Brothers of Arms

[Gert]

Some info is slowly coming out and so, like the Expansion thread, this is for anything 1.06 related

[Gert]

1.06 overview:

The coming updates will include many great new features like Guild Renown system, new PvP Tower system, Tier 3 Raiding, and gearing up for our first ever expansion. We're also listening and absorbing the feedback both from our test server community and forum communities to address some of the top concerns and issues. Below you will find each new feature and development as it stands right now but these will surely mature over time as we get closer and closer to their release!

Guild Renown

Guild Renown is a system whereby the actions of any individual player count towards their guild’s reputation. Collectively, guild members can level up their guild in three distinct categories to gain access to new guild rewards and bonuses. The system has two primary components, the Renown level, and also Renown rankings which place guilds against each other and measure your successes against those of other guilds on your server.

Let’s take a look at the Renown levels first, before moving on to the rankings. Renown levels act much like the levels for your character, i.e., as you accrue Renown points through your actions in game, you will in effect ‘level up’ your guild.

Almost every action in the game will earn some form of Renown points for your guild. There are three categories of Renown points that contribute to your overall Renown level:

* Valor points: Earned from PVE gameplay, killing mobs, doing quests, beating bosses and raids.
* Glory points: Earned from PVP activities like winning mini-games.
* Artisan points: Earned through crafting actions.
* Your Renown level is a combination of all three of these totals, which allows you to level up your Renown level in any way you choose. You do not have to do all of the categories if you do not want to. It will be perfectly possible to try and level up your Renown level with any combination of the above actions.


As your Renown level grows, you will earn new rewards for you and your guild and access new features for your guild cities, like new pet or mount vendors, and even another new building type for your city, among other amenities. Some of these new rewards will benefit every member directly, and some will be for the guild as a whole. You will get more details on the rewards themselves when the update goes to the test servers.

Renown rankings are where the competitive element comes in. People like to claim bragging rights, and the Renown ranking system will allow players to see how their guild has compared to others both on the overall Renown earned and also in each individual category. You will be able to see which guild has accrued the most Valor, Glory, or Artisan points in any given period. The rankings will reset after each ranking period (currently planned to be weekly, but that may be adjusted during testing), and everyone starts on equal footing.

PvP Towers

During the update 1.06 cycle we will be adding a new system to the Border Kingdoms that will allow players to fight over new PVP Tower locations. This system is being designed to allow more players access to objective based PVP game play without needing the resources to own a full Battlekeep.

Tier Three Raids

The coming update brings the next expansion to the raid content in Age of Conan. Thoth Amon's Stronghold will become available for raiders to explore, fight and die in! With over half a dozen great new encounters the Stronghold will introduce players to tier three raiding complete with new armor and other new rewards. Thoth Amon has long been a thorn in king Conan's side and players will be able to experience the battle with this iconic Conan villan for themselves...will they stand loyal to the King and be able to thwart the plans of this most powerful of adversaries.

[Kendar]

This look's like fun I hope they make some changes to T3 armor appearance as well.. T1 and T2 looks too much alike, speaking from a conq point of view. Some changes would be nice

[Alb]

yes it would be ... but considering that the differences for Demos was mainly ... some 'nice' colour changes .. who knows :p.

Rangers do get 1 sleeve more in their T2 chest piece when compared to T1 .

[natas]

If any 1 woundering about look of T1-T2 chest piece u can just look at alb first T1;) then ME NATAS T2;P=);D

[Gert]

Alleged Guild Renown screen

New info and pics from 1.06 here for those who understand Swedish:

http://www.fz.se/nyhetsarkiv/?id=35747 (Google Translated)

-7 bossfights
- fight side by side with Conan
- coming in the New Year (bit obvious this one )

Guild Renown rewards like:

-make new buildings and buy decorations for the guild
-2 player vs. player arenas
-new companions, mounts
-higher guild lvl will result in more items and quests from guild's traders[hr][/hr]T3 Barb and Ranger armour can be seen in this post

[Gert]

IGN article along the same lines as the Swedish article here...

Bit more info on the mounts/companions:

The twenty new companions being added are specific to each race and archetype, so you'll be given a chance to obtain a companion that is unique to your character. If you're a mage, for instance, you'll be able to enslave a minor demon. If you're a Cimmerian, you might befriend a wolf cub. The new mounts, which are open to all players associated with a sufficiently advanced guild, include a fast Stygian Half-Breed and a tough Tarpani Stallion whose hide is as tough as armor.

[Gert]

Update 1.06 will introduce a new system in that regard (raid tokens). We have more information about this hopefully later today. - Tarib

About time

[Gert]

And here we go - 1.06 hits TL:

The first iteration of Update 1.06 is now available on the Testlive servers for our players to check out and test. You find instructions here on how to access the Testlive servers and the separate Testlive forums where you can discuss the update and give your input.

Together with various changes and improvements, Update 1.06 also introduces new features and content to Age of Conan. The following overview highlights the most important ones and also includes links to articles which describe them in a bit more detail:

Guild Renown

Guild Renown is a new leveling and reward system for guilds in Age of Conan. Members of guilds can experience their epic adventures as they normally do today while contributing to their guild’s Renown simply by playing the game. There are three types of Renown - Valor (PvE), Glory (PvP), and Artistry (Crafting), which broadly describe three different play styles. As players progress in game, they will be able to progress their Guild Renown for the entire guild and unlock awesome rewards to be shared with each member of their guild. Guild Renown has a maximum of 20 levels to be achieved by the entire guild.

Every week, Age of Conan will rank the top-earning guilds, not only in total points earned (of any kind), but also in the total Valor, Glory, and Artistry earned for that week.

New Tier 3 Raid Instance: "Toth-Amon's Stronghold"

Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold is our new Tier 3 raid instance. It has seven boss encounters, including Thoth-Amon himself. In addition players will encounter some of Thoth-Amon’s most powerful allies, both new ones and some they might have met, or at least heard of, before - like Hathor-Ka.

On Testlive, Toth-Amon's Stronghold can be accessed by talking to the Raidmaster to get attuned for Tier 3 and afterwards entering Toth-Amon’s castle located in the city of Kheshatta.

Raid Loot Token System

Update 1.06 also adds something the players have been requesting for a long time – a token system for raid loot. The token system is added to Tier 1 and Tier 2 as well as Tier 3 raids. Hopefully this will help alleviate some of the randomness (or perceived lack thereof) in the loot drops.

Guild renown article

T3 raid article

1.06 Patch notes (TL Forums)

[Gert]

Had a quick play this morning....

In full T2 gear I have around 2% less mitigation than I do on Live in mixed T1/T2 gear on Gert - hope this is just a visual bug and doesn't translate to an actual decrease

Building village walls gives guild renown so another reason to build them

[Gert]

Class and CC Changes in 1.06:

CLASSES
BARBARIAN

* Too Many To Count should no longer taunt guards.
* It should once again be possible to trigger fatalities with the Whirlwind-combos.

DEMONOLOGIST

* Reduced the range of the Fiery Torment, Storm Chains, Possession, Gate of Hell, Wicked Bolt, and Detonation spells to 5 meters.
* Reduced the range of the Agonizing Jolts spell to 15 meters.
* Inferno of Amher and Shockblast will now crit like they are supposed to when you have the spellweaving buff Hand of Doom.

NECROMANCER

* Reduced the range of the Freeze spell to 5 meters.
* Reduced the range of the Ice Shackle spell to 10 meters.
* Reduced the range of the Unholy Hands spell to 15 meters.

PRIEST OF MITRA

* Reduced the range of the Eye of Judgment and Condemn spells to 5 meters.
* Reduced the range of the Repudiate spell to 10 meters.

TEMPEST OF SET

* Reduced the range of the Cobra Stare spell to 5 meters.
* Reduced the range of the Quicksand, Visions of Hatred, and Puppets of Set spells to 10 meters.
* Reduced the range of the Thundering Voice spell to 15 meters.
* Thundering Voice should now properly interrupt the target of the spell.

PvP area changes:

PVP

* Hallowed Vaults: The direct passage from the center room to the flag rooms is now filled with Poisonous Gas. It's best to not stay in this area very long, as it can be hazardous to your health.
* Totem Torrent: Adjusted some collision walls to improve the gameplay flow.
* Those who have earned a key to the Armsman's Tavern arena can now access a special bloody version called The Lion's Maw. By signing up for one of the two teams (Red or Blue), you can kill the other team to your heart's content, including fellow guildmembers. Note that kills in the Maw do not award PvP experience.

Lion's Maw sounds interesting....

[Gert]

Tried a T3 raid tonight with Taf - was fun but a lot more different/fun than T1/2

[Gert]

The latest 1.06 TL update has fixed the awful Guild Management window - looks quite nice now

Still no sign of the guild renown rewards/npcs though

[Alb]

we can have our own "locals" pub then ... looking forward to that .

[Gert]

Bit of clarification on the tokens:

To clarify, in T3 we created a concept of a participation token. This is a token that everybody in the raid gets for completing a T3 encounter. However, this was not meant to be a primary method of token acquisition for most raiders chasing tokens, which is why we have token containers such as urns which drop a number of tokens. I believe players on TestLive have only "found" the archetype specific ones which grant 10, but there are other container sizes as well and non-archetype specific ones. The participation tokens are there because we felt the game should reward players for completing the encounters outside of guild Raid Point or DKP systems, even if its a comparatively minor reward.

T1 and T2 have no participation token (all the token drops in T1 and T2 follow normal loot drop behavior). It is only the participation token in T3 which is handled differently. This is because the token system fulfills slightly different roles in T1/T2 and the T3 raids, and much of this comes just from the difference between implementing an entirely new loot system for new content, and modifying existing and established content to use a more lightweight version of that same system.

Note that the token pricing of items on the epic equipment vendors reflect this difference.

TL down atm but Guild renown NPCs should be added this patch so can start seeing what they have

[Gert]

* City buildings no longer rebuild when the playfield comes up.

I like this fix No more buildings be built with the load noise on zoning in...

[Gert]

Latest update:

TESTLIVE
* In Old Tarantia, near the Border Kingdoms recruiters, there is now the first Military Supplier, a Gem Appraiser. She accepts extremely fine gem donations in exchange for Artistry points.
* Decoration objects should now appear and function again as intended.
* The Lion's Maw has been closed to the public for repairs.
* Architect-created guild city Decorations and Centerpiece items (previously referred to as "blueprints") now look like the decoration that they are used to construct.



GENERAL
* Fixed an issue which caused the playfield to be locked after finishing the first bossfight in Thoth-Amon's.
* Fixed an issue which caused raidlocking to not work properly.
* Target's target should now work properly again.

The Gem Appraiser is going to be nice for gaining points - no more wasted gems

[Gert]

Your Warped Dread hits Ravenous Crocodile Follower for 369 unholy damage. Your Warped Dread hits Ravenous Crocodile Follower for 378 unholy damage. Your Warped Dread hits Ravenous Crocodile Follower for 371 unholy damage. - Gert1's Combat log

Seems they've fixed Warped Dread to actually do the shield damage as well

[Gert]

Nice blog post here about some of the new stuff in 1.06...

[Gert]

Necromancer

* Necromancers are only able to have one Frozen Hatred. Instead of a new Frozen Hatred spawning, the duration of the pet will increase by 60 seconds for every fatality. This is capped at 5 minutes. To visualize the duration, the Frozen hatred will grow and shrink based on the time remaining. Larger means longer duration.
* Necromancers get a new spell from level 1 called "Frozen Hatred". This spell works like a stance applying a buff that persists over death and can be deactivated by casting it again. This buff needs to be active for the Frozen Hatred to appear when you or your group members do a fatality. This way necromancers can choose when they want these frozen giants to appear.

Good news imo

And there is a new UI for the launcher:

Downloading new patch:

new_patch1.jpg

Options:

new_options.jpg

[Gert]

Latest patch notes has this little gem:

RAIDS
* Kylikki, Leviathus, and Thoth-Amon now have a chance of dropping rare unique social pets.

Not sure why it's K and not V but interesting anyway

[lilieRose]

nice
i am interesting for see that

[Gert]

Production Update

Update 1.06 testing is advancing very well and the tweaking and polishing has come a long way. Still pending testing but if everything continues to look as good as it does now and no major show stopper should emerge, we plan to bring Update 1.06 to the live servers sometime next week. The downtime announcement will follow as soon as we have all the details ready.

1 week sooner than I'd thought it would be...

[Gert]

Should know tomorrow if it's this week or next...