Silkroad Online

Silkroad Online (also known as SRO or Silk) is a free massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) which was recently in beta testing, but was fully released on 21 February 2006. It was created by the South Korean company Joymax. Much of the background of the game is based on the historical Silk Road.

Overview

Silkroad is based on the history of trading in China along the Silk Road, a historical network of trade routes in Southern Asia. The game provides players with the option of three different roles after achieving character level 20; a merchant, a hunter or a thief. A merchant transports goods between towns, the thief attempts to steal the goods and a hunter protects a merchant from thieves.

Successfully completing a job for any given role earns the character experience points, which allow the character to gain character levels, and provides the character with job bonuses. Roles are not fixed and can be switched every ten minutes. However, switching from a thief to a merchant or hunter will decrease the thief points, and switching into a thief role will decrease the merchant or hunter points.

While the current version is limited to China, there are plans to update the game with European and Arabian races. An English language version of the game is currently available in the Philippines.

Gameplay

Character creation

Characters may be male or female, and there are a variety of different templates for each sex. Height and weight may be modified. The initial weapon and clothing set is selected during character creation.

Gaining experience

Similar to most MMORPGs, characters increase skills and levels by gaining experience points through combat, quests or jobs. In combat, the amount of points gained are determined by the type of monster killed. For points gained through quests, the amount of points is proportional its difficulty. Characters may also gain points by successfully completing objectives for a profession, such as a merchant completing a trade run or a hunter killing a thief.

Points are divided into two types: XP (experience points) and SP (skill points). XP increase a character's level and SP increase the number of points that a character has available to put into raising or buying a skill. A character may have up to 300 masteries (skills). The amount of SP required to raise a skill increases exponentially based on the level of the skill.

Characters in Silkroad have only two stats to choose from, strength and intellect. These stats influence the amount of health, mana, defence and attack power of the characters. They also influence the physical and magical balance of a character, additional factors that influence damage and defence calculations. When a character gains a level, two points are automatically allocated to each stat and an additional three points may be distributed in the manner preferred by the player.

Combat

Combat is comparable to other fantasy-based MMORPGs. The character's damage, attack speed and range depend on the weapon and the character's stats. Items and gold that are dropped by an enemy cannot be picked up by other characters until a minute has passed. After each kill, a character will gain XP and SP. Another meter is the berserk meter, which is filled by killing large numbers of enemies. When a character goes into "berserk" mode, all combat statistics will be raised for a short period of time.

When a character dies, experience is lost and there is a choice between respawning in town or waiting for another player to resurrect the fallen character.

Parties of up to 8 players can be created. While experience will be shared for each enemy killed, only the character that struck the final blow is considered to have killed the enemy. One recent feature is the party matching system, which allows parties to advertise for specific types of members they wish to gain.

PvM combat

Many of the monsters are taken from Chinese mythology. There are usually three different types of each monster (such as "water ghost slave", "water ghost" and "water ghost champion"). While players will usually attack single monsters, higher level monsters will be attracted to lower level characters and may join in overwhelming the player.

High level unique monsters will appear several times each day. These unique enemies will spawn other monsters around them as they are damaged. Unique enemies drop special items.

PvP combat

PvP combat is another popular feature of Silkroad Online. After reaching level 10, a character can purchase capes that allow him or her to attack other players outside of town. Capes identify the faction (a coloured team) that the character belongs to, and can only attack other players wearing rival coloured capes. Note: Orange capes do not have any team connections and is considered a free-for-all cape. If any player wears one, he or she runs the risk of being attacked by any cape wearer.

At level 20, players can attack any other player also level 20 or over, but killing another character will result in a "murderer" status, and a reward will be offered for the killer's death. The "murderer" status can be removed by killing monsters. While normally death does have a small chance to result in the loss of items, a murderer has a higher chance to lose items when killed.

Pets

Silkroad Online allows characters to possess pets. There are four types of pets: grey wolf, white wolf, seowon (squirrel) and myowon (monkey). Monkeys, squirrels and white wolves can only be obtained from the official Item Mall. White and grey wolves last forever, but can die and only be resurrected with an item called "Grass of Life", which is sold at the stable for 50,000 gold. Wolves are the only pets that can attack and will become stronger as they level up. Squirrels and monkeys can only help their master by picking up loot automatically, and although their lifespan is only 4 weeks, it can be extended with a revival clock (also bought from the Item Mall).

Item trading

Players can set up stalls to sell and advertise their items. The seller determines the price at which to sell each item, although it is possible for buyers to communicate within the stall window. As NPCs sell a limited selection of items, stalls are a popular way to acquire high level or unusual items.

Trading

One of the three activities is trading, which can be accomplished by bringing 'special goods' from city to city. Special goods must be carried by a tradecamel or horse and cannot be picked up without one. A trader can be attacked by a thief and the hunter is supposed to protect the traders.

Jobs

Players can pick a job after reaching level 20. Merchants carry goods between cities while thieves attempt to rob the merchant and steal the goods. Merchants may hire hunters to protect themselves from thieves. Characters can switch freely between jobs and are not locked into a role. Player kills that are performed in the duty of the role (such as a hunter killing a thief or vice versa) are not considered murders. However, experience points are still lost after each death.

Guilds

High-level players have the option to create guilds, although low-level players have the option to pay an NPC to create a guild. The requirements to create a guild is to be at least level 20 and have the 500,000 gold guild fee. Guilds fight to gain "guild points", which allow more players to join the guild and give other benefits. Guilds can create unions and rivalries with other guilds.

Items

Equipment

Equipment is split into weapons, shields, body protection and accessories.

Weapons: Weapons are classified as swords, spears or bows. The sword class includes swords and blades and the spear class includes spears and glaives. Swords and spears have higher magical damage but blades and glaives have higher physical damage. All sword-class weapons are one-handed. Weapons have a unique ability called "Critical". This attribute determines how often the hit can be considered a "crticial hit", which gives bonus to damage.

Shields: Shields can be equipped if the character uses a one-handed weapon. Blocking is automatic, although there are skills to make shields more effective. Shield have a unique attribute called "Blocking ratio" which determines how often the wearer can block an attack.

Body protection: There are three classes of protection: armour, protector and garment. Armour has the highest physical defence but lowest magical defence. Protectors have equal physical and magical defence, and garments have the highest magical defence but lowest physical defence. Armour and protector pieces can be worn in combination, but garments cannot be worn in combination with any other class. There is a 10% walking speed bonus and 10% reduced mana cost for casting spells for wearing all-protector equipment, and a 20% walking speed bonus and 20% reduced mana cost for casting spells for wearing all garments. There is no bonus for wearing all-armor equipment.

Accessories: In addition to clothing, characters may also wear accessories such as rings, necklaces and earrings. Accessories have abilities called "Phyisical" and "Magical Absorption", which reduce damage taken from physical and magical damage, respectively.

Item classes

An item may be found in one of four classes, all of which have different properties.

Normal: Normal items are the most common type in the game. Normal items will have stats at the lowest end of the range for each category. NPC vendors are limited to selling normal items.

Magical: Magical items have one or two modifiers, such as increasing strength or intelligence. There are also modifiers that effect the item's chance of being upgraded through alchemy.

Seal: Seal items have the statistical equivalent of an item several levels higher. There are three levels of Seal item: Seal of Sun (+15), Seal of Moon (+10) and Seal of Star (+5).

Ethereal: Ethereal items cannot be repaired, but their durability is several times higher than a normal item. Ethereal items are usually four times as durable as repairable ones.

Item Mall

The Item Mall allows a character to buy items (with real money) through the official site. Examples include an experience-enhancing scroll, a pet monkey and decorations for a player's stall.

Masteries and skills

In Silkroad Online, skills are divided between weapon and elemental masteries. Within each mastery, there are many series of skills that can be learnt.

Weapon masteries

Bicheon Swordmanship: sword and blade
Heuksal Spearmanship: spear and glaive (misspelled as "glavie" within the game)
Pacheon Bowmanship: bow

Elemental masteries

Fire: Fire skills add the highest amount of damage to an attack and give the chance to burn an opponent, causing damage over a period of time.

Lightning: Lightning skills adds a medium amount of damage to attacks and can lower the parry ratio of an opponent. Other skills can increase the walking speed of a character.

Ice: Ice skills add a low amount of damage to attacks and have a chance of slowing or freezing an enemy. Other ice skills are used to increase a character's defence.

Force: Force skills are related to healing and various passive abilities.

Game problems and exploits

Like many massively mulitplayer games, SRO has many problems. One of the major problems is the heavy load on the servers. It can sometimes take more than a dozen attempts to successfully login, and lag can be significant.

Random crashes can occur, even as soon as the game has loaded. When the game crashes while a character is in combat, the character will die. The engine may also crash when buying or selling items from a stall.

The official English version of the game is written in a combination of British English and American English (for example, both "defense" and "defence" in the same window). In addition, there are many basic grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes.

External links

Official websites

Unofficial websites

2005 computer and video games | Windows games | Massively multiplayer online role-playing games

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