Wild Terra - The Adventures of Lystral

Wild Terra is a new Open World Survival MMO made by the Russian development studio Juvty Worlds. Currently in Early Access, the game is playable by purchasing an access bundle, ranging from $10 to $100, directly from the developers. Juvty Worlds offered MMO Central the chance to preview the current state of the title, planned for launch on PC/Mac (Windows, Linux and MacOS) by the end of 2015.

Trailer

Gameplay

The MMOC Team was nice enough to give me the Early Access key to get into the game, but knowing the types of games I enjoy I initially wanted to pass it off to someone else. That said, I do focus on indie developers so I thought I would at least try it out so I created a settler by the name of Lystral (one of my go-to character names) and began her life in the open wilds of Wild Terra.

Here I met with my first obstacle. The game starts you out with literally nothing, you are dropped into a wilderness with no options for even customizing your character or hints on what to do first. It’s a true survival game, and I have to say these type of games don’t bring out the best in me – especially since the currently test environment has open PvP, and full loot privileges (to help with balancing – PvE servers will be available on launch).

For those unfamiliar with the survival genre, you will need to craft (or steal/loot) everything you need to survive and thrive in the world. For example, when you start out the first thing you need to do is forage for rocks, and use two rocks to make a stone knife – this knife will then enable you to harvest fur and meat as you kill animals. Collecting deadfall from trees lets you make spears with the timber and go out hunting rabbits. Almost all equipment stems from these premises.

Characters only have three “statistics” – their Health, their Stamina, and their Known Recipes. A campfire will heal you by proximity, and allow you to cook food which will restore Stamina (each action you perform will take Stamina). So a common first objective is to find food and gather the items needed to make a safe housing area with a fence as should you die, the respawn location is either random or at a crafted bed.

Once I had a home base with a bed, by crafting a Dominium territory marker, and lots of wood to make a fence around my own little piece of dirt that I call home, I was all set! The fenced area does allow teams to have permission to enter and able to use community wells, storage, mills and more. It seems like it would be great for guilds, though I have yet to encounter many other players.

Learn from Lystra’s mistake though – the best tip I can give you is to make two of everything, and keep a set in your home so if you die while out and foraging then you will have a spare set of armor and equipment waiting for you back home to assist you with retrieving your fallen goods. I learned this the hard way, right now a pair of bears are camped out on my bodies (yes, bodies – I died three times trying to get my stuff back) and I had no way (yet) of claiming my goods back from those evil bears. I want my stuff back, bears!

I will warn you now, it’s addicting and this is why I normally avoid this style of games! I know that sounds silly, but I get very frustrated when I lose stuff. Though that said, I did enjoy looting homes and grabbing stuff if people left their doors open. I like it less when it’s done to me, though.

There is a RMT Shop where you can buy recipes to make better items, though exploring the land can result in finding random strongboxes that have recipes and/or items in them.

Conclusion

Overall I’m glad I tried Wild Terra and I am enjoying it; however my patience is thin and I really hate losing my stuff. I’m so used to common MMO features like having a teleport or mount that I feel like playing Wild Terra is more difficult. Not just for having those things, but you have to think and prepare your next move. I play MMO games to see the great, beautiful lands in them and to explore. This game gives you a chance to explore but makes it challenging (sometimes punishingly so) along the way.

If something happens, you have real consequences – losing your gear you just crafted, that took you the hides of 20 boars to make. Wild Terra really gave me a sense of accomplishment because you have nothing to start with, so my little house and rickety fence may look cheap, but I put the time and effort into every piece of it – it’s a great feeling that I made it.

Now I need to start over and get all my gear back I lost to the bears that are guarding my body. If they leave I can collect it all, but they seem to like my decaying remains in their desert. I’m stubborn enough to play harder to get my stuff back and kill them next time!

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Heather "gentlestar" Barber

Staff Writer at MMO Central

A proud mother of her little xenomorph, located in Ohio, Heather likes playing MMO's for the sheer fun of it and disdains anything that feels like a second job. You can often find her stopping to admire the scenery, before jumping down the throat of whatever mob she's enjoying decimating next!

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