Solo Farming Rares

Someone on the forums had said farming solo instances like Refuge of the Apostate, Isle of the Iron Statues, Forgotten City (Unchained), and Dead Man's Hand (Unchained) for rares was full retard.  I respectfully disagree.  Doing Nightmare Bubbles would be full retard.  Solo farming for rares is just partial retard and everybody knows you never go full retard.  And having done it to get the Children of Yag shield, the Hyrkanian Chest and necklace (on different toons), it is also very tedious.

When I wrote the guide to Dead Man's Hand's main quest line, I ran the instance 18 times to get an idea of how much gold, Esteem Tokens, etc. would be gained.  Dead Man's Hand, while fun, is the most time consuming of these solo instances but each one, if completing the quests in them, takes around 25-40 minutes (although I know people can do them faster if just going for the rares).

Keyboard Commands of Age of Conan

Like all MMO or RPG games, Age of Conan has some a lot key commands.  This post will list some of the main ones that many new players don't know but often ask about in Global.

In general, if you go to Settings -> Controls, you can see most of these as well as change them to whatever you'd like.

This post will probably be updated over time as features are added/removed or people mention different commands that are generally useful to players but not included.

So You Want To Be a Guild Leader?

There's much more to being a guild leader than been the head of a bunch of merry men (and women).  Even if you've been a guild leader in other games, you may be better off learning a little bit about AoC before starting up a new guild or taking over an older guild.  This guide (on the native blog site) has a lot of links back to the forums, resource sites, and other blogs, hopefully providing a useful resource for new guild leaders.

Here's some things to think about as you ponder starting a guild.

"Secrets" of Tortage

Most people have gone through Tortage a few times.  Including characters I've deleted, I'm guessing I have run around the Barachan Isle more than twenty times (including a few times to make notes for guides and such).  Despite its familiarity, it's still one of my favorite places in the game.  Partly due to characters you interact with and partially because the area was so detailed and full of interesting quests.

This post is going to focus on a few special quests.  Special because it requires the completion of another quest before it becomes available, its reward is a blue item, or both.  There's also a few Night bosses sprinkled about White Sands Island, the Volcano, and the Underhalls.

What is Daggamalt?

Old Photo: it's now nerfed to 405 and 68/s.

Taking a mild break from making simple walkthroughs, I thought it'd be fun to look at one of the health potions we all use without thinking.

What is Daggamalt?  We know it to be the level 60 healing potion that everyone knows, loves, and wishes was more potent (which then begot us Potent Daggamalt).  The beer nerd and amateur home brewer in me wanted to look into whether it would be possible to make Daggamalt.

Faction Walkthrough: Hand of Glory (Turan)

One of the only good things to come out of the 2011 Conan movie was the Savage Coast of Turan adventure pack.  This provided another level 50-55 leveling area, two solo instances, a group instance, and a Tier 3.5 Raid that almost nobody did due to difficulty for the rewards given (I think that's changed recently).

This walk through will provide a basic guide to joining the Hand of Glory, advancing in the ranks, and listing the quests available.  It also contains some story spoilers.  This chain has some fun dialog and many of the characters you meet have some fun non-game advancing lines that are worth a read if you're lore hound and enjoy tie-ins, even if its from a relatively bad movie.

Walkthrough for The Weakling, The Warrior, and The Wanton (Unchained)

Dreary place

Outside of raiding and PvPing, one of the best ways to get better gear is by gathering Rare Trophies that can be traded in (with gold) for purple gear.  One of the easiest Unchained instances to gather rares is Dead Man's Hand.  It generally takes longer than Island of Iron Statues and Refuge of the Apostate but is easier than both and significantly easier to access than the latter.

All a player needs to access this (and Island of the Iron Statues) is the Turan Adventure pack (which costs 1300 Funcom points or 6300 for the Jewels of Turan version which has several additional features including the Sand Demon combat pet).

To start the quest, talk to Artus in Ardashir.  The first time this quest is run, there's some extra steps (that I won't cover here) that set up the story for the recurring section.  After the first run through, the island only has four recurring quests.  Despite not paying much in silver (four to six silver, compared to 10 to 12 for Khitai quests), these are fairly easy to complete and in your general path through the island.  The fourth quest is available on the island but since completing it takes you off the beaten path, it's not covered here although it is pretty straight forward.