Unbiased Shining Moon Review

[Vallamaria]

To help other people potentially interested in the server I've decided to make a review going over the pros and cons of the Helheim server on Shining Moon RO. Since some of the cons are things I would have liked to have known before joining. In any case, it's a decent server but it has some shortcomings.

Pros:

- The Helheim server is a kRO-like server with some custom quality of life features added. So you won't find any jRO or iRO items on it. Which is nice if you just want to have a more kRO-like experience in terms of balancing.

- All of the staff are very helpful nice. Also, the server owner Lunar resolves issues from support tickets very fast.

- You can get costume headgears for free since they're dropped by monsters instead of being locked behind the cash shop. Also, there's an NPC that will let you convert any stat headgear into a costume version that can't be enchanted.

- The Advanced Party Loot System makes party play a lot more worth it by making it so everyone in the party gets loot when someone kills a monster. Naturally this doesn't apply to MvP card drops though.

- They seem to hold a 50% EXP, double drop, an refine rate increase event every other weekend.

- It has custom EXP rates that go from x1 up to x100. So it lets you decide how low or high you want your Base and Job EXP rates to be. This system also gives a character a permanent drop boost if you level to 175 on lower base EXP rates such as x1 without ever increasing the Base rate before hitting 175.

- The server has up to the 17.1 field maps so it's relatively up to date. They've also got every single piece of Shadow Equipment implemented. Which is really great if you like getting to play around with the latest gear and builds.

- They've got an instance manager in the menu that will let you start any instance as long as you're within the correct level range. Which means you don't even need to do any prerequisite quests to enter them.

- The small community the server has seems quite pleasant and friendly.

Cons:

- The server seems to crash once every single weekend. But thankfully they have a NPC that gives players compensation to make up for it when it happens. However sometimes it crashes when the server owner is asleep and will be off for hours until the server owner wakes up and fixes it.

- The server population is quite small with only around 300 (maybe less) actual players. So it can be hard to find people to party with and there's also not as many people doing WoE/PvP.

- Despite advertising as being up to 17.1 they currently lack all of the 17.1 instances except for EDDA Fall of Glast Heim. Also, they haven't bothered to implement the EDDA Half-Moon in the Daytime instance since they feel it doesn't have good enough gear to be a high priority. Additionally they lack the Charleston Crisis and Nightmarish Jitterbug instance revamps.

- They only have up to Episode 16.1 - Banquet for Heroes as far as story quests go. So when it comes to those quests they're as far behind as iRO. Also, because it's what the majority of their players voted for they just prioritize pushing out new gear with little regard for implementing more story quests.

- The server currently lacks NPC portraits for every NPC in the game for some reason. So you don't get to see the expressions of the NPC as they give their lines of dialogue. Which hurts the immersion and enjoyment of what quests the server does have.

Conclusion:

If you only care about getting to play around with the latest gear and builds you'll enjoy this server. Provided you don't mind the server crashing once per week and are fine with the small population. However if you're someone who cares a lot about experiencing the lore and story of the game this definitely won't be a good server for you.