April Fools - TL trade skill revamp

First batch of promised trade skill revamp is finally on the TL. Strangely enough now there is a split between classic "crafting" and "gathering skills". The core crafting changes are far from ready to go TL, but we can already play around with some of the gathering skills. Right now on live servers you can pretty much pick up every gathering profession from skinner to miner. The revamp will add depth to those, but at the same time it will limit your choices to just 2. If you check out the latest patch notes you can take first two of the many to come: fishing and skinning.

Skinning

There is not much to skinning right now. If you have "skinner's knife" in your inventory then after you have slain an animal that is "skinnable" an icon will pop up and you will have an option to gut it. As of now every animal drops "generic leather" since the new ingredients and materials are not yet implemented.

Fishing

This I like. I have no idea how will this profession generate materials for other professions (you can bet it will for alchemy and cooking), but it is obviously more of a money maker: stack of 10 trouts (took me about 10-15 minutes to fish) sold to NPC for 50s. The real fun begins when a combo bar pops up which means you have cough a special fish. You need to quickly and without any mistake go trough combo motions and if you succeed you will fish out either more valuable fish or a loot box. I got this on my second attempt and the loot box had pretty neat blue ring in it. The best part is your chances to catch fish/get boxes rises the more difficult is the area you are trying to fish. In Paikang fishing was much better, but I have failed a lot of times because the fishes were exceeding my level of skill.

Even with this muddy waters the best fishing spot is in Paikang

Skinning is definitely far from being done, but fishing is fun and engaging minigame of itself. Sitting in the Old Tarantia port and trying to catch "the deadliest catch"? With this system I can imagine myself doing it. Also check out the video by Kehml from AOC Test Live Servers featuring fishing combos.

EDIT: yes, so this was APRIL FOOLS joke. There is no fishing in AOC, nor there will ever be (most likely). I made this screenshot about 1 year ago and just had to use it this way. The rod is just sticked into the ramp and my charactered is doing /danglefeet emote. Oh well, enjoy!! :D

Guess who finds out about PvP World Bosses :D

See me bust a move!

thanks to WoodExalted

Bombay Assassin - assassins skip what?

By "popular" demand, yet another Bombay Assassin:  Death Whirlwind

Bombay assassin vs re-rollers

It's been a while since last quality Bombay Assassin producation. I think you will enjoy this one.

Have you seen freshly dinged assassins doing nothing but GC+soul strike?

Assassin Trailer

Looks like Sudden from assassin boards has made a tribiute to this very site with his assassin video:



Seems like the least I can do is expose you to it's coolness.

Korgoth of Barbaria

Oh man, did I ever drop a ball on this one: I keet forgeting telling you about best thing since sliced bread - Korgoth of Barbaria

In a dark future wasteland, the great cities have risen and fallen, primordial beasts have reclaimed the wilderness and thieves and savages populate sparse, dirty towns. From the frozen north emerges a warrior known as Korgoth, and his merciless savagery may be his only key to survival. Korgoth of Barbaria was the pilot episode of an animated fantasy-action-adventure-comedy from Aaron Springer. The half-hour pilot aired on September 25th at 11:00PM EDT.

Basiclly this is best Conan "parody"...ever. I don't know if word "parody" is evern proper for this gem: Korgoth is as Conan as you can get and his savage world is populared by beautiful women, sorcerers and warriors. The show nearly draws its inspiration from Conan while the gags and the story are not tied to Conan in any obvious way (its more of a low fantasy parody).
The show (sadly only one episode) has many strong points:
1. Its blooooody. The ammount of violence is staggering so be advised (no really, its very graphic)
2. Great, griddy animation fitting the dark world of Korgoth
3. Best voice-over EVER. Every single character posseses amazing voice. Voice of Korgoth? Its Conan in every way.
4. Soundtrack. I am not a biggest fan of Heavy Metal (not a fan at all in fact), but it is soooo fitting.

Now go check the episode and don't get hooked too much - like I said: there is only one

OMG! Deadly assassinos!

Check out Conan the Adventurer (animated series)- very cheesy he-man-alike cartoon. The cool thing is that the authors accualy knew REH lore and tried to follow it. The not so cool thing is that this series are for kids so there are no adult themes.Its basically reskined He-man with SAME characters and plots. You can catch all the episodes on youtube. I won't lie: it is painful to watch :D I have jumped from episode to episode because I am unable to watch for more than 10 minutes without going into seizure.
One of Conan's friends is an assassins so you can say that this post barely qualifies as posting material for assassin's blog ;p

I accually think that young Conan is suffering from condition known as gynecomastia.

Bombay assassin - wrong impression

Returning assassins might be getting a wrong impression about the state of things in Age of Conan

This is how it is done

Somewhere deep under FC headquarters there is door with small label saying "assassin departament". Inside, two men sit in a small, dark room and disscuss matters of utter importance....

"....and what else did he say?
"that we should fix it or GTFO"
"Its fine, tell him we will have assassin class polished before 1.5 is even on test server"
"Its been live for 3 weeks now"
"When did that happen!!?"
"How the hell should I know? Perhaps we should google other things than our own names"
"Ok screw it, lets do some brainstorming.We will stay couple minutes after work if we have to, god damn it! I will not quit on this class and my third job in 2 months!"
"Here is what we got in terms of feedback and I quote "assassins suck, roll caster, noob"
"That is all the feedback we got?"
"That is what I got in mail"
"Hm.... I say we go back to the begining and review this class inside and out"
"Good idea. I have this nice class description from back in the beta days"
"Great, man we are so professional and shit. Read it"
"Assassins are the most lethal killers in Hyboria"
"They should be happy they didn't get nerfed, read some more"
"Those aspiring to the top of this profession face the most deadly regime of training"
"How is pre 80lvl pve?"
"Crappy, most quit on lvl50"
"It's called deadly training - in it to win it and no limit is my home. That is what assassins stand for. If you can't cut it to lvl80 you should reroll caster"
"Fair enough. There is more: Those aspiring to the top of this profession face the most deadly regime of training, discipline"
"I am not sure how we stand on discipline.."
"Well people whine that they have to force themself to log on their assassins"
"They are lacking the discipline, obviously"
"Man, you know this shit, no wonder they made you head-dev-sin guy"
"Shut up and read, I am raiding with my Pally tonight and want to catch some preraid battlegrounds"
"..but the ones that survive are executioners supreme"
"How is 80lvl assassin population?"
"Poor at best"
"Ok so we have the survivors part nailed down. About executioners supreme..I guess we COULD fix some feats and..."
The phone rang
"yeah?"
"Guys, we have just found out that casters are overbalanced, which means they are balanced as hell. We are currently balacing them down. I know I am asking for a lot, but you have to cancel yours departament balance patch"
"You owe me lunch, buddy"
"Thanks man"

and that is how it is done.

1.5 Bombay assassin style!

Waiting for 1.5? This what we are getting.

Fate gone wild

Fate, the goddness of Tortage decided to "take it to the streets" and went to the place that all people eventually wind up in: KESHATTA (which sounds like somekind of dish or a name for a kebab bar). The goddness did not WTFPWN anyone, but she could only if she wanted to.

Kicking it old school - Ninjas of the night

Intro to pvp video made by Mephs back in the days....no comment really needed - it is full of win.

Since there is nothing else going on...

Yes, you guessed it: bombay assassin time :D
This time I promise it's a good one: Hybrid vs Lotus. Game is sloooooowing down. Less people online, less news, things are getting sluggish in long await for the famous 1.4 patch aka 4.0 goodness. Hope it will go beyond expectaions because we need a miracle right now.

Bombay assassin: lotus got a buff

Lotus got a buff - it's what I am singing all the time now :D

The Roleplayer - Age of Conan Machinima

The Roleplayer is AOC machinima which is really well done. Since it is an assassin class blog, machinima that is well done is not enough to be in news so I will spoil it for ya - there is an assassin character in there :D.



Apart being funny it shows the sad state the roleplaying is in this game - something I miss very much from my old WoW days.Hope that after server mergers the RP will be back to Hyborian world. Enjoy the movie!

nerf avatar of death...

Time for another bombay assassin - nerf avatar of death.
Obvious inspiration for this was this outstanding threadthat has been going for weeks now and just won't die. Imagine this: casters whine about our 3 minute cooldown avatar of death when TOS crited me for mere 3675 dmg today...AOD could save me from that, right? Not...

Assassin from Bombay

Everyone knows Bombay TV right? Just check it, no need to explain it here. Well once in a while I get the "bombay TV" vibe going where I just gotta make some assassin related movie for reason that are beyond my primitive reckoning.

I know that most of them are not funny to the general pop so you have to be REALLY HARDCORE assassin player to "get it" and still it might now be worth a decent "lol".

This is my oldie, bombay TV from the very begining of AOC where assassins where underpowered and pre-70 guardians were UNKILLABLE for us (you could chew on them for hours). Since very few of assassin community were +70lvl at that time the FTD (from the darkness) was this mythical holy grail of assassindom (there is such a word?) so everone wanted to be lvl 70 so they could finaly kill stuff...ah good times.

Check the life before you hit lvl 70
Here is my latest creation: The last Lotus assassin, in memory to my friend, Alex from Siths clan who was the last assassin I know of on my server - Aquilonia - to use Lotus specc and still get that lvl 3 gear. He is gone now.

Just so we are clear on this: lotus does work in pvp, but you can do better with other specc (hit Lotus specc problem compliation thread for great info on this subject)