Good news, dear barbarians and other species; First batch of 2.1 patch is now live in FunCom’s Age of Conan, and with it a new seasonal event: A Bloody Solstice, where players get to help the Aesir with their Solstice festivities which have been disrupted by the Vanir. At first I thought of making this a special, but since the event is much shorter than I expected, we’ll be having a look at the rest of the patch content, some of which has already been revealed in previous posts here at MMOCrunch.com.
Walk with me, stranger, and let me tell you of all this.
It’s already been four days since the patch was released, so I don’t think anything of what I say will be a real spoiler; anyway I will try to keep this as clear as I can.
A Bloody Solstice
The event starts, as the previous ones, with a claimable item that will send you to talk to an NPC. This is easy enough, any character out of Tortage can do this since the NPC is in one of the starting areas and, just by talking to him, you’ll get the first rewards: The Aesir Snowcatcher and a crate of winter stuff (everything social of course.) The nicely surprising thing about these quests is that they give a good amount of XP towards your next level (if you’re not max level yet) and also to the mastery progress for AAs. So, all in all, it’s worth investing half an hour of your time to complete them even if you’re not too compelled by social content like seasonal events. The second quest is ‘solo’ and it takes you to an instance [singlepic id=2870 w=320 h=240 float=right]where the Aesir festive grounds have been overrun by Vanir and your mission will be disrupting them, by means other than sheer brute force, and make them flee. Again easy, but fun, and this time the reward is a drinking horn that you can hold in your hand instead of a weapon. On the picture you can see the look of both the snowcatcher (helm) and drinking horn (handheld).
What some might not find that funny is that, after the solo instance, you’re sent to Ymir’s pass, which is actually a level 60+ area, so unless you have help from higher level friends or kind souls, you’ll have trouble reaching the camp if you’re too low level. There’s a little surprise after you complete the second quest and that is that, from time to time, Vanir Avengers will spawn randomly to attack you. It doesn’t matter if you’re involved in a fight, talking to an NPC or sitting calmly. This doesn’t last forever though, after a while they’ll get tired and leave you be. Or, of course, if you complete the next step in the seasonal even chain it will stop then as well. So, in Ymir’s pass you talk to an Aesir chieftain who wants to hear the story of your success against the Vanir from your own lips. He then invites you to join the celebrations in the festive grounds with your friends.
Yes, you must bring at least three friends, anything else wouldn’t be true merrymaking, right? So there you go, with friends, expecting a ferocious fight or something challenging and… what you have to do is sit, drink and dance with your friends! It was hilarious when I read the quest log and couldn’t believe they required a group for that! But it was just a trick to get your relaxed and distracted because when you have danced and drunk, the chief of the Vanir arrives to take revenge on you. Some action happens after all, and you can plunder and pillage a chest piece among those defeated.
What you find in the crate with Midwinter Gifts is more social items. Snowballs that you can throw at friends to start a snowball fight, mugs of Asgardian Stout to keep you warm and drunk to the bone for a while, Asgardian Chew to turn your breath frozen among other things. And that’s pretty much all there is to say about the Winter Solstice event.
Dances
It’s not that they’ve introduced new dances to the game, but instead all races now can learn other race dances through a quick quest that can be found in the starting areas of each given race. I have only done one, Stygian, and mostly for RP reasons. In order to be able to get the quest you need to be member of a guild with renown rank 9 or higher, which is not an easy feat in an RP server since roleplay doesn’t actually earn points for your guild (but that’s another story.) Also I’m guessing the other quests will ask you for money. The Stygian quest requires that you pay 3 gold to the NPC who will teach you the dance, be prepared and have the money in advance so you don’t get disappointed. Lastly, be aware that if you are too high, there won’t be an exclamation mark (!) above the quest giver so it might go unnoticed even if you pass right by their side. Unless there is a way to show greyed out quests that I haven’t found. Also the skill has been changed from abilities tab to companions tab.
Guard Changes
My opinion regarding this subject can’t be too objective because I haven’t played a Guardian up to max level (I am still leveling her up.) The first two days, what I heard from Guard friends was that it felt they were less tough against melee damage, but tougher against magic. And indeed it looked like their life was going down much more quickly when confronting physical attackers than spellcasters.
The most important change came to the Juggernaut tree, so Tempest guardians won’t notice much change. Being myself a fan of Sword and Shield characters, I’ve already noticed that even in defensive stance, with the changes they brought to manoeuvres and tactics, (which I think are a nice improvement) it’s easier to kill multiple enemies swiftly. The shield takes on more importance as new feats with new combos have been introduced involving. Also, taking aggro and keeping it seems more as it should be, even if the guardian is lower level than the damage dealers. So, without knowing how the changes affected high level characters first hand, my opinion is that they’ve done a nice job this time.
Other issues
Well, I won’t go into the pvp stuff for my opinion wouldn’t be of much use anyway, having not experienced much of Age of Conan’s PvP before. For the same reason I haven’t tried out the new guild mini-games events, though I suspect that will change in the future. But not everything is good news; apparently dancing ability has been changed and is only available out of combat when, curiously, it was one of the requirements during a Khitai encounter where you are supposed to dance at the request of a certain boss. The encounter in Warmonk Monastery with the Air boss has the blue tornadoes fixed and they now send you to the balcony above the small pond. I can say that it takes more than a bit of practice to get the knack of the encounter again.
What I find most shocking is the social area on the roofs of Old Tarantia buildings; an exclusive area where only the top most ranked guild, and their guests, can access. To be at the head of the guild rankings, guild members have to commit themselves to either PvE content, raids, instances, etc. or PvP, therefore not leaving much time for social content. And a social guild won’t spend enough time grinding renown to reach the number 1 in the rankings. For most roleplayers this is really disappointing, and I include myself there.
There are more changes, you can read the whole set in the official forums. This patch has brought a lot of content, fixes, changes, etc., though instead of focusing on one of the areas of the game, small stuff has been brought up for everyone. I wonder if instead if everyone is content or will everyone will feel disappointed by the little content directed to their game-style. Hopefully, it’ll be as usual and those protesting will make noise but not be too much.
And with that I’ll wish you farewell and let you enjoy the game, until next Saturday, when Hyrkanian Insight will be updated again. Watch your step, stranger.