The Zu Online development team has been busy testing version 1.12.00 over the past month. Most of that time has been spent on the Wind Calamity, the most anticipated content addition slated for release in the update. To overcome the Wind Calamity, players must complete a series of difficult quests, which players have voiced concerns about since it was announced. As a result, the dev team has paid particular attention to the system and worked hard on improving gameplay. The following test log details the team's test latest experiences.

The test began at 9:00 AM EDT (GMT-4) on July 27th and lasted several hours. The characters joining the test were:

eM (Level 241 Summoner). Equipped items: Rank 9 Level 6 Epic item set whose Potential has been activated the furthest, but no item of which has been improved by spars. Equipped pet: Level 241 senior pet equipped with top pet gear.

LemonTree (Level 252 Moonmaiden). Equipped items: Rank 9 Level 5 Epic item set whose Potential has been activated the furthest, but no item of which has been improved by spars. Equipped pet: Level 240 senior pet equipped with top pet gear.

F1 (Level 241 Swordsman). Equipped items: Rank 9 Level 5 Epic item set whose Potential has been activated the furthest, but no item of which has been improved by spars. Equipped pet: Level 180 senior pet equipped with top pet gear.

(Note: The quest chain requires a group consisting of at least two players, but it is intended to be too difficult for a group consisting of only two players. Thus, we assign three characters to test the quests.)

Only Level 180 players who have overcome the Fire Calamity and Thunder Calamity are eligible to challenge the Wind Calamity. Like the other Calamity quests, Wind Calamity quests are very difficult. To begin, players should accept the "Puzzle of Calamity Challenge" quest from Lord Daluo. The objectives of the first few quests of the chain are to gather certain items. It took a while to gather these, since there is no autotrack option available to track the objectives, but the process did help improve our familiarity with the game zones. After completing the gathering quests, we entered Sharpwind Castle to do the major quests in the chain. One notable difficulty there is that all Sharpwind Castle quests should be completed within one hour.

The first challenge in the Sharpwind Castle is to get through the Secret Passage. When entering the Passage, we found the monsters had an impressive combination of high attack power and defense plus the ability to reduce their target's movement speed. Failing to get through the passage after several attempts to pass near the monsters, we concluded they are too tough for players around Level 180. We then lowered the monsters' stats to get through.

The second challenge is to face many Level 999 monsters that have a multi-colored aurora effect at their feet. Anyone who enters an aurora is immediately killed. The only way to pass the second challenge is to find four types of Windy Beads with which players can seal the monsters.

Next we were confronted with the third challenge as we entered Sharpwind Tower, and quickly found an error there. According to the development team's design, the Wind Platforms on the Sharpwind Tower should blow wind regularly in a certain direction so players can get through the platforms when they stop blowing. However, whenever we tried to get through the platforms, we took damage from the wind. We are still attempting to fix this error.

After passing the third challenge, we turned to the last challenge, in which players must defeat a tough boss. The boss was extremely difficult, but we finally managed to defeat it with almost perfect teamwork.

08-12-2009