La Tale


La Tale is a 2D side-scrolling online game developed by South Korean studio Actoz Soft. Gamers take the role of adventurers in a mythological fantasy world with three continents, Jiendia, Freios, and Eastland.
It was launched in South Korea in February 2006 where it was well received. In February 2007, Actoz entered into an agreement with Chinese game operator Shanda to open a server in mainland China. On March 18, 2008 OGPlanet signed a contract with Actoz Soft to bring La Tale to North America. Aeria Games launched La Tale in Europe on July 30, 2009, and closed the server on October 21, 2010.
Sign-ups for North America closed-beta testing began on July 10, 2008. Testers were selected from 22 July to 30 July. Closed-beta testing began on July 31, 2008 and ended on August 6, 2008. An open-beta test was held for fileplanet subscribers from August 15, 2008 to August 18, 2008. Official open-beta testing began on August 21, 2008 and ended on September 3, 2008. La Tale was officially released on September 18, 2008. La Tale was also published by GameNGame, but this version closed in May 2015. As of June 28, 2017, La Tale has been relaunched by Papaya Play.

Gameplay

Gameplay of La Tale is based on most MMORPGs. Players control a single character that combats monsters, obtains and completes quests, and participates in other activities. The game has a 2D side-scrolling setting similar to MapleStory and Ghost Online. The keyboard is used to hotkey character actions while the mouse is primarily used to speak to Non-player characters, purchase items, and manipulate the items.
There are two types of currency in the North American version of La Tale: Ely and LTC. Ely is the normal in-game currency, used to buy equipment and other usable items. Ely is gained through killing monsters, selling items, and completing quests. LTC are the currency used to purchase fashion-shop items. LTC must be purchased through PapayaPlay, similar to buying NX Cash for Nexon products. LTC were not introduced during closed-beta testing but were tested in open-beta. Note that the clothes you buy from the fashion shop are permanent and will never expire. Unlike, Nexon games, however, one may purchase LTC items with Ely from other players. Although it can be purchased, buying un-tradeable items can result in being banned or scammed. There is no safe way unless the player buys something that can be traded. To tell the difference between trade-able and un-tradeable items, simply hover over the item and see if "Trade" is green. If it is grayed out, then you cannot trade it.

Gameplay and characters

One player account has three slots for characters. By purchasing an item called the Character Slot Card from either other players or the fashion shop, players can add up to eight more slots to their account. Players have the choice of choosing their character's gender, class, and appearance. Names are also given to characters at this point.
Hit points are displayed on the top left corner of the screen in orange, upon having a low amount of HP the bar will begin to flash red. HP can be recovered by using potions, consumables, and by sitting. Few items and equipment have HP regeneration ability, enabling gradual HP recovery per set of time. For example, the Syringe in fashion shop has a 70% HP and SP recovery over the time span of 10 seconds with a 30-second cool down, and the Starkeeper Recovery Kit allows for 10% HP recovery every 10 seconds for 10 minutes. Reaching zero hit points gives the player an option of returning to the nearest town or returning to the nearest saved waypoint. They will then be resurrected with half HP and SP unless a Potion of Resurrection is used. This potion allows the character to be resurrected at the place your hit points depleted to zero, though HP and SP will be set to half their normal values.
Spirit points are also displayed on the top left corner in blue. This indicates the amount of SP, or points for skill usage, the player has left. SP can be recovered through potions, consumables, or by sitting. Few items and equipment have SP regeneration ability, enabling gradual SP recovery per set of time. SP will be consumed on most skill usages. Wizards and Bards have the ability to heal. They are able to utilize SP to recover their own HP or other players' HP. However, there is a new class that doesn't need SP to use their skills: Card Master. This class has three different bars that is essentially exactly the same as SP but are used for different skills. The three bars are: Darkness, Elemental, and Mana Cards.
Experience points states how much experience points the player has to acquire in order to reach the next level. Experience points are gained through killing monsters and completing quests, though players can also gain XP by saving at a Stone of Iris or Returning Stone. At Level 10 and higher, the XP Penalty system applies when you die, reducing 3% XP on each death, but preventable if you have an Iron Will or a Potion of Resurrection. Experience points are also influenced by combos, which are series of attacks that do not fail or miss the target. A combo may reach an amount of 9,999. Status points, or "stats", are preset and are automatically added to the character upon leveling up. A Stat Powder Coupon can be used to get a stat decrease and increase. Upon use, you can decrease a stat by 5% from being added when leveling and increase a stat by 10%. Keep in mind that only a decrease and increase powder stacks. If you are already high level and can no longer use it while leveling, there are Stat Reset books that can be used along with the Stat Powder potions; it might take a few tries to get a desirable outcome.

Classes

There are 9 starting classes in La Tale.
Each class specializes in one of the four stats in the game:
Strength, which determines flinch rate and physical damage capability;
Stamina, which determines HP and defense capability;
Magic, which determines magical damage and magic defense;
and Luck, which determines critical rate, ely gain, and item drops.
Warriors are a class focusing on Power. They wield either two-handed swords, spears, or knuckles. Although they lack defensive capabilities, Warriors excel at dealing high amounts of physical damage in the frontlines. This class quite beginner-friendly, since they are good for soloing. However, due to their low defense, they can die rather quickly. Warriors are used for the sole purpose of dealing physical damage from short range. They are the one of the strongest classes, making them excellent for players who prefer powerful attacks. They are usually paired in the frontlines with Knights. Warriors are the only class that can use greatswords and spears.
Knights are a class focusing on Stamina. They wield either a sword or blunt weapon in one hand and a shield in the other, or they can wield knuckles. Like the Warrior class, they cannot use daggers. Their exceptionally high physical and magical defenses and stamina allow Knights to withstand large amounts of damage. Knights possess the highest stamina of any class and have average offense. They are commonly used as tanks, players that absorb most, if not all, of the damage to keep other members of the party away from harm. Templar Knights even have healing abilities.
Wizards are a class focusing on Magic. They wield staves, daggers, and knuckles. They mainly deal area-of-effect damage by using their magic, which is divided into four elements: fire, water, wind, and earth. Wizards are great for damage and support at a distance. Wizards can either be entirely offensive, entirely defensive, or a mixture of both. Fire and earth tend to be more offensive, while water and wind tend to be more defensive, note that water and winds elements have faster recharge than fire and earth. Players can also choose to become healers by using healing water skills as a Wizard/Sorcerer or song/guitar healing and buffing skills as a Bard. Later in game when wizards job advance, they can no longer use daggers or get any dagger skills. Most players use two different elements instead of sticking to one since there are beneficial skills in each element. Also, Earth is the only one to not be able to use skills freely in the air unlike the other three elements.
Explorers are a class focusing on Luck. They wield daggers, bows, crossbows, and knuckles. Most Explorers deal damage from a distance. They lack the damage output of the other classes, but they are compensated with very high attack speed and high critical attack rate. Explorers mainly deal supportive physical damage from long range. Their long range is also accompanied by increased attack speed, making them perfect for players who prefer distanced combat. Treasure Hunters are the best class to find rare items due to their high item drop rate and Gunslingers are also long ranged and have skills with short cool downs.
Engineers are a balanced class. The stats they gain from leveling are distributed pretty much equally. They wield toolboxes. Their special abilities involve using contraptions from their toolbox, which gives them a varied set of skills to choose from. They also can plant a totem or turret which deals constant damage or makes certain effects to any enemies around it for about ten seconds. Different turrets have different effects such as attacking, slowing, pushing, etc. When Engineers promote into the Meister, their weapon changes from a toolbox to an MG.
Soul Breakers wield souls in which many represent the monsters in La Tale. They are also a magic class, but it utilizes different types of elements. There is a Red, Blue, and Black Soul. Through every job advancement, a new soul is gained, meaning first job only has access to the Red Soul. Some souls take a while to charge their skill, some are fast. It depends on a player's play style when choosing a soul. Most players usually just choose the strongest one regardless of what they like.
Card Masters is also a class focusing on Magic. They wield cards that take up both the weapon and the shield slot. This class isn't a short range nor long ranged class because it has both type of skills. Card Master is special because this class doesn't use SP for attacks but rather three other bars that were stated above. The two job promotions this class can choose from is when you decide if you want to be a long ranged or close ranged class. Battle Master is close range, while High Master is long range.
Wanderers is a class focusing on Strength. They wield a Black Jade and Lantern. However, the lantern is able to turn into a Katana sword with a special transformation skill. Meaning, the same weapon is used to attack with both a sword and a lantern. For sword, it is mostly based on skill combos that you can rearrange in any order. You input the order into the slots on the right side of the sword skill tab and place the shortcuts onto your hot keys. Then, proceed to hold down either of the two shortcuts to do the combos you have selected.
Demigods is a class focusing on Magic. They wield a magical rod that takes the weapon of shield slot. It can also be easily upgraded and enhanced with no chances if it blowing up. Demigods have two modes of Divine and Rage. Divine gives slower skills that focus on giving high crits and have good crowd control. Rage gives skills with low cooldowns and great damage that can be spammed in later levels. The gauge between modes replace their SP bar.
Agnis is a class focusing on Strength. They wield a Hammer that takes up both weapon and shield slots. They use Anger Points in replacement of SP. Agnis have slow, medium-range attacks and high defense. They do substantial damage but have slow attacks and low mobility as a sacrifice. Their high HP and defense make them have a high survivability.
Dark Chasers is a class also focusing on Strength. They wield a chain sword that takes up the weapon and shield slots. They have fast attacks with high damage though the skills need good ping to be as fast as they can. Their SP is replaced with a gauge that fills when attacking. The class does not have the best survivability due to them having great mobility. They have powerful surface and aerial skills though a lot of skills have high cooldowns.

Skills

Skills are split into five categories: General, Support, Action, Emotions, and Temporary.
In each category, there are sub sections.
The General tab consists of: Attacking Skills, Miscellaneous Skills, and Special Skills. Attacking skills are pretty straight forward. These are skills used to hit monsters, but some skills are passives that increase the attack power of your character as soon as you put skill points into it, meaning you don't have to press the skill to activate it. Miscellaneous skills are mostly buffs, support, and passive skills that increase the stat of your character. Special skills have the same idea except these don't require skill points. You can only get one skill from each row and to get a skill from all four rows requires your character to be at least level 190. The General tab is the only one that requires skill points. You get 1 skill point per level up unless you are a Sub Class, which gains 3 per level.
The Support tab consists of: Auxiliary Skills, Item Skills, Ely Skills, and Fight Arena Skills. Auxiliary skills are skills that let you get through the game and complete quests. In this tab, there are such skills as Mining, Digging, and Ignite. Item skills are normally pet buffs that you can activate while having a pet equipped. Most players don't use this section, as opening the pet menu allows them to put each pet buff on their hotkeys. Ely skills are skills you can get purely by using Ely. With the release of the Engineer class line, new skills called "Ely Skills" were introduced into the game. One skill for increasing of the Four Stats: Power, Stamina, Magic, and Luck. These skills are purchased and there is no level requirement. These are somewhat expensive for new players, so they are not a priority. Some skills cannot be unlocked without going to various dungeons to succeed a book that is dropped by the boss. Books that can't be accessed through bosses come from boxes in Fashion Shop that give a random item upon use. The last way to get the remaining skills are through PvP. You have to reach a certain rank in order to trade in PvP points for a book. Fight Arena skills are those that are earned through getting PvP points and trading them in for skills that help counter or fight another player.
The Action tab consists of: Basic Actions. They are simply actions the character performs in general. These skills include jump, sit, fish, etc. Action skills do not require any skill points, as they are already at the character's disposal. For classes such as Strider, they have two skills called Special Hard Attack and Special Plain Attack. They can only be used when your character has enough points in the Special Gauge and those points are gained through attacking a monster or player. Side note, Striders and Blade Masters' Special Gauge points disappear if they are not used within a few seconds. If your class does not have these skills, then disregard everything that was just said.
The Emoticon tab consists of: Emoticon A and B. Essentially, they are the same thing but section A has most of the emoticons that can be acquired through killing monsters or bought from Fashion Shop using Astros. Ones that are a monster drop aren't 100% success rate. The guidebooks are of varying difficulty, and some may fail.
The Temporary tab consists of: Temporary Skills. These are usually skills that are used for events going on at the time. They assist you in completing the missions that come. As the title states, most of the skills are temporary and will not stay with your character after the event is gone.
A player may use a skill by clicking the skill symbol on the skill menu. A simpler way is set a button on the keyboard to that particular skill. Skills are also color-coded. Blue stands for Weapon skills, purple for Magic skills, gray for Miscellaneous skills, red for Action skills, and green for Emoticons. Symbols without a colored background are consumable items.
Most skills have cool down times, which are noted by the skill symbol being shaded. Once all the shading has disappeared, the skill is able to be used again. A new addition to the game has been implemented in which the skills show the seconds or minutes left until the skill can be used again. Also, some Weapon and Magic skills can be chained into combos. They are noted by the flashing word "Combo" on the right side of your screen. Chaining these skills together allows the player to use them quicker, ensuring the combo will continue. However, only skills of the same tree and of the same vertical branch can be used in combos. Sometimes, it just requires the player to learn how to play their class and discover their own play style. A few classes are flexible in skills you can chain such as Sefirot and Hero.