[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.

[Guide] Expanded sidestep perk

The changes to the sidestepping (double tap left or right) are probably the most fun mechanic introduced in ROGS.

In vanilla Age of Conan sidestepping on it's own wasn't that useful and I rarely it was used in pvp.

ROGS introduced passive upgrade to sidestepping which adds another buff: 10% evade when maxed 5/5.

Stacking that works

10% evade might not be all that much, but the buff obviously stacks with your gear's evade rating so going up from 7% to 17% even for 5 seconds can be a huge advantage when you consider the stamina consumption and other benefits. It also stacks with both double tapping backwards and cat's paw.

Sidestep + cat's paw - since cat's paw lasts whole 10s you should first get the cat's paw buff running and then do the sidestep. Since the buff will be active half the time the cat's paw buff is on expanded sidestep can be somewhat considered an upgrade to cat's paw too.

Buff: ~7% pvp lvl5 gear + 10% + 40% = 57%

Sidestep + double tapping backwards - backward tapping gives a mere 2s boost so you should apply sidestep first. With the animation lag that comes with sidestep you should get around 2s when both evade buffs are present which is more than enough to dodge that nasty axe going for your neck.The added benefit is that you will quickly gain distance from your opponent WHILE getting more evades so it's great combination for breaking melee contact and getting out of weapon's reach.

Buff: ~7% pvp lvl5 gear +10% +25% = 42% (that's FREE cat's paw equivalent for 2s on extremely low cool down)

If you really want to get crazy with it you can stack on 3 evade buffs:

Buff: ~7% pvp lvl5 gear +10% +25% + 40% = 82% !!!

Added benefit:

The extended sidestep will still grant you 10% immunity chance (15% totally with pvp gear) which is an icing on the cake and might just work at that critical moment. The other and much more useful thing is that all sidestep (just as double tap backwards) will prevent opponents from knocking you back if its timed right. Great example would be Barbarians slow animation on knock back: do the sidestep just as knockbacks animation finishes and you will be pushed backwards, but you will land on your feet. Work both in pvp and pve and it seems to be a feature and not a bug - Funcom is not sure about it (how come you guys don't know this? You are in charge of that shit).

You can also direct your movement by holding the right mouse button and turning it around. Not only will you get the buff, but it is also a great way to quickly get at your opponent's back. The video demonstrates the movement.

Summary:

Extended sidestep will benefit you in both PVP and PVE, melee fights and caster fights and it comes with no penalty (as opposed to double tapping backwards which also applies debuff and has longer cool down).

It's a cheap perk to get, it's passive, very fun to use and it will upgrade your survivability in a noticeable way. It's also very "assassiny" in its nature.

Assassin's hideout podcast ep.16

show notes:

- changes to Bori
- Minigames
- Ranger revamp
- Choking powder perk

title of the post is a link to the podcast.