February 27, 2009

PTS Patch 1.2: Guild Crafting Materials and High Guild Rank Mounts

Tonight on the EU PTS a larger zone domination test was organized. As part of it, GOA created a guild (highest rank) and people could join it. While i had no time to stick around for the RvR, i managed to sneak into the guild long enough to check out all the guild benefits you can buy from the guild vendor. The first screenshot collage shows you all the mats you can buy from the guild vendor (those need different guild ranks) and in addition some potions you can brew with those mats. The rez potion (cost you 62.44s in mats) is really cool - being a standard bearer i can also rez with the banner, but could prove useful. You also see that the snare potions are not fixed and the resulting potion will always have the same effect. In addition to what you can see on the screenshot you'll be able to buy different seeds (only different in level not in type from what you get at every other vendor) and also different containers and curios for talisman makers.


Now the juicy stuff: New guild rank mounts! Since the test guild "Eternal Destruction" was of the highest rank, not only could we buy the guild rank 25 mounts, but also the new improved mounts (faster & lower dismount chance) you can get at guild rank 37. The mounts you can buy from the guild vendor have three additional colors and the faster ones are slightly armored, but have the same color then the other ones from the guild vendor. While normal mounts have 50% speed increase, the armored ones have a 60% speed. So people don't need to worry that it will make such a difference in RvR. 10% is not that much tho, we had a short race and it was a tad faster, but not very. Here are the pics of all the guild rank Orc boars:





The cost of 150g is really cheap for the better mounts IMO. It's just that guild rank 37 is not that fast to reach. Thirst is at rank 29 currently, still some levels to make. I know not all will ride boars, so here is a screenshot of an armored dark elf mount. I also met Oziriz, a reader of my blog, inside the Viper Pit and could convince him with a few coins to show of the Chosen steeds (1,2,3,4,5). Talking about blog readers, i met quite a few during my adventures on the PTS. If you play and see me standing in IC, say hello... :)

At the start of todays RvR event i was also able to catch Magnus (GOA) for a few words on his Black Orc in full Conqueror gear. He was joining the fray to fight Order in Praag himself. Overall i've to say that the atmosphere on the EU PTS is very relaxed and people are willing to test things out. Hell, I've send a huge chunk of bug reports myself. The more i see from the patch 1.2, the better it looks. While crafting has been easy before in WAR, after the patch it will still be easy, but much better to understand for people and they ironed out some bugs. And finally crafting will be useful, all of the trades. Personally I'll need to switch around my trades a bit (due to the BoP seeds/plants), but that's fine.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great Infos for crafters!

Anonymous said...

Oh thanks for bothering to request those mount shots! =) By the way Thulf you think Mythic will anyday soon change their ridicilous gold bag system from keeps? You see i quitted WAR some months ago but i *love* reading your blogs and see the game takes its uprising, but if theres something that seriously gives me a turnoff to this game is how Keep defenders remain unrewarded, and people trade keeps for their "precious" gold bags. >_<

Proximo said...

"keep trading" has not happened on our server (Karak Eight Peaks) for a couple of months at least, at least not in T4 where I play. Lately we've been outnumbered by order (yes really!) but man we've had some awesome oRvR happening.

The gold bags are still there, and by the looks of it they ain't gonna change anytime soon either. But they've increased the amount of bags that drop so that helps a little. I had my entire Annihilator set before I had the renown rank to equip it.

Also, there are incentives for defending keeps, it actually gives more renown and inf to succesfully defend a keep than it does to succesfully attack and take it. And defending keeps will be VITAL starting patch 1.2 with the new Domination system, where you can cap a zone by taking and holding (defending) all the keeps and BOs in the zone for a certain amount of time.
Previously you had to cap them all, then gain Victory Points from Scenarios and/or Public Quests to lock the zone, this will still be possible but not needed.
What has happened before is that a zone could be entirely owned by one side for days, but since the loosing side was not there to defend it and do scenarios it would never be capped.

/walloftext :P

/Proximo aka Oziriz =)

Anonymous said...

Oh my what a lovely huge wall of text made of useful information and awesomeness. =D Thanks alot for the info, but i must ask 1 more question:

Can you pass gold bags and other loot bags now? I mean since you have entre annihilator set you most likely gain more bonuses on your PQ rolling thing, but that way the randomejohn with his lesser gear will never be able to gain gear, so is it possible epic people can pass the loot now?

Proximo said...

Sadly no, even though the community has screamed for the ability to pass on bags we've yet to see this on PTS or any patchnotes. But some Mythic employee (can't remember exactly who, think it was Mark Jacobs actually) asked on VN boards "so you REALLY WANT to be able to pass on bags ?". So they are aware of it and it might still be added, as you see from Thulfs latest blog entry they are still adding things to the patchnotes for 1.2 so there can be hope. :)

Anonymous said...

BTW, we have had the ability to pass bags to other party members from the launch of the game, by using the "Master Looter" option for looting. It's just something not too much advertised, and feels more like a bug than a feature, but damn it's usefull!!!

Andrew Pittman said...

I enjoyeed reading your post