Political System
After level 50, a new kind of prestige opens up for TERA players: the honor of becoming a vanarch and running a province on behalf of the Valkyon Federation. But, even though you have to be level 50 to run for the vanarchy, the TERA political system impacts every player on a server. This guide explains how to get involved and what you'll get out of this exciting game feature!
What is the Political System?
The Valkyon Federation is an alliance of seven member races that formed to battle the argons and provide stability to the continents of Arun and Shara. As a representative government, the federation has organized settlements around the world into provinces, each of which is administered by an elected official known as a vanarch.
For players, becoming a vanarch is the ultimate accolade. As a vanarch, your character is the best of the best, a member of an elite group that has money, power, and fame. Vanarchs make decisions that affect every player on the server, and every player on the server can hold them accountable when it's reelection time!
How do I get involved?
The easiest way to get involved is to just play TERA. Vanarchs are responsible for setting and collecting taxes from vendors, and everybody shops, so everybody participates. Vanarchs can also activate special shops and skill trainers in settlements, open new teleport routes, and more. Using these services will bolster a province's economy, and increase the chance that a vanarch might run for another term in office.
Voting
At level 20 and above, a player can participate directly in the election process by voting. Every three weeks a new election cycle begins, and each player (not character) can vote for potential vanarchs on each continent on the server. Who you vote for is completely up to you. Candidates will use a variety of methods to get the word out about their campaign and influence voters, including sending in-game emails, making campaign promises, or maybe even lying to voters and outright buying votes. Choose your vanarch wisely, though, or you may regret your choice for the next three weeks.
To cast your vote, use the Activities menu, select Candidates, and then view the contested provinces. The easiest way to make your choice is to think about where your characters will spend the most time during and after the election. If you're an end-game player, you should consider getting involved in races in Northern Shara. If you like making new characters, consider either Arcadia or Poporia province in Southern Arun.
Keep in mind that you can cast one vote for each continent on your server. For each vote you cast, you'll receive a free uncommon healing potion in the in-game parcel system as a gift!
Candidates
The most important part of the electoral process is having qualified candidates in each contest. Accepting bribes for voting is nice, but it's much more fun to do the bribing, especially if it means winning a vanarchy.
Vanarch terms run for three weeks, and the last week is usually spent campaigning. The first step in that process is registration. To qualify as a valid candidate, your character must:
Be at least level 50
Be leader of a level three guild with at least 20 members
Pay a candidacy fee of 3,000 gold and 100 Catharnach awards
The first and last qualifications are the easy ones, although you're looking at a large commitment of time and resources for either. Guilds are important for many reasons, but you'll need the support of yours if you want to move your game to the next level.
To register, find the Election Registrar near the same NPCs that helped you form your guild. After selecting the continent on which you want to be elected, ranking each province in the order of your preference, and supplying a candidate statement, you can submit your registration. Be sure to check your mail afterward, because you'll receive a free gift: an uncommon potion that will increase the power of everyone in your guild temporarily!
The Guild
Guilds are fairly easy to form (all you need is a character above level eight, a few online party members, and some coins), but a really good guild works together for a larger goal.
Every zone has special guild quests. These quests do not give experience on completion, but instead reward you with one to four special tokens called Catharnach awards. These quests are designed to complement, not replace, the zone and story quests in the area. More guild quests will open up as you complete more of the zone.
Why is this important? If you want your guild to participate in the political system, you'll need a lot of these quests under your belts. Spending 20 Catharnach awards raises your guild to level two and 50 more are required to reach level three. These are not permanent upgrades either! You'll need to maintain your guild level by paying those fees again every two weeks. Also, keep in mind that the 100 Catharnach award registration fee isn't a deposit. So your guild will need 170 Catharnach awards each time your guild master wants to run for vanarch.
The Election
There are three phases to an election—registration, campaign, and reign.
Part of the registration process involves selecting the province you want to rule. It's not as simple as picking from a list. You need to select one of TERA's three available continents (Southern Arun, Southern Shara, Northern Shara), and then rank its provinces according to which ones you most want to govern. Those who receive the most votes for each continent (remember, each account only gets one vote per server) are awarded provinces based on their top choices.
This is one place your guild can possibly hurt, rather than help you. If word on the continents is that your guild, AMAN DEATH SQUAD LOL, contains a bunch of hardcore gankers who terrorize low-level zones, you probably shouldn't campaign to govern those provinces. If on the other hand, your guild, FREE HUGS FOR ALL, is known for helping low-level players, you might have a better chance there.
Managing Your Campaign
Whether it's your first attempt at vanarch status, or you're a seasoned political veteran, getting votes is going to be a chore. With as many as fifteen provinces up for grabs, and any number of eligible candidates, everyone's political prowess will be put to the test.
Alternatively, you can try some innovative ways to fool the rest of your server's population into voting for you. Here are just a few things that have been suggested:
Pay someone to campaign for you. By paying someone to campaign for you, you're more likely to hit all eligible voters during your campaign. . Having a few people to spread the word about you and your guild can go a long way.
Recruit helpful people. If voters see your guild helping people out around the game world, they'll remember you come voting time. Having some helpful guild members out doing good deeds is an excellent way to accomplish that.
Throw a party. Start hosting deathmatches in public places or ladder tournaments for duels. Offer some of your cool loot as prizes, or just some of your guild's money. And if you enter it yourself, voters can see you in action.
Post a campaign video online. Take to the airwaves, using websites, social media pages, or even video-hosting sites to press your campaign. You won't be able to link to these in game, but your server's forum on TERA-Online.com is an excellent place to interact with potential voters when you're not playing. And who knows, you might get some new guild members as a bonus! But remember, sharing personal information is against the official Forum rules, so keep a necessary degree of separation between you and your characters.
The Vanarch
A vanarch's term of office is three weeks long, but the political system is always cycling. A week after the election, registration opens again for all provinces. Actions taken in that first week will make a big difference for vanarchs who want to stay in office, because they'll need to receive the most votes again when the next election comes around.
Once elected and appointed, vanarchs have a number of responsibilities to their provinces. To fulfill these duties, they will need to earn policy points by completing special quests with their guilds.
What are Policy Points?
Policy points are like supercharged versions of Catharnach awards, and are gained in much the same way. While vanarchs get a certain number of points just from being in office, they and their guilds can earn more through access to special, vanarch-only quests. These involve some of the greatest threats to the federation, and award between 100 and 500 policy points for each quest.
Vanarchs can also trade in on some of the good reputation their guilds earn. The Social Menu not only provides a list of all guilds on a server, but also allows players to "praise" the actions of particular members. For most guilds, this praise amounts to bragging rights. But to a vanarch's guild, it translates to power in the form of extra policy points.
What Does A Vanarch Do, Exactly?
We've mentioned that a vanarch has the power to tax and turn on special vendors and services. In addition, the vanarch and all members of the vanarch's guild get unique mounts. In fact, they're the fastest mounts in the game, and only a select few players will have access to them, and only while their guild leader is in power.
On top of that, the vanarch will have access to a special "message of the day" announcement as well as an announcement channel, both of which can be used to communicate with people in the zone you reign over.
Everything else costs policy points. For every week that a special service is available, you'll need to pay some of your hard-won policy points. No points, no services—and a diminishing chance you'll get reelected in a couple weeks.
You can use your policy points to:
Raise or lower individual tax rates on several categories of transactions. Any gold you earn as a result is yours to keep!
Open specialty shops, with items not available anywhere else.
Add skill trainers in remote locations, allowing characters to stay in your province and spend more gold more often.
Upgrade the abilities of stamina restoring clerics—something which may come in handy if somebody dies on your watch due to "friendly fire."
Enable access to trade brokers on certain continents.
Adjust the PvP settings for your province on certain continents (and only on PvP servers, of course).
And all of these choices are visible to your fellow players through the province menu. So choose wisely, play regularly, and get the word out about the kind of leader you really are!
http://tera.enmasse.com/game-guide/e...litical-system
Inaugural Election Details
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Vanarch Election Calendar