Playing Talisman Online In PCLinuxOS

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

A legendary journey ...

In the ancient Far East, there was a peaceful and serene continent. The people there were living and working in peace and contentment. Their families thrived for generations.

However, a huge unknown evil force was brewing in the darkness. Once it had collected enough energy in the last thousand years, the evil force eventually turned into a huge monster called Master Blood. Its birthplace was called the Blood Palace.

With the arrival of Master Blood, peace ended. Master Blood kept killing humans and other living beings to strengthen its power. It fed up absorbing their poor souls.

At that time the whole world was at the mercy of Master Blood. The poor had become destitute and homeless. The beautiful and peaceful continent became a living hell. Dead bodies were everywhere.

But as the old saying goes, "Where there is oppression, there is opposition." The Grand Master Tian Meng, who comes from the north, was determined to exterminate the horrible Master Blood.

Under the leadership of Master Tian Meng, a just organization was quickly formed. Those warriors of justice came together to suppress Master Blood and his minions.

The battle between justice and evil lasted for 100 days. Both sides were severely injured. Finally, Master Tian Meng and his four companions fought with Master Blood on Blood Mountain. That incredible battle lasted for five days!

Fortunately, Master Blood was defeated by the magic of Master Tian Meng, called Heaven Ice, in the end. The soul of Master Blood was sealed in an ice cube which is located at the bottom of a natural pool in Green Scarp Valley.

The surface of the pool was locked with the "Thousand-year Ice" magic. From that moment on, the faithful Nanmu family has guarded the icy prison of Master Blood.

After Master Blood was sealed, the world regained peace. People began to rebuild their homeland. The whole continent gradually witnessed the return of peace and harmony. With the experience gained in the battle with the evil force, Master Tian Meng and his companions decided to create their own classes and accept many pupils to increase the force of justice.

With that mutual intention, it was created the well known 5 classes – Monk, Wizard, Fairy, Tamer and Assassin. The force of justice grew more and more.

However, 500 years later, the ice cube that was in the deep pool bottom in Green Scarp disappeared suddenly!

Then, various types of ghosts and evil monsters appeared continuously. The breath of evil was gradually suffocating the people. What the hell had happened? Master Blood resurfaced or a new monster was born? The five just classes made the pact to act together and find out the truth.

Talisman Online, the game

After this breathtaking introduction, you better be ready for many adventures in ancient China. The game is based on ancient local legends, with lots of Chinese folklore, Taoism and Buddhism, and beautiful scenery of the area where the game unfolds.

Fact sheet

Talisman Online was developed by the Chinese company Mira Games. Mira Games was founded in the summer of 2007 and is committed to the development of MMOs in English for the global community. The company also developed similar MMORPG, as Asura Force, Dragon Heart and Oceans Uncharted. Talisman Online was launched on 17th October 2007.

Review

Talisman Online is heavily inspired by the mega hit World of Warcraft from Blizzard, but still manages to look and play like an original game.

Much of the interface, mini-map and other details were taken directly from WoW, while the improvement of equipment and auto-walk are new features that help Talisman Online stand out from the crowd of WoW clones. Although Talisman Online is a unique and interesting game there is a little lack of content, and sometimes sameness.

The game does not offer a lot of customization and you are only able to choose the face and hair style of the five templates provided. The missions are highlighted in green on the map and click on them easily allows your player to go where the quests are. Keyboard shortcuts make it the ideal interface for the players. It is quite easy to navigate the world of Talisman Online.

New, different from other MMORPGs is that in Talisman Online, the player does not get stat points when leveling up, instead, stats increase automatically with each increase in level. That is, the game increases the stats of your character automatically. The amount of increase is different for the different classes.

Classes

• Wizard (male / female) - Wizards are masters of the arcane arts. They may have weak defense and low HP, but can cause great damage with their spells.


• Monk (male) - Monks are the warriors/tanks of Talisman Online. They fight with big weapons and inflict heavy damage. Monks have high defense and use stamina to use their skills.


• Assassin (male) - Assassins are quick specialists in close combat that have low defense, but high attack rates and evasion. As Monks, Assassins use stamina instead of mana to fuel their skills.


• Fairy (female) - Fairies, a supporting class, that have healing spells and buffs. Fairies can cause enough damage but suffer with low defense.


• Tamer (female) - The Ranger class, Tamers stand out in long range combat with their trusty arches. Tamers can persuade creatures of the same or lower level, to fight by their side.

Verdict

It is worth exploring the world of Talisman Online, because the graphics are quite beautiful, there are interesting visual effects and the hardware requirements are very low (P III and Nvidia/Intel compatible with DX 8.1, with at least 32 MB ram). It has sometimes an annoying music and some translations of "Engrish" that are hilarious, but all in all, it is worth it.

How to run it in PCLinuxOS

You'll need Play-On-Linux (POL).

• Open POL.
• Click Install a Program.
• Click Install a program not listed.
• Click Next, Next, Next until you reach the manual setup screen.
• Click Install a program on a new virtual drive.
• Create a new virtual drive, and give it a name. I called it talisman.
• On the next screen, select Configure Wine / install some libraries. Then click Next.

Now, configure Wine to Windows XP. Click the Graphics tab and configure as shown below:

In the DLL installation wizard, click POL_Install_microsoft_core_fonts, and then click POL_Install_d3dx9_36.

In the Talisman Online site http://www.talismanonline.com/, download the client
TalismanOnline_3124_2_Setup.exe.

Click Next and choose TalismanOnline_3124_2_Setup.exe to start the installation.

Proceed to install the program normally, with the next, next, finish and accept the terms of the EULA.

After performing the installation, do not check the Run the program after installation.

Follow the POL process, and choose the icon to create the launcher. Choose game.exe.

And that's it. You are now ready to live great adventures in Talisman Online.

I recommend that the resolution be set at 1280x720, or you'll have the game running in a window, since it has problems with the mouse capture in full screen.