System Rules
Contents
System Protection
Conflict: Guardian Regions
PvP, PvE, and PK are perfectly possible within all towns except for Root Towns without recourse. Within Root Towns, when someone engages in Deadly Conflict or extreme emotional distress is caused to the protectorate, the System Protected (damage immune) Guardian Constructs teleport into the space of conflict and almost instantly annihilate the offending actor. This has forced many kingdoms to post powerful warriors into their towns. And their Heroes roam their holdings to keep the worst kinds of people at bay.
Region Protection
Root Towns and Dungeons, as well as special areas like the walls of Aincrad Tower and Chaos Gate Instance regions, are under special System Protection. This stops walls, or even sometimes special NPCs, from being damaged by Adventurers. And some regions are even not damageable by the People of the Land.
Movement
Flight & Glide
Flight and Gliding are not possible due to the effects of the mysterious Cursed Wave. Those species who have wings can, at best, use them to ‘feather fall’ down large heights, and only carrying themselves, or at well-diminished ability, one unarmored person. The same effects encompass all non-monster races.
Swim & Climb
Swimming and Climbing skills are stats on a character trained by use. But in general, one can be assumed they can swim and climb standard things anyone else can climb or swim. These are generally not in-mush represented stats, so be reasonable on their use. When it comes to Swimming, diving and holding breath and the like are harder, but potions are available to aid in this. These are expensive unless you know someone who can make them.
Real Life Sense™
Crafting
In order to get a Real Life Sense experience out of an item, it must have been created by the player’s own physical actions, rather than just a UI command. It’s easy to create food in bulk through UI commands, but it will lack anything beyond basic texture. The same will go for making weapons that ‘feel’ metallic, etc. This system may have other undiscovered effects.
Pain
Unless the Pain Limiter is turned off through some kind of system command within an area, or on a person, pain is experienced as 20% of what it’d be in real life. Losing limbs and the like is still strictly painful, and Death is not pleasant of an experience. But stab-wounds and slash-wounds will not distract anywhere as much as they would in real life, and most Healing Artes eradicate a certain level of Pain.
The Five Senses
Aside from Pain, all five senses are 1:1 scale. This means that severe scents can overwhelm, and sonic attacks cause deafness in a very real sense. However, there are plenty of skills that enhance various experiences, such as Dark Sight. And some species, such as certain breeds of Were-Fangs and Cait Sith, may come with such enhancements innately.
Communication Limitations
It is impossible to communicate outside of a party/raid group while in Battle, during a Battle, or inside of a dungeon’s danger zone or raid zone; Be it PvP, PvE, or even a Kingdom War Region. This is a new mechanic for the Apocalypse era.
In order to communicate with someone, they must be on your Friends List, in your Party, in your Guild, or in your Alliance. You still need to know their exact player name as well.
Inspect
Inspect is a core feature to a lot of MMORPGs, including Elder Tale Online. It’s the ability to analyze objects, buildings, people, and learn details about them through observation. In the case of armors and the like, one would need a compatible Job Class (Profession). The same goes for things like reading ancient texts, understanding the difficulty of a lock or a trap, etc.
Inspecting People of the Land and Players will reveal details like Name, Status Effects, and their general health bar status. However, Levels, Class, etc are not revealed so easily, unless one is partied, friended, or in the same guild. An Alliance is not enough to learn info about another. One will, however, see an ‘Green, Yellow, Orange, Red’ indicator for how powerful a target is. And some people have spoken of enemies with a ‘Black’ bar causing entire raid-wipes.
Adventurers carry a Wing Icon, as well as an I. People of the land carry a Castle Icon as well as an I. Monsters and Beasts carry a Monster Icon, but Beasts also have a Hand Icon.
Party
A party can only contain 3 characters at most. Larger groups are expected to form a small guild and to have multiple parties within. The game uses this to balance its healing distribution and combat difficulty.
It is not possible to party Monsters or Beasts - though a tamed beast will appear in the party interface under its owner if they are within context-distance. People of the Land can be in a party, but the general player consensus is that they can clearly not earn or share XP through such means. They're basically 'guest characters' in such situations.
Appearance & Chargen Generation
A character’s appearance is chosen at random by the system, or through the Bodyscan system, though one gets to select the Race, Class, Secondary Class and in-game, the Occupation. Gender is can be decided by random if the player so opts it, but everything else remains unpickable when not using Bodyscan. This causes a wide variety in looks amongst players. It is claimed that no one player looks exactly alike.
OOCly, this means that you have a wide variety of description customization, as long as you stick to a race’s main themes and looks.
Taking Damage
When taking damage, the area wounded is traced by a glowing light. This area remains lit for only a second and can be used as a good indicator that one’s attack has landed. This holds true to players, people of the land, and monsters.