Returning to WAR: Leveling in Land of the Dead

With a lot of people returning to War I thought I would post the odd guide. @Werit (Hope you don't mind me stealing your title)

Today’s post consists of some good spots to level in. I have also posted, so more people come to know these spots. As they are excellent for PvP and ambushing. Nothing breaks up your rhyme than the blade of a Witch Hunter. Check out the maps for the locations, you will see my character marker showing the position.

Area of effect spots.

The following is a list of good AoE leveling spots. A good group should consist of an area of effect (AoE) DPS a healer and a tank. The simplest tactic is the tank and DPS sit in a central spot and the healer who has a tanks guard on him just runs past mobs and due to the guard the tank draws the aggro. Once a sufficient amount of mobs have been gathered the DPS spam’s his AoE attacks and you all get to watch the experience roll in.

River Drakes (map link) - Relatively close to the destruction war camp. Also good if you have Butchering as a craft skill.

Bandit Scouts (map link) - You can use the underground building to try and minimize the chance of getting jumped on by a Witch Hunter.

Skeletons (map link) - Off the beaten track and is sometimes not as busy as the other spots. The Skeletons spawn just by the covered entrance.

Also...

Champions of Sebok (map link) - Good spot for single target DPS, you need to watch out for the AoE damage from the champion as it can hurt a lot...

Words of Warning

With rested experience you can probably churn out a level an hour but this means your renown rank will not keep pace with your level which could mean you spending a lot of time in tier 4 just playing catch up.

If it is your first character I would not recommend this, as you miss out on all the excellent content in the other zones. As well as excellent Land of the Dead public quests which are a blast.

Don't forget this game is about War and hitting other player's in the face!

WCPI: Super Effective

Check out Super Effective she seems to have the same alt weakness as me with 4 characters almost at level cap. Not surprisingly though, she has a better handle on the English language as well :)

Play War without buying the game!

It looks like Mythic are doing another first to allow people to play War without having to buy the box and just directly upgrade a trial account. See the details here.

I think this is a smart move as it removes 1 more obstacle for free trial players to convert to subscribers. About a year ago I gave World of Warcraft another look and to my surprise I had to buy both expansions and a months subscription to play with my friends. In the end I didn't buy both due to the extra cash.

On another note my shaman 'Slapit' hit 40 yesterday which is my third character to the level cap. You might think I would concentrate on 1 of my 40's. Maybe my main 'Hellichoppa' and raise his renown from 46 to at least the 50's so I can wear Warlord gear.

Not on your snotling, I have my squig herder who has just broken into tier 3 called 'Toenail'. I gave him a run today and it was so much fun, not having to heal or be in the thick of it as a MDPS being targeted by everyone and their auntie.

101

This was meant to be my 100^th post, but the hint of any sort of War expansion trumped it. I never thought I would make it this far as my usual attention is like my choppa’s life span charging into a war band in open RvR(very short lived). For this post I thought I would look back and try and pick out my favourite posts. These are not the ones with the most hits or comments, just the posts were I liked the ideas. To my surprise I was spoilt for choice and had cut the list short.

Third faction and a single vision

Around patch 1.3.2 the cries for a third faction were very loud. They seem to have subsided now as the player base may have accepted the way Mythic are heading with fixing the core game and incremental fixers to RvR.

Realm pride by statistics

These numbers are available and I still think graphs showing the number of keeps and objectives taken, tinted with guild information could help realm pride.

Breaking up zerg

Order numbers are still high on our server and king captures are relegated to early morning raids. Together with a large amount of the player base trying to get crests through scenarios means open RvR is up and down at them moment.

Defence sabotage stage for keeps

The changes for keeps have made the fighting in keeps a little more dynamic, but when greater numbers are involved keeps start to become little more than speed bumps. I have seen a varied amount of tactics involved defending against greater numbers from morale building tactic and meeting them in the open. Defending from the top and hoping just to gain renown to forming a tank wall at the door. Mythic have a great base and could add a lot to keeps to improve them without investing too much and by just including mechanics which are already in the game such as public quests and siege weapons.

Tier 2 revisited

I still to this day like playing in tier 2. Any time I get jaded with the masses or pre-made groups. I can just pop to tier 2 were levels fly by and open RvR becomes more manageable. This was also one of the earlier posts.

Hallelujah War Expansion news!

Bootae found it and it looks like we have real news of a War expansion!

I have never continually sub'ed and made it to a MMO expansion, could War be my first? Well it was the first which kept my interest to make it to the level cap twice.

By the way this was also my 100th blog post and what a post to make!

In a recent GDC 2010 interview with UGO, BioWare's Dr. Ray Muzyka said of Warhammer Online, "Right now it's [a] really profitable business unit within my group." Muzyka went on to say they've actually seen more people come into the game since enacting the free-to-play model on the game's earlier levels, and that he personally felt they were working.

In fact, by the sounds of it, Warhammer Online is due for some interesting announcements in the future. Another of Muzyka's comments on the title was, "We have new content planned and all kinds of cool expansions for it." We don't know how much more clear cut a message can be than that. And hey, it's good news! We're looking forward to our playable Skaven and Lizardmen, Mythic and BioWare.

An’t no boils on me!

Over the past few weeks my experiences in War have seen ups and downs. I am currently levelling my Shaman to 40, as of today he sits at 35 so almost at level cap. This means I’ll have 3 characters at 40. The Shaman has been the easiest character up to now to keep his renown near to his level, so much so he is nearly ready to wear full Annihilator which beats the pants of the PvE gear available. He is not far off beating my Chosen on gear who had been 40 a while now. I still find the levels between 30 and 40 troublesome. PvE wise you are sorted, there is plenty to do but then this means you renown starts to lag. PvP wise in tier 4 you are almost a leper even being a healer. Few want you in pre-made scenario groups and pug war bands start to become scarce as most of them are alliance only war bands.

But when there has been an alliance war band running, it has been epic. Renown and experience flows and the fighting has been excellent. A good few times with have sat at a battle objective of ¾ of a war band holding out for the final few seconds trying to keep a horde of order at bay and prevented a zone lock. Those times are truly precious.

We have also tried the tactic of defending a keep by build up morale 4’s against the siege pads. Then when the horde of order turns up at the gate we immediately run out and push them back. A few nights ago it looked like an almost certain zone lock when instead of defending 2 keeps we stayed at the north keep in Chaos Wastes and used the above tactic. We managed to push and wipe them 3 times before they completely gave up.

Dwarf Boat (Karaoke Version Goblin Style)

I didn't get 20 comments. :( But the hits to the blog and other peoples links were cool. So here it is, I am not responsible if your ears bleed and green chaos mucus dribbles from your nose.

Dwarf Boat (Karaoke Version)

It is a bit late as my time is usually split between edit or play and playing War tends to win. Hope you like my footage of the Ironclad scenario to sing along too. I do have another version with me singing a terrible goblin impression but it was to awful to post. Then again if I got 20ish comments on this post I might feel obliged to post it but that will never happen :) as my max is around 3.

If you would like a reminder how the song is sung before you go and impress you friends with you own rendition have a look at the original here.

Try the fish. I am here all weekend.

The stars aligned which meant I actually got to play War at the weekend (wife went out), could this be fate or coincidence that patch 1.3.4 hit the servers only the day before. Scission my chosen alter ego slapped me across the face with a gore soaked metal gauntlet and shouted ‘Thank the changer!’ I was just a glad to have an evening sitting in my pants in a pre made scenario group.

I got to play in a range of teams from the standard PUG to alliance and guild groups. My focus was to play in an organized group and not just get gear for my main character. So I swapped between a choppa, chosen and shaman alts to best support the group makeup as we lost and gained members. This also meant I got to play Ironclad the latest new scenario in War from varied points of views.

First off I had a complete blast, the close quarter fighting and 6 man groups meant you played a much greater role in the success or failure of the instance. The extra shinnies on offer meant the scenarios popped all night long.

The scenario is intense, if I had to sum it up in one sentence it would be like trying to sleep in a dustbin while a black orc constantly kicked and rattled the metal bin.

Only a few of the matches went completely for or against, though we never got spawn point camped. Most of the matches seemed even with lots and lots of fighting. The better groups where able to mix up taking the flags and keeping an organized group who stay together the run around.

When I played my healer it was constant AoE heal spamming. Then until I learnt to hide and keep mobile, I spent match after match with at least two people trying to pound me into the ground. So my roots and snares were used in full force. Once I got the hang of it, it was a case of either sticking with the tank hidden just around the corner or playing hide and seek with the melee DPS. It is a small boat but there is a lot hiding places and corridors to run round in.

My chosen loved this scenario, as it was almost impossible to take him down and he died once in about 5 matches. The close proximity of a healer and the ability to get out of sight of any ranged DPS couple together with limited numbers meant he could almost saunter around the boat checking out the hors d'oeuvres and winking at the witch elves.

Lastly with the choppa, again it was excellent but a little squishy at times. The AoE was excellent after you had played hide and clobber with the opposing healer and the witch hunters had little or no area to sneak around you. A quick AoE attack usually brought them out of hiding as they crept up on your healer.

I really enjoyed the 6 man scenario and had a lot of good balanced fights.

We also played a few of the other scenarios as well, and ‘came a cropper’ in Reikland Factory which may end up being the new Thunder Valley. About 4 times on the run we joined the scenario late after people had quit, finding the main group of order camping the first flag while smaller groups capped the flags. We tried going around, but at times it was hard just getting out of the spawn point.