Is the PC version of TERA worth playing?

    I was playing another MMORPG – which I only stopped playing it about four years ago – when TERA launched, so I completely missed the days when it was a new game with probably a huge population. After I stopped with that other MMORPG I've been playing other titles from different genres, but in the past few weeks I got a sudden interest in playing MMORPG games again.

    None of the newer titles interested me other than a few that haven't been launched yet. But if my quick research is to be believed, TERA seems to be a decent game even after 8 years. It has some features that interested me like pets and other stuff, but I have a few concerns holding me back and it would be great if anyone could help me with these questions:


    1. Are there exclusive items in the Shop – i.e. available for purchase with real money only – that give the player a direct advantage in combat? I'm talking about potions, buffs, weapons, armor, accessories, items to help with crafting etc. Basically anything that gives you an advantage in combat that would otherwise not be available for F2P players.
    2. If not, then how hard is it to loot the items or buy with in-game currency when compared to the prices in the Shop?
    3. Can I add abilities to a pet? I found the Dragonette very interesting and it would be a shame if I had to buy another one just for the gold looting and other abilities.

    1. Yes there are such Shop exclusive items: underwear with 0.16 physical/magical crit power (best f2p underwear is 0.12), mounts with a 2.0 crit factor for 6 sec every 60 sec (f2p 1.5, sometimes events where with extreme luck, you may get such a 2.0 mount), much higher accessability of scrolls to reroll random stats on gear.

    2. As of now, I guess it´s pretty hard to get back to the end content, as the combat system grew much faster (much more attack speed), the gear upgrade chances are pretty low, all the gear has 3-6 random stats on 13 different pierces (some of them cannot be rolled but need to be dropped well). Thus its hard to get good gear and make decent dmg.

    But once you got acceptable gear & skill it won´t be too hard to find groups for dungeons. (Guilds / Statics became more interesting, as the community definetly shrank the last years)

    3. The pets have several skills: auto loot, auto gather (ore, plants, essences), fishing support (able to get best fish while afk fishing), self-feeding (no need to activly feed pets), auto use health/mana potion when below x %.

    Also you can upgrade pets to partners. these can have the same skills as pets, but also can give you 3-40 Power and have an additional effect: higher crafting crits, higher best fish chance, give shield when hit, random restore health/mana, more exp...