Bastion Stair General Info & Maps

The Bastion Stair (public) dungeon is one of the high level dungeons, you'll probably spend some time in. The Bloodlord set, which can be obtained from the bosses, has (like the Annihilator set) lesser wards, that will help inside the city dungeons and in Fortress fights. You best reach the dungeon through the very NE corner in Praag, there is a portal which will take you towards Bastion Stair. The structure is actually located in the Chaos Wastes (far SE corner) where there is a portal as well, but access through Praag is faster from flight point.

The Bastion Stair has an entrace hall where you'll find a bunch of quest givers, a healer and the rally master that will grant rewards from Bastion Stair influence (you gain from doing PQs inside the dungeon). Like in Mount Gunbad you'll need enough influence to enter the private boss instances at the end of each wing - first inf bar for first boss, etc. The lockout (after you kill one of the final wing bosses) for Bastion is 1440 minutes. You can use /lockout to check how much time is left on the instances you got an active lockout. The whole dungeon got a Khorne/Beast/Demon theme.

The Bastion Stair consists of three wings:


# Trail of Carnage
(left portal - mobs 33+)
There are three Public Quests in this wing:
1. Rise of Carnage
2. Bloodherd Labryinth (nice typo Mythic)
3. Trail of Carnage (Arena Challenges)

The final boss in wing 1 is Thar'lgnan (drops Bloodlord boots).
Trail of Carnage MAP v1.0
(with connections and boss spawns)


# Path of Fury
(right portal - mobs 35+)
There are three Public Quests in this wing:
1. Fury's Ascent
2. Halls of Rage
3. Path of Fury

The final boss in wing 2 is Lord Slaurith (drops Bloodlord shoulders).
Path of Fury MAP v1.1
(with connections and boss spawns)



# Steps of Ruin
(stairs straight ahead up - mobs 37+)
There are three Public Quests in this wing:
1. Step of Anger
2. Step of Hatred
3. The Brass Legion

The final boss in wing 3 is Kaarn the Vanquisher (drops Bloodlord helmet).
Steps of Ruin MAP coming soon.

As of patch 1.1a the Bloodlord gloves drop from golden PQ bags inside the dungeon.

There is also a fourth area, called the Rift of Rage, located at the end of the third wing, where the last and fourth boss, Skull Lord Var'Ithrok (drops chest & gloves), can be found. To gain access to the portal to enter the last private instance, you'll need to finish a few quests inside Bastion. The ones you need to finish for attunement are
wing 1: Blood on the Steps (3 part quest), leads to Leashing the Bull (kill wing 1 boss).
wing 3: Infinite Patience (4 part quest), leads to Vanquishing the Skull Lord.

In each wing you can find skulls laying around on the floor, they are named after the wing you picked them up (Skull of Carnage, Skull of Fury and Skull of Ruin). Those skulls can either be placed on pikes found throughout the dungeon - then they might yield a short buff or a curse - or can be placed at the respective skull piles near the entrance hall to spawn another boss called The Collector. Apparently you need around 100 skulls from each wing or something along those lines to spawn him.

NOTE: This post is work in progress and will be completed/updated with maps of the other wings as well as more info. You won't find any spoilers how to kill bosses here tho. It's just to provide some orientation inside the dungeon. If you find any errors (some things i just wrote from memory) please let me know. If you can remember the exact names from the non PQ related boss spawns, leave a note as well.

Update 24/11: Added the rest of the PQs and the map for wing 2.
Update 29/11: Updated the non PQ hero name for wing 2.
Update 13/12: Updated the patch 1.1a info about gloves.

Altdorf burns... again! (Averheim server US)

After the first raid on Altdorf, where players supposedly used some bugs to get the deed done, yesterday happened the first large scale raid that managed to control Altdorf (1, 2). Apparently around 300 members of the alliance Retribution (guilds: PRX - The Professionals, Cadre Quietus, Xen on Onslaught, Dusk Till Dawn, Isolated, Sinners and Misery) started at 7am EST to take keeps and around 12am they were fighting in Altdorf. Most of the alliance were organized very well with voice communication from the looks of it and the whole raid was setup a week in advance. During the five hours of preparation to raid the capitol, they did not meet much resistance. While on the one hand it was early hours and less people online, there are also voices from Order players that complain - again - that not enough people care about what's going on in open RvR. When it comes to the "important" fortress raids, every player gets an onscreen message once the battle moves over to a fortress and also gets notice of one is captured. At least then people should start to move towards the battle zone quickly.

On a sidenote: On Karak-Azgal the Maw was under attack by Order yesterday night. It was a battle 50:20 in the beginning and from those 20 defending Destruction around 50% was from Thirst. When i noticed what was going on i headed over as well (and I'm only rank 28), but the battle had moved on already. It was nice to see that a few more Destruction showed up at the Maw to help to defend it. When one of the fortresses is under attack, do care! Shout inside the capitol for more people to come and defend. If the capitol is under direct attack there is a bottleneck and it's harder to help defend the city then to help defend the fortress before.

From what the participating Destruction players said, it was no cake walk as the upgraded NPC defenses can't just be zerged but also require some tactics. Most participating players were around rank 30-34, they took the T3 keeps and also guarded the altdorf gates later on as only approx. 40 players from each side could enter the city instance per scenario. They took down the head priest of the sigmar temple, but the master wizard (Lord, rank 48, 4 skulls) in the BW college did provide some serious pain. Quote: "He oneshot me (a chosen with 600+ toughness, 700+ elemental resist, 8500+ hp) with a crit for 8721 damage (1962 mitigated!)."

The Destruction players never made it to the Altdorf king tho. The PvE content inside the city seems to be rather challenging, at least players should be rank 40 to have a better shot. Looks like Mark Jacobs announced some tweaks to the zone capture system, that will make early morning raids much harder to pull off, when he commented on the first siege (on KEP) earlier, but MJ said he'll look into all the data from the raid and will announce his finding about system working vs. needs more tweaks later on.

When the players are done plundering the city i hope we get more info and pictures - the warband was in Altdorf for about three hours, should have gotten plenty. Check Dusk Till Dawn for some more pictures. In addition i found a video from the raid on the last T4 Dwarf keep. I also found a photstream by Isphet on flickr with pics. The most interesting part of info from this so far was a sidenote from Mark that how well your raid is doing with the PvE stuff inside the city determines the length of the city capture. So there is no such thing as to capture the city and leave it alone for 24h. Just saw that Andy clarified the capture process here:

# You must capture two fortresses in tier 4 within 12 hours of each other.
# To capture those fortresses, you must seize and hold the neutral tier 4 and your opponent’s zone in two of the three racial pairings (after which you only have 60 minutes to capture said racial fortress).
# After all of this you fight in a contested, not captured, Altdorf/Inevitable City for control of the city, much in the same manner as a regular zone would be. In the case of Altdorf, after you have secured the city and the defending force is ejected from the city you have one hour to complete the Bright Wizard College and Sigmar’s Temple public quests. In the case of The Inevitable City,The Monolith and The Sacellum. Should you fail to beat these two Encounters within the hour, the city will be reopened to the defenders and they will be allowed to wipe out any attackers left in their City.
# If you complete the two Encounters as an attacker however, you lock the city down for 20 -24 hours and get access to the King Instance..
# Contribution points towards the capture of a city are scaled based on the population of both sides, not just one lump sum. This ensures that a defending force with smaller numbers has a fighting chance to hold off the invaders. However, you can overcome the scaling with a sufficiently large force.

Raid on Altdorf Capitol (on Karak Eight Peaks)

Wow, while reading some other blogs, Book of Grudges pointed me to the fact that on Karak Eight Peaks (KEP) there was a raid on Altdorf main city (1,2) going on tuesday. That's pretty fast, after we heard it would be such an epic expedition to gain control about the enemies capitol. O.o
Apparently around 19:00 Destruction players started to raid T4 Keeps and did not meet much resistance, either because not enough higher rank players were online or simply because still too few people care. The taking of keeps continued until around 23:00 and after midnight Altdorf was open for an assault. Some people claimed that there was a bug that did let players enter the last fortress through the postern door, while some say a few classes (anyone know more about this?) will get skills to use these doors later on. Apparently it's enough to capture two racial pairing, so taking over two T4 Fortresses is enough to be able to move forward on the opponent's capitol.

From what i could research the following happens once a capitol is under assault: The city becomes contested (which will result in the loss of one city rank!) and invaders can enter it. The whole city becomes an RvR zone and everyone inside collects victory points. The points are collected by participating in one of the two public quests (with opposing goals) that show up inside the city, involving killing enemy players & citizens and burning down tents and stuff (for the attacker). A new scenario will open up as well - in Altdorf it's called Altdorf War Quarters - plus there are battlefield objectives inside the city to capture as well. During these activities, both sides will collect victory points. Once one side can accumulate enough points to tip the scales, one of two things happen: If the defenders win, they attackers are pushed out of the city and all T4 resets to neutral. If the attackers win, the capitol is captured (will result in an additional city rank loss!) and the opposing side is pushed out of the city and the winner locks it down for 36 hours. During this time the PvE content (PQs, dungeons, King encounter - if the king is killed the city will lose two additional city ranks!) are open for the attackers to enjoy. After the time is up the city and T4 will reset.
We pillage, we plunder we rifle and loot Drink up me hearties, Yo-ho.

One important thing to note: Apparently you need to be rank 32+ to be able to help defending the capitol! If you're lower rank, you can't enter the city in a contested state. While the city is contested your new "hub" for bank, etc. will be some black market at the border of the city. Question remains, if Altdorf is only rank 2 at the moment of the raid, would it be possible for Destruction to raid the king's quarters as the leader's hall is not open before rank 3? I assume you'll need to conquer the PQs & dungeons inside the locked down capitol before you can attack the king? The decrease of the captured city rank will not affect the current capture and only take effect after the city resets.

Some issues stay with the attack on KEP... the attackers did not capture the city as apparently the control bar was barely moving. Was this a bug or because the defenders did better? As there were so few defenders before, this seems doubtable. The question in the first place should be: If one faction manges to level up faster then the other (two hardcore guilds would apparently be enough), there is little the defending realm can do if they got not enough players rank 32+ online during that time. I know this will even out later on, but at the moment it poses a problem. I also hope this city raid will raise awareness for every player to bother should there be T4 keep attacks going on. I know many don't bother as renown points are better in scenarios - at least that's the impression i gained when i see how few bother to travel to an assaulted keep quickly. As a last sidenote: Once the enemy city becomes contested you can pick up a quest at the T4 warcamp to capture the enemy city - reward 3k XP and 30s. Yay!