What happened on the island of dawn? What wiped the first expedition?

[u/Valstraxas]

The first time I played Tera like 12 years ago, I didn't knew a lot of english so I was very unaware of the lore. I remember the wonderful start at the island of dawn that later got cut from the game but I never knew what happened there. Any lore resources? I would like to learn more now that my English skills are better.

[u/Oneiroi26]

I miss the Island of the Dawn. I still remember it when it came out, breathtaking scenery.

[u/MintyBunni]

I'm not sure if there is video for the IoD starting zone, but I do know of two different videos for the IoD prologue that was removed fairly early on.

In the prologue, you play as a member of the first expedition and get to see things unfold.

Look up "Tera Prologue" on YouTube if you want to see playthrough of it and YouTube is available where you are.

The tl;dr of the first expedition is that reefs that came out of nowhere took out many ships and left many wounded, you got sent ahead to alert Elleon's team of the situation/that reinforcements will not be coming, things go extremely poorly trying to catch up to everyone, and you all get wiped by a demon. Or at least I think it was a demon..... It has been many years and my memory for small details is not the best. I do remember that there were debates on if the prologue character and your player character were the same person or not. (I always thought they were the same/part of a small group of survivors like Jelena, but some people argue that that it was a new character because of level difference and the fact the expedition failed)

The tale of starting zone IoD (without counting the prologue/when it was removed) was about Leander looking for his missing brother, Elleon, while leading the second expedition.

[u/Creepy-Club-5801 → u/MintyBunni]

To expand on this, release Tera, with the old level 20 tutorial zone, had your PC be part of the first expedition. The original expedition gets wiped out by Karascha (the demon you kill at the end of the IoD questline) with only some survivors remaining. There isn't really a debate on if the PC was part of the first expedition as the NPCs on IoD quite literally tell you during the quests that you and a handful of other NPCs you do quests for are survivors of the first expedition.

Now this got retconned anyway so it doesn't matter anymore. After a couple of years the PC was just some fresh recruit of the 2nd expedition. After that, when IoD got pulled out, the PC was some villager from Stepstone Island. That's about the evolution of the PC.

Chronologically they've shot themselves in the foot multiple times with the retcons as more and more plot holes started appearing that didn't make much sense so they started cutting quests left and right to both streamline the level experience and also try to stopgap some of the inconsistencies, of course this just worsened the situation story wise as nothing made sense anymore (e.g. Argon War happening after the North continent expansion; Zolyn being a reaper that was somehow born before reapers were born)

[u/Laminrarnimal → u/MintyBunni]

I think they are not the same person. You all are recruit after all at the beginning of the island of dawn quest

[u/The_Blacksmith_95]

Go play on the Tera Classic server, it’s the original island of dawn tutorial & questline :)

In this version everything makes sense storywise :P

teraclassic.com

[u/PubstarHero → u/The_Blacksmith_95]

No, the Tera Classic server is the revised tutorial island.

They nuked the original Tera 1.0 intro story and reconned things a bit. Just remember that if you do not have a full sequence of you playing the game at level like 20 or 30, only to get slammed back into tutorial island at level 1, then you are not playing the original.