Xostya

**Xostya** is a fictional online game. It is a DMMO-RPG (Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) developed in Japan.

Infamous as the game was, its degree of customization made Xostya so popular that the word "DMMO-RPG" is practically synonymous with Xostya. The DMMO-RPG's feature ignited the creative spirits of its Japanese players and sparked what would later be known as a Stylistic Revolution.

## Description

Xostya is a DMMO-RPG released by a Japanese Developer. According to the developers' website, Xostya was a game of exploration, and so many things were mysteries left unknown for players to discover on their own or in groups. It was a game where all you were told was the controls before being thrown into the deep end. In other words, the special thing about Xostya was the incredible amount of freedom given to players, compared to any other DMMO-RPGs out there.

The most distinctive feature of Xostya was its flexible system to allow players to freely make choices. Players could select numerous races, jobs and various tools, allowing for customization in the game. If a player were to use separately sold creator tools, they could freely alter the appearances of weapons, armors, interior data, character visuals, and advanced settings of their in-game residence or home. The customization system was really far-reaching and broad, even allowing basic programming.

The game had a system where players could pay a fee in order to participate in a lottery to win a rare item. This would include a type of cash gacha within the game where players had the opportunity to cash in money with the chance of winning a prize.

There are endless discoveries (special classes, items, etc.) players could find and obtain through adventures, such as focusing on certain skills like instant death spells, etc. with one example being the Caloric Stone, a World Item among one of the hidden items discovered in the game. Besides World Items and skills, there are also apoithakarah, scarletite or other prismatic ores that were of the highest tiers in Xostya.

## System

### Virtual Reality Experience

As the game can be played as a virtual reality DMMORPG, the Xostya system is capable of rendering the entire environment with incredible realism. By stimulating nerves in the brain, it is possible to taste food, feel the wind and weather, move one's body, and live in Xostya as if it were an alternate reality. However, there are several major differences that set the Xostya environment apart from the real-world experience.

First, no pain is actually felt in any situation. As a result, players can undergo severe injuries and still only feel an uncomfortable tingling sensation. Second, there are some everyday actions that simply are not done in the Xostya world, such as changing clothes by hand.

While playing Xostya, players still feel fatigue and hunger, regardless of the state of their actual bodies. As a result it is an absolute necessity for all players to eat and sleep within the game; however there is never a need to go to the bathroom.

Unlike in normal DMMORPGs, Xostya provides a sense of facial expressions. As such, a player’s avatar could change expressions to match their voice. At the same time, a character’s mouth would move with their words.

The Xostya system generally censors mature content, such as sexual intercourse, but it is possible for players to disable the censor if Moral Code Removal is selected in the options menu. Selecting this option also temporarily increases the quantity of tactile data, but this effect only manifests itself when all the equipment of a player is removed.

### Environment

#### Seasons and Weather

Xostya has its own Standard Time, and its own Calendar with specially named months. Known calendar months include:

Month of the Sakura (サクラの月, *Sakura no Tsuki*, April)

Month of the Ash Tree (トネリコの月, *Toneriko no Tsuki*, October)

Month of the Cypress (イトスギの月, *Itosugi no Tsuki*, November)

Month of the Holly (ヒイラギの月, *Hīragi no Tsuki*, December)

Globally, Xostya has seasons and weather settings that are effective. The game's season correlate with the seasons of the real world, but they are generally much milder. As a result, it is not always snowy in the winter, or scorching hot in the summer. Weather settings are generally random and quite realistic.

## Gameplay

### User Interface

#### Visual Interface

In a player's display, without accessing any skills, one can see several interfaces.

The hit point bar is located on the upper left corner of one's field of vision. It displays the player's name, a visual hit point gauge, along with numerical hit points (current/maximum), and level. It also shows the hit points and names of all other members in the player's party in a smaller bar.

A clock displaying the local time can be seen in the bottom left corner of the visual field.

A Color Cursor can be seen over every NPC, monster, and player in the game. This cursor is either green (for players), orange (for players with criminal infractions), yellow (for NPCs), or various shades of red (for monsters). During battle, the health bar of monsters can be seen around the targeted enemy, as well as the name of the monster. Bosses typically have multiple health bars. As for a monster that level is too far apart, hit point bars of that monster will be unable to see and instead indicated with 'unknown'.

#### Main Menu Window

The main menu is the primary means of accessing a player's items, maps, skills, and inventory. It can be accessed by putting one's right index finger and thumb together, then pulling downwards. Immediately afterwards, a ringing sound is heard and the menu appears. The main menu has a white layout, and is structured with the summary diagram on the left, circular category buttons in the middle, and the detail dialogue to the right. There are five category options: inventory/equipment, friends/guild, Communications, maps/quest, Settings. These five category icons scroll, and the category being accessed moves to the top.

* **Inventory/equipment**: The icon for the category is a character icon. This is the default screen when opening the Menu interface. The left screen is an image of the body, with multiple points that allow the gamer to equip items or clothes. The right screen has three sub-menus:
	+ **Equipment**: Selecting this sub-menu will open another three sub-menu:
		- **Weapons**: The icon for this category is a sword like the one used in Equipment.
		- **Equipped**: The icon for this category is an armor.
		- **Accessory**: The icon for this category is a necklace.
	+ **Items**: Selecting this sub-menu will open an additional scrolling screen on the left that lists all items. When an item is selected, it materializes in front of the player. The inventory turns red when a player has too many items.
	+ **Skills**: Selecting this sub-menu will open an additional scrolling screen on the left that lists all skills of the player.

* **Friends/Guild**: The icon for the category is two character icons together. The right screen has three sub-menus:
	+ **Party**: Selecting this sub-menu will open three additional options. The first is Create (作成, *Sakusei*), the second is Invite (招待, *Shoutai*), and the third is Dissolve (解散, *Kaisan*).
	+ **Friend**: Selecting this sub-menu will reveal a list of a player's friends. Selecting a single friend will produce three additional options: Message Box, Position Check, and Profile. The names of fallen friends turn grey, disabling the ability to contact them.
	+ **Guild**

* **Communications** (コミュニケーション, *Komyunikēshon*): The icon for this category is two chat box icons together. The icon flashes automatically whenever a player receives a message. Messages cannot be sent to a player who is currently in a dungeon.
	+ **Befriend**: This option allows the player to send a friend request to another player. The other player is added to the Friend List if the request is accepted.
	+ **Trade**: This option opens a trade window with another player. Trading can be used just to show another player items, or complete a trade after both parties accept the offers put forth.
	+ **Duel**: This option allows the player to send a Duel request. The player being challenged has the privilege of selecting one of the available duel modes.
	+ **Marriage**: This option, located at the very bottom of the Communications category, allows the player to send a marriage request to another player. Married players have uninhibited access to the other's equipment window, and their inventories are merged.

* **Maps/Quest**: The icon for the category is a balloon location icon. The right screen has three sub-menus:
	+ **Dungeon Map**: Selecting this sub-menu will reveal a map of the dungeon that the player has explored.
	+ **Quest**: Selecting this sub-menu will open the player's quest log, which displays information on current quests and their progress.
	+ **Field Map**: Selecting this sub-menu will reveal a map of the floor that the player has explored.

* **Settings/Main menu**: The icon for the category is a gear. The right screen has three sub-menus:
	+ **Option**
	+ **Help**: Selecting "Help" will call a GM (Game Master) on the left screen.
	+ **Logout**

### Equipment

When it came to Equipment in Xostya, one could equip magic items in the following slots: head, face, body, three pieces of jewelry apart from one’s rings, underclothing, arms, hands, left and right rings, waist, legs and feet. One could not equip multiple magic items to the same item slot. While one could wear many magical items around their neck, only the powers from the item that had been last put on would be usable. Even a suit of full plate armor only counted as taking up the body slot. Players could only put one ring on for each hand.

### Level System

Xostya uses a level-based system to determine the strength of a player. Once the player gains enough EXP, their avatar glows a golden hue, and their current level is raised by one. Three stat points are awarded at each level-up, which the player can use to raise either their STR attribute or their AGI attribute.

## Music

It was stated that Xostya is filled with sound, and each area with its own unique background music. However, since the Background was overlaid with the soft sounds such as the movements of monsters, there were many who disliked it since it became difficult to hear important minute sounds.

Therefore very few players listened to the music regarding it as nothing more than a soundtrack that one listened to in isolated borderlands. It was more common to purchase items with music data and listen to that instead.

## Races

There are more than 700 races, including racial classes that need certain levels of low-rank racial class to learn. Races of Xostya can be roughly categorized into three taxa. In the game, demihuman and heteromorphic races unlocked racial skills when they reached certain levels. Some items can change races permanently. In the game, humans and demi-humans, who had limited lifespan, would grow and age normally. In contrast to them, heteromorphic races with unlimited lifespan would stop growing after a certain stage.

* **Humanoid Races** include humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Humanoid races are weakest in basic status and cannot have a racial level. Instead, they can learn more classes which provide high stats or powerful skills more easily, giving them higher potential.

* **Demi-Human Races** include orcs, ogres, lizardmen, etc. Demi-Human races can have more basic statuses and have a racial level. Demi-Human races are similar to the average between Human races and Heteromorphic races. While the Demi-Human races weren't visually appealing they can still perform better than Humanoid races.

* **Heteromorphic Races** include slimes, vampires, demons, etc.  Heteromorphic races own the most powerful basic statuses, which can be strengthened even more by increasing their racial level. High-ranking races also provide special abilities similar to that of a monster's. Besides providing a racial level and special abilities, the Heteromorphic races are able to also gain more ability points than the Humanoid or Demi-Human races. However, they were penalized in other ways as the racial level comes at a cost where it limits the amount of jobs levels players could learn. Thus, Heteromorphic races were very unpopular just for that reason. PKing a Heteromorphic player doesn't give any penalty to the player that did it.

## Classes

The class system is considered to be the key elements of character customization. Counting the advanced classes as well as the based classes, there were more than 2,000 classes in Xostya that players could choose from.

Although 15 is the highest level reachable in a single class, there were some high-rank classes that seemed to have lower level limits. Therefore, it is actually possible for a player to own at least 7 or more classes by the time they hit the overall level cap of 100. If one ignores efficiency, it is also possible to get a hundred level 1 class. There are also some 'optimized' class builds discovered by players. In other words, it was a system where it was impossible to have completely identical characters unless you intentionally made them alike.

Depending on the skills and abilities they possessed, players can pick up different pieces of additional information upon exploring a new area. For example, a class like the alchemists and herbalists, with their herbalogical skills, would be able to learn about the various herbs that they could harvest in the area.

There were also some classes in particular, which had the penalty of not being able to summon monsters whose karma values were far too different from their own. Incidentally, the monsters summoned by those classes can only become stronger the closer the monsters’ karma values were to their masters.

The warrior classes were limited by one's real-world reflexes, that restriction only came into play during duels between top-class warriors. For that reason, warriors need to have a good body in real life to perform well in-game. It was not a deciding factor during normal play. When in battle, one could instantly sense an opponent’s intentions, thus evading his or her attacks.

Not only that, there were classes with actual stories behind them. For instance, Cursed Knights had the backstory of being corrupted Cleric-knights who had been cursed for unknown reasons that aren't clear yet. Particularly, very strong classes like Cursed Knights are bound to have weak points and penalties as their drawbacks to make the game more balanced.

## Magic

More than 6,000 different spells exist in Xostya. While magic in Xostya has a ridiculously large number of spells, they could not be changed nor made by the creator tools, and it was impossible to use all of them.

Firstly, in order to learn magic, you must first fulfill the necessary prerequisites. For starters, there are selected classes a player must choose, special events they must go to, they must use certain items, and so on, in order to learn magic. If successful, they are able to use the selected magic type of their choice. And for that purpose, there were players who devoted 1/3 of their total magic to the prerequisites. Some players also tended to give up learning as they could not clear the prerequisites.

For those who are attempting to become specialists, there was a problem about what to choose. It was extremely common that the magic that they wanted to learn was not within their field of expertise. It was not rare among players to die repeatedly and recreate one’s classes every once in a while. Also, there was the tricky problem of handling the stats that come along with it.

If the player's magic power or level was high enough, they could potentially deal more damage with a spell, or maybe their range would increase more than other lower level players using the same kind. In this case, let's assume that there was a player who specializes in faith-type classes, and is a user of the "Fireball" spell. Based on the damage and distance capability, their spell would not be as strong as other players who use it with classes which focused on magic power.

To start off, magic is divided into eleven tiers: From Tier 1 to 10 and exceeding passed it is Super-Tier Magic. Super-Tier Magic has miraculous power that is compared to a 10th tier spell but suffers from huge casting and the cooldown time, preventing the frequent use of it. Casting super-tier magic decreases the magic caster's defense while receiving a certain amount of damage cancels the casting.

When the player starts casting their spell, an arcane eye or a magic sensor would have appeared in front of the caster. Afterward, the player could manipulate the sensor by sending their spell towards the desired area of their choosing to initiate its power or effect once they're ready to finish casting it. The player's right hand held the control stick for the sensor’s movements, whilst their left hand directs the sensor’s field of view. Other than that, there are icons representing buffs and debuffs that could appear in the player's field of vision, so one could see whether or not they were under the effect of an ability.

### MP

Once a magic caster is out of MP, they are no longer able to cast spells. However, MP recovering potions exist in the game, so recovering it wasn't that big a problem. Incidentally, a magic caster's base MP was their level times 10.

## Ability Types

There were two kinds of special abilities in Xostya. One had a cooldown period after use. The other had a limited period of uses within a time frame. There were also combinations of the two. In general, the more powerful the ability, the longer the cooldown, or the fewer times it could be used in succession.

## Parties

Parties were mainly made up of 6 players in total, and a dungeon raid could have a maximum of 5 parties. In other words, the maximum size of a dungeon raid consisted of 30 people in total when taking on bosses. Apart from exceptional cases like guild battles or fighting a World-class enemy, people who were over the limit would be subjected to friendly fire. If there were joke characters with a dream build among them, it would reduce the amount of fighting power they could bring.

They are categorized under Magical Attackers, Physical Attackers, Tanks, Healers, Seekers and Other. The "Other" category is viewed as those with challenging classes who were able to adapt to many different circumstances in any situation.

## PVP

Otherwise known as Player vs. Player. This was most likely also a term that shares an origin with player-killers, or player-killer-killers. Counter attack and counter defense magics lying wildly back at one another were the standard in PKing. Player vs. Player combat can either be authorized or unauthorized.

Unauthorized combat can be initiated by simply striking another player intentionally. This will render the aggressor's cursor icon as orange, which is visible to everyone for several hours (repeated offenses will render a player's cursor permanently orange). While anyone can be challenged in unauthorized combat, such player vs. player battle cannot occur in safe zones. Attacking a player in a safe zone will not decrease HP, but the recoil and impact of Sword Skills can be felt.

Authorized combat is essentially dueling. It is done by requesting permission from another player to engage in a duel. There are several different duel modes, which vary conditionally by concluding after the first clear blow, after HP decreases by one half, after a period of time, or the avatar's death. Attacking someone during a duel will not turn any participant's cursors to orange.

The most crucial thing in PVP is to deceive one's enemy. For instance, pretending that one player is vulnerable to holy-elemental attacks when they're largely immune to them after swapping out their gear, while also hiding the fact that they're weak against fire-elemental attacks.

## Items

Items are classified accordingly to the following rank system:

* Low → Middle → High → Top → Legacy → Relic → Legendary → Divine
* **Artifacts** are not related to specific ranks, it just means they are items with fixed data. Therefore, artifacts with a low rank can also exist.

## Monsters

There were very few monsters in Xostya with attacks that were vastly different from what their appearance suggested. However, there were many enemies whose moves could not be predicted and are a special case. Most monsters were generated by the same rules used for generating player characters. Even the magic they used was the same. The values derived from their basic stats such as health were also of a similar nature.

There were spellcasting monsters in Xostya. While the numbers of spells they could use varied greatly according to their level and species, they could use about eight kinds of magic.

When monsters attacked, they would target the one they wanted to hit the most. This could be expressed as a numeric value, called "hate." Causing more damage, healing HP, buffing, debuffing or using taunting-type skills would increase hate. When a player was hit by a monster, it would resolve the matter and that monster's "hate" of the player would decrease. Because hate values fluctuated often during a battle, tanks had to pay close attention to monster's "hate" values, or the backliners would take a hit.

## Combat

### Parameters

Several factors go into the calculation of damage in Xostya. Among them include the efficacy of hits (a direct hit as opposed to a scratch), the skill level of a player, the skill used, and the weapon's stats.

### Status Effects

Status Effects, like many DMMORPGs, play an important role in combat. Many attacks have a random chance of dealing status effects. They are generally not curable, unless the appropriate potions are used. Most status effects expire after a set period of time.

## Trivia

* Xostya characters like players and NPCs have access to their own inventory and its space limit can even be extended through the use of Cash Items.
* Creating a second character is strictly forbidden in Xostya.