Ancient Kingdoms

Got the giant king, but of course he dropped druid chest. The hardest part is clearing the room without aggroing everything and the boss; the fire casters do a ton of damage and getting two in a fight is even a bit of a challenge.



Went to try the giant caster boss but that room with the frozen DoT floor is annoying af and gave up just clearing when my mage died to the DoT.

I've killed Avatar of Water four times, he's easy now, just annoying to get the spawn item. Most of the basic upgrades i need are optimized jewellery from any and all bosses, the set armor items from Winterforge, and bracers for everyone which I have not researched to target farm. My item level is 4,897, and my mercs average around 4,000 with the rogue at 4,570 from all my hand-me-downs.

Vault of the Vanished appears to be the next big challenge. I tried Morwyn but she is another caster boss with AoE mana degen spells. She also spawns some serious spongy adds that take a while to clear, and the boss ALSO has lifetap effects, so she heals while you are clearing adds. Just tried once so will obviously have to carve out a strategy. I assume she drops the key to get to the dragon on the last floor of the dungeon, which is the target for the next quest for the Planes.

I have killed Pyroth and Urzak at least 8 times each and they won't drop their quest item; 30% chance on Urzak and 20% on Pyroth - may the odds be ever against you (edit - world boss loop before bed, Urzak finally dropped Savage Blood. Two more items to go, both 20% drop rates). I have 3 friggin' black dragon scales, and even the spine. I figure to try the Spirit of the Forest tonight. Edit - Spirit down. All on farm. And three two that deny me quest items.



I've just stayed with my tank set-up the whole time. 10 mins to switch between specs, so I just don't bother with the dps one. The Fearless Battlestance Mastery ends up being kinda useless, the rage loss is overbalanced.

Slaanesh69 said:

The Fearless Battlestance Mastery ends up being kinda useless, the rage loss is overbalanced.

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Yeah, the Fearless stance is really only useful on about three bosses: the Dragon world boss, the stupid fucker in Sunken Temple, and the 50% named in Despair/Chamber of Fire.

Rage generation in general is piss poor, and the devs have said they don't want Warriors generating rage from being hit because it would somehow make DPS Warriors overpowered. But I don't really understand that logic, because if a DPS Warrior is getting hit, it's probably because you're running a DPS spec to burn down easy bosses you already have on farm. The reasoning feels pretty odd.

I'm still just doing my normal boss loop. At this point, I only need the Cobalt chest and helm. The helm is going to take a while since I'm still nowhere near killing Hrimsorr. That boss is insane.

Morowyn is still giving me problems too. She doesn't seem that difficult at first, but once the adds spawn it turns into a complete shitfest that just snowballs out of control. Next attempt I'm going to try Runeshielding through that phase, though I don't think it'll be back up by the time she does it again. There's always praying for an interrupt, but not only can interrupts miss, the delay between pressing the button and the ability actually firing in this game is horrible. Most bosses only have 1.0-1.5 second casts, so you basically just have to luck into "predicting" it.

The good news is that it sounds like the Dragon boss after her is a total pushover and basically free loot. Apparently it drops one of the best Warrior tank weapons too, outside of the legendary from the MC zone.

Bought it and played for about 45 minutes but wasn't quite the itch I was looking to scratch.

Soooooooo........I've collected 68 of these Radiant Aethers and tonight decided to find out what they are for....perhaps crafting. No, as a matter of fact, you keep them in your inventory:



Edit:

Also, tried Hrimsor the giant caster boss, and that fear resist stance may have some value after all. This is what killed me:



6 fear-casting mobs while fighting the boss and his two caster flunkies was not nice.

Well, I did some light reading of the Steam threads on Ancient Kingdoms - looks like ToV was explicitly created for online groups. They say that some dragons have been beat by merc groups but it is very hard.

There was also a comment on the overtuning of Morwynn, hopefully that gets fixed.

Anyway, I was discouraged by the Spirit of the Forest's lack of quest item drop so I played some Erenshor this morning on my day off - uh oh.................

Yeah, I haven't been playing much either. I'm doing a "farming loop" every 3-4 days now. The progression "soft cap" is real and there isn't a good way to "farm" Vet levels currently, which is about the only way I feel like I can make enough progress to be able to take down Hrimsorr and Morwynn at this point.

I'm currently addicted to Rune Dice and just kind of waiting for Erenshor's "raid" patch to dive in.

Someone break down inventory management for me. Especially early (<L30) game when you don't really have the gold to buy more bank tabs. Is any of this crafting shit actually important or should I just dump it all?

I started as a wizard, no idea if I'm taking the right skills or if there's something that doesn't sound all that great but is actually really strong. Or what's involved in respec'ing later on if it turns out I fucked up. I also put pretty much every stat point into int so far, and I fully expect that will end up biting me in the ass at some point too.

Currently running cleric and warrior for my mercs, planning to grab a rogue at 30. I don't really have many problems but would I be better off using a druid for the healer while leveling?

velk said:

Erenshor is a love letter to classic EQ. It's deliberately obtuse and awkward. I suspect a lot of people will immediately bounce off due to having no idea what's going on or why any of these ass-backwards mechanics exist. If it is your kind of thing though, there's some warm nostalgia fuzzies there.

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Completely the opposite for me. I was instantly hooked with Erenshor, and I think it is MASSIVELY more user friendly and has a ton of QOL stuff that AK sorely lacks. I'd still be playing it, but I've pretty much maxed out everything I possibly can before the raid stuff gets added this summer. Trying to give AK a fair shake in the meantime, but man the game really doesn't make it easy.

Vorph said:

Someone break down inventory management for me. Especially early (<L30) game when you don't really have the gold to buy more bank tabs. Is any of this crafting shit actually important or should I just dump it all?

I started as a wizard, no idea if I'm taking the right skills or if there's something that doesn't sound all that great but is actually really strong. Or what's involved in respec'ing later on if it turns out I fucked up. I also put pretty much every stat point into int so far, and I fully expect that will end up biting me in the ass at some point too.

Currently running cleric and warrior for my mercs, planning to grab a rogue at 30. I don't really have many problems but would I be better off using a druid for the healer while leveling?


Completely the opposite for me. I was instantly hooked with Erenshor, and I think it is MASSIVELY more user friendly and has a ton of QOL stuff that AK sorely lacks. I'd still be playing it, but I've pretty much maxed out everything I possibly can before the raid stuff gets added this summer. Trying to give AK a fair shake in the meantime, but man the game really doesn't make it easy.

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I spent almost all gold buying bank slots up until like slot 4 or 5 (whichever one was 50k). Then I looked up what a house has and you can get a few more account wide "bank" pages before they also get super expensive. All houses across all zones and all characters share the same storage.

For the tradeskill stuff, I kept one bank slot for the potion mats and one bank slot for gems & spell scroll mats. The non-stackable necks and rings that are used to make resist gear seem to keep dropping from everything, so while I used another bank page to keep those, you can probably sell them. Use the wiki to tell what is actually useful and what isn't; a bunch of gems and some of the "pages" have no use other than to sell. I also used the wiki to look up bags, including the two that are crafted.

Disclaimer: I didn't get far enough to where resists actually mattered, but I had some mats saved up for everything I went to make, from potions to spell scrolls (bind is nice) to resist gear (to stick in a house box).

Burns said:

I spent almost all gold buying bank slots up until like slot 4 or 5 (whichever one was 50k). Then I looked up what a house has and you can get a few more account wide "bank" pages before they also get super expensive. All houses across all zones and all characters share the same storage.

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When did you get a horse? I had assumed that's what I was supposed to be saving every penny for first.

Vorph said:

When did you get a horse? I had assumed that's what I was supposed to be saving every penny for first.

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I think I bought the cheapest horse in my late 30's, early 40s? Then I didn't think about it again until I had more than enough to buy the fastest.

Sell everything. Eventually, when you need it, you should have enough storage to hold stuff. I now have 9/10 tabs, and they are all full except #9 I just unlocked to hold the fish once I decide to try it.

Money comes a lot faster once you start farming bosses, kind of in that 40-50 range when you are running that 5 boss dungeon in the elf lands (twisted tower?). At some point you will stop selling unneeded equipment and use it for the primal essence exchanger in Bonebreach town to make the 14 slot bag, and then for various other crafting at end game.

I just made my first Avatar of War key. That puppy is going to sit in the bank for a while since, like Kirun, I still cannot kill Hrimsorr and Morwyn. Tried the latter again tonight and I didn't group taunt fast enough on the first add summon and my cleric died: false start.

Also, one run through Winterforge and the King dropped my cobalt chestpiece, the game KNEW I was starting to lose interest.

Oh and the Ancient Cyclops's legendary drop is a sweet, sweet warrior artifact:

Vorph said:

When did you get a horse? I had assumed that's what I was supposed to be saving every penny for first.

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I didn't buy a horse until after level 50. I kept needing space, so I kept buying it until it felt like a ridiculous price for what I was making. For the big trips around the world, I didn't have much of an issue getting enough rep to buy the portal scrolls to 3 of the 4 cities by the time I was 50 (think it was Elf first, then dwarf, then human for rep). Not sure if I would do it different if I did it again. The horse would have certainly saved some time after vendoring shit and running back... but the dungeons that I did the most didn't feel that far from a city (like Black Ice Deep, Lizzy Den, and Twisted Haunt).

Also, early way to get money was crafting armor out of the extra molds that dropped in Black Ice Depth. Probably should have grinded that out more to get a horse around the time extra bank tabs/house chests were 50k+.