Another in my series of WAR guides, attempting to explain Mythic's poorly documented RvR schemes.
The latest RvR system change comes at us with recently released patch 1.2.1. As of this patch, there is now an additional way to acquire the RvR set gear. These items can still be found in gold reward bags from keep/fort/city captures, but now you can also collect the new medallions, and use these to purchase the gear.
The are several sources for these medallions: drops from enemy players; rewards from keep and fort captures; rewards from keep and fort bags; and rewards for T4 zone captures.
Enemy players now have a chance to drop one or more medallions as loot when they die in addition to their normal loot. The type of medallions players drop is based on their renown rank. The highest level medallions can only be found as drops from players with a renown rank of 71 or greater! Loot bags from keep/fort/city captures now give you an additional choice of taking a lump of medallions instead of the other rewards. If you don't win a loot bag at a fort or keep capture, you are automatically awarded Officer (or Conqueror for forts) medallions which will appear in your backpack. Being present in a zone when its captured will also automatically drop a number of medallions into your pack. Successful defense of a keep, fortress or city invasion will award medallions also. And finally, there is a repeatable, chained series of RvR quests in each warcamp for which the final quest rewards 4 Officer medallions.
High-level medallions can be broken down into numerous smaller ones, but they can not be reassembled into larger pieces, so take care when breaking down a medallion.
So what do you do with all these medallions you have collected? Well, you use them to buy armor! All of the RvR set gear, from Obliterator on up through Sovereign now requires these medallions to purchase, with prices increasing as you go higher up the ladder. You can no longer buy any of the RvR set items with gold alone. The vendors in keeps still only have a limited selection of the RvR armor sets, but there are not several new vendors in the Viper Pit that sell all the pieces.
Note: RvR set boots still have a chance to drop as loot from players based on their renown rank, so it is still possible to acquire the boot armor pieces without ever winning a loot bag or a single medallion.
Edit: As of April 24th, Mythic applied a hotfix to the servers which now gives a chance for gloves from all the RvR sets to drop from appropriate level players. So you can now acquire two pieces from each set without using any tokens.
Showing posts with label Guides. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guides. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
How to Dominate a Zone in Warhammer Online
With the release of patch 1.2 yesterday came the new Zone Domination system for Tier 4 RvR areas. As a supplement to my previous post about How to Lock a Zone in Warhammer Online, I present my summary of how this new system works...
First off, I find Mythic's mention of 'points' in the domination system is kind of misleading. There really is no accumulation of domination points. You can't save points for later nor can you gain multiple points from one objective. It's more of a binary system. You either dominate a zone or you don't. To dominate a zone, you have to have full control of ALL objectives and keeps in that zone. To gain full control of a keep, it has to be under your realm's control, and claimed by a guild for two hours straight. To gain full control of an objective, it has to be controlled by your realm for 30 minutes straight.
In short, to lock a zone via domination, everything in the zone needs to be controlled by your realm, and all the timers displayed on the map need to finish counting down. If an objective is under your realm control and has no timer, then you don't need to worry about (aside from stopping your foes from taking it from you). If a keep is under your realm control and has no timer, first off, check to make sure that it is claimed by a guild. If it is, then everything is great. If it's not claimed, then you need to get a guild to claim it ASAP if you're trying to lock the zone via domination.
Allowing the other side to take an objective adds a minimum of 45 minutes before you can lock the zone via domination (15 minutes until you can retake the objective, and then you have to control it for another 30 after that). Allowing a keep to fall adds a 2-hour minimum wait (not including the time needed to retake the keep) before the zone can be dominated and locked.
So if you're going for a domination lock, acquiring, claiming and holding the keeps is of primary importance. Objectives are more fluid and you don't have to stress out too much if they get taken while the keep countdown is still going. But, once the lowest keep timer gets to under an hour, you will want to capture all the objectives and keep them out of the hands of the other realm. This usually equates to stationing a few people at each Objective to slow down attackers and to also send out a timely warning. You'll also need a decent sized group at a central location that can respond to these attacks in a swift and brutal manner.
On the other side of the coin, to stop a zone domination, all you really have to do is take a single objective every once in a while. The difficulty comes when the opposing realm has enough bodies to follow the tactics outlined in the previous paragraph. You either need a warband that has enough force to quickly overwhelm an Objective and then hold off attackers for the three minutes it takes to capture the flag, or you will need multiple coordinated strikes and feints so that your foes aren't able to respond quickly and effectively enough to interrupt the captures.
Also, one very important thing to remember is that Zone Domination is not the only way to lock a zone. The previous system is still in place (IE, accumulate ~97 victory points). Zone Domination is simply an alternate method of locking a zone, and you can work on both paths at the same time. Zone Domination will likely have a larger effect on servers with severe population imbalances and off-peak times on all servers.
First off, I find Mythic's mention of 'points' in the domination system is kind of misleading. There really is no accumulation of domination points. You can't save points for later nor can you gain multiple points from one objective. It's more of a binary system. You either dominate a zone or you don't. To dominate a zone, you have to have full control of ALL objectives and keeps in that zone. To gain full control of a keep, it has to be under your realm's control, and claimed by a guild for two hours straight. To gain full control of an objective, it has to be controlled by your realm for 30 minutes straight.
In short, to lock a zone via domination, everything in the zone needs to be controlled by your realm, and all the timers displayed on the map need to finish counting down. If an objective is under your realm control and has no timer, then you don't need to worry about (aside from stopping your foes from taking it from you). If a keep is under your realm control and has no timer, first off, check to make sure that it is claimed by a guild. If it is, then everything is great. If it's not claimed, then you need to get a guild to claim it ASAP if you're trying to lock the zone via domination.
Allowing the other side to take an objective adds a minimum of 45 minutes before you can lock the zone via domination (15 minutes until you can retake the objective, and then you have to control it for another 30 after that). Allowing a keep to fall adds a 2-hour minimum wait (not including the time needed to retake the keep) before the zone can be dominated and locked.
So if you're going for a domination lock, acquiring, claiming and holding the keeps is of primary importance. Objectives are more fluid and you don't have to stress out too much if they get taken while the keep countdown is still going. But, once the lowest keep timer gets to under an hour, you will want to capture all the objectives and keep them out of the hands of the other realm. This usually equates to stationing a few people at each Objective to slow down attackers and to also send out a timely warning. You'll also need a decent sized group at a central location that can respond to these attacks in a swift and brutal manner.
On the other side of the coin, to stop a zone domination, all you really have to do is take a single objective every once in a while. The difficulty comes when the opposing realm has enough bodies to follow the tactics outlined in the previous paragraph. You either need a warband that has enough force to quickly overwhelm an Objective and then hold off attackers for the three minutes it takes to capture the flag, or you will need multiple coordinated strikes and feints so that your foes aren't able to respond quickly and effectively enough to interrupt the captures.
Also, one very important thing to remember is that Zone Domination is not the only way to lock a zone. The previous system is still in place (IE, accumulate ~97 victory points). Zone Domination is simply an alternate method of locking a zone, and you can work on both paths at the same time. Zone Domination will likely have a larger effect on servers with severe population imbalances and off-peak times on all servers.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
How to Lock a Zone in Warhammer Online
6/22/09 Note: This post is about locking via victory points. If you are looking for information about locking a zone via domination, please see my other blog entry on the subject.
In Warhammer Online's RvR endgame, locking zones is the key to pushing the war front closer to your enemies and opening up fortresses and capitols to assault. However, the way this is done is not especially intuitive. So this post is my attempt to summarize what I have learned about the process over the past couple of months.
To lock a Tier 4 zone, one side needs to gain ~97 Victory Points in that zone. Victory Points are gained for controlling objectives and keeps, winning scenarios associated with that zone, completing Public Quests in that zone, and controlling the Tier 3 zones for that pairing.
Victory Points go as high as 97 and as low as 0 and will decay slowly over time if there is no action in the zone or its related scenarios (but the VPs will not fall below whatever the baseline is for the controlled keeps and BOs). Each objective is worth ~6 Victory Points, while keeps are worth ~15. So controlling all six points of interest in a zone will only give you about 54 total points.
Scenarios can contribute significantly to your faction's VP total, but the key is winning on points rather than having time expire. This makes the scenario objectives vitally important, something that many kill-happy players don't seem to understand. Winning a scenario with 500 points will grant your side 6-7 VPs for the appropriate zone. Winning because time ran out, on the other hand, only generates 2-3 VPs. Quite a difference!
PQs only give 1-2 points, which makes grinding PQs to flip a zone rather difficult and not especially efficient. PQ grind should only be considered if you just cant seem to get those last few VPs to lock the zone, or there is major overabundance of players on your side in the zone.
Skirmishes between players in the zone seem to contribute almost nothing to the VP total. Occasionally you will see a 1 or 2 point gain as the result of a large battle, but that's pretty rare.
The bulk pressure of locking a zone still seems to rely on scenarios. And as a result, scenarios are not always the casual, quick fun that they are in the lower tiers. And remember, scenarios only affect VPs for the pairing they are in, so if you're trying to lock a zone, it's best to queue for only scenarios in the pairing that you want to lockdown. Unfortunately, this relies of the other side also queuing for that scenario, but there are usually enough players choosing the queue all option to make it work. Supposedly, if the other side never tries to join the scenarios and you have enough people queued to get it started, your side will still get a few VPs, but I'm not exactly sure how this works.
In my experience, one of the best ways to lock a zone is to first win a bunch of scenarios to push your side's VP total up. If your opponents control the keeps, so much the better. It is unlikely they will notice your point creeping upwards unless you take a keep from them. If you can reach 40 or so VPs without controlling any objectives or keeps in the zone, then you're pretty much set. Run out and grab all the points of interest as quickly as possible, running a scenario or two at the same time to buffer your VPs and keep VP point decay from setting in too much.
To assist in your zone-locking attempts, I recommend installing an addon or two that will give you more information about the Victory Point progression. I use Realm Status and War Effort, myself.
War Effort is a nice addon that shows a window with basic info about all the T4 zones, including current VP count and keep status.
Realm Status is dual-featured. It has a window with VP info about every zone, and it also has popup windows that notify you about changes in VPs for the Tier 4 zones. I almost never look at the main window, but I love the popup notifications. By keeping an eye on these, I can generally get a good idea of whats happening in each zone without actually being there, which makes it easier to see when the RvR focus needs to be moved to a different pairing
In Warhammer Online's RvR endgame, locking zones is the key to pushing the war front closer to your enemies and opening up fortresses and capitols to assault. However, the way this is done is not especially intuitive. So this post is my attempt to summarize what I have learned about the process over the past couple of months.
To lock a Tier 4 zone, one side needs to gain ~97 Victory Points in that zone. Victory Points are gained for controlling objectives and keeps, winning scenarios associated with that zone, completing Public Quests in that zone, and controlling the Tier 3 zones for that pairing.
Victory Points go as high as 97 and as low as 0 and will decay slowly over time if there is no action in the zone or its related scenarios (but the VPs will not fall below whatever the baseline is for the controlled keeps and BOs). Each objective is worth ~6 Victory Points, while keeps are worth ~15. So controlling all six points of interest in a zone will only give you about 54 total points.
Scenarios can contribute significantly to your faction's VP total, but the key is winning on points rather than having time expire. This makes the scenario objectives vitally important, something that many kill-happy players don't seem to understand. Winning a scenario with 500 points will grant your side 6-7 VPs for the appropriate zone. Winning because time ran out, on the other hand, only generates 2-3 VPs. Quite a difference!
PQs only give 1-2 points, which makes grinding PQs to flip a zone rather difficult and not especially efficient. PQ grind should only be considered if you just cant seem to get those last few VPs to lock the zone, or there is major overabundance of players on your side in the zone.
Skirmishes between players in the zone seem to contribute almost nothing to the VP total. Occasionally you will see a 1 or 2 point gain as the result of a large battle, but that's pretty rare.
The bulk pressure of locking a zone still seems to rely on scenarios. And as a result, scenarios are not always the casual, quick fun that they are in the lower tiers. And remember, scenarios only affect VPs for the pairing they are in, so if you're trying to lock a zone, it's best to queue for only scenarios in the pairing that you want to lockdown. Unfortunately, this relies of the other side also queuing for that scenario, but there are usually enough players choosing the queue all option to make it work. Supposedly, if the other side never tries to join the scenarios and you have enough people queued to get it started, your side will still get a few VPs, but I'm not exactly sure how this works.
In my experience, one of the best ways to lock a zone is to first win a bunch of scenarios to push your side's VP total up. If your opponents control the keeps, so much the better. It is unlikely they will notice your point creeping upwards unless you take a keep from them. If you can reach 40 or so VPs without controlling any objectives or keeps in the zone, then you're pretty much set. Run out and grab all the points of interest as quickly as possible, running a scenario or two at the same time to buffer your VPs and keep VP point decay from setting in too much.
To assist in your zone-locking attempts, I recommend installing an addon or two that will give you more information about the Victory Point progression. I use Realm Status and War Effort, myself.
War Effort is a nice addon that shows a window with basic info about all the T4 zones, including current VP count and keep status.
Realm Status is dual-featured. It has a window with VP info about every zone, and it also has popup windows that notify you about changes in VPs for the Tier 4 zones. I almost never look at the main window, but I love the popup notifications. By keeping an eye on these, I can generally get a good idea of whats happening in each zone without actually being there, which makes it easier to see when the RvR focus needs to be moved to a different pairing
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