Ragbag with Amenemhetum`s Curse and LotD Talismans

Inside the Tomb of the Vulture Lord some rare new crafting ingredients drop for talisman makers and apothecaries. The two new talismans to craft are Odjira & Kamenra. For apothecaries there are two new potions as well. The Sacred White Lotus brews a Speed of the Blowing Sand potion and the Nehekharan Lion's Heart will create a potion called Amenemhetum`s Curse, which will summon a lioness that is supposed to fight for you. In fact, the summoned lion does NOTHING, just stands there for 60 seconds and then dies. With all the bugs for the talismans and crafting items from LotD, you wonder how all that stuff can have passed the QA department. Did anyone try those banners you have to pay a bunch of gold scarabs yet? Do those work at least or are they bugged as well?

Word of Warning for the LotD talismans (drops/vendor) they are STILL bugged: Their timer runs while you are online, you don't have to have the item equipped and in use. Very easy to destroy some good talismans this way. Wonder when Mythic will finally fix this stuff.

Oh, and btw... what's up with the wardb.com website? Their upload of new items has been broken every now and then and currently still is. Seems the code monkey is busy with their new aionarmory.com website? C'mon, can't be that hard to fix the stuff. Pretty please?

WHA posted a nice video from the Games Day Chicago with all Destruction Sovereign sets shown, some look awesome. Too bad it will be near impossible to get those with the way the campaign is going atm, not to speak of my own low renown rank which makes it impossible to even wear them without months of RR grind.

This evening around 20:00 CET there is a server wide protest happening on many EU and some US servers to make a stand against the current way Mythic/GOA are handling the development process. You can read further discussion and info here and here. IMO if you are not satisfied and you feel raising your voice (in a constructive manner) in the game forums has no effect, the only way to vote is with your wallet and the money you pay (or not) GOA/Mythic. But online protests have a long history and can add to the forum voice, so i don't blame people for trying to get more attention to their cause. G'luck guys, I'll try to check it out.

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.

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?

Ragbag & Test Server Info

With Mythic hyping the 1.2 patch and especially the upcoming two new classes many players were eager to try them out on the test servers. In the beginning of February along with some others i was approached by GOA and invited onto the upcoming test server. The test was supposed to be restricted, but under no NDA... so i was happy to be able to try out the Choppa pre-release (will take test server access over Mythic love letters anytime) and write about the new classes. Unfortunately things developed different: Mythic decided to release the patch first to their core tester group, which operates under a NDA. GOA was not able to create legal agreements in this short amount of time (for different countries as well), therefore no "private" pre-testing of the upcoming content. The EU will get a public test server together with the US probably in about one or two weeks. The PTS won't have the two new classes online in the beginning tho, just the rest of the patch. Bummer I've to say. But I'm happy to see that GOA starts to show some love to the EU community and is trying within their possibilities to make things happen - of course those things are easier for Mythic to do. I know many EU bloggers were disappointed about not being included in the "lover letter affair", so if GOA works closely together with the EU bloggers that makes up for it, at least for me it does.

Does anyone play on the Dragonback Mountains server? What's going on there? Seems some players are massively exploiting the Keep Lords and also by purpose trying to bug out the city invader PQs like the Brightwizard College. GOA is taking an official stand and punishing those players harder now. Another issue that Mythic needs to adress is those "banner walls" some people set up, IMO that's an exploit as well.

A little ripper pig told me this magazine is where Mythic gets the new ideas for boar mounts. Notice the Babes & Boars calendar. *laughs*

Watching the Ten Ton Hammer panel discussion video and reading the interview from eurogamer gives you a good impression about the upcoming new zone. Will be interesting to hear how many players you need to beat the Tomb of the Vulture Lord tho. I kind of like the fact that the current high level dungeons don't need a massive amount of people to beat.