Fight on the Flag

It’s finally here, the long-awaited Land of the Dead. But we have to wait a week or two, depending on who wins the resources race. The side that wins the race, Order or Destruction, gets unfettered access to Land of the Dead for an entire week.

You know what this means? Destruction or Order is going to be sooo bored for an entire week while the other side frolics in LotD.

In any case, here are some links to get you moving:

A superb Live Event guide by Gaarawarr Gabs. This link includes a rundown of everything you must do to complete the live event, pictures to show you what airship parts look like, stuff about the Reikland Factory scenario that I didn’t know:

Also, when the scenario is won, you get the Desert Madness buff which increases your Renown and XP gains by 5% for 30 minutes.  Good times.

This guide will also include the location of an Easter Egg, but people haven’t found it yet.

Once we actually get inside Land of the Dead, here is a beastiary by Gaarawarr Gabs, which includes what mobs drop tome tactic fragments.

Warhammer Blog Times also has a guide for boss strats in Tomb of the Vulture Lord.

Sigil explanation guide, again by Gaarawarr Gabs (maybe Syven won’t have to keep telling us wtf it means). The meat of the post:

The Sigils and their Unlock Requirements

Each Ward has five fragments and each fragment has one or more ways to unlock it.  You do not have to do all of the tasks listed, just one.

Finally, I am suspicious of how this patch and content will affect RVR. I fear this will make RVR a constant RVE fest, because everyone will want to be in Land of the Dead.

Here are some concerns posted by Warhammer Alliance member Anglakhel. She (or he) went into the test server to try out the new content. The only problem was, nobody else was really there.

The PTS, however, was completely unequipped and unprepared to test out these two dimensions of the Expedition Resources Quest. Player Kills were almost impossible. Once one side had control of the Land of the Dead, they all abandoned the RvR lakes to explore the news lands. The consequence of this was that the faction without LotD control didn’t have any enemies to kill and the Expedition Resources Quest failed to advance in any meaningful way.

Without player kills, the Expedition Resource Quest depends upon zone capture to generate resources. However, the PTS didn’t have an established group of guilds with the Rank, Resources and Standard Bearers to claim Keeps and lock down zones.

So basically what we have is a live testing environment. Let’s try to bear with these changes. I still think Warhammer is the best PVP for me, but only because of the strength of our guild.

Patch 1.0.4 is live this morning and Witching Night (the live Halloween event) has begun. Because the servers are down I am unable to provide screen shots. Those will come in a few days.

Here are the relevant notes for RVR:

• The successful capture of an enemy battlefield objective now rewards the capturing players with experience.
• In response to player feedback, the amount of renown earned from healing players has been increased slightly

Read the rest of the patch notes on the Warhammer Herald.

There is also more information about the two new classes, Blackguard and Knight of the Blazing Sun. Apparently there is going to be a server-wide live event to introduce the two classes to the game starting November 17:

When the Heavy Metal live event (the event to introduce the Blackguard and KotBS) begins on November 17th, players who log into WAR will see a new tab in the Tome of Knowledge. Clicking on this tab will open the Live Events page, where each day we’ll place a new daily task. Completing these daily tasks earns influence, just like you’d earn in a public quest. There are rewards for Basic, Advanced and Elite influence, culminating in the ultimate prize: the chance to play WAR’s new classes a full week before they’re released to the public! This last reward won’t be easy to earn, and players who want to get to the Elite level will need to log in each day and complete on the daily event.

Hrm, and I bet they are PVE tasks. Let’s hope not all of them.

There’s also going to be an exclusive Tier 4 scenario during the time of the live event:

Participation in this scenario will give players an extra 10% bonus to their Renown point gain.

Wonderful news! We now get twice the experience for killing people in open-field RvR combat! Read the WAR Herald for more:

With the addition of the new region-wide and RvR-wide chat channels we have seen a marked increase in Open RvR participation. In order to encourage this trend even further, we have made an additional adjustment to the experience awarded for killing enemy players in an Open RvR area. Previously we increased this amount by 50%. As of today, that bonus has been raised to 100%. With this change players killed in Open RvR will now be worth double the experience than those killed in scenarios!

Some great changes for PVP and for fishing! Have a look. Fishing is below the fold.

Here are the PVP related changes, from the patch downloader, some bolded for emphasis:

  PvP
– Diminishing returns on honor for kills is being eliminated.
- Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
- Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will be worth no
honor.
– Added new PvP daily quests that send players to Halaa and the Spirit Towers of the Bone Wastes. These quests are available for Alliance and Horde at their respective local quest hubs.

- Arenas
- Personal Rating: The amount a player’s personal rating can climb
above his or her team’s rating is now limited.
- The benefits of drinking out of combat have been delayed while in the Arena. It will now take four seconds before the full benefit of the
mana regeneration will come into effect.
– Queue times for arena matches have been reduced. Players will now be able to enter matches faster than previously.
- Shadow Sight now increases damage taken by 5% rather than dealing damage over time. Duration has been reduced from 21 seconds to 15 seconds.
- Players feared outside of the Arena (through the world or outside
the arena walls) will now be teleported back to the center of the
arena map.

- Battlegrounds
- If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no
longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle.
- When you first enter a battleground, messages about other players
joining the battleground will be linked together for the first
minute. You will see a message in AV like “28 players joined” rather
than a line for each player that joined. After the first minute, it
will work as it always has. In addition, all of the messages about
other players leaving the battleground and getting marks of honor
once the battleground is complete have been removed.
- Battleground Rune Buffs:Speed, Restoration, and Berserking buffs
received from battleground runes will no longer cause Stealth or
Prowl to break.
- Alterac Valley
-Captain Balinda Stonehearthnow Stonehearth can no longer be
interrupted, silenced, or have her spells slowed. In addition, her
water elemental cannot be banished, and does increased damage.
Vanndar Stormpike and Captain Balinda Stonehearth have had their
health totals reduced to match the health totals of Drek’Thar and
Captain Galvangar.
- Warmasters/marshals in Alterac Valley now increase each other’s
maximum health and damage by 25%. This is a stacking effect.
Horde players will now start the battle closer to Drek’Thar and
Frostwolf Keep.
- There is now a Join as Party option.

- Warsong Gulch
- When both flags are held, the flag carriers will receive 50% increased damage done to them after approximately 10 minutes and 100% increased damage after approximately 15 minutes.
- Flag carriers can now be tracked 45 seconds after picking up the
flag.

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