character turning this to false will remove these shadows and increase performance.

FXAA=False

Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing When enabled it allows anti-aliasing, rendering high-performance visuals faster and more completely. Smooth's edges in all pixels on the screen, including those inside alpha-blended textures and those resulting from pixel shader effects.

MaxAnisotropy=4

This can be set between 2 or 4 and some newer cards can go as high as 16 setting this higher will make the game take more time to load textures but will improve the quality of the game and lower performance. This makes distant textures more clear.

MaxMultisamples=1

This setting controls multi-sampling which is used to reduce jaggedness.

MinShadowResolution=70
MaxShadowResolution=2048

Both of these determine minimum and maximum values for shadow resolution the higher the minimum is set to the more dark and rich shadows appear the lower the maximum value the more shadows will appear less noticeable and gray. Lowering and raising these resolutions will result in performance drops or rises and visual errors. The higher you raise it the more edges of shadows might seem jagged depending on other filter settings. Changing this lower will improve FPS you should change it to 512 if you plan on modifying this.

ResX=1440
ResY=900

Can be used to try out custom sizes for resolution if you cannot access the settings in game to change them or want a custom setting.

ScreenPercentage=100.000000

This setting effects how the game looks setting this below 50% will higher performance but the game will look block like or blurry.

FoliageDrawRadiusMultiplier=1.000000

Changing this to 0.000000 will remove grass from the game and increase performance.

ShadowTexelsPerPixel=1.273240

This modifies smoothness of shadows setting this to 0 removes shadows while higher values will increase quality of shadows.

UseVsync=False

While disabled you get more performance when set to true vertical synchronization keeps FPS with respect to monitors refresh rate.

OneFrameThreadLag=True

When turned off greatly improves performance when turned on it effects screen tearing and partial frames.

FogVolumes=True

When set to false this would disable volumetric fog.

LensFlares=True

This causes a lens flare effect when set to false this would remove this effect of the look of bright sunlight.
OnlyStreamInTextures=False

When set to true this will avoid loading textures that are not in use increasing quality of how fast textures load.

SpeedTreeLeaves=True
SpeedTreeFronds=True

These control how foliage is rendered when set to false this will remove some of the foliage which can improve performance and increase visibility.

If I missed any and your curious what they do feel free to post in the comments and ask and I'll add more to the article but this covers most of the effects which modify performance in game.

Kelsaik’s Nightmare Another Great Patching Error

Anyone who was using modded files as well as people who have not modded any files are having the annoying corrupted file problems again. And Enmasse says you should replace the game.version file then repair the client to fix it. But this does not fix the issue for many people instead when they zone into the actual raid they crash and are unable to log back in. This is very annoying making it unplayable for many people.

And because of this some of my own guild was having problems joining our raid for Kelsaik. So what I did was I compiled a patch which includes all of the packed files which came in this update this way if you have tried everything and are at the point that you are thinking of uninstalling the game and re-downloading it all over you could try this patch i made which will directly patch all of the files modified during this update. Keep in mind it replaces all of the korean modded files and I'm not sure if there's a new Ktera update for them yet or whether its safe to patch them back again I'll find that out and update this in the future and provide more information. But if your using a 64bit operating system you will want to use this installer: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwGeHg1m4YFLWnNrMnNzbU05dkk/edit?usp=sharing

I was going to make a installer for 32bit as well but because of the large file size I decided to just provide you with a manual patch since you can just extract it into the Tera folder which should be easy.  Which you can download from here https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B90u9z2fsJ4bcUplb3RwWEtZVGM/edit?usp=sharing

Hopefully this will make you able to login and play properly with it. I know I was able to login and do the 10man fine without any crashing. And it was a lot of fun hopefully you get to enjoy playing them too!

Update: It seems I missed patching the newer Tera.exe file which goes along with it so in worst case use the patch above then use the repair and it should upgrade that one file without you having to uninstall and reinstall. One of my friends said this saved her when she was able to uninstall the whole game so it will be beneficial to use.