TERA Online Enhancement Crystals Basics Guide

TERA Online Enhancement Crystals Basics Guide

What is a Crystal?

Crystals are enhancement items that can be attached to equipment. Considered consumables, crystals can be destroyed randomly when characters die, or while unequipping them. Part of TERA’s in-depth customization, crystals allow the player to emphasize the strengths of their class and preferred play-style or overcome the limitations of their class or situation.

Types of Crystals

Crystals are divided into two categories: armor and weapons. Weapon crystals (red) primarily offer offensive enhancements, while armor crystals (blue) provide support or defense. Crystals come in various degrees of rarity, with rarer crystals offering more powerful effects. As players increase in level, they will discover more cuts of crystals offering even more powerful versions of effects they’ve already seen. Crystals possess diverse features and may come into play under different conditions. Typical basic crystals simply increase HP or MP, but players will quickly find advantages in the diverse effects and conditional activations available.

Conditional Activation

Some crystal effects only trigger under certain circumstances, but offer a bigger bonus. Basic movement crystals only enhance movement speed when out of combat. Others crystals may only activate due to knock-down, while fighting an enraged enemy, or when attacking the enemy from behind.

Knocked-down activations occur when a character (monster or PC) is knocked down due to a skill or a basic attack. Knocked-down characters are usually more vulnerable to their enemies’ attacks. Some crystals offer bonuses when the PC knocks down the enemy and others activate when the PC is knocked down.

Attack from behind effects enhance the player’s attack power when attacking enemies from behind.

Enraged monsters have gone berserk. Some monsters, after being in prolonged combat, show signs of heightened aggression. Their attack and movement speed increases, as does their damage. Enraged monsters turn red, warning the player to take effective countering measures such as blocking or dodging. Some crystals also trigger additional defenses when an enemy is enraged.

Monster Size

TERA’s monsters come in three sizes: small minion-like monsters, regular monsters, and formidable boss monsters. Certain crystals are effective only against a specific size of monster. By combining various crystals, players can mix and match the effects for combat in a location or situation. Below are a couple sample crystal combinations designed for use against different sized monsters:

Attacking Groups of Small Monsters

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Domineering Rhomb
Increased damage when attacking small monsters.

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Squelching Rhomb
Increased critical damage when attacking small monsters.

Defending Against a Boss

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Dauntless Cabochon
Chance to create a protective shield when knocked down by a boss monster.

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Acrimonious Cabochon
Increased critical damage when attacking boss monsters.

Crystals with Class

Below you’ll find examples of how various crystals can be utilized on each class.

Warrior

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Warding Hexage
Chance to create a protective shield when knocked-down. The protective shield appears as a faint red sphere surrounding the character and lets you ignore a certain amount of the enemy’s damage.

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Fleetfoot Hexage
Increases movement speed even while in combat.

Warriors tank by gaining the enemy’s attention and dodging opponents with fast moves and faster attacks. Although skilled at evading incoming blows, warriors wear leather armor, which doesn’t mitigate damage as much as heavier armor. The crystals Warding Hexage and Fleetfoot Hexage both enhance this tanking style.

Although warriors frequently use defensive skills such as Evasive Roll and Death From Above, they also need good movement speed in combat in order to position themselves for every advantage possible. Fleetfoot Hexage crystals don’t offer quite as much speed enhancement as the Swift Hexage crystals. However, Swift Hexage only increases the warrior’s out-of-combat movement.

The Warding Hexage’s ability to let a player ignore damage when their dodge skills aren’t available makes it a great choice for warriors. The warrior’s lower defenses make the leather-wearing tank more vulnerable to the enemy when knocked down. In that situation, the protective shield may protect the warrior from enemy attacks long enough to return to combat.

Lancer

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Inspirational Rhomb
Chance of a period of HP regeneration when knocked-down. Crystals that regenerate HP even 50% of the time are very useful.

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Vigorous Rhomb
Constant HP regeneration. HP regeneration is especially useful for the metal-armored lancer.

Lancers hold enemy aggro with skills like Challenging Shout and defend against incoming attacks with a physical shield. The lancer’s heavy metal armor and well-positioned shield prevent the PC from taking too much damage. Lancers are less mobile than warriors, so they rely more on healing.

Because of the lancer’s damage mitigation while blocking, recovering 100 HP is more effective for a lancer than on any other class. In combat, 100 HP on a lancer will last much longer than 100 HP on a mystic, priest, or sorcerer. Continuously regenerating HP while in combat helps the lancer to avoid a crisis of HP.

Slayer

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Savage Cabochon
Increased critical damage when attacking from behind. There’s a big difference between a critical hit from the front and one from behind.

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Triumphant Cabochon
Power increase when landing a critical hit.

Slayers deal wide area attacks, fighting in melee range with the tanks. By standing toe-to-toe with the enemy, it’s easy for the slayer to slip around and get behind an enemy. In a group, slayers should find it easy to continuously position themselves for rear attacks. Savage Cabochons accentuate the slayer’s effectiveness when attacking from behind.

The chance of dealing critical hits already increases when attacking monsters from behind, and when combined with crystals that increase critical damage, the backstabbing slayer can consistently deal massive hits. Pairing up with crystals that activate upon landing criticals adds another layer to the slayer’s damage cake.

Berserker

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Defiant Hexage
Increased damage when HP is below 50%.

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Persistent Hexage
Increased critical damage when HP is below 50%. Damage increase when low on health affects all attacks. Almost makes you not want to get healed!

Berserkers have abilities which can substitute HP for MP for various combat effects. This intentional “lowering” of their HP can quickly move them into the range where Defiant and Persistent Hexage crystals are most effective.

Combining high damage attacks with the high defense of heavy armors, against most opponents the berserker can gain more benefit than other melee classes from this combo–almost to the point where they prefer not to be healed in combat!

Archer

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Cruel Rhomb
Damage increase when attacking a knocked-down target. The archer can supply a large amount of burst damage to a pinned-down or stunned enemy.

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Venomous Rhomb
Strong poison effect when you land a successful critical hit on a knocked-down target.

Archers attack enemies near or far with a continuous stream of damage. They have several traps that let them slow or stun an enemy, making them susceptible to knock-down. So when an enemy is knocked down, these crystals can give the archer the chance to immediately capitalize on the situation and pile on extra damage.

The archer’s fast attack speed means more hits connect while an enemy is down, and therefore a higher chance to critically hit an enemy during that time. Archers profit from that advantage more than other classes, and with the Venomous Rhomb crystal, gain a damage-over-time poison effect.

Sorcerer

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Cunning Cabochon
Increases maximum MP.

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Glistening Cabochon
MP regeneration when landing a critical hit from behind the enemy.

Sorcerers rely on MP more than any other class to deal their highly explosive damage. One strategy to deal with the constant consumption of MP is to use continuous MP regeneration. Another strategy useful to sorcerers is to increase their initial maximum MP to last them through the battle and gain MP back through items or skills like Mana Infusion when not it combat.

Long cast times of the sorcerer’s powerhouse skills means that sorcerers usually see fewer critical hits in a set time than other classes, but by using the short-ranged skill Flame Pillar a sorcerer will see multiple hits to the enemy and more criticals. The Glistening Cabochon crystal paired with Flame Pillar offers the sorcerer another way to gain back precious MP.

Priest

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Infused Hexage
Continuous MP regeneration.

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Warding Hexage
Chance to create a protective shield when knocked-down. The protective shield appears as a faint red sphere surrounding the character and lets you ignore a certain amount of the enemy’s damage.

The priest’s offensive skills are relatively inexpensive in terms of MP. During combat, the priest won’t consume much MP until healing is required; but when healing is needed, it’s imperative to have a lot of MP at the ready. MP regeneration crystals like Infused Hexage keep the priest’s MP topped off.

Cloth armor doesn’t offer a lot of protection in combat, and priests have fast self-heals for normal combat situations. But if a priest gets knocked down, they can’t cast and become very vulnerable. The protective shield of the Warding Hexage offers the priest a chance to survive the crisis.

Mystic

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Infused Hexage
Continuous MP regeneration. Mystics need all the MP they can get!

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Resolute Hexage
Decreased damage received when HP is less than 50%.

Mystics are probably the most versatile of the TERA classes. They can summon creatures to help them in combat, and channel auras for beneficial effects for themselves and party members. These skills either consume significant amounts of MP up front, or continuously deplete MP, so mystics must ensure they have MP at the ready. The Infused Hexage crystal provides a vital regeneration of MP both in and out of combat.

The cloth robes of the mystic don’t mitigate damage well. With adequate MP available, mystics can easily heal themselves. However, if they take a lot of damage when their MP is low, they may find themselves facing a crisis. The Resolute Hexage crystal offers damage mitigation that one might normally experience wearing heavier armor.

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