Camps in Vanguard

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Ganking the Gankers

We're still trying to figure out the social dynamics of VG. Is it like WoW, where literally anything goes? Is it like EQ1, where 90% of the players respected camps? Somewhere in between?

So far it seems like we're playing EQ with WoW rules, and it's pretty obvious most of the player base skipped EQ1 and came straight to VG from WoW. At least in WoW, the dungeons were all instanced.

We were under the mistaken impression that whoever engaged a mob first got the mob, but it turns out that the first group to do the first n% damage gets the mob after all. After taking the high road most our two weeks playing, we decided it was pointless to assume courtesy and came up with a couple anti-ganking defenses.

1. Some random person is stealthed (they think you can't see them) or just milling around and following you as you clear towards the boss mob, waiting to gank you.

We clear about 1/2 of the way to the boss and use group evac. Since the respawn is so fast, the person is trapped in the middle of the camp - hope their gate is popped.

2. Just as you cleared all the way to the boss, some player / group runs up and ganks the boss at the last second.

Hard to defend against, but we're going to try some variation of train / evac the next time it happens.

3. Some group comes in and takes over your camp.

Happened to us tonight. Sitting at a camp grinding exp peacefully for a couple hours. Since we were duoing, I guess the other group figured there wasn't anything we could do. Normally we would just find another camp, but these guys were total dicks - waiting for us to engage a mob before ganking us, presumably to scare us off.

That's when we finally understood the game mechanics and realized that our blood mage / necro duo could out DPS / out skill a full group (of idiots). So we turned the tables and followed the other group through the camp, ganking every single one of their pulls. We timed the nukes / dots so that the second they engaged it, our nukes landed. Our DPS was so good that we kept up with their pulls, until they got on their horsies and left.

Several people came along solo after that, and we let them join up to finish their quests (at about 2 minutes a piece) and be on their way. A full group came and requested the quest mobs, so we took a small break to let them do their thing.


Old School

Seems about 20% of the players are old-school EQ players who will walk into your camp and engage you in conversation. Are you here for the quest mobs or just grinding? Can they join up with you to finish their quest? Can they share your exp camp?

These players we go out of our way to be nice to and help out whenever we can. We've also run into several husband / wife duos who were very nice. The other 80% can fuck off and go back to WoW.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

I'm surprised you've encountered so many WoW newbs, honestly.

[Ddrak]

I haven't really had too many problems, but there's not really that many "camps" that I've found yet either.

Dd

[Embar Angylwrath]

I haven't really had too many problems, but there's not really that many "camps" that I've found yet either.

Dd

I've run into no problems with that, but I play on an RP server (decided at the last minute to go there instead of Hilsbury, because some friends were there).

The only issue I've really had is getting people to stick around for corpse runs. ITs a hard lesson, but binding crystals seem like a good investment to me now.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Yeah maybe it's because we've been doing more of the newbie quests - 3 accounts, 6 toons, with our highest level about to ding 16. Hopefully some of the grief will go away as we level up.

So far it seems hard to beat a duo for exp, and folks at the TTH forums are confirming this.

Love the necro so far. I had a few uber pet grafts waiting for level 15 (one it says I discovered), and when I put em on fluffy his power skyrocketed. One is a pet nuke that crits for over 400, and one gives fluffy 10% of his damage dealt back as health. Fluffy kills so fast now that I've stopped using DoTs for the time being.

The wife is focusing on her blood mage now, since they hit disciples so hard with the nerf bat. At level 14 her nukes crit for 1200+. We thought we'd have a problem duoing 2 robe wearers, but nothing lives long enough to do us much damage.

The dread knight is kinda boring so far. We know we'll need him for dungeon crawling later on, but his DPS is the weakest of any toon we've played. Yeah, they're not supposed to be a DPS class, but c'mon Sigil throw us a bone!

All in all we're having a blast playing VG - enough to start boxing again. The wife is having fun digging up all the obscure quests. Not many folks know that you can quest a free horse at level 7, which has generated a lot of tells.

[Ddrak]

Duo tends to be good because your downtime stays pretty low. Once you get too many people the mobs die so fast you tend to have a bunch more downtime. My best xp group so far has been 4-6 people grinding blue con 4-dots. However, the group must be disciplined enough to be able to move from place to place without losing people, and commit to staying for a decent amount of time or it all just falls apart.

I'm still liking the cleric - especially that his damage skills are melee based and healing is mana based, which means I don't run out of mana trying to do damage. Wearing plate also makes me a pretty decent tank, though holding agro is often difficult.

Had an awesome time last night killing Dailuk (5 dot lv21) with a single group of lv19-20s. 10 minute fight and he had a fun trick up his sleeve. :)

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

It looks like the VG cleric is what the EQ cleric was supposed to be. My EQ cleric wore plate too, and I usually had a higher AC than the tank in the group. But the plate cleric didn't mitigate damage the same as a tank class. I believe they mitigate the same in VG.

These days we often time have to camp out with no notice, so playing cleric in a group is out of the question. Playing Markkuss in EQ, the group usually broke up when I had to leave, but at least I'd get some 8 hour camps in first. The cleric epic was also priceless. Epics some day for VG?

So our long term, random play time approach is just to 4 box utility oriented classes. VG has been generous with the options for healing. Our main healer will probably end up a shaman. Run speed buff at level 8 !!!

VG is trying to discourage boxing by making every class a constant button-masher, but I'm sure we'll figure out the right macros over time.

[Select]

There's an FD like spell for Necro's right? If it works out the same train-wise... life will be interesting for anyone who tries to campsteal

[Freecare Spiritwise]

As far as I know, necros, monks and disciples all get FD (DK too?). I know the necro gets it as a lvl 20 quest... No idea how well it works. Levelling is slow in VG. Exp at 14 was about the same as EQ was at 40, so it will probably be a couple weeks before I have FD *jonesing hand twitches* Also, I've read that it's supposed to take a full group at level 20.

One really cool thing about VG is that all 4 healer classes can cast a gem that can be used to rez any healer of that class. That's much more convenient than having the necro rez the cleric and spending 15k+ plat on a stack of EE's - unless she forgets to cast the gem on me.

No class can summon corpses that I know of. That seems to be the only thing the necro is missing from EQ.

[Ddrak]

Summoning corpses isn't really necessary though - anyone can do that at an altar. You just eat an unrezzed death.

Dd

[Rsak]

Weren't those healer rez stones used in EQ2?

[Ddrak]

Yes. VG has a couple of concepts from EQ2 - rez stones, small raids, mobs locking to first to do significant damage, etc.

I wish they'd used the EQ2 targetting system (one target, but auto-assists to get the offensive/defensive as required), but having separate offensive and defensive targets isn't too bad I guess.

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Summoning corpses isn't really necessary though - anyone can do that at an altar. You just eat an unrezzed death.

I'd agree if the game weren't so frugal with exp, and buggy too. I've had corpses half-way down a cliff, or under the world. Standing on top of where your corpse is on the map, and /targetnearestpccorpse not showing anything really sucks. I'm ok with losing exp because I'm an idiot, but losing exp to (unfinished) game mechanics is annoying.

I wish they'd used the EQ2 targetting system (one target, but auto-assists to get the offensive/defensive as required), but having separate offensive and defensive targets isn't too bad I guess.

Takes some getting used to, but I like it.

[Ddrak]

I've found /targetmynearestcorpse much more effective.

Dd

[Frank O Pinion]

Not many folks know that you can quest a free horse at level 7, which has generated a lot of tells.

Including this folk ... do tell, oh wise one. I've found no such quest.

-FrankO

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Not many folks know that you can quest a free horse at level 7, which has generated a lot of tells.

Including this folk ... do tell, oh wise one. I've found no such quest.

-FrankO

From the wife: "Darkhorse downs, horse pens, woman standing in the middle, level 7 quest."

Darkhorse downs is on the Qualia (sp?) continent, south of Lomshir if I remember. Non KoS to dark elves (hathor zhi) and lesser giants (lomshir) that we're sure of.

The quest horsie has a really cool look. He's a tad slower (5%?) than the store-bought ones, but he makes up for it with extra stability (+5%). If your quest horsie is too slow for your liking, you can replace him at lvl 10 for 12 silver from a horse vendor. We like the look, and the extra stability so we've kept ours. With the horseshoe, tack and shaman buff, he's plenty fast.

The wife is a questaholic, and her next find was figuring out how cool the missive quests are. Repeatable, decent exp, decent money, easy to do and you turn in 10 missives and get a nice prize. She's gotten 3 yellow items so far, with the rest being blue.

[Finglefinn]

Gettin' ganked by the E is a lesson.
So, is there any more questions?

[Frank O Pinion]

Great! Thank you for the info.

-FrankO

[Stormaye]

So far it seems hard to beat a duo for exp, and folks at the TTH forums are confirming this.

Trivia note: the TTH community manager (edit: for Vanguard) played a druid on Brell for years. Ask her for an evac sometime