Priston Tale

Screenshot from Priston Tale

Priston Tale is a 3D fantasy MMORPG that centers on fast-paced point and click monster fighting (much like Diablo II or Ragnarok Online). The game, which originated in South Korea, was initially developed for the local market. It was created by Triglow Pictures Inc. (now known as Priston Inc.) and has since been published for Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, England, and now expanded to the Philippines and Brazil. In 2004, the English version of Priston Tale went out of public beta (in which it had remained for nearly 2 years) and became a commercial pay-to-play game.

Some of the features of PT include a clan system, in-game shops, eight character classes, all of which can use every item available if they have the correct upgraded statistics (except for few exceptions - armours, robes and orbs), four-tier skill system for each class, item upgrades, a simple yet involving battle system and an easy to use interface. PT is also very intensive in potion using, and dying is moderately easy. The experience loss per death also tends to climb quite steeply (experience loss is based on a percentage of your obtained experience), mirroring the ever increasing experience needed to level. Drop rates are relatively low compared to other games, and high level items are usually sparse, which makes them quite valuable. Also, there are many high level characters, sometimes making it difficult for lower levels to adjust to the market.

The amount of players participating in Priston Tale has been on a slow but steady decline, though people end up returning quite a bit.

The monthly fee is currently $12.99 USD/month, although a free trial is offered for all users up to level 39 for the English version. Also, there are certain places where game coupons are sold, if you're not able to pay for PT by using a credit card.

Gameplay

This is mostly about leveling only; Though there are several activities players participate on, which are essential to the game. Some of these activities are:

Trading: Players are urged to participate in this, not only because money is necessary in the game, because equipments are easily gotten through this if they are proficient enough in their trading skills.

Clans: Players can join clans, in which teamwork prevails. They are the core of the social community of the game. Clans can also participate in special events created for clans only.

Bellatra: Bellatra (formerly known as Survive or Die) is a competition in which 4 teams with members of the same clan are forced to fight monsters until 2 teams are declared finalists. These 2 teams will continue fighting monsters until the last one survives. The winner team's Clan Chief acquires rights over the Bellatra, by being able to modify the monsters the next users fight, by receiving an income from Bellatra, and more.

Bless Castle: Bless Castle is a Player Vs. Player activity in which 1 clan holds and defends the castle from all other participating clans.

Equipment

Throughout the game, the characters progress through a series of levels, and they aqcuire skill points. As they progress they get different items such as weapons and armours to help them in their quest of achieving the ultimate warrior. Items of these calibur usually require a larger amount of skill points in an area than the previous items. Armours in general help the character stay alive longer by giving it different attributes. Weapons in general help the character defend themselves or attack any monster they wish with a lot more force. At the same time, there are certain specifications as to when players may wear such weapons and armor. These are mostly level and stat requirements. Also, therr are certain specs for armors and weapons so that they may achieve their great performance and special stats. These may be found in game, written on the armor or weapon. (E.G. Fighter Spec, Knight Spec, etc.)

Groups of Perry

Tempskron

Description: The Tempskron tribe is situated on the southern part of the Priston continent. This group is focused mainly on the usage of power and technology.

Tempskron Classes

Fighter: They exist only to fight, and they like their fights up close and personal. Their highly trained bodies can withstand the hardest environments, and can survive under the worst odds. Fighters tend not to wear protective armor or shields, preferring to travel light. Their rigorous training is readily visible from their strong muscles, and they are always on a lookout for a good fight. Their main weapons are axes.

Pikeman: These warriors strike terror deep into the hearts of prospective enemies. Their gift of far sight and intimate knowledge of terrain gives them access to the most inaccessible of places. Their main weapons are pole-arms.

Archer: These female warriors are unmatched in their skills in projectile weapons. Preferring to take enemies out from a distance, their favorite weapon is the bow hence earning them their name. Archers are the essential ranged supporters of any battle, and they tend to blend into the environment, out of sight. They main weapons are bows.

Mechanician: One of the most unique classes on the continent of Priston, the mechanician is the very thing their name implies, a master of all things mechanical. Endlessly researching the origin and control of mechanics, they have developed set of skills like no other. Mechanicians tend to have a rather heavy build from tinkering with heavy machinery, but are not very aggressive. Their main weapons are claws.

Tempskron Class Change Tree & Respective Class Skills

Fighter:

First Class: Fighter
- Skills:
  - Melee Mastery: Increases efficiency in melee weapons, increasing Attack.
  - Fire Attribute: Permanently raises resistance to fire.
  - Raving: Goes berserk for a short period of time, striking an opponent consecutively, but loses HP with each attack.
  - Impact: One-hit attack, with an increased ATK Rating, against an enemy.
Second Class: Warrior
- Skills:
  - Triple Impact: Three-hit attack, with an increased strength, against an enemy.
  - Improved Swing: One-hit attack, with an increased critical strength, against an enemy.
  - Roar: Stun enemies within a radius with a loud scream.
  - Zecram: Fire-based attack, enforced by the power of Zecram.
Third Class: Champion
- Skills:
  - Concentration: Temporarily increase ATK Rating with intensive concentration.
  - Avenging Crash: The skill deals great damage with the continuous attack of flame revenge.
  - Swift Axe: This skill improves the ATK Speed of Axe weapons for an amount of time.
  - Bone Crash: Area attack, with increased ATK Rating and ATK strength. Increased damage against enemies with Demon type.
Fourth Class: Inmortal Warrior
- Skills:
  - Destroyer: Three-hit attack, with increased damage. Effect against Demon type monsters.
  - Berserker: This skill improves the ATK strength of the user, but decreases his/her Defense Rating.
  - Cyclone Strike: Spinning skill that deals damage to all the enemies within a radius.
  - Boost Health: Increase the HP of the user permanently.

Pikeman:

First Class: Pikeman
- Skills:
  - Pike Wind: Creates a whirlwind to push back and damage enemies.
  - Ice Attribute: Permanently raises resistance to ice.
  - Critical Hit: Aims for enemies' weak spots to raise the probability of a critical strike.
  - Jumping Crash: Leaps up into the air to strike down with a powerful blow.
Second Class: Combatant
- Skills:
  - Ground Pike: Area attack which inflicts ice damage to enemies surrounding you.
  - Tornado: Spinning attack against enemies within a radius.
  - Weapon DEF Mastery: Permanently increase shielding ability during combat, when wearing a 2-handed weapon.
  - Expansion: One-hit attack, with increased damage and distance, due to the augmentation of the weapon's size.
Third Class: Lancer
- Skills:
  - Venom Spear: Poison ATK dealt by underground spikes that branch from the original pole-arm.
  - Vanish: Disappear from the monsters' sight. Once an action is made, the user reappears. If an attack is done to an enemy during the Vanished state, damage will be increased on the first hit.
  - Critical Mastery: Increase the percentage of dealing Critical Hits permanently.
  - Chain Lance: Critical spinning attack that hits the enemy 3 times, with increased damage.
Fourth Class: Lancelot
- Skills:
  - Assassin Eye: Increase the damage done by Critical Hits and increase the percentage of Critical Hits occurring.
  - Charging Strike: Three-hit consecutive damage, each one stronger than the former. This may be charged to further increase its' damage potential.
  - Vague: Increase the Evasion Rating against monsters, by making monsters not being able to see the user's body clearly.
  - Shadow Master: Continuous, increased damage attacks done by shadow copies of the user.

Archer:

First Class: Archer
- Skills:
  - Scout Hawk: Summons a hawk to scout the surrounding area, raising attack rating.
  - Shooting Mastery: Permanently raises attack power with bows and crossbows.
  - Wind Arrow: Imbues an arrow with wind properties to increase attack power.
  - Perfect Aim: Makes an aimed shot with increased ATK Rating and ATK strength.
Second Class: Huntress Master
- Skills:
  - Dion's Eye: Increase the ATK Rating permanently.
  - Falcon: Summon an aggressive falcon made from powerful energy, which aids the user by attacking the same enemy the user is attacking.
  - Arrow of Rage: Make a scattered attack with shooting arrows to the aimed target.
  - Avalanche: Concentrated attack done to the selected enemy.
Third Class: Dion's Disciple
- Skills:
  - Elemental Shot: Powerful, continuous ATK with an elemental bonus.
  - Golden Falcon: Summon a Golden Falcon, a version of the Falcon with an increased power and duration.
  - Bomb Shot: Area attack done by a bomb arrow shot.
  - Perforation: Arrow shot with an increased damage, increased Critical Hit and increased ATK Rating.
Fourth Class: Sagittarion
- Skills:
  - Recall Wolverine: Summon Wolverine, which helps the user by attacking enemies and spreading their attacks.
  - Evasion Mastery: Increase the Evasion Rating of the user permanently.
  - Phoenix Shot: Area attack with an increased damage, enforced by the spirit of Phoenix.
  - Force of Nature: Increase the ATK Rating and ATK strength of the user permanently.

Mechanician:

First Class: Mechanician
- Skills:
  - Extreme Shield: Temporarily increases Block Rating of the current shield.
  - Mechanic Bomb: Throws a bomb to damage enemies within explosive blast radius.
  - Poison Attribute: Permanently raises resistance to poison.
  - Physical Absorpion: Temporarily increases the body's ability to absorb damage.
Second Class: Mechanic Master
- Skills:
  - Great Smash: Score a critical hit with accumulated power.
  - Maximize: Temporarily increase maximum attacking ability thorough the optimization of weapons.
  - Automation: Temporarily increase weapon's speed and attacking power through the automation of shooting weapons.
  - Spark: Make an attack against enemies within radius with powerful electrical energy.
Third Class: Metal Leader
- Skills:
  - Metal Armor: Temporarily increase armor's block rating and make stronger armor, get Physical Absorption 120%, and increased blocking rate.
  - Grand Smash: Continuous ATK to an enemy, with an increased ATK Rating.
  - Mechanic Weapon Mastery: The skill optimizes Mechanician Spec weapon's ability permanently.
  - Spark Shield: The skill makes an energy shield with powerful electrical ATK, with an increased Defense Rating. This skill is connected with the Spark skill, which makes the improved shield deal damage to your enemy equal to your Spark skill's level.
Fourth Class: Metalion
- Skills:
  - Impulsion: It attacks nearby monsters with one shot of powerful electricity. It creates a powerful spark on your weapon and is useful skill for a wide range of monsters.
  - Compulsion: It attracts nearby monsters near with a powerful energy. It is more useful for party play than 1:1, since you can use it to attract nearby monsters, and use yourself as a tank, while your party members eliminate the monsters.
  - Magnetic Sphere: It creates powerful magnetic spheres around Mechanician and temporarily attacks nearby monsters.
  - Metal Golem: It summons a strong Metal-type Golem, which protects the Mechanician.

Morion

Description: The Morion tribe is located on the northern part of the Priston continent. Their specialty is the usage of soul and magic power to vanquish their enemies.

Morion Classes

Knight: Knights think about the body of oneself most purely, and they do training hard. When they use a sword, their holy force shows the strongest force. They prefer to use medium class armors. Their main weapons are swords.

Magician: Their spiritual strength is very high and they channel that strength into their magic. They have a strong image and often use aggressive spells. They portray wisdom and knowledge. Their main weapons are rods, which they use in combination with their magic power.

Atalanta: There is a rumor that states that they are descendant of the Tempskron tribe. However, we do not know their correct origin. They are swift, agile, long-range attackers. Their preferred weapons are javelins.

Priestess: They are purity and the holy existences, and they do their best for sacred work all the time. They always help other people and believe faith strongly. They are mostly slender types and can feel a religious figure. Their main weapons are wands, combined with holy, magic power.

Morion Class Change Tree & Respective Class Skills

Knight:

First Class: Knight
- Skills:
  - Sword Blast: Attacks enemies with the energy of a sword.
  - Holy Body: Temporarily increase Absorb Rating against Undead enemies.
  - Physical Training: Increase Stamina permanently.
  - Double Crash: Fatal and strong double attacks.
Second Class: Paladin
- Skills:
  - Holy Valor: Grants divine power, so it increases the ATK ability of party members against undead monsters.
  - Brandish: Area attack that strikes multiple enemies within a radius with increased damage.
  - Piercing: Piercing attack that strikes multiple enemies in a line with increased damage.
  - Drastic Spirit: Temporarily increase the Defense Rating of the user.
Third Class: Holy Knight
- Skills:
  - Sword Mastery: Increase ATK strength when using Sword weapons permanently.
  - Divine Shield: Increases Block Rating of the shield temporarily. It also gives the shield the ability to a percentage of the damage dealt by an Undead enemy and add it to the user's own HP.
  - Holy Incantation: Make an Undead enemy become your ally.
  - Grand Cross: Continuous attack with increased ATK strength and ATK Rating.
Fourth Class: Saint Knight
- Skills:
  - Sword of Justice: Area attack with increased damage.
  - Godly Shield: Activates the skill Divine Shield, and not only Block Rating is increased, but the Absorb Rating is increased too.
  - God's Bless: Temporarily increase the ATK strength of the user.
  - Divine Piercing: Fast, powerful and continuous attacks, which strikes the enemy 3 or 7 times depending on the skill's level.

Magician:

First Class: Magician
- Skills:
  - Agony:Sacrifices own HP and recovers MP.
  - Firebolt:Attacks enemy with a small fire generated spell.
  - Zenith:Icreases all elemental resistances.
  - Fireball:Attacks multiple enemies with this fire based spell.
Second Class: Wizard
- Skills:
  - Mental Mastery:Increases permanently the MP.
  - Watornado:Attacks multiple enemies with a Water Tornado.
  - Enchant Weapon:Enchants the weapon with either fire, thunder or ice.(RANDOM)
  - Death Ray:Shoots a ray at the enemy.
Third Class: Royal Wizard
- Skills:
  - Energy Shield:Creates a shield that protects the R. Wizard making it lose a % of MP instead of HP.
  - Diastrophism:Causes an earthquake around a certain area.
  - Spirit Elemental:Calls forth the help of the spirit elemental that gives strength to the spells.
  - Dancing Swords:Creates two swords that keep dancing around the R. Wizard attaking anyone that gets close.
Fourth Class: Archmage
- Skills:
  - Fire Elemental:Summons a fire elemental to protect the Archmage. May be set to attack automatically or manually, in which the Fire Elemental attacks the archmage's target.
  - Flame Wave:Three lines of flame upon the enemies.
  - Distortion:Decrease moving speed and ATK Power temporarily by the skill, and the skill is very useful for a single player or party players.
  - Meteorite:The skill can damage for a wide range to monsters,

and damage three times.-->by Silant Atalanta:

First Class: Atalanta
- Skills:
Second Class: Valkyrie
- Skills:
Third Class: Brynhild
- Skills:
Fourth Class: Valhalla
- Skills:

Priestess:

First Class: Priestess
- Skills: Heal
Second Class: Saintess
- Skills: Meditation

Divine Lightning Grand Healing

Third Class: Bishop
- Skills:
4th Class: Celestial
- Skills:

Negative Opinions

There is a strong amount of negative views toward Priston Tale on many levels. In the English version especially, Administrators rarely showed any signs of tech support to their customers leading to a lot of anger toward them. This continued even after the commercialization.

Wall Hacking, Aimbotting, Zoom hacks, and thunderstruck

While Priston Tale was in open beta still, Numerous hackers gained the ability to steal other users account. Many of these hackers were simply scammers who downloaded "DLL" or other program files that weren't distributed or talked about to the general public. Due to an over-amount of lag as it was a free game with generally poor coding, it became a constant hazard that offering an expensive or rare item to another player could leave you with nothing in return.

The popular fan-made forums for the game were often the location of "witch hunts" in which certain users would claim that users in the game who were quite wealthy were generally hackers. Due to the rarity of most items, this could generally be confirmed but there were many cases that could never be confirmed or denied and it was often left strictly to opinion, or who a person liked on either side of the argument.

Following the commercialization of Priston Tale, many users "quit", often citing that their accounts were hacked and they weren't interested in rebuilding them through the rather long and ultimately pointless process of leveling up.

Reports to admins were generally left completely ignored. Admin presence in the game was generally quite minimal and was generally left to stories of seeing admins promoting "godlike powers". In one proven case, An admin called Heysay pulled a player into an often disputed "admin Chinese checkers room" (used to invistigate with members and contact with them) *this room has all functions dissabled for EG. ScreenShot's* believeing that the player was using a skin hack on one of their special powers. It was decided afterwards by the admin that this effect was simply different in the Korean version which he was used to.

Language Issues

For the English version, Pristontale often suffered from a large number of translation and language issues. Admins were known to use broken or confusing speech, often leading to confusion or misspellings in game. A number of popular monsters and maps in the game have used several aliases, often leading players to ignore the changes and refer to them by the name used when the player first began using that area. "Classic Players" generally refer to the maps simply by early referencs calls such as "D3" to mean "Desert number 3". These names have been updated as new maps become released which had duplicate interfaces(dessert interfaces or dungeon interfaces).

Upgrades

A recurring complaint from nearly all players in the English version involves items. In beta versions, the quality of items in game was generally few and far between. New upgrades were spoken of, but were usually faked and copied from images of the much farther along Korean version. The rarity of these items led to a common amount of theft, scamming, and general hacking of these items

Private Servers bring an Admin Code

After commercialization, many rumors of a private server surfaced. Although multiple groups claimed to be working on one, only one partial version was eventually released. Initially lacking any type of multiplayer modes, it was generally considered hard to get working despite that it supported few features other then the ability to use the game in an offline mode. Later versions of the software did include minimal networking and NPC support, but these have been distributed only among small groups and not released to the general public.

Use of the private servers opened up new testing ground and hackers managed to create an "Admin Code" which would unlock GM level commands including monster spawning and item generation as well as an instant level up. Though these were rarely (if ever) used for tech support purposes, many hackers broke known records by creating god items or high level characters outside the general realm of normal. Use of this Admin Code led to server rollbacks and many account deletions before it was eventually patched out(citation needed).

The Admin Code chaos continued in the Brazil version of the game as hackers generally did whatever they please throughout the games current history.

Stolen Server Code

In early 2006, Japanese hackers posted screenshots that they had stolen Official PT Server files. These files have been confirmed by multiple sources, and currently, there is an increasing number of private servers using improved versions of these leaked files.

Priston Tale 2

A sequel to Priston Tale is currently in development. It looks to change and improve on many of the things featured in its predecessor. The development team stated at one point that they were "inexperienced" and had "learnt a lot" from the first version and that the second has had much better planning. Screenshots of the new game from E3 2006 depict many recognizable characters, enemies, and environments, albeit altered significantly. It uses unreal graphics engine 2.5.[1]

Official Links

Priston Tale

Priston Tale 2

Unofficial Links

Priston Tale Nation - Most active Priston Tale English, Valento Server community
nProphecy - nProphecy gaming community, contains information about Priston Tale and more.
Priston Fan - All around Priston Tale information site.
Priston Secret - Stat calculator for testing char and much of information like monster stat, skills details and weapon 100 information.
Midranda forums - A large discussion board where lots of people visit regularly.