I tried playing this for a while, but I could never play for more then half an hour at a time before it would crash. Must not like my laptop.
Uhh... TERA is rather CPU and GPU intensive at the same time, due to rather poor optimization. So yeah, playing on a laptop might not be the best idea.
How hardcore is the game? I have heard some stuff on the net that says late-game, you Need to grind like a motherfucker to survive Dungeons and stuff.
It depends on far you want to go. If you want to get the very best gear, then yeah it's gonna be a grind. If you're just aiming to be able complete the hardest dungeon in the game, the grind isn't really all that ridiculous.
To expand on that, this is the current gear tier list:
PvE: Idoneal -> Fulminate -> Wroth -> Schisma -> Lucid
PvP: Deviate -> Tensus
(Left is worst, right is best)
Levelling is very easy due to Avatar Weapons, which basically allow you to mow through mobs of your same level and deal ridiculous damage due to the 80~90% crit chance it has against mobs near your level. At level 65, you get the Idoneal set for free. After that, you can just go into Bathysmal Rise Normal Mode, which is very easy now due to boss nerfs and going from a five-man dungeon to a seven-man one. The drop rate for Fulminate boxes (consumables that give you the appropriate gear for your class) inside are ridiculous and if you're lucky you can get geared in Fulminate in two runs. If you're unlucky, you may take a few more runs to get the last piece of armor you want. Or you could be like me and rerun it over and over again for Frost- jewelry.
After that you can run Akeron's Inferno Normal Mode (AINM) for Wroth and Schisma. Wroth gear drops inside the dungeon, though you may want to ask "Fodder or not?" because everyone'll roll for things if it's a fodder run... If you instance match AINM you'll get treasure boxes that have a rather high chance of giving you the Schisma weapon when you open it. Generally, you should be set for the hardest dungeons in the game when you masterwork and +12 the second best tier of gear. This
might require a bit of grind, but the true grind is when you try to get Lucid and +15 it. (You have to first masterwork it and +12 it, then pay a 1000 masterwork alkahest and 2000 tier 6 feedstock to be eligible to awaken it, then you'll have to pay a few hundred alkahest and feedstock for each attempt to +1 it up to +15, and you'll drop back to +12 if you fail it, though this is getting changed next patch)
But to survive dungeons, you don't require that much. TERA is generally much more about skill than gear, though gear still matters a lot. Gear allows you to make more mistakes and have less time to make those mistakes since you'll kill bosses faster, but it's fully possible for a skilled DPS to do double the damage of those more geared than him.
It's not fully necessary to run dungeons late game though! You can also just play dress up with your lolis... Yvenna is dressed in a schoolgirl outfit, an Feral Valley Jr. High to be exact.
(I should totally post screenshots when I have access to a better computer)