f13.net

The Kingdom of Estiah! It ain't half bad, yo.

You fight using collected 'charms,' which are like cards in a deck you fill with offensive and defensive actions. At the beginning of each fight, your collected deck is shuffled and put into play. At first, you are a generic adventurer that uses very simple charms — mostly ones that do damage or absorb damage — but soon you start building up skills and gaining charms that combine effects and allow for specific targeting strategies. The charms you can use are dependent on what your stats have grown to. You grow your stats by gaining skills, and by signing up for a job once a day.

There's also a collection system and you can have a pet that can participate against other pets in races or fights. Pretty much everything you do feeds you with skills and levels.

I'unno give it a shot and see what you think.

www.estiah.com

and if you wanna be nice, when you sign up, use me as your mentor by using this link to sign up.

http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/20038

If I mentor people (by getting them into the game, oh snap viral marketing) I get points in my mentoring skill every time they level. So you guys might want to coordinate mentoring so that most of you can have people giving you mentor points.

Dunno how long I'll stick with it, but I will say I like their style sheet. :-)

I made you my mentor Sam, so you'll at least get a few mentor points.  If anyone is interested, mine is:

http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/20419

This is good, more people should try this one.  I put you as a mentor Sam.

Questions:
-I did the first dungeon & a bunch of gathering.  What else should I do to get to L3 to make it to the next city.
-I saw that different skill raises give you various stat bonuses, should I start planning ahead to what stats I need for the tier3 class or is leveling slow enough that I dont need to worry that far ahead.
-Is there a maximum of saved up action points?  Do I need to reapply to the job every 24hrs?

I'm de-lurking to say that I'm giving it a try too. I set up two accounts (they allow it, just don't mentor yourself) and one is under Samprimary and the other was meant to be under Lantyssa, but I unfortunately forgot to come back to nab the link. It's engaging so far, the deck-building tactics seem to get fairly complicated at the upper reaches, but I trust it will continue to ease me into them as I progress.

I believe there are 240 action points per day, and you can accumulate 1200 of them, five days' worth. But playing more regularly lets you take advantage of the resets to dungeons, pet races/fights, travel, and work.

Here are some useful tips for beginners from their forums, I quoted relevant section below. http://forum.estiah.com/index.php?topic=646.0


Hoax, you should post your link so people can pick you as a mentor. I'm posting mine here in case people want to chain these along.

http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/20703

http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/20775

Here's mine.

Where am I supposed to be fighting at L2 until the first dungeon resets?  pvp?

I get it, spam arena 4tw, anyone found a link to the arena mobs and what they do so I can not waste points checking if I can beat something?  I wish I had recorded all the random fights I've failed at so I could review the decks they use.

I also created 3 alt accounts, because I forgot to assign the first one a mentor.  So Lant and Sev you both have a padawan.

There is a Wiki with useful info: http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Arena

The Arena is also a good place for this:

For instance, I was able to master rank one of Spirituality (http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Spirituality) by level 4 with decks designed to always kill my predictable low-level enemy with my very last charm (card).

I'm going for a Shadow Knight, so I am focusing on Dex/Pow.  Right now it doesn't hurt to spread the points out a little, and in fact it lets you use more charms if you have your stats spread.

It is beneficial to master as many skills as you can.  There is no downside.  They'll help level you, but only the stat points from working jobs (nn/900) are limited.

Once I got a hang of things, I ran the Sewers for charms, items, and the renown skill.  Then I would move to one of the adjacent cities and do its dungeon for more.  Eversweep gives you a fire charm which focuses your next several attacks on one target, while Aleas gives a defensive armor/ward charm which focuses attacks on you.  Once you're strong enough you can do the Bunny quest there for some nice Yeti charms.  With my spare action points I would gather or play in the arena.  The other cities let you participate in PvP, too.  (No harm to losing other than lost action and a bruised ego.)

Jobs you have to manually train each day.  The selected one shows up on your character page for quick access.  You can switch even after training, you just cannot train again until the next day.

Another tactic I've just realized is that you want your default defense gear to contain your absolute best set up.  For dungeon and areana fights you want your gear selected to give you skills.  For gathering and hanging out in PvP cities, you don't get weapons skill ups, just the skills like Survival and Extreme Gathering, so having your best charms assigned lets you win those.

In the eternal quest to be different, I'm working up my stats differently than the primary/secondary/tertiary/ignore recommendation, and am instead going for primary/primary/secondary/secondary.

Also, I want to pick an hour each day where I'm sitting around someplace where people can get to me, and I'll switch my pvp defense deck to just 14 wards/armors, so anyone can kill me and get buku skills.

So I'm really getting into PvP now.  Lots of arena fights today.

I'm level 7.  My gear of choice focuses on magic damage, a few pieces of armor, and one ward and combo armor/ward.  I'm picking on level 8-9 people with low PvP rankings.  They lose nothing besides a bit of ego on the recent news, and if they win then they get Self-Defense skill.  Because their health pushes my deck to it's limits, and they're higher level, I'm skilling up Courage, a ton of other skills, and often Spirituality.  Also being higher level, it costs me 8-9 action instead of 10.

Edit: put in correct skill name

-I'm working my 4 characters through the sewer to get the +500g bonus
-Been grabbing the rat parts craftable item (+6/+6 def), missed those for awhile
-Raising spirituality versus the rat lord (just make a deck w/ 60 damage that will win on the last card)
-One of my characters got a hamster, which made me notice that fleas were pets too, I'm now enrolling in pet fights on all my characters
-I'm working towards a pure defense deck to just outlast the spirit of arena mobs and beat them even though they are higher level.  I need some better armor and/or wards before it'll work...

I'm going to send one account to the L3 city to check it out, keep the rest in noobville for an extra day.  Since I noticed there was a travel timer so I don't want to rush before I get the most out of the starting location.

I need to get my job timer so that it goes off pre-work hours instead of in the middle of the day, since I can't really play on a day we're busy.

You can do the dungeons in both cities if you have the action points by doing one before you move, then the other.  Then move back the next day.

I've found a reasonably reliable way to build Cheat Death (http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Cheat_Death), a tremendously valuable skill which grants another +1 Spirit as well as +5 HP.
Cheat Death = win with no charms left (Spirituality skill) and almost no HP (Survival skill) in the same battle.

Here's the battle: http://www.estiah.com/character/combat/replay/id/3131429/owner/20703 - you can watch it once logged into your own account.
Here's background on my opponent, the Old Goblin, level 5 in the Arena: http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Old_Goblin

Hint: From the Wiki you can see that the Old Goblin has 16 spells, 12 of them are melee hitting for either 9 or 10, and 4 are armor.
Hint: Your spells will always get through so you can determine exactly how many rounds it will take to kill him. Which tells you how many rounds he will have to attack you.
You should be able to work it out from there.

Why don't I get any skill ups from pvp while people who are L6 attack me at L4 and gain skill ups for winning?  wtfx

I've only won one battle where someone attacked me, and the majority of people I attacked were two levels above me.  Sometimes they got skill, but a lot of the time not.  So, I don't know.

I think you can't skirmish a person then attack them and gain skill, or something, so skirmish is basically only for testing out your armor ratios I guess.  My characters are coming along, I think you 3 should have gotten mentoring skill ups when they hit L7 today.  Its interesting to watch for how they are going to diverge into different strategies.

I'm currently running my pvp gear as a defensive deck on 3 of 4 guys.  Since Bunny Hood and Protect are so much better then any attack you can get at my level but once I build up some actions and farm some dust I'm going to Zeal on Sunday where the attack charms + pvp gear look tasty.

Yep, I got some points.  I'm at 51/100 for mentoring.

WORK HARDER NOOBLETS! (http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/whip.gif)

Lantyssa is so mean =(


I am torn between leveling up and SITTING HERE FARMING PEOPLE 2 LEVELS HIGHER THAN I AM FOR THE NEXT WEEK!
It takes a bit of prep work but setting yourself up for reasonable pvp, but once you get there the game seems a bit easier.  (I say this at level 6 HEH).  I can use my pvp setup on offense and defense.  It is also working for farming Yeti!

Oh, in case anyone wants to be my young apprentice
http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/2085

You are learning quickly my young apprentice.  Your reaching level 7 has also been noted.  You will have full rations for another week.  (Gotta practice my Cruelty skill... can't be a Deathknight without it.)

I moved over to Eclis to check it out.  A couple of mid-40s are actually using me to practice their Cruelty skill.  I wish some people my own level would.  I want to get my Self-Defense up.

Funny thing about getting a good record in PVP.  Others will not want to attack you ;)

I may slow down leveling for awhile.  I want to see about more Yeti cloaks in Aleas and complete my Battle Claws collection.  Maybe pick up more bunny hoods.


Any consideration on F13 forming a guild?

Yeti Cloak and Bunny Hood are worth it, but honestly at this point you level so fast that I'm not sure its really a big deal.  OTOH, the Battle sets are win and farming enough dust 5x5x6 per charm set so it takes some doing.  I'm in Everclear with my characters at L7-8 eye'ing Zeal and its Goblin Tower where I can get some crafting components for decent charms and some good str8 charm drops.

I figure I'll try to get so good others want to try and knock me down a peg.  One for two tonight.  Aleas is a little more happening than Eclis for level 10s.

Want to amend my post, I only am sending 2 of 4 characters to Zeal, the drops/crafting isn't all that hot, esp not when compared to the joy of stomping other players for their shiny dust aka Battle set gear.

Basically I looked at my character's stat lines and decided if they could utilize the best of the loot you get from Goblin Tower I'd go.  But for the other two its going to be just dust farming and ap saving then the Cursed Forest, which has some great charms what with the introduction of DoT.

I can still pretty much cream 90%+ of anyone my level, but its getting harder to take out people who are +1L from me.  I've been cherry picking weak +2L players to try to level up courage and I always start by attacking the highest level to maximize my action point gain.

At level 9 I took a little break.  Being fairly busy for the last couple of days I moved a safe town, worked a job and decided to gather a bit with my big pool of points.  In my opinion the guide is a bit off on delaying gathering.  While it can take a bit more time and be less profitable it does have some advantages.  At this point I am really trying to focus on my 2 core attributes.  You can gain 2 skills that will give nice boosts to your primary.  Exploring (which happens at random) will eventually unlock precious spirit (already vital).  The downside is on occasion you run into trouble (a gang of players or single player) if you lose that fight you get nothing.  However, monster attacks yield a bit of gold and you get a gather item.  You can laugh it off, but I already crafted a level 13 item with a single market purchase.  With that I saved  good deal of money and have a jump start on another tier of play.

*edit* I forgot to mention.  Win or lose those random pvps do not go on record but you DO gain the pvp itemif you win!

There an F13 guild  yet?

Hint:  Skip the fuck out of the Goblin Tower, do get free items/gold from Cursed Forest.  Its very easy to just slap together an auto win deck in the forest and the drops & craftable charms from Goblin Tower are pretty poorly designed, I may end up only really getting 1 Spiritual Shield (2x armor +1 spirit) and a handful of the +15 to next cards after running it 6 times.

Hint:  Get +6 stat jobs.  They are better then +5 stat jobs.  :grin:

If I were to do it again I would focus on pvp and pick up every battle set I can use instead of doing Goblin Tower, make sure you grab 2+ battle shields and then do Cursed Forest when I hit L9.

We don't have a f13 guild yet, I don't think we have that many people playing though.

No.  Guilds take big cash and items to get started.  I think there is a level requirement as well?

Level 20 and 5000gp.

I like the +15 Boost (only gotten two magic boosts, not the melee) from the Tower, however the Cursed Forest drops some really nice charms.  I'm going to hop between Aleas and Lumina for a few days collecting those I think.

I got my Balance skill maxed by building a deck of 8 offensive, 9 defensive, and 4 support (defensive) cards and fighting the level 10 arena fighter.  He couldn't kill me, and though he did more damage, he only has 20 cards, so he always lost.

It is getting more difficult to boost variety skills now.  I *just* picked up my first axe.  I still have no holy.  Amazingly enough I picked up several points in recklessness on pvp duels (mind you my deck has reasonable defense!).  Gotta work on balance.  I also have to figure out tactician. 

Amusingly I was trying to farm up dust for a few more high defense items and started scoring fragments.  Now, I am not willing to spend 100 gold to get 2 dust, so that was annoying.  Scored what I needed though (and fragments for items already).  The final cursed forest fight beat me my first time.  I had to strip all my defense, but I won.  FARM MODE ENGAGED!

Do you only need to max a skill once?  There is a rank number next to the skill but once I've mastered it I can't see how to progress to the next rank.

Many skills unlock rank 2 at level 10.  3 at 20, etc.  Skills with fewer ranks unlock at higher levels.  There may be some which unlock earlier, but the wiki isn't very comprehensive.

Somebody actually beat two of my decks in pvp using a 100% battle charm deck versus my decks which never lose to equal levels..  I'm going to dedicate much more time to researching how valuable a dungeon really is and otherwise skipping and farming players.  My pvp ratings are all close to 1600 as is so nobody ever fights me who doesn't think/know they are the shit.

For example, I'm going to pretty much bypass the L10 Battle Tournament except for with my Int/Dex character because he can readily use the best two charms Thundercall & Lightning Reflexes.  PvP for my other guys.

Lant, I used you as a mentor yesterday.  I found out a couple of days ago that another name for a red panda is a bearcat, and I have a large shaggy cat that I call Bearcat, so that's my name.

I'm finding the key to battle is to build a deck that's uses the combined ward/defense charms than separate armors and glyphs. I'd recommend running holy square to get 5 protects and then Bunny Hunting dungeon to try to get the yeti fur cloak.

For general combat I agree about the protective charms.  If you know your opponent only uses magic or melee, then the armor and ward charms are more effective.

For pvp you def don't want to run non cumulative armor/ward unless it is at least 1.5 times the average damage for your level's metagame.  Which means already at L10 I'm pretty much only liking bunny hoods, yeti cloaks, L7 pvp +20 charms and the +23 200 gold vendor charms.

I'm resting all my characters except the one that is running the battle tournament in Inachis.  I'm still doing jobs because I don't really fear leveling up, I'd like to hit 12 through jobs then go on a fucking tear for fragments and max out all my pvp charms this time around.  The Thunderock charm drops look great but I don't think that I'll be able to use that many of them at 12 judging from the dungeons I've farmed so far.

Here's how i would have done it:
-focus on getting self defense up, before you go ape shit and make your pvp rating so good that people don't attack you ever.
-make sure that by 12 you have 6x5x5 fragments, this is for the 6 battle charms you will get 5 of before you hit 17, you can supplement with armor/ward/dot depending on your pvp build.
-once you've done all that pvp, you can look around and go for craftable/dropped charms to fill out your charm list.  Either for skill ups you need or to make your pvp deck better.
-make sure if you can't get a job that is useful to you, then take a movement job and the +250gold.
-if you still have action points left over, I mean if your getting over 900AP saved up, then gather based on what the skill up gives you.

I am out here farming for more brawler gear right now!  Hoax has a point about the self defense skill, but it is hard to get that many attacking you.  At this point I do not get attacked.  My defensive setup is also much nastier than my offense.  In offensive pvp you are going to end up filling gaps in skills.  Right now my deck is doing dots and training up skills I never used much (like swords, earth and other random junk).  It still wins because the concept is solid enough, but it is a bit spread out.

Level courage.  It is not that hard at low levels which makes it easier to do without specializing.  My advice would be stick with a deck that does one damage type.  Players are going to have both defenses in a deck.  If you are able to focus one one defense half the protection they have is useless.

At level 10 try to get battle protections (pvp item).  I would also suggest battle preparation, that might be of little use depending on your deck though.  Do not ignore the level 12 brawler armor/wards.  +32 defense is amazing.  At level 12 with the right loot or purchases you can get 14/14 shoulderpads through crafting in Luminia.  At level 13 there is a 17/17 item crafting item in Inachis.  Both are expensive 75/100 gp each + materials.  PVP Items do not cover both defenses. 

Does anyone have a good strategy for building power?  I am working towards the Deathknight class, which makes heavy use of Dex, Int, and Power, but I can't seem to find any way to build all 3 at a reasonable rate.

Destruction (break armor)
Recklessness (no defense)
Fist, Shadow, Sword
Condenser (from kata gathering)


Prospector Apprentice
Firefighter
City Guard
Graverobber

Of course, it is pretty hard to raise a third attribute into useful levels.

There are a couple of jobs which I alternate between since I am also going for a Deathknight.  It depends on the city, but there is some overlap there are a couple of near identical jobs when it comes to stats.

City Guard: +4 Pow +2 Int
Fire Fighter: +4 Pow +2 Int
Bodyguard: +5 Pow +1 Con
Barber: +3 Dex +2 Pow +1 Int
Scribe: +3 Dex +2 Int

There were some others I liked, but Lumina doesn't have those available.  Current stats: 54 Dex, 42 Pow, 33 Con, 31 Int, 27 Spirit, 156 Hp, Level 13.

I think my big revelation has been, that leveling up is sort of the enemy in many ways.  You don't want to level up while increasing a stat that has no value.  Its much better to be a very well built L13 then rush to L15, pay more AP per pvp fight and have worse stats.  I've started to use the +250 gold movement jobs much more often, basically if I don't see a job I really like the stat and skill bonuses of available at the city I happen to be at.  I've also started to pay more attention to what leveling a battle skill actually gives me.  If it doesn't level up one of my top two skills, do I really care about gimping my pvp deck to skill it up?

The wiki is down so I can't look over the Ornate Bronze L13 crafted set but here is my list of stuff that is worth going for besides the Brawler(L12) pvp sets for my characters who are all at L12 or 13 currently.

Brutal Axe(52pow/34con/L13) - Thunderock
Iron Kneepad(L10) - Cut Amethyst(Ecl), craft(Lum)
Lightning Reflexes(34int/31dex/R1Lightning) - Battle Tourny
Thundercall(36int/26dex/R1Lightning) - Battle Tourny
Stone Fist(43con/31pow/R1Earth) - Thunderock

Its in my gibberish shorthand but shouldn't be too hard to decipher.

I've got a DoT deck going that does wonders.  I almost tried it out on Pezzle yesterday.

I think I'll start engaging y'all if I see you.  I still find myself feeling guilty for attacking people even if it doesnt' mean anything.

5 x Ornate Ring
1 x Brawler Shield Mug
4 x Summon Spider (need one more)
3 x Burn
2 x Poisoned Sword
3 x Spider Kris
1 x Acid Daggers
3 x Bronze Knuckles
1 x Battle Shadow Scroll
1 x Battle Holy Scroll

Most of those cards are crafted.  On top of a massive amount of DoT damage, there are a few armor breakers to make sure it can penetrate every round.  Interestingly, summons deal damage on your turn, while magic DoTs apply on the opponent's turn.  I'm hoping for more summons and a few quickening cards since I am going Scout -> Rogue -> Deathknight.

That deck will beat me Lantyssa.  I know this because I still have trouble with DoT decks.  Trying to work out a way to beat them.
I also know because I have skirmished you several times ;)

My current defense deck is a bit silly, but it makes me grin anyway.

5x Brawlers claws
5x Bronze knuckles
5x Battle claws
2x Steelwood hammers
1x Acid daggers

The rest is defensive stuff, some of which needs upgrading.  I will probably trade out battle claws for spiders.  Once I go to town I will pick up shield mugs and poisons as well.

Wow, mine is a good deck.  A level 16 attacked me, so of course he gets first hit.  He won with 4 hp.

Lant get some Iron Keepads if nothing else, you should be running at least 3 of them imo.  They are L10 required craftable +8 armor +1 action.  There's also Lightning Reflex which is 6 magic damage from the Battle Tournament dungeon.

I don't have the stats for the Lightning Reflexes or that other one I have but can't remember.  I've thought about the knee pads, but want to stick with my current deck for a bit.  I don't want to change too many variables at once.

Whoa, where can you craft those?

Imperial armorsmith in Lumina
2x Iron ore
1x Cut amethyst
1x Aluminum
60 gold

I'll cut you! :x

Remorseless  training?
hehe

Can you level heroism fighting pvp 3 over your level or is it just dungeons?

Grr, I have no inventory space.  Since I don't really have a good idea of what are good items to craft, I keep everything.   I need to research into what items I should keep.

I should build a Remorseless deck.  I like my ornate rings too much though.  M4g1c felt my wrath today, just because.  (Y'all are welcome to fight back.)

The items will depend upon what you want to focus on.  Grey ones can safely be sold unless you want to use them as food or boosters for pet stuff.  Many things like ores, metals, vita, and kata can be bought in the town you want to craft in.  Food seems like a pet thing.  Alchemy and leather goods seem to be the ones with the most use that you cannot easily buy.

IMO, Inachis has the best armor.  Eclis has DoT items.  Zeal has Focus items (with annoyingly low damage).  I don't remember what Lumina carries.  Non-PvP cities have the PvP item traders.

Recklessness is the one that uses no defense stuff.  Easy to do at our level really. 

I was just jumped by a level 16.  Won by 16!

Good job!  Now I'm glad I didn't attack you yesterday. ;D

Lant crushed me with her DoT deck, this is m4g1c's new setup which will absolutely crush that setup versus a almost 1700 rank player at his level. FIGHT (http://www.estiah.com/character/combat/replay/id/3501377/owner/20801)

I'm pleased with the early build of this, at L13 it won 83.3% of fights with me attacking L16's and top pvp'ers (1600+ rating to give them -1 natch)
-Not a safe bet versus people with over 175hp, so I skip them.
-If it gets unlucky with the wide swing timing (an unresolved +damage makes me  :sad_panda:)
-People with +action can outrun it.  I'm otw to pick up Quick Glyphs to even those fights out more.

All four of my characters are taking on a more serious air, I've bought the 4-6 Brawler sets they can use, now I'm just toying with builds for them.  I'll be in Lumina (Spiritual Shield 4tw) for the next couple days if anyone is there to pick a fight with me.  Characters are: Hoax, El1t3one, El6t6one & M4G1Cbullet

I managed to get Lightning Reflexes (x5) into a trial deck yesterday, and after job training I will be able to add Quick Blade (x4).  I'm curious how that will play with a DoT deck.  I'm interested in trying out my Remorseles DoT deck against M4g1c again though.  It'll let Hoax see how good the defenses really are and let me make tweaks to it.  I also have a destruction set using spider summons and a ton of fist and destruction cards.  It's not as solid as the DoT deck, but I still won the majority of fights with it.

I went on a killing spree yesterday and fought every even-level player in Eversweep.  The DoT deck never lost.  The Destruction deck lost twice.  I got seventeen shards out of it.  Time for some upgrades...

I need to farm up some extra action and tech cards.  Blargh, DELAYS

It's worth it to not be underpowered when you level.

In case it was not mentioned, you can leave items in storage for a long long time.  Days and days and days.  I think the timer on  the items might reset if you add to the stack as well.

The scout's extra action cards all deal 1 spirit damage to yourself in order to cast.

It is harsh, but effectively brutal in most circumstances, especially if you sneak in a few powerup + willpower cards.

Lant attacked me today, I didn't do too badly, Brawler's armor was a bad draw, was within 2 cards of winning, lost with her at 21hp and me sitting on 32armor.  Same day, same deck a L17 attacks me (I'm L14) and he doesn't fare so well. (http://www.estiah.com/character/combat/replay/id/3554183/owner/20775)

You did really well considering a I was a level higher.  It was a strong magic DoT deck, so the armor didn't help you at all, though against most people it wouldn't be a bad thing.

I actually thought I was going to lose.  I need to beef up my direct damage cards though.  I've only added two or three and my skill gains were so effective I leveled more than I intended.

One of my builds is an interesting skill learner:

Summon Spiderling x5
Lightning Reflexes x5
Bronze Knuckles x5
Acid Daggers x5
Quick Blade x5
Brawler's Shield Mug x2
Wide Swing x1

Destruction, Tactician, Summoning, Recklessness, Quickness, Fist, Twinblades, and potentially others.

The issue is I haven't invested in Ornate Bronze or Brawler ward charms because I am at Thunderock trying to get 10 liquid stones for Spiritual Shields but its taking for fucking ever.  So I literally have no heavy ward charms on that character.  All my other defense decks run at least 3 30+ ward charms but that one.

I got a destroy 42 ward card today.  That went into the magic DoT deck real quick.

If anyone is curious, it seems after four quick draws you stop.  I had a lucky chain...

These guys refuse to send me a confirmation email, does this game still exist?

Sure seemse to.

I got the first available "shifting" charms. I was wondering what the hell was up with them since they were going to be a major part of my selected T3 class.

Shifting damage is awesome, btw. It automatically turns itself into the damage type that your opponent is least defended against. Likewise with shifting cumulative armor, which automatically turns itself into the defense type you have the least of.

Totally hot for auto-defense decks.

I had two shifting daggers I was finally able to use today, too.  They are great.

In PvP, I had a match-up I won with 1 hp left!  Talk about a nail-biter.

Check spam folder? 

I'm a little overwhelmed atm with 4 characters, may end up  shelving my two most promsing for awhile and working with my more failed experiments up to L20.  I'm just getting to L15, which means colliseum, which is something I've been very excited about.

I still dominate people 2 levels above me but the margin for error has been shrinking noticably.

I've been finding that levels really aren't a good indication of anything.  It really does depend on how well you setup your deck and the luck of the draw.  Certainly is interesting!

That's not true, minimum +2 levels have +20 hp, usually they have more.  I judge based of hp when I choose my attacks since I run mostly under max charm decks for efficiency of draws.

I beat Lant today with one of my characters who is L15 (she's at 16) but I haven't made it public.

Ah.  That fight.  All the high damage cards with me not getting any DoTs until the end didn't help.  But it was a pretty thorough trouncing.

I had actually left that character alone before because of the avatar.  Revenge is a dish best served warm.  (Still a tough fight.)  ;D

Levels count insofar as there are level minimums for charms and they represent periods of feasibility for farming Insert Notorious Blue Charm Here.

For instance, when a char goes from 19 to 20 they unlock their class charms and become tons more powerful; they unlock more at 23, and can farm Blue Dragon Bones, thus making these critical stepping-stones overall.

sides that though the most important figure in measuring up an opponent is their pvp rating: sub-1500 ratings mean "I am trash, please beat the shit out of me 4 free skillz"

I'm at the point where I don't waste time pvp'ing versus anyone who is sub 1600 unless they are +2 levels so I get the fight at 8AP.

So far I haven't gotten anywhere in my first attempts at the coliseum, I was drunk when I checked it last night though so no lessons were learned.

As a note, if anyone is interested in playing, I'm in and wouldn't mind some mentor lovin'. I'm taking it pretty slow, levelling up all my +spi and +hp skills, but it's definitely paying off as I'm decking everyone 2-3 levels above me.  :awesome_for_real:

IGN is Scaradan; http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/21960

I got paired up with you, Hoax, for that Rogue Colossus, I thought that was funny - he had about 8 or 9 DoTs on him by the end  :grin:

I've been playing for a little bit, just trying to keep my charms as up to date as I can (I'm level 13). I'm focusing on Int/Con and using Mace/Holy, hoping to go Paladin or Heirarch when I hit 40. I don't have Cheat Death yet, I was planning on waiting for a few levels then farming it on the Seasoned Fighter (Level 14 Arena, does only Melee and a lot of armor/ward), but until then farming 'The Abandoned Manor' for Heroism/drops and PvP for a set of 'Warrior's' stuff.

What a grindy week or so it has been for me!  Realizing that some of my skills were nearly beyond recovery I set out to bring all the basic attack skills up.  Harder than it sounded for some things (I had a grand total of 3 axes for example).  Days and days of mindless event farming for cash so I can buy underpowered charms.  At least I scored a nice batch of lightning reflexes  :grin:

Axe, Holy and Earth were all rescued from oblivion.  In route I picked up empowerment, summoning, spirituality, cheat death, destruction, sap and tactician.  Some of the decks I had to use were simply horrid..  An unhappy road, let me tell you!

On the subject of cheat death/spirituality have you considered Wizard of Zie?  Level 11 should be in your range.  He only does 20 melee damage and has a low charm count.  I built a survival deck and farmed him up fairly easily.  My method eliminated the melee damage entirely (easy to do) and found a nice sweet spot on his damage.  Only lost 3 fights and spit around 70/30 on cheat death and spirituality.  Once you get cheat death finishing spirituality is trivial.

 

What's the best way to build up Sap and Spiritbreaker?  The shop in Eclis for DoT has only 1 debuff charm, and I am no where near close to the requirements for that. 

Sap--
Brawlers Poison (pvp)
Burn (cursed forest)
Wildor's dagger (battle tournament)

Others are out there with higher requirements as well.  Look for the debuff symbol.

25+ dex or power will get you started.

As for spiritbreaker, you need spirit attacks.  I think the lowest level one is Mind Flay (level 15 from Abandoned Manor boss).

I'm of the opinion you shouldn't do that.  You should only level skills that increase your primary two stats or increase your third stat without raising your 4th.  Also get pretty much everything that raises hp and spirit.  You can use the pvp charm sets as a guide, if you can't use the ones that are primary/secondary and secondary/primary the second you turn L17 your too spread out is my new theory.  This is a short term view though based on, focusing your deck as much as possible is what wins pvp in the colliseum  (along with farming +hp skills).

With almost 30 spirit in the mid-teens, you might miss a lot of filler cards by not leveling those other skills.  Leveling them later on might also be a pain.  For your job, certainly work only on your main stats, but I don't think it hurts you to practice a bit of everything.  (And my decks do well, so it's working for me.)

Poisoned Sword
Spider Kris

As well.  The Kris isn't as nice as the sword, but it filled out my initial sap deck well.  I've done the tournament numerous times, but Wildor does not like giving me his dagger.  I have two, and not much cause to use them anymore.

Work on constructing Willpower decks if you plan on doing the Crystal Mines at 17-ish.  I blew through 300 action yesterday even with six Willpower and three Spirit cards in my deck.

Anyone figured out a way to make penetration not suck?  If it stacked with damage boosts but from looking over logs it doesn't seem to at all.

So I just finished reviewing 3 of my 4 characters and I'm going these routes for anyone who is curious...

-Shadow + magic DoT's + Defense  (dex/pow)

-Defense + Lightning/Twinblades + Spirit Damage (int/dex)

-Axe/Fist Speed Deck (int/pow)

Currently I'm good enough to win 2 fights in the 1v1 coliseum but not win it all.  I still crush people in pvp but only if they are within my hp striking range.  I still dominate L+1 1600+ rating players in the open field though, 80% win rate.  Not good enough though, so I'm focusing in more.  Currently at L16 (no warrior sets yet) the tier1 of the meta is clearly people who can use brutal/diapason axe and the rare spirit damage + turtle decks.

You can farm the Crystal Mines for spirit cards.  I made 5 Dark Shakanite Swords with tainted shakanite, have 2 Mind Flays and 4 Mind Resonances, plus three or four other types of cards I can't use yet.  My Will/Spirit deck does 17 Spirit damage.  I don't have enough defense to survive all fights against players yet (had one double defeat even!).  It's available though.  (The Abandoned Manor may drop a few of those.  I don't remember off-hand.)

My decks are in flux again.  I can do okay if I pick my targets, but I'm probably average at best until I can flesh things out since I blasted through the last few levels.

I have a guild with nine empty slots. You guys could ask for an invite if ya want :D

Here's an update from me. I have been mindlessly coasting on my initial spirit-based strategy, creating an all-defense deck and farming PvP points from two/three levels above. My two characters are around 1800 rating each from this rather dull tactic, but it's allowed me to fully equip even more defense from the PvP store, even buying for future levels. I haven't tried harvesting more than a couple of times, and gave up pet racing pretty quickly (...checking things out to write this post, though, I see I should be aiming for Explorer Rank 2, I ignored Pezzle's tip when the rank one bar didn't show spirit).

I also took a break from trying to level every skill that showed up, since advancement seems to be mostly about maximizing the stats you want, not leveling at any cost. But I haven't spent much time trying to work it all out in advance, I'm coasting and only just now investigating the new kinds of powers which have started appearing in the mid-teens - building a DoT deck. The plan from the beginning was Shadowknight and Assassin, and Lantyssa's SK posts are going to be very helpful when I start getting my brain involved again :)

Bat Country time?  Count me in!

Coalition of the Unwilling.  Does that mean we have to join if we don't want to? ;D

Who are the people in it?  Friends, or random people you've picked up?  How many of us are there which are unguilded?  Do we want a real Bat Country guild if this isn't?

I joined. There seems to be a whole lot of buildings you can make for the guild, but I'm not quite sure how the 'build points' thing work, maybe Sam could explain it.

This is decidedly a not F13 guild, haha. It's full of friends and associates from another forum. You can drop membership like plinko if in the future you want to make an F13 guild, it would be understandable.


HOW BUILDING WORKS FUNCTIONALLY, AS DETERMINED THROUGH TRIAL AND ERROR

- Guild leader determines which building to build next
- Guild leader then tracks the building to build, displaying building prerequisites on the guild page
- Guild members then chip in the required building supplies into the warehouse until the building prerequisites are met
- Guild leader then triggers the building process
- Guild members then contribute their build points each day until the building is complete
- GOTO 10

HOW BUILDING WORKS DYSFUNCTIONALLY, AS DETERMINED THROUGH HOW WE DID IT

- Guild members join guild and go 'cool, a warehouse' and put random stuff in the warehouse
- Guild leader looks at buildings to build and notes them to himself and wonders what 'tracking' is
- Guild leader eventually tracks building and thinks that he is building it
- Guild members fill up warehouse with equipment unrelated to building requirements
- Guild leader figures out what is going on, has to discard tons of random shit in the warehouse so that real building materials can be put in
- Guild members fill up warehouse with equipment both related and unrelated to building requirements until there is no room in warehouse again
- Guild leader says 'hey guys plz only put stuff we need on the tracking list'
- Guild leader looks at tracking list to determine what not to throw out
- Guild leader throws out everything not on tracking list
- Guild leader discovers that equipment that the users had contributed to their needed amounts actually stop being listed on the tracking list, so he just threw out a shit-ton of pine and stones that were necessary for the next building
- Guild leader goes auuugh
- Guild contributes necessary material
- Guild waits
- Guild goes ???
- Guild leader finally comes back from vacation, clicks 'Build' after seeing 'Construction Imminent'
- Guild builds building
- Guild members then contribute their build points each day until the building is complete

How the hell do you defeat the count in the Abandoned Manor?

I had beaten him a couple times without too much trouble then just hit a brick wall in trying to kill him. I refitted my deck a little bit and now I kill him almost every time. Ornate Rings from the Inachis crafting shop help a lot (17 Armor 17 Ward), Thundercalls/Lightning Reflexes from Inachis Battle Tournament, the Focus Staves/Wide Swings from Goblin Tower, whatever other +to next melee/magic you can use.. a few armor pieces (since it's largely melee damage) also help. Get a few big hits in, absorb his leeching attacks and he'll go down.

A lot of DoTs mixed with some heavy damage cards and power boosts.  The big problem is his healing.  You need to either stop it with armor, or be able to have a couple of rounds with sustained high damage.

Mr. Count is susceptible to break n' burst damage above all.

The more damage you do in single, large hits, the better off you are.

I've managed to beat him twice with my current deck which is pretty armor intensive.  However, in both cases, he's dropped Summon Imp and not Mind Flay. 

I'm going to hit 20 tomorrow.  If there is interest, I'll start up a Bat Country, otherwise I'll join the Unwilling.

I'd join BC.

Other opinions?  The guild tag can be between 2 and 6 characters.  I was thinking Bat Country as the name, with f13 as the tag.

It looks like we can get a long banner pic for the guild itself.  We could use the black and white logo someone made, or something else if someone is artistically inclined.

I'm going to get my 4 accounts to L19 then have them fight to see which one I take to L30 and I'm going to leave the other 3 inactive.

Whichever one wins will join BC.

I've decided I hate the Count.  He's dropped Summon Imp 4 times, Mind Flay 1.  I hope the next time I fight him, he drops Summon Imp, that way I will have 5 of them, and the  game won't drop them for me anymore.

It'll still drop them, they just get discarded...

They still drop, sadly :|

Diapason Axe 9
Heavy Crucifix 0

Damn it, I need more Mind Flay to level spirit breaker....

you can pick up spirit attacks as level 17 pvp items.  If you want more from the dungeons go to the Ghost Mine in Skyrift.  Of course, you will need willpower to survive..

We can't stop now.  This is Bat Country (http://www.estiah.com/guild/163).

There are nine open slots right now.  I don't mind alts, but we should first get primary characters in, then maybe go for a secondary alt once we think things are settled and see how much room we have.  As long as they're contributing gold, supplies, and build points I don't think they'll be a problem.

I'm lazy, so does anyone have links to the various f13 wallpapers or shirt art?  The sketchy www.f13.net on a black background would make a good banner.

I am partial to the Chainsaw monkeys myself :P

PS.  WHERE IS MY INVITE ALREADY??

nm.

I'll take a Bat Country Invite!  User sidereal

I'm underleveled for the count, but have occasional success with a Burn deck that's small (14ish?  I can look later), uses all 4 Lightning Reflexes and my highest damage attacks.   Success depends entirely on the Count's moves.  If I can get the Reflexes, Spiders, and big Lightning spells clumped up and he's just doing his dual-attack w/ 6 heal I can burn him down just before I run out of cards.  On average I can get him to drop to about 35 or so.  Kills are rare.

Sent.  I WAS WAITING FOR PEOPLE TO TELL ME WHO THEIR MAINS ARE BEFORE INVITING. :-P

Delmania, inv plz.

I have decided to make another character.  Who wants an apprentice?

I do.

http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/21495

(http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2507/105/2/1086507889/n1086507889_30373261_3037000.jpg)

My PvP record is terrible.  As is my PvE record.  I can't seem to find a good balance between offense and defense.

I've found going with a mostly offensive deck is best.  I have at most four or five armor cards in any given deck unless they give other nice bonuses.

The only exception is my spirit build.  Four armor, four ward, a couple of will, and 25-ish points of spirit damage.  It still can't beat a high damage deck, though it did beat a two-on-one when I was gathering once.

Advice for your guys's guild:

Organize your teams, asap. You want a minimum of 12 players for three teams; fill yourself out with alts if you have to.

The fights take place in teams of four.

In each team of four, you want to do one of two things:

Option One:

- Three players use 100% damage and powerup cards, no armor or ward
- One player uses 100% focus cards

Option Two:

- Two players use 100% damage and powerup cards, no armor or ward
- One player uses 100% combination protect and armor/ward cards
- One player uses 100% focus cards

We only have six of our thirteen slots filled.  Apparently the rush to join our awesomeness didn't happen. :cry2:

We can go on being awesome (and elitist!) without them.

I've been offline for most of the month, back now but still catching up on shit.  I'll have selected a main character by Monday and will need a spot.   :drill:

I made a character (http://www.estiah.com/character/22829) that'll join once he's leveled but I'm not letting myself play much while I have school stuff to do, so... it might be a while. Are there particular party roles that need filling? I've been thinking warden looks fun.

At this point, I think alts can fill in our vacancies.  We can always kick them if someone wants to join up.

I haven't done much teaming, so I don't know how the group dynamics work out.  All I know is I'm going Scout->Rogue->Deathknight and I make the rest up as I go along.

Ok, signed up using ezrast's char. Name in game is Hurion.

http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/23734

I've just made 3 characters.  One will be a slayer, one a paladin, the other a inquisitor.

I love the setup of the game so far. 

Keep a spot for Righa please. I don't know how to join - do you have to invite?

I sent you an invite.

The easiest way is probably telling us here.  Otherwise you can search for the guild "Bat" (the search doesn't recognize spaces) and ask for an invite, or search for Lantyssa and ask for one.

We have recruitment room.  You can invite my alt Smilingjack if you like Lantyssa.  He will be a Berserker!

Is there a minimum level needed in order to join? If not, mind inviting me? (Hurion)

Officers should have invite capability, too.  Since I'm making all the mains I know officers, any of should be able to do it.

I refer you to my invite request dated the 3rd of April, 2009.

Invite sent.  So what's next on our guild buildings?

I sent it.  I don't know why you ignored me.  Or if the mailman got eaten by a Grue.

Perhaps the interface has pwned me, then.  I don't see any indication anywhere that I have an invite.  I have 0 private messages.

So, I am not certain what other people are doing, but I've been grinding some of the various dungeons in Gaea's Dawn and Skyrift.  The distance between the cities requires me to use a moving job, so I am at 125 on Horse Riding rank 2.  I've also been more aggressive in attacking players with a deck that focuses on sword, shadow, and spirit attacks, with a sorted arrangment of armor, ward, empowerments, and sacrifice cards placed in.  I've been doing ok, but not great.  Still having a surprising amount of fun in this game.

It's nice to play a game deep enough that I can faff around between Pet Racing, Arena fights, and grinding skills without getting bored.  Might be a keeper.  Also, the Wizards Study is ready for the guild and needs builders.

I'm wandering around the northeast cities.  Been collecting some nice upgrades and have some evil decks if the cards play out right.  Had a 250 damage hit today. ;D

It's costing me a lot of gold though, so I haven't had any to donate to construction lately.

I haven't found anything to do with money yet, so I've been pretty generous with the cash.  The stuff I can craft is pretty cheap.  I suppose I can buy cards off the auction, but I haven't even bothered looking yet.  I've got a greater than 50% win rate in PvP with a deck I've put together from drops.  Plus I'm still leveling fast enough that any card I pay for would be useless in a couple of weeks.

Who wants an apprentice?  I don't know how much I'll play her, but I'm thinking of starting up a Summoner for some dabbling.

I'll take it... I was planning on being a Summoner myself.

We're being seiged.  It's going to go poorly. :ye_gods:

Everyone that can should build.  I think we lose any gold in the building being built if we lose the seige, so we have 23 hours to get 150-ish points.

Lol. Is there anything I can actually do to help?

Edit: K, will do.

Your guild is besieged by Hell Found (http://www.estiah.com/guild/132).
Start in 23h30m


http://forum.estiah.com/index.php?topic=502.0

You sure you want to put any progress toward the building?  We just started it.  I'd rather just put nothing into it, since it sounds like they destroy some proportion of the building progress, and if the progress is none, then that would be none.

So, should I stack support for my guild deck, or stick with my 100% offense?

There's already progress, and they'll get some gold.  If everyone who hasn't committed progress does so before the reset tomorrow, and everyone does it after, then it's finished and there isn't anything to lose.  Even if we don't succeed, the worst they can do is knock us below what we're at, in which case they would have been able to knock us to zero should we do nothing.

The only way I can see that plan being bad is if they get an amount of gold based on how much progress we've put in.  Then it's a case of risking our ability to finish against leaving it at a quarter complete.

I would say offense with maybe some focus cards thrown in.  That's based on my limited colliseum experience and that offensive decks seem to work out better for me.  Sidereal had some siege suggestions in an earlier post.

There's guild warfare and land destruction and shit? I didn't even know. What level do I have to be to contribute anything meaningful? Szephit is 10 right now.

You can always contribute, especially build points :)

Well we just got stomped. I forgot to set up a guild gear and contributed a whopping 15 damage to the war effort. Not that it mattered; I didn't stand much of a chance (http://www.estiah.com/character/combat/replay/id/33477/report/4162) anyway. Heh.

Yeah, it was nice of you to join and then get gangbanged in a 4 on 1.

The penalty for losing was pretty slight, except for my ego.

Need a lot more Focus in guild decks.  A lot more.  I had a few in mine but never got one out (died first).  Neither did anyone else in my group.

I volunteer to be a focus bitch once I actually get the charms for it. Also we should organize groups by damage type for maximum defense crushingness.

Whoops, it already happened? I didn't even set up a guild deck  :facepalm:

We didn't stand much chance, even with well-coordinated decks.  Our first string second rounders won though. :awesome_for_real:

I had some focus items on, but was the first killed.

Damn it, I need to setup a better guild deck. I didn't even have all my slots filled...

I need two more deck slots.  I have a melee deck, a magic deck, a spirit deck, and an empower deck at the moment.  I want a guild deck, a sap deck, and a couple of others.

Hm.  I have  PVP deck, a base PVE deck, a skillup deck that I rotate cards around with depending on which skills are close, a Burn deck designed to max out damage in 10-15 rounds to kill off particular bosses, a Turtle deck designed to stall enemies to exhaustion, a Guild deck, a pure Magic deck, and a pure Phys deck.  Obviously I don't have this many slots, so I keep having to rebuild them from scratch according to need.

http://www.estiah.com/user/donate

$9 for more slots.  I am thinking about this, I've been having enough fun to warrant throwing them some support.

Forge is building.  What's queued up next?  Shakanite smelter?  Sanctuary?  I have no idea what Seals do, but it sounds fun.

Edit: Aha.  I found a wiki (http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Sky_Seal)

"Seals require a gold upkeep to be paid for their activation and at every action point reset. When active, a Seal will apply its effect at the beginning of each fight during guild battles and siege defenses. However, players that do not meet the level requirement of the seal will not be affected by its powers. "

Seems like a good building to do next.

I like this game better than "The West."
I'm in, named "Ghambit"

I've been using that Wiki heavily from some time when I go to sell items in my invventory.  It also has some use ideas for decking building for various fights.

Did you create your character with a Mentor? Either by typing in their name during registration or by using one of the URLs at the beginning of this thread? It's not a big deal, but it will offer a minor ongoing benefit to whoever you name, so might as well do it with a new character.


I use the wiki heavily too. I'm finding myself wanting/needing to invest increasing amounts of time in research and planning as the battle tactics have opened up in the late teens and 20s, and as my two characters have started to diverge. And that's just for charm acquisition, I haven't begun studying the course of my actual PvP battles yet.

"Black Berets (http://www.estiah.com/guild/user/list/id/179) requested a guild battle".


Edit: I'm up for it, let's get some practice at this.

I'm inclined to accept

Yeah I'd like to accept as well.  More fights mean we can shake our decks and our setups down.

Accepted.  Apparently it's hardcoded at 3 squads?  Not sure how those get setup.  Lantyssa already set up some squads, so I'll leave squad selection to her.

I simply set up the squads to distribute our levels a bit so the last battle wasn't completely random.  Still playing, but I'm rather distracted at the moment so y'all are welcome to tinker with it.

The battle begins 4hrs 0min from the time of this post. The squads are viewable here: http://www.estiah.com/guild/squad

Based on Samprimary's post quoted below, I'd say the ideal contribution of lower level members of each squad is heavy use of focus cards in their guild decks, to create focused fire of the all-nuke decks of the higher levels in the squad. I would also recommend that players with multiple characters in the guild get their characters placed on the same squad, allowing some direct coordination.

I'd be curious to see how a single squad based on spirit attacks would fare. Normally I would think it would be a terrible tactic for groups, as opposed to duels where there is a single card stack to destroy, but if all four decks were spirit attack (both my chars have them) it might be very effective.

Since we don't have much time to prepare, I rearranged squads into more closely level-aligned groups.  If they do the same we'll have a little advantage in my squad, but otherwise the groups will be fairly evenly matched.

Someone is still welcome to redo it though.

THE STUDENT BECOMES THE MASTER!

Hurion (L.13)

Your mentor is [X]  Szephit (L.12)

That's some quality mentoring

I've put five focus cards on each on my chars to make sure some are in play, although that's still only one card in six of my decks. But they're old cards and not too potent otherwise.

Another apporach to squads would be to create one for melee and one for magic. Concentrate the damage types to minimize the opponent's damage mitigation. Assuming they even bother with armor/ward for guild battles, they may not. If that is in fact the way these go - with nobody bothering with armor - then boosts, armor destruction, and penetrations don't matter, it's all about raw amounts.

Also, DoTs should outlive you. If you find your character not lasting long in these guild battles, they are the gifts that keep on giving.

Hello all.  I'm a mighty fearsome level 5 but I would love to join the club if you'll have me.  This game seems very nice and I think I'll be playing for a good while.  I'm Grebo in the game as well.

One question tho, where the heck do I go to make charms out of my rat skin?  Is there a page on the wiki or somewhere that gives the low down on crafting?  I couldn't seem to find it.

Boosts are worth it if they give more than what another card could do.  I still like destruction because a lot of cards add a bit of armor here and there and it'll strip that out, usually at not much loss of overall damage.

To craft charms go to the city market.  Orange shops mean craftable.  Gold means craftable with PvP gems.  Each city has its own assortment, so you'll have to figure out what you can get from where.  Google "Estiah Wiki" and you'll get the main wiki as the first hit.  Lots of raw data, but not a lot of guides that I have seen.

In case no one noticed I have been inactive, mostly.  Game became meh.  I may start up again.  My decks are set up for offense in groups.  The building continues.  If you need space for others I can remove characters from the guild. 

Now hurry up and level 22 more times so I can get 5 extra hit points. Anyway, *my* mentor is still level 9 so feh to you good sir!

Oh, well that's easy.  Thx.

Lost the guild battle.  They stuck all their worst guys in the first group, which our best group crushed, and then yadda yadda.  This, apparently, is a strategy.

Are we sure the squads aren't matched up randomly? I thought they were but now I'm pretty sure I made that up.

They are unless you set them.

Group pvp is quite complex.  If we want to seriously consider it we need dedicated decks.  One person to draw fire, one to buff, one for focusing attacks and one for damage output.  It is an interesting aspect of the game.  It might just draw me back.

Yep, they beat us. A more even level spread, and suckered our best group to go against their worst, giving them the advantage in the remaining two matchups.


The theory that they might ignore protection didn't hold up anyway, this guild at least had a standard mix. Anyway, if they had gone with a single tank loaded up on protect, armor and ward, it would still be useful to break through. So forget what I said.

Oh god, I feel as if I've done a bad thing.  I should not have clicked on this link.  This will end badly for me.   :ye_gods:

Yeah, this game is going to break me.   :grin:   Can I get a guild invite for Ardahl, please?

"Oblivion Squadron requested a guild battle."
http://www.estiah.com/guild/user/list/id/176

Levels: 28, 27, 23, 21, 14, 13, 13, 11, 11, 11, 10, 9  (and then 9, 8, 8, 7, 5 which may be in fighting squads).

BC lvls: 28, 25, 24, 23, 22, 20, 20, 19, 18, 13, 12, 8

I'm giving this a shot as Kageru if the guild needs more lowbie fodder. Took me a while to realise that buying new charms did not put them into your deck, lots of falling asleep at the feet of the rat god. Will read through the thread to glean tactics, but is Paladin a decent / useful class to work towards?

I'm planning on accepting the challenge close to its expiration to give us max time to prepare (if it's close and I haven't done it, go ahead and accept). I have re-ordered the squads in a different sequence, we'll see how that pans out. We don't want to add anyone to the guild now because that would give us a full fourth squad which the attackers would beat, they can field four and may have. But I think because our fourth squad is currently only 3/4 it won't fight, based on the quote at the bottom.

Please put your focus cards in your guild deck!  Focused fire provides the major tactical benefit of having all of us concentrating attacks on one of them and hopefully knocking him out of action quickly. Those are the cards with prefixes such as "Tied", "Guiding", "Aiming", crafted mainly in Zeal early on. I have a few other scattered ones gained as treasure: like Throwing Bright Axe and Terrine's Wide Helm.
http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Category:Focus


http://forum.estiah.com/index.php?topic=502.0

I put all 2 of my focus cards into my guild deck.

Oblivion Squadron has enough players for 4 squads.

I just noticed that on the challenge screen it says "Battle 3 squads" so it looks like we do know in advance, and no worries on the extras this time.

Kageru, I sent you an invite.
I don't know anything about the Paladin... or any tier 3 classes, really, beyond some basic info I've read trying to decide which way to go. Here's the Pally thread from the official forums, if you haven't seen it: http://forum.estiah.com/index.php?topic=1554.0

At this point, my inclination would be to not accept any challenges.  We're obviously not even close to having decks setup correctly for it, and feeding other guilds a steady supply of honor points and cutting our build points doesn't strike me as a sound strategy.

I agree that we're not yet ready for GvG, and any guild issuing us a challenge is likely to be, that's why they're doing it. However, we don't lose build points from that, they're only involved if we are sieged, which we can't refuse anyway. All we lose when we lose a challenge is rating, which is the equivalent to single player's PvP ranking. See: http://forum.estiah.com/index.php?topic=502.0

Here's what I learned from the latest battle (http://www.estiah.com/guild/war/report/id/4333):

• As you said, we don't have enough guild war decks prepared, or inter-squad coordination
• The order of the list in the squad matters, that's the attack order, and I'd want my focus-heavy characters topping the list
• We could have won this with a particular squad order, but probably only one (if we swapped our first and second squads we'd have won our first and last fights).
• Challenger attacks first for a slight advantage, but only two attack, then all four defenders in a row, then remaining two challengers to complete the round. Choice of opponents is a more relevant factor in the reason to be issuing challenges instead of accepting them.
  
• Extra actions are in heavy use, I need to get over my spirit-oriented aversion and make the most of them

Here's how the focus use went in the three fights:

1st fight: they used focus 5 times, us 1 (Hurion). The fight went 11 rounds. The person they first focused died at the start of round 4.*
2nd fight: they used it 6 times, us 1 (Severian). The fight went 15 rounds. The person they first focused died at the start of round 3.
3rd fight: they used it 4 times, us 7 (Skyrunner620 for 5, Pezzle & Sever1an once). The fight went 8 rounds. The person we first focused died in round 3. This match was heavily imbalanced anyway, though. We'd have won regardless.

* actually Hurion put a Protect on himself, then focus followed him

So, was that a bad or good thing?

Seeing the result has somewhat inspired me to go farm some more focus cards. My main character (Skyrunner620) had 7 or 8 but it'd still be nice to fill a deck with a heavy amount or even 100% focus cards.

Aha.  I thought we were losing build points.  If all we're losing is pride and we're gaining experience, I'm not as opposed to getting ripped on for a while. 

I noticed that as well, and it makes me think poisoning up our decks would be a good idea.  Poison and other banes that act on the enemy's turn fire on each extra attack, and extra attacks are usually chump damage. . 6 for Lightning Reflexes and the Melee one. . Quick Blade, I think.  So they're eating full poison damage for turns that are giving them barely any damage benefit.  Also, spirit damage would exhaust people who churn out extra turns, but I'm not sure how well the intersection of focus and spirit attacks would look.  I don't think I've ever seen a GvG battle go to exhaustion.

For a while I was handily beating people 3 levels higher than me just by learning all the spirit-related skills and filling my deck with nothing but defense cards. It pretty much felt like cheating since the only way to beat me was to have more spirit than I did. This was before any access to willpower or spirit damage cards, so I'm sure it's not so simple at higher levels. But I've hardly seen any willpower cards actually used, which makes me think an all-spirit strat could actually work really well.

That's actually referred to as a spirit turtle.  I've noticed that people, in their defense builds either do something like that or high offense builds.

It works as long as your defense is high enough to pull it off.  Since most defenses aren't cumulative though, while damage is, what looks like a strong defense deck might actually defend against a lot less than you would expect.  If they have some willpower cards in there, you can be in real trouble.

As an example, I've run across at most one or two successful turtlers since my early 20s.  It's possible, but tough.

Two more challenges. Black Berets beat us once already but we probably stand a chance against them. Evolutions will murder us. Declining the battle might risk us getting sieged though.

Anyway, for coordination purposes my current guild deck is all magic damage and one focus card. Not sure where to get more at my level.

We should decline Evolutions. If they want to siege us we can't prevent it. I think some etiquette has developed as far as declining vs. allowing the challenge to timeout, and declining vs. being sieged, and challenging vs. sieging, but I haven't read enough of the forums to get a handle on it. It may not be consensus, anyway, just complaints. I notice Evolutions' guild description is "We accept wars ... stop the effing sieges" (but then they're also trying to farm us, guild level 15 to our 8, 1216 rating to our 776). Anyway, declining is probably preferable than letting the challenge time out, and we can't possibly beat them.

Black Berets is much more interesting. Both of us now have the full battle report (http://www.estiah.com/guild/war/report/id/4267) of our first meeting, and both of us can adjust tactics based on that. To the degree that we have enough people staying on top of this game, anyway.

One thing we can do to help ourselves with focus charms is to use our Wizard Study to build a Guiding Lighting mold (or Light or Ice, the other two with 7 focus). So, for example, we put in 50 Dust Kata, 10 Imperfect Crystal Ball, 10 Shiny Stone and 80 build points and we get a Guiding Lighting mold in our Showcase that any of our members can use to craft the card using their GHP.


I got a bounty put on me ("Severian") yesterday, which was interesting. I don't think I can find out who placed it (?), but I do know who beat me right after that, and who collected some money and increased his Bounty Hunter skill to 70/100. He's got a bounty too. I suspect this is just something people do.

Speaking of which, I encourage any of you to attack Severian and Sever1an... and lose  :grin:
My Self Defense skill building has fallen off considerably since my PvP rating got high, and that skill has a very desirable spirit bonus. I promise I will return the favor - attack me and lose and I'll do the same (even if I have to temporarily hobble a deck). That's assuming we're close enough in level range to gain skills. Actually, I encourage you to attack Severian and win too, if you can (spirit turtle defense), and collect some of that cash and Bounty Hunter credit.

I need to craft some more Aiming Shadow for focus.  In the meantime my guild deck is mostly Magic damage with some armor and ward damage.


Lose?  Raise your level so I can get some Bounty Hunter skill going. ;D

On an amusing note I'm using my current avatar for Kylantha.  First card played upon engaging in a PvP battle:

(http://iria.chem.uh.edu/f13/Captain_Ky.jpg)

Heh, that icon right there was the big huge warning sign I should steer well clear of that person in pvp.  Although I mostly went on a losing streak there today.  At what point do characters start diverging from straight melee/magic damage + armor/ward to more diverse deck types?  I'm only up to level 5 on my characters so far, but I don't see much different coming up in the first two cities. 

Oh, and if you want a punching bag for her, I have 3 Ard's there waiting for a beatdown.


Edit:  heh, nevermind, I see you already found me, seeing how that was me you did that to ;)

quote is not modify

I was fighting everyone in my level range.  Nothing personal.  (And if you win then you get some self-defense skill.)

Being your first time through you probably won't notice differentiation until the mid-teens.  You can start it earlier, like Ky has an all magic build, but there's so many little nuanced things to figure out that you're unlikely to do so.

I've got a fairly good understanding of how it works now, just a lack of gold to actually switch characters over to all melee or all magic.  I was more wondering when things like DoTs enter in, or when the first set of class changes actually occur.  I know the attribute values, but that doesn't tell me the actual average level range.

The game is quite abstract and obscure at first, but I think I've got a handle on it. Basically doing dungeons to generate charms + gold and develop any skills that contribute to my main stats (int + con). Levelling isn't really that fast though with action points plus cooldowns.

I notice the high summoners study dungeon can drop a focus card. That looks like the sort of charm that will be useful in the longer term, compared to the pirates hat which is very neat (yaaar!) but no doubt obsoleted relatively quickly.

Was reading the forums and found this hint,

21) 900 growth only applies to the stats you gain from regular foods and jobs.  The job skills, battle skills, gathering skills, and any elixirs do not apply to your growth total.

which was really unexpected. If true (need to watch while mastering a skill) it means you want to master just about every skill and only have to be careful about stat gains from jobs. That's quite a change from what I expected. Though I guess it's a balance between fast levelling and the amount of power at a given level for duelling.

If you read the ext for the completion of the Summoner's Study, you'll see that the Bright Fire charm is actually given to you by Leitz.  It's the earliest you can get a focus card, which are important when going group fights as using a focus harm will cause everyone to attack the player or mob the charm was used on for the given number of terms.  The pirate's hat is very useful at low levels because it is a cumulative ward and armor increase, so it you use it twice, you'll be at 24 armor, as opposed to regular armor charms which only increase your armor to the amount on the card (I think). 

Classes switches occur at 20, 30, and 40.  The best thing to do is to identify which two stats your desired class needed, and focus on jobs and skills that raise those, then choose a third stat, and raise the skills that complement that.    However, until about level 10, everyone uses the basic charms, and once you hit 10, things like DoT spells open up.

Alright, that's what I was looking for, thanks much.  Finally got my main two guys decks up to being able to reliably beat people 2 levels above me.  That's leaving me happy now, until Lantyssa decides to come back through and wipe the floor with me again ;)

You get cruelty for killing lowbies.

I was beating him up with Ky who is around his levels.

I just take my beating and like it.  :cry2: I figure it's just karmic revenge for the atrocities commited in My Brute.

Welcome to beat up on Kageru too if anyone needs the skills. I'll just consider it tough love.

I'd read on the forum that offering a battle was considered the polite first step before sieging weaker guilds. Seems that's the case.

Wouldn't the polite thing be to not attack weaker guilds?

Well, we have no chance against Evolutions' upcoming siege, but I don't think we'll lose building points since this time nothing is in progress.

Regardless, I took a closer look at our squads (http://www.estiah.com/guild/squad) now that I can get some sense of people's decks from the last battle report. I've done a little more re-arranging, mainly making sure that inside the squads the focus-players are going first. I've put notes on two of the squads, which you can see on mouseover. I think our #2 squad level-wise (Vorpal Bunnies) might actually beat our #1 squad (Red Panda Platoon) head to head, since it has twice the focus and everyone is doing the same type of damage. That will get kills, and as soon as you get that first kill and it's 4 on 3 you've suddenly reduced the opponent's damage output to 75% (all else being equal). Any scattered will or spirit cards in guild decks are just wasted turns in GvG, and armor/ward isn't much better, unless you're the designated protect tank.

Actually, I have focus in there.  Just didn't manage to come out in the last couple of fights.


I'd love to get more banes/poison.  Looks like the best choice at my level is Duelist Consuming Flame (http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Duelist_Consuming_Flame)

Also, we're a little gimped in sieges because we don't have any seals, which are sort of global attacks to help out defenders.  We need the Sanctuary to build to get them, and the one thing we're missing (other than cash) to start the build is a single Bloodred gem, which as far as I can tell are got by running The Abandoned Manor in Wildhowl.  I've run it twice in the past two days without getting a gem, but if anyone else is in the area and of a high enough level, it's worth trying to get one.

I'm attempting to get more focus cards, but somehow forgot to get one of my primary ingredients.  So it'll be another two days.  Then I plan on heading over to that side of the map.

I am trying to build a solid guild deck, but my money is rather limiting.  Since I am aiming for the Death Knight class, I've been trying to focus on sword, shadow, and spirit cards, but I've been holding off on buying any fighter charms until I hit 27..

I know it's been mentioned, what's the game's policy on alts in a guild?

Bat Country is victorious!

Bat Country's rating increases by 40.
Evolutions's rating decreases by 40.

They weren't very good and we managed to pair all their level 30 guys with our low levels.

Alts in the guild seems fine, it's mentoring your own characters which I have seen said as a no-no.

I was thinking I'd go Death Knight, but I'm wondering about Inquisitor now.  I'm loving my magic decks.  Recent attack by a character two levels higher (http://www.estiah.com/character/combat/replay/id/4774690/owner/20419).  His deck didn't seem all that great, but I just shreded him.

Tangental to this, one of my alts is apparently an award winning pet racer, if we ever need trophies to build vaults.

The second battle in that guild rumble was fantastic.  Thus far it looks like about 80% of guild battles are decided before they start by the level difference, but that one was comparable levels and went down to the wire.

Still some bad cards rolling around guild decks, though.  Taking damage yourself to do spirit damage is a big minus.  I haven't seen an exhausted player in a guild battle yet, even with all the extra attacks.  Spirit damage and Willpower need to get taken out.

Got the Bloodred gem.  The only thing between us and the Sanctuary is cash.

I was trying to get it yesterday, but that vamp was kicking my ass.

In a guild battle a pure Spirit deck will be a weakness.  If everyone played it though, it could be pretty devastating.  Also, if dual-purpose spirit cards are played it could also  have the benefit of forcing them to discard some of the cards which let them do combos while not completely sapping your ability to do damage.

Mind-flay is a good card, but probably not in a guild battle as you say.  Too much damage is being thrown around so damaging yourself without significantly boosting your own damage or armor isn't a good trade-off.  (Two point spirit damage cards that don't hurt you aren't that far off, either.)

For my own build Will is very important.  It lets me cast my Scout Hastened cards without forcing me to discard half my deck and provides a bit of defense when I do run into a Spirit build.  Without it I do end up running out of cards.

Magic inclined extra turn decks would do well picking up blue dragon bones.

PS. dammit, I leveled.  I am inactive!  Really!

(http://i627.photobucket.com/albums/tt359/delmania12/exhaustion.png?t=1241659780)

The purpose of spirit actions isn't necessarily exhaustion, more to reduce the what can be used against us.

I'm sure we could create a spirit attack squad, in fact I could man half of it, both my characters have strong spirit attacks (each currently has 10 of the 2x attacks and at least 10 singles). I'd be interested in how effective it would be. We can name the squads by tactic to make it easy to keep straight.

What I think is ineffective is trying to do two different tactics in the same squad, which means the same fight. If half of us are attacking HP and the other are attacking spirit, our opponent get two defensive pools to utilize, each being attacked at only half effort.

Since cards are played randomly out of the deck, and spirit attacks remove cards randomly, there's really no such thing as reducing options unless you do reduce them all, inducing exhaustion. If the other guy doesn't run out of cards in a match, it doesn't matter whether he has 30 left or 1, and it doesn't matter what they are.


Armor/ward works still well against a disorganized opponent, I noticed. If they're spreading their attacks all over then it's as effective as if it were four one-on-one battles. In a focus vs. focus battle, however, my theory is still that it only helps 25% of the time, when you are the one under attack, and meanwhile 100% of the time when your squad is on the attack and attacking the opponent 4-on-1 you are contributing nothing.

Before:

After:

Subject demonstrates evidence of learning.

I could offer to do a Spirit/Turtle deck, but I think right now I'm probably our top damage producer with my magic deck simply by dent (dint?) of levels.

A paladin with protect, focus cards and their numerous gain armor + attack and add armor to damage charms looks pretty good. Though it's going to be quite a while before I'm even a recruit let alone at that point. Had a look at the heirarch class and it seems to be full of willpower mechanics which don't really interest me much.

I'm running a Guard/Warlord alt (that I'll invite into the guild any day now) to see if tanking is a reasonable strategy.  And I just started up a Wizard/Inquisitor alt today to try to setup a heavy poison/bane deck.

We should discuss which Seal we should work toward once the Sanctuary is complete.  Seals trigger at the beginning of each guild battle and offer some benefit to the defender.

These are the options that will be immediately available:
Stone Seal: 46 Armor
Water Seal: 46 Ward
Sky Seal: +59 to first magic attack
Forest Seal: 72 magic damage over 12 turns

I'm leaning to Sky (59 * 4 is 218 quick magic damage.  If a focus gets out early, most or all could be on the same target).  Forest is more total damage (248), but it gets spread evenly over the enemy units and is metered out over time.

Alternately, we could punt on it and wait for Wizard Study II to get Lethargy Seal (-9 to target's melee (ongoing)).

I'd say Sky Seal, too, as it doesn't give them a lot of time to get wards up against it.  We might want to go for the War Banner next as people are hitting the 20s and the white shards are going to be level restricted for obtaining.

I'm waffling between Rogue->Death Knight and Shaman->Inquisitor now.  Any opinions?

I would pick inquisitor since the pure spirit destruction deck sounds like fun. I don't know what you were angling for.. deathknight seemed to have more versatility/split focus. I'm angling for novice->sage->heirarch. Sage's ward projection looks like it could be pretty good, and I like playing healing characters.


http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Soul_Blacksmith

No need to hurry on the Banner.

I feel a gravitational pull from this thread but not enough to get invested in. Sounds fun though.

Estiah is very grindy and requires lots of planning/research in order to be a real success.  It can be quite fun though.  You can pvp in most places.  The one on one pvp has no real downside.


Behold the glory of my farmed up fury potions on some random guy!  Yes, I am willing to take advantage of those with vastly lower pvp ratings!  Only viewable to those who play.

http://www.estiah.com/character/combat/replay/id/4829545/owner/20859

why isn't this easier to play?  I signed up and I almost face palmed on the first page.  I mean, it's Eve all over again.  No?

I don't know having never gotten invested in Eve.  I picked it up fairly quickly though.

Likewise. Note the "Tutorial" link on the top right which gives you a basic introduction to the screens. And there's a FAQ, and the forum has additional beginner tips.

On another subject, gathering, specifically exploring, has become much more interesting since March 31. I've discovered a hidden shop with unique charms in one town and a hidden encounter in another, which once I figure out how to beat it, will give me the crafting materials I need for the shop. And develops a Treasure Hunter skill.

The game design is actually pretty streamlined once you figure it out. Also, the only lasting mistake you can make early on is working a job with stats you don't need, which is pretty inconsequential at low levels.

It's probably easier to figure out than it is to have explained.

I'm starting to see how group battle gets more interesting. Just like the Seal we're working on which will give us a collective bonus, there are charms which apply to groups, and which can even be used in conjunction by multiple players to change/magnify their effects. I'm a few levels away from being able to acquire some of the charms here (http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Seylin%27s_Hidden_House), which can do things like 22 damage to all enemies or +6 to all allies' magic attacks, and if those two effects are played by teammates on the same turn, they result in an ongoing -16 to all enemies magic (http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Vita_Banishment).

I also like how it's somewhat unpredictable; you can increase the probability of the powerful combo happening, but only by discarding other useful charms. Like the Blessing of Grimox (http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Heart_of_Grimox) dynamic, I like how that's designed.

I made it down to that shop today.  I'm going to bounce between Chopley and the Temple to collect a few sets of those cards.  I have a lot of higher level focus cards I'll be getting access to soon as well.

We did well in the Siege, again.  Two of our primary groups won, so it was enough to hold out.

I like that concept as well.  The only problem is that Lez and Nip are remarklably difficult to defeat.

I found just stacking as much damage as you can and hoping you don't get focused off the start leads to victory a majority of the time, even for my L19 (at the time) guy.

edit: Also that siege was remarkably pointless  :oh_i_see:

Akasuki gains 23 honor points.
Akasuki's rating increases by 4.
Bat Country's rating decreases by 4.
Bat Country loses 0 building points.
Akasuki gains 0 gold.

Totally pointless.  It's the Estiah equivalent of ganking, but it didn't even inconvenience the victim.

Speaking of victimhood, our Sky Seal is in process of building and we might be able to squeeze it in before the next siege (they're coming hot and heavy!)

The material gathering got a lot faster when I realized that most of the materials were for sale in Eclis.

It seems being an outlaw is a skill.  So I have that going for me.

Only need one more person to build to finish the seal, I can't again until tomorrow morning, unless you want to invite one of my alts.

Actually, new members can't build in the first 24 hours or something like that.  I tried.

Pack of damned dirty cheaters  :awesome_for_real:

Finished it off... now back to the bunny slaughter.

Don't forget to actually activate the seal under the Sanctuary menu, it'll constantly eat money though, tossed what I could in there.

No point activating it. The guild sieging us has us waaaaay overleveled.

Damn, I keep forgetting to help support the guild buildings.  Mainly because I need all the gold I have and you never need any of the crap in my inventory.

Sell the crap and donate the difference. ;D

Actually we just got sieged by someone much more manageable than the incoming gank, so the current plan is to activate the seal just before that siege procs then turn it off immediately afterwards.  If I read the text correctly you pay the upkeep cost immediately on activation and at every action point reset, which is.. every hour?  Every 2 hours?  Something like that.  Sky Seal upkeep is 180g.  It's not clear if there's some minimum number of cycles it has to be left on.  If not, it seems like you can get away with just paying once (the activation just before the guild battle).  If anyone wants to dig into the Wiki or the Forum or whatever to find out if this is accurate, that would be fantastic.

The guild action point reset is shown on the main guild page clock, same as the one on the character pages.  It's showing as 24 minutes to me right now, but I have no clue how long the cycle actually is.  Suppose I can check back in a half hour.

edit:  Yeah, it's looking like it's every 2 hours just like player action points.

:uhrr: me 50/50 HP

The Rat God is the first nooblet gear check.  He never does any damage, but you have to do enough to kill him before you run out of cards.  Protip: drop all of your armor and ward and whatever and buy a couple of cheap damage cards from the Inachis market.  (There's a store that says it sells lvl 1-5 gear.  Use that one).

Is this guild all the same person?

Zenk
Lilzenk
Zenkzor
Zenklet
Zenkster
Bigzenklet
Lilzenklet
Demonzenk
Zenkdemon
Lildemonzenk
Bigdemonzenk

I think I'd go insane trying to manage that many characters.

I now keep a text file to keep track of my short range plans for my two count 'em two characters.

I think so.  I was both amused and horrified.

Make sure your damage adds up to 60 for the fight.

Every...single.. character.. uses.. Tyrael

wtf?

I'm pretty sure we can set how many squads we'll use if they're not bringing more than 3. We lost because they got to use their completely stacked L30-40+ group twice and then beat a 2-man group. Or if you can't that would be awfully silly.

You can't when sieged. Sieges are all players on both sides.
If it was a battle request (like Black Berets (http://www.estiah.com/guild/war/report/id/4267) was) it would have showed how many squads they were using and that's how many fights there would be. If we request a battle ourselves we can can choose how many of our squads to use, minimum 3.

That's why they have the -30% on the additional battles, to try to help balance this scenario somewhat.

I think this weekend I am going to reshuffle my decks to be a bit more useful in guild battles.  I've been sitting in Windscar farming Icecloud talismans for the 2 shadow/sword charms but that it's goin slowly.  With the amount of gold though, I think I can afford all of my level 27 fighter charms, which should boost my damage output. 

Well I am happy to report I just  blew all my gold buying up the fighter class charms.  Now I need to put them into a deck....

Both Black Berets and Oblivion Squadron have requested guild battles.  I'd vote to accept both to try out the seal.

Sure, there is nothing to lose. If it's a battle then building points aren't involved, and our guild PvP rating will eventually be reset to 1500 anyway if and when we build a War Banner, so it's really inconsequential. Except maybe in avoiding sieges in the meantime by those picking the lowest-rated opponents.

If we accept them at the same time we can activate the Seal once and use it for both. Since the Seal cost is on a two-hour cycle, the safest time to accept the battle request would be on the hour at an odd-numbered hour (7 PM, 9 PM, 11 PM, etc.), which would give us almost a full hour before and after the battles to activate and then de-activate it without paying more than once. Not that it involves a lot of money at this point, but you get the idea.

I started the Seal one cycle early, because I'm not sure I'll be at my keyboard.  180g here or there.  Battles are in an hour and a half.

One downside of starting our weak group first is that if we go to 4-squad battles, they're the ones that go twice.  Unfortunately it looks like you can't move squad order and we'd have to build them from scratch to change the order.  Is that right?

No, it's easy to re-order the squads, it's just in an unexpected place. Click on Declare Guild Wars and you can drag and drop the squads.

Black Berets is bringing 3 squads to fight, so there's no disadvantage there. The first time we fought them (http://www.estiah.com/guild/war/report/id/4267) they did weak-strong-strong and we won the first fight, our best wasted against their worst, and lost the following two, and thus the entire battle.
Black Berets (then)
Squad 1: 10/11/08/11
Squad 2: 23/23/18/23
Squad 3: 19/23/22/18
They will all be tougher now, of course. And maybe they re-ordered, though I doubt it. We were around the same range as them or slightly lower back then.

Oblivion Squadron will be bringing 4 squads. The weak-first tactic is a disadvantage against them. However, the fourth fight is worth less than the first three ("elite") and winning two of the first three is very likely to win the battle, even sacrificing the fourth, since we get two full-point wins versus their one plus a lesser one. Also, the point value of a given match is based on the combined levels of both sides, so matches with lower levels in them - such as our first and fourth - are worth fewer battle points (although in this case their level 30s will compensate). Looking at their level spread, and the fact that they are bringing four squads and therefore are almost definitely using their strongest first, I like the tactic against them. I would only go strong against strong if, looking at their top four characters (31/30/25/25) we were pretty sure we would beat them. Given the presumed jump in strength at level 30 with the new class charms, I doubt it, even though our seal would help.

I guess this could be an example of when not to accept two challenges simultaneously - if you want to change your squads in between the fights.

Aha.  That place is indeed not intuitive. 

I've gone 3-1-2-4, where 1 is the strongest group.

It occurs to me that this might actually be moot in a (non-Siege) battle, since I suspect each squad is only allowed to fight once (because the squad # is predeclared).  It's in a Siege where squads have to be recycled through if the sides aren't balanced.  The Zenks ate us up by sending 3 tight squads which did middling against our elite guys and then chewed through the rest of the guild.

Whoa, nail-biter!  :awesome_for_real:

http://www.estiah.com/character/combat/replay/id/38389/report/4741

We might want to consider building the Forest Seal.  Severian never triggers it with his melee attacks (I've only looked at my squad battles today), and if I go Rogue->DK then I won't either.  The Forest Seal will at least be guaranteed damage.

No harm in building it.

In the meantime it might be worth dropping 1 or 2 magic attacks in the guild deck for the free massive damage it'll give.

I'll be out tomorrow morning, but anyone else feel free to accept that incoming battle and trigger the Seal for it.  It looks like we outlevel them, so. . . whatever.

Anyone have some strategies for the last boss in the Tomb of Sheypar?  He only does magic, but Ward Projection in insane.

Lots of magic damage.  I like Shadow spells since they knock some of the ward off then deal damage.  Something with decent piercing would be okay, too.  If you keep his ward down then his damage output is minimal, the only trick is to also do enough damage to hurt him.

Oh god.

Achievements.

New icons for the city actions too.

I foolishly tried to read the backstory. I heartily recommend others avoid making the same mistake.

I started reading this... the only thing I know about the backstory is that there is some kind of curse that has changed all the spells and weapons to charms and no one can die.

Anyone had any luck in either racing or fighting?

I know racing is 100% random except for the booster, and fighting has some kind of system behind it that is not very well documented anywhere I could find. Just getting 20 charms for your pet and maxing it's growth ought to win you some tournaments but I'm sure there's a better way of doing it somewhere.

Yeah, I am trying to find information on boosters.  Either way you get the skill increase, so it's not too bad, but I know several guild buildings need the trophies.

I'm testing ideas with fighting now.  At a guess, growth in an attribute's color matches the runes.  My bunny was 25/25/25/25 and did fairly well in the Bunny Leagues, but was just decimated in the Tiger.  It'll be a while before my bat is up to snuff.

The boosters do have an effect, but figuring them out can be difficult.  I used Book: "Ten Way to Cook a Bunny", Statue: "Fluffy Bronze Bunny", and Black Bunny Fur in the past.  It sped her up and didn't seem to cause her to lose any more than randomly picking anyone else.

I've had two characters that have won a handful of races, and I have no clue how.  The one I've got in guild hasn't won any.  I do have 2 tin and 1 gold racing trophies each on two other characters though if we need them.

I honestly don't even remember what I've used for boosters on most of the races I've won.  Just random clicking.  But the last one I won I used a Golden Racing Trophy as the booster.  Seemed appropriately perverse, and what do you know?  He won.  But he's lost the last few times with it.  Random.

What do the item colors mean?

Grey = mostly worthless (but can be pet food or boosters)
Green = used in crafting, buyable, but different towns sell different things.
Orange = PvP reward, used in crafting.
Blue = dungeon rewards?

Because the inventory is full of random crap, so I'm tempted to sell off all the green / grey stuff.

http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Main_Page

That's a link to the wiki.  When clearing out our inventory, it's usually a good idea to check to see if the item in question is used to craft a charm you want.  If not, sell it regardless of the color.

Shepyar is really annoying me.  I am using a deck filled with charms that do ward or Shadow damage, and he's still wearing me down.  I've beat him once.  My death knight is driving my crazy, I can't seem to hit on that combination of charms that will do well in PvP, and I seem to not have much damage doing capacity.

I wasn't able to be Shepyar consistantly until I was a few higher than him.  There were a few levels where I sucked all around, really.

I'd post my magic gear, but I just disassembled that deck.  It was a combination of Rogue cards, magic empowerments, and a lot of crafted cards.  I made sure to stock up on cards from Night Tear and Windscar.  (If you don't have five Blue Dragon Bones in your deck, go get them from Windscar's dungeon.)

Blue = Only obtainable from a dungeon

As Del said, check the wiki.  I have a lot of overflow at the moment because I'm trying to craft a bunch of different cards and my packrat tendancies are catching up with me.

I am seriously considering spending $30 and doubling my inventory.  And get a nifty blue title as well!

I had a good deck for him that beat him pretty consistently at level 25, the only losses are usually when I don't block his spirit damage. It used a lot of holy charms though - Blind Ray (100% pierce DoT), Disperse Darkness, a few meditations, duelist holy staves, novice holy rods, ray of lights.

I don't know what your stats are in, but if you don't have enough magic to do 30+ a turn you should just find as much piercing magic you can find with a little bit of willpower and ward. Also maybe some charms that do melee damage but also destroy ward (like Icebreaker).

Going through 30 items on the wiki while trying to guess what I'll need for future builds sounds painful, but if that's the way to do it.

Happily farming the dungeons is turning over all sorts of new charms, skill ups and gold.

Are dungeon drops significantly better than whatever's available at the vendors? I haven't done a dungeon in at least five levels. I've been spending all my action points grinding out explorer and extreme <whatever> skills, and gaining combat skills through pvp, which gets me a bunch of free crafted charms every five levels. Selling off the stuff I gather nets enough gold to buy the ordinary vendor charms, with a little left over for the guild.

It's been working out pretty well so far in terms of pvp win ratio, but I'm curious if I'm going to start getting creamed without Awesomeness of Grimox or something.

I imagine all the low level stuff I'm finding will be swiftly obsoleted. But in general I am getting charms with interesting effects and decent power that makes the progression more varied.

Awesomeness of Grimox is a great charm.


Back to racing: I stumbled into a Crafting Vendor in Gaea's Dawn a couple of days ago that sells Vitaminized Candy.  When I found it it wasn't even on the wiki yet, though it's there now (http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Vitaminized_Candy).  I gave one to my golden fish, his mood went crazy high, and on his next race he basically lapped everyone else for speed.  Unfortunately, he got distracted or whatever.  But he was fast as hell before that.  So apparently mood = speed.

Oh, and our guild battle with Black Berets fires in 10 minutes.  I switched on the Forest Seal.

BUNNY GOD MODE! :drillf:

In general, you don't need the dungeon drops, gear from the shard and dust merchants is pretty good.

The siege by Zenks is starting at the next AP reset, I am activating the seals.

Any Pet Fighting tips?  We finally got the last racing trophy, so it's all fighting trophies now.  Every time I've fought, my pet has lost every single round.  No idea what's what.

I'm thinking you need to focus on one or two stats and maximum growth.  Then have all the runes corresponding to those stats.

I am starting to do some data tracking, and Belfrey's gotten us two trophies, but with so many variables and her opponent pet's stats unknown, I can only figure out so much.  I might mail one of their owners and ask their stats.  Could be enough for a bit of algebra to let us know.

What's the Stat -> Rune association?  It looks like it might be color, but Yellow would have to be Orange, and I have a bunch of White ones.

So I've been playing this for a bit.  I started it back when this thread first started and thought it was kind of lame and put aside for a while, but then I decided to try it again and have found it's actually a pretty cool game once you delve into it some.  Surprisingly deep combat (for a web game) and what not.  I'm in the guild as Drevik, but have a few other alts as well (Jaydow, Correth).  I'm only level 10 on Drevik, but I was thinking about going for Assassin as my T3 class.  I've asked around a bit on the Estiah class forum about the two branches for Assassin.  Most seem to think the Scout - Rogue branch is the way to go by a large margin.  The Novice - Monk branch seemed more interesting to me though.  Does anyone here have any experience with the Novice and/or Monk?  Playing one or fighting one?  I'm curious if there as gimp as other people say or if they just haven't given them a chance.  I like the idea of being able to Cleanse DoTs and the melee buffs seem pretty nice.  Anyhow, just wondering if anyone has any input.

There are only a handful of class cards.  Three types, available in three upgrades if my Scout and Rogue classes hold true across all the classes.  (Shaman did as well since I researched them to make my DK/Inquisitor choice).

At worst you just won't use the class cards, which isn't a big deal as there are tons of options out there.  My biggest problem is that I haven't found a melee equivalent of the Blue Dragon Bone, so I tend to lose against people who went magic instead of melee.  My Rogue cards are okay, and I do use them, but nothing amazing so far:  Low Damage + DoT, High Damage + Self-Spirit Damage, Low Area Damage.  My high damage attack does three more than the PvP-craftable sword that has no downside.

Most of the time that people advocate for Scout, it's because of Hastened Heat shot, which is the only spirit/EA card in the game.  Of course, like most scouts card, it also deals spirit damage to you, as well, so YMMV.   As for Blue Dragon Bone, yes it's really awesome, I thought, however, when I fought you, that you had Night Cloak charms?

Night Cloak is great in an extended battle if you use almost all melee, which has other downsides.  Blue Dragon Bone has no downside if you do not use armor/ward (most builds do not), and stacks the damage upfront for the next attack.  Someone favoring burst attacks is likely to have killed me by the time my damage has started to equalize.  (I have to average 3-4 boosted attacks to gain the bonus of a single BDB.)

I'm also not sure exactly how it works, but constant buffs do not seem to add all their bonus like the single-time buffs do, and it seems to get worse with stacking.

I'll probably give Novice -> Monk a shot.  I like to be different and I have my other 2 alts if ends badly.  Thinking about Pyro and Slayer for them (if I end up keeping up with both of them, heh).

Group base dungeons - I assume all you do is park your character in the city and create a password for a group?  I am about to head to Triland soon and I was hping to do the summoning altar.

They have a unlimited size public group which anyone can join, and it pairs people together from that pool when it's time to start.

Sometimes a person will start a group and rename it to give out its password, and possibly even the tactic (like "pass = melee"). I'm not completely sure what the advantage is to that approach, other than perhaps getting a partner who's paying attention, and it does allow the second person to start the fight immediately instead of waiting for the appointed time in the public party. If you see a high level character doing this you definitely want to join that group.

I've never had a problem going in the public queues.  Only lost once in Triland, and that was because I was paired with a low level, I picked my wrong deck, and got really bad draws.

(http://i627.photobucket.com/albums/tt359/delmania12/th_guid_deck.png) (http://s627.photobucket.com/albums/tt359/delmania12/?action=view&current=guid_deck.png)

So, this is  my current guild deck.  It's a rather generic deck, and I am looking for advice on how to improve it!

Just thought I'd bump this thread since we're still active in Estiah, but due to the nature of the game, it's not very communicative.  Also, anyone wnat to share their ideas on how to build a good PvP deck?  Been having some trouble with deathknight and hierarch.

I'm really enjoying the game but didn't talk much because my low level cards were so dull. It's getting more fun now that I have a wider selection of toys to play with though. And that vampire in the abandoned manor is still tough. I'm largely playing it as a PvE game though, but a discussion of PvP or Guild battle decks sounds good.

So, uh, I joined? Lorekeep's the name. ^^

Getting a little bored of the single-player aspect; any room in the group for a 31 guard (heading towards paladin)?

I know jack and shit about guild stuff, mind you.  I'd have to be ed-you-kated.

*edit* oh yeah, dur, Polysorbate80 is the name

We're full, or close to, but working on a guild-hall expansion.  I've been a bit distracted this week so I haven't paid too much attention.  We should be able to invite soon though.

We're about half way through the construction of the guild hall.  I can remove my alt from the guild until we have more free spaces.

I'm thinking of going Champion if that's what you all need.

We need what you want to play. :-)

Interesting, looks like Lez and Nip are trying to reduce the effectiveness of EA decks by teaching people how to counter them.  AFAIK, the only ways to counter an EA deck is a heavy DoT/Def or a dizziness charm like Hypnotic Pendulum.  Inventory stuff is awesome, I wish they'd link the Wiki to the item names, or give a popup box that tells you what an item is used to create.

The inventory change is a fantastic correction of brain damage. Having a separate screen for selling items was bizarre.

Reward from the new level 14 dungeon:

Blinding Scratch
1 Extra Action
-6 Target's Next Melee
-6 Target's Next Magic

Quite possibly the best EA charm for the level.

Not bad.  All my characters are around that level, I'll have to look for that dungeon.

Needs more DoT's obviously..

Kageru uses [Bronze Knuckles]
Righa's armor drops to 0
Righa takes 14 melee damage
Because of Poison, Kageru takes 3 magic damage
Because of Poison, Kageru takes 3 magic damage
Because of Poison, Kageru takes 3 magic damage
Spiderling bites, Righa takes 3 melee damage
Because of Poison, Kageru takes 3 magic damage
Because of Burn, Kageru takes 2 magic damage
Spiderling bites, Righa takes 3 melee damage
Because of Poison, Kageru takes 3 magic damage

Thought I might as well test my new PvP deck against another BC person so at least one of us will get some benefit out of it. My deck is pretty slow so it's probably a good matchup anyway.

Really enjoying this game. Deck building, PvE, PvP and guild PvP... even groups. Currently doing ghost manor in skyrift which is as much about learning to use and fight spirit decks as it is a PvE challenge, and neatly backed up by the local crafting shops specialising in the same cards. It's even really low impact because you can only do so much in a day and don't have to worry about someone wiping out all your progress while you are not looking.

Actually, any battle with the undead require high will power more than spirit attacks.  The Ghost Manor is low level, so you don't run into the whole "infinite spirit, 2+ spirit attacks" every turn that you do in places like the Tomb of Shepyar...

Sure, the boss mob in the ghost manor though has high hit points, good armor charms and a spirit damage DoT but really low spirit. He's intentionally designed to be targeted with spirit attacks to run him out of cards before he does the same to you.

Gathering seems more fun than Arena since it develops other skills besides combat. I don't know what any of the materials are but Kata seems to be closer to what I want to do (Pow + Int is what I need to raise for Champion).

Not sure what discovered sites means.

Discovered sites sometimes add a place you can visit on the city places screen, usually a shop or event, at the bottom of the page.  Sometimes it does nothing and just adds to your discovery achievements.

Capping all the "Extreme" Gathering skills is a good way to increase your HPs.  You'll cap Explorer along the way which again gives +HPs.

The arena is good for what you mentioned: leveling combat skills.  Some skills, like the defensive ones, (Iron Will and Wards) can be hard to level via normal PvP combat or dungeon runs, so the Arena gives you a place where you csn pick your opponents and focus on developing those skill.  As for materials gained from gathering, the higher you go up, the more diverse the requirements for gear is.

This game is tickling my skill raising.

http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/32278

If you want to join and need a mentor. ^^;

Arena is also good for lvling the harder to get skills like Cheat Death, Survival, and Spirituality.

Just putting a feeler out there to see who is still actively playing.  Been quiet on this post and in the guild page.

I am, but I'm taking it easy and farming cards to fuel my collection urge. Currently farming the ghost mine for spirit / willpower cards (+ pure water) and then it's off to become a recruit and farm crystal valley some more.

It's probably the most casual of the web games because you can only do a dungeon twice a day, move once and have action points. But the strategic depth is excellent.

Been a busy couple of weeks, so I've stepped back for a bit.  Should be back when things settle down.

I'm going to transfer the ingame Shoutbox posts over here because they are a little cramped for the discussion. And they're not retained.


The cash doesn't come out of our pocket so all we lose is building progress and rating (and a lower rating will reduce attacks on us anyway). The reason to stop building would be to discourage the siegers, which makes sense to do for a little while. What we sacrifice is gaining our personal GHP @ 2 points a day. GHP won't actually matter until we build Showcase charms which are personally useful, and that's a long way away for the higher level chars. Those are quite expensive in any case, and only make sense to me for charms which are otherwise unobtainable and/or which remain useful at highest character level instead of being put aside when they are outleveled.

The reason to get the War Banner, for whoever put it on tracking, is to enable sieging other guilds. The idea being that we earn new GHP, make back our rating if we care (I don't, not while we're still growing anyway), and earn guild money so that our characters can keep more of their own. Which, come to think of it, might require a bigger Vault. If we don't start going on offense after guilds we can beat just as we've been sieged  by those who find us easy pickings then there's no point to having the banner.

Keep in mind that in sieges all characters are used, so we'll be sending in 6 squads, not just our top 3. With our relatively consistent high-teens low-twenties spread, though, that may work to our advantage if we pick guilds which have a broad range and lots of low levels. Though it's still the three "elite" squads which usually decide the whole thing because of the way points are allocated.

I'm still actively playing, but only in the low 20s and about to disappear for a week or so.

I am playing sporadically, but I don't know what the hell I'm doing, as exhibited by my first character, and slightly less so by my 2nd character.

I'm still playing.  I also have a couple high teen alts that could be invited if we need more for building and sieging.

I am taking it slow around Lv. 11, trying to beat the Lv. 10 dungeon and failing horribly. My charms seem weak compared to the others.

Can I sell grays? I'm not sure if item quality is the same as WoW. Gray = junk.

Edit: Nevermind, thread reading FTW.

Try a purely defensive deck and simply outlast him.

What be the issue?  Look at the class list, pick one, and work towards that.  Do the dungeons at the level listed, and do PvP/Gathering in the meanwhile.

Are you able to raise skills like Mathematics and Discipline without doing jobs? That would seem to be the place to focus my job choices.

Those require jobs or study at the academy.

So what should I be doing with my job stat gains? I imagine if I'm capped on growth I can still get the associated skills but I don't want to pump the wrong things.

I've been using jobs pretty lightly. Focusing on jobs that move me towards the class I want to be and only consistently working when I need some levels for the next dungeon I want to farm. The farming is pretty much optional since you can still get charms if you outlevel the dungeon and many of them will be replaced by higher level versions anyway. You would certainly grow in levels a lot faster that way, but I like collecting stuff :)

Skills from jobs, as opposed to combat skills gained by fighting (which tie in to charm requirements), don't lead to anything else. You don't gain abilities, with the minor exceptions of the ones which overlap with gathering, and travel leading to longer distance travel. Mastering them leads to further jobs down their own lines, and a relatively small stat boost when a level is mastered, but the big impact is to your stats as you pump them with your jobs day after day. To decide what jobs to do, decide what class you want to be (http://forum.estiah.com/index.php?board=20.0), that will determine your two key stats, and the rest follows from there. It's not crucial to decide while you're under 20, you can't really mess things up.

My stats are pretty heavily weighted, my future Dark Knight at level 36 has roughly 300dex 300pow 230int 100con. The con is useless to me so anything that goes/went in there is wasted.

Oh, and there are a few skills which are prerequisites for classes, for example Remorseless for my DK, so I look for jobs with them when I can.

My recommendation follows what Sev says.  Look at the tier 3 class list, decide what you want to be, then focus on fulfilling the requirements for that job, leveling the stats and skills you need first.  So, if you want to be a champion, focus on jobs that award pow and int, and build your decks around using damage boosting and fist weapons.  That will fulfill 3 of the 4 requirements.  For the last one, Discipline, you'll need to level that via jobs, but you'll find jobs that do that while also giving you power and int.

That being said, I also highly recommend everyone levels Ward, Armor, Iron Will, Survival, Spirituality, Cheat Death, and Horse Riding.   Those give excellent boosts to hp and spirit which are key to winning fights.

Courage seems easy to get. Attack someone 2 levels your senior in PvP who has a shit rating. I got a lot of Soul Fragments that way.  :grin:

I just picked started today.  Interesting game.  I just do dungeons right now, not much gathering.  I picked the job to do +1 all stats as a job.

I have no idea what I'm doing right now.

Edit:
Finished the dungeon now just spending points in the arena.  Gathered a few times but I don't know what that's supposed to do.

Editx2
I figured out the leveling thing.  I have charms of so many skills.  I guess I should consolidate or something.

What tier 3 class are you aiming for?  The sewers in Inachais will give you a points toward the Sewer Cleaner, I highly recommend you run the dungeon until you max it out. 

I don't know, I just looked over the classes.

I ran the sewer thing, then it said I couldn't anymore, then I did the arena until I ran out of points.  That's all I did.. that and buy a few random charms.

You can pretty much go to level 15 without making that choice, but I'd recommend making it as soon as possible.


Whoops I should have gone into more detail.  Once you complete a dungeon, you can't do it again until the next dungeon reset.  Those occur twice a day at 2:04 am EST and 2:04 pm EST.  The Arena is a great place to learn the combat system, but it's real power is in helping you level your defensive skills (armor, ward, iron will) and your "survival" skills (Survivability, Spirituality, and Cheat Death).  Moving and working, fyi, are reset once a day at 2:04 pm EST, though in your case, stay in Inachis until you max out Sewer Cleaner, since you get 500 g for doing that.   

PvP csn be done at any level, provided you're not in a safe city (Inachis, Aleas, and Zeal).  You can start buying charms from pvp at level 7. 

When you find yourself with Action Points after doing the dungeons you'd like to do work on these skills that give +HP and/or +Spirit:

http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Category:%2BHP_Skill
http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Category:%2BSpirit_Skill

A lot of those skills are much easier to get when you're low level compared to if you try to skill them up at a higher level (say 15+).

Of all the skills listed, Cheat Death is the hardest one.  You need to win a fight with > 10% health and > 10% charms.    This is what the Arena is for.  Estiah has a decent wiki, which you can find at http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Main_Page.  If you search for an Arena mob, chances are you will find a lising of the charms it uses.  From there you can calculate the total armor, ward, and numbers charms you need to need to fulfill the requirements.  It's still not easy , but definitely worth it. 

I know I am talking about things that may not apply to you, but the more you know, the better the game gets.   For a web game, it has surprising depth and strategy to it, and you need to put some good thought into your decks.

Here's my old post about Cheat Death which spells out one way it can be done:
@Delmania Thanks for the in-game tip about that other quest, perfect timing for me, I'm off and running!


Edit: Geez, since February? Good job (http://www.estiah.com/favicon.ico) holding my interest so far.

Wow, I was dominating in PvP, then someone whipped out a pure armor deck on me. Hah!

http://de.pastebin.ca/1468410

Full details for the quest.

I don't really get how I get involved in 1v3 fights while Gathering.

It's random.

This post is working out real well right now.  I've been just doing jobs and dungeons a few times a day, made it to level 5. Now I'm going to work up the cheat death skill with all my saved points.

 I'm going to shoot for the cleric class and then the heirarch and their stats are int and con I think.

Here's the class post for Heirarch: http://forum.estiah.com/index.php?topic=1635.0
And of course the Wiki, which keeps it simple: http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Hierarch

THat info is pretty useless.  This game moves at a glacier like pace.  It'll be October before I hit 20.

I found the levelling to be way too fast in the early levels.  Especially if you worked a lot.  In terms of play time, Action Points, and acquiring gear I would agree that the game moves a bit slow.

Which I'm fine with.  I load this up in the morning before I go to work.  Then I do it right before I go home.

And...
I got my Cheat Death to 100  :grin:

Congrats!  Rank 2 doesn't open up until level 40, so you've got time to focus on other things.

I've been PVPing like mad. The token system of Shards etc. seems to appeal to me more to get awesome charms than currency. They really do have two approaches to the game: PvP or PvE, and both have a similar scheme of reward leading to similar charms.

And PvE itself has two systems for obtaining charms: events (dungeons) and gathering + crafting. Including hidden craft shops and hidden single-encounter events discovered only by gathering.



Well done! If you maintain that Spirit advantage over most other players you can get tons of automatic wins in PvP by exhaustion for many levels to come.

The charms from these are awesome.

Something that bugs me is that you can get days and days of energy stored up only to blow it all in 15 minutes or less.

Their bounty system needs a major overhaul. Being unable to sort by level and not being able to see who has a bounty in my local area is a huge pain in the ass. Bounties seem like a great way to pick up some cash.

Wut?

Action -> Outlaw Hunt

Oh. >_<

I did Ghost Mine for the first time which I assume is one of the player-created dungeons they added recently. Thankfully I had enough cash to build a Willpower deck as I knew I'd be walking into a Spirit Damage fest. I made it through on my first go with most Willpower gear, but it was rough at one point. It's amazing how strategies have to be adapted for certain encounters. For instant, healing mobs or mobs you need to take down in one shot requiring empowerment gear. Speaking of which, the reward was a +17 Next Melee & Magic, which is something I desperately need at this point! So I will probably be spending a lot of my Lv. 17 time in Skyright.

Grinding Ghost Mine for a bit can get you a good Spiriturtle deck put together (just spirit and defense cards, and the occasional willpower).  These are pretty deadly in PvP.

Yeah I don't really want to level at this point. I'm about to hit a new threshold of PvP gems (Lv. 20+) and I don't really want to do that. I can level so fast that I bypass content. I want to savor each level at this point.

That's pretty much my only gripe with the early game.  You have to try pretty hard not to level so that you can build a competitive deck for your bracket.

I just saw Righ. Haha. His deck is good. ;_; Lv 17-18 seems to be all about the Spirit Damage.

I am going to get the Lv 17 gems I need then accelerate to 20 and get those PVE charms. Stockpiling Lv. 17 gems does not feel appropriate when I can't use half the charms.

I just got 14.  I've got most of my skills past level 1.  Doing a bit of gathering now.

I can't just find a dungeon to grind, or anything else.  I can't beat the earth elemental in that one level 12 dungeon.

What should I be doing?  I don't think I'm using my APs efficiently.

For the elemental you just need to stack your deck with charms with high penetration.

Check out Rooftop Rush in Zeal.

Also a good time to PvP low ranked people and start saving up shards for Lv. 17.

Oh.

I just wasted almost a whole day's worth of APs trying to defeat a level 14 dungeon.  Kept fucking dieing no matter which deck I try.  My charms suck.

Rooftop Rush?  The goal of that dungeon is to teach you how to counter EA decks.  The trick is to use poison attacks, like Burn, Brawler's Poison, Wildor's Daggers, etc.

Actually, this comment is prompting me to gripe a bit.  Estiah is design to take several months to full enjoy.  I am fine with that.  I am getting annoyed with the AP system, however.  You get 20 AP every 2 hours, for a total of 240 per day.   Before the expansion of Gathering to include events and shops, that might have worked, but now, between gathering, PvP, dungeons, events, and the Arena, there's plenty to keep busy for a long time.

EA decks?

Extra Action.  Charms like Iron Kneepad.

Which fight?  The first one is definitely a pain in the ass if you try to beat her straight up at an even level.  If you just turtle her though it's a breeze.

Have you done any PvP yet?  Some nice charms at the Fragment Trader:
http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Fragment_Trader

If your just plain annoyed and want to continue on level to 15 and hit up the regular stores in each city for some nice charms.

I have only a few fragments right now.

I need to work today so I get one more point of dex to use wildor's dagger.

My stats may be uneven:
Int: 75
Con: 63
Dex: 30
Pow: 14

I have gotten stuck on the earth elemental in another city and the Rooftop Rush, 3rd fight or so with the viper that keeps spitting out poison and the other guy with a name that I can't remember.

My charms are starting to lack though.  I don't have many greens/blues for my level anymore.  I have just a ton of market bought ones.

I think I would defintely level to 15 and try to get my Dex up to 42-46.  Then you can upgrade to the level 15 store bought charms and you should have a much easier time doing the dungeons.  With the higher Dex you'll be able to use Shadow/Lightning charms along with Mace/Holy.  The level 15 Holy charms have 50% penetration and would be a huge help with killing the elemental.  The extra damage from the upgraded charms and the level 15 Ward charm will help with the viper.

I'm going to hit level 15 as soon as my work resets.  I'll give it all a shot.

Question: if I have 5 of a reward card from a dungeon, am I screwed if that's what I get as random loot for beating the dungeon?

Once I hit 31 Dex and level 15 I was able to get a bunch of items to add to my deck like lightning reflexes and wildor's dagger.  Nice.

Screwed as in you just don't get anything, yes.

Man my deck is finally starting to look good again.  With the addition of dex and some lightning abilities I'm getting some good returns.  Also farmed a bunch of soul frags so when I move tomorrow I can craft some stuff.

I was concentrating on two stats to much.  Doesn't hurt that I have mentoring at level 5 or so right now.

Yow. I could use me some mentoring. >_<

I'm proceeding verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slowly. Got a good Spirit Deck and am ready to start farming up cash for the eventual Lv. 20 money sink.

By design, it takes time to advance within the game.  So, don't be in a rush to level, as there's always plenty to do. 

On that note, how many people in the F13 guild are still active?

I've been playing this lately and am up to level 11. At first I thought it was just arenas and dungeons, but wow, there's a lot to do. Lately I've just been gathering in order to increase my health level.

If any active officers can send me an invite, my character is named Steranko.

Coliseum fights can get pretty god damn nasty. I'm watching opponents with 100 more HP than I have and doing massive amounts of damage from collected charms. I don't know if I'll be able to catch up until Lv. 50.

Level all the skills that do hp, and collect the charms.  If you want to stay in your bracket, just don't work.

I'm trying this out, and it seems like a good 20m time waster once a day. Good call.

It's a good game. Probably the best of them because the gameplay widens over time and you can always adjust your tactics, plus it even manages to have a sense of place for some of the dungeons.

I wish I could but mentoring is one of those skills that I can't level. By the time I got all the HP ones my ancillary skill gain would push me to five or six more levels. Just gonna enjoy the game, try my best, and worry about competiveness at cap. BTW, for anyone going for the PvP kill streak, it stops at 60. Finally got it and can now challenge myself against opponents with high ratings.

I just did the misty, ghost manor place today.  Finally figured out how to kill those damn vampire bats.

Leveling up a lot of my skills that were lagging.  Leveling up fire with crappy heat wands is fun.  I love that blue basilisk.  He doesn't have enough charms to kill me, nor I him but I out last him and I use a lot of charms.  Greeeeat for leveling.  And I get ticks for survivor too.

Find someone to make an alt with and mentor them to each other's mains.  Perhaps you and Draegan can team up.  If you're really not interested in actively playing an alt just log it on and Work every day and it'll slowly level up that way.

It looks like our guild rating is low enough to move us off the radar.  Commence building!

Well Akecheta doesn't seem to be playing so I can mentor on someone else if someone who is low level needs a mentor in kind.

I need more willpower gear.  Only have 4x 2 willpower charms.

Edit:
Crafted some.  Thank god this town has the mats to sell.

Beat the Ghost Mine today after a few wasted attempts.  Now I know all about willpower and spirit.

I can't believe I didn't read this post until recently. I am furious- this game is fun as hell! I apprenticed my first character to Lantyssa, and have two others apprenticed to trotski (mostly a lurker here, but a RL buddy).

Antolin- L7- aiming for Assassin
Liryk- L5- aiming for Pyromaniac (I think- may reconsider)
Anyaala- L2- thinking Inquisitor

Feel free to farm me for Cruelty points. Shoot me an invite to the guild if/when I am high enough level to be useful and there is room.

Lantyssa is your Mentoring maxed? I am actually trying to raise HP skills and Mentoring is a huge one. >_>

Can you transfer apprentices? That would be cool.

No, one of the few beefs I have with the game.

I thought this would be a good time to mention something, and that is a little tip for leveling.  If you look at the bottom right of your experience bar, you will see a Character Growth count (mine's at 742/900).  Once that value reaches 900, jobs will no longer give stat gains, but they will grant skill increases.  The thing is, the way you level in Estiah is increasing your stats, and once you reach 900 points, the only way to do that is ranking skills, or using items like food and potions.  Leveling via jobs will get you to tier 3, so if you want to reach your final class quickly*, then level via jobs.  If you want to take your time exploring and ranking skills to increase the charms you can use, go for it.

I only use jobs when I've finished with a dungeon and need a level for the next one. Though at low levels just the gain from skills was enough to do it.

I'm more worried about using job growth in the wrong fashion. Maximum potential from skills is something I want to maximize before doing Jobs since I don't know how much Int I need, how much Pow I need, etc. Unless you can eventually get all charms and max all skills if you eat food?

Until you reach tier 3, your stats and skills growth should focus first on the requirements for your tier 3 job, then on hp and spirit, and then on whatever is your tertiary stat.  In terms of potential growth, it's more than possible to get your stats and skills to the point where you can use all the charms in the game, with the exception, of course, of the class charms.  However, unless you don't mind leveling very slowly, I'd recommend saving that for when you reach tier 3.

Don't mind leveling slowy. ^^ Trying to get the most out of each level.

Quick question:  Am I potentially screwing myself down the line by increasing skills I don't intend to use so I can get the stat bonuses?  I.E.  I don't typically use twin blades, so if I throw together a bunch of twinblade charms, and spend a day in the arena increasing the skill.  Will bad things happen to me?

Also, is it possible to have more than one pet at some point?

Stat's gained from mastering skills don't count towards your "growth" limit. That's just from working jobs (and eating food) so training up your skills is almost always a good thing, though it might mean you are not as focused. Someone careful to only train two stats might have slightly better charms at the same level. It all balances out pretty quickly though.

You certainly can have multiple pets.

Not at all, I'd actually recommend this.   However, the caveat, as pointed out by Kaeguru is to make sure your primary 2 stats (the ones needed for your tier 3 job) are high enough to use the better charms for your level,

I havn't gotten pets yet.  I did just hit level 19 though. 

You can have one pet at time, unless you donate for an extra slot. You can replace your one pet with another, sacrificing any built-up stats and runes. You can buy low level pets in some shops, and get some from some dungeons.

You can do things with pets more frequently than twice every 24 hours, and they don't require action points, so if you feel like fiddling around in Estiah more often you can fiddle with pets. I wasn't succesful with mine in fighting until I traded in my newbie pet for something I earned from a higher level dungeon (L.26 & L.28), not that I'd tried much before, just racing. It came with a decent number of apparently good runes and I filled them out to 20 before I started fighting regularly. I was able to use fighting as a money-earner for a while when I was short of cash, but I didn't try to take it to the big leagues.  Racing is apparently pretty random except for the booster.

Yay, finished the test thingies for Paladin, now I just gotta wander back to the right town  :awesome_for_real:

Finally defeated The Underground Academy.  5000 HP makes for one long fight.

Yeah, it took me a while to come up with a workable combo, and it's still probably not a whole lot better than 50-50 to get a win (I can't heal those dudes). But now I'm done looting its coffers and off my duo go for Tier Three: The Becomening

I actually waited to become a death knight before trying that fight, just so I could use Touch of Decay.  However the one time I've won, I had 0 charms left, so I suspect it will be a fun few fights.   The only way to keep those dudes alive long enough is to use a combination of protect and melee debuff charms as well as 5 White Sealing Orbs. 

The only class that has any real group healing is the hierarch, so when she gets to that level, I hope she has an easier time...

The key to big damage towards the end is Sylan equipment (or other melee+magic attacks you might have), you double your accumulated drug induced stabbiness. I pulled that tip off the forums when I was frustrated. Here's the gear I used at 39 FWIW.


And here's a fight (http://www.estiah.com/character/combat/replay/id/8037533/owner/20703). The cards didn't fall that great for me in this one, but I made it anyway.

Ok, Greydam is an utter bitch.  That is all.

Bah, he's a pushover. I've already beaten him twice in twenty attempts.
Ignoring my eighteen losses I'm perfect against him.

My character feels super weak at Lv. 22. Probably because I didn't go for pure damage dealing likes axes and went for supportish offense like Fists.

What class, Lorekeep?

I have a lvl. 19 character named Greth who is about to become a Scout. Can I get an invite?

Slight necro.

Started playing this as Rendakor, would like an invite to the F13 guild if it's still active at all. I'm only level 4, but thinking about going Death Knight. Do your early class choices make any impact on your endgame abilities? I see that you can become a DK as either a Rogue or a Mercenary; do you retain old class charms when you select a new class?

http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/56101

Yes, you always keep the charms from your previous class.  So in that sense your early class choices impact your endgame abilities.  You could also say that the choice impacts you later based on what stats you decide to raise.  I'm not sure if the F13 guild is still active, but if you don't hear from anyone and still need a guild let me know and I can invite you to my guild.

I've been playing this since I found this thread.  I'm now level 39 and about to be a Heirarch.  You can find my old posts in this thread to find when I started to let you know how long it takes.

I got a guild rolling from the FOH boards. 

It's a fun game to play once a day.

Your tier 2 and tier 3 charms aren't important in the endgame, but they are important before that.  While that's obvious, what's not obvious is what defines the endgame, which is anything level 45 and above.  However, leveling takes a bit, and the game's got so much content all the way through, ignoring tier 2 and tier 3 is not something I'd advise.  As my highest is a death knight, I'd highly recommend the scout/rogue path, and the damage you get from those classes outweights the stuff from the mercenary charms.

Ok thanks Del; thats the path I was leaning towards anyway.

Out of simple curiosity, what's the name of the guild?

Richshaw Revolution

I just hit 40 and made myself a Heirarch.  Now I have to collect "Mark of..." items for my class charms.  Then I have to create a whole new deck.

Once you hit 40, I'd highly recommend the first thing you do is to rank Spirituality, Survival, and Cheat Death to ranks 3 and 2, respectively.  Also, acquiring those marks will not be easy, and may require you to rank up other skills.  Those marks comes from 4 of the most challenging dungeons in the game, and these dungeons represent the shift that occurs as you enter the endgame.  Previous to this, all of the dungeons have a theme that designed around a particular strategy.  The dungeons have no such thing, they require you pretty much to build a unique deck for every fight.  Make sure  you've gotten all the useful charms from the previous dungeons, as those will  help.

Well I have two of those marks already.  Only need a few more now for the first couple of charms.

I havn't been able to touch Cheat Death skill up at all.

Edit:
Ah.  Looks like I couldn't even get Cheat Death until I hit level 40.

I forgot the difference between marks and insignias.  Marks come from the Trials, insignias come from the dungeons.

Ah ok.

I also have someone telling me I don't have enough skills at level 40?  I wasn't aware of how far behind I was.  Also I thought there was a finite amount.

Some I don't have, that I need is the Extreme Gathering for +hps.  I need Courage/Leadership/Defender but they seem difficult to get.

I thought my character was progressing nicely.  But people seem to think that to be uber you need to sit at some level and work on a ton of skills before leveling up or something.  Shrug.

It just depends on what you want to accomplish.  If you want to win the Coliseum consistently and go for a 3K+ Rating then yes, you'd need to slow down and boost your +hp skills a bit.  Other than that it's not really that big of a deal and you can certainly win without boosting every single +hp skill.  My guys routinely beat characters with more HP than me (sometimes as many as 100 more).

Don't worry, you'll have of plenty of chances to level skills.  Did you ever notice that x/900 that appears under you character's info?  That's your growth, and once it hits 900, jobs no longer give you stats boosts, which is important because increasing your stats is how you level in Estiah.  So once, you reach 900 growth, you need to rank lots of skills to level.  As for what skills to level, you've got  your basic defense skills - Armor, Ward, and Iron Will, your basic attack skills, which in the heierarch's case, are Holy and Mace.  Then you've got your class flavor skills like Discipline, Strengthening, and Faith.  Those are what I'd recommend ranking to 5 first, then do all the HP skills, then other ones, like tradeskills, travelling, treasure hunting, etc

nm

Having 26 Spirit at level 10 makes PVPing with an all defense deck very easy. However, since I do mostly PVP I'm pretty poor; is it worth trying to make money and buy the level 10 vendor charms, or should I just wait til 13 and buy the Soul Fragment ones? Any dungeons I should run for charms in the near future? I plan to hit up the Abandoned Manor for Willpower charms at 15, not sure what to do until then except keep farming bads for Fragments.

I don't think I can stress enough the importance of skill building in this game.  If you make the effort to keep all your skills capped throughout the course of the game, it really does make things go smoothly.  Basically all 8 of my characters have been doing nothing but the Arena for the past few weeks.

Hmm, alright. Should I work on skills that don't up my primary/secondary stats too, or are they skippable? Example: I'm Dex/Str focused, can I just ignore Holy (int/con)?

Unless you have a burning need for a charm that requires Holy, yes.  I am assuming since you're dex/power, you're a DK to be, so you want to choose either int or cons, and then build up the skills that go with that stat.  For example, my dump stat is int, so that means I can use fire, fist, lightning, and twinblades charms. Of those, I selected lightning and twinblades and am working on ranking up those skills.

Got it, thanks.

Been playing this game a for a little while, I'm Leodido lvl13 at the moment, could I get an invite if there is any room left please?

Also I noticed recently that sometimes I'd drop some not so bad item (ie extra action item or bane item) and the charm would never appear in my gear selection screen, is that a bug of some sort? My inventory is full of shit at 100/100 with a lot of item in temp storage but that should not be my problem ?

edit: ok I'm stupid, its just that I can't use those charms ...

I think Bat Country died on Estiah...

Ahh my bad... I gotta say I'm really enjoying this one, wondering why you guys all quit? Does it stays the same forever and bored you?

I played for 6 months or so and started a pretty nice guild with the FOH forum.  I just got really bored with it and just stopped one day.  It was a fun game.

Apparently they have been cloned in China (http://www.estiah.com/index/index/news/41) without their consent.

Decided to play some of this again, anyone know when/why/who/what caused the massive hp creep?  My decks used to be top tier for my level and suddenly everyone has around 100 more hit points then I do.  I've looked up hp raising skills and I'm working on fixing it but I'm only going off info from the wiki and I can't help but feel like I'm probably missing something.  Its going to take me raising every exploration/crafting skill plus doing some very specific jobs to raise it through skills.

I guess what I'm asking is are there more of these that I should know about? (http://progenitor-softworks.com/ew/index.php?title=Cave_of_Providential_Balance) Because I clearly need to focus on upping my hp before I worry about anything else.

Arise! Just started playing this again out of pre-WoW-expansion boredom. Anyone still messing with it? Doesn't seem to have changed much; I had a ton of action points that I've blown over the past few days. Hopefully it'll still be sticky with only the daily allotment.

I'm playing as part of the EJ group, but from what I can tell the increase in hitpints is due to the new dungeons allowing players to farm the final ranks of Charm Alchemist / Defender  etc - skills that used to be a lot harder to max out.

There's a very, very very long questline at level 47 or so that gives a lot of extra health (60 in total), but from what I can tell not veyer many people have done it because it's so insanely long. Other than that there's nothng I know of that's been added.