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Guild Revamp Thursday April 27, 2000 Ok, due to much discussion, I've agreed to reform the guild with a lot of changes. Less people, higher level requirements, much more strict recruiting, etc. Read on if you're interested in the changes : 1> No one enters the guild without my direct say so. 2> The minimum level for JoV is now lvl 30. I will be making some few exceptions with members who were in the guild before that participated in IRC, guild quests, raiding, etc actively. I can think of several people under 30th lvl that I would invite into the guild, while I can live without a great many of them until they get higher level. Bear in mind, lvl 30 is the "now we'll consider you" point. I will not be accepting everyone who wants to join who's over 30th lvl. 3> Anyone who wants to join JoV will have me come and view the player unpledged and with no vassals. If I don't know them, there may be a period of "come raid with us first" or something to see how they do. 4> When I accept someone into the guild, I will designate who they pledge to and be there for the pledging. If you're referring someone to the guild, keep in mind that I'm based in Zaikhal and the person (and yourself if you're the prospective patron) coming to me will greatly speed up the process. 5> Once pledged, you are required to be active in IRC, quests, raids and to continue leveling. I'm not saying your life has to be dedicated to the guild or anything, but just getting in and then going idle isn't going to cut it. And yes, that means no damn mules. 6> Furthermore, members are required to turn off guild allegiance requests so someone doesn't pledge to you without going through the process. I know people just like to come up and pledge because we're just that damn cool, but that's a quick easy fix (and it keeps you from forgetting to break from them if a fight break out or some such thing). 7> Problems will be dealt by going through the following channels. Step 1, try to contact your patron. Step 2, ask your guildmates if they have the information you seek - USE IRC. Step 3, is to ask me. I'll happily help you with anything if you've at least tried to help yourself first. People how ask me "how do I get to ..." are expecting me to look in AC Explorer and type out the route in AC for them. Save me a step and look it up yourself. Come to me with real problems - I want self sufficient members. 8> If you want to do a quest, attack a town, or whatever - don't think of me as the only guy in the guild that can organize a small team to do exactly that. Again, this is the purpose of IRC. I know we don't see IRC while we're in game, but anyone who's idle is bound to check in there and if you just say "If anyone wants to do the Hamud's katar quest, /t me in game" and go back to playing - I bet you'll get some responses when people check the guild room. We're all here for each other... that's what it's all about. I'll begin putting this process into effect when I get home tonight. For re-pledging, please look for me in game or in the IRC room after 7:30pm EDT (when I normally get home from work) and bring it to my attention.
- Nighthawk If you want to hunt together sometime, that's fine. I'm not going to war my former guildmates, but I'm definitely over having to deal with the bullshit all by myself. The website, the IRC room and EVERY in game problem has fallen square on my shoulders. I'm over it.
- Night I must insist on two things. 1> No vassals under lvl 15. If I see a low level JoV vassal, I kill them and wait for them to ask me why. I suggest everyone else do the same. The reason for it is that we're at war with 90% of the shard and I don't want some newbie getting killed over and over to be a problem. Also, I don't want some low level causing waves with the very few guilds we're not at war with. 2> When you're in the IRC channel, I want names to be simple. Just your character name if you're in channel, or an abbreviated name with | and your status : InGame, Sleep, AC, Work, Food, afk, etc. That way we will know if you're available in game or in chat, or if you're afk and are just logging the conversation to read later. Please no names like NH-reallylikeswendys! or any other such stupid names. I don't want my screen filled with text just because you think you're being cute. If we lose people that have passwords, I'll change them. To give me information in IRC, just simply /msg NH. I won't be changing myname to the normal NH|Work or anything like that so that I make sure that I get these messages. NO ONE gives out passwords to anyone. If I see someone in the chat room (and I want to see more people in there, so tell your vassals to get in), I want to know that I have their information. Thanks for the help.
- Nighthawk First, about the new server - Snowreap. No, we don't know when it's going to come out, but my guess is that it's coming soon. Start planning your character now. I'm working up some templates for pure meleers (unarmed, dagger, staff, sword and axe are the only ones I can forsee anyone taking). They're stats are a lot more spread out, but they should still work out fine. Pretty much I expect nearly everyone to be a meleer or a mage, with a lesser emphasis on archery. My master plan is that meleers will go to Stonehold at lvl 15 for the Pit, 20 to the crater caves, 25 hit the dires and hopefully hitting olthoi at the Olthoi Tunnels or wherever after 220 melee/melee def. Archers Olthoi Tunnels after 15 and stay there pretty much as long as they want eventually ending up in the dires. Mages to the crater caves by 15, Disaster Maze by 20. My plan is for us to live in SH and control Olthoi Tunnels and Disataser Maze asap. Anyone who doesn't have Life and Item both trained by level 16 minimum (if not at creation) is crazy, so start planning your character now. If you need help or want a couple of suggestions, feel free to email me. Loyalty. This skill is ungodly important to me. Loyalty takes a percentage of the exp you earn and gives it to your patron. Why Loyalty is so cool is that it doesn't take shit away from you, but it still gives something. It's free exp for the guild and helps advance everyone at the maximum rate. By lvl 20 mages should have 70 loyalty and non-mages should have 50. By level 35 having at least 100 Loyalty is completely normal, especially if you're a long term vassal like I hope you all are. Between my two main characters (lvl 32 and 36) my total Loyalty is 215. I think raising it to the lvl 20 point takes maybe 15-20k exp, which is nothing... I can sneeze that. If you are over lvl 20 and need don't have that high of loyalty, think about the exp your vassals should be giving you by then and raise it. It not just for you to give to your patron, it's for your vassals to give to you, etc... It benefits the whole guild, so spend the 15k.
- Nighthawk
- Nighthawk Now, the Allies section needs a bit of explaining as well. We're either allied or at peace with the guilds in the Allies section. We're not allied with Red Devils nor Loch, but we are at peace. I'd say we're allied with Clandancent and Stress Factor just because we hunt with them so much, but aside from those two we're at peace with that listing. Now that that's done, the guild IRC channel is up and registered. You may need to download and install MIRC if you don't have an IRC client. To access the correct server simply type /server irc.stratics.com tehn to get to our channel it's /join #jov r33t (r33t is the password). If you're online, looking for backup, etc - get in the channel. It will be easiest if everyone gets in the channel when they're planning on getting in game and alt-tab's over to check it occassionally to see if something is going on. If anyone is an IRC pro, get ahold of me and show me the ins and outs (like password protecting the IRC channel).
- Nighthawk
- Nighthawk BTW, there is a rumor going around that Hamud's pyreal katar quest is gone. If that's true and you're unarmed, you'll probably be kicking yourself for missing my posts in the guild Forum about trying to rally a party to go get it (even though I already have it).
- Nighthawk Anyhow, we need to have a guild meeting at some point. The big problem is that not everyone reads this page, so it's hard for me to just say "ok, wednesday at 8pm EST" and expect more than 5% of the guild to show up. So, we need to pass this URL out to all of our vassals and make sure they check it a couple of times a week. Hopefully we'll get enough of the guild reading this that we're all on the same page someday in the distant future. :/
- Nighthawk There have been rumors of a new pk shard coming out. Well, as much work as I've put into my character and Ron has put into his, we're still wanting to move to the new shard if/when it opens. A world where we're not at a disadvantage because we didn't play BETA and didn't know the elite leveling spots, where there are no matte robes, where everyone starts from ground zero fresh... I'm all for it. FYI, with the current sticky-patch (tm), I foresee many more people concentrating on melee and magery instead of archery, except Ron of course since he's a die-hard archer. Anyhow, I've heard from a total of zero people from yesterdays post. Was kinda hoping that our guild, oh i dunno - read this. Blah. If you're unarmed and you want in on the quest hunt tomorrow, you better get ahold of me.
- Nighthawk The quest for all meleers is last month's monthly quest that I'm sure most of you are aware of. Its the one where you have to collect pyreal motes by killing lots and lots and lots of golems who occassionally drop one. You combine 2 motes into a sliver, 2 slivers into a nugget (4 motes), 2 nuggets into a bar (8 motes) and then you combine the two bars into the ingot. This is the very very important part - to combine the two bars, you must have 250+ Alchemy to get the best possible ingot which in turn gives you the chance to get the best quality weapon. My good friend Patriot and I are working on getting his alchemist up to about 190 Alch so my mage can buff him to do the combining for us. Once that's done, you have to go to the crater and buy a stamp and a couple of other brief steps (including getting your melee skill buffed to 250+), but the collecting of the motes and finding and alchy to combine the two bars is by far the hard part. If you get that far, let me know and I'll assist you with the final weapon making. Anyhow, I know a lot of our mages are killing golems and don't need the motes they find. Zarr and several others have been my savoirs in contributing to my personal 16, but I encourage any non-meleers who get a mote to turn them into me so that I can hopefully collect 16 more for another one of our guild (most likely the highest level meleer). So, keep your eyes open while you're leveling. The Unarmed quest is one that starts with getting a gromnie tooth off of an Ash Gromnie. Those fuckers seriously hurt with their lightning attacks, so make sure you buff against lightning when you're hunting them looking for a tooth. There is only one dungeon that I know of that has Ash Gromnies, but there isn't a lot of them there and it's deep in the direlands. So, I don't know how you'd go about getting a tooth, but it only takes one person getting a tooth to get a lot of people the quest weapon - Hamud's Pyreal Katar. It's a non-elemental katar, so elemental weapons still work best against things vulnerable to a specific element, but if you don't have the element or if the creature isn't vuln to one - this weapon kicks ass. All you unarmed guys need to send me an email with your in-game-name so that I have a list of you all (god help me for asking for that) so if someone sends me a /tell after finding a tooth, I know who to get ahold of. As a side note, I've noticed that our raiding has dropped off a lot recently - possibly due to me finally trying to level up my new guy, Crimson Tears. Just because Ron or I are not in a raiding party doesn't mean you guys cannot get together and hit our hotspots. My personal favorites are Baishi, Sawato, Stonehold (lotta running to get there) and the Plateau (more running - blah). This is outside of the obvious of doing the Zaikhal, Cragstone, Hebian-to, Qalabar circuit. Anyone who's over lvl 25 should be involved in raiding to some degree and over 30 you should be quite active. If you have any questions that are not time sensitive, please email me instead of asking me in game. My time in game is short, so 90% of my time is running frantically from leveling to killing vassal killers to raiding to other such activities. So, if you don't need an answer right then, email me.
- Nighthawk A lot of people are finding the lugians too hard. Get your Unarmed and Melee Defense up to 120+ before trying The Old Mine. Also, make sure you have a shield and you cast Impen on it. That along with semi-decent armor and not rushing to fight 4 at a time and you should be fine. Unfortunately, archers have gotten the shaft on leveling recently, so you have to deal with it and do lugians. I didn't change melee stickiness, so it's not my fault - but I will be the first guy to say "tough shit - suck it up - I've told you how to level".
- Nighthawk So, for those of you with Bow and Unarmed, you may want to get that unarmed up a bit. Golems and Lugians are both great exp for meleers. Without good melee to hit them and a shield/good Melee Def you're gong to have a hard time. There are Golems all over from the Ice Golem Shrine to the Crater Caves, but the best Lugian spot is in The Old Mine dungeon... yummy exp there if you're a melee under 25th lvl. Turbine has said that they're going to tone down the stickiness of monsters, but it may be as late as next month's patch before that happens. So, adapt quickly and keep on leveling. And yes, the level ranges in the hunting section are a suggestion. If you're 15th+ lvl and you're hunting at Crude Town, you're basically stealing exp from the lower level guys. Imagine when you're level 9 trying to get decent and a lvl 16 is clearing the ridge out so fast you can barely get a hit or two in. Don't be that guy. There are better leveling spots for you, so use them.
- Nighthawk I'm sure you agree. =)
- Nighthawk The Forum is password protected, so send me or Ron a /tell in game and I'll give you the pass. This is a rough draft of our new guild page. It gives you enough to at least see where I'm coming from and answers 90% of the questions I get. Don't think I'm not more than happy to help, but if I say "check the website" it's because it's easier than re-typing an answer I already have here. Yes, you may have to go out of game to come here for a few minutes, but I'll get much more detailed here than I would in game since I only have to type it here once. If you have any questions not covered here, feel free to /tell me as Crimson Tears, Patryn or Crum'. BTW, this guild page is for US. Do not give out the url to anyone. Most of the info I'm putting up here is not for public consumption and is the result of tons and tons of my personal notes and research. Enjoy it, but don't share it outside of the guild. This URL will change every so often to make sure that only the guild has access, so send me a /tell in game and get the Forum password. I'll update the URL in there most likely. Anyhow, welcome to the guild. I wanted to give you all a background on us and your fellow guildmates. Ronald McDonald and Nighthawk are your monarchs, but basically we're not here to be your bosses, we're here to help you guys get started, level up, and handle the annoying political bullshit so you don't have to. We used to play UO on Baja as pks and thieves, so we're definitely not an anti-guild here in AC. Anyhow, enough about us and onto the guild. Most of the guild is made up of either fans of wtfman.com or former Baja pvpers. As of the time of this writing we have about 100 members and we're growing both in numbers and in strength. The downside is that at this point we're in leveling-mode since 90% of the guild is under 20th level. The upside is that once the majority of the guild is 30+, I genuinely think the rest of the shard is in deep shit. If you ever need to say "how do I get to" or "where is the nearest dungeon/lifestone/town to", then you need to download AC Explorer and become familiar with the CoD Search feature. These are very handy and I highly reccommend their use. If you ask me, you're bascially saying that you're too lazy to look it up yourself and you want me to look it up for you. =P |