Dagger and a bowl of rice: Khitai report ep. 5

I have been preparing a post on how Kara Korum is Latin for bull shit. Seriously, you can't take a step without aggroing a spider or other member of araneae order (you google that shit). Compared to Grasslands Kara Korum is rocky hell in which you just die over and over. However this weekend I have decided to give Kara Korum another shot and to my surprise it has been the most pleasurable experience I have had so far in the expansion if not in the whole Age of Conan.

First and foremost the crater in Kara Korum and the story around it has set my imagination and interest a blaze. I am 100% sure that I will dwell in Kara Korum until I have checked every nook and cranny in that place and learned of it's secret. Seriously, I am willing, once rank 4 with Last Legion, to betray them (even thou I REALLY like that faction) just to explore Scarlet Circle's involvement with the crater.

I have also been pleasantly surprised with Brittle Blade's quests. Grasslands and Chosain gave me the impression that Brittle is this cheesy gathering of cutthroats. In Grasslands you take orders from fat assassin and Chosain officer is this insecure weakling. Lucky in Kara Korum you will have a chance to look at Brittle's dark side related to the worship of Goddess of death (from whom we will all take our final communion I have been told..). The cult of death behind assassination business has been briefly mentioned by fat assassin in Grasslands and I have truly missed that aspect of this faction. I won't spoil anything, but I am rank 3 with them now and it only gets better.

I still have to unlock Priests of Yun in Kara Korum, but I am fully expecting their quests to be pure gold.

So far only the Chosain has been disappointing for me since it gives very similar game play experience as Grasslands and there is not enough emphasis on the conflict: it should  have been ever present in that zone (that is how I have imagined it anyway when I have first read about Chosain) and it turned out to be small skirmish that players ride through and hoping not to get knocked off the mount by some mob.

 

Assassin's hideout podcast - ep. 18

show notes:

- interview with Didek
- social tab in pvp
- it's over 9000!






title of the post is a link to the podcast.

Assassin's hideout podcast - ep. 17

show notes:

- changes to rangers (live)
- changes to Bori (live)
- chocking powder in pvp and pve
- future changes to pvp





title of the post is a link to the podcast.

FAQ - all things assassiny past 1.6

This guide will get you cutters up to speed with all the hoops you gotta jump through after resubing.

The following questions are the most common so I hope I have covered it all - if not feel free to ask in reply.

I am answering question in somewhat random fashion - just like you are asking them.


1. Where are the stances? I used to have one for lotus and one for corruption.

They are no longer here - removed along with 1.6. Its for the best, really.


2. Whats the deal with soul shards?

Soul Shards are now part of every assassin. Regardless of what tree you will pick you will relay heavily on shard consumption and shard management. The soul shards also work in different fashion now: they are no longer gained via successful melee hit, but rather passively regenerated or gained via feats and perks.

Every skill and feat description will inform you of shard costs: some are free (like kidney shots), some will always consume fixed amount (like avatar), some will consume all shards (like death whirlwind) and finally some will remove 1 shard if you happen to have it (snap kick).

Only feats that consume fixed amount of shards will NOT work unless you have the shards to spend (like deaths gaze, opportunistic strike) - all others will work, but will deal less damage or there will be no penalty at all.


3. How can I heal myself?

Right now only avatar of death provides healing on successful melee/magic attacks.


4. What is my survivability vs magic users?

Its better than ever. Not only assassins kept all of their goodies, but also got dull pain which basically makes you immune to magic for mare 2 shards. They only nerf is that lotus overload will now proc every 10s, no more.


5. What is my survivability vs melee?

Its worst when you consider only the passive feats. Assassins have to relay heavily on their CC in order to go toe-to-toe with other melee. The cat's paw is now on 2m cool down so you can use it more often (please do)


6. How does my DPS stack up to other classes.

When it comes to single target elimination we are IT.


7. What is the best specc for PVP/PVE leveling/Solo PVE

Right now Hybrid builds reign supreme.Most hybrids are corruption based with lotus tree as supplementation (just like in 1.4)


8. I have just rolled an assassin, what should I feat in?

1. Feat in corrupted blades

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1630-15

2. Feat in lotus blades. This will give you best damage at the very beginning. Corrupted blades will also get upgraded as you level up (its tier based, each tier = level range)

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1601-05,1630-15

3. Feat in Swift ending, cat's paw and lotus dart. Its a solid damage upgrade, survivalist bost and your first feated in miasma.

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1601-05,1619-05,1623-01,1625-05,1630-15

4. Feat in necrosis for a solid face stab boost

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1601-05,1610-03,1619-05,1623-01,1625-05,1630-15

5. Put one point into dull pain to unlock next tier of feats

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1601-05,1610-03,1611-01,1619-05,1623-01,1625-05,1630-15

6. Get snap kick and lotus extract. Snap kick will be your first AOE CC that will let you knock back several opponents and lotus extract will grant you instant 3 shards.

7. Get lotus tainted blood and lotus overload - you won't be needing any more anti magic feats for a long long time.

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1601-05,1610-03,1611-01,1613-03,1615-01,1619-05,1623-01,1625-05,1614-01,1616-01,1630-15

8. Get opportunistic strike for more CC

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1601-05,1610-03,1611-01,1613-03,1615-01,1619-05,1623-01,1625-05,1614-01,1622-01,1616-01,1630-15

9. Get sense weakness, corrupting strikes and soul strike miasma. You will feel the power of sense weakness and corrupting strikes as you level up and get more crit rating gear so this is why I am not advocating getting it early on. Deadly venom from lotus dart and upgraded face stab will make up for not being able to use detonation early on.

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1601-05,1610-03,1611-01,1613-03,1615-01,1619-05,1623-01,1625-05,1614-01,1622-01,1616-01,1630-15,1632-15,1644-15,1652-11

10. Accelerated and Precise strikes. Accelerated will bail your ass out of sticky situations (bad mob pull) and Precise strikes will supplement both deadly venom from lotus dart and face stab.

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1601-05,1610-03,1611-01,1613-03,1615-01,1619-05,1623-01,1625-05,1614-01,1622-01,1616-01,1630-15,1632-15,1644-15,1640-15,1652-11,1634-13


From now on the patch is pretty straight forward. This is what you will end up with:

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class=34&tpl=1601-05,1610-03,1611-03,1613-03,1615-01,1619-05,1623-01,1625-05,1614-01,1622-01,1616-01,1637-11,1645-13,1631-15,1630-15,1650-11,1647-15,1632-15,1653-11,1644-15,1612-12,1640-15,1641-11,1643-11,1648-15,1654-11,1652-11,1634-13

9. How miasmas work?

The basic stuff about miasmas is covered here:

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2659990&postcount=1


You can also read about face stab here:

http://forums-de.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=144543


10. What can I specc in for pvp?

Here are most common and exotic builds for pvp:

http://forum.assassinshideout.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=47

Here is what you should NOT specc in for pvp:

http://forum.assassinshideout.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=61

You can read more pvp guides here:

http://forums-de.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=114374


11. Can I use hide more often now? Is sneaking fixed?

No, its still broken.


12. Will I get any bonus to stealth as assassin?

Like hell you won't.

13. How should I open fights?

It is pretty much same for pvp and pve: first you need to apply base poison in form of grim corruption or slow death strikes.

- consume grim corruption with soul strike and use swift strikes combo. Swift strikes combo will end its animation when soul detonation goes off giving massive spike of damage

or

- apply slow death strikes and use swift strikes combo. During the animation use face stab to consume both base poisons

or

- apply slow death strikes and use lotus dart and then use swift strikes combo to beat down opponents with large HP pools,


The following are just examples, but those are the most common uses of miasmas.


14. What stats should I get on my gear?

Go for combat rating and crit rating. You can read more on 80lvl pvp gear here: http://forums-de.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=142927

[Guide]Assassindom part 3: consumables

The following are the list of consumables that you can get for pvp. Here is how they work:

Spiritual Resonator: Not many assassins have access to this because it requires being in 18lvl renown guild. Upon use it forces people out of stealth. A-must-have item for obvious reasons.

Rating: *****

Sneezing powder: This will prevent your opponent from going into stealth. This will be very useful in open world pvp where people can actually run away from you and try to get into hide.

Rating: ***


Repellent stone: this will downgrade the rank of your target's armor. Assassin's snap kick is working on all armors up to medium. So to take advantage of this item you would have to target a soldier wearing nothing but heavy armor. Too much hustle for 10s.

Rating: **

Potent lodestone: this item will upgrade your armor up one rank. After applying this you will be treated as light armor in terms of knock back resistance. Since every single class in game can knock back light armor it use utterly useless. The only class that can REALLY take advantage of this are medium armor users (ranger, BS)

Rating: it does nothing.


Itching powder: prevents portal usage. Useless.

Rating: *

Flaming Saduca: More of an cool gimmick that actually useful item, but it will make you look like you are burning. In a heat of the battle this item might just make you look like some Demo/Hox proced fatality on you so you will be ignored as target...or not. Still beats stones for the price alone: FREE (found in chests in OT)

Rating: **

Fatal Concoction: It will give your 10% fatality chance which stacks with your other buffs. 20% base fatality chance + 15% from relish in death + 10% fatal concoction = 45% so almost free brutality. It can be found in chests in OT. One fatal (oh the irony!) flaw: you can only carry one.

Rating: ****

Manual of Carnage: it gives 5%, 10% and 15% pvp xp gain boost which speeds up leveling considerably. Make sure to carry no more than one because those can drop in world pvp (not in a minigame thou). Always have it running when pvping.

Rating: *****

Minor Brews: rewards from quests in Khitai, can be also bought from factions. It gives small boost, but every bit counts. Go for +dex, +critical or +const.

Rating: ****

Blue pots: A lot of players are bean counters - they will squeeze every penny and the thought of blowing 1g on a one time consumable is dreadful to them. In reality those are real battle turners that can and will change the outcome of pvp scenario. I would spend 1g on a pot if it ment winning a minigame, would you? Of course you should use them in EXTREME situations, but those will happen and you better be prepared. Blue stamina pots are amazing for flag running with accelerated: the weight of the flag will drain stamina pool very fast and the pot will make sure you are not out of steam until you have delivered the package.The healing pot is of course for healing.  You can also get those for useless tokens dropped by the mobs, in fact it the best way to spend those tokens.

Rating: *****

Also don't forget to stack up on best food and healing pots (sold in guild city with 2m timer).

Special thanks goes to Lora from forums.assassinshideout.com.

Where is my crafting?

I enjoy crafting. Or should I say: I enjoyed crafting in other games? Age of Conan has THE poorest crafting system I have ever seen in any modern MMO. Everyone can get to the Master level with ease and by doing so you are just another shmoo who can create some items and that is IF you are in a guild that has progressed your city enough.

I remember back in the "gem wars" era when at least gem crafting was exciting. Apart from broken stats it had the random element: you could get some average +dmg gem with stats like +5, but you could also get that sweet +8 which would sell for high profit. Right now if you don't have really rare recipe you are screwed.

The crafting materials are in fact more costly than whatever 80lvl food you could craft for it. For example food made from beguiler blood (mmmmm...demon's blood) costs 55s per 5 and that single vial of blood goes for 60s. Nice.

To top it off the recipes are so rare, how rare are they? They are so rare that items made from those are no longer on the trader because people who got them are long gone from the game. Like for example asuran daggers (which I am still using) are to die for. Hell, you have higher chances to actually raid for T1 and epic quest reward dagger than to buy off that shit on trader. That might be true just for my server, but still: there is huge marked of re-rolled assassins for those daggers and with the high demand there is little supply.


Well what would be the solution then? This is what I would really like to see:

each crafted armor has its own progress bar and as you craft more of these it you could level up both the recipe for the item and the item class itself. Leveling certain item would add some extra stats and leveling type of item would add extra stat to the pool of stats.


Example:


You have crafted that damn asuran dagger few times and leveled up in asuran daggers and dagger type of items. Here is what you could get:


+22 offhand rating (progression bonus) on asuran dagger

+3 stamina regen added to the pool of random stats for daggers. Whenever dagger is created in has a chance to have +3 stamina regen or +40hp or +12 magic damage etc.. from the pool of random stats.


This would be quite exciting and it would add another layer of specialisation among crafters. After you have leveled high enough you could create costly epic dagger that you could name (words like ass, twat, pwnage are bound to appear, but some creative people would want their crafted stuff to have other, cool name)


Whatever the revamp might be it would do nothing but good for the game because right now crafting is reduced to progression in the renown.

Don't get me started on pvp item crafting...where the hell is that?

One more thing: why the new factions doesn't have some cool crafting recipies? Seems like a perfect opportunity to introduce more stuff to the game.

Smooth pvp lvl 7, no Bori included

It's official: I have managed to gain pvp lvl 7 and not half kill myself in the process. In fact, its been most pleasurable pvp experience since AOC day #1. I have skipped all that Bori PVT&R crap (player vs tree and rock) and went for 100% grade A cocaine called "minigames". I have been doing solos, premades, semi-premades both inside and outside the guild (and for the record we have never picked specific classes for our groups, its all invite-on-demand). There were days where I've got 4 tokes in a row and there were days were we got beaten down into submission. Since playing an assassin doesn't frustrate me anymore at any level, its been fun for the whole family. I remember how1.5 Lotus assassin was nothing, but pain. Sure, the very few of us that had the balls to go out with this class  and were weaving huge epeens (even bigger if you made it to the top of the kill charts in minigames, which did happen), but the price was paid in endless stream of profanities when barb always stuned you, casters always ran away and rangers were plain ignoring your tickles until you kicked in Kidney shots & Lotus overdose mix. There is certain nostalgy attached to an old sin, but people tend to remember only the good things and the bad things are lost in the myst. I have been trying to re-visit lotus build for pvp (with only 5 points in corruption), but it lost its charm and doesn't feel like Lotus anymore (could it be because of those shards?). Guess I am stuck with Hyrbid pvp and pve power horse and since AA system has been introduced it's only getting better (Liberation? Chocking powder? Delicious!).

I think I want to say that I am enjoying Age of Conan in my own way (no raiding, no instances) and I am glad that I can progress and participate in pvp even with my limited game time (4 minigames x 20 minutes or less is perfect for me) and not to get bored with class that I have been playing non-stop for over 2 years now.

By Crom, that's all I could ask from MMO.