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.

Rare Hybrid Potions

With patch 1.2 going live on the EU servers today, i spend most of the day organizing stuff and training crafting skills, etc. Thulf is now switched to 200 cultivating. Its not that hard to do. The increased critical failure rate is a tad annoying and additives are rather costly at the vendors, have to keep that in mind when pricing potions i guess. A major part of the day me and others spend on trying to get our hands on as many rare BoP seeds as possible. I created a large screenshot collage with the 12 new hybrid seeds, plants and potions known to me, check them out... some really cool potions there. One thing i noticed: Special moments with the rare seeds don't yield any dye pigments like the patch notes state. Ah well, maybe they'll be added later. I don't have any reports about special seeds dropping from bosses inside the instances or something like that. If you find/see seeds or potions that are missing in my list please poke me.

HAHA... many contacted me today because of the first live event title you can gain: Stuntie Stompa! Thanks guys, i did not miss it and had a gazillion people tell me they had to think of me when they got their title. funny. =)

TIP of the day: Since i wanted to give Irinia data for her Crafting Info Tooltip about the new seeds, i was researching the WAR chatlog. Some time back Mythic disabled the logging to disc and if you want to switch it back on you need to manually edit the UserSettings.xml file and change Logging logAllToDisk="false" to "true".

Ragbag

Did you ever wondered what would happen if you kill the chaos giant Friderax inside the Sacellum arena during the PQ? Me too.. when it started i went in for the kill and fought the big boy. While he hits like a schoolgirl, nothing special happens. The PQ "fails" and you don't get any shiny loot from him. I was only able to claim his smelly pants for me - maybe I'll sell them on the auction house, some people like used panties. If you look at my UI screenshot and wonder what the new unit frames are i use, the addon is called Pure. The addon is still in alpha stage, so don't use it if you're not willing to deal with bugs. The configuration is very cumbersome atm as well. But for me it serves well more or less out of the box. The unit frames are similar looking to agUF if you recall those. If you use the addon, help wikki (author) with bugs and such. Looking forward to the release version, this is the best looking unit frames addon so far.

If you want to see how the epic Keg End backpack looks on an Orc, check here. The tier 1 version looks rather powerful for a rank 5 cloak. Meanwhile i got the Bottomless Stein trophy, it looks better then the trophy from the last event. You can have the mug at shoulders or belt.

I still wonder what the deal with the UpToWar (DevTracker) WHA newscrawler is. Apparently the WHA team did not work together with them yet to solve that problem. As i like to have one devtracker, i hope this gets resolved soon.

I recently stumbled over the CotCast Podcast. A bunch of folks from the guild Circle of Trust (Ostermark server) have their own round table podcast. If you like alcoholic beverages, Justin Timberlake, playing the flute and are not afraid of explicit language, this one is for you. ;) They mainly talk about WAR related topics of course. While they did not directly feature Stunty Stomper they refer to my news. So as apparently they read my website, a friendly waaagh! to the CotCast team, cool show... reminds me a bit about our own vent server at times.

On a sidenote we went back into Lost Vale yesterday night, so i might post some screenshots from there once i looked through them.

PS: Because i was asked about my "texture fix"... the manual edit of the settings only solved the blurry texture issue for me. I still see the green surfaces every now and there.

Tip of the day: Enable "monster emotes" in your chat filter for your main chat window, else you'll not only miss important infos during boss fights, but also info from gadgets around the world when you use/click them.

Heavy Metal Firefox

I had no real expectations for the new live event Heavy Metal, figured the rewards would be rather pointless again. To my surprise the rank 35 cloak you can gain from the advanced influence is very nice for tanks. While atm using the initiative cloak from the renown vendor i already have the crit reduction, but the rest is a bonus and the on-use ability could prove useful in some boss fights... beside looking cool. Therefore I'd suggest you participate at the daily tasks (apparently they don't change at midnight but rather around noon). It looks like you'll still be able to finish the influence bar when you miss out on some, but no one can tell that for sure yet. A player named Xaxas posted screenshots from the test server, where apparently you could already see all the tasks awaiting you (1,2) and the info has been compiled into this thread at WHA. The new cloak will go nicely with my new boots, as i got Sentinel Feetsplate in Bloodwrought Enclave yesterday. Bummer i can't dye the secondary color... joy!

To bring more clarity to the players concerning zone control and captitol raids Mythic/GOA posted a write-up on their homepage. Better go to the US site and read it over there, as GOA only pasted it but did not fix the errors in the text yet. The changes to the campaign don't seem that dramatic... on Karak-Azgal we had a lot of RvR going on but no zone has been locked yet. There is a macro you can use to get control point values:

/script EA_ChatWindow.Print(towstring(GetCampaignZoneData( GameData.Player.zone).controlPoints[GameData.Player.realm]), SystemData.ChatLogFilters.CHANNEL_9)

Since the Realm War pages went online in EU as well (go and fix them bugs already GOA!) i thought it should be useful to add it to my search engine list in Firefox (like you can do with WarDB), so i can look up that guy who is talking in chat channel right now. If you want to add it yourself as well, follow these instructions. If you mess it up, don't blame it on me. I use the Web Search Pro plugin, could be that the config file looks a bit different for you - I'm too lazy to deinstall it and see how it looks then. ;)

How to add EU Realm War character search for your server to Firefox:
Beforehand you'll need to find out your server ID. Head over to the EU Realm War and select character search, type in your character name, select your server from the dropdown menu and search. Then hover over (or open in new window) the column headers (see pic). Inside that string you should see a part like server=12 - that number is your server ID. Now:

1. Go to the address about:config (type it where you would normally enter a website address)
2. In the "Filter" box, type: mmsearch
3. Double click on extensions.mmsearch.mmsearch-freesearchengines to edit the value.
4. move to the end and paste in (change server ID and name [bold parts])

f_ewarf_vWarhammer Online KA charf_vhttp://realmwar.war-europe.com/realmwar/CharacterSearch.war?server=12&realm=0&race=0&career=0&characterKeyword=f_votherf_vhttp://realmwar.war-europe.com/realmwar/_site_files/favicon.ico

Now press OK to save and restart Firefox. enjoy.

Flipping the Switch

During the last days i switched from cultivating to scavenging on Thulf and moved cultivating over to an alt. One of the best choices i made, it's possible to train scavenging to 200 in about a few hours. It's always hard to lose progress you made, but sometimes it has to be done. Luckily with my knowledge about cultivating i was able to bring my alt up to 120 culti already and the next time I'll watch some TV he'll get to 200 easily, as the hardest part is over. I had some funny encounters while i was running around in full armor grinding low level PQs. Some peeps were really happy i was there to help them finish the PQ and i got a lot of tells what i was doing there. I still think one day i should go back to the starting area and hand out my own quests to new players... would be fun.

Since Mythic finally fixed the last PQ in wing 3 of Bastion Stair we went back to the Skull Lord (final and fourth boss) these days to send him back into the Rift of Rage. It's a fun fight and be it only due to the size of that Lord (check the size of his axe compared to the players). ;) I should take some time and write up for you a few orientation pointers for Bastion Stair, we all can run around there with closed eyes meanwhile. If you do wing 3 first and people got used to the portal jumping its always fun to lead group members towards the exit portal (in the other wings) instead to the boss instance - sometimes they take the bait and use it. I know, it was late. :P During that run i was lucky and got the Bloodlord Sholdaplate, which gives me the two piece set bonus. They look nearly identical to rank 3 white Orc shoulders btw. I was also finally able to get my hands on the Bodyplate of the Bleakest Despair, which eluded me for quite a while due to unlucky PQ bag generation. In addition we visited Bloodwrought Enclave, but i have to say i was quite disappointed as Bastion Stair is more fun and feels more of a challenge - needless to say we could not use a single of the drops in there. One thing that really annoys me is the lackluster high rank dungeon quests. You get these awesome tasks and then the only reward is some XP (it's a rank 40 quest, hello?!?) and there are not even follow-ups. At least should have made those more atmospheric and if nothing else reward some good looking social clothing you can wear while hanging out in the city.

The EU finally got a beta (!) version of the Realm War pages online. I used this fact to create a new info frame for the right navigation with a direct link to my profile. The EURW is still buggy tho... some weird localization errors and other bugs leave room for improvement. It's nice to see Thirst is one of the top three ranked destruction guilds on our server tho. Looking at the sheer amount of members other guilds have, I think we're doing really well. I think they squeezed in some kind of server status page into the leaderboards... but i dunno, overall the realm war pages seem ok, but there is still way to go. I hope we'll see some fixes soon and not in the same time span it took GOA to bring them online.

Tip of the Day: Despite a recent hotfix for the data.myp issue (every crash increased the file size), it seems that one did not fix an already existing large data.myp file. So it might be a good idea to go into your WAR folder and check the size of that file. If it's several gigabyte large (it's supposed to be around 50MB), delete it and tick the "full file check" in the patcher next startup.

When i grow up...

...i want to pillage & plunder Altdorf capitol. In the meantime Thulf hit rank 40... yay! The last two levels i did reel in with questing through Greenksin & Chaos chapters. So now what? I'll test my current mastery tree against another spec idea i got, atm i use 0:17:8 and am quite satisfied with it. I really should do some more RvR and bring my renown up. One mission of course has to be to get more Wards for the high-end dungeons. So far i only got the Bloodlord Andsplate and mobs inside the city instances and Lost Vale hit damn hard. Beside gear from PQ loot bags and boss drops, i can't upgrade my gear anymore with quest or influence rewards. There is one influence reward, the Da' Gorfang Bladestoppa I'll switch with my current Witch Steel Bladestoppa, to get but i nearly maxed the influence already. Beside that nothing else i can do beside running instances & PQs and hope for a lucky drop. Easiest way will probably be to do some RvR to be able to buy the rest from those rewards, tho nothing really major there beside the stuff with insane renown requirements. One quest to mention is Helpin da Humies, really easy travel quest and good reward if you did not get a better head piece yet. I got two good blue drops from PQs inside Bastion Stair i use: Gore Covered Sholdaplate and Bloodherd Eadplate (I could also use Eadplate of Demons, but the Bloodherd one looks better - maybe switching it for 'Eadplate of the Stair). The rest is a mix from the best quest, influence and BoE drops i could get my hands on. Overall I'm satisfied with my gear and atm i run around with approx. 11.6k HP (yes, includes the wounds tactic) while maintaining a very good level of mitigation. Once i get more set pieces with Wards my HP will go down a bit, but looks like i should be able to stay around 10k, which should be sufficient.

Overall i have to say the journey from 1-40 was enjoyable, partly also because the humor in the greenskin chapters is fun. I tried to stay away from the elvish chapters as much as i could, as i found them rather boring and too turquoise & pink. Character development felt like it was going somewhere, i gained new skills and new gear on a regular basis and had the feeling it was useful. Although itemization sucks at 25+, it really does. While in the beginning you praise that quest rewards are always useful to you, during later levels it's mainly DPS gear choices - three nearly identical pieces, but no tanking stuff - and like all the other classes you suffer from really weird stat distribution on gear. The gear 32+ being the worst... check out the epic rewards from Bastion Stair influence, WTH?
One thing i thought was rather disappointing is the really easy AI from NPCs. You get a quest to eliminate the boss from another tribe, head over and hes surrounded by his 10 bodyguards... you just get into a good position and shoot him, while he runs mad at you his gang does absolutely nothing. There are very few linked mobs in PvE, or those with smart behaviour or special abilities. This results in the normal PvE game being really, really easy. Starting with Mount Gunbad inside the instances it gets a bit better, but not much. Some of the scripted PQs are really cool, but i wish there would be some more generic intelligence for NPCs.

Talking about the city dungeons, Bloodwrought Enclave & Bilerot Burrow, and Lost Vale finally I'm able to venture into them, which is great. I took a sneak peak right after i turned 40 and in Lost Vale you can explore a bit and even kill a few mobs on your own... looks promising. ;) So beside Bastion Stair, expect to see a few updates and screenshots on those high-level dungeons here soon.

Patch 1.0.4b did hit EU today and introduced a damage reduction if you don't wear enough Wards. Evens out the playing field and everyone has to get their hands on Ward gear now. The random drops inside the dungeons suck tho, going there again and again and only find loot no one in your group can use is frustrating. Mythic should either introduce repairable items that more then one class can use or at least generate part of the loot depending on group setup. I don't think its viable to only drop loot that can be used by all in the group, as people probably will gear up to fast - but at least some way in the middle should be found. GOA also mentioned the EU Realm War pages again and they had run into technical difficulties.. blah..blah. Seriously, no one cares... we want results. GOA does not have to develop the game just provide service to EU customers and it takes forever for them to get stuff done. Answers from CSR to problems/bugs have a backlog from one or two days and the "service functions" they are supposed to provide with their website are non-existent yet. While i acknowledge their job is more difficult then many realize (having to coordinate everything with Mythic) the lack of service since the launch results for me in a state of mind where i don't even bother to read any of their excuses anymore. Go and get the stuff done, then we can talk... win trust back with results.

EDIT: Looks like the ward patch did not only nerf damage a notch, but significantly. People report they do barely any decent damage with only a few set pieces and in addition that bosses only drop one set piece and one blue now.
EDIT2: We've been in Bastion Stair tonight and i can't confirm any nerf in loot drops, looks like it did before patch to me.
EDIT3: Mythic reverted the Ward change back via a hotfix tonight. No word on when this will change for EU yet, but its coming.



Tip of the Day: When you port back into the Viper Pit via the Guild Recall Scroll, maybe to use the Flight Master inside the VP for quick travel access between zones, you don't have to run around the small podest to buy a new scroll. Just stand at the corner and you can access the vendor as well - saves you a few seconds everytime you do this.

European public test server - Status: Unconfirmed

Not only do the EU WAR customers still wait for server status and Realm War pages, which were promised since a looong time, but MagnusK now posts that European public test server status is unconfirmed. Good Go GOA! :( Feedback from GOA CSR is mediocre at best as well, takes forever to get a response and usually its not very helpful. With the not satisfying service it's no surprise you can hear voices that doubt that our EU bug reports make it into the Mythic system anyway. Until today GOA's service is still a fail and if WAR wouldn't be developed by Mythic, i think many more players would have quit by now.


Tip of the Day:
Did you know it's possible to dye all cloaks at the moment? Just unequip all other gear and choose to apply the color theme to all items, this will also dye your cloak even if it would deny this else. With the guild emblem on cloaks still bugged this saves you from staring at those ugly white cloaks. ;)

Sneak a Peek from Bastion Stair

I still want to go back to Mount Gunbad and do wing 3 once more. I'm still thinking about if i should create a map from Mount Gunbad as people tend to get lost in there or have no clue which wing they have to go to finish certain tasks. But then again you move on so quickly, is it worth the time invested? Our guild started to run the Bastion Stair dungeon some time ago. Since Thulf is rank 31 now, i was able to tag along...



Like MG the Bastion Stair is a three wing dungeon and mobs rank from 33-40 in there. The dungeon got an influence bar with rewards as well - all suck for my Black Orc tank btw. The whole dungeon got a Khorne/Beast theme and while i think the atmosphere inside Mount Gunbad is more fun - i think Bastion Stair looks "to clean", the devs should have used more different floor/wall tiles - Bastion Stair is good fun nontheless. Some really evil and fun boss fights. The dungeon is the first PvE one that yields item sets with wards on them. I've been inside Bastion Stair two times so far (in wing one and two) and will post more in detail about the dungeon and its rewards etc. when i find the time during the next days.



On a sidenote, Stunty Stomper has been mentioned in the latest LagWAR #13 podcast. I don't listen to podcasts that much, but like to do it every now and then while doing some boring grinding stuff to spice it up. LagWAR is a fun podcast hosted by Brilen (c'mon say pip again!) & Ziss (thanks for the kind words about the blog), check them out at their lagwar.com website.

Tip of the Day: Did you know you do not need to stand right next to a PQ loot chest to grab the bag you won? As long as you can see and interact with the chest you can be far away and use it.

Toe-to-Toe: Warhammer Color & Dye System

One of the coolest things concerning the Warhammer Online item system is it's color & dying part. The WAR dye system will let you dye most (but not all) items in a color you want. Nearly every merchant has the ability to dye items. You can choose in the dyeing UI if you just want to dye a single item (just choose that one) or use the checkbox to apply the same color scheme to all your armor. All armor has a primary and a secondary color. You can left and right click on the color dots to dye primary or secondary colors. There are 14 colors offered by default from the vendors. There are rumours about other colors being available at higher renown ranks, but so far I've heard of none being confirmed.

Beside merchant bought dyes there are more possibilities to get different looking colors... Some quests offer dye containers as a reward. Don't be afraid to try them out, as you'll always get a confirmation window after the preview if you really want to use that color. So it's safe to check them out on your armor. Many color names found inside WAR suggest that Mythic uses the Games Workshop Citadel Colours from the original game, but some people on the forums complain the colors are not 100% original in tone, maybe due to some armor layer clipping. The large color table suggests that later on Mythic will possibly add more colors as different rewards. There are also some rare colors (like Enchanted Blue Dye (looks like a smurf) or Blood Red Dye) you can get as drops. I found them in Mount Gunbad and RvR so far, so i guess they're just random world drops of dye.

The most interesting & rare colors many thought were supposed to come from crafting. Well, let me tell you I'm a 200 Apothecary and 200 Cultivator and it's not really true until now. Of course I'm not rank 40 yet and maybe there are some mysterious ingredients that eluded me yet, but so far the possibilities to craft dyes are very limited. I don't want to turn this into a crafting explanation, but there is only so much with the available ingredients and containers for dye you can do and try out. If you managed to create dyes other then the obvious ones, share with us. The worst thing is that the crafted colors look nearly the same then merchant ones or drops. How does crafting dyes work? Well, Cultivators can get special moments (better then a critical success) and gain pigment extracts from growing plants. An Apothecary can take Mortar and Pestle (vendor item) and fixer plus a pigment extract to craft dye. Basic fixer lvl 1 can be bought from a vendor but Cultivators can get higher level fixers from special moments as well. The highest fixer i got until today is lvl 125, don't know anyoneone who got a better one. Colored pigments i found so far include yellow (Golden Yellow Dye), brown (Scorched Brown Dye), green (Goblin Green Dye), blue (Seaguard Blue Dye) and red (Red Gore Dye).

Some people claim they crafted violet or black dye, but i did not see any proof yet. Screenshots & explanations or it did not happen. The dye system is one of the greatest item features and I'm positive we'll see more dyes soon as special rewards.

Tip of the Day: If you try to brew potions with Apothecary and the potion fails, use water as a stabilizer. You can use up to three water for the same potion to stabilize it. After the vendor bought water is not good enough anymore you'll need better water or zoic from other scavengers & butchers.

Toe-to-Toe: Warhammer Addons

Maybe you're one of those players that don't have any addons installed yet? Well, then we should get you started as addons can really improve your gaming experience. I know some are reluctant to install them, but i always used a ton of addons and as long as you keep track of new versions, it's not a problem at all. Should you not have seen them yet, i keep a list of the addons i have installed in the nav-bar to the right. All of them have screenshots posted at the download location, so i won't bother to post screenshots of those addons but rather entertain you with some random panoramic screenshots.

Before i talk about the addons i use, let me talk you through the process of installing them. If not there already, you need to create a path like C:\Games\Warhammer Online\Interface\Addons\ (depending on where you installed WAR) don't mix it up with the interface folder in your user area, that's not the right one. A really good addon FAQ is at WHA, go read it first. I grab all my addons from curse, so far there are no other addon websites worth mentioning. Warhammer Online stores the settings for addons on an addon version basis, which means you do not have to update them after every patch. Of course when Mythic changed something you'll have to grab the latest version to fix stuff. In general i would advice to check for updates to the addons you use regularly to get bug fixes and improvements. Should you install a new addon version, all settings are gone and you have to set it up again. Usually no big deal, but keep it in mind for addons that work in the background. You can modify lastLoadedVersion (check the FAQ at WHA how to do so) to keep the setting, but only use it if you know it will work. By default Warhammer stores addon settings global for all your chars, if you need to operate with different setups, you can change that by editing ..\user\UserSettings.xml -> save_settings_per_character="false" needs to be changed to true.

What can those addons do for me? Well, I'm glad you asked... Some addons are real timesavers. The one addon I'd say saved me a ton of time is zMailMod, it's a mass mailing addon that will show you the amount of time until all the mails/attachments are send and sends mail after mail by itself. Finally you should be arsed to send those crafting things you vendored before to some guildie. Go and install that one now! The QuickMailTool does help you to empty your mailbox and delete mails, while not working perfect yet (eg. does not take money) it's useful if you watch closely what you're doing. Another good addon is Last Listed which is the only auction house addon i have installed. It will populate the search automaticly depending on the item you want to sell and also remember the price you put it up for. Especially if you're a crafter and try (lets not talk about how the last patch destroyed apothecary income from cores) to sell things this is useful, but also for just selling stuff you found.

The next addons are to customize your UI... Vertigo will enable you to arrange and size your hotbars as you like. You want a three slot mini bar somewhere? no problem. ActionBarColor will color your action buttons red if target is out of range. InfluenceText adds numbers to your influence bar to show how far away from the rewards you are. Does help to keep you sane while grinding influence and you can also click it to go directly to the warstory entry to check the rewards again, dangling in front of your nose.

Talking about items there are two addons i use, first - as there is no item linking yet - the Mostly Harmless Item Linker, generates text with item info so you don't have to type stats if you intend to give away some item to guildies. If you keep different suits of gear ClosetGoblin is for you. This addon will let you manage equipment sets with ease and got a nice UI to do so.

Three more useful addons i use: PlantMe if you're a Cultivator, use this one! Improves the cultivating profession a ton. The addon will provide you with a small window you can use to cultivate seeds & spores and use an included dropdown menu to quickly use additives for the process. You just ckick the tiny squares for each seed slot. Then i also use Chat Alert! to be notified about certain events and chat channels, especially if someone whispers me. The default settings are annoying, but you can turn off all the channels you don't want to hear a sound for messages. Join Selected Scenarios is the new version from Scenario Join All Button, as Mythic implemented a join all button now. But this addon is exactly how Mythic should have implemented it: A small list with available scenarios to check those you want to queue for, sometimes I'm just not up for Tor Anroc but want to queue for all the others.

On a sidenote: I hear good things about Squared (like grid) to use if you're a healer. I don't use it but check it out should you need to heal people.

In addition there are a bunch of tiny helpers that will just change the default view of some window, etc. like GuildDefaultTab (change the default view & sorting from guild window) and NearestOpenGroup (sort open groups after distance, from nearest to farthest). I also want to mention IdentityTheft, a small helper to create "clean" screenshots - it will hide all player/NPC names etc. Great little addon to create good looking screenshots while in combat.

As you can see i did not mention all, but think this should at least give you an idea about what kind of useful addons are out there. Depending on your class there are many more and I'm also watching some very promising beta version, I'm sure I'll add soon to my collection of useful stuff. Don't forget to install LibSlash as its a library for registering slash commands most addons use. If you want to delete an addon, just delete the folder inside the addon path and its gone.

Tip of the Day: You can update or change addons while running WAR, you just have to do a /reloadui afterwards to update your UI.

Toe-to-Toe: Claiming a Keep

Yesterday night Thirst, with the help of Rigor Mortis & Da Meanest an' Greenest, took back the T4 keep "Ironskin Skar" in Black Crag from the filthy hands of Order. I did not participate personally, but will use this as an example how to claim a keep and what it costs. Before you can claim a keep, of course first you have to conquer it. So gather a strong warband and find one occupied by the forces of Order, preferably already claimed by an Order guild. ;)



You can check which realm owns a keep by looking at the mouse-over window. It will also show if a guild, in this example Thirst, has claimed that keep. So after you conquered the keep and slaughtered all the NPCs (including the Keep Lord of course) in there, you can claim the "empty" keep. If you just leave it, NPCs from your realm will repopulate the keep by themselves. If you want to claim the keep (Note: Your guild needs rank 14 to be able to claim) for your guild, after the fight you'll have to head to the top of the structure. IF you are a standard bearer for your guild, you'll be able to interact with one of the banner poles on top and you can place your banner there, claiming the keep.

It's important to note: The claiming standard bearer won't be able to carry a standard as long as the guild keeps that keep, because he "uses" his to claim it. Once your guild claimed the keep (your guild can only have one keep claimed at a time), the banners will transform into your guild heraldry, showing colors, patterns and emblem depending on your guild rank. In addition the Keep Lord will be hired by your guild and will show the guild tag as well.

But of course such service does not come for free. If you intend to claim keeps, you better fill up your war chest in advance with gold. The costs for keep maintenance are:
T3 Keep Maintenance =  6 gold/hour (144g per day)
T4 Keep Maintenance = 10 gold/hour (240g per day)

Maybe a good idea to talk about guild tithes & taxes or how guild members donate money in advance. We did not really plan for the keep claiming and had to realize our funds inside the guild vault were not enough to hold it for long. Next time then... ;)

So you wonder what the benefits are for paying maintenance and defending a claimed keep? Well, should someone attack "your" keep you'll get a warning in chat - so better make your way over quick when that happens. The benfits of a claimed keep include, that your guild banner tactics (the ones "equipped" in the banner used to claim) will be applied to the specified RvR area for ALL realm members to benefit from. In addition your guild will earn experience over time while holding the Keep. If a Keep (that is claimed by a guild) is captured, then the Standard associated with the Keep is considered captured.

Toe-to-Toe: Guild Taxes & Guild Tithes

As we level higher in WAR it will become more important to fill up our guild war chest, i thought maybe it's a good time to take a quick stab at the guild taxes & guild tithes features.


When the guild reaches rank 3, the option for tax & tithe opens up. Guild taxes are pretty self-explanatory: The guild leader can determine a percentage of your earnings that will go to the guild vault. The tax rate will show in the rewards tab next to the tax option.

What exactly is the tithe then? The tithe option is a voluntary contribution from each player towards the guild vault. While the tax is imposed equally for all guild members, the percentage of the tithe rate can be selected by everyone differently. If you want to donate to your guild bank, just click the tithe option inside the guild reward window and a small pop-up will open, here you enter the percenetage of you earnings you want to give.


Both options, tax & tithe, will add up. So if your guild has a basic tax of 5% and you choose a 7% tithe rate, you'll donate 12% of your income to the guild. I think i read somewhere it's rounded down where it applies. I'm not 100% sure, but i also recall the deducted money is only taken away from looting corpses and not doing quests, vendor sales or income from the auction house.

Attack on Keep "Stoneclaw Castle"

Yesterday night a larger warband from Thirst members plus some randoms gathered in Hellfang Ridge to assault the RvR zone in High Pass. As we did not have many healers with us, after a small visit to Stoneclaw Castle, we decided to take Battle Objectives first. Usually those are guarded by one Hero and a bunch of other NPCs, which are not hard to take down with a larger group. I don't know if it changes with different ranks/renown, but i got 400RP for capturing battle objectives. Once we started taking over objectives we were opposed by a large group mainly from BOON Control and Vengeance. Fun!

The best battle was in and around Ogrund's Tavern, which has one small entrance with a door you can open/close. Due to the collision together with some skills this makes for a very fun combat experience, trying to break in or hold a building like this. If you don't have enough healing power its very hard to take over such an object tho, when you got skilled players holding the doorway. Even with a squad of Black Orcs using Raze and Hold The Line! The battle went back and forth, we took this battle objective, they took that. Some great open RvR action.

In the end we wanted to assault the keep despite our lack of healers. This is when the strange stuff started to happen: Some of us, including me, could not see the keep anymore. We saw only a few walls or parts of the towers and the rest was gone. The funny part was we could just run inside, as there were no walls for us. If "inside" most NPCs and players were "out of range", only maybe 20% could be attacked. I can only imagine how this must have looked for the players inside the keep, using a knockback and send someone flying through the wall. Butler was hit by the bug as well, think he frapsed it - so i might post a vid should i get one. This bug (probably due to server lag?) was really annoying and due to queues you did not really want to restart the client. First time i have encountered something major like this.

On a sidenote, phunqe on Karak-Azgal used the search function some during prime time and came up with estimated server population caps: Refering to his thread it looks like the population caps are 1500 players per side, 3000 players per server at any time. Feels about right, tho i can't say that all the zones on my server feel populated, sometimes you can walk for quite a while until you meet someone.

Tip of the Day: Did you know the sergeants at battle objectives will give you a 30min buff, when you talk to them? The type of buff you get differs per objective and you can see those in the "small print" when you mouse-over the battle objective on the map.

Mount Gunbad: Mushroom-Crazed Night Goblins

Well, well... yesterday night we went into Mount Gunbad with a larger guild group. Me only being rank 20 and one of the youngsters. What initially started as a quick cave expedition ended up in a fully fledged mountain assault, visiting all three wings. But first things first... Mount Gunbad is located in the Badlands. In the far NW corner of your map you can see a cave, that's where you want to go. The mountain is home to crazy Night Goblins, that harvest weird mushrooms to brew potions. Over the years they have become very powerful through the forces they can access with their drugs. The whole cave is covered in moss, mold and mushrooms. The main inhabitants being Night Goblins, Spiders, Squigs and Giants... oh, and i did i say giant squigs? The cave scenery is very atmospheric, great place.

The whole mountain is a public instance. In most parts everyone can go and there are only (as far as i could discover) three one-room instances, which are group'o'six only, where a boss can be found in each. Most mob groups are larger and have at least a champion, usually 2-3 of them plus trash. Every now and then there is a hero in the middle of things. In addition respawn is quick some places so you better watch out where you go and what you pull. It's not possible to adventure solo in any part, a full group should be adviced. Inside the mountain is a *ton* of public quests and the final stages are enjoyably tough, like Biletongue (troll PQ). Mount Gunbad has its own influence bar and certain stages of influence seems to be needed to enter the private instance parts. XP gained inside the instance is, like in Sacellum, very weak. Maybe after another visit I'll write more about Mount Gunbad - I'll definately go back, it's some serious action in there. But not for the weak... *evil Orc laugh*

There are three wings:
#Right Wing (23+) contains Gunbad Lab
#Left Wing (25+) contains Gunbad Nursery
#Middle Wing (27+) contains Gunbad Barracks

It's possible for you to harness the mushroom powers of the Night Goblins: Just when you enter the instance - and later on at some places inside - is a cauldron bubbling. If you interact with it, you can choose from three repeatable quests to collect certain mushrooms. These quests do not yield any XP, but if you complete them will grant you three different 30min buffs. The buffs being Bloodfang Brew, Green Ooze Brew and Spikespore Brew.

Tip of the Day: Should you win loot bags from public quests and you can't wear the reward yet, store the complete loot bag in your bank until you reach rank. It could be, that in the meantime you find something similar - then you'll still have the choice to pick something else from the loot bag.

The Inevitable City Map (updated)

Watching the public chat channels and questions on some forums, there still seem to be a lot of people that have some trouble to find their way around inside the Inevitable City. Not anymore... here is a citymap with all important POIs in it. I did not clutter it with any trainers and such, as those are really everywhere and also show up properly on your map. The info & color code on the map should be simple enough to figure out. All city dungeons and public quests are on the map as well. enjoy.

Things to know:
Mount Vendor, needs to be rank 20, costs 15g.
Name Registrar, register 2nd name, needs to be rank 20, costs 4g.
The Viper Pit, Guild Tavern, needs city rank 2 (and guild rank 6) to open.

Points of Interest:
Bloodwrought Enclave, PvE instance (city rank 2, player rank 40)
Bilerot Burrow, PvE instance (city rank 3, player rank 40)
The Elysium, some strange garden (city rank 5)
Eternal Citadel (city rank 3)

Public Quests inside the City:
# Temple of the Damned
# Inevitable Rot
# Toil and Trouble (triggers by touching a cauldron in the alley)
# Chaos Unleashed - Defeat the Chaos Spawn (triggers by a skull in the alley)
# The Bigger They Are...
# The New Plague - Defend the Monolith (takes place inside the portal)
This PQ is triggered by a portal inside the Monolith, you can see the quest is "charged" by flashes below the portal that leads into it.

Tip of the Day: Did you know, that when you fall off the edge inside the Inevitable City, you'll get teleported to the resurrection point within the city, but without any penalty applied? Sometimes a fast way across the city.

Edit: Due to popular demand i added all the trainers (career, renown and crafting) to the map.

Crafting Trainer inside the city:
# Butcher
# Scavenger
# Cultivator
# Apothecary
# Salvager
# Talisman Trainer

Update 08/10/11: Added the PQ Chaos Unleashed, thanks Elsherath. Also added trigger info on two PQs.
Update 08/10/31: Added trigger info for Monolith PQ.
Update 08/12/13: Updated the Trainer locations for Talisman crafting and Salvaging for patch 1.1

Edit: Check this blog, should you search for an Altdorf map.

Mount & City Rank

So what's happening to Thulf you ask? And rightfully so... there is so much stuff to explore and write about and only so much time. I hope between still posting useful information (which at this point i think is of more use to you guys) i find more time to blog about my own adventures. I got *tons* of screenshots from weird, funny and cool places. I also have a large directory of dead stunty pictures i intend to throw in every now and then.. hehe. We started to refer to "DPS = Dwarves per Second" lately. ;)

This weekend Thulf dinged rank 20. yay! Of course i immediately traveled to the Inevitable City to buy my mount for 15g, which was not hard to collect until rank 20. I did not have to work for my mount, which was "casual" for a change. Black Orc's ride warboars (see picture).. looks a bit strange at first, but you get used to it. The idle animations are fun, the boar scratches his head on the floor sometimes or you pat it on the head - tough Orc love. The mount moves with a speed buff - being 50% faster then running/walking. Great to go places to explore or work on Tome unlocks. The mount summon takes 3 secs, which seems ok. Any hit from a monster will dismount you immediately, but falling damage will not! I really enjoy my mount...
Tip of the Day: Should you not have your mount yet, use your Flee ability to travel long distances. Your Action Points refill fast and as long as it's not a very dangerous area, you should be fine.

Since a small discussion on our server forum at WHA about advancing the city rank, i was asked how to check the current city rank? While inside your main city, there is a small red star above the minimap, mouseover it to get a pop-up showing city rank with "benefits". As of now there is no progress bar for city progression. While killing mobs inside the city, participating in PQs inside the city and also doing city dungeons (like Sacellum) and overall RvR performance should increase the city rank slowly, some players think the city rank progression is turned off for now - at least during beta it was much faster. And no, the "lock" on the bar above the map does only mean that it's not possible for the other realm to raid that main city. Due to the lack of a progress bar, no one knows for sure yet. Searching the net it seems like NO city reached rank 2 yet tho. Only time will tell, maybe we get a statement from Mythic/GOA about this soon. Should be nice to be able to use the Viper's Pit Tavern and access the vendor in there.

NOTE: Seems one of the imagehosters has problems today, don't be surprised if the blog looks a bit strange or some pics are missing, hope this will be fixed soonish.

Toe-to-Toe: Warhammer Auction House

Looking at the search hits, it seems like there are many people still struggling to figure out the warhammer auction house and how to best utilize it. I'll try to give you a quick rundown...
The most important thing to notice: When you hit the search button on the auction house (AH), your chat window will give you a number of results. If it states search results 500, some auctions have been cut off. The AH will only show a max. of 500 results at any time to you. Should you hit this magical number, its adviced to refine your search more to see all fitting auctions. Some features on the AH are still a bit bugged, like search for career related stuff, you'll always get some crap you can't use as its for someone else. You can sort results by clicking on the column top like name, rank, time left, etc.

From my use of the AH, your best tools are these (until the rest gets fixed):
# Item Name - enter a search keyword in here and you'll only get results that include it, use this!
# Rank from x to y - if you search for gear to buy, limit the search by a rank frame that makes sense. With rank 20 you don't want to search for rank 1 gear.
# Categories - if you only search for armor, weapons or crafting stuff you should use this one.

What about selling stuff at the auction house you ask? Well, the warhammer auction house UI makes it really simple for you. It tells you the the vendor price (good stuff!) and suggests a price connected to the vendor one with a little markup. Careful tho, some crafting material does not sell for much at the vendor, so its worth more then the AH suggests. If you think that the drop you found is only mediocre, you might want to take the suggestion (pending on the drop up it a little). I'm still amazed how many players try to sell crap rank 17 items for a few gold, no one will buy that stuff. If you have no idea how much its worth, use your common sense (would you buy an item for 5g at rank 17?) and search for the item first to get an idea about how others priced it (which does still not mean it's worth 4.9g if you know what i mean). You might want to adjust the duration tho, the default 24h seem a bit short. As a last sidenote: Your mailbox has a seperate tab for mails from the auction house - how could you miss that? ;)

Toe-to-Toe: Open Party System

After playing a few days i have to say, I'm having a blast! There are so many things to see, fight and explore... its fun. One thing that bugs me is, that many many players have not figured out the whole open party system for group play in Warhammer Online yet. It's rather simple: When you create a group, it's an open party by default. If you don't want other people to join your group, go to party options and untick the "open party" option. Then it's not necessary to be rude and just kick people that try to join your party.

What does open party mean? Anyone can just join your party. How to find open parties? All of you might have noticed the pop-up you get when you enter a new zone, showing open parties. But you can search/enter them at all times. Use the small icon below you character pic to open a window that shows all available open groups & warbands in your area. You get some info about what they are doing and how far away they are.

Tips of the Day:
# All party members can invite someone to the group. If the person sending the invite is not the party leader you'll refer him to the leader and he'll get a pop-up to accept the person into the party. Really useful so you don't have to spell out strange names over and over.
# If you grind PQs not only for influence, but also for loot bags, once in a PQ area sort open parties after distance and join a group. Your overall contribution should be higher in a party.