Darkness Rising - S/Shots

Norcott · Post by **Norcott** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:22 am

Heta wrote:I'm sorry, but that is just childish and stupid

if something is wrong it should be corrected

And it just so happens that theres always someone to do so eh.
wish i hadnt bothered now tbh.

Heta · Post by **Heta** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:30 am

I dont see whats so wrong about correcting something that is wrong, what would be wrong would be to not say anything about it and have people running around having false information. I wasnt beeing rude or anything to you, if you are going to post information about something, please get it right before doing so or just dont bother doing it.

Selenia · Post by **Selenia** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:58 am

A piccie of my Fire Wizzie on Gaheris ...

It took me around five days played time to get to Champion Level 5, and that wasn't through constant grinding. The Champ weapon's abilities are split into two parts. 99% of the abilities are granted when you are given the weapon initially. The secondary part of the weapon, which is usually an unlimited charge of some sort (for casters it's usually a 50% power heal, usable in combat) is given to you after defeating the Circle of Five.

You firstly need to speak to the King to start the Champion Quests and to actually start gaining XP for your champion levels (you will not automatically qualify otherwise, and no XP gained retrospectivly is taken into account).
The new quests are both fun and heavily story-driven, including a couple of nice surprises on the way. There are a couple of excellent outdoor instances involving small towns, a castle ruin under siege, and a manor-come-training centre (without spoiling too much). Once you complete Chapter 3 (or four, I can't remember) you are granted your unactivated Champion Weapon (see above). The final chapter is defeating 5 hideously formed Daemons (which took a FG of us around 5 hours to complete) ending in an instance dungeon where you take on the final bad guy - and believe me, he is "tough".

Each major Daemon kill gives you a *lot* of ChampXP (something like 50%+ of an individual level - so killing the lot gives you ChampLevel 2.5 instantly meaning you have only 2.5 levels left to get to 5). The main mobs also drop remains which look quite nice hanging from the wall (see here for more info and piccies).

Each Champion level gives you access to individual types of horse, and you're eligible for the more aesthetic horses at ChampLevel 5 (like the Nightmare, Storm and Undead horse). The horses are 15 plat each, and involve running a quest to actually get the horse on top of that. The quest for the unicorn for example involves you actually finding it, and then making it trust and like you enough before you can click on it and it lands in your inventory). You can have as many horses as you want, but each involves paying 15plat, a short quest, and the sellback loss is 10% (meaning that if you sell the horse back to buy another, you're only given 13.5plat in return).

Champ abilities are gained at one point per level (so at level 5 you have 5 points for example). These can be traded in to train into different minor subclassing from the realm's primary class trainers (like magician etc, rather than specialised trainers like Enchanter or Hero). Spending one point in a subclassing ability opens that "tree" and you are free to spend your points starting from the Level 1 ability upwards. You cannot spend one point and get the level 5 ability, you must work your way up and spend all five points as you progress. At the moment I have a minor heal (about 100 odd heal per cast), a minor concentration AF buff (which is useless as I'm a caster and get a better AF buff anyway, but I needed it to get ...), and a minor str/con and dex buff.

Champ Level 4(?) also gives you the ability to use your realm's basic weaponry (like slash, thrust and crush for Albion), so my wizzie can switch over and use a small shield and rapier (which glows, yay \o/ ) for close quarter combat. I could have trained in minor combat abilities which would have given me access to styles, but hitting for 14 damage a time I didn't think it would be a good spend (I suppose it's good for druids who don't get access to combat styles).

I'll see if I can dig out any screenies I've taken from the Circle of Five dungeon...

Mojo · Post by **Mojo** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 12:09 pm

So will it be time to redo templates when this expansion comes out or what?

Heta · Post by **Heta** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 12:23 pm

not realy, the champ lvl weapons are rather equal to the existing artis out there. Arti weapons will be just fine

Selenia · Post by **Selenia** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 12:24 pm

Mojo wrote:So will it be time to redo templates when this expansion comes out or what?

Inso far as much as casters can, if they spec in the naturalist path, provide themselves with their own buffs (+36 str/con, +36 dex, +36 Int ((at level 5)). The champ weapons themselves off little bonuses to casting speed and damage for the caster weapons anyway, and probably to melee speed and damage I should expect. Overall I don't think it's going to cause people sleepless nights worrying that their templates are now defunct.

Gamblor · Post by **Gamblor** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 12:25 pm

Me likes the the screenies =).

I'm looking forward to Dr , more for the Classic server side of things than anything else.

Sure they will be handy here , but the abilitys will be alot more useful if you don't have a BB tbh.

Puppet · Post by **Puppet** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:07 pm

Norcott wrote:That is true yes,, :blank:
but i wasnt implying that it was the only way to gain champ exp.. i was merely giving info with regards to following the quests.. champ lvl xp can be gained from all most anything inc rvr but at a reduced rate so i found on the test server.. just for info: the test server isnt full of people you know, at most theres usually no more than 5 online in each realm and one or two of those will be [devs] and alot of times just me on the hole server so whats possible is limited

If this is going to become what seems to be the norm these days and end up pro correcting and misunderstanding the general post then ill delete the flaming thing and not post anymore info on future patches..

Spam the Gold and Glory with [GLORY] racks up your Championlevel XP quite fast. I was CL5 in no-time with that xD

Norcott · Post by **Norcott** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:13 pm

Puppet wrote:Spam the Gold and Glory with [GLORY] racks up your Championlevel XP quite fast. I was CL5 in no-time with that xD

I would have done that.. but i was going through the quest looking for bugs tbh plus content information.. makes no diff now Pup. :blank:

pikeh · Post by **pikeh** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 2:26 pm

is DR free?