| Subject: AC2 Beta extended another day + Notes for the Event from AC2HQ |
Author:
Kaillus
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Date Posted: 13:24:47 11/03/02 Sun
Amid's Beta Event Notes
Amid’s Beta Event Notes…
This is a fairly simple and straightforward event. There’s nothing fancy or innovative, just a simple stress test of MS and their Developers ability to deliver content on the new engine. If you keep that objective in mind then the event was very much a success.
1] When you log on you will be given a brief introduction and setting (and one drools imagining a real event with a real story line being delivered). You’ll also notice a new active quest in your quest tab.
2] This event takes place in the Shoushi area and specifically the prosper ring. You’ll notice the devs have altered the landscape turning the moon red and the daytime sky even redder. Around the Shoushi area you’ll encounter vast stretches of scorched earth and still burning trees. If you’ve visited Shoushi before you should notice that it’s no longer there, now it’s just kinda a big heap of smoldering rubble.
3] The Prosper ring is made up of Shoushi, west prosper, south prosper, and east prosper. Your quest tab will tell you which outpost to go to. The west prosper outpost is for levels 10-20, the south prosper outpost is for levels 21-35, and the east prosper outpost is for level 35-50. (A note – if you were lifestoned near the toad idol as part of the slavetaker quest you’ll find getting out very difficult, going back to the outpost is way out of your league, instead travel north – there is a mountain pass by the next lifestone to the north, it’s hard to find but you CAN get out of the area with luck and persistence and full exploit of lifestone immunity. Going this way you can also partake of the monguality of a brutish monogua or three, something definitely new to the area.).
4] Once you begin your quest you’ll stumble on some strange, enticing, and mysterious portals. These portals are for the KvK (player vs player) portion of the event and we’ll have more on that later. For now just stick to the plan and find your boss mob.
A] The level 10-20 skeleton can be found @ 7.8n 2.8e (Credit goes to paraduck for the first report here)
B] The level 21-35 general can be found @ 0.2s, 7.7e
C] The level 36-50 boss mob can be found NEAR 1.8s 16.1e (sorry I can’t be more exact)
Each of these locations have the portals around them, in addition to the boss mobs you can expect to find XP & loot rich tyrants (dragons!) as well as your boss mob. Killing the level 21-35 boss mob advanced my archer from level 23 to level 31 and I had somewhere around three million xp to spend. The boss mob had only 4 standard quest loot items on him. Many people expect special weapons but for those you need to read down to number five.
Once you have killed the quest mob and your quest key clears you have “solved” this simple beta event. Enjoy the level boost and run around killing the novel critters and seeing the new landscape. No need to level now or craft, the world ends at exactly 11:59pm Nov 3. The mobs in your quest area drop great loot and weapons that will ensure you own the game in style and grace for the duration of the game.
5] If you’re up for an adventure you can partake of the kingdom vs kingdom portion of the event, although despite the cries of doom and angst on the boards this is 100% completely optional on your part. In fact you can take advantage of one of the kvk bonuses without ever having to fear death from another player. When you logged on, if you were neutral, you were given 1600pk points, these translate into kingdom abilities (4 of them!) the moment you join a kingdom! If you already were part of a kingdom AND you have less than 1600pts then you are bugged and the logon screen requests you contact the admins who will correct this problem for you as quickly as they can (and realize it will be quite a while from the number of requests so be patient and considerate).
Now we have a problem. The event has destroyed the bridges to the kingdom castles around shoushi and the kingdom castles are now infested with players who’d love nothing more than to rip your neutral buttocks to shreds anyway, so where to go to get these new abilities? CRAIGSTONE! Yes, it’s often forgotten, but Craigstone has all the kingdom shrines and is a peace area. So hop on over and pick a kingdom. Most players seem to have chosen order, but if you REALLY want to partake of the event, try shadow or dominion just to be different, vitae is incredibly easy to work off thanks to the new mobs in your boss mob areas.
Once you touch the kingdom stone of your choice you’ll find 4 new abilities unlocked under your “special” tab (where the portal spells are). Now you can continue to play the game and very easily avoid the KvK areas while using your new found abilities to own those cushy mobs even more!
6] During this Beta MS has been very busy making the game stable, stomping memory leaks, fixing authentication, chat, and sound. Anyone who remembers September or earlier betas will notice that this focus has paid off bigtime. The game is now stable and even in crowded conditions the lag you see is caused by your bandwidth or system not the game itself. But in all this time MS didn’t have time to test the player vs player and kingdom vs kingdom aspects of the game and this is important because there will be four such servers running when the game opens and it’s important any serious problems be discovered now. Thus we’re treated to a pretty rare thing for Microsoft and Turbine, a PK/KvK event. For those who are sweating about their $12.95/mo, MS has already gone on record as stating that this will NOT be the norm in retail and like this beta any such events will be completely optional and at YOUR discretion.
So back to those portals. The new devastation has destroyed the bridges to the kingdom castles in the shoushi area. THE ONLY WAY TO THE CASTLE IS THRU THE PORTALS IN THE QUEST AREA! The portals are level restricted so a level 50 can’t go to west prosper (the 10-20 event playground) and get into the level 10-20 castle. Yes that’s right, the 3 kingdom castles have each been assigned a level range so EVERYONE who wants to can participate without fear of putting a level 10 up against a level 50!
If your kingdom owns the castle for your level you can safely portal in and go to one of three new shrines, double click on them, and get a nice sparkly weapon that will do additional damage against players! (note that the mobs back in your quest area drop weapons almost as good, but the ones in the kingdoms are easier to get and do bonus damage against other people). Once you get the weapon you can take the portal back to your quest area or you can stay and defend. But the choice is entirely up to you. Having defended many castles in my day I say, defend only so long as its fun, if it gets boring or unfun then go do something else, if the castle falls you can always help take it back. But the surest way to take the fun out of this type of event is to obligate yourself to stand vigil no matter HOW boring it gets.
If your kingdom does NOT own the castle then you can expect to be attacked immediately as you portal in, and if you have a slow computer, can expect to die even before you can move. So the rule here is, go with LOTS of friends! There’s safety in numbers and if you have more numbers than the other guy, your kingdom is going to take the castle (and they HAVE been changing hands!). In the quest areas there are four portals each portal leads to a different corner of the castle so a good general will organize his troops to come in several portals at once.
Once you portal in, if you have to run, you can – run towards the moat. The cliff side usually has a thin strip of “peace” land where nobody can attack you (and you can’t attack anyone else). If you make it to a peace area you can sit there and wait with your evil minions making faces at the defenders until you have tactical superiority to launch an assault and take the castle. Or you can LS recall, try to call someone out to a dual, or “/moose”.
And that’s all there is to the event. At it’s simplest you have two separate and unrelated events. 1] Log on, kill the boss mob. 2] Log on, activate your kingdom skills, get kingdom weapon, defend castle, or attack castle. You can do one, you can do the other, you can do both, or you can do neither. It’s all up to you and all totally optional.
I had a LOT of fun defending my kingdom castle last night and I had a LOT of fun having my archer go from level 23 to 31 and allocating 3 million unspent xp points. While I wish the event had more depth and substance I do recognize the beta elements in the quest and what MS is testing and what they’re looking to find out from US the players and no they’re not looking to find out we don’t want 100% pk events in retail, they already know that, but they are looking to see how the people who do pick up the pk ball and play with it fare and if there are any serious imbalances that need to be addressed before retail goes in.
All in all it was a mediocre patch in comparison with what we’ve come to expect from AC-1, however if you compare the AC-1 patch to the AC-2 patch you’ll see a similarity and considering that the first month of AC-1 had probably one of the best events in the game’s retail history, that may indeed portend very well for AC-2.
Hope you find this guide useful, please feel free to add or modify it if you find anything of interest!
I’ll conclude by pointing out a post that contains the latest KvK updates from a great warcry roving reporter! http://forums.warcry.com/read.php?f...t=110316#110331
From: Thaden Brightheart
Well, Night is almost over, so this will be my final update on the big EoB lev 21-35 KvK battle. Though, I dunno how long EoB will last, a few days?
It started out with Order just decimating anyone who went into the area. This was actually what brought on what came next.
Shadow has the second largest army, and was starting to mass troops. Wave after wave, they attacked the Orders strong hold, until they broke a large anuff foot hold into the battle grounds at around 6pst.
By this time, any Dominion troops to go in were not firing on Shadows, nor visa-versa. The previous domination of the area by order bred resentment in both armies.
The tides of battle changed to favour all sides, even the out numbered dominion for a short time controlled the area.
At one point, shadow had all but crushed the Order.. but that lasted but 1/2 - 1 Hour. The Order used superiour numbers and quite a few beefy level 35`s to take back the area.
The battle still rages on as I speak, but it looks like the order will probly be victorious as the night winds down. However, there are smaller scale victories being won on sides of the arena which cant be kept track of. And every once in while, the guardian is slain by Shadow or Dominion... so while Order has the majority of people. There is still room for otheres to venture in, lurk the side boards, and claim a weapon.
This has been my battle report as I saw it.
- No
Dominion Healer
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