During his time at the Game Developers Conference, Editor-in-Chief Darryl Gangloff got a taste of combat in a new TERA demo.

The Smuggler's Hideout demo

Now that the lesson was over, it was time to take what I'd learned and dive into a party. I grabbed the mouse and keyboard and looked at my berserker holding his huge axe. The first thing you'll probably notice when you get your hands on TERA is that the mouse is tied directly to the camera, which allows you to quickly look around the battlefield without clicking or holding down any buttons.

As Ramirez mentioned, combat does have a console feel to it. Clicking the left mouse button will perform a basic attack, while hitting the right one will perform a special attack. As with many other MMOs, pressing hotkeys on your keyboard will give you control of your other abilities. I realized quickly that timing my blocks by hitting the “C” key would keep me alive a bit longer and make my healer happy. Also, my berserker blocked by slamming his axe into the ground, which is an impressive animation.

After taking a few moments to get used to my character, we made our way into the Smuggler's Hideout, which is the first 5-player instance in the game at around level 20. Hager mentioned that there's also a mini-instance that players can try out around level 10. Here's a Smuggler's Hideout trailer to give you a sneak peek at the instance:

Our party consisted of Hager as a lancer tank, Ramirez as a healing priest, a damage-dealing sorcerer and my berserker wielding his massive weapon. In case you're curious, we were all level 22. We started to hack our way through the trash monsters without much difficulty as I practiced my combos. As the producers mentioned in their introduction, my eyes were glued to the action in the middle of the screen. This isn't a game where you can auto-attack, sit back and click abilities; you're going to be kept very busy in combat.

Rather than tabbing through targets like in other MMOs, you need to physically aim at your target by pointing your character in the direction of your enemy. This also means that you can move around to avoid a monster's block and hit it from behind. In a similar fashion, healers will need to aim their heals at other players, which means that priests and mystics must be quick on their feet. However, Ramirez showed me that his priest also had a target-locking heal at his disposal, as well as the ability to cast an AoE healing circle on the ground. “Party members should definitely run to stand in that circle when they see it,” he said.

It was then time to take on Soulcrusher, a massive rock boss that certainly fits the term “big ass monster.” Even with two producers on our side, this creature put up quite a fight. Soulcrusher's glowing eye/orb/thing would change colors as one of his tells to let us know a big attack was on its way. I got knocked down multiple times, but a quick press of the spacebar allowed me to jump back up and knock back the monster.

Hager's lancer was able to hold the hate for most of the battle, which was shown on the screen through a glowing circle around the feet of his character. Other party members should definitely keep an eye out for that circle in case the tank loses hate. It's a quick way to see who's about the get pummeled by the enemy.

For all you healers out there, Ramirez's priest was able to join in on the damage-dealing fun. “Alright, you're all doing good on health, I'm going to focus on damage,” he said more than once during the battle.

As Soulcrusher crumbled and the demo ended, Hager and Ramirez emphasized that the monster was just one one of the bosses in the Smuggler's Hideout. It looks like players will have many more big ass monsters to fight when TERA launches in North America and Europe, hopefully later this year.

Darryl Gangloff, Editor-in-Chief