Ether Saga is a 3D Chinese MMORPG developed by Perfect World Inc., with anime-style cartoony graphics. It features many unique features and systems that makes the game one of a kind. Once inside the game world, players can earn and spend money to upgrade a large variety of items to enhance their game play experience.
There are four races in this game Ren, Shenzu, Yaoh, and Mogui with eight classes, each race share the similar class (with the exception of Mogui, who have magic in one class and melee in another). The race begins with a pet which helps the player in his fight. After level 15, players can freely select and capture many creatures to become their pet. The power of selecting and raising pets add a new twist to the game.
Ether Saga is heavily influenced by the Chinese literature Journey to the West. In fact, it appears as though the player characters follows some part of the aftermath of the novel. In the previous version, Ether Saga Online, the plot followed in between the events of Journey to the West.
An expansion renamed the game from Ether Saga Online to Ether Saga Odyssey, which introduced the Mogui class, the Dream World, and Future Finale worlds. It also renamed the elemental system into a loose translated version from their original name (Oora, Widu, Unda, Pyra, Erda) to their new names (Ferus, Flora, Aquan, Pyros, Terra) respectively.
The current level cap is at 135.
This game contains examples of:
- Addressing the Player: All pets will say this before every conversation
- Female Pet: Savior/Sire/Sage/My Friend/Noble [char name]
- Male Pet: Boss/My Leige/My Lord/Glorius [char name]
- An Adventurer Is You
- The Yaoh Race's goal is to find a Sacred Ark that was discovered missing during the Peach Yard Banquet. Without this vessel the sacred knowledge cannot be brought to the Middle Kingdom.
- The Ren race must collect fragments of the Divine Chalice which were scattered about the world when a clumsy official dropped it.
- The Shenzu Race have been instructed to capture a certain pig demon who is actually the reincarnation of a powerful yet unruly heavenly general.
- The Mogui Race are instructed to show the power of their race to the world, something similar to that of a mission.
- Anti Poop-Socking: The pet may remind you to get off of your computer to stretch here and there, but doesn't interfere with gameplay.
- Played unusually with dungeons. If you are at the recommended level of a dungeon, you can take as many maps as you want from Mapkeeper Ming to go into it (they dissapear at midnight). However, if you are past the recommended level, you are only given 3 maps a day for that dungeon.
- Played straight with level 90+ dungeons, as you are limited to 1-10 maps a day, depending on the dungeon.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: Appears to be the behavior of any fiece pet
- Lampshaded by them as well, as one of their conversations include, "Attack! Attack! Atttack Attack Attack!"
- Apathetic Guards: Guards do not move a muscle whenever a monster appears around them.
- However, this is averted when they suddenly rush towards Player Killers (people with infamy), dealing 19,990 damage per hit while ignoring defense. And they can crit. A lot.
- Amazing Technicolor World: There are some spots throughout the open world of ESO that are quite beautiful to say the least. Generally they can be found around water-based locations. Nighttime emphasizes on the beauty of it all, too.
- Badass Adorable: The Demonix Pets Panda Cub, Redridge Hatchling, and Void Nestling. Although they are very cute, they can be melded with other pets to get the highest growth rate of any pet.
- Little Miss Badass: The Void Nestling and her next evolution count as well
- Blatant Lies: Pet: "[Player Title], look, I put 100 dollars under your keyboard, hee-hee."
- Blue Boy, Pink Girl: The Hoppsy/Floppsy bunny pet has two versions. The pink version (Floppsy) is always female while the blue one (Hoppsy) is always male.
- Averted by hellions, where in early levels males wear purple while females wear a dark-blue armor
- Bodyguard Crush: May feel like this between the playable character and pet. Though only exists as sub-text.
- Humanoid pets have a slightly higher chance of invoking context like this than other pet species.
- Carnivore Confusion: Some pets, inspite of directly being animals, do not exactly follow the food web well. For example, you have rabbits that eat shrimp meat as snack, a spider that eats boiled eggs, and a tiger that eats Rice cakes.
- A sheep can eat any meat from monster drops, including lamb leg.
- Cast from Hit Points: The Hellion class has a skill that sacrifices some HP to increase rage.
- Passionate personality pets can use a certain skill to heal the player for a crap ton of HP for level 60, though it reduces their HP to one for a limited time.
- Cat Girl: Tomero Gilgunner and Clawpus Cobrahead
- The Clawpus Cobrahead is a girl with tiger claws that replace her hands and feet with a cobra in her hair.
- Critical Existence Failure: Played straight with players, but subverted by pets, in which they will talk much more when their HP is low, normally talking about how they are dying.
- Cute Monster Girl: Occurs in almost every race. Clawpus Cobrahead, Lamian Huntress, and Korrigan Champion (fox-humanoid classified as a haunten) are some of the more popular ones.
- Deadpan Snarker: Pets become this when they're low on belly/energy (food).
- If you give a pet an MP potion, this text appears: "[player title], You care for me so much that you even give me potions that have no effect on me..."
- Defeat Means Friendship: In order to capture the majority of pets, their HP has to be weaken to a certain point. The icon next to their name should start blinking, which should enable their chance to be caught.
- They go from trying to kill you in the wild to devoting thier lives to save you as a pet. What.
- Elemental Powers
- Flora resembles grass, and reduces terra damage
- Pyros resembles fire, and reduces ferus damage
- Aquan resembles water, and reduces pyros damage
- Ferus resembles lightning, and reduces flora damage
- Terra resembles earth, and reduces aquan damage
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors : This system is based more on what consumes what rather than elements. In a way, it just a complex food chain
- Florax are strong against Haunten. They are weak against Beastkin. Justified in that plant life take over the dead, yet are eaten by animals.
- Aerax are strong against Vena. They are weak against Scalen. Justified in that Flying animals eat insects and are normally eaten by reptiles.
- Elementa are strong against Mechen. They are weak against Vena.
- Beastkin are strong against Florax. They are weak against Humanoid. Justified in that animals eat plants, but are hunted by people
- Humanoid are strong against Beastkin. They are weak against Haunten. Justified in that humans hunt beats, but are scared of the dead.
- Haunten are strong against Humanoid. They are weak against Florax. Justified in that humans fear the dead, but plant life grow over them
- Scalen are strong against Aerax. They are weak against Mechen.
- Vena are strong against Elementa. They are weak against Aerax. Justified in that bugs can adapt to various temperatures, but are prone to be eaten by flying animals
- Demonix are Jack of All Trades. They are not weak against any pet type, but they aren't strong against any other pet type either.
- Enemy Chatter: Seen in the Pokari Region with all enemies, although they only seem to talk when they are under attack.
- Occurs more often in dungeons in which monsters actually call for backup if not killed in time.
- Averted with every other monster outside Gaap land region. Why were they not programmed to talk even though they still drop their signature snack?
- Evolving Attack: The Pet's natural skill will level on its own if the lightbulb is lit.
- However, there is a bug in which the skill will stop leveling after a certain amount of levels. The bug was never fixed since the cash shop item Pink Lotus can fix it.
- Extreme Omnivore: Pets can eat foods from monsters, consisting of watermelons, meat, mechanical parts, industry oil, body parts, etc...
- They can also eat common drops like dusts, ethrelics, item shop goodies, weapons, armor...
- First Town: All users start in Pokari, though it is not the race's home town. Pokari is the ONLY town that has pet melding, crafting tools, and daily events. As a result, many players have their return area in Pokari, regardless if the quests reqire traveling 2 maps.
- Fusion Dance: You can fuse with your pet by clicking on the paw print button. This will increase your stats, allow you to take 1/2 damage (as pet takes some damage from enemies that hit you), and in a few cases, transform you into the pet.
- Pets can be melded together to increase stats growth of the host pet. To do this, you will need two pets that are level 30, gold, and spirit corresponding to their level (2400 x level [in tens]/ 10). Success will increase stats growths depending on support pet, though failure will waste spirit and consume the support pet. In previous versions, this also caused the host pet to die, waiting 3 minutes in order to revive it, but has since been removed.
- The first meld is guaranteed to succeed and has the best affect on stats growth if the support pet has higher stats than host pet.
- The second meld has a 83% chance of success. If it succeeds, there is a 50% chance that the host pet will take on supporting pet's appearance.
- The third meld onwards have a decrease in success and now possible to mutate the hot pet.
- When mutation occurs, your pet takes on an appearance far different from the pets you melded with. This may be a necessary process in order to get pets that are noncollectable through other methods.
- There are charms that modify what the outcome of a success will be, plus increasing it as well.
- Pets can be melded together to increase stats growth of the host pet. To do this, you will need two pets that are level 30, gold, and spirit corresponding to their level (2400 x level [in tens]/ 10). Success will increase stats growths depending on support pet, though failure will waste spirit and consume the support pet. In previous versions, this also caused the host pet to die, waiting 3 minutes in order to revive it, but has since been removed.
- Get on the Boat: Eventually, players will HAVE to fly in order to continue with main quest. So those that are trying to complete the game without flying? Find another game.
- Gonna Need More X: Pets want more skill slots. They always want more, even when they have up to eight (max) skill slots.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: Althought not really needed, the developers said that it is possible to obtain every single monster in the game as a pet. Though to hold them all, you will need a lot of red banded yarn for inventory space...
- Improbable Weapon User: Some monsters will use really wierd weapons to take you out. The Tomero Gilgunner is the best example, as she uses a living fish gun to shoot players.
- In-Universe Game Clock
- Interspecies Romance: Players can envoke this with each other if they play as different races and using various interactions. They can even be embraced (or carried like a newly wed),
even with the same gender- Hinted to be a possible relationship between the pet and player character, even when both types are the same gender.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Appears in subtext
- Leopard Assassin: I'M BEING STEALTHY
- It Has Been an Honor: Keep the HP of your pet low, but feed it properly to get similar dialogue from your pet. Makes you feel a little sorry for not healing your pet.
- Jack of All Trades: The Demonix race, who's attack power is not influenced by any other monster race.
- Also normal type pets, that have an all around growth rate rather than 1 or two specific growth rates. They are the worst type of pets since they do not have many skill options.
- Kaizo Trap: When you kill a boss, everything in the instance despawns (especially those traps that deal fixed damage), and you win the dungeon. However, when running 12 room dungeons, you can kill the boss, but the traps will respawn at their same rate. It takes 3 minutes to leave this dungeon. Therefore, those that never run 12 room dungeons will likely suffer from this in their first time.
- Killer Teddy Bear: The Tough Teddy monster in the Lost World is this. Appears harmless until it starts attacking you, charging at you in great speed and unleashing an angry face mixed with sharp, retractable claws. Did I mention that it could also be captured as a pet?
- Kitsune: The Feline Champion
- Lady Land: The Amaz region, consisting of only female NPCs. Even the monsters surrounding the city are all female.
- Lethal Lava Land: Averted completly in the Dizzet Region. One can run around in the lava and kill enemies without feeling the effects of lava at all.
- Level Drain: Through the use of certain Jades, it is possible to decrease the level requirement of some armor so that you can equip it earlier.
- Level Grinding: Present in levels 75-90, in which exp rates go up significantly, from reaching a few million to hundred millions in level 80.
- This can be averted by going into the Twisted Moon dungeon and buying a Twisted Moon key package to get a lot of exp for clearing dungeon.
- Limited Move Arsenal: When captured, pets will only have 2-3 available skills slots for moves to learn. If one is not careful, one slot will be used to host the pet's signature skill.
- This can be averted by buying Smart Candy at the cash shop.
- Players may fall into this too on some occasion. In spite of a various amount of ethyr skills possible to learn, a class can only equip 4 ethyr skills at a time out of a possible 36.
- Luck-Based Mission:
- Training quests that involve Justice Calls (dungeons) require you to collect drops from bosses. However, said drops do not appear very often and when you reach 5 levels above the dungeon recommendation, the drop rate decreases, making it impossible to complete that quest.
- Trying to level pet skills that the trainer do not sell also counts, as drop rates for those skills are less that 0.1% (even further than that).
- Future updates modified this so that the boss drops are tradable between players.
- Magikarp Power: Sheep have this potential. They have the least stats growth out of all pets, but when melded enough times (9), allows one pet to have maxed out stats
- Mon: Makes up one of the main aspects of the game. Although most Chinese MMORPGs contain some type of pet system
- Mook Promotion: The Rattero bandit starts as a common enemy in the first few areas of the game, but then you see him the Ole region at level 102, running around in a giant mech suit called the A-R Android. He also becomes one of the essential pets for melding super pets.
- Monster Allies: Almost all monsters have the potential to fight on your side, just so as long as you catch them first.
- Monster Compendium: You can gather the monster card drop from a monster to get some information off of it. Unforunately, the general drop rate of said cards are 0.01%, and if you level past four levels above monster level, the drop rate decreases...
- Ms. Fanservice: A few humanoid-like pets might be like this. The Knocknee Assasin follow the Zettai Ryouiki. The Clawpus Cobrahead also has minimal clothing, using a few bones as a bra and wearing a skirt that doesn't even cover her underwear well...
- An unusual pet that follows this is Lady Whiteskull. While she is more adult-like in appearance when compared to the others, she is a Haunten species.
- Non-Combat EXP: In the form of two dailies, in which players will have to wait 1-2 hours to receive a fixed amount of EXP based on level
- No Fourth Wall: In subtext, pets may ignore the wall completely and might talk to the player about real life references in some occasions.
- Oblivious to Love: It can be assumed this is the player's relationship with their pets/sidekick.
- Pet: My Liege/Savior, I love you, but you never notice me!
- Players may not be so oblivious, as once a pet reaches level 30, a heart appears next to their gender. Hover your mouse over it and it says, "This is a season of love..."
- One-Man Party: The Mogui Race. Hellions can act as tanks and as AoE damage dealers. One skill also allows strong HP recovery rate for a couple of seconds.
- Especially the Maven Race. Good attack power, decent DEF and healing ablilites? Yes please!
- Perverse Puppet: The Zephyr Dolls, who hangs around outside of pokari, though they are more cute than crazy and insane
- The Grudge Doll follows this trope more seriously. It doesn't help that they are a haunten species, either.
- Player Killing: Seperated in channels labeled PvE and PvP. Players are protected from all player killers until level 90, in which safe zones from PK are only found in cities.
- Players who want to kill (or be killed?) by other players before this level breach can have the option to disable the PvP Protection.
- For every player killed (even in alliance wars), you gain infamy. Gaining 5+ infamy causes decrease in movement speed and also causes your MP and vigor to take damage, too. Dying with infamy also has a chance of having you drop unbound equipment.
- Scenery Porn: Although traveling the lands of Ether Saga can take a long time, the scenery makes up for it when you can explore pratically any surface, leading to several moments when the sun/moon light is at that right angle...
- This is also one of the game's selling point, as there is a complete camera control option (f9) that allows you to take screen caps at any angle/depth.
- Scratch Damage: If enemies are not missing the attack, they are doing 1 damage to you at least.
- Since you cannot regenerate HP/MP during battle, going afk for several hours while under attack may cause the player to die from several ones. As a result, one should never go afk in an aggro area.
- Some monsters will always deal a fixed damage rate (50-200), regardless of defense or resistance.
- This is why at least some HP pots should be equipped when using possesor (in-game botting). Since they do not know when to stop, they will keep going until you die
- Shoutout : The game, being heavily influenced by the Journey to the West, will of course have several quests relating to this novel.
- Further envoked as players level, they begin to travel to the west, as well.
- Pet Skill Howling Wind Description: The Golden Wind. Spoken of in tales of yore, Could it be that now is the time for it to return?
- Moonhare Taunt: I am punishing you in the name of the moon.
- Three pigs that act as elite enemies have designs from popular animes and video games
- The yellow pig has a striking resemblance of a super saiyan
- The red pig wears the costume of Akuma
- The Old Item agent in Pokari alows you to get Pilot suits that make you look like you were a pilot of a certain murderous robot...
- Bonus points in that the female set makes you look like Rei Ayanami.
- Smash Mook: In the world map, you will see mini-doors throughout the zones. They will commonly be open mini-dungeons with no way to clear them, but the enemies inside them do far more damage than their dungeon counterparts that most people avoid them.
- The Leafan Cave in the Dizzet Region have enemies with attack power of 5.7k and 120 accuracy. This means that you will need 5.7K defense and 120 resilience in order to avoid taking complete damage from these beasts.
- Squishy Wizard: Conjurers, Mystiques, and Maven Race.
- Can be averted by placing points in DEF and HP (optional).
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: You and your pet will never drown in water. Heck, you could even fight enemies in the water.
- Tech Points: Spirit used for leveling skills, and Valor for leveling job change skills.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Lampshaded in the transformation achievements between the Knocknee Assasin and Potbelly Wanderer.
- Potbelly Wanderer: I am the Knockknee Assasin's husband!
- Knockknee Assasin: I am the Potbelly Wanderer's wife!
- Use Your Head: One of the basic attack animation for the Leopard Assassin,even though he has daggers he can use
- Useless Useful Spell: Damage over time skills work wonders against most enemies. Bosses completely ignore these skills and their effect.
- Video Game Caring Potential: You can protect your pet from the horror of other monsters, as they have less defense than you. They may even dote on you for doing so!
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Feed them stuff they can't eat, make them attack bosses first, or just starve them and not give them any food for belly. Enjoy the reactions to all of these situations, You Monster!.
- They respawn in 3 minutes if they die, so people may take advantage of this in dungeons to make them activate traps.
- Of course, when they respawn, they have much less belly,so their attack stats are not very helpful anymore... unless you fed them, of course.
- Video Game Flight: Granted quite early in the game in a form of a cloud. Costs about 4 MP per second to use, but the owner can control it to go almost anywhere without getting harmed. Combat is not available for these.
- Some transformations grant flight as well, but cost 20 MP per second to use. Combat is possible, but attack power is reduced in flight, probably to avoid abuse of effortless grinding in the air and attacking other players from the sky.
- Winged Humanoid: The Cocoon Cutie monster, which is practically a human woman with butterfly wings.
