Astellia Online’s second closed beta here in the west is underway this week, and there’s a big new feature awaiting testers: the cash shop. In a new dev blog up today, Barunson cautions players that this is just the first stage of the cash shop as designed for western players and that it’ll continue seeing updates and tweaks over the course of the beta as feedback rolls in.
“In order to allow players to fully dive into the shop, we’ve added two items to the CBT-2 shop that will allow players to purchase set amounts of Gems & Zender (Loyalty) currency,” the studio says of the test. “Each account will be able to claim the Gem Pack a total of 1 time, and the Zender Pack 6 times. Gems are account bound, and Zender is bound to an individual character. What this means is if you claim 2 Zender Packs on one character, only 4 total Zender Pack claims will remain on your account to be used on other characters.” In other words, choose wisely during this test.
As for the currency itself, it looks as if the current build sets a value of $1 per 10 gems, so $10 for 100 gems. That’s meaningless without a chart, of course, so yes, there are charts. It looks as if most costumes and mounts clock in around 120-180 gems, a single month of Norden’s Favor (premium sub) is 150 gems, appearances changes are 100 gems, and so on. Zender, on the other hand, is the loyalty currency players earn by logging in characters daily, and those costs are much higher.
Barunson has also noted that the charts aren’t finalized; for example, Norden’s Favor will be available for Zender, in spite of not being on that list, while Beeswax (the thing that un-binds gear) will not be available for gems as listed. Give the charts a peek:
