Tera: Vanarch System - Updated! OH SHI-

[Senji]

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

Spoiler: show

The time to reign in TERA is upon us! Starting May 18, guild leaders who wish to declare their candidacy for a vanarch position, can. What is a vanarch? Vanarchs are an integral part of TERA's political system. This is an elected position that lets you reign over an entire province for three weeks. Start planning your campaign with our vanarch election calendar!

Elected vanarchs can collect taxes from vendor shops, set tax rates, decide which specialty shops to open in a province, and gain fame for themselves as well as their guilds. Vanarchs will be known across the realm—hopefully for good reasons!

There are three parts to the political cycle: the registration stage, the voting stage, and the reign stage. The registration and voting stage last one week each, while the reign stage lasts for three weeks and overlaps the next occurring registration and voting stage.

The registration stage is when guild leaders can announce their candidacy. So, if you want to run for a vanarch position, you will have one week to fulfill the registration requirements: be at least a level 50 character who is the leader of a level three guild with at least 20 members, and pay a candidacy fee of 3,000 gold and 100 Catharnach awards. We'll close applications at 6:00 PM Pacific on May 25.

At that point, the voting stage begins. This is when vanarch candidates need to get their names out there on their servers, and convince players to vote for them. There are many ways to do this, some more nefarious than others. Every game account gets one vote for each of the three continents per server. If you're running, make sure your guild members vote for you! The candidates with the most votes by 6:00 PM Pacific on June 1 will be one of our first vanarchs, a first that will never be repeated in TERA again!

Don't get too comfortable in your position, though. While your reign is three weeks long, the registration process will open again just one week after you take office. If being a vanarch is something you take a liking too, you'll have to apply, campaign, and get elected all over again!

Curious? Want to learn more about the ins and outs of TERA's political system? We'll be adding a political system section to our Game Guide next week! Good luck to all of our applicants. We're excited and can't wait to see the results of this first election cycle!

http://tera.enmasse.com/news/posts/i...paign=features

Vanarch Election Calendar

[Lucavi]

3k gold for the possibility of winning? Hoo boy; you better be making a killing off of taxes.

[Kaiyoko]

3k gold for the possibility of winning? Hoo boy; you better be making a killing off of taxes.

3k is really nothing at 60 lol.

[Ezek]

I imagine most people that will be running for Vanarch are filthy rich anyways at this point. My party members and I routinely sell T12 enigmatic weapons from Ebon HM/Balders for 4k+ a pop while stuff like the socketed earring and ring go for 1k+.

With how the first Vanarch elections are being held (no battlegrounds yet...), I'm pretty sure the GMs of the big zerg guilds on each server will win quite handily this time around.

[Odin'sLaw]

since this "kind of" falls in the same update would someone mind getting me a correctly sized BG arrow dragon head picture? not sure if the NA's are using it but i'd like to use it for the EU one

(guild war poster banner scare mongerer picture of something or other)

[Rulke]

So.. Sonomaa for Vanarch!?!

[Katlan]

gonna merge some of this crap into the complaint and PvP thread since this thread is a pure bitch fest about PvP and really has next to nothing to do w/the meat and bones of the Vanarch system

[Senji]

Info released, updated OP

[Senji]

Odd that it doesn't seem to require points to turn the npcs on..or they are already on in this example?

[Avarice]

5000/day to turn PvP off, Jesus christ.

[Coren]

I assume Sono will be running for a vanarch position (or whoever currently 'leads' the guild). I'll throw a few bucks in the guild bank to get to the 3k (with all the 60's we have, if everybody chipped in 50 gold we'd have plenty).

What areas will we want (you pick a continent, then list the areas you want in the order you want them)? My guess is the 60 areas (like the fortress or pathfinder post) are the obvious choices. I could also see Elenea's area due to the number of people there (everybody 54 to 56). Or pick one of the 58+ instance areas, such as Cutthroat Harbor (for Fane) or Bastion (Balder's) so that everybody can come out and re-buy their specialty crystals they just broke as well as teleport scrolls when they wipe. I think you can also tax the AH listings made, and the AH listings purchased in your town.

Is there any info about the special bam fights/quests that only vanarch-led guilds can do?

[BlackMoomba]

If someones Vanarch, they're the ruler of that zone, I don't see where the problem is with them being able to turn off pvp. Though they should be given more options like turning off safe zones too, if they can make it completely safe, they should also have the option to turn it into a jungle.

[Kaisha]

Need an option to exempt outlaws from using your area's NPCs.

[Lucavi]

That would suddenly make me very interested in something of which I currently have 0% interest in. Being able to effectively roll back the shitty PVP changes that EME made, or take it a step farther and make it a bit more like how we all want it to work, would drum up Vanarch hype for at least one person on these forums.

[Senji]

who?

[Lucavi]

Thought it obvious. :3

[Senji]

Updates to TERA’s Political System


TERA’s political system is one of the features we’re most excited about, and it’s a part of the game we’ve spent a lot of time refining. With our second round of vanarch candidates stepping up to serve their servers, we thought we’d take some time to talk about some upcoming changes to this already popular aspect of gameplay.

As originally conceived, a player seeking vanarch status had two paths to the office—campaigning and conquest—with the latter requiring candidates and their guilds to distinguish themselves through battleground play. While revisions to the battlegrounds aren’t quite ready, we are happy to announce that we’ve found a way to put the fight back in political infighting!

In the revised system, candidates will select a continent as usual, but they will also select a competition type. If they choose a straight election, they’ll rank their preferred provinces and then begin campaigning for votes. If they choose to fight for the right to rule, they’ll rank their provinces, and then their guild enters a modified guild-versus-guild (GvG) PvP battle with all other candidates’ guilds on that continent.

When the competition phase begins, all members of other eligible guilds become targets. But instead of a normal 24-hour fight, vanarch GvG is a weeklong affair. We’ve set some limitations: only kills scored on characters level 40 and up count, and there’s a cap on the points your guild can earn from a single guild’s members per day. Vanarch GvG doesn’t replace normal GvG battles (those are still declared and resolved as usual), and even though you earn no points for lower-level characters in rival guilds, they’re still on the hit list.

Vanarch GvG tracks progress the same way as voting races. Players in candidate guilds can check their current vanarch GvG points but not those of other competitors. At the end of the competition, the guilds with the most points on each continent get provinces to rule, with ties resolved by the first guild to reach the point total.

In each election cycle, a few provinces per continent (Southern Arun, Southern Shara, Northern Shara) will be eligible for vanarch GvG. Those provinces will not be eligible for voting purposes, so dust off your weapons and get ready to fight!

http://tera.enmasse.com/news/posts/u...litical-system

[madpersian]

Snipe and hide in safe zones will pr

[Lokus]

Safe zones are the bane of GvG.

[Lucavi]

Worthless unless safe zones are outright eliminated. Completely worthless.