Snafzg returns to WAR (week four): A gilding guild
Welcome to the continuing adventures of Snafzg returns to WAR! Just to recap, week one provided an introduction for this crazy project, week two highlighted Tier 2 on Iron Rock, and week three highlighted Tier 4 on Phoenix Throne. Snafzg returns to WAR was even featured on the last episode of our Massively Speaking podcast. Next week will be my final impressions post, so make sure to come back for that one!
In this article, I'll focus on my continuing journey into Tier 4 on Phoenix Throne as a rank 40, renown rank 45 Squig Herder named Snafzg. Let's recap some of the goals I set out for myself last week: find a guild, participate in a city siege, raid Land of the Dead, check out the Wild Hunt live event, top up my RvR influence bars, obtain a fourth piece of Sentinel gear for my set, and most of all gain a general feeling for what has changed for better or worse in the past few months. I'm happy to report that many of these items have been checked off my list.
First, let's start off with the things I did accomplish. I'm now a proud member of Phoenix Ignition (PI), the only guild packing more firepower than a barrage of Bright Wizards! I spent the past couple weeks actively searching for a guild and had a few worthy candidates. What tipped me to PI was that everyone was genuinely friendly and knowledgable, willing to PvE and RvR, and familiar from when I used to play Warhammer Online actively near launch.
It all started when I logged in last night and broadcast that I was looking for a Hunter's Vale group. I only got about 1/3 of the way through this special dungeon the night before and really wanted to finish it before writing this article. I was immediately invited to a group of PI members and we spent the next 45-minutes searching for a tank to complete our group. After finding one, we entered the dungeon and began running through it as fast as possible.
You see, there's a 35-minute timer on this dungeon. You can still finish it if the time runs out but you don't receive as many rewards. After last night's experience, I would be shocked if any guild group could burn through this dungeon in that amount of time. You can skip a few bosses but some you must face. We got to the lion/lioness hero trial and failed three times before actually defeating it. That encounter alone would take upwards of 10 minutes even if you completed it on your first try.
Anyway, we didn't kill Kurnous within the alotted amount of time, but we did kill him. We had quite a few frustrating encounters in this dungeon but I really liked that the group of people I was with were persistent enough to stick it out. They were aware of this blog series and asked if I was still looking for a guild. I said that I was and they tossed me an invite. After such a good experience, I simply couldn't resist!
I should also briefly recount my city siege experience from last weekend. I was finally lucky enough to be online when Destruction pushed Order to the gates of Altdorf. I tried to join a group with some of the friends I had made since coming back, but their instance was full so I went into one alone. There were nearly two Destruction warbands for me to tag along with who were anything but organized. I tried to organize things myself, but I'm not very experienced with city siege and no-one was listening anyway.
I really do like the new city siege mechanics. Basically, there are three capture points in the city, which generate points the longer your team holds them. You also gain points for killing players. The first team to 1,000 points wins that phase of the siege. The next phase involves the exact same process, or alternatively, killing your enemy's lord boss.
Back to my story, Order were basically kicking our butts. After nearly an hour of futile attacks, I decided to take a quick break. I logged back on 20 minutes later and jumped into another instance. This time there were no defenders to be found -- only our team. We just got to the second phase quickly so the wardband leader called for a rally near their spawn point to kill the lord.
We all gathered and started our attack. I personally think Mythic made this boss too difficult. Even without Order breathing down our necks, this encounter took ages to finish. I fail to see how it would be possible with even a single group of Order to help defend. Eventually, we did finish him though and I was lucky enough to win an amazing new bow.
It was a bit strange to be rewarded more for joining an empty instance than I was for participating in a full one. Also, after we finished our siege, Order won back their city due to other instances and we were ported outside. Hilariously, hundreds of us were ported between the gates of Altdorf and the instance portal. I luckily remembered my book of binding, but you can tell that polish is still a bit of an issue one year later.
