Lost Vale v1.3

Just came back from a weekend trip, but before i went we were heading into Lost Vale last week. Since patch 1.3 i have not been in there, so i was interested to see what changed. First thing i noticed: You can ride your mounts inside the instance now - finally! What did we mutter about the long runs when we started the instance way back... of course it would have been nice to be able to use the spirits to teleport through the instance, but i guess 50% less walking is better then nothing. Since its an outdoor instance it feels ok to ride around on your mount. It felt to me the Butcher fight was adjusted some, so its not as wonky with the small Gobbo then it has been before. The Blood of the Vale questline is bugged now tho. First i heard you can repeat the questline a few times now, to get the talisman reward more then once. So i went to retake the questline. The quest bugged for me when i did not take the vial from the Everqueen directly after the fight, but instead ported back to IC to give a guild mate some stuff from the vault. When i went back to grab it about 45min later i could not interact with the Everqueen. Hum.. i know it worked before to go back and interact with her. Broken now. I wrote an appeal about it and some time later a friendly CSR contacted me. He really put some effort in helping me out (teleporting me around and trying to fix it), but failed to finally fix it since he could not create the vial in my inventory and despite he said he flagged the quest as complete, i could not hand it in. Why can't he create a quest item in my inv when he confirmed the N'Kari kill and saw i can't interact with her? In addition he told me, that the repeatable LV quest is a bug players have that finished it before it was patched. So apparently no repeatable to grab a timed talisman - would at least add some more incentive to LV. In the end i had to abandon the quest and will see next time if i can continue it and retake it. Always nice to see one thing fixed and another thing broken. Starting to get tired of some minor bugs that take forever to get fixed.

On a sidenote i was very lucky with Darkpromise that run. I've run LV for a looong time and was always really unlucky with DP (which i only need for the wards anyway as most of it is crap for tanking). During our run i was able to pick up the Darkpromise Eadplate and the Darkpromise Bodyplate. nice!

BTW, when will the bunch of broken talismans from LotD be fixed? I fail to understand why i still have several in my bank you can't see the proc (one is even mythic quality) and after the ones i had equipped in my hammer vanished (since apparently the timer for those also ticks when you don't have them equipped), I'm also not very keen on trying any of them out. How long can it take to fix them?

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.

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.

More Lost Vale HQ Panorama Wallpapers

I'll be out of town until the weekend to visit a friend, therefore no news here until I'm back. To give you guys something to toy around with, i created some more panorama wallpapers from Lost Vale, this time from the final wing. Enjoy!









You can download the large files containing 1680x1050 and 1400x1050 versions here (choose free user).

Lost Vale HQ Panorama Wallpapers

Did not feel much like writing today. To celebrate my new Darkpromise Andsplate i got in Lost Vale yesterday, I created some more high-quality panorama wallpapers, this time from Lost Vale. Enjoy!







You can download the large files containing 1680x1050 and 1400x1050 versions here (choose free user).

Night of Murder and NYCC news tidbits

The latest live event Night of Murder is on. The event overall looks like more fun then Keg's End to me, I did not participate that much yet tho. Most of the quests you can solve just by doing RvR. The list of tasks is a tad uninspiring to me tho.. while its a lot of different tasks, many of them are boring and you can't really influence when you trigger them. Why are there tasks like "Assassinate 5 enemy guild officers" or "Assassinate 1 guild leader"? Seriously, we could just get a kind of dice item we can use every 20min to try rolling a six - same effect. The marked mobs inside the capitols are nice, as there is life within the cities while people hunt them. They show up as a rank one "suspicious" person and will adjust to your level once you hit them. And yes, i can solo the rank 40 hero mob for the event. You can't kite them around too much tho, once it disappeared in a cloud while i was fighting it still. If you "camp" one of the spawn places for the marked monsters it will take you approx. 20-30min to kill five for the marked quest. I read somewhere you could use the influence daggers from that quest in areas where your realm has an INF bonus to gain more then 430 INF with them, but either it was fixed or its an urban legend. Did not work when i tried it. The rewards look okay to me.
BTW, the Lobbin' Noggin you need to throw five times to a friendly player can be tossed back and forth between you and a friend. So in theory one skull would be enough to finish this for the whole guild.

The most fun thing during this event is the "love note" you can send enemies tho. During RvR there is a small chance your corpse will drop a Thoroughly Lobbed Nog and if an enemy picks it up and mails it back to you, you'll get a pocket item in your mailbox: Your Thoroughly Lobbed Nog. Not exactly sure what it does when you use it, but I'll research later.

There are several news tidbits people could gather on the NY Comic-Con event. Ten Ton Hammer got a nice video of the Choppa and WHA got a nice write-up here. There is also news about new mount options: With guild rank 20 you can buy a color variation and with guild rank 37/38 you'll gain the option to buy armored mounts (slightly faster and harder to dismount), the models used so far look the same just with some armor. Bummer, i hope that will change... guild rank 37 is far away still tho. Our guild is close to 29 now.

Talking about our guild Thirst, we're still recruiting btw.

On a sidenote: We recently cleared wing one and two (then it was late) in Lost Vale with five people, because we had one person drop out right at the start. I was really not sure how far we could get with five and especially Gorak looked tough. It was a fun challenge but in the end we managed it. Just as a tip tho: Should part of your group die inside LV and you don't have wipe recovery available due to skills/banners: Roll on boss loot before you release. The despawn timers on the boss corpses are shorter then the way you have to run back and CSR will tell you "So Sorry, maybe post a suggestion as feedback on longer despawn timers". Happened to us after the Gorak fight.

Lost Vale Map

Since i saw another map of the Lost Vale floating around now, i figured there is no use to keep you guys waiting longer. Of course my map has more information and does look better. ;)
As a bonus for those that participated in the Lost Map Challenge, i gave them credit for unlocking the map on the map itself. Thanks for joining the fun! As for the last question from Challenge III: How many Gorgers in total live inside the Gorger Cave in Enclave? It was 29 in total when i went in there. The other two challenges would have been "find that place" and i would have posted screenshots, you had to find the place. I'll keep those for some upcoming challenge...

Here you can grab the high-definition 1600x1900 Lost Vale Map (choose free user).

The lost Map of Lost Vale Challenge III

The challenge for the lost map of Lost Vale is going into the third round. This time you'll have to adventure into the world and visit certain places to solve it. It's great to see people having fun crackin' the questions... maybe i can talk Paul out of a pair of his red sport shoes and we'll have another contest in the future. ;)

Challenge III tasks: Numbers
How many ships/boats can you see from the beach in Lost Vale? 9 (Aquaduck)
How many statues are placed at the large maingate towards the Stunty capitol? 12 (Aquaduck)
How many teeth does a Wyvern have? 22 (Sekrish)
How many teeth does a dragon have? 40-56 (Sekrish)
How many Gorgers in total live inside the Gorger Cave in Enclave?

Map info & Contest Rules

The lost Map of Lost Vale Challenge II

The response for the first challenge was much greater then i expected. Nicely done guys! Some of the later tasks will actually require you to venture into the warhammer world and check certain places, stay tuned. :) Alright, so here are the questions for the second part...

Challenge II tasks:
What kind of architect was Doctor Zumwald? architect of the plague (Mazar)
What is a Slayer's (Stunty) job? To die a honourable death on the battlefield (Sekrish)
What is the last name of Caledor, the high elf mage? Dragontamer (Mazar)
What have a Wise, a Goldhound and a Dragonsbane in common? they all were lieutenants of Runelord Ranik Valayason at Grom Rodrin (werit)

The third challenge is up...

The lost Map of Lost Vale Challenge

Like i wrote earlier, i created a complete map from Lost Vale. You may have already seen the teaser, below is a new one from the final map. As creating a proper map from an outdoor instance has been more work then the other smaller dungeons, I'll not just post it, but you can unlock it! I'm launching the Challenge for the lost map of Lost Vale:

The Rules:
The challenge will have five parts. Each sub-challenge will have certain tasks/questions. Once all sub-parts are solved I'll post the next sub-challenge. To solve a task, just post your solution in the comments to that task (if you post your char name, you'll get credit for being the first solving it). It's not necessary to answer all at the same time, I'll update the post with those tasks that have been solved already. If necessary post a screenshot to support your solution. There is no time limit for the challenge, but the final map will only be unlocked (posted) once all five challenges have been solved. Sounds like fun? Then get started right away...



The original map to be unlocked is 1600x1900 pixel in size, shows all three wings with necessary points of interest and has some basic guides where you need to go. Orientation inside the outdoor instance is pretty easy once you found your way around, but many players like the other dungeon maps for initial orientation.



Challenge I tasks:
We'll start off with some easy questions...
Which of the magic winds do Necromancers that turn into Liches learn to master? Wind of Shyish/Purple (Yavvy & Walo)
How do you call a hybrid creature half chicken, half lizard? Cockatrice (Snafzg)
Who or what is a Shartak? A Dragon Ogre (Mileena)
Which creatures do Ogres use as mounts? Rhinoxen (Snafzg)

The third challenge is up...

A sneak peak...

of the upcoming Lost Vale Map. It will be a full map with all three wings in one map. The final map will have some additional guidance where to go compared to my other maps as the multi-level outdoor environment can be confusing else by just looking at the map. Until its unlocked, you can use the map Grabz created, which i thought was funny. =)
BTW, voting for the 2008 Greeny Awards will go on until the 19th, so place your voice for the best community sites there.

What I'm working on

Felt like i could make a short post about what's in the pipeline and what I've been working on. I really want to finish my follow up on the WAR: Age of Blogging. Our initiative has been very successful so far... we got a lot of coverage, even the latest US GrabBag was refering to it. Edit: The WAR EU website posted about it today here. More important tho, a large amount of blogs introduced themselves. Thats the reason I'm lacking behind, as i at least want to have a brief look at every single one of them. I should get it done these days tho. Then I've been toying around with my personal version of RvR setup. I bought a bunch of gear and talismans from the AH, threw away some, got some others. I'm too lazy to respecc all the time, so I'm working on my own best version of a tank setup for RvR. I'll keep you posted once i was able to test it more. I also have all the screenshots for my post about exploration in WAR laying around, just need to write the article.

One more thing I'm working on is a map for Lost Vale. As it's an outdoor instance, its not that easy to create a good map for that place. The basics are meanwhile done tho, only need to polish it and add the POIs and some waypoints to it. As this one was more work then the other ones, I'm thinking about creating a scavenger hunt for it, so readers of my blog will be able to do some tasks/exploration and finally unlock the map, resulting in it being posted. Once the map is done, I'll talk more about this project. Stay tuned.

On a sidenote, Denman, a guild mate of mine, created a great Black Orc RvR video. Fun to watch!

I touched Darkpromise Feetsplate for a few Seconds

...but then they were gone. What happened was this: We went back into Lost Vale yesterday. The start of our trip was already a bit unlucky, but the climax was our fight against Dralel the Whitefire Matron. We kill the boss, we loot the boss... sweet! Darkpromise Feetsplate (WarDB info on those is wrong btw, check set bonus etc. here) for me. Like 30 secs later the zone crashes, we find ourselves outside at the boat (with a bunch of other people) and realise there has been a short rollback.. Loot from the boss fight is gone and the instance had a softreset, trash back and boss alive again. yay! Guess what the spider dropped this time? Black Guard boots no one could use... supernice. Of course CSR was useless in this matter - nothing they could do to exchange boots, who would have guessed. I'm just happy the instance crash did not happen earlier, as i was lucky enough to get my hands on the Blocka o' da Doombull, which is (beside the Blocka of the Watcher) the best tanking shield for an Orc in game. And it looks like the header of my blog, how cool is that? ;)

I updated the Altdorf City Siege post with some more clarifications, as Destruction was able to capture two fortresses again on Karak-Azgal last night around midnight. I only went in briefly, as it was late already... but it was only my second time and it already started to get boring. Why? While in the beginning there were some nice fights inside Altdorf, rather quickly the instances did split up... Destruction farming Invader in their instance and Order in another. Yawn. Most people won't be able to wear Invader gear for a longer time anyway. Inbetween people met inside the Warquarters scenario, which is not that much fun compared to other scenarios i have to say. PQ Contribution is definately bugged, i tried it out and it does not really matter if you do anything at all in there, its just random. The quests are not repeatable, even not at another siege. Mythic needs to get back on the endgame quickly to make it more fun and fix the flaws with the city instances. If you have a 48:48 instance its a lot of cool fights, but if the instance is nearly empty for one side its boring as hell.

With the bad Darkpromise droprate in Lost Vale (wing bosses only drop one piece, city dungeons at least have a chance to drop more) i assume those people that grind the renown will be better off farming invader, hoping for a high contribution number and winning several bags then. That might be a faster way to gear up for king fights. Until contribution is fixed, i wonder why Mythic doesn't pull the plug on the contribution system and make it entirely random numbers. At least then you won't see the same player grab the gold bags all of the time.

Lost Vale Impressions & Info

Like i reported before our guild Thirst runs two groups into Lost Vale (called Gaen Vale by the elves) now. The instance is currently the hardest available PvE dungeon (not talking about king fights), its designed for six players (rank 40) and on a five day lockout. You reach the instance with a boat from Avelorn (its a landmark at the west coast). We cleared Lost Vale and killed every boss in there on our first serious journey with enough wards. As far as i know on our server we're the second guild that cleared the Vale and we were the first after the Chosen fix. We used two Black Orc tanks with 5/5 and 4/5 wards. Overall i have to say the instance is the most fun one in WAR so far. The zone design is very atmospheric and some boss fights are a lot of fun, despite some bugs in there still.

Since its the hardest instance IMO Mythic should have a close look at the loot tables again tho, after the introduction of the new city dungeon drops and the new influence rewards the risk/work vs. reward in Lost Vale is a tad off balance if you ask me. Some items are really good, but others you don't even bother to roll on as the shard is more useful. I don't know how it is for other classes, but the Black Orc Darkpromise set is a joke (stat & set bonus wise) compared to Sentinel and how hard it is to get the set from Lost Vale. So if you take the long lockout into account and the work it takes to get that stuff, Mythic really needs to rework the stats/bonuses... and as its a PvE set, shouldn't it be more focused on tanking when it comes to the set bonuses?

Before you enter Lost Vale, make sure you pick up the Blood of the Vale quest from inside the Eternal Citadel in the Inevitable City. Every group member needs to be on this quest as it will allow you to bypass the traps/barriers to advance into the other wings. One more good idea is to tell people to clean up their quest inventory as you'll need to collect some stuff inside the instance. Advancing the quest through the dungeon will grant you special items to bypass the barriers in the other wings (wing 2 has nasty Sprite traps and wing 3 a wind-swirl barrier) and also grant you some jewelry after killing the last boss in each wing: The Whitefire Stone, Root of the Worldbearer and Eye of N'kari - the three pieces are a jewelry set btw.

The instance has three wings again:
All bosses have a chance to drop the Darkpromise belt (BoE) or gloves.



Wing 1 (left): Thornvale Wilds
Ahzranok (Lizard)
Malghor Greathorn (Bestigor)
Horgulul (Chaos Breed Demon)
Dralel the Whitefire Matron (Giant Spider, Wing boss drops Darkpromise Boots)




Important to know: The quest to advance further in wing 1 is sometimes bugged and the quest description is not very intuitive. It does not matter if the quest triggered as complete before, but after you killed Horgulul, your group needs to use 10x Menhir Shards (you collect through the wing) at the large column where you fight her. Who uses the shards is not relevant, after using ten shards the quest giver will spawn and even if you completed the quest by a bug before all need to talk to her to gain the Torch of Lileath. You need the torch to fight the wing boss properly.



Wing 2 (right): Blackwillow Forest
Chul Earthkeeper (Yhetee)
Larg the Devourer (Gorger)
Butcher Gutbeater (Ogre with Gnoblar pet)
Gorak the Ancient (Dragon Ogre)
Sarthain the Worldbearer (Giant Treeman, Wing Boss drops Darkpromise Shoulders)






Wing 3 (middle): Palace Gardens & Alarielle's Palace
Zaar the Painseeker (Chaos Breed Flayer)
The Darkpromise Beast (giant plant from the starter area)
Sechar, the Darkpromise Chieftain (Chaos Humanoid, drops Darkpromise Helmet)
N'Kari, Keeper of Secrets (Daemonette of Slaanesh, Wing Boss drops Darkpromise Chest)

Important to know: You need to talk to Alarielle the Everqueen after you killed N'Kari. She will despawn after a short amount of time, so make sure people talk to her after the fight is over. Some people say if you missed her you can go back into the instance after a softreset and still finish the quest. But its easier to be aware of her short despawn timer and tell people to talk to her.

Two things i seriously have to complain about to Mythic: The long walks of shame after a wipe on a boss, especially the wing end bosses. You fight the boss for 5min and have to run 10min to get back there? WTF?!? This is really annoying and takes away a lot of the fun. It's an outdoor instance, why not let people use their mounts in there? Or create some kind of secret passage or teleporting device you can activate once you reach the last boss. To run around for such long times just sucks. Fortunately we did not wipe that much as we one- or two-shot most bosses, but to run back to N'Kari in wing 3 takes freakin' forever. If you then get the standard/banner bug where your banner turns into a Firewyrm and your char becomes bugged so you can't take out any banners anymore, the walk starts to get very annoying.

The other things is the dungeon lockouts. With the long lockout timer you're screwed when one group member gets sick, does not show by whatever reason, his internet goes down, etc. In addition if someone disconnects while you kill a boss, your whole group is screwed as that person will be locked out. The dungeon lockout IDs need to be fixed in a way that you can exchange party members to go on. Just give a "new person" the instance ID of the group leader, but only if that person does not have a lockout timer yet for that instance to prevent abuse. The only problem you can have then is that someone is "stealing" your instance, but who would PUG eg. Lost Vale? All the other instances you finish in one evening anyway. The problem would be less annoying then being locked out for 5 days and not being able to go on because you can't substitute people.

I also did wonder why there are no Tome unlocks in dungeons like Lost Vale? It's really cool to explore these places, why not be able to discover some lore unlocks for them? Overall Lost Vale is by far the coolest dungeon, if only Mythic fixes the long walks and dungeon lockout problems.