Blade & Soul Guide: Combos Analysis & Application

In Blade & Soul, it's of great importance to control BOSS. But BOSS is different from normal monsters, and players need to cast 2 debuff of the same effect.

Debuff: knock back, knock down, stun, groggy, dominate, frozen, slow, aerial, etc.

And only knock down, stun and groggy of all classes can interrupt BOSS's skills.

When you land a skill with knock down effect, a green shadow of BOSS will appear. Then your teammate casts a skill to knock down the BOSS and you will successfully defeat him.

Different colors will appear based on different debuff. And here's the simplest recognition method for combos casting.

Knock down - Green

There are many usages for combos. Here are two examples.

1. E.g Hulei BOSS's Chi Chok. Champions who are grabbed cannot counter and players need to help them out with combos.

2. Teammates cast combos to knock down BOSS. And destroyer land Grab, then you can output damage together.

Examples of skill combos (the same class can cast the same skill to form combos)

Knock down: Blast (Assassin) + Leg Sweep (Kung-fu master)

Stun: Kick (Blade master) + Clash, Charge, etc (Destroyer)

Groggy: Iron Cannon (Destroyer) + Instant Strike (Kung-fu master)

Knock back: Push (Force master) + Blow (Assassin)

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Production Profession Mossy Gate（태상문）Guide

　Once players reach the top level, they tend to exchange Bo Pae pieces with other Bo Pae pieces. They have to combine a set of Bo Pae pieces together in order to get into dungeons. The job is profitable. Blue Bo Pae pieces are the major product in the market. Maybe the purple pieces will be the major product when the top level rises.

Below are some profitablethings:

First is the synthetic stone. Required materials are:

1.       Wood: gather by lumbering team. Difficulty: 1

2.       Same level essence. Gather in the dungeon. Difficulty: 1

3.       Soulstone. Difficulty: 2

4.       The bone of Red Boar. Difficulty: 3

Take level 45 as example: 24 synthetic stones are needed to combine a set of Bo Pae pieces. The cost is 3 gold and you can sell it at 5 gold.

Blue invisible Bo Pae needs:

1.       Green Bo Pae Pieces

2.       Eyeball of Kuluo. Can get by decomposing the weapon dropped by Suwa Palace Boss. Difficulty: 2

3.       Advanced coagulator. Produce in pottery. Difficulty: 1

4.       Fire Beast’s horn. Can get by decomposing the weapon dropped by the Fire Beast. Difficulty: 2

The invisible Bo Pae is with low stats. However, it’s very good to improve skill experience.

The materials needed to make Bo Pae Pieces are:

1.       Wood. Difficulty: 1

2.       Bo Pae powder. Can get by decomposing same level Bo Pae pieces. Difficulty: 1

3.       Normal coagulator. Produce in pottery

The cost is only 3-4 silver. You can sell at least 15 silver.

Blue Bo Pae pieces have high demands in late game. The required materials are:

1.       Green Bo Pae pieces. Difficulty: 1

2.       Eyeball of Kuluo. Difficulty: 2

3.       Soulstone. Difficulty: 2

4.       Bone of deer. Gather by hunting team. Difficulty: 1.

Development over 5 Years: Blade & Soul Timeline

Preface of Blade & Soul

2007: Project M (working title) came forth along with the success of Lineage, LineageⅡ and AION.

Nov 21st, 2007

Blade & Soul first appeared in the public as Project M.

NCSoft CEO Taek Jin Kim released the Battle Sequence Movie of Project M at his speech in Seoul National University.

Taek Jin Kim told the story of his experience as a student of Seoul National University to NCSoft CEO and things after the company foundation at his speech. To display the result in future technology of NCSOFT, he also released the Battle Sequence Movie of Project M.

The movie includes game content for about three minutes in which splendid scenary and vivid characters attract all audience's attention. And students think highly of the waving outfit and dense background.

In all it's a fantasy game of Chinese martial-art with oriental world outlook. Combats among characters show splendid martial-art and turtle and monsters in ancient oriental mythology will appear as giant monsters.

Kim spoke with pride at his speech that Project M revealed the future of NCSOFT.

2008: After sinking for almost a year, Project M appeared again and it was official named as Blade&Soul.

May 15th, 2008: NCsoft revealed that Blade&Soul will be released in July at Korean game industry seminar.

Jul 21st, 2008: NCsoft released Project M countdown poster.

Jul 31st, 2008: NCsoft officially released Project M at Korean game exhibition - ShowCase. This 3DMMORPG is a martial arts fantasy aiming to bring fresh amusement other than monotony to players. It's planned to reflect new MMORPG by extending things completed by characters in game. An oriental style world with by featured scenes, various kinds of stories integrated with martial-art world outlook and the never experienced enhanced action, all these will bring players wholly different experience. Blade & Soul is developed by chief development officer of LineageⅡ and their art designers are famous screen designers.

This time a large amount of game scenes are revealed and the delicate scenes and powerful attack cause great sensation.

2009:

Mar 19th, 2009: NCsoft first released the beta time of Blade & Soul - the fourth season of the year 2009, and recruitment announcement - recruit for Blade & Soul personal version.

Apr 12th, 2009: the develop group held the press conference and released 8 game system including classes, races and Qing Gong.

Aug 8th, 2009: NCsoft revealed the delay of Blade & Soul schedule and its CBT at the conference of the first two seasons in July.

In November, 2009 NCsoft attended the Korean yearly game exhibition - G-star with Blade & Soul in seoul.

2010:

Feb 9th, 2012: Taek Jin Kim, NCsoft CEO said confidently at the conference that Blade & Soul would have the first beta at the first half of the year and OBT would be in 2011.

Mar 8th, 2010: Blade & Soul official site released weapon materials and artworks of four classes.

May 7th, 2010: NCsoft announced Blade & Soul would be postponed to July and OBT time was undetermined. Two days later, NCsoft again announced the delay of the first beta and it was temporarily on the fourth season.

Nov 12th, 2012: The yearly Korean game exhibition G-star began. And NCsoft announced the news of Taro Iwashiro as music OST producer of Blade & Soul.

2011

Jan 18th. 2011: NCsoft played a big joke with us. It said the news that NCsoft would develop Blade & Soul IPhone edition last year was actually a joke and Blade & Soul Video/Console edition would still be developed by Unreal Engine 3.

In February 2011, NCsoft held the 2010 fourth season financial report conference and the climax appeared: Blade & Soul would have its first test in April and OBT was among August and October.

Feb 18th, 2011: NCsoft interview. The first day of interview, people were shocked by a great news: 60% of Blade & Soul development were already completed.

Apr 27th, 2011: Blade & Soul (KR) first beta was alive.

Aug 16th, 2012: Blade & Soul Chinese server enabled the CBT 1.

Destroyer Skill Build Guide

Skills vary after leveling and the players need to select them based on different circumstances. As the difficulty of dungeons and quests improve, the combat will be more difficult if you ignore skill build. We provide you with the guide of destroyer as follows,

1. Use Clash and Grab to quickly decrease opponent HP. End the battle with Trample before devastating attacks by enemies.

2. Cast Iron Cannon to quickly move close to ranged opponent, then employ Axe Toss in Grab state.

3. Enemy in Grab state: Headbutt deals damage to target, downing them in the process. While Axe Toss deals damage to both the target and monsters after downing if monsters exist.

4. Target of Grab will be out of control if players fail to cast another skill after Grab.

5. Grab of destroyer can only be available to humanoid opponents. Since it's ineffective to monsters enemies, it will be a little difficult to counter them.

Pay attention to the use of disables so that more choices can be made in combat. And enjoy landing consecutively skills in Blade & Soul.

BNS Producer Bae Jae Hyun: the Way of Online Game Development in Next Generation

Bae Jae Hyun, the incumbent CPO of NCSoft, is the chief producer of the monumental online game “Blade & Soul” and the chief game developing officer of NCSoft.  

   Having participated in the development of “Lineage” in 1999, Bae became the producer of “Lineage II” in 2001. He is best known for the premium quality of his productions. Bae will share his experience and techniques in developing next-gen online games, which are burgeoning in China, at the coming CGDC2012.

The development of net game field in Korean starts relatively early. In the late 1990s, Korean net game set off the first round of net game wave in Asia. And NCsoft successfully leads the field with two classic MMORPG works - Lineage and Lineage II. Later, Aion: The Tower Of Etern can even rival World of Warcraft in Korean market.

After the success of two classic works - Lineage and Lineage II, Bae Jae Hyun became the producer of Blade & Soul. This 3DMMORPG is a martial arts fantasy aiming to bring fresh amusement other than monotony to players.  

So how was Blade & Soul developed? And as the leader of Korean online game masterpiece, how does Bae develop a terrific next-gen online game?

Producer Bae Jae Hyun will share with professional game producers and developers from around the world his ideas about the development of next-gen online games, evolution of graphics and playing skills, combination of combat and story, and practical game development concepts through such fields as changes in game platforms, evolution of game types and improvement in net environment & technology.

Taking classic games for examples, Bae shares his ideas on game development and design and sum the following three points,  

1. Users positioning: position new users

As new type of next-gen online game, Blade & Soul is endowed with wholly different game features. And this result is in the different position of users. So it's necessary to re-divide game users and ensure new - gen player type.

2. Game positioning: totally different from traditional game types.

What kind of game is Blade & Soul on earth? MMORPG? Act? FTG? ...... It's a next-gen works that surpasses the tradition. So the game positioning must be new positioning.

3. R & B direction positioning: next-gen without technology stream

Next-gen is common these days, but what is next-gen for Blade & Soul? It defines the new next-gen game through new perceptual transmission rather than such technology as engine of high quality, numerous character builds, splendid lights and shadows effect.

Bae's wonderful speech and vivid explanation of next-gen online game changes influence the media and audience greatly. He said that he would attend such developers conference more and contributed to the development of online game.

BNS Parry Analysis

Many players think Parry of blade master is too powerful in Blade & Soul and even totally damage resist in a certain period of time. It must be a BUG! But do you players really know what Parry is? Now I will give a detailed explanation.

Active Parry is a skill where you deflect your enemy's attack with key "1". It lasts for N second (s), and is increased by N percent.

So there are active and passive Parries. In other words, active parry is based on parry stats of character menu. It cannot parry all the damage. (Actually, many players misunderstand its meaning.)

You will find the additional parry damage when you place the mouse on the parry of character stats.

Premise of the stats must be white name monsters of the same level. There will be 10% bonus of parry for gray name monsters, -5% for green name monsters and more than -10% for red name monsters. The percentage may be not accurate but level suppress does exist. And it's the reason why HP consuming with active parry. (Level or parry stats is too low)

Parry mechanism:

There's cast time for active parry so it can be interrupted.

Being attacked after parry is state of skill, so players are mobile during the animation in 0.N sec. (it's evident in successive parry and single parry time can be easily ignored for it's short)

Counter (perfect parry) is a special parry. Counter 1 time if being attacked after parry in 0.5 sec (you can counter successively in 0.5 sec in the talent tree), block all damage (except those with parry immune) and stun opponents. Players can only block the damage when it comes to boss.

Parry range:

Active parry range: the area of around 160 degree in front of the character

Passive parry range: the area of around 240 degree in front of the character. It won't appear if being attacked from the back.