JoBildo the Tempest of Set

I'll be on vacation this coming week and I won't be back until June 1st. Now, I may still post as I'll have my laptop for TTH work and all that jazz, but just in case... here's JoBildo waving goodbye for now. /tear



And here he is looking like a Stygian Runway Model.



Cheers folks, and have a great week!

Age of Conan: Questing in Khopshef Province

I decided not to go resource gathering last night as I only have a couple days before I'm on vacation and without a computer that will play Age of Conan. It seemed more appropriate to spend some time killing bandits and wildlife in Khopshef Province. *nods* I don't have any screens again today, as I keep forgetting to photo-document my travels, but I did go and grab this little image to show you what Khopshef looks like. Beautifully rendered, and very Egyptian Nile.



Here's a little Lore Lesson on the zone, thanks to AoC Wikia...

East of the coastal city of Khemi, Khopshef Province boasts no great cities—only fabled ruins recounted in ancient legends and caravan tales. Newcomers arriving in the province at the small village of Bubshur hear stories of a great and ancient pyramid that lies along a tributary of the Styx some distance to the south. Of late, an enigmatic oracle of the Shemite goddess Derketo has braved the haunted lands around the pyramidal tomb and laid claim to a temple structure adjoining the ancient pyramid, where his worshipful followers serve his every whim. What the arrival of this oracle portends and why he chose to settle so close to the mysterious crypt, no one knows. And local fishermen who risk the crocodile-infested waters of the river Styx speak of the bleak island west of Pashtun and the strange ruins located there, said to be a temple dedicated to gods that were old when Atlantis still rode above the waves.

Meanwhile, the people of Khopshef Province pray to their gods and try to go about their lives, mining salt from the flats around the village of Hep-Kab or welcoming the caravans traveling from Medjool Oasis to the south. They keep out of the punishing sunlight at midday and ward their houses against the evils of the night.

But all is not well among the people of the region. The island town of Pashtun, an independent village claimed by neither Stygia nor Shem, has become the hunting ground for a fearsome monster that stalks its citizens each night. Each morning the bloodless corpses of its victims can be found lying along the village’s dusty streets, or empty boats are found drifting in the river’s sluggish current. The village leaders have turned to the oracle, seeking an explanation for the deadly rampage, but he answers them only in riddles.

Now, each evening, as the red sun stains the western sky, the people of Khopshef Province glance furtively downriver and await a hero who will stand between them and the horrors that lurk in the darkness.

BANDITS, LIONS, AND DISAPPEARING CHILDREN

I spent a good chunk of time last night doing some pretty hairy deeds. I stumbled across a dying man who was poisoned by a jilted lover who also happened to be a cook for his clan of bandits. He asked me to not only track the cook down and kill her but to also bring him back one of her freshly cooked meals so that it could be his last. Apparently while she was a bit of a murderess, she was also a damn fine cook. I ran down river to the camp where the cook was holed up, slew her buddies and lopped her to bits with my polearm and more than a decent bit of electricity. In exchange he told me where he had hidden the treasure that he and the cook were going to share before it all went south.

As I strolled down the riverbank on my way to the next quest objective I came into some close contact with a particularly nasty crocodile. After fending the beast off, I did a little "JAWS" style investigative work to find the upper torso of a man's wife in the croc's belly. Yep, another quest. I stuck the torso somewhere on my person and kept on truckin'.

I also slew quite a few lions, lionesses, and cubs in order to protect the caravan route. I had to lug the heads of 4 of the males from the pack back to the town of Babshur for proof of my work. I'm not sure where I put them, as I don't think JoBildo's leather armor had pockets, but I assume it was the same place as the half-digested female torso.

In all, it was a successful night of deed-doing. Though I did run into one trouble spot. Escort quests are few and far between in Age of Conan, a fact I'm thankful for. I ran into a lost boy (not the Peter Pan variety) when I was out hunting lions, and he asked for my help getting home. No biggie, I figured, I was heading back to the town anyway and if all else fails at least I can use the kid as a bargaining tool if we get in a jam.

The problem is, when we got about 100 meters from the dork's home he went all David Copperfield on me and *POOFED* out of existence. I had no idea where he went to. He just disappeared. This same thing happened back in beta when I was escorting a maiden out of the Black Ones' place of worship on White Sands Isle. Apparently, it's still an issue. I won't be doing another escort quest any time soon. Especially if the next one I come across is as boring as this little kid's was. He wanted me to protect him from the lions, but there were no lions... not an enemy of any kind really for the entire slow saunter back to the kid's home. And then the little bastard had the audacity to bug out on me.

Ah well, I did gain two levels despite this set back. I can't wait to continue on tonight as I've moved on to another quest hub that involves a man named Captain Nut and another guy who calls himself the Cock Handler. Mature content indeed.

Cheers!

Gathering Resources in Age of Conan

I intended to have some more screens for you today, but something happened last night that I didn't expect... I had fun spending 2 hours doing nothing but gathering crafting resources for the guild's eventual PvE City. Let me explain.

In Age of Conan, crafting doesn't begin until level 40. I'm not sure exactly what the design decision behind this was, but that's the way it is. Your guild can start building its PvE city (separate from the PvP Keeps in the Border Kingdoms) as soon as you have a level 40 and that level 40 character is given Guild Leadership for long enough to claim a plot of land for the City in one of 3 truly massive zones). Your guild also needs to be made up of at least 24 people.

That said you can start gathering materials as low as level 20 in order to help your guild build that city and make a place to call home. To do this, it's a bit different than any other MMOG I've played. You'll get a quest in your starting city to go to your nation's main crafting and PvE city zone. For Khemi, this is the Purple Lotus Swamp which can be reached by heading straight south through the first adventuring zone in Stygia called Khoshepf Province (or something like that).

Once there you'll have to make your way to the Swamp's main crafting village which is oddly massive in the case of Purple Lotus Swamp. I assume it was made gargantuan with the expectation that eventually lots of people will be there training their crafting but last night there were only ten of us hanging out getting all the quests you need to begin your vocation as a gatherer. Anyway, this big old crafting village is where that initial quest first sent you, and by finding the NPC for that quest you'll be given 10,000 XP just for talking to a guy. Not a bad deal really. But once you see how long the jog is to get here, you'll realize why the reward you so.

So anyway let's go over the cool and the uncool about gathering in Age of Conan.

THE COOL

• This will likely be an uncool for some but there is no innate way to track gathering nodes. You must search the zone while keeping an eye out for indicators of something that can be harvested. Trees that can be harvested will have falling leaves from them and might stand out a bit more. Metal or rock deposits will be differently colored than the regular mountainsides and ground and often will be nestled next to a mountainside or rock outcropping. Leather is attained by killing beasts throughout the zone, with a somewhat small drop percentage.
• While you can't use a tracking system on your radar like in WoW, you can however make map notes of where you found the node or herd of animals. The place where the resources are never changes so as you scout the massive gathering zones, it's perfectly viable to make tons of map notes for future reference, or sharing with your guild mates via screenshots.
• Resources like trees, rock and metals have "health" on a percentage. Each time you gather from one it takes away roughly 10% of this health. When it's below 10% you won't be able to get anything from it, but when you stumble across one that's at 100%... you've got yourself 10 pieces of ore, or bundles of wood or whatever. This can also be an "uncool" in the fact that if it's a busy gathering day you might constantly be finding only recently tapped nodes.
• While harvesting a tree, or a copper vein, or any type of resource node, there's a small chance that you'll be interrupted by a "Jealous Prospector" or some other type of NPC enemy. This little touch is very cool in the fact that it even brings combat to a usually non-combative feature. It keeps you on your toes, rather than auto-pilot as you zoom from node to node. It also ensures that you'll be getting some XP and loot while you spend precious hours harvesting resources your guild.
• The whole zone is generally aggro free. Except for the rare occurrence of a mob popping when you near a node, or when you're harvesting, there's no real enemies. It's a zone entirely made for resource gathering and exploration and boy is there a ton of ground to cover. I spent 2 hours in Purple Lotus Swamp last night and only covered about 50% of the ground while I was gathering.
• It's a massive place. I don't know about the Acquilonian gathering zone, or the Cimmerian one, but Purple Lotus Swamp is one huge zone to play in. And the fact that they don't just give you a gathering radar to go by a la WoW or LotRO really places an emphasis on exploration that I thought might be missing from Age of Conan due to its non-open world. Tobold has said that he doesn't get the feeling of a world from AoC, and I can only suspect that it means he's not spent some time in the gathering zones. They're epic, plain and simple.
• Once you have the gathering skills, you'll also find nodes for the resources in the main adventuring zones of the world. But they're few and far between compared to the dedicated gathering zones.
• Since the zone is so large... I really wish I had a horse, or even that lumbering mammoth. Speed would be of much use for this part of the game.
• Lastly, you can take up all gathering professions. I can't recall them all at the moment, but there is no limit to which gathering profession you take on. You can be a miner and a skinner, a stone cutter, and a weaver (cotton and other fabrics). Why? Because your guild will need the goods and it's nice to be able to do it all instead of worrying how many more miners your guild will need. Everyone can pitch in this way.

THE UNCOOL

• The initial quests to learn your gathering skills are long and often tedious. I spent 2 hours last night gathering, copper, silver, ash wood, etc. I only completed 2 of I think 6 different gathering quests. I couldn't even find leather on the beasts I killed, and I certainly didn't come across any Cotton plants.
• There are tons of nodes spread out across a massive zone... but because of the fact that they're spread out so far it often feels like there are too few of them to be found. I would like to see the disbursement be a little more dense. Maybe twice what it is now.
• The quests to gain the gathering skills require 20 of each resource. You spend hours doing these things and then you give the resources away to the quest NPC. LAME! After all that work for what I thought was going to go towards my guild's city, I ended up losing the resources. That sucked.
• The documentation on how or where or what the nodes will look like is slim in game. I was lucky to have a guildie who already had done them, or else I would have been lost. So take heed. Ores and rocks are near mountains and other major rock formations, lumber is on trees that have leaves constantly dropping from them, and leather is on the animals in the area. Cotton? No idea. Hopefully will find some tonight. My guess is by water sources.
• This is a guess, but I'm thinking that on PvP servers the gankage level will be astounding. Not necessarily an "uncool", but it could be if you're in the middle of mining some copper and you get jumped by 3-4 assassins and a necromancer. This is why I play on PvE servers.
• Nitpicking now, but there's no way to tell at level 20 how much resources you'll need for your guild city from within the game. There may be some website which has this info already, but I'd like to know what I should be stocking up on as I go along.

And that's about it for now, folks. I can see this part of the game frustrating a great many people who are used to the more simplified and streamlined affair that is WoW's gathering, or even EQ2's these days. But to me, this is a very novel and surprisingly fun take on the key part of crafting that will really reward the explorers and the dedicated. I could have been 24 from level 20 earlier in the night had I spent my evening questing and killing, but something kept me in Purple Lotus Swamp. I'm sure there will be others who find it as engaging as I do, but I worry that most will find it a waste of time when they could be out grinding mobs for experience.

Me? It's satisfying that childhood urge of being an archaeologist. It feels good to be exploring an uncharted land. One day I'll have all the nodes marked and it will likely become a chore, but for now... for now it's a blast to run around looking for buried treasure.

Ten Ton Hammer's Age of Conan Feat Calculator!

Well, Machail, Martuk and myself worked long hours compiling the text for these, and Bill Pirkle and his wife (one of our fantastic Tech guys at TTH) put the coding together in record time and we can finally unveil our very own Feat Calculators!

TTH's Age of Conan Feat Calculators

Now, they're not all in yet and this is the beta run of them. But many of the classes are completed and updates will be forthcoming as I'm sure there are some descriptions and stats that are a little bit off since the end of beta. But come on... who doesn't play a way to play with their character's build without having to pay a fortune in game?

Go there now!

Note To AoC Players - Stay out of Laceish Plains!

I checked the patcher this morning, in a vain attempt to possibly log in before work (yes it is that good) and I was greeted with a warning that no one should enter the Laceish Plains zone until they fix an issue that's causing players to get stuck there.

Woops!

Looks like Funcom's stil got some kinks in the cogs. Just a word to the wise for anyone who was planning on visiting this place... I believe it's an area for the early resource gathering in the game, but I could be wrong. My realm of experience is almost entirely in the 1-20 game, so someone wiser can fill me in on that zone. I'm not even sure I'm spelling it correctly at the moment. Some help there would also be appreciated...

Cheers!

JoBildo's Out of Tortage!

See? I'm not fibbing! These are shots from the docks in Khemi, the main Stygian city, and where you come to after you finish the Tortage Destiny Quests. They were taken on High settings with 2000m draw distance, 8x AA, No Bloom, High Shadows and Textures, and at 1280x1024 resolution (I think... might be off on that last one).





What's utterly fantastic about Conan to me is the feeling I got when completing the Destiny Quest, even though it was the 10th time I'd done so. Those first 20 levels, thanks to the storyline, really feel like a mini-adventure and the beginning of your greater purpose... to take down the evil sorcerer Thoth-Amon.

One thing I'll miss about Tortage though is all the excellent voice acting. Make no bones about it, when you leave Tortage the voice acting on every quest NPC comes to a stop. Again, most likely a result of the 1-20 experience originally being a single-player offline game, but it still is a culture shock.

It's okay really, as I'm used to reading plenty for quests, but it was nice to have the atmospheric accompaniment of the voice acting for those few levels.

Upon completion of "The End Battle" I also got a nice big polearm for my reward that pretty much whoops every other weapon available to me. But I also got Strom's (the big bad guy of Tortage) 1-handed sword to drop, so I have myself a decent DPS weapon and a nice 1-hander to use with a shield should I need the extra defense. God bless being a priest who can use a shield!

Man, I am stoked though friends. I'm finally really out of Tortage and now the next 60 levels will be entirely fresh to me. I can't wait to see what Funcom's got in store in terms of dugeons and city building, crafting and eventually sieges.

We got the TTH guild up and running yesterday and I'm currently the "Lord", but that might not be forever if Boomjack or Cody wrestle it away from me (gladly). So look for JoBildo or use the Social panel to look up the guild "Ten Ton Hammer" to find out who's on and we'll gladly send you an invite. We're in open enrollment for TTH members right now, so be sure to have a forum account with us as that's how we'll communicate outside the game.

Once the dust settles, we'll worry about more proper organization like officers and whatnot. We've already got a couple members nearly to level 40, so we'll be picking our plot of land for the Guild City this week most likely. Good times ahead!

Lastly, I hope to really get some adventuring done in Khemi tonight and in the surrounding areas, so look for some more substantial screens tomorrow and tales of my travels.

Khemi From On High...

Seriously... this game is beautiful.

Thanks to Goonheim again for the pics.