Hey, Shun here!
I always read the forums and the official site of any games every time I decide to play a certain game.
Sometimes, you'll come across good forums and great players who create great guides or come across trolls who wants to feed newbies with fake information.
It's mostly because of anonymity that individuals like to troll, right?
Some trolls just make themselves look like total idiots and clowns on the internet though. No one's really complaining since internet's there so that you can watch as people make a fool out of themselves.
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(Shun's POV)
After I finished in placing the dishes on the automatic dishwasher and going back to my room, I started skimming through strategy sites. After reading through most of them for a few minutes, I roughly understood what this game is all about.
Well, to start with, [OSO's] basic overview is as follows.[OSO] is built around Senses; an equippable talent that exists separately from the normal equipment like weapons. Learning such a talent consumes points and every player can equip them through their inventory window.
While equipped, a Sense can give you a permanently active ability, allow you to use certain skills, have an effect on various actions, or provide corrections and multipliers during the game.
By repeatedly making use of their effect, Senses gather experience points and continue to level up. When that happens the effects of the multipliers and corrections become greater.
Up to 10 Senses can be equipped at once.
The player starts with 10 Sense points (now referred to as SP). There's no point in just having a Sense! Remember to properly equip it! If you don't have the Sense equipped, you won't get the effect of that certain Sense.
Every Sense that you acquired does not have to be equipped, and can be kept as backup. The Senses can be freely re-equipped. If a Sense's level is high enough, it can advance or branch out and become even stronger.
Senses could either be derived, upgraded, or merged with another Sense. The derivation of a Sense makes it branch out after the 'parent' Sense reaches a certain level. It does not consume the 'parent' Sense.
Upgrading a sense, also known as Higher Sense, required the 'parent' Sense to reach a certain level. In which case, it consumes the 'parent' Sense and restarts its level and removes it from your Sense List. The 'parent' Sense is still re-obtainable.
Like any other RPG game, the stats each player has are MP and HP; physical attack is ATK, physical defence is DEF, magic attack is INT, magic defence is MIND. Then there is SPEED which influences speed, DEX which applies a correction to weapon and production skills and LUK which increases drop rates and the chance of critical hits.
These statistics are calculated from the total configuration of all equipped Senses.
Players cannot see their own stats. Presumably, this was decided in order to make the game more realistic.
At this point, I am now thinking of the endless possibilities of this game.
"Mom and Dad really struck it rich by investing in this game big time…"
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Of course, it wouldn't be a boni fide role-playing game if there's no badass skills and such. In this game, there are special techniques and moves called 'arts' and 'skills'.
[Arts] are weapon-based special attacks. [Skills] are magic-based attacks and support abilities. In addition to that, the naming varies depending on the Sense, for example there are also [Recipes] or [EX-Skills].
[Arts] apply a correction to weapon attacks and make dealing damage easy. It is said on the forums and guides that people who aren't accustomed to fighting are recommended to solely rely on Arts.
There seems to be a movement correction every time you use [Arts]. [Skills], on the other hand, use spells and techniques that cause a fixed, pre-determined phenomenon.
Paying attention to MP management is required in this case. While [Recipe] are related to crafting skills and allow players to produce items.
In order to obtain the MP necessary for using [Arts] and [Skills], a player must obtain the [Magic Power] Sense. After obtaining MP that way, the player is required to obtain yet another Sense which is [Magic Talent].
If you want to be a wizard who utilize magic, the [Magic Talent] Sense and an [Element] Sense are required. These two senses are mandatory if a player wants to use magic.
Moreover, there are different [Element] Senses namely: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Darkness, Light – a total of six elements. These element's usage is not limited to magic. Apart from these six elements there are magic Senses that specialize in things like support and recovery.
There are highly-versatile Elemental Senses as well as multiple magical Senses which specialize in specific actions. Considering the Senses related to magic the three of [Magic Power], [Magic Talent] and [Element] are considered the basic set. If you don't have one of the three, you basically can't cast a spell.
Similar to wizards having a basic set for magic, there is also a basic set for warrior-type players. These are weapon or equipment Senses which are namely: [Sword], [Club], [Whip], [Stick], [Spear], [Hammer], [Staff], [Axe], [Shield], and [Bow].
There are even close combat specific Senses such as [Kick] and [Fist] which allows players to deal damage using their, obviously, fists and kicks. Aside from those two, there even weird equipment Senses such as [Book] and [Musical Instrument].
Weapon Senses allow attacking with a corresponding weapon and increase the damage dealt while equipment Senses well, allow you to equip those equipments. There are some exceptions to these rules though.
Another type are the Armour Senses, they are Senses which add a correction to the corresponding armour type. The armour can be equipped even without using an Armour Sense.
However, in order to damage the enemy with a weapon one needs to use a corresponding Sense, which makes it a mandatory sense.
The recommended Senses other than weapons and armor Senses for warrior type players are passive Sense which raises a player's stats. Although they don't gain any special abilities, magic, or special attacks initially, they do raise the specified stats a lot in return.
Players are recommended to choose a weapon, armour, or stat-raising Senses to suit your style. There's a lot you can choose from so there is a high chance that you can be the 'only one'.
In [OSO], the play style changes as you equip and combine Senses. You can enjoy the occasional adventures while equipped with the Senses that suit you.
Moreover, if you do not like your own play style, even without deleting your character, you can reset the equipment and relocate the Senses.
Reading through the strategy guides really did help me picture out what game it would be. There were some advices that aren't useful to new players at the very least but there are also extremely detailed and newbie friendly ones. Also, the template builder was very helpful, to me.
There was quite a large number of Senses that can be initially obtained after starting to play so, it can be troublesome to newbies such as me to choose which Sense configuration I want.
Looking at the numerous list of Senses, I started to mull over the Senses I could make use of.
"I usually practice with the sword so I'll pass on the [Sword] Sense. Maybe I'll pick it up if need be but… Something unique is better…"
In my search, I came across the site which ranks each Senses. It's quite the legit site since the maker of it is a BETA player.
Even though it is called [Only Sense], I think it couldn't be help for people to copy paste your build for better 'efficiency'. Thus, I'll make a build that contains Senses from the bottom rank.
Gazing at the long list, I began to quietly murmur.
"I trained mostly on close combat weapons so I guess I'll take the [Bow] Sense to have some long ranged weapon in my arsenal. The problem that I saw regarding this Sense is the supply of the arrow but, where do I get a great supply of arrows?"
As I am thinking deeply, the arrow of my mouse stopped in the middle of two Senses, the [Synthesis] and [Alchemy] Senses. These two are considered to be trash Senses as well since, the former would cost the player a lot while, regarding the latter, nobody really came out to give a concrete description as to how it works.
"[Alchemy] is mostly about creating things like [Synthesis], right?"
At the time, I didn't know that I actually had an evil smile plastered all over my face.
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※~To be continued~※
Author's Remarks:
※ I hope this chapter will enlighten you guys as to how the game works. Next chapters will be about the game.