Figured I’ll make a little post. Sort of a conclusion. I’m terrible at staying on topic or any kind of consistency so just bare with me.
I have indeed quit playing Age of Conan completely. Haven’t logged in for weeks and my account should expire in a couple of days. I have noticed that most of the other AoC blogs I used to read have stopped blogging also. That is probably because there aint really that much to blog about once you reach the max level.
So why did I quit? My reasons are a bit unclear for myself also. I guess I can say I just didn’t feel like playing anymore. After hitting level 80 there were 3 things to do. Farm resources for the clan (which is incredibly tedious btw), PvP with no consequence or gain, the 24 man raids and did I mention farming resources for the clan yet? This is all fun for a week or so. The 24 man raids take some organizing which means scheduling and scheduling everything in my life around an event in a game? That is not something I want to do anymore. I’ve recently realized I have wasted massive amounts of time on mmorpg’s and gained nothing but “friendships” which can be broke down to getting a msn convo once a week that goes pretty much like this: “Hi. How are you doing? Can I have your account?”. There are ofcourse exceptions, quite a few of them too, but the amount of people who want nothing more from me anymore than my account saddens me since some of these people are people who I used to call friends. Naive, I know, it is the internet afterall. But I personally take my internets very seriously.
About AoC community and gaming communities in general. I don’t feel the mature rating the game received had any affect on the maturity of the community. Actually the AoC community is no better than the free l2 servers’ communities which are full of immature morons who have long ago forgotten that games are meant to be fun and not just about “pwning”. For these people it is impossible to even consider the fact that someone is better at the game than them. If they die they feel so humiliated they must try to verbally insult the person who killed them fair and square. What happened to sportsmanship gamers used to have? A little bit of competitive nature is okay, but it has gone over the top.
A sad example of this is the playerbase of the 2d shooter game called Soldat. I’ve played it for years every once in a while and got some mad skills at it too. It’s a lightweight game which you can just start up and be kicking some ass in a matter of seconds by joining a public server. But I shit you not when I say I can’t play it anymore due to being too goddamn good at it. I simply get vote kicked from servers after a while the most common reasons being “noob” and “hax”. The people just can’t comprehend the fact that someone else might be better at the game than them. Another interesting thing I have noticed is that the vote kick is usually initiated by the person who was on the top of the server before I joined.
Sorry for getting carried away, but this is a thing I feel passionately about. Gamers need to remember the fun and bring back the sportsmanship to games. This kind of bad behaviour started out as a joke by purepwnage, the angry german kid and multiple other sources, but if this keeps up a funny joke will become a grim reality.
“By competing we understand that our goal of competitive sports is to interact amongst each other without the sole intent of winning.”
On saturday 28th of June 2008 On the EU PvP Server Soulstorm we managed to succcesfully put together a 24 man raidgroup consisting of totally random people. Our goal was to defeat Vistrix the dragon. We set out from Kheshatta in high spirits and headed towards Atzel’s Approach and the Dragon’s lair.
I remember a funny conversation on ventrilo right before we started clearing the trash. It went something like this (can’t remember names sorry):
Person 1: Should we start clearing trash?
Person 2: Sure, why not. It’s only trash.
Person 3: Famous last words.
Remembering this conversation and the fact that we wiped a couple of times on the trash still makes me chuckle. ^^ Some people were first timers in the whole raiding thing in MMOs which added some extra challenge. The old raid veterans were going over the basics over and over again until everyone knew what they were supposed to do though and in the end I think everyone did a good job at following orders.
During the trash clearing we managed to get one epic belt which was apparently assassin gear. Can’t remember who got it, but grats to whoever got it anyway.
So finally after a few wipes and a quick “MMO raiding for dummies” crash course we arrived at Vistrix. After going over some some basic tactics and speculating how it fights and what to do when adds appear we were ready to charge in. Let the battle begin with swords in the wind!
Vistrix 1 – Raid 0. Not quite like how we planned. ^^ This pretty much set the template for how all of our tries in the following three hours would turn out. We eventually figured out how the AoE fireball thingy works, but just as we started to get the hang of it people started to leave in large numbers as it was getting really late.
You win this time Vistrix! I personally had a blast wiping over and over again and would like to thank everyone who participated. We never got to loot him, but I would say if another raid gets put together we now have a substantially higher chance in succeeding. I hope we will manage to put together another one of these random raids soon enough.
Few words about it first. I figured that instead of just posting the build I’d simply go over the tree feat by feat and explain them a bit and say a few words about why to take or not to take the feat in question. This way it will be more useful not only for the berserkers, but also for the people that want to learn more about berserkers, their strenghts and weaknesses and also what to expect when facing one. For those who want to skip the babbling and see the feat build that I’m using just skip to the bottom of this post. I’ll post a link there.
The berserker tree offers a great deal of survivability due to the multiple crowd control ablities it provides. Also provides nice damage even though the reaver tree supposedly offers a much better burst damage. Does not have a so called “I win” -button, which is the reason why majority of barbarians are running for the reaver tree and CoS nowadays. I personally like to feel like I’ve been in a battle instead of just one shotting my opponents. Wheres the fun in that anyway? All in all a very nice tree with tricks for all kinds of situations.
The Berserker Tree Feats
Top to bottom, left to right:
Blood Rage – Grants the barbarian the Blood Rage Stance which increases damage inflicted and enemy attacks have a chance of increasing the barbarian’s rate of Health regeneration and evasion chance. The health effect can be applied three times.
Required to advance obviously. When max procced gives a really nice HP Regen rate and a small evasion boost for better survivability. Maxed 5/5
Great Weapons Master – Increases the damage done by two-handed edged and two-handed blunt weapons.
Doesn’t need much explaining. More damage is always good for a DPS class. Also scales with level. Maxed 5/5
Atrocity – Increases the damage done by the barbarians butcher combos.
Butcher is one of the berserkers two low cool down damage combos and as a berserker you will be using it alot. Maxed 5/5
Shock and Awe – Reduces the reuse time for Stunning Punch and Clobber combos.
Extremely important talent for any berserker to max out. When maxed out it reduces the cooldowns of both Clobber and Stunning Punch for well over 10 seconds. Maxed 3/3
Staggering Punch – Improves the Stunning Punch combos by adding an effect that also reduces the victims movement speed.
This feat seems a bit broken at the moment. Sure it snares the opponent for a while, but the snare starts when you perform the combo and lasts less than the stun from the combo. Only useful if the enemy resists the stun and catches the snare. Of course it is possible I missed something when testing it but for now it doesn’t seem too useful at all. Still 1/3 (I guess I’m keeping up my hopes of it getting fixed ^^)
Reverse Swing vs Grisly Wounds – Augments the Staggering Blow combo by increasing the damage the barbarian inflicts. VS The barbarian augments the Butcher combos with their own inborn brutality, adding more damage over time.
Basically it’s a choice between direct damage and damage over time. When maxed Reverse Swing gives a short buff that increases the berserkers damage by 10%. The buff lasts long enough to land a combo or maybe a couple of instants. This can mean significantly more damage than what Butcher’s rather weak DoT would cause even with this upgrade. I didn’t have points for both so I chose to go for Reverse Swing instead of Grisly wounds. Reverse Swing maxed 5/5
Paralysis – Adds a brief root effect, preventing the target from moving, to the barbarian’s Clobber combo.
So much for only one point. Roots the enemy for a while so you can deal damage to him/her or perhaps throw a stun so the enemy can’t escape. Many people don’t know about this feat and fail to notice it on their debuff bar when under it’s effect and therefore try to run away after getting clobbered instead of doing something useful like active blocking or fighting back. Gives you a few free punches at least. ^^ Definitely maxed 1/1
Insanity – Permanently increases the barbarian’s resistance to fear effects.
Grants passive fear resistance. No idea about it’s numbers, but I’ve been feared lots even with this feat maxed. It is required for getting Unstable Mind though. So maxed 3/3
No Escape – Grants an ability that enables the barbarian to throw their weapon, impaling their enemy, cause massive damage that lingers for a short time and also stuns the victim. This ability disarms the barbarian for a short time.
The damage this ability causes is quite massive. It stuns the enemy and does damage over time for the stun’s duration. There are many many situations in which this ability will come in handy. I’ve used it for escaping, as a finisher, occasionally one shotting mobs without effort and even in the middle of a 1v1 PvP situation when running out of stamina to stun the opponent for a while so my stamina pot can do it’s job while me running about unharmed. Maxed 1/1
Combo Earth Shatter – This mighty combo stuns all foes in close vicinity.
360 degree aoe stun. Need I say more? Maxed 1/1
Finishing Blow – Grants the barbarian a charge ability available after they knock back an enemy. Their charge causes severe damage but a high stamina cost and long reuse time.
Regardless of the description takes no stamina at all. This ability does NOT break a combo so it is best used by using knockback, charging up a combo up to the last hit, finishing blow and finally the combo finisher. That’s some nice burst damage right there. Throw in some instants like decapitation right after and you will be exploding damage all over your enemy. Scales 1 point = 2x damage, 2 = 3x, 3 = 4x. Maxed 3/3
Arcane Marauder – When hit by spell damage the barbarian gains natural health regeneration and drains mana from enemies around them.
To be honest I didn’t see this as a very useful feat to begin with and therefore I don’t have personal experience of it. But from what I’ve heard I was absolutely correct. 0/5
Unstable Mind – Grants the barbarian an ability which removes all stun, snare and root effects and gives them immunity for a short period of time.
Great ability indeed. I personally use this ability only to break off stuns and such. Not too much for the immunity. Even when maxed the duration of the immunity is under 10 seconds. But even with only one point invested in it you can break a stun, snare, root or a fear effect with a 100% rate. Therefore 1/3
Hammer and Anvil – Enhances the Stunning Punch combo by increasing the damage it inflicts.
Doesn’t seem much earlier in the game but really starts to shine at higher levels. Especially if the left side is unshielded when using Stunning Punch. Also required to get to Comatose. Maxed 5/5
Fearsome Agility – When hit in combat there is a chance to gain a short evade buff. This can stack up to 5 times.
A really low procrate. I’ve never had it proc more than three times in a fight. When maxed adds 1% evasion for each proc. I have it maxed at the moment, but this is one of the first things I’ll be changing when I get around to respeccing again. Have some other ideas for the 5 points already. Maxed 5/5 (For now)
Rampage – When hit in combat you will occasionally damage every enemy around you for a small amount.
Nothing special. The damage is about 150 a proc at level 80 which is not too noticeable especially because it doesn’t really proc that often. Requirement to advance down on the tree though. Therefore maxed 5/5
Comatose – Enhances Stunning Punch combo by increasing the amount of time the victim is stunned for.
The longer they are stunned the less damage they can deal to you, right? ^^ Maxed 2/2
Rampaging Horde & Welcoming Death – Grants an ability that increases the damage inflicted upon foes based on the number of friendly barbarian’s in the range. Maximum number counted is 10. & Grants an ability that increases the damage inflicted by the barbarian’s attacks based on the number of dead foes nearby, up to a maximum number of 10.
No personal experience from either one but sounds to me like these abilities are way too situation specific that they will be hardly of any use. Ignored for now. 0/5 0/5
Combo Scatter Foes – Grants the barbarian a combo that will knock back all foes in a wide cone in front of them.
Another knock back with great damage and a quite massive are of effect. The damage is somewhere around the damage of Decapitation if I recall correctly. Maxed 3/3
Combo Decapitation – Grants the barbarian a swift combo that inflicts massive damage and increases the chance of a fatality. This combo has a long reuse time.
Under rated feat in my opinion. Sure, it doesn’t live up to the promises of “Massive damage”, but it is an instant combo. Nice way to build burst damage with KB, finishing blow, combo, decap. Though the cooldown should be less as it doesn’t deal the massive damage that it promises. Maxed 5/5
Thirst For Blood – Grants an ability that drives the fellowship in to a wild bloodlust. Attacking or being attacked can trigger a damage bonus effect and multiple applications of this effect eventually boosts health and stamina regeneration.
The image shows max procced (5) TfB at level 80. When turned on everyone in your group receives it and you have 15 seconds to make it proc before it vanishes. Thank god the proc rate is really good though. Probably easiest to proc with white swings that actually hit something; possibly while building up combos. The duration of the effect is unfortunately only 10 seconds. Hopefully gets boosted in the future patches. No problems with the cooldown though as it is only around 2 minutes. Maxed 1/1
Feats From the General Tree
Excellent Balance – Grants the rogue an ability which makes them immune to being knocked back in combat. Additional feat points increase the duration and shortens the refresh time.
Obviously required to advance, but also really useful. When maxed the duration is 15 seconds and the cooldown is 30 seconds; so you can have it on 50% of the time. Use it as much as possible in PvP situations. Maxed 5/5
Second Wind – Grants a new special ability that gives a short duration but substantial stamina boost. Takes a moderate time to refresh.
A very important feat for a berserker as you will be eating your stamina bar for breakfast and stamina pots sometimes just aren’t enough. A berserker without stamina is a dead berserker. I strongly suggest investing points in the Endurance feat as well even though I didn’t yet do it myself. The cooldown with nothing invested in Endurance is 10 whole minutes. 1/1
Quick Recovery – The rogue instantly recovers stamina after being knocked back in melee.
No matter how much excellent balance you use you will inevitably get knocked back at some point. With this nice feat you will atleast get some stamina out of it. 1/1
Natural Protection VS Toughness – Increases the rogue’s elemental/physical defense ratings.
I didn’t have that much points left for the general tree so I decided to only pick the stuff that I really needed and therefore only wanted to use 5 points in the tier 2 feats. This left me with 3 points to distribute to Toughness or Natural protection. In other words Physical resistances vs Elemental resistances. I feel like soldiers give us berserkers more trouble than mages currently so I went for Toughness. 3/5 in Toughness
Acrobat – Increases the rogue’s evasion rating.
I keep changing my mind about this feat constantly. But right now I see it as a decent feat. Gives 1% evasion for each point invested. Some extra survivability never hurt anyone except my enemies. Which is a good thing, right? Maxed 3/3
Escape Artist – Grants the rogue an ability which gives them a substantial chance to escape snares that slow movement or root effects that prevent movement.
A stationary berserker is a dead berserker. Maxed 3/3
Agile Mind – Grants a special ability which gives the rogue a substantial chance of escaping fear or charm effects.
This feat is a complete mystery to me at the moment. It doesn’t show up as an ability I can use, but as a 24 hour buff that is on me all the time. Does this mean it’s a passive resistance? or maybe it has a chance to kill the fear or charm effect earlier than normally? No idea at the moment. Still I’m hoping it works in some mysterious way and therefore maxed 3/3.
Heres the link to the feats as I promised: CLICK ME
A Few Tips for Playing as a Bersker or Against One
When playing as a berserker one of the most important things is to keep moving. You definitely aint a tank and your HP is very limited. If you try to face a soldier class face to face you will get your ass handed to you very quickly. You have the advantage against all one handed weapon wielders in circle strafing as your hit cone is larger than theirs. So keep circle strafing around those tanks as long as they cant hit you. If the tank has some skills however he will be able to hit you and at that point you should step back and only step back in when you’ve got a combo charged up to it’s finisher. Unpredictable movement is the key. The tanks white swings will hurt you more than your white swings can hurt them.
As a tank if you’re getting circled around and cant seem to hit the barbarian, you can simply back up to a wall. If you can hit em then give them no quarter. Keep incessantly attacking and give them no breathing room. If you let them step in and out whenever they please you will be in trouble. If you got CC use them. Anything you can do to stop their movement is always good.
For casters. Try to keep the distance and CC them before they CC you. This is the only way to survive the starter combination of a berserker really. If you by some miracle survive it then do whatever you can, CC, DD, run away or whatever else you see fit. You will have about til your stun and knock back immunities wear off and they can do it all over again.
This might seem like I’m just being captain obvious to some people, but from what I’ve seen people just can’t figure out this stuff unless told. Hope this helps someone atleast a little bit. This build is built around my playstyle and it works just perfect for that.
As a bonus today a little vid I made showing off one of the two 2handed blunt fatalities that become available at level 80:
Whohoo. Finally managed to achieve level 80 with 9 days and 2 hours of played time. I would like to thank; first of all Funcom for creating the game and making this experience possible, Crom for blessing me with the power to do this and finally all my friends who still stand by me on IRC and msn even though I can’t always find the time to reply them as I am too busy making heads roll. Oh and the biggest thanks of all goes out to my loyal horse which made getting from point A to point B alot more enjoyable. ^^
So.. What now? To be honest I have no idea. I could go for gathering and crafting, but hearing about how unfinished they are at the moment has just put me off the whole thing. Will definitely be doing some PvP minigames as their popularity seems to have gone up a bit and people are actually advertising it in OOC now.
Another thing I need to focus on is my gear. A trendy level 80 barbie cant go around walking in rags. There are two official level 80 barbarian sets I hear. The berserker set and the ragereaver set which have apparently got their names mixed up as the berserker set is better for the reaver feat tree and the ragereaver set is better for the berserker feat tree. So Ragereaver set here I come!
Sooner or later though it is inevitable. I will have to roll an alt or two. I promised myself I wont do it before I hit 80 on my main and I kept that promise. No idea what classes my alts will be, but i will probably want to try out each of the archetypes for starters. If you’ve got a suggestion for a class feel free to drop a mail or leave a comment preferably with a small description or a reason as to why pick the class in question. ^^
The last few days have been somewhat uneventful. Well ingame at least. Managed to get my barbie up to 68 yesterday and saying I will be 80 in a week from now seems like a realistic estimate.
Currently roaming the Atzel’s Approach area which provides mobs and quests from early 60’s all the way up to early 70’s at least. The Thunder River area also provides some nice quests in the 60 – 70 level range and is totally worth checking out. There are also a few group dungeons with quests available for my level range which I have left untouched so far. Mainly because at this level people tend to prefer going with their clan rather than with random people, which is also a good reason for me to start thinking about finding a suiting clan for myself. If you play on Soulstorm and got a clan that could use an awesome barbie just /tell Odefi ingame. ^^
Barbarian’s Berserker Tree Unplayable?
This is the image you will get if you read the official forums.
I personally think there is nothing wrong with the barbarian’s berserker tree apart from a couple of feats far down the tree which are mandatory to grab to get to the last feats. The image I got from the forums was that the berserker tree is good for nothing and if you want damage you should just spec dual wield.
First of all berserkers have excellent crowd control abilities. I currently have two stuns and two knockdowns and have taken all possible feats that improve their effects. If I use them all I can disable a group of mobs for good 14 seconds at least. Of course doesn’t work that well in PvP due to the stun and knockdown immunities, that stunning and knocking down generate. But still that is some serious crowd control right there.
Also the damage is not bad at all. I got Staggering Blow IV yesterday as I hit 68 and did some testing. It was constantly doing around 60% damage on mobs four levels higher than me, non crit and on the unshielded side of course. If it crits it one shots the mobs. Now I have not tested dual wield, but seriously Cyclone of Steel would have to one shot all mobs and players for me to give up the awesome CC abilities for the extra damage.
After yesterday’s fixes to finishing blow and decapitation the only feat that I feel is somewhat useless is Rampage. The damage it deals is around 40 on my current level and it doesn’t really trigger often enough to make it worth the whole five feat points I’ve spent in it to be able to advance towards Thirst for Blood.
I have to admit I haven’t done too much PvP, but so far I have been able to stand up for myself against almost all classes even though soldier classes give me some trouble. I have this code of honour which means I don’t attack players unless they provoke me in some way. When I am alone that is. If I am in a group and they want to fight another group I wont say no simply because group PvP is really enjoyable. I don’t get ganked much, but if someone attacks me I will make it my job to get revenge one way or the other; some times over and over again. ^^ My Kill/Death ratio is around 2/1 even though the deaths include quite a bit of traveling from the time when I still didn’t have a horse and getting killed by a player was the easiest consequence free way to travel.
That’s my two cents about the current state of berserkers. Dual wield is something I will definitely have to try out in the near future to get more perspective of the matter. My berserker build has changed quite a bit from the last time I posted about it and I will be posting my new build with details in the near future.
This Week’s Patches
The most significant change this week was definitely the speed boost for all mounts, which was really significant. I was already traveling purely by horse before this boost now it’s even faster. You are still piss easy to get knocked off of the mount, but it is a matter that one of the devs has said they will look in to. The information I provided about riding a horse a while back was also a bit flawed. You can’t actually sprint as much as you want with your weapon sheathed. It was due to a bug that wouldn’t update your speed until you unsheathed your weapon. This bug was fixed this week though so you can now ride a horse just as fast regardless if you are holding your weapon or not.
Also there was an announcement concerning the buddy keys, that came with the AoC Collectors Editions, which we did not receive on the launch. The word is that we will get our hands on them in the “not too distant future”. Could they be any more vague? ^^ This will be a great chance for me to get some friends hooked on AoC and also to get some company for when I get in to the alt game after hitting 80 on my barbie.
That’s all for today. Keep watching the skies! ..or something. ^^
Yesterday after an hour of OOCing “LFG” I finally got a group to the main sewer system below the tarantian noble district. Was a great group too. Everyone knew their jobs and took care of em too. Only problem was that the higher level players that had skipped the quests before were now coming back there to finish them as the mobs could no longer harm them. So the bosses we were supposed to kill were dead most of the time.
I already disliked going to the sewers even before this party since the place is always full of people and I definitely prefer wide open outdoor spaces over the dark, narrow sewers. Also my computer gets completely jammed sometimes and so far it has happened only in the main sewer system every time I’ve been there and so it happened again and of course; before we had actually managed to achieve anything, thanks to the higher level players camping the bosses. That would have been fine if it was just that, but when I logged back in I couldn’t see the party list and wasn’t able to participate in looting. I asked the partyleader to reinvite me in the party, but when trying to get reinvited I got hit by the so called “party bug” and couldn’t be invited in to the group again.
I pretty much tried everything possible to get it working again, but nothing helped. So there I was unable to join the group and forced to leave the whole place without having achieved anything because of a bug. This was the first time I was really affected by bugs during my whole time playing AoC and I gotta admit I felt really frustrated and had to log out for a while to keep my cool. Now I think I understand the people who skip the whole place and wait for the mobs to get gray so they can do it solo. No matter how much fun grouping is, the place is horrible and should definitely be turned in to a group instance instead of the shared dungeon it is at the moment.
Later when I logged in I picked up a quest to go to thunder river which was a new area for me. You can get there through the Poitain gathering zone and the place is populated with level 60+ mobs. I picked up some red quests and had a blast doing them as they were really challenging at around level 59~. It almost felt like making up after a fight with a good old friend, after the negative sewer experience. I think I’m starting to develope a healthy love hate relationship with this game/Funcom. ^^
Status Report
My barbarian is level 63 currently as I write this and I’m getting to experience the “lack of content” first hand. It’s not as bad as the forum whiners make it out to be. I still find quests on pretty much every single level. Red quests, sure, but that just gives it a bit of an added challenge and makes it that much more fun. I have had to grind some on the last few levels to fill the xp bar that the quests didn’t fill, but I find that understandable as I did skip a majority of the sewer quests.
About the Grinding
To understand my point of view with grinding you have to know a little bit about my MMO history and about Lineage 2 in particular, which is the game I played for the longest period of time and still have my loyalties at. L2 is often nicknamed “Grindage 2” and for a reason too.
I played L2 for over three years. Tried out the retail servers, but that wasn’t my thing with all the bots, dual boxing and ebaying going around. So I ended up playing on the so called ‘private servers’ for the majority of my L2 career, because on private servers botting and dual boxing are actually monitored and banned.
Lineage 2 is basically a continuous grind from level 1 to 80. Sure; you got class transfer quests at 20, 35, 37 and 40, 76, but they are done with the “lets get these over with so we can get on with the grind” -mentality. The quest rewards in L2 are not even worth mentioning because they are just pure crap.
The question in L2 is not how fast you will reach the max level. The question is IF you will ever reach the max level since most people just never make it there. And if you reach the max level how do you get rewarded? With more grind of course. You’ll get to add a subclass to your character (you can actually add a subclass on 75 already and when your subclass reaches 75 you’ll be given another, up to 3 subclasses) and redo the levels 40 – 80 with another class. Yay. o/
The higher you get the slower the xp flows in. At mid levels (low 40’s) on retail rates you’ll be getting about 0.05% per mob of the total amount of xp needed to reach the next level, and the XP given by mobs and the amount needed to level up don’t increase proportionally like in AoC. And at any time another player can come along and just pk you which will make you lose around 4% of the total xp needed to reach the next level.
So when people come to AoC from WoW all spoiled with quests (Yes I did try WoW and it just didn’t click for me) and whine about the lack of quests, having to grind some and getting ganked (with no real death penalties?) I just can’t help laughing. Those who played L2 know what I’m talking about and those who didn’t will never fully understand what we’ve been through. ^^
Just read through what I’ve written so far and one has to wonder why did I stand the grind for three whole years. I have to say it was probably because the game was so goddamn pretty and during those three years I forged a numerous amount of friendships that will last for a lifetime. Also the game was challenging and there was ALWAYS something to do when you logged in game.
I just hope I will be able to look back on Age of Conan in three years, with the same kind of warm memories, as I do on Lineage 2 now.
This rant is something that has been building up in me for quite a while now and it just had to come out. Sorry for the extensive L2 description but I found it relevant to the matter. ^^
Haven’t had much time to play AoC in the past few days. Today I took an entry test for Tampere Polytechnic and now that that is off of my mind I will have more time to play again. o/
I mentioned a new helmet, that I found even visually worth using, in the last post aaand behold! Here it is:
Aint it the nicest helmet you’ve seen in Age of Conan so far? ^^ For me it sure is. So it floats a bit on the shoulders? Doesn’t bother me! It has this sort of a cloak thingy implemented in it that visually replaces the actual cloak that you are wearing which allowed me to wear a cloak that had crappy looks but good stats. This was great for a while.. til I got this as a quest reward:
This is simply the best looking cloak I have found so far in Age of Conan and it really fits my character’s other gear. Now that I have found a nice helmet and a nice cloak I am forced to decide between them! Can’t have both. It aint easy being a trendy barbie I tell you.. =( For now I will roll with the cloak visible. Will have to keep an eye open for that helmet with the ram horns as it would go great with the new cloak!
The Horses. Are they worth the G’s?
What is a trendy barbarian to waste his money on in the world of Hyboria? Buy a horse of course! As at the moment it is one of the few money sinks around. So I took a leap of faith and went to buy myself a horse. This was a leap of faith indeed because of the rather negative experiences with the mammoth. I didn’t wanna buy a black or a white horse since everyone around has either a black or a white horse. So I bought a Skewbald Pinto for 2 gold and basic riding skills for 1 gold.
The basic riding skills come with a set of skills for all mount types. The mount types are of course mammoth, rhino and horses. The skills include one of the following skills for all of them: charge skill (does a knocback), sweep skill (does a knockback as well). Horses get an extra knocback skill with their back feet which the other mount types don’t. Also you get a quick dismount skill which allows you to (obviously enough) dismount quicker than normal.
I did some fighting horseback too and the horse seemed to be able to take way more punishment than the mammoth before throwing me off of it’s back and sprinting away. Actually it only happened when I was going up the eiglophian mountains and agroing every single cannibal on the way up just for fun. Had to be atleast six level 51+ cannibals on my tail before the horse threw me off and left me to di.. I mean; went to get help. Though horseback fighting aint too useful since you can’t perform any combos while you’re riding; only white swings. Don’t know about spells since barbarians do not receive any.
There are a few riding modes. With your weapon sheathed you can endlessly sprint around without draining your stamina at all. If you take out your weapon you can sprint slightly faster than with your weapon sheathed but it will also drain stamina. There is a bug with the horses that makes you able to sprint on foot without draining stamina but it is hardly abuseable since it goes away as soon as you swing your weapon. I gotta say I definitely feel like I got my moneys worth. The riding looks great, feels great, sounds great and is significantly faster than traveling by foot. So if you got the money to spare and don’t feel like jumping off a cliff everytime you want to travel across the map; buy a horse!
I Have Discovered The Reason Why Mammoths Went Extinct
And it is because Funcom did not make them elites! I got this quest to slay the mammoths at the eiglophian mountains near the hunting lodge. I had seen them roaming around earlier and stayed far away from them since I figured they must be very very tough opponents judging by their size. To my surprise I found that the quest was not marked as a group quest. I decided to try to kill one of them just for fun and picked the lowest level one of them first. It was level 58 or 59 and I was level 55 at the moment. I was shocked to find that the higher level, HUMONGOUS mammoth dropped dead after only one stun, three combos and a few white swings. There were four of these giants that I had to skin ranging from level 58 to 61 and I managed to skin them all at level 55 without them giving me much trouble at all.
I have to say I was extremely disappointed as I was looking forward to a challenge when I received this quest. I believe that huge size should give the mobs more power especially in this case. We are talking about the friggin mammoths here! I could imagine having a great group experience taking down these giants if they just were alot tougher. I can hardly say the bandits in the Cistern look even near as tough as these things yet they are a whole lot tougher. Please Funcom. Don’t let these giants go extinct again and make them elite!
The PvP Minigames
Is it just me or are these games almost impossible to get in to? I have been trying for a week atleast an hour straight a day and only managed to get in to one game. Which was over in under 2 minutes after I got in to it. Apparently I got put in in the middle of a game which my team was already losing. Either the games need to be advertised more or maybe all the people are just too busy leveling up. For now I guess I just have to keep trying. =<
Good times
Had a really fun experience in a party at the cistern & the main system the other day and just felt like sharing this. We managed to clear out all cistern quests and while at it we encountered another group that acted rather hostile towards us so it turned in to a group vs group PvP brawl. It was madness I tell you. Cistern aint the roomiest place around and we had 12 people going at it. Not to even mention all the mobs we managed to agro. As people were dying off and running back from the spawn the fight slowly moved towards the spawpoint and eventually we were fighting at the spawnpoint. Me and this other barbarian in my group did a really nice job taking stuff down as we concentrated our attacks at the same targets and really pinned them down with stuns and knockbacks. Eventually the other group ported out of the place and we were victorious.
Next was the Main system which is noticeably tougher. We managed to kill some bosses, do some quests and overall did a good job down there but what was truely epic was how the party ended. I’ll let the screenshot do the talking:
I don’t know what madness drove us all to jump in to that corner but there we were. Just a few mobs away from the last boss we needed stuck in a corner! Though it didn’t really feel like a big deal as I had had so much fun up to this point and to be honest it was quite funny. ^^
What is this then? As some may know when you are in hiding you are walkthrough, but when you come out of hiding the system will try to relocate you if you are stacked with another character. So the system relocated me through the wall and down below. ^^ The shot is taken after a relog to try and fix my location. Fixed it simply by running around a bit and the wildest thing happened. Suddenly I was going down the sewer drain with the water, warping around the walls and eventually warped back in to the open through a wall. Landed me right in the middle of mobs and got me killed. Which was ok since the rest of the group was still stuck in the corner and the party was over. Had a blast though!
To wrap it up here’s a nice werewolfy shot I took the other day:
Haven’t posted anything in few days and that is because I’ve been too busy running up the levels with my barbarian. Last time I posted four days ago I was level 35 and today I managed to hit 50 with 3 days and 14 hours /played time.
Hitting level 40 came with a couple of changes. First of all my Ring of Acheron, which I received with the collector’s edition, lost all of it’s effect. At first I thought my character was bugged cause suddenly my out of combat stamina regeneration dropped way low and I felt totally gimped for a while til I realized it was the ring. The ring gave around +30 out of combat stamina regeneration and I didn’t actually realize how huge that was til I lost it.
Another change at 40 was the ability to finally ride my preorder mammoth which can be seen..
..in the image above. I immediately went to get the mammoth from the bank when I hit 40, got on it and thought it was totally awesome. Until I rode to Conall’s Valley and tried fighting a level 20~ vanir that is. It was all going fine for a while, was really stomping the vanir until suddenly the mammoth threw me off of it’s back and sprinted away after one (!!!) single level 20ish mob. So yeah, for now the mammoth is useful for show off and nothing else. It is hardly faster than my character by foot and I have to mount and dismount it which takes a while so my character on foot is actually the faster way of travel. Also it is as hard to maneuver as an overloaded truck.
The mammoth looks awesome though and its always fun to pull a mammoth out of your pocket next to some newbies that either run away in fear or go “WOW!!”.
At around 40 I partied some in the Sanctum of the Burning Souls which was quite fun. Managed to get blue boots drop too which give 5% out of combat running speed and 1.5% invulnerabilities to all physical damage types. ^^ A picture from one of those parties below.
My Barbarian at 50
So far I haven’t regretted picking the barbarian class for a second. As I mentioned before I specced my barbie as a berserker which was also the right choice for me I feel. At the moment I can take on 4 – 5 levels higher mobs in singles and handle groups of a few level higher mobs with ease as long as I use all my CCs (Crowd Control – Stuns, Knockbacks etc.).
As you can see my character has the look that I can only describe as the Journeyman look. Like he just slayed a wolf and is wearing its hide or something. ^^ I am quite happy with the looks and I feel like I’ve achieved some level of uniqueness due to hiding my helmet and picking some items based on their looks and not the stats (the cape for example). I dislike the fact that characters turn completely bald when given a helmet to wear even if it would not cover the whole hair area. Therefore I have decided to hide my helmet until I find a helmet that does justice to the looks of my character.
There was a thread on the Europe AoC forum about giving barbarians the ability to hide the chest armor to give the characters a more barbaric look. I think its an absolutely great idea! It was only a suggestion by a player though and theres no way to tell if we’ll ever see that happen. When I think about a berserker I think of a person who just rushes forward in the heat of battle ignoring things like pain and danger so I feel being able to hide the chest armor would do justice to the ‘Berserker’ title. \o/ What I found amusing was when someone from a RP server replied saying he is already playing without wearing a chest armor to make his character more barbaric. Thats just plain hardcore. ^^
Skills and Feats
Since this is what people, that are either curious or just cant figure out by themselves in fear of messing the whole character up, are always asking for I figured I’d just give it up here. I encourage everyone to experiment around and find the builds that suit your own play style though. There is no way you’ll permanently doom your character by bad choices in this game as respeccing both skills and feats is possible and not too expensive.
My build is created purely PvP in mind.
Bandaging – Regenerating hp and stamina faster is always nice thing to have. Didn’t feel it is too important as outregenerating damage is hardly possible and between fights I can just rest it up.
Recovery – Faster rest equals to less downtime. Useful thing to invest in.
Fast Recovery – Broken at the moment. One point makes the skill work just as well as 500 points.
Endurance – I like to get from point A to point B as fast as possible and constantly find myself sprinting even though I should be saving stamina for possible ambushes. No mage class has been able to escape from me so far though.
Run Speed – Not sure if it even works correctly. Feels like increasing it does nothing. Didn’t invest too much.
Skulk – Not too useful early game as you wont be sneaking long distances. Becomes more important in group PvP situations as you have to sneak up to the enemy casters as fast as possible.
Climbing – Hate to invest points in this.. It is mandatory for completing some quests though.
Hiding – The most important skill the rogue classes have. I’ve always kept it maxed out.
Perception – Handy for catching them hit’n’run rogues after they run and hide. Never use search with your weapon in your hand as it will take ages.
Subtlety – Useless for PvP therefore completely ignored.
The feat build is focused around CC and augmenting the butcher combos. Early game the butcher combo didn’t really seem good at all but it has been gaining power over levels and is definitely going to be an important end game combo. Does nice initial damage and inflicts a 3 second DoT (Damage over time) that currently at level 50 with Butcher V does around 90~ DPS (Damage per second).
Currently I’ve got two stuns and one knockback. The earth shatter combo is definitely a must have. It stuns everything around you, a 360 degree stun. Finishing blow is a really nice skill to use with knockbacks as it makes it possible to peak damage to one particular target of the targets that you have just knocked back.
No escape is semi bugged at the moment and using it should be a last resort option. It has a chance to bug your character so that you cant swing your weapon even after it comes back to you. Relog should fix it and getting stunned also seemed to help when I tested it with a friend.
Few Words of Warning..
..about a few semi bugged quests.
First would be the Wounded Child in the Wildlands of Zelata. Which is NOT bugged. Semi-bugged at most. If you ask OOC they will tell you it is bugged as this is the common misbelief. However me and many others have completed it. Theres a theory that the child only spawns after server restart or when a new instance is created. My own experience supports this theory as I found the child by switching to the last instance on the list which logically is probably the newest. Its worth a shot since the nearest waypoint is under 20 second sprint away. Either its that or just an extremely long spawn time.
Pyramid of the ancients at khopshef is a mess of an instance. The map markers and radar are totally messed up there. That didn’t stop me from clearing the whole three floor instance to get to the final boss just to find out that the quest wont update after you have killed him. The harem chick’s quest to find her sister in there is doable though.
In defence of beauty quest in the tarantian noble district is also semi bugged. There is no logical pattern to how it works or does not work. The problem is that most people cant get the NPCs to enter combat mode to be killable. Some say switching instance helped. That didn’t work for me though. Eventually I went to epic mode but still couldn’t get them to enter combat mode. Luckily enough I met a dark templar that could get them to attack but lacked the strength to kill them in epic mode. So we created a symbiotic quest party in which he made the NPCs fight back and I killed them. Quest finished. ^^
Randomness for Great Justice
I FOUND MY HELMET!
Unfortunately this guy is wearing it and wont let me even try it on. Damn the NPC god mode. =( I must have one of those for my barbarian in the future though. Looking forward to the day I get one. ^^
Where are the Superheroes you ask? Behold! Odefi got genetically mutated due to surviving a lightning strike and..
..ELECTROMAN was born! Unfortunately just a graphical glitch due to an electric fatality, but for a while there I had an extremely unique look going on. ^^
Okay so I finally took the time apart from AoC to learn how to use Sony Vegas 8.0 decently to make use of the fraps material I’ve recorded. Actually I noticed I didn’t really have as much raw material as I thought I did. Funny and epic situations come and go so suddenly they are usually hard to get on tape. I’ll just have to work on my frapsing skillz in the future.
So for the compilation; it is very small. Contains a few ganks and a Red hand guard mugging at Tortage city. Those things (the guards) are tough I tell you. ^^ Took me all day to learn to use Sony Vegas to put this together and that was taken out of my AoC time so you better watch it (and like it too!)! So without further ado I present you AoC Opening Weekend compilation which happens to be my first ever made video too:
I’ve been playing AoC intensely since it’s release and it has totally sucked me in. I’ve been sleeping for around 4 hours every night since friday and it’s really starting to take it’s toll. Having a really hard time concentrating at work and almost fell asleep at lunch today. And THAT, people, is a sign of a great game.
My /played is around 35 hours now and my level is 35. Specced my barbie as a berserker and im loving it. Seem to be doing really good in both PvP and PvE. I still havent encountered any major bugs or any lack of content that everyone keeps talking about, but I guess those are soon to come. I just want to get 40 fast so I can ride my mammoth!
If I was to complain about something at this point it would probably be the lack of choices in armor, the looks mostly that is. Seems like no matter what I wear I look exactly the same as the next guy of the same class. Yesterday I got a sleeved version of my nice armor and that really felt like a small victory on my part. Even though the armor was a quest reward and every single barbie out there on my level will probably be wearing exactly the same armor. Don’t get me wrong the armors look absolutely realistic and fantastic, but it would be nice to look cool AND unique. Oh and I’ve got a huge thing for horned helmets. In every game I just have to have a horned helmet. Yesterday I got one as a drop and was sad to find out it was heavy armor and I couldn’t wear it. So please Funcom! Add a light armor helmet with huge ram horns on it to the game. \o/ For now I am stuck with my wannabe horn helmet which can be seen in the image above.
Another thing I wasnt too pleased with was that some of the group quests can’t be done as a group for some reason. For example the one in which you have to destroy the Ymirish Statues. That place is tough with the Ymirish destroyers and sorcs running wild and definitely can’t be beat solo at that level range and bad pulls in a group can get you all killed real easy. So the quest requires you to destroy 6 statues. The thing is that every single person in the party will need to kill 6 statues of their own. This can be very very time consuming especially if your group lacks a healer as you will probably die alot.
I still haven’t tried the minigames at all, but that is on the top of my ‘to do’ list tomorow as I get home from work. Also LFG Mayhem in the fortress and Cimmerian’s Plea /tell Odefi ^^
By Crom! Just now as I was finishing this up so I can log in to AoC for an hour before I go to sleep I received the information that the servers are going down now for some updates. Just my luck.. Oh well.. Updates are always nice. I shouldn’t complain. T_T
First of all regarding the issue with the collectors edition activation keys; Tarib from Funcom has posted the following regarding the faulty keys:
We are aware of an issue with some Collector Edition keys incorrectly stating “No Offer Found for given key”. We have a solution for correcting this that is now ready. Please go to https://register.ageofconan.com and enter your key again, then follow the on screen instructions. We are very sorry for those inconvenienced by this.
Note that this is only related to Collector Edition keys and not standard edition keys. If you are having issues with your standard edition key please look for more information on http://support.ageofconan.com/ or contact customer service
Thank you
So just follow the instructions given and I hope everything works out for you.
Now for the first impressions
So yesterday I got home, made some food, sat down at the computer, logged in to Age of Conan without any problems and played for over 12 hours straight.
I started on the new Europe PvP server Soulstorm, that opened up yesterday with the Europe release of Age of Conan. My characters name is Odefi and I am a cimmerian barbarian. Here’s a face for you to remember:
The game started a tad slow. For the first hour or so I found myself fighting mobs that couldn’t really offer any kind of challenge and just randomly smashing the buttons seemed to do the trick no matter how many they were. At this point the game seemed a tad boring, as I had gotten used to the way you swing your swords in AoC and no longer going “Ooh!” and “Aah!” everytime I swung my weapon, but that’s how tutorials always tend to be.
This all changed really quick though as I got to the city of Tortage and started questing there. I found myself having to use as much combos as I could to slay the groups of enemies I was now facing and really having to plan out the fights especially if I was facing more than just one mob at a time. At this point I really started enjoying myself and the more I got in to it the better it got.
Quick tip for everyone: Turn the autofacing off from the options. I really wish I had noticed this sooner myself as manually facing adds a whole new level of tactic to the game as your character wont automatically lock the facing on the targeted enemy anymore. This makes fighting bigger groups easier too; just back away a bit to group them, face them in a way that all (or most) of them are getting hit as you swing your weapon around, throw a stunning punch, throw some combos and voila, you have a dead group of mobs. ^^
As I play on a PvP server things got really interesting (in a good way) when I started questing in the underhalls and white sands as they are FFA PvP zones. Got my fair share of getting ganked and did some ganking myself. Was having a great time and later found myself getting excited whenever I received a quest for either one of these areas.
The fighting system is not that hard to get in to, but you’re going to have your hands busy mastering for example strafe circling in PvP while throwing combos. I have managed to do this to some extent but probably not in a way that benefited me any more than my enemies. There is indeed a great amount of skill involved here and that’s exactly the way I like it.
The graphics are awesome and gazing down on the widespread landscapes from high places just takes my breath away.
I am currently level 17 after about 12 hours of playing. Done tons of quests and every single one of them has worked like they should so no bugged ones. Haven’t really encountered any issues / bugs at all. The game froze on me once while loading but that was simply fixed by restarting the client.
Been also doing some frapsing and will probably upload a collection of epic moments later this weekend. So far I’ve fully enjoyed playing Age of Conan and cant really say a bad word about it. Putting a game down for a tedious tutorial would be like going to a movie and putting the movie down for bad trailers.
Oh one thing actually that I found annoying are the fatalities as they are rarely a good thing. Didn’t see this coming now did you? The fatalities tend to get me killed or atleast seriously wounded when im fighting a group of mobs and fatality activates on the first one of them that happens to drop dead. Your character will stand there performing the animation, taunting the dead mob or slashing its corpse or whatever, and during the animation you wont be able to control your character and the other mobs wont give you a break as they keep battering you down, and sometimes a fatality involves your character moving a bit which can put you in a tactically bad place. They should add a way to break off the fatality when necessary (or if there is a way someone should inform me ^^).
That is all for now. Stay tuned for some fraps later this weekend. See you ingame on Soulstorm.
Yet Another AoC Blog 