Monsters

After you look at these monsters, you may wonder “how did these creatures get created?” or “why choose these monsters?” and the answer to those questions will have to be (for now), “we can’t tell you that yet.” The reason we can’t tell you is that it has a lot to do with the backstory and fiction for the game…which we are not releasing still for quite some time because we want to keep it as a surprise.

But trust us, there *is* a backstory that explains our madness. wink

These are some monsters from the first areas you’ll encounter within the game.

• Fluff: It doesn’t seem to matter how often you harvest these cute little critters for their cotton fluff, they just seem to appear again from nowhere, like dust bunnies under a bed.

• Garlic: This “stinking rose” has a tendency to belch excessively on anything that startles or annoys it.

• Alarmskeeter: Combining an alarm clock with a mosquito left the world with a critter that possesses the two most annoying sounds in the universe. The Alarmskeeter uses its highly irritating alarms and buzzes to aggravate a target’s inner ear and drive it mad.

• Laceback Bootsnake: Yes…this creature seems to have once been a rubber boot. And yes…it seems to now be a snake. But it’s NOT “a snake in my boot”…so don’t say that.

• Clutch: It used to be a lady’s handbag, but the handles became wings and now it flaps about like a bat. Never touch a lady’s clutch. It’s just not polite. And it bites.

• OMG: The OMG has all the sympathetic, likeable qualities of a hungry shark. It uses its tail like a whip and it’s a tough cookie, besides. A nasty bit of work, they are.

NPCs

Here are a few details on some of the NPCs you’ll encounter right after you start the game.

• Rancher Bill: Bill runs a farm and ranch to the west and south of Barton Town. He’s been here for years and has quite the extended family working the ranch along with him.

• Purvis: The spectacularly dense, but amazingly strong son of Rancher Bill. Purvis’s hobbies include carrying cows for distance (he puts them over his shoulders like a yoke) and driving fence posts for speed (he holds them still with one hand while he drives the post into the ground with his other fist).

The Conductor Family: There was once a train engineer with a very happy wife and a tremendous number of sons and daughters. The mother didn’t have a very creative imagination and named all the children with rhyming names. Years later, the engineer ended up running the entire Barton Railway and eventually his kids took over the family business. They’re all nice folks, but keeping them separate in your head can be quite the chore.

Area Screenshots

Click on thumbnails for larger views.

Battle Rings

What are they?
Firstly, Gaians have three fingers and a thumb on each hand. Therefore, a Gaian can wear up to eight rings at any one time (four on each hand).

Each Battle Ring is, essentially, a skill for your character. (For example, you might get a Ring that lets you throw fireballs at range, or turn invisible, or get faster, or project a force field, or…well…almost anything.)

So, you can wield up to eight skills at any one time. Some skills are passive (always on) and some require activation (like when you attack a monster).

You can only change your rings when you are within a “Moonfield” (the name of that object might change, but that’s the name for now). There are fictional reasons for why you can only change Rings in a Moonfield, but let’s avoid fiction for the moment. In a nutshell, what this means is that you can’t just swap out your “skills” at any moment, but it’s still pretty easy to customize your character to fit any group you want to join…depending on the number and quality of Battle Rings you possess.

Yes…there *are* mechanics in place that will tend to encourage folks to try out “sets” of powers and possibly even a few penalties that lessen the power of your abilities if you try to be too much of a “jack of all trades”. But we’ll go into those details in a future info release.

How do you get Battle Rings?
The obvious answer is…from loot. When you defeat opponents, they will drop treasure items ("loot") that usually do NOT contain Battle Rings, but sometimes you'll get lucky.

When you fight against powerful opponents ("Bosses") as well as completing major quests you may also be rewarded with new Battle Rings.

Players can trade rings to each other, and the Marketplace is always an option, but the in-game stores (like "Barton's Boutique") will not buy or sell Battle Rings.

How many can you possess?
As many as you desire. (Well…okay…as many as you can stick into your Ring inventory and in your Storage on the main site. In other words, many…but not an infinite amount.)

How much are they worth?
That’s up to you. Battle Rings will be fairly rare loot drops, but there will be enough of them that you will eventually find yourself with a surplus of rings that you’re not interested in ranking up. Watch the Marketplace and figure out what those rings are selling for…and then sell them for around that much, if you so desire.

How do you get better with them?
You accumulate experience with each individual ring as you use it. Thus, we track the “Rage XP” that you’ve accumulated with a Battle Ring to determine the level of experience, or “Rage Rank” that you have with that ring.

Once you get a higher Rage Rank (RR), you can activate that ability at a higher effect level, which can be extremely advantageous to you. You start at RR1 with a ring, and can work your way up to RR4 at the maximum.

Only Four Rage Ranks? That Doesn’t Seem Like Much Advancement Potential!
Fear not! Rings can be upgraded by infusing special items found throughout the world into them. We’ll discuss “upgrades” in a future info release, but you can continuously power up your Rings over time as your character matures and becomes more seasoned through adventuring.

What is Ring Fu?
Quite simply, “Ring Fu” is a total of all the Rage XP that you have earned on every Ring that you have ever used. Ring Fu is used for several things, but in general, it’s a quick way of seeing how seasoned you are when compared to other characters. It’s also used to determine when you are veteran enough to use high-quality rings, and a few other minor things.

I have a MILLION other Questions? Can I ask them now?
Yes, you can. We have some information reserved for future info installments, but please ask your questions in the (Gaia Online MMO “Battle”) forum. (Brand new!)

We’ll browse through that forum regularly and answer questions. Don’t be too put off by how often we have to say things like “We’ll be announcing that later on”, but we’ll try to get you as much information as we can in the meantime.

And if you have suggestions, then by all means, lay them on us! We love ideas!