Estiah

[sidereal]

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

[Ard]

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

Pack of damned dirty cheaters 

[Kageru]

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

[Ard]

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

[Azuredream]

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

[Delmania]

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.

[Lantyssa]

Sell the crap and donate the difference.

[sidereal]

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.

[Ard]

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.

[Soln]

Solno collapses of exhaustion.

** Battle status **
Rat God : 8/60 HP, 0 Armor, 0 Ward, 0 Willpower

me 50/50 HP

[sidereal]

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).

[Azuredream]

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.

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.

[Severian]

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.

[Lantyssa]

Is this guild all the same person?

I think so.  I was both amused and horrified.

[Solno is defeated by a tub of lard]

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

[Delmania]

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.

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

wtf?

[Azuredream]

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.

[Severian]

You can't when sieged. Sieges are all players on both sides.
If it was a battle request (like Black Berets 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.

[Delmania]

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. 

[Delmania]

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....

[Delmania]

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

[Severian]

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.

[sidereal]

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?

[Severian]

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 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.

[sidereal]

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.

[Severian]

Whoa, nail-biter! 

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

[Lantyssa]

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.

[sidereal]

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.

[sidereal]

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.

[Delmania]

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

[Lantyssa]

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.

[ezrast]

Oh god.

Achievements.

[Kageru]

New icons for the city actions too.

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

[Delmania]

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.

[Delmania]

Anyone had any luck in either racing or fighting?

[Azuredream]

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.