The Chains of #TERA

I knew about the chain system in TERA because it kept popping up skills for me to use after I triggered other, select skills. I naturally assumed that the system had some kind of innate progression, or of linked abilities that the game devs decided made sense to trigger in sequence, leading to an ever increasing power smack-down the more chain steps that were triggered.

Kinda. But man, I love the way TERA does it’s chains.

Chains are customizable. Every active skill that you have is represented in the column on the left. The column on the right is where you can drag another skill from your skills pool. This is the skill that will show up after you trigger the skill on the left column.

As a sorcerer, one of my abilities is a leap-back called Backstep. It’s super useful for a ranged caster because when things get too close, bad things happen to me, so it’s in my best interest to get the hell away from things. Plus, most of my attacks require some distance between myself and the target, which this provides.

Here, after Backstep is executed, I am prompted for Ice Needle I, which slows the target. So the idea is that I leap back, then fire this off to slow them as they approach, not only putting distance between the target and myself, but keeping that gap open as long as possible.

But wait! There’s more! Because every skill is represented in the left column, any skill you place in the right column can also trigger it’s own chained skill! I actually found this out by accident. So what I did was to add Magma Bomb II as the second step in the chain after Ice Needle I.

My strategy now is that when something gets too close, I use Backstep to leap away, which chains to Ice Needle I to slow them down, which allows me to use Magma Bomb II at a distance. Because these items are chained, I see a representation of the next step in the chain on the screen, and all I have to do is to press the Spacebar to trigger it. Not having to rely on TERA’s limited hotbar space, or to click or keypress something specific, has saved a lot of time, and has allowed me to keep enemies at a pretty consistent distance almost every time.

I really want to sit down and consider a chain that can be used to keep distance and to maximize damage so that an enemy doesn’t even have a chance to approach.