Rappelz

Rappelz is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The game is developed by the Korean company nFlavor, and published by the Californian company Gala-Net Inc. Although Rappelz is free-to-play, revenue for the game is gained through sale of special items in the "Cash Shop".

Each major installment of the game is referred to as an "Epic", similar to Lineage II's "Chronicles". The current installment is called "Epic 5: Dragonic Age".

Gameplay
The game is set in a medieval fantasy world, dominated by three races: the Deva, who represent light, the Asura, who represent darkness, and the Gaia, humans that possess an affinity with nature.

Development
There are currently several different versions of the game: Korean, Japanese, US (global), French, German, Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Russian. Versions can differ dramatically, for example, the US version added a restrictive logout timer on 22nd Jan 2008 which disables users from logging out for 10 seconds while not in a non-PvP area, such as a town (this feature has been disabled for the time being). Korean and Japanese versions have a similar timer however it only applies when in player-kill mode.

French Version

The French version of Rappelz started its beta on January 30, 2008. It was closed again on February 11, 2008, after which on February 14, 2008 the French Rappelz version went live. The live version opened with server Pyroxia. On March 13, 2008, a second server Kentauros was opened.

German Version

The German version of Rappelz started its beta on January 30, 2008. On February 14, 2008 the German Rappelz version went live. The live version opened with server Horus. On March 13, 2008, a second server Bastet was opened.

Current Pets
The Rappelz Reference Guide lists the pets in order of taming chance, using tiers. As of Epic 4, pets from tiers 1 through 3 are considered Basic, and tier 4 pets are considered Rare. Pet cards for pets from tier 1 can be purchased from NPCs, pet cards for tiers 2 through 4 are drop-only items (though sometimes they do appear in the Cash Shop as bonus items on special packages). tier 1, 2 and 3 are all listed as "basic" on their pet cards, however different drop rates and tame rates may put them into different tiers as shown below.

Tier 1 (Basic):
 * Pantera: A muscular cat-like creature. It focuses on physical attack.
 * Poultry: A red chicken-like creature. It focuses on accurate physical attacks.
 * Tortus: A giant tortoise-like creature. It is a tanking based pet with high defense and health.

Tier 2 ("Common"):
 * Blue Pixie: A small fairy that glows blue. It has cleric-like healing abilities.
 * Orc: A goblin-like creature with a club. It is a very popular pet due to its high attack and defense.
 * Red Pixie: A small fairy that glows red. It has nuking abilities. and has low health but extremely high damage
 * Siren: A beautiful humanoid female. It has abilities to debuff and trap enemies.
 * Skeleton: A skeleton warrior. It has fast physical attacks.
 * Yeti: A white bear-like creature with a mask. It is also a tanking based pet with high defense and health.
 * Wolf: A wolf. A basic creature that specializes in agility and physical attacks.
 * Octopus ( Not on US servers yet) The Octopus is a creature that specializes in evil magic.

Tier 3 ("Uncommon"):
 * Hawkman: A humanoid hawk with a giant hammer. It focuses on physical attack and defense.
 * Salamander: A red bipedal lizard. It focuses on physical and magical attack.
 * Harpy: A humanoid female with wings. It has high level of accuracy.

Tier 4 (Rare):
 * Angel: An angel-like creature with wings. It specializes in in physical defense and healing magic.
 * Kentauros: A centaur equipped with a spear. It specializes in powerful physcial attacks.
 * Gnoll: A humanoid wolf. Gnoll is a creature focused on blocking attacks.
 * Naga (Not on US servers yet): A snake with half humanoid body.

Tier 5 (Rare):


 * Cerberus: A three-headed dog. It focuses on powerful and accurate physical attack ability.


 * Genie (Not on US servers yet): A little genie.

Tier 6 (Unique):
 * White Dragon: A unique creature which specializes in powerful magical attacks and physical defense ability.
 * Mystic Koala: A beautiful koala that increase lucky and crit.Power.

Lydian, Ent, Astarot, Windy Pixie, Forest Pixie were planned to be introduced. The current status of these pets is unknown. The current plans include a Unicorn pet.

Races / Classes and Levels
Each of the three races in Rappelz has three classes: a warrior class, a magician class, and a summoner class whose abilities center around their pets. Summoner classes typically have skills to support their pet as well as skills borrowed from both other classes for their respective race. Similar to Ragnarok Online, characters begin as a basic class with limited skills. There are no gender limitations on classes, but each race has its own classes and skill sets. Players are free to adventure anywhere in the game world regardless of race.

Rappelz features a variety of classes, most of which can be unlocked through attaining a certain character level and job level. Character levels are attained in the traditional way, by defeating mobs and gaining experience points. Besides experience points, defeating mobs also grants the player job points. Job points are required to obtain and level up the character's skills, but also to increase their job level. Most skills require a minimum job level to be unlocked.

As of Epic 4, there are three class categories: starting class, first job class and second job class. After attaining level 10 and job level 10, characters can choose one of the first job specialized classes. At level 50 and job level 40, the second job class can be chosen. For example, the Gaia warrior class, Fighter, can choose between Champion, a melee-oriented battler, or an Archer, who focuses on bow skills. All classes of any race share a single "racial skill" in Epic 4, which grows in power with each class increase. When advancing a character's job class, the job level is reset.

It is also possible to 'overbreed' your character. This means the character is not advanced to a second job class when it reaches level 50, job level 40. Instead, job points are collected to bring the job level up to level 50 as well, before further specializing. Overbreeding gives a character a small bonus to its statistics. Opinions vary on whether overbreeding is worth the amount of time and job points spent.

Deva
The Deva are a light-based race. They also have water- and earth-based skills. They are primarily defense-oriented, focusing on the powers of healing and buffing. Their racial skill is "Minor Healing", which restores HP to the caster.


 * Guide - The Guide is the starting class for the Deva. The basic skills Smite and Minor Healing are learned by this class.
 * Holy Warrior - Holy Warriors are the game's primary tank class. They have the highest natural health and defense of the first jobs. They have various skills to force monsters to attack them instead of other party members (most notably the skill Provoke). In addition, they have multiple debuffing abilities, which are continued in the two advanced job versions of this class.
 * Soldier - The Soldier focuses on the offensive aspect of Holy Warriors. They get additional damage-dealing skills as well as the only two holy warrior skills of non-light element.
 * Knight - The Knight focuses on the defensive aspect of Holy Warriors. Focusing on their prowess with a shield, they have additional skills for provoking enemies and the greatest natural defense in the game.
 * Cleric - The Cleric is the main healer/buffer of Rappelz. They have powerful healing spells as well as strong player buffs. They also have several attack and debuff spells.
 * Priest - Priests expand on the Cleric's partying ability. They get extensions on all heals level cap, as well as many "mass buffs" that can affect a whole party. However, many of these buffs are considered broken and worthless because they do not stack with standard buffs, and are nowhere near as strong.
 * Bishop - The Bishop expands on a cleric's offensive casting ability. They get no new healing spells, and have the max level on some of the Cleric spells raised. They make up for it in several powerful debuffs and disable spells.
 * Breeder - The Breeder is Deva's summoner. Breeders have more defense oriented buffs and focus on raising and healing their creatures; they have limited light based damage skills also.
 * Soul Breeder - The second job class of breeders mainly extends their first job skills further.

Gaia
The Gaia are a neutral human race who generally have mix of defensive and offensive skills. Their skills revolve around manipulating the forces of nature. Unlike the Deva and Asura, they do not have a race-specific element, but they have skills utilizing all four "natural" elements (water, earth, wind, and fire). Their racial skill is "Mental Concentration", which increases their critical attack for a short time.


 * Rogue - The Rogue is the starting class for Gaia. The basic skills Smite and Mental Concentration are learned by this class.
 * Fighter - The Fighter is the warrior class of the Gaia. Fighters focus on damage skills with two-handed axes, dual-wielded axes, or longbows.
 * Champion- The Champion class is the continuation of the melee fighter path. They focus on melee skills.
 * Archer - The Archer is the continuation of the longbow fighter path. They focus on various bow damage skills as well as trapping skills. They also have the unique ability to detect hidden enemies (assassins are currently the only character in the game that can hide).
 * Kahuna - The Kahuna is a melee/caster hybrid class. Their magical attack spells are mostly focused on status effects and often have long re-use times. Their melee damage ability is greater than that of other magicians. They possess a heal-over-time spell as well as several buffs; however, the heal and buff skills are not as powerful as their Cleric counterparts, but are stackable (buffs from Kahunas and Clerics are able to be in effect simultaneously).
 * Battle Kahuna - The Battle Kahuna furthers the Kahuna's melee and damage abilities. They have additional attack skills as well as higher levels of passive attack skills (their base damage is higher).
 * Druid - The Druid focuses on the support aspect of the Kahuna class. They have more spells for disabling opponents as well as greater healing ability.
 * Spell Singer - The Spell Singer is the Gaia pet class. The Spell Singer focuses on increasing the abilities of both the pet and the player, with the summoner itself becoming considerably formidable at melee upon learning to dual wield one-handed axes. It is the only class in the game which lacks a self healing ability but it can heal its pet.
 * Evoker - The Evoker furthers the Spell Singer's abilities.

Asura
The Asura are the dark-element race of Rappelz. They also possess fire- and wind-based skills. They are primarily an offense-oriented race. They have lower health and defense than the other two races, but they also have greater evasion. Their racial skill is "Deep Evasion", which increases their evasive ability for a short time.


 * Stepper - The Stepper is the starting class for the Asura. The basic skills Smite and Deep Evasion are learned by this class.
 * Strider - The Strider is an assassin-like class that uses high evasion and attack speed, hitting fast but not particularly strong. They can specialize in blades (swords or dirks) or crossbow.
 * Assassin - The Assassin specializes in twin dirks or swords, and have a large range of offensive melee skills and stealth skills to hide from their enemies.
 * Shadow Hunter - The Shadow Hunter is the second job class of Striders which specializes in crossbows. They have many ranged skills and debuffing abilities.
 * Dark Magician - The Dark Magician uses spells that drain and weaken the enemy. They have many offensive spells and debuffs.
 * Chaos Magician - The Chaos Magician is the second job class of Dark Magicians which concentrates on high damage spells, but has a low defense against physical attacks.
 * Warlock - The Warlock is the second job class which concentrates more on debuffs and curse magic. This makes them more party-orientated because they have less attack power on their own than the Chaos Magician.
 * Sorcerer - The Sorcerer focuses on offense and absolute control of their pets. Sorcerers can exchange HP with their pets and leech their pets' strength.
 * Battle Summoner - The Battle Summoner is an extension of the sorcerer. They have offensive potential in both melee and magic, and more offensive buffs for their pets.