Zenith: The Last City is finally here and available now! Zenith is a cross-platform MMORPG for VR platforms including Oculus Quest, PC VR and PSVR. As stated on the official Discord for the game: “Zenith is set in a futuristic fantasy world featuring both fantasy and cyberpunk elements” and is already creating a buzz as a unique experience for VR gamers.
If you’re looking to get ready in Zenith and on the path to max level, read on for our short guide showing you everything you need to know to get started. You can also check out the video below from ZStormGames with an extensive walkthrough guide or follow @ZenithMMO and join their discord.
Who Are You?
The first thing you will do in Zenith before playing is join a “Shard”- a server. Try to pick one that’s in your region for the best experience. You can get an idea of how full each Shard is by looking at the “low”, “medium” and “high” to the right of the name. One thing to note: the first couple of days of almost any MMO, servers are rapidly scaling up and optimizing to demands. It’s useful to keep an eye on Zenith’s Discord or Twitter for updates about server statuses, etc.
Now to get started in the game and create your character. You can play around with some customizable details until you’re happy with your basic appearance before it’s time to look into your character build. Character customization is fairly limited at the moment to facial types, skin colors, eye colors, hair, etc., but Ramen VR has stated that they’ll be adding a lot more unique ways to customize characters soon.
You can then choose between two classes: blade master or mage. Essentially, you’re deciding if you want an up-close melee combat style with dual blades, or if you’d prefer a ranged style using magic. Within those two classes there are three roles to choose from: tank, DPS or Support.
- Tank is used to take the heat for the party
- DPS is made to dish out the most damage per second
- Support is there to keep everyone healthy when times get tough
Finding the right class and role for yourself will be a big factor in how you play the game so definitely think about what would suit you best to get you going.
Keep in mind though that you can change subclasses at any time, you just have to wait 60 seconds before swapping again. Each subclass maxes out at 40 at the time of this guide’s publishing, but that could change in the future. Also, leveling up your lower classes is quicker as you get extra experience to catch them to your highest level class.
Important Settings
Once you’re in, it’s definitely worth taking a look at the different settings you can play around with as there are a lot of them and each player will definitely have their own preferences.
First, really investigate the comfort settings. If you’re prone to motion sickness, perhaps change to angle turns rather than smooth motion, or if you’re a seasoned VR gamer you may want everything free. As an option for those that really suffer with motion sickness, you can even make all movements be in third person, which can dramatically reduce or completely eliminate discomfort for some players. If you find the experience uncomfortable at any time, just sit down, pause and recenter and the game will let you play sitting too.
Second, decide how you interact with other players. From default, you will be audible to nearby players and if you don’t want that you will need to mute yourself and others if you don’t want to hear them either.
If you’re playing Zenith from PC, there are some graphics settings you can tweak depending on what your PC can handle and what your preferences are. You can also change your streamer settings so that the camera shown to your audience can be from a different point of view. Picking up the green arrow when switching to third person mode is picking up the camera and can be a great way to get some fun selfies with your friends.
It’s Dangerous To Go Alone
In a world as dangerous as this, it’s going to be a lot easier (and more fun) if you play with friends or make some new ones. Guilds are going to be the best way for you to progress as a group and you can add new friends by approaching people in the world and aiming at them while holding the grip button. Repeating this action will then allow you to add them to your guild, allowing for easier teamwork and for you to play the game as a party which will be useful especially if you have different subclasses working together.
To complete quests, you will want to speak to non-player characters (NPCs) and see what tasks they have for you. They will offer you side quests alongside your main quests and you can track them at any time by pressing the top button on your respective left-handed VR controller. This shows you a mini map on the back of your hand where you can see quest markers, threats and members of your party. It will also display a short description of your current quests allowing you to get back on track should you be distracted. You will see beams of light in the world above your objectives, so it’s easy to see where you’re headed.
When working together, it’s also possible to revive your teammates if they fall during combat! To revive a player, look out for a red “lifeline” near the fallen play and hold your hands near it. You’ll see life force being channeled to the player and the player will come back fairly quickly (quicker if more players help). If you die, it’s not the end of the world. Players just make a praying motion and you’ll return back to the last checkpoint.
To prevent dying to begin with, you’ll want to learn how to heal yourself and heal others by cooking. While exploring you will find ingredients that you will be able to make into meals and snacks. There’s a quest giver known as Brimm that teaches you recipes and how to cook quite early on in the city, so be sure to find him and make the most of learning to cook as it will save your life, and your party’s lives too.
Getting Around
In Zenith, everything is scalable, meaning the world you see is there for you to fully explore. The issue is you have very limited stamina which will cause you to fall and potentially die if you’re from a great enough height. As everything you do involves stamina, you will want to make increasing your stamina an early priority. You can increase stamina by finding secrets called Amara’s Tears and taking them to the shrine of Amara. It is going to be a huge boost for your early progression to focus on adding stamina as it allows more of the world to be explored. Another method of gaining stamina points is by doing quests for a character called Mika, whose early quests give you stamina boosts.
Once your stamina is high enough you can sprint around the map, fight for longer and climb higher. This helps exploring and traversing dramatically as a Zenith’s ability to glide may end up being a pretty common way to travel over the long haul. Again, tweak your settings to what’s comfortable and then take flight using either the control sticks or a motion that mimics a bird’s wingspan and fly across the skies to access more areas. For those less affected by motion sickness, turning on the “Sensitive Gliding” option can take immersion to another level because it lets you gain speed by diving down and even lets you pull back up to gain height.
Upgrading Your Character
There are a few extra things you will want to look into early on to push your progress: Godstones and World Events.
World Events are similar to those seen in other games where an event will happen and you and the players close to you can all take part in a battle that will be difficult, but provide great rewards depending on your success. These are super handy for getting a start in levelling up and are worth doing every time they occur.
Godstones are used to further increase abilities associated with the different subclasses. A subclass may, for example, give you a speed boost for a short time or increase your damage. These are tied to specific Godstone Gestures in the subclasses and need to be activated to gain their advantages. The more you use them, they will begin to level up, allowing you to then apply major and minor upgrades which can further increase the potential of the Godstones and make your character feel much more powerful and durable.
What role-playing game is any good if you can’t find and make better loot? Well, in Zenith of course you can and you will need to be on the lookout for enhancement stations and synthesis machines to make the most of it. Enhancement stations upgrade your weapons when you break down unwanted items and make them into enhancement dust, while synthesis machines allow you to use materials you find in the world to craft new loot for your character. The more you explore the stronger your character will be, so get searching!
This is partner content that has been produced in conjunction with Ramen VR.
