I used to be really big into mobile gaming, so I often downloaded at least one or two new games a day. This eventually led me to get deep into a few mobile MMORPGs, where I discovered a simple-looking MMO named Rucoy Online.
I never got far in the game years ago, and only recently have I come back around to notice that it’s still getting regular updates. So I jumped right back into it with a new account and this time I got a lot further than before.
So, without dragging this on any longer, let’s take a deeper look at Rucoy Online.
What is Rucoy Online?
Rucoy Online isn’t quite the game players would expect out of most MMORPGs. It lacks quite a lot of features that the genre offers, however, it does provide the bare minimum gameplay to satiate players who like grinding. At its core, Rucoy Online is a game about making numbers get bigger.
Rucoy Online is a very grindy game. Oftentimes, you’ll find yourself just whacking away at the same enemy sprite for a couple of hours before moving on to the next. There are no combos, no skill trees, or talents to select from. It is nothing but tapping an enemy, sometimes using a skill, and waiting for that sweet sweet exp.
That being said, it does sound a little boring on the surface. You could argue that nearly all MMORPGs can be boiled down to this concept. So what makes this game so addicting for its player base?
Let’s go over Rucoy Online’s gameplay loop in more detail.
Classes
Rucoy Online starts players off right in the middle of nowhere. Right from the start, you can swap between three classes. The three classes are as follows: Knight, Mage, and Archer. All of them share different strengths and weaknesses but are balanced roughly equally. Each class has a unique skill they can execute for more damage, at the cost of mana.
Knights are the default class and consist of melee combat with no real ranged options. To make up for having to get up close and personal with enemies, Knights come equipped with tankier gear allowing them to soak up more damage than the other two classes. Knights have an ability that swipes enemies in a small radius around them, damaging any foe within this radius. Using the Knight class and dealing damage levels up your ‘melee’ skill.
The next class is Archer. This class is all about dealing damage from a distance, which in turn levels up your ‘distance’ skill. Archers have moderate range, deal moderate damage, and are squishier than knights. Arrows are consumed from attacking, so you’ll have to be stocked up for longer grinds. Their unique ability fires three arrows at a single target, dealing high damage, at the cost of a chunk of mana.
The final class is Mage. Mages have slightly more range than Archers and deal more damage than the Knight and archer at the cost of being the most vulnerable class. Mages consume magic using their basic attack, so you’ll have to ensure that you come equipped with plenty of mana potions. Their ability is a large fireball AoE that damages multiple enemies from a distance, at the cost of a lot of mana. Equipment for mages doesn’t provide much protection, making them very vulnerable to attacks. Dealing damage as a mage will level your ‘magic’ skill.
Combat
Once you’ve decided on what class you feel like using, the next step is to just go out and fight enemies of your level. Dealing damage will level up the skill of your selected class and defeating enemies will net you XP for your base level. Leveling up will increase your basic stats, like health and mana while leveling up skills increases how much damage you deal with said skill.
Taking damage will increase your defense skill, which reduces how much damage you’ll take from foes. All classes will share this skill, so it’ll grow naturally over time. To further reduce how much damage you take, you’ll need to equip gear from mob drops or buy it from a vendor or player.
If you run out of HP in combat, you’ll die. Dying in Rucoy Online comes at a hefty exp loss, which can set you back quite a bit if you are getting beat up a lot. Luckily, you can utilize healing potions to restore your health.
Potions can be purchased from an NPC Vendor, dropped by mobs, or bought by players. They have a very short cooldown and can be spammed in an emergency. Potions have stronger variations available for higher-level players. Greater potions cost more gold but provide much more efficient restoration.
Hunting down mobs becomes a game of knowing which zones have enemies of the level you are trying to grind for. Enemies are generally grouped together with like-level foes being nearby. Part of the early game progression is simply grinding and then exploring to learn where to farm next.
Often, you’ll have to venture further and further from the starting town to find mobs of an appropriate level to grind. Luckily, you can grab yourself a teleport scroll to make it all the way back to town if you get lost or find yourself in a sticky situation.
Later on in the game, bosses become a viable type of mob to hunt down. These are often very powerful and many players will server-hop and swarm it the second they know it’s alive. Bosses provide some of the best and rarest gear in the game, so you better act fast since most of the higher-level players are after it.
But if you want to take on powerful enemies and late-game mobs, you’ll have to do a lot of training to get there.
Skill Training
While beating up a thousand rats is fine for leveling your skills and base level, there are other options to increase your skills. Skill training involves equipping your character with a training weapon and spending quite some time whacking on a mob. Doing this, you’ll earn bonus XP for both the active skill selected (melee, distance, magic) and your defense skill. That being said, this only works if you have accumulated ‘online training time’.
While playing, you accumulate both online and offline training time, as long as you aren’t AFK in the beginner town. There is also a built-in stamina function that drains while in combat, which does net you some extra experience. These mechanics work in synergy to net more exp for players who do a bit of planning before their grinds.
Now, onto offline training. This mechanic is pretty straightforward and can be accessed from the starting town. After a long day of grinding away, players can then spend their accumulated offline training time to get an extra bump of exp while they are logged out.
To trigger this, all you have to do is find the training dummies of your desired class and select them. Doing so will log you out, and you’ll accumulate experience points in both the selected skill and your defense skill.
The caveat to offline training is that you can purchase training time with in-game currency. It’s one of the disadvantages a F2P player has, but it’s a mobile MMO, so it’s par for the course.
Speaking of currencies, let’s take a look at the economy in-game.
Economy
Occasionally, enemies will drop loot or gold. You can then use any items you find, and sell them to a vendor, or to other players, provided you have the premium currency to open a market stall. Gold allows you to purchase items from other players or NPC merchants. You can buy potions, arrows, teleport scrolls, and gear. There’s also a bank to keep your things stashed, with options to spend gold to increase your storage space.
There is a premium currency in Rucoy, as most free-to-play games come equipped with. Diamonds can be purchased in the in-game shop which can then be used for various perks. Some of these perks are purely cosmetic, like the pets or outfits. Others can be used to purchase bulk items that are expensive to get with gold, like high-tiered potions and stacks of teleport scrolls. There are even some items that negate your stats, which is useful for training.
Diamonds can be sold to other players via an in-game market stall system. To open up a stall, you'll need to spend diamonds for how long you want to ‘rent’ the stall. Generally, it’ll still take quite a long time to accumulate enough gold to freely spend on diamonds and late-game items sold by high-level players. But, it’s nice that the option is there for players who’ve got a ton of gold and don’t feel like spending their IRL money for an in-game currency.
PvP
Rucoy online offers PvP that players can engage with after the starting areas. This occurs a bit after level 65 and unlocks after reaching the graveyard zone. Once you reach this area, you’ll get a new icon on your HUD showing off crossed swords.
Clicking the icon will give you a couple of options. You’ll be asked if you want to attack other players, to which you can respond in three ways that all have separate functions. There are as follows:
- Yes: PvP will be enabled and you can attack anyone at this point. Attacking another player will brand you with a white skull, indicating to others that you are a potential threat (or prey).
- No: This option simply closes the window.
- Cursed: Selecting this option will allow you to only attack players who are branded with a skull icon.
Defeating players will change which tier skull you have, which carries heavier penalties if you are defeated. For each player you defeat, your skull will change color from white, descending to gold, then orange, then red, and finally black. The higher your skull tier, the more gold you’ll lose upon defeat, and it’ll take you longer to disengage from PvP and be able to safely log out.
If you or another player reaches the black skull tier, a server-wide bounty will be placed on the player in question. Other players can swoop in and defeat this player for a nice sack of gold. If you plan on going on a killing spree, you best be prepared for the very powerful players that lurk in wait for bounties.
Overall, PvP is where a lot of players spend their endgame, working to antagonize others or as a unit to take down problematic players. There’s quite some depth to Rucoy’s PvP in comparison to its PvE gameplay, which in turn makes it a decent endgame goal to grind for, but optional if you don’t feel daring.
Multiplayer
Outside of PvP, there isn’t too much to actively do with other players. You can team up with randoms or add them to a friends list. Teaming up allows players to group together and farm mobs together. It’s efficient for taking down tougher foes a lot faster and as long as players are near each other, everyone reaps the benefits of EXP gains.
Teaming up is a way to keep yourself safe in PvP zones, so making friends with higher-level players is usually a good rule to live by. You can get carried by other players, provided they are willing to drag a lower-level player into some deadlier zones.
Most of my personal experience from the community in the game comes from reading the cursed Server Chat logs. It’s a mobile game, so there’s quite a wide variety of players that come through and ramble on the channel. Often it’s PvP players talking smack since you’ll need to be in the mid-game to even use the server chat channel.
As for local chat, it’s usually players asking questions and looking for teammates. Overall, it’s a pretty minimal amount of player interaction but it's just enough to keep players engaged.
If anything gets stale or if you’ve made yourself some enemies on one server, you can swap to another one with ease. There are quite a few servers and they all have their cliques and gripes to go along with them.
Conclusion
Rucoy Online is surprisingly doing well after all of these years. Regular content gets added regularly, with a new boss getting introduced at the time of writing. If you are looking for something pretty low-key to mess around with while watching TV or a podcast, it’s a good game to fiddle with half-heartedly.
It’s a game about numbers getting bigger in a non-committal way. You don’t have to worry about logging in daily for bonus currencies or any of that nonsense. Just log in, kill some mobs, chat with random people, train, log out, and do it again another day.
The game runs on damn near any mobile device and isn’t heavy on the battery compared to most mobile games. If you want a chill lightweight experience to accumulate progress on, this game is perfect for you.
Note from the Author
Hey gamers, thanks for reading another one of my reviews. In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to post last month, but I got stuck into two very long pieces. What started out as simple subjects, ended up becoming a very large ordeal.
The first review that I failed to meet my deadline on was for FFXIV’s Dawntrail. I’ve got a lot to share about the game now that the expansion has been live for a bit. It’s currently a wall of unedited text that’s gonna take me a bit to clean up and refine.
As for the other review, it’s almost ready for edits. This review is a bit of a surprise, but I can clue you in with some hints as to what it covers. I’m trying my hand at covering mobile games lately, so it’s a very popular one that most have heard of.
Anyway, thanks for sticking around to the end of the post, and I’ll catch you all soon!
Gotta get back to training my [Writing] skill.
~greysyns.