Tarisland is a fantasy MMORPG developed by Tencent, set in a stunning open world from the Western. The game is designed to be fair, promise no pay-to-win, emphasize skills and teamwork, and provide balanced experience for all players across platforms. It is also well-known as WoW alternative in China.

Class and Talent build

The game features 9 classes, fully customizable for player characteristic preferences, each with two specializations and 2 sets of ultimate: passive and active, supporting extensive and diverse customization for 5-player dungeons, 10-player raids, 3-player PVP arenas, and 20-player battle fields.

Beside class talent tree, each character is provided with an Inscribed Stone build, enabling players to empower their characters to make adjustment for their playstyles and specific challenges encountered in game.

Among the 9, Bard appears to be a unique class, distinguished not only by his appearance and talent tree but also by his unfamiliarity to WoW players. Bard holds a musical instrument, a harp or konghou (箜篌), which many people might recognize from a concert. The harp has a long history, appearing in cultures worldwide and used by many artists throughout the ages.

Story

The story is quite generic, short as it is in early stage, but enjoyable. It does not require spending hours or days to complete all the quests to reach the current max level 40 to start hunting in raids and battles. As I guess, many players just skip all the way for post-story activities.

Timing and Season

As designed for mobile platforms to target a wider range of audience and playing habit, the game activities are not lasting, insane grinding, and do not encourage autoplay or camping. Many activities such as PvP, battle arena, trial, and trading are time-windowed, and rewards from dungeons/raids are limited by day and week, ensuring players with a strict investment of time and money are able to grow fairly.

A season is meant to refresh the game and motivate players with completely new contents and gear sets, not to leave a group of players falling behind, and new players can easily catch up with the latest updates.

Trade Center

The Trade Center simulates a small portion of real-world transaction system, allowing players to list, browse, sell, buy, bid goods, and even being obligated to pay tax for every succesful transaction on the platform.

Many valuable items used to craft high tier items can be acquired here. To make it easier for a group of player, some items are restocked every week and can be traded by easy-to-earn currency.

Despite a non pay-to-win game, real money is legally used to buy in-game currencies such as gold, silver, and crytal, later are used to trade for other items listed on the trade center. Rewards from main and daily quests are a great source to build wealth in game.

As each season progresses, the demand for specific types of items arises. Many of these are short-term consumables designed to enhance character strength, as well as jewelry and runes that empower gears, and often crafted through the final stages of the alchemist profession. Raw and intermediate materials from other professions are also valuable, as players cannot frequently switch crafting talents.

As a result, players must spend vigor, the energy used to gather raw materials from the wild, to craft higher-value items for trade. That is why, if a player buys all the necessary materials from the trade center to craft a higher-value item, he has to sell it at a lower price than the cost of those materials combined. If he were able to sell higher, the market would be problematic as the item does not have an increase in actual value.

When a player reaches a certain threshold in his crafting profession, he will be able to craft rare and very highly valuable items, but with a low to moderate success rate and fairly high material costs. If successful, he will earn a significant amount of gold by selling it at the trade center.

The listing features ceiling, floor price, quantity of salable item at lowest price, and total quantity. Watching these value changes over time also suggests the supply and demand of an item.

Arcane Realm

Arcane Realm is dungeon rotating every 24 hours, with a combination of 1-day and 3-day affix to make the run less repetitive and more challenging. For higher rewards, players have to conquer higher floors, ranging from 1 to 10. The concept of floor may sound unfamiliar to non-asian countries for level of difficulty. Obviously, it is a literal translation of 层 (ceng), a way of expressing levels as in many stories I read.

I believe the 1-day challenge affixes for Arcane Realm are inspired by the nature (Entangle, Gale), society (Enwebbed, Twist), and the Universe (Orb, Annihilation).

• Entangle: Vines will sprout and gradually grow at the current locations of all player characters. They will entangle all player characters within their range when they are fully grown.
• Gale: Gales have appeared. Player characters who are positioned downwind will have slower attacks when attacking targets that are positioned upwind.
• Enwebbed: Create a closed loop by linking all player characters, resulting in a continuous increase of DMG dealt to them. This effect can be eliminated by untangling all connections and removing any overlaps.
• Twist: All player characters will randomly receive either the Maverick or Social Animal effect. When there are other player characters nearby, player characters with the Maverick effect will take an increasing DMG. When there are no other player characters nearby, player characters with the Social Animal effect will take an increasing DMG.

The last two are from the Universe (or physics), they symbolize the release of energy and the contact of matter and antimatter.

• Orb: Spawn Orbs around the location of random player characters. Orbs shoot out in all directions, dealing DMG to any player character they touch and granting them the Orb effect.
• Annihilation: Two players are selected and given a sign pointing in a certain direction each. After a certain amount of time, matter and antimatter will be emitted from their positions in the direction of their sign. If the matter and antimatter collide, they will be annihilated, dealing DMG once to players within a 5-yard range. If there is no collision, they will continue to move in their own direction for a certain distance and explode, dealing DMG to all players.

Annihilation occurs when matter and its counterpart, antimatter, collide and release energy. They are particle pairs, such as electron-positron and proton-antiproton, with the same mass but opposite electric charges. There has been an idea that for any given amount of matter, there exists an equal amount of antimatter. However, what actually happened is that a tiny excess of matter over antimatter in the very early moments of the Big Bang led to the formation of stars, planets, moons, galaxies, and all kinds of living and non-living things even humans. This is known as matter and antimatter asymmetry, which is contrary to the perfection of symmetry as reflected, for example, in the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang about the coexistence of 2 opposite forces complementing each other.

The 3-day affixes take inspiration from biological forms including Parasitic, Shadow Fiend, and Attenuation.

• Parasitic: 2 bloodworms appear during combat and upon death, slowly approaching the nearest monsters. Once reaching the target, they infect it, recover 20% of its max HP and self-destruct, dealing direct DMG and DOT to all players.
• Shadow Fiend: they emerge from the ground right at each player position and continously follow them until they die.
• Attenuation: the player will be inflicted with higher DMG over time, and this effect can only be removed by consecutively casting three different skills during battle.

Attenuation appears to be a term indicating the reduction of something or process. It was interesting to investigate the idea behind this and the result is far closer to its meaning. The plain text in simplified chinese interface is 对战首领期间全队解除异变时技能释放不超过3个, meaning during boss fight, the enire team eliminates the DNA mutation by casting no more than 3 different skills. It definitely has something to do with biology as 异变 (yibian, dị biến) in chinese is a change or alter in biological system.

Gameplay - RAID

The raids, in my opinion, are activities that people find not only interesting but also frustrating sometimes because they are challenging and require players to have a great understanding of the core mechanism, boss skills, role responsiblities, even strategy planning and teamwork.

Each raid features 4 different levels of difficulty in term of boss HP, DMG, skills, mechanics, and challenge affixes, requiring players to gain knowledge and experience from the previous to be qualified for the next play.

Level of difficulty may entail players to be adaptive. After being confident with a level in a specific raid, the next level may break the previous behaviour that players have already gained and are already very familiar with.

Merfolk King

This is the first and easiest raid in Root of Corrosion, and things only become a bit harder in challenge mode. During battle, water waves will emerge from 4 whirlpools periodically and spread across the field, causing immediate death if players fail to dodge them. In order to survive, the players are required to quickly run to a specific waypoint and diagonally teleport to the opposite one, where the water waves originate.

Ancient Tree

The mechanics are simple, blocking the energy rays produced from 3 out of 4 flowers on the field to stop the Tree from empowering. The longer a player contact with the ray, the damage taken is greater over time. Therefore, another player has to take the place of his partner in turn.

Things become much harder in challenge mode when the player contacting the ray is inflicted with a negative effect, Nature’s Wrath, and dies immediately if he is trying to block the ray for the second time. To dispel this negative effect, the player has to go to a swarm of hornet, locating near each flower. But one downside of this is that he will also take damage over time (DoT) and leave the swarm on his travel path, causing distractions to other players. After a phase shift, the swarms also make their way to random spots on the field, limiting players’ moves.

Synthesis Doctor

This raid requires players to make use of proper potion to encounter red, blue, green orbs released and shields created by the Doctor during battle. A few of wrong moves might break the mechanics, leading to a complete wipeout.

The mechanics are probably derived from physics and chemistry. For instance, when a player uses a green potion to enhance his healing abilities, he cannot use it to encounter red orbs. Mixing the two triggers a deadly compound, resulting in catastrophic consequences, such as the player dying instantly.

Another example is when the Doctor is chanting a poison fusion spell for a few seconds, all players must spread out, maintaining a distance of at least 5 meters. Failure to do so will cause an increasing damage explosion due to a harmful poison reaction. During gameplay, the movement of players performing the machanic resembles the diffusion process in physics, where particles are randomly distributed from high to low concentration space. And this is how perfume can be gradually smelt from anywhere in the room once particles are released from oil diffuser without the need of external factors like wind.

At the highest level, players are challenged by Yin and Yang poison, half of them will be inflicted with Yin while the other half is Yang. Within 10 seconds, the Yin needs to find the Yang and vice versa to remove the negative effect from each other. Otherwise, any pair failing to complete the mechanic will be eliminated, causing subsequent group mechanics to fail as well.

Forest Gemini

This raid would not make it name without its challenge mode, the hardest but most interesting raid challenge. In addition to the core mechanism of defeating Jon and Ivar in a fairly small difference of time, the challenge requires players to protect 2 natural seeds during the entire battle. The two seeds in turn randomly appear in any spot on the field, will explode after a few seconds if not carried by any players and deal massive DMG to all players if hit by AoE skills but normal attacks. The player who carries the seed is more vulnerable to DMG over time and must pass it to other players, as he cannot hold it for too long.

Similar to other raids, players engage with normal mode weekly for gear advancement, enhancing character’s strengths and abilities for more challenging activities.

The challenge mode requires consistent practice, strategic adjustments, and active communication among team members. Especially when teaming up with random players, it often takes more time to get familiar with each other. If it is the case, be patient, and don’t expect the team to complete the challenge in the first few attempts. Many have come up with a plenty of strategies tailored to their teams, and once the challenge is completed, everyone deserves congratulations.

As you may notice that Jon and Ivar in their transformed states are frightening predators, one ruling the land, the other dominating the sky. Many of their abilities are inspired by natural phenomena like earthquakes, lightnings, hurricanes, meteor airbursts, and wildfires. These forces reflect the extreme conditions that shape life on Earth, highlighting the crucial roles that natural disasters and apex predators play in both natural selection and evolution.

Archdruid

This raid was particularly challenging when it first launched. Two groups, each of 5 players, in turn teleport for an underground battle, defeating an elite monster and minions to protect and heal a heart in time. The strategy for the raid requires strong healing capability from healers, fairly high and equal DPS division between the two groups.

If players may find it a bit troublesome to get familiar with the mechanics at first, the challenge mode definitely brings joy. The Zelo will additionally plant among players a Seed of Decay that keeps spreading and leaving residues. If the seed comes into contact with the residues while spreading, it will explode, dealing massive DMG to all players. The seed and its residues are visualized in 3 different colors: blue, white, and yellow. Players have to figure out which colors should be together and which should not by coming closer to or away from other players in a specific amount of time. The seed needs passing to the outer group as it is not allowed in the underground battle. As the challenge requires players to manage the seed and its residues, it may draw inspiration from the biodegradation process.

Interesting Challenge

As I was exploring what inspires the mechanics of the raid challenge to see if it may reveal something interesting, normally, during battle, players are randomly assigned a combination of 3 yellows, 1 white, and 1 blue, adding up to 5. The player with the white can hold it for 10 seconds and must pass it to one other to prevent an explosion. Since the blue and white can come together, this suggests that a group of 5 can confidently handle the white passing.

Design of Achievement

Accumulating 90 stacks of decay point in this raid is one of the rewarding but challenging achievements. Since a specific skill grants certain points of decay, there are a number of ways the team can distribute stacks among members as they are predictable and players know when, how many, and how to get. As other challenging activites, strategy for this is creative and adjusted according to team. After a first few tries, players agree on how each member acquire decay points. A difficult part of this is how long players let the shadow alive because it gives variable stacks depending on time. And time is heavily influenced by DPS.

Even when players have the desired stacks in the second phase, it can still be challenging to burst the boss if the team DPS is not on point and they have to follow the mechacnics to survive while some of them now have a greater chance of being rooted. If players can end the fight as they want, then everything is much easier.

As I noticed, many runs were successful when players could hold the shadow HP to a desired point for others to get the right stacks or confidently kill at the right moments, and not hope for something magical to happen in the end. There may be reasons that some players does not gain the right stacks as planned, they still have chance to gain more by getting an extra starfall, or quickly go into the green circle to avoid unnecessary increase of stack. In addition to these, situational awareness of the boss HP, upcoming boss skills, and whether it is safe to be rooted or outside the shield for a few seconds are other factors that contribute to a whole team’s success.

Spider Queen

Try not to fall off the platform and perform interruption to prevent a wipeout. This seems to be the most distressing among the raids, especially in epic mode, where players are challenged by completely opposite mechanics to dodge 2 different skills from the spiders. It is not hard to dodge these 2 skills separately, but when combined, they create a surprising effect as what saved you a second earlier is now threatening you. It works like a cognitive assessment, and a few players in their early trainings, fearing they might fall off, quickly move toward the center right after a central pushback.

After the battle starts for a while, players will be inflicted with either green or purple poison, and divided into 2 groups, continue battling on 2 separated narrower platforms. If one steps on the wrong platform, he will not be able to survive the corresponding debuff from the elite spiders. The mechanic probably stems from a natural therapy, habit cures habit (以毒攻毒, to treat poison with poison), somewhat similar to the idea of inactivated vaccine but in the reverse order. The key of combat in this phase is to keep lowering the elite spider’s HP timely with the other group before the integration and manage to destroy the green slime eggs before all of them spawn and distract DPS and healers in the final phase.

In challenge mode, the Energy Core in the center of the battleground pushes players away from it or drags them toward it periodically. Players avoid stepping off and falling from the platform by moving constantly. The epic challenge mode is particularly difficult for Priest.

As other raids, battle records indicate that players with high damage immunity has a greater chance of suriving critical or sustained attacks from enemies. An advantage of playing both tank and healer role is skill rotation maximization, the use of skills in an optimal sequence, as long as player has great understanding of skill cooldowns, buffs/debuffs, incoming DMG/heal, effective duration, and situational awareness.

Blight Dragon

This raid is a great example of the importance of powering Inscribed Stone (IS) for burst, the mechanism is unique, insisting role strategy to fight against the Dragon skills, not tough, but does require practices. While players are creative in solution to combat the Dragon in normal, elite, and epic mode, the affixes in challenge mode are what set this raid apart again.

After 5 seconds since the battle starts, 2 players will be paired together by an Omen chain, shakes to massively deal DMG to linked players whenever its length exceeds 10 meters and causes death to the other if one unfortunately dies. During battle, each player needs to gather a drop of Hope Shimmer to help locate the Wrath of Nidhoggr and form the protective shield, preventing meteors from being casted and leading to massive AoE DMG on the field.

As one player is bound to his partner, his moves are limited and expect the other to respond in agreement. It opens up completely new challanges, partner choice and role responsibility division for smaller groups.

Characters

My favorite characters are the Priest and Paladin, both of which are crucial in any cooperative gameplay.

Priest, an omni healer, possesses powerful recovery abilities to support the team. Their prayer skillset, which I usually specialize in, provides DMG reduction, instant healing for teammates, and health restoration for the entire team at critical moments, making them extremely suitable for battles that require mobility.

Paladin specializing in Guardian is a master of defense. They wield a hammer and a shield, standing at the forefront, fending off the enemies’ attacks and protecting the allies behind. Playing this character also shows how thoughtfully each class is designed in the game. For example, when casting the single taunt skill, Paladin strikes their hammer against the shield twice, producing a unique sound that draws the enemies’ attention. Or when casting the AoE taunt skill, they strongly slap their shield in the air, releasing high energy waves of molecules in all directions, threatening the enemies around.

The costumes in the game are well-designed. The one my character is wearing, which can be easily bought with in-game currency, looks brighter than the default costumes or those earned from achievements. There are two more for player’s preferences, both are also appealing.