Design Flaws at the Expedition Camps in LotD? Tomb of the Vulture Lord cleared

Yesterday we were preparing for tombs inside the Land of the Dead when Order flipped the zone. Being good citizens we went to the Destruction Expedition Camp to defend against Order. While we were outnumbered, due to the gate we could hold the attackers back for some time. They would have gotten in anyway at some point due to their stronger force, but the problem arised before: Apparently there is a flaw in the terrain design at the warcamps and you can use your mount to climb the mountain and jump in. I did not try this at the Order camp yet, but at least its possible at the Destro one. Since its not that easy to just ride in this looks to me like a design flaw with the terrain near the camps. What is your experience with this?

The guild Coven (Dark Crag server) cleared the Tomb of the Vulture Lord (1,2). Like suspected before, after you kill the 8th boss inside TotVL you'll spawn a large statue worldboss outside in the courtyard. I actually saw the statue when i explored below the pyramid, it was far below the courtyard rocking slightly back and forth. Those that are far into the TotVL claim that a bunch of boss fights are still very buggy and you need some luck to beat them if they bug out. I've not been far enough in yet, but as soon as i do I'll report about it more.

Aion review - Blood for Blood!

You wonder why no WAR updates over the weekend? Well, during the closed Beta Weekend 3 i was able to check out the upcoming Aion MMO some. Since i know a bunch of people are interested in it i took the time to give you a rundown from my perspective. I leveled an Asmodian Templar (Tank) up to level 18 during that weekend. So all my findings will be based on what i saw during that time. Also important to note: Apparently NCsoft will release Aion with version 1.5, so there are several patches missing (translations: 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.5) on the EU/US servers at the moment. Some things might get fixed with those, where i know it will its mentioned in my article.

Before we start to talk about the game, let me say a few words about the GameGuard software, a hacking prevention software that Aion uses, which sucks a lot. I know many players had trouble with it, me as well. I had to deinstall (not simpy disable) my NetLimiter (firewall & bandwidth shaper) as else i would get some error window that only told me some korean gibberish with no hint towards the problem. Users of 64bit windows had major trouble as well, those had to exchange some files taken from another game to fix their problem. I fail to understand how a company can use such a crappy software that does not even yield a proper error message in the first place. Lets hope they improve it, but from what i hear people are not happy with GameGuard, tho its unlikely to change.

Who will have fun in Aion? Well, if you dislike grinding at all - Aion is not the game for you. Period. If you need the game to take you by the hand for everything or want a rich storyline with a lot of lore - Aion is probably not the right game for you. Can casual gamers have fun in Aion? Yes, they can but the most fun you'll have while playing with a good guild (called Legion in Aion). Due to the way things work a good guild will speed up your progress a lot. The game itself immediately reminded me of some of those typical asian free-to-play grind MMOs (like 2Moons and such), but its a notch better done. A lot of features are not really explained inside the ingame manual and you have to figure them out yourself. I'd suggest that this gets fixed before release, else the whining will be huge since people have no idea how to use certain things.

Graphics
The game looks very good. Character customization at character creation (and also later on) is huge, a lot of stuff to play with. Despite the lower polygon count used for models in Aion, they made good use of some high-quality textures on the monsters and the surroundings. Like so many other games they have a bunch of places with blurry/bad textures as well, but the overall feeling when you run around is great. In general the maps are nicely done, tho often a tad colorful for my taste... guess thats the asian influence. Several monsters or plants/trees have a cool and unique look to them tho, you don't think i saw this similar model a hundred times already. Some races are the "cute kind", like large squirrels or pandas - but heh, who does not like to slaughter cute Mumu herb gatheres while they do nothing wrong but work?

Audio
There is a lot of good and catching music in Aion. Sometimes it feels a bit out of place when the different themes switch, but overall there is a larger amount of good music then in many other games.

UI in general
The Aion UI is nothing special or really new. It looks clean and has enough features to work with tho. Often i wish it had more options to turn off some confirmation windows or other parts to save a few clicks, but its ok to use. You can't freely place or resize the UI, its rather limited in ways to modify. Annoying: It seems at many places the UI is missing tooltips to explain what certain settings or attributes do. The UI luckily has a moderate color/feel to it so not to distract you from the gameplay. Everything you look for in a MMO UI is basicly there, can't remember important parts missing. Annoying is that you can't switch the camera view to look freely around while running into a direction, maybe its because coordination in flight later on, not sure. You can use the middle mouse button to switch the camera 180 degree and eg. look behind you while running forward, but thats about it... else you'll always run where you look. Note: Someone mentioned patch 1.5 has enabled left mouse button to rotate camera and also invert mouse. The UI has many auto move/pathing features that will make your toon run by its own. Parts of it can be disbled (stick to target) but some others can't. This can be tricky if your toon starts running off and aggros close by mobs because by accident you clicked a gather note.

Instanced gameplay
The game world is instanced. While one instance (called channel) can hold a lot of people (no idea how many) it seems at any point there are 10 channels from any given area. Not so sure about the main capitol, can't remember if that was instanced as well. You see a lot more players running around then eg. i saw in AoC instances tho. The game engine supports a large amount of players and runs very smooth and stable. While playing i seldom had lag and even with 50+ players on your screen inside the main city the performance is very good, no heavy drop in FPS for me. You can change channels by choice any time you wish. If you're in a group you can choose to teleport into the group leader's instance from the group menu. If certain quest points are camped you can always try to switch the channel to avoid the crowd. Sometimes this helps, sometimes not. I also hear that only the first few areas in the game have channels, later on and in the Abyss there is only one - anyone knows this exactly?
Note: I heard tho, come launch the channel change will have a 10-15min delay. So no avoiding crowd or farming named mobs with channel change.

Leveling/Quests/Grinding
During the beta weekend there were a few points when you ran low/out of quests and needed to grind a little bit to get to the next level. From what i read one of the patches added a bunch of more quests to help with that. When it comes to leveling you can do both questing or grinding. It will depend on what you do which is more effective. If you get a small group of people and grind those elite mob areas, this can yield very good XP. I was going solo at some point and killed mobs 3-4 levels above me and that yielded very good XP as well. It will depend on your level, your gear and if you're solo or in a group, but so far it looks like you don't have to quest. Tho usually the quests will lead you through the areas and some follow-up quests will give you item rewards. Every so often a quest will give you a short intro with a cutscenes (using the game engine), which can really add to some stories, but often felt a bit out of place. I'd rather have a sequence explaining me what happened then show me some abandoned hut in the middle of the forrest i never saw before. There is a quest helper system in place and when a quest text mentiones a certain NPC, mob race or place you can "locate" them and if possible get a mark on your map where to go to, sometimes things are at hidden/hard to reach places and it does not work.

During leveling i had two aspects that annoyed me big time:
1. Loot rights are given to the person/group that did the highest damage to a mob it seems. This results in high damage classes to "steal" the mob you have been fighting already. There are a few quests on a timer, you already fight a mob down to 70% HP to get a quest drop and some sorc jump in, kills the mob with a tad higher damage then you, grabs the stuff and runs off. I met a bunch of players that did this by intend. Supernice.
2. Sometimes there is a very long respawn timer on quest objectives (you scouted the area already three times only to realize the object spawns on a table you ran past several times) or quest mobs. I did a few quests where only special mobs would drop the needed items and in the whole frickin' village spawned 3-4 of those for like 15-20 players running around there. Add point 1 to that and go figure the annoyance.

There will be griefing and spawn camping in Aion on a larger scale then in some other MMOs.

A nice feature during fights inside NPC villages and such: Many NPCs alert each other when attacked or start to run away and alert others when low on health. You'll really have to watch were you are going and which mobs to pull later on if you're leveling in areas where the mobs are challenging to you. In addition ranged NPCs are hard to move, looks like they use their ranged "attack skill" also when close to you. So no step-by-stepp pulling them back. To a certain degree you can work around it with corner pulls and such. Training NPCs into other players is rather easy as well and i can imagine this leads to griefing as well. When you run away too far from a mob it will reset and leash back, BUT can aggro players on the way sometimes. While you kill mobs somewhere one idiot running away with a large groups of mobs on his tail is often enough to get you killed, so watch whats happening around you. Overall fighting mobs is more challenging then in many other MMOs, which is refreshing. I also hear rumours about a hate list system used beside the normal aggro system. Mobs can have certain "rules" why to hate certain players more then others.

Combat
Killings monsters feels like its taking longer and more effort then in WAR, WoW or AoC. Depending on the level difference against a mob you will use several different skills before the mob drops dead. When fighting equal level monsters you use a few skills to kill it, but i had to use at least one rotation from all available skills at the early levels to kill it. Level difference has a major effect on the power the mob has and the time it takes to kill it. If you fight a mob three levels higher then you, its already dangerous if you get adds at the wrong point and you'll have to use several skill rotations to kill it. Combat overall feels good tho, the animations are very fluid and if i use a shield bash my toon will really take his shield and smash it into the foe. Combat skills are used similar to Black Orcs in WAR. While you have "single hit skills" as well, the best skills are part of a chain which opens up after you used the starter skill. Depending on your level you get more skills to use as 2nd or 3rd. The chains are easy enough to identify/use since there is a good display for them and when they become available they'll start to glow. Then you got a few seconds to press the corresponding key. There is no skill "queue", so if you press the needed key to early it won't fire. Should you use a different skill while moving down a chain, the chain will be lost since you need to wait for the starter skill to come off cooldown again. The different chains for my templar had 1-3 branches they could lead to. Many skills are in reaction to eg. block, parry, etc. ergo only open up if the condition is met. Playing my templar from the skill system itself really felt like being on my Black Orc, i can live with that. The fights sometimes feel a tad long, if you bang with two people on some elite mob it can take forever to get it down. On the other side you have the feeling something is happening, the good animations underline that feeling. The fight animations and sounds are a bit too much mortal combat IMO, but i read somewhere one of the patches gives you an option to disable at least most of the "mortal combat ninja cries" your toon does while fighting.

The skills use MP (Mana Points) and Divine Points (DP), some are free without any costs. DP are collected through fighting players & NPCs, through dealing/taking damage. You can't store DP and should you die or log off, that bar goes to zero. DP skills are really powerful from what i saw. It takes quite a while until you filled your DP bar enough to use a skill.

Death
If you die you'll get a short debuff (1min) reducing movement speed, lose a small percentage of XP and resurrect at your last binding location. You can pay a Soul Healer to get the XP back, does not matter if you do it while you still have the debuff or not. If you adventure into dangerous areas its adviced you spend a few coin to bind before you go so you don't respawn too far away. It's annoying to have to wait for people to travel back across the continent. If you die there is a 30min timer another player can resurrect you. You can buy resurrection stones rather cheap from general goods vendors - good investment to be able to rez your cleric if things go wrong.

Items
Come in different quality: grey (trash), white, green, blue and orange. During to the beta weekend i sometimes found green items (a few levels better then white) and one blue chest piece from a named mob. There is a neat item comparision system in place and if you compare two items red/green indicator will tell you which stats are worse/better on the different items. Item tooltips are a bit unclear tho, could use some work. I found it very annoying tho, that many items have the same name, but very different stats on them. You really need to look at them in detail. Very few items in the game seem to be bind on pickup, from what i hear only the boss loot from the high-end dungeons will be BoP. The vendors have a button to sell all misc (grey) items. All UI parts that deal with items work more like an online shop, you can choose the stuff you want to buy and then have to press the final button to check out and confirm the transaction.

Tips:
# strg+left-click on an item will open up a preview dressing window.
# strg+right-click will link an item into chat.

Auction House & Private Stores
There are brokers in major cities. The AH interface is a bit cumbersome and lacks more filters (stuff like enter item level filter was improved in 1.1 apparently). The amount of items you can list at the AH is limited (dunno exactly how many). If you buy stuff from the AH it goes directly into your inventory. If you sell stuff at the AH, you need to "settle your account" at the trader to obtain the money. There is a private store system in Aion. At any place you can start your own private shop and sell stuff from your inventory. Many players use it while being afk. Some major areas in the capitol city are *full* of private shops, you can spend a lot of time to run from player to player and see what they offer. When you open the shop you can put one line of text in, which will be displayed over your head - also often used for guild recruiting messages etc.

Tip: Double left-click on a player-store to automaticly run to that player and open the shop interface. Since players move right into the player with the shop sometimes it can be hard to target them.

Mailbox system works like in every other MMO. Its a bit confusing tho as you have "normal" delivery (which is instant into the other mailbox already) and "express" - unfortunately i did not test this, but i read this results in a Shugo (small squirrel/hamster NPC) messenger coming to the recipient and delivering the letter.

Group/Party System
There is no real LFG system, which makes the task of finding a party for certain elite quests a bit harder. One reason I'd only play Aion with other people i know. A party can have up to six people, a raid up to 24 players. There is no need/greed loot roll system, only roll dice or abandon roll. This should be improved IMO. In the group distribution you have some nice additional features. You can distribute money to group members, can choose to auto distribute misc items, there is a master looter and some strange bidding system wherer you loot for coin you bid (and coin is distributed between party members).

NPCs have some sort of point indicator next to their name when targeted, this shows you how strong the mob is. While i can easily kill a mob with 1-2 points on my own, those with 4 points could be very tough cookies, sometimes impossible for me to kill solo, depending on the mob. Some quests don't indicate that they are group/elite mission and you'll need to group up. So you'll need to watch out if you run into some elite area.

From what i hear there will be several high-level dungeons available a release, some instanced some with PvP in them. Tho i doubt you should expect very complicated scripted encounters from what the game felt to me. I'm sure the bosses will have some tricks up the sleeve, but thats about it.

Flying/Gliding
With level 10 you'll finish a quest chain and "earn your wings". Despite what many people think you CAN NOT FLY EVERYWHERE in Aion. At least in the first areas there are only few places you can fly freely. Depending on the wings you have and gear stats, etc. you'll have a certain amount of flight time (rather limited). Once the timer runs out you'll get a nasty (fun!) warning *meeep meeeep* and start to fall. Yes, you can die if you fall deep enough. ouch.
What you can do everywhere is glide. You do this by jumping down a slope, just jumping from any higher place and use space again to spread your wings. Many players fail to grasp the concept of gliding, so here is how to: As long as you glide downhill and don't get stuck uphill or at an obstacle you can glide until your timer uns out. Gliding over water is good as well. Don't push your forward movement button while gliding, only adjust your direction by going left and right - this way you can glide a very long time if the area supports it and you use the environment smart. While gliding you will aggro mobs and they can hurt you, so be aware of that. Utilizing gliding properly will speed your movement up a lot.

Other forms of transportation include a flight master system between major hubs inside the same area and teleports between the different regions. So far there are no plans for mounts from what i hear. You can upgrade your wings later on tho. You also have a personal teleport skill (20min cooldown) you can bind at various obelisks, this does cost a small fee.

Swimming
You can't swim in Aion. Should you enter water deep enough, you'll simply walk on the ground under water. *lol* There is a system that will damage you when you enter "deep water".

Title System
By means of questing (and maybe other things) you'll obtain titles. The thing in Aion is that titles have a small stat boost attached to them. So if you wear a title (and only then) you'll get that stat boost. The title system is not very intuitive and i disabled title display on PCs rather quick as it looks annoying because the title is displayed together with the player name. I never saw a message that i acquired a new title either, so check the title list from time to time.

There are many ways to enhance your gear/weapons: manastones (gems you socket into gear), enchantment stones (obtained by "disenchanting" gear with vendor bought tools), power shards (drop from mobs can be bough at vendor) that enhance your weapon damage for one hit. The different ways to enhance your gear are not very intuitive at first, check here for more info.

Crafting
I tried crafting a tiny bit. Crafting overall does take a long time and some major coin. You'll have to to go into the main city for crafting stations. No crafting anywhere else. There are normal crafted items and you can crit on a craft, resulting in a better item. There is some wierd upgrading system, where you basicly take an already crafted item, add some more materials and refinement stones and then create a better version. Since crafting can fail (no idea about the mechanism) i can imagine it will take a lot of time and materials to craft the best gear. Apparently you can train all crafting trades up to 399 skill, but only master one to 450 skill.
Gathering materials is done in two ways: You gather stuff like ore, food, plants, etc. from the floor and you have to gather aether that is floating around in the air in flying enabled zones.

Armor dyeing (so far i only saw vendor bought dyes) did look like crap ony my plate armor due to the armor reflections not working together well with the new colors.

Legions (Guilds) System
There is a guild system implemented and you eg. get a guild vault with a guild plus some other organization tools. A lvl 1 guild (register) cost 135.000 Qina (coins in Aion) and can have max. 30 members. You'll get a random crest assigned for the guild cloaks (also displays on player tooltip). Lvl 2 guild can be obtained while having at least 10 members and paying 845.000 Qina. You get to choose a crest from a certain pool and your guild can have max. 60 members. A guild rank 3 can upload their own crest (if you can really upload and not just create one, thats cool) and have unlimited members, but you need to pay 3.151.000 Qina and obtain 10.000 Legion points (from PvP and maybe fighting the 3rd faction inside the Abyss). Note: Above figures to buy higher legion rank seems to be outdated, but you get the picture.

The fluff stuff
Aion has a lot of fluff stuff, like googles, funny hats, festival dresses, etc. Very early on you get cool disguises via quests as well. Lets not even start to talk about remodel shops that will let you switch even the 3D model your gear displays, if you got enough coin. There is a lot of stuff to spend gold on: resurrection stones, teleport scrolls, custom 2h binding stone scrolls, etc. Overall there are many money sinks already in the game. Some of the stuff you buy from the vendors is really useful.

NCcoin?!?
One thing that jumped my eye while reading over the user agreement, they mention NCcoin as some kind of currency to pay for ingame items with real money. I'm not sure if this will really make it into the game, but i know many hope it does not. Also paying a monthly fee (no one knows yet how much for EU/US) as for other MMOs would not be welcome if they make money on the side with this.

Due to the nature of the game you'll be able to spend hours by trying to improve crafting, gathering materials, etc. The later game levels are supposed to be a bit of grind, but then again even WAR or WoW felt like that in the end, tho i assume the feeling might be more present in Aion. Will Aion be a game i could have fun with? Only in a good guild. Should a large part of my guild mates move over to Aion, probably so would i. It's no game i would start without being part of a Legion tho. You hit the wall playing solo rather quick and the lacking LFG system does not help that much. Aion overall was better then i thought it would be, but my expectations were not that high and i doubt it will be THE upcoming MMO people waited for. I think it can be fun for a while tho. Some things are new and refreshing to look at or use. The higher challenge rating while fighting "normal" NPCs was very welcome. They had more AI to them then in the other MMOs i played recently. Most likely i forget a bunch of stuff in this review, should you have any questions or want to share your own thoughts, feel free to use the comments.

Meti Ka, Soother of Souls

Finally i got my hands on one of the epic 1H weapons, Meti Ka, Soother of Souls (no link, warDB has some issues atm), that can drop in the tombs. The hammer looks a bit tiny on my Black Orc, but heh... grave robbers can't be choosers. At least it gives me a viable option to equip some of those epic LotD talismans. A few of the really good talismans (cost 250 gold scarabs at the vendor i think) are very powerful. I'm not sure if the trash mobs in LotD can drop the best (BoP) talismans as well, but the tomb bosses and i think also other players can. Now i only need a shield to go with that, so far i bought the blue one from the vendor but due to the bugs (see below) i did not use that yet. Maybe the weapons from TotVL have more unique models.

Word of Warning: I read at the US forum there are some bugs involving the LotD talismans and those can go *puff*.

Tomb of the Vulture Lord

Beside plundering tombs and exploring LotD more of course i wanted to have a look at THE new LotD instance, the Tomb of the Vulture Lord. To enter it, you have to finish the PQ at the Temple of Ualatp and after the PQ is done, the door to the instance will be open. The amount of time to enter is maybe a tad short, could use another minute IMO. Unfortunately so far i was not able to join a group going into the TotVL, but some guild mates went there a few days ago (lockout timer on the instance is 3 days) and with the mechanism to bring new group members into a dungeon, a friend was able to let me tag along. BTW, if you enter an already used instance without a lockout, you won't get "tagged" until you kill a boss in there it seems - we killed a few trash mobs and i still did not have a lockout. Compared to some other MMOs where you get the same instance ID the second you enter.

As far as i've heard so far there are eight bosses inside that instance. Each boss fight works as a PQ. After you kill the Vulture Lord himself hes supposed to wake up some large statue you have to fight as well. The whole tomb is full of traps. I only could check out the first two, but the mechanism works like this for them: Three people have to bypass the trap and on the other side all three have to pull a lever at the same time to disable the trap. The others can follow safely then. Should the instance get invaded, you can turn the traps back on to hinder progress of the invaders. There are also doors you can open/close behind you. Sounds like fun. At the start of the instance you'll find a healer and should you die inside, you'll respawn at the start and not the expedition camp. Thank god! Once you progress further into the instance, there is also a ghost called Adom Fusa'ni who will teleport you stage wise deeper into the tomb once you killed bosses in there. Nice to speed up progress. Can we please now get something like this for Lost Vale?

The traps are cool - you feel like Indiana Jones working your way through the traps. I like what i saw so far and am eager to go back and work properly on the Tomb of the Vulture Lord. I was able to bypass the first (Pendulums of Death) and second (Darts of Pain) trap without dying at all. You just have to watch it for a few seconds and be on your toes, those were not that hard tbh. But i know that many players died several times trying to get through... Hehe... oh the fun on vent you miss. ;) Since i didn't get a chance to fight any bosses in there yet, not much i can say about them. But judging from the feel of the place and the other lair/tomb fights I'm sure it will be fun. I'll try to report more from the place once i could go in deeper.

Black Orc Tyrant Armor Set from Land of the Dead

With the Land of the Dead came some new gear and also a new armor set: Tyrant's War Boyz' Kit. Two of the set items you can buy at the vendor inside your Expedition Camp with some kind of mask currency (from the tomb of the vulture lord i guess). The rest of the set seem to drop from the bosses inside the Tomb of the Vulture Lord and have a 50% chance to drop from the bosses there. Seems the drop itself is a repairable item more then one class can use. If this works correctly it means less sharded loot and more item joy for the party members. Good stuff! The Tyrant set does not award any wards btw. Judging from a bunch of Tyrant armor screenshots at Gaarawarr Gabs, the Orc questgiver inside the Expedition Camp wears the full Black Orc Tyrant set, which you can see on the screenshot. I wonder if we'll ever see the kind of cool cloak he wears - with some kind of standard on his back. Should be cool tbh. There is another set called The Warmonger of Sakhmet, consisting of four jewelry items and The Squigplate of Sakhmet (maybe THE cloak)?

The set bonus from the Tyrant gear is as follows:


I wonder why a PvE obtained set has a parry bonus on it tbh. IMO sets obtained by RvR should be geared towards PvP and sets obtained in PvE dungeons should have bonuses on them towards PvE. Check out the full Tyrant set stats posted by Lokax. Tbh the distribution of attributes and special bonuses does not really get me excited for the single pieces. I can't see myself wearing the full set for tanking purposes, which is a bummer as it looks rather nice. I fail to understand the logic behind the itemization of this new PvE set. I know some people say: "Heh, its a nice addition to Warlord gear" - but tbh not all of us can wear the high RR gear. Which leaves a mix between Darkpromise/Tyrant/Sentinel plus a few epic pieces like Insurrectionist Feetsplate, Time-lost Bodyplate to set up the best combination of tanking gear. I hope the items/set will be adjusted again. I've no idea how good they are for other classes What do you think about the new Tyrant set?

Mirror, Mirror...

Still a lot of stuff to explore and try out in the desert. Overall i very much enjoy LotD so far. The main gripe right now is the not working guild/alliance chat, which is becoming very annoying. This is just a quick post, as a reminder for players that its faster to use the mirror of infinity to travel into the desert then to walk the path all the way through the mountains. When you die and want to regroup you head for the healer anyway in the warcamp. Right behind him (at least for destro, but I'm sure order has something similar) is the questgiver for the mirror transport. Use it! :)

How the ancient zandri pyramid architects botched (Exploration)

Since i like to know my surroundings properly, I went for a proper exploration tour into the Land of the Dead. Before i tell you how the ancient zandri architects messed up the large pyramid at the Temple of Ualatp, lets talk about the other things to find in LotD. There are four glyphs spread out over the zone that will yield an achievment tome unlock each. Tells you an interesting story how the scepter was broken in four pieces and of the casket of souls - don't want to spoil it for you. Should you have trouble finding them, the maps that were spread out over the fanpages for the last event have all marked one glyph on them (nice touch!). There are also a few hidden quests that yield a scarab and in addition some trash item with flavour text, not sure if you can do something with those or not.


In some remote locations there are also small camps with either bandits or skeleton workers that are usually commanded by one of the different disciples. I have no idea what these are for, maybe later during the key of zandri (?) questline you have to find them? Beside those disciples there is nothing really interesting to find in those camps, at least i could not see anything else to interact with.


One really weird thing i ran into the first day exploring the zone is a zombie named "Test". He runs around the whole zone, across the river and through mountains. Hes running quite fast as well. First time he crossed my field of vision i was like "WTF?!?" You can't target or interact with him tho. I wonder what kind of purpose this kind of test mob could have for zone development? Maybe hes running around everywhere randomly and tested for places you can get stuck in? Who knows... *shrugs*

The next weird thing i encountered are groups of spirits/ghosts walking the desert. You can encounter them "from" your own faction or the enemy one. Both groups will disappear once you get too close to them. What is the purpose of those illusions? I don't know, but when you get near the library in the southern part of LotD you can get a glimpse at a mysterious "Mirage Controller" on one of the column structures. It's hard to see or to spot and i could not find any way to get up there or to interact with it.

Now you finally wonder what proof i have the ancient zandri pyramid architects botched? Well, i found a way to bypass all those invisible walls (that really destroy the immersion btw, bad design IMO) you encounter in the zone. Usually there is the "teleport out security" in place, but it has holes and you can bypass it. You can access two areas (at least i found so far) called "zone 306" and "zone 304" this way. The areas are vast desert/mountain parts without anything interesting i could find. BUT, you can access the large pyramid at the Temple of Ualatp from the backside. I tried to climb the huge pyramid, but you can't. :( The thing you can see on the screenshot is, the pyramid got no wall on the back. Ergo there is no collision and you can pass through the inside of it.

The bad thing about this is, you'll end up *below* the floor next to the pyramid - where the architect/glyph PQ is. This could be exploited, since its an RvR zone, you can see everything that goes on above and there are parts you can get up to appear on the floor level again. I'm sure (did not try) you could also attack players there while being below the floor or surfacing at parts where the other players can't access you. This needs to be fixed by Mythic. Luckily it won't be many players that will find the way anway, but you never know. It's not possible to access rooms from there you can't access from the normal floor level. I did not jump of the edge of the world down there, no idea what will happen. Here are a few more pictures from below the pyramid. If you find anything else interesting while exploring, feel free to share with us in the comments. There is also a place up in the mountains where Dwarf miners do their business and you can trigger areas that will port you directly into the library of Zandri. Happy Hunting!

The dead walk the desert

So I'm back in the game. The first day, after being offline for several weeks, felt like being a Black Orc without arms or legs... if you know what i mean. I did set up my UI properly again for Thulf (did not have the heart to do it for my Choppa yet). Did i have fun? Yes, i did. But first things first... Since GOA merged a bunch of more servers towards Karak-Azgal, our server is more alive then ever. Tho many known faces/guilds are gone since people stopped playing. The game performance did not get better, stayed the same then before for me. Some transparent textures still have problems displaying properly and a few things like the obelisk at one PQ did lack textures at first. The screenshot feature for super screenshots is still broken, so i keep using FRAPS.

The Land of the Dead reminded me immediately of Stygia, which i liked in AoC - so its not a bad thing. Atmosphere is good in the new zone, a mix between Stygia and the Mummy movies if you ask me. Although there are a few places you run into invisible walls, which destroy the immersion of a vast desert. There are PQs all over the place. PQ rewards are bags with crafting materials, scarabs (new LotD token currency) and sometimes a r31 epic weapon. So for r40 players the PQs are just a giant timesink, since you have to do them to collect glyphs, which you need to enter the four Tombs (sun, stars, moon and sky). The scarabs you also collect via the PQs are ok to buy a lot of new stuff, but eg. the best talismans cost a shitload of scarabs and are on a short timer. I don't see anyone getting those. Most new talismans are special in a way that you need special weapons/shields from LotD to use them. The tomb bosses drop epic/mythic talismans as well... there are a bunch of new sexy procs/attributes for those (some are even permanent). A few talismans for weapons are bugged, you can't see what they do. The tomb bosses can drop new epic r40 weapons and some are badass. The tomb fights - i visited sun, stars and moon so far - are nicely done and fun. Mythic needs to fix the bugged/exploitable sun boss tho. All fights have a nice twist to them and are something quick to do, IF people have the glyphs already. Else you run around for a while and have to collect the missing glyphs for party members. I'm not so sure yet the glyph mechanism is a good timesink, can imagine it will become rather annoying once its less people doing the PQs (right now its fast to get them). The only glyph very annoying is Ricci's Raiders. Basicly its a caravan of bandits running around you have to find and from the looks of it they don't respawn immediately. Therefore many people lack the scorpion glyph. Some of the PQs are nicely scripted as well, not all tho. To enter the Tomb of the Vulture Lord you *have to* finish the Temple of Ualatp PQ and enter the door while the reset timer runs.

IMO it's too early to say how LotD impacts RvR on my server. So far there is always RvR going on, either inside LotD once access is being flipped or in the normal world to regain access to the zone. If too few players are fighting for zone control there might be a push towards a capitol. So far it looks ok to me and inside LotD its more small-scale RvR, which is great. I haven't been to the Vulture Lord tomb yet, but I'm not sure for how long Land of the Dead will entertain people. There are some nice new items, but Mythic also reused a bunch of crap items (like useless blue repairables) that didn't even get unique models to look cool. I fail to understand why they can't use some unique models at least so you can run around with some of the lower level items in the capitol or something, just for fun.

Overall there are still a bunch of bugs in LotD, some you wonder why they have not been fixed yet as they are major annoying... like guild/alliance chat is bugged in the LotD zone. You can only read it from people you're grouped with, no one else. It does work while you're inside a tomb tho. stupid.

A few more things i noticed:

GOOD:
- The dismount at the stairs at the Apex in IC is *finally* fixed.
- New & powerful pocket items with "use" (absorb damage, immune to crit hits for 10secs, etc.) from LotD. Good stuff, cooldown 1 hour.

BAD:
- There is some kind of bug with the enhanced bags, sometimes half of them becomes unresponsive. You have to switch eg. between crafting/normal to get rid of the bug.
- They implemented the new whacky tradeskill titles, but those (like me) that "triggered" it before still have ??? and can't use the title.
- Friendlist is broken for me. Doesn't show if people are online or not.

This post has been long already, so I'll write about some LotD crafting stuff and tome unlocks next time.

Loading WAR...

The LotD hit WAR and i figured its time to go back into the game and get a look for myself what going on, if i should keep my subscription active and get back playing or not. First thing was an "orgy" of patches and updating addons, which nearly gave me a headache. I'm still in the process to set up my UI again, since a few mods i used for hotkeys etc. are not working anymore i have to redo it completely, meh. When i logged into the game the first things i checked out was the enhanced bag space (nice!) and the new ward system. Hmm.. at least its very viable for me to get the Darkpromise Wards without getting the drop. At least something... Although i saw so many people running around in Invader gear and even bits of Warlord, it would take ages for me to get the required renown level. If i understood right you need to equip the gear to get the ward, right? Just having a warlord item in my inventory won't be enough, or? I checked the AH if there were any new items to buy, but nothing of interest for me. Of course due to me not login into the game for such a long time all my mailbox stuff (loads!) decayed and is gone. Ah well, i still have enough gold left to get back on my feets and due to some recent bugs that made it possible to make thousands of gold coins easily i hear the inflation is hitting WAR badly anyway atm. Probably as there is not much else to buy with gold still. Strangely one of my characters got "duplicated", i have no idea why and its just a low level with not much stuff on him (8g, yay!).

I traveled to the Land of the Dead and checked out the "starter area" but due to my UI being messed up so badly i could not go on further. I'll have to fix that first and hopefully will have some time during the weekend to have a proper look.

What happened in the meantime? Mark Jacobs left Mythic. A lot - and i mean a LOT - of WAR blogs closed their sites due to people not playing anymore. GOA did send some bloggers letters, finally, like the US did, maybe the less and less blogs are the reason it was only three blogs? Well, we will see how this translates over the near future, but i was quite shocked to see so many blogs close. People lost interest, time or are waiting for Aion (I only had a brief look and could not decide yet if that would appeal to me). What is the status about the EU merchandise programs or even the announced WAR veteran program? Anyone knows? Is there anything important to know for crafting or a Black Orc that happened during the last two month? If so, feel free to share with me and point me into the right direction to get me up to speed again.. ;)

Edit: Talking about Aion, i just saw that Eurogamer is handing out keys for the next beta-weekend. Check here. In the comments is a link that will let you download the client before.

Yes, it's true...

...I'm still alive, despite the rumours Order got me. =)
So what's happening? I wanted to update my blog a long time ago, but did not just want to post some lame ass post without any content, when i started to look what happened while i was gone i saw that a large bunch of other blogs vanished and people stopped playing WAR. huh. :S So i figured i had to havea closer look and then just got caught up with transitioning relationships and looking for another job. Simply a lot of everyday stuff that kept me from getting back into WAR. I still did answer email requests tho. BUT my account is still being payed for (tho i guess my mailbox vanished meanwhile) and i intend to stick around for the land of the dead. I'll be at a large Rock festival for the weekend and hopefully next week i can take some time to log back in and start posting again. Maybe not as frequently as i did before, but we'll see...

I'm back

Just a quick note: I've been on an international fair for more then a week and due to preparations and fair attendance had no time to write in my blog. So no, not dead yet... just have been very busy. ;)

Ragbag & Easter Eggs

No, I'm not already searching for Easter Eggs just yet... only have been rather busy IRL and quite frankly did not miss playing WAR that much. That's why there were not that many posts during the last days. No worries, this blog won't close, I'll keep on playing WAR at least until the Land of the Dead is released (if that's not delivering I might rethink) but so far I'm still into WAR and think its a good game.

Starting to get a little dampen by the feedback from Mythic and GOA tho. Looks like Mythic focuses on their own little US forum and not much else. I wrote about my zero-response from eg. Andy before. The first king capture/kill (EU) took a few days to make it into the herald news. You start to wonder what's going on over the pond. GOA seems busy as well: Two weeks ago i inquired about how exactly the communication between GOA & Mythic would happen and what role the WARforge - Idea Exchange would play. Also the US already uses their "Oracle program", while the "EU Veteran program" is MIA. Since i got no answer to my questions so far, i have to assume GOA does not know the answer yet. Regis "The Box" was spot on if you ask me - so far the communication seems to be more window-dressing then real, at least it looks like this for many EU players. If the two companies that run the game bother so little, why should i? Let's hope they work on fixing stuff... shall we talk about the Realm War Pages again? Better not.

Talking about the first king capture on K8P. Nice! Although from the dev response you can see the encounter was bugged and the CC should not happen on him. GOA posted some screenshots here from the encounter. At WHA (1,2) you find more screenshots from Emperor Karl Franz and the loot. In total the whole raid took around 14 hours (wtf?). There is also a video with a funny song from that night: Destruction in Altdorf, they PVE all night long. LOL

Did you read about the upcoming token system for RvR gear? Wizards & Wenches sums it up nicely and you can read the original dev post here.

If i feel like it, I'll jump on the PTS and check some stuff out... but the weather turned around nicely for spring activities outside.

April Fool's, Lost Vale and Rant

Just so the people reading my blog through a newsfeed reader don't miss it and spend hours searching: The entire Beyond the Kraken Sea towards the GM Castle post was just my sophisticated April Fool's joke. Everything was fiction and photoshoped. If you spend some time up there searching for the Journal (and i know some did *g*) i hope you had some fun at least and maybe saw a new area. ;)



After the evening in Lost Vale when the server started to screw us over, we went back another evening to finish the instance. We encountered some strange bugs (most is covered on the forums) during our run and especially at N'Kari i think we had the pleasure of encountering all of the ones mentioned here. Running several meters past an orb and picking it up was no fun. Also it felt like the stupid channeling-tomes are even harder to pick up now. Took me around 100 clicks to pick one up at some point. I fail to understand why the end-game instances does not seem to have any priority in the bug fixing process. At least they give people something to do while Mythic works on fixing the real end-game. But when you run an instance with a five day lockout and its bugged like hell, you start to ask yourself "Why am i doing this again? I want to have fun and not bite my keyboard due to stupid bugs..."
We did not get many items we could really use during that run, but i was lucky enough to grab Da Choppa of da Chieftain, which will become my new main weapon. I still wonder why there are just more or less generic weapons and not some designed for specific roles so eg. you can obtain a tanking Choppa - guess its part of a somewhat lazy itemization.

During our LV run we were talking a lot about the current "feel" of the game. The main problem right now is that there is not much to do that you can call endgame. Once you're not (or very seldom) running city dungeons anymore, because you got full sentinel, you can only do Lost Vale (which has a long lockout, you can't switch team members and its bugged), do oRvR and scenarios. The thing about oRvR currently is tho, that its a zerg-fest. Those of you that played AoC may remember some of the cool small scale PvP you could do there. That's the feeling i want in WAR as well. Zerg attacks are freakin' boring. Attacking Keeps involves too less strategy and the capitol raids are boring as well, once you've been there a few times. The whole end-game is not polished enough to be fun. And the thing that really bugs me are the very few possibilities you have to "upgrade" your character. Farming renown just feels like a grind, as does running LV currently. If we would not have such a fun crowd to play with in the guild, i think many more would have quit already. Once you have full Darkpromise gear you can only upgrade via Warlord gear (rr64-70). If i will hit a wall when i have to grind 30 renown levels to be able to wear the next item upgrades and there is no other possible upgrades... probably I'll rethink the "fun" I'm having. Mythic is re-thinking the ward-system and i hope they're doing it properly. In addition i know for a fact, that when the Land of the Dead does not deliver towards end-game fun and the "feeling" you can upgrade your character more, WAR will face hard times.

Beyond the Kraken Sea towards the GM Castle

Edit: Like the date indicates, this entire post was my April Fool's joke for you guys. Gotcha! =)

Those of you that like to explore will know there are certain places in WAR that are called "dangerous territory" and are unused areas or parts of the map you're not supposed to be in. Many places have some kind of teleport security in place, if you trigger it you'll be ported to your binding location. Some places have "security holes" and you can explore into the unused zones. Usually its not very exciting, just vast emptiness... But do you remember the GM island in WoW? Well, there is a similar place in one of the unused zones in WAR. Its the only place i found so far that looks like a game designer joke placed there in case someone would find it. The area is only sparsely designed and its not that many ojects there, but it includes a larger castle and more important: A QUEST GIVER!



Description how to get there: Fly to Eataine and ride towards the place marked on the map close to the PQ. Behind the tower is a small slope that leads up into the mountains and can be climbed. Once up, comes the hard part as you'll be entering dangerous territory and your map & minimap are useless there, ergo no system of coordinates to use. I'll give you the direction as good as i can, but its really easy to get lost up there and lose your way. Once you have been there, you'll understand why as it all looks the same. Even i could not find the area one day and got lost. Incoming Pull blog has been there recently as well (and posted a video about it), but i assume he did not find the way to the GM Castle since its not very obvious.

Word of warning: If you dismount in the dangerous territory you won't be able to mount up again. You can ride around on your mount just fine, but its not possible to remount by whatever reason.

Once you ride up the mountain try to keep NW (orientation from your viewing point, not from the last map location) and look for a huge steep face "wall" you can't climb. In that zone are three different of these kind of huge walls that look similar, but only one can't be climbed to the left or right side - that's the one you need to find. The other two you can go up slopes to the sides. Since everything up there looks the same and there is not much you can take for orientation, you'll just have to ride around and search some. Maybe if i find the time to clean up my HD i could create a video as well, but no promises. At the base of the steep chasm wall, in one small jagged corner approximately in the middle, you'll find the "First Journal of Aperire" on the floor. Using the book will teleport you to the top of the wall you can't climb otherwise.

On top of that mountain luckily you can mount up again. Behind you is like a smaller mountain range and you want to take your way around it to the left. After a short while you'll be able to leave the mountains behind you and you'll see a larger structure in the distance. You nearly made it! The place has a small castle in the back and a tent in front of it. Strangely enough the castle and the trees right next to it don't have any textures for me. Dunno if its because the place is unfinished (sure looks like that) or if its me. But i don't have any other texture problems ingame. There is a lonely unicorn walking in large circles around that place. You can't interact or target it in any way tho. In front of the tent is a humanoid named Pentu Ratlab and he is a quest giver! Else there is not much to see, beside a few trees the area is the same vast emptiness like the rest of the dangerous territory.


Not only skipped my heart a beat when i found the area, but i would not have expected to find a quest giver there. The quest itself tells you about a clan of Troglagobs that stole a magic book. Doing some research via internet provided me with the info that Troglagobs are a race of aquatic goblins: "Troglagobs are by far one of the more unusual types of Goblins. They are Goblins that dwell in the sea, making coastal raids against the Empire, Tilea and even raiding the shores of Ulthuan and Lustria. Recently, many of these ocean dwelling Goblins have been sighted on Albion in great numbers, in the muddy southern tip of the island that has come to be known as Trogland. Troglagobs can have greenish skin like their Goblin cousins, though most tend to reflect a more seaish green such as turquoise or similar blue green color. The hands and feet are webbed like that of a frog making them exelent swimmers with exceptional speed. Troglagobs actually have both gills and lungs, allowing them to breathe comfortably above and below water. However they will not venture too far from their aquatic habitat, as they need to refresh themselves at least every few days of else they will dry up and die."

There is a large water surface (endless sea?) to the right side of the castle area where the ground goes down quickly. So supposedly thats where the aquatic goblins came from. But be careful not to step into the cold water, as you'll drown and die very quickly from taking drowning damage. Nothing else to find when i searched the area, no real shore either. The quest asks you to find the book somehwere in dangerous territory, which could basicly be everywhere. The reward shows a key trophy (why is this uncommon and not epic?) and the quest text tells you about entrance into the castle to claim your reward. If the reward is that trophy or something else is unknown to me. But would be cool to enter that game master (GM?) castle and possibly being able to re-enter while wearing the key?

Since there are so many different areas with dangerous territory and its hard to search/navigate in them i figured its worth posting this secret quest so more explorers can help with the search. Maybe the quest is unfinished (since the castle structure seems to miss textures plus the place looks weird) and you can't complete it, but who knows? Would be awesome to be able to enter the game master castle and see whats behind the doors. Anyway, thought this post makes up for the still missing article about exploration in WAR i wanted to write for aeons. Happy hunting...

Another Ragbag, with AoE, Keep upgrades and Bio Breaks

Hum? Another Ragbag? Yeah, I'm a bit short on time these days due to me organizing a conference for the weekend. So its just some short pointers. But i'm writing on some longer articles as well, I'll post over the next days... exciting stuff. ;)

Syp got hoarse crying waaagh! and figured its time to take a bio break. Good luck with it man, feels like the right thing to do when reading your reasons. And finally you got a clean layout again. =)

I saw i was awarded a sticky keyboard award as well, and two times. I did not have time to have a closer look tho. But thanks in advance guys. While Regis said I'm good with pigs, Girl IRL naming me an old-timer, made me feel... old. ;)

You possibly read about the Incoming 1.2.1 GTAoE Changes Adam posted. The good news is Mythic is working on this stuff, the bad news its not nearly enough yet. There are several threads discussing these changes on the forums, but if you want a nice diagram head over to breakfast at war and read hey adam, ur doin’ it wrong from pancakez

Interesting stuff upcoming with next patch.. a short preview for v1.2.1 Patch and a more detailed description of the upcoming Keep Upgrade System. Sounds like a good start, but no where near where we need it... keep going Mythic, i seriously hope you nail down the endgame better before more people get bored.

And what the freakin' hell is wrong with the EU servers? Last night we were inside Lost Vale when the Inevitable City was attacked and Order even managed to get to stage two of the capitol siege. Inside LV the lag was about two seconds when you wanted to use a skill or move stuff inside your bags. The mobs behaved irratic and were teleporting around, which made some boss fights not that much better. Around midnight then the whole server infrastructure went to hell and people (me included) got disconnected all the time up to a point we could not even start the patcher anymore. Great! :( Now whats the reason? Is it again some "internet infrastructure" problem like the last time? Or did GOAs servers could not handle the stress? They really need to do something here, it was annoying as hell and all of us were fed up yday. And why is the lag inside an instance so horrible? All other MMOs i played organized the cluster in a way that you could at least "flee" from server lag when going into an instance. Seriously feed the hamster better or spank the internet monkey harder, i don't care... but fix it. Ah yes, we found one item in two wings we could use yesterday... everything else was crap to salvage.

In a hurry, no gfx today folks...

Ragbag

Tome of Knowledge posted a great article about History and Lore of the Tomb Kings. Good stuff.

Mythic makes good use of their forum and tells us what they're working on with regard to the high end dungeons. In addition they're thinking about applying some of the changes they did to LV to the city dungeons. Well, from our last trip there i have to say the repairable items are useless for good equipped players (and with sucky gear you can't run these dungeons anyway). I read tho, that Mythic is re-evaluating the ward system currently and tackling ideas to seperate it from gear more. We'll see if they can come up with something useful. More gear choices would be appreciated.

Talking about the forums, does anyone else have the feeling the EU/EN ones are not used that much? Seems people rather stick to Warhammer Alliance. While at the US forum there are interesting discussions every now and then, not so much in the EU forums from what i saw so far.

If you're bothered by casting lag in WAR, there is an interesting discussion going on here. While it seems not as bad as some think, its definately an issue when the UI is not responding to the game fast enough.

Ever felt Lost Vale is too hard for you? Well, maybe do it with seven people then: LV Seven Manned. LOL

GOA confirmed that EU players will also get the Signet of the Cursed Company when pre-ordering BattleForge. I'm not going to buy a game just to collect a WAR ingame item, tho the signet is one of the coolest transform items so far.

Ever wondered what will happen during stage 2 of an Inevitable City siege? On the Eltharion server it happened and there are several pictures and some info here and here. In addition there is a nice video from the Sacellum/Arena stage 2 PQ here. Looks like some serious fun, always wondered why Mythic does not use the arena for regular fights to entertain Destruction in the capitol more. Even the pit fight inside the tavern could be an event you can trigger every now and then.

3rd Party Tools

Since there are a few WAR related "tools" i use, i figured its worth an extra post. Because these are external programs, use any info provided here at your own risk. While it works for me, don't make me responsible if your dog puppy dies.

As Mythic screwed up the super-screenshot feature and the standard jpg screenshots look really wretched, I'm toying around with 3rd party tools to take the screenshots in WAR. At the moment i switched to FRAPS and take them as HQ .tga pictures since you can't adjust the jpg quality there either. I have to convert them later on as they take quite much space, but i just run a batch processing from IrfanView or Photoshop with high quality settings.

Here is another wallpaper i created while testing the different settings, shows the demon from the chaos camp in High Pass:

You can download the large files containing 1920x1200 and 1600x1200 versions here (choose free user).

Another small tool i started to use is the nomovie patch from kuntz. I was running the patched beta client to play WAR, so i never had any intro movies or long logo displays to deal with while starting the game. But with patch 1.2 my startup also showed a looong chain of all the logos etc. Especially when your game crashes and you want to get back in as fast as possible, its annoying. Kuntz created a small program that patches the original WAR files. You run it once and all the startup stuff is gone, its great! There has been some discussion on the forums that this violates the WAR Eula, so he removed the program from his website, but tbh if Mythic wants to ban me because i get rid of the movies... i need to find another home anyway. I found an uploaded archive of the latest NoMovie v1.2 here. He even provides the source code for it to let people check it does not alter anything else. I use it, it works great... when you start WAR, you get nearly immediately to the login screen.

One more tool i want to tell you about is EasyMyp, which is a file explorer for Mythic's .myp files. Be aware tho, this tool i suggest only to the advanced computer user and there is not much of a manual yet. They have a forum, but the program is still in the early development. Since EasyMyp will allow you to open and expand .myp archives this might especially be useful for addon developers to check out some lua code or if you need icons/textures from the game to pimp your website. And NO, you can't view any WAR models or other 3D stuff with this tool, its just a file explorer that will let you extract files out of the archives. I was searching for a few things from the Mythic files for a project I'm working on, thats how i found EasyMyp and thought some of you might find this interesting.

Like i said, some of this stuff I'm not sure how Mythic feels about it and i doubt they really approve, maybe tolerate it. So use at your own risk.

Get Your Personal Free Skeleton Warrior Pet

Since we don't have any access to the wolf/dog pets in the EU yet... What shall you do if you feel lonely and want a companion? Here is your chance to grab your own personal skeleton warrior construct to accompany you. You will be able to summon it everywhere (yes, also in IC) and it will even fight alongside you (tho its rather weak, just fluff). The downside: It lasts only for 55secs, then you have to abandon the quest and retake it again in Averlorn to get a new one. It looks great tho as you can see on the picture and people were pointing fingers at me when i was running through the Inevitable City with it. ;)

How to get it: In Averlorn chapter 11 (destro ofc) there is a quest called Bone of Contention starting at Kyathor Blackfen. When you advance the quest chain further, you'll come to the last step where you have to enter the camp of the Arkaneth forces and slaughter some. The info on WarDB is a bit messed up. But once you have the quest to slaughter the Arkaneth forces you should have the Blackened Stone ready in your quest inventory. When you use it, you'll summon the Enthralled Construct from the picture. If you want to get another stone, you'll have to abandon the quest. Then go to Morridan Darkrager (at 22170x42842) inside the camp itself and talk to him. He won't be very chatty but you'll find another gem in your quest inventory afterwards. Use it once to accept the quest again, now the gem is charged and you can summon another skeleton warrior. Rinse and repeat as often as you like. What says better "Stay away Stranger!" then your personal skeleton warrior bodyguard? ;)

Ragbag with Choppa and EU Forums

Tonight will be the EU dev chat on IRC. We'll probably be in Lost Vale so i won't attend and i assume someone will post a transcript. I don't really expect anything major new, but its nice the chat is taking place. We'll see how the Mythic developers will influence the EU forum later on.

My Choppa Stuntystomper is meanwhile rank 23. Soonish I'll see if i can gather a group for Mount Gunbad. Since we have access to the direct MG teleport scrolls, it should be easier to convince people. Despite having an easier time to move around with the Choppa due to Charge & Sprint, i'm glad i can use a mount meanwhile. Since so many players create alts at the moment, you can sell all the greens you find during your adventures for easy money at the AH. I think my Choppa alone made around 70g and i dye every piece of armor i wear and spend enough for gear at the AH and bought my mount etc. Since this is a ragbag i won't go too much into detail about my Choppa now, but intend to write a longer post about him in the upcoming days. One particular post i found useful: Choppa Influence Reward List

The super-screenshot feature is still broken. Until Mythic fixes it i won't create any further wallpapers, just not worth the time. I PMed Andy (Mythic CM) more than a week ago about it but did get zero response back from him, not even a simple "no idea". From my experience with the community teams so far Mythic vs GOA is 0:1 I've to say. Maybe the US CMs are too busy sending out USB drives with pictures, who knows. *shrugs*

Finally i was able to log into the new official EU forums. Apparently its possible to use some html code, which is nice. If you need pointers how to edit your signature or post pictures, check those guides people posted. If you need html color codes check here. Did you realize there are server forums, they're just not expanded by default? EU EN server forums here. BTW, if you want to edit your message you need to use the options menu to the upper right of your post, from what i saw at the forum many users missed it. The waaagh button apparently is a way to say a certain post was a good contribution, possibly some way to try and track good posts/posters for GOA.

Tip of the Day: After Mythic enhanced the quest log to two pages there is a problem at a certain point when new quests don't show up as marked areas on your map. Looks like the quest tracker can only show quests for one page, but not two. So make sure you eg. untick the ones not in your area and then sort quests after the zone column and check the ones you would like to track.

Official EU Forums - Beta Version Fails to Impress

Today the official WAR forums for the EU opened their "beta" version. To give you the bad news first: They failed to impress me. When you try to login, you have to route over the GOA flash login, which spins for 45secs and then greets you with the good old error code 414 - login failed, you can't login to the forum and post. Splendid! If this starts while only few explore the new forums yet, what will happen during prime time? Sloooow access i would guess. Browsing at least works... Hmm.. next thing you realize: The EU CMs have some new nicknames on the forums... WTH?!? I fail to see the bigger picture behind this tbh, its only confusing for people. The good news: The forums are hosted at the same company the US forums are and not many people complained about those. The forum itself (excluding the GOA login) is fast and does work well. The design is okayish but not awesome, guess its personal taste. Since i could not login to the new forums yet, i could not test the rest. Bummer GOA slipped this again and instead of creating some awe inspiring stunt its just something mediocre.

Let me know if you find anything interesting and don't forget the contest GOA is hosting to hand out some Skaven Cloaks and the unique Choppa/Slayer heads.