The Anvil of Crom: Secrets of Hyboria
I thought we'd do a bit of a departure from our usual format for this week's installment of The Anvil of Crom. As the column is a long-term chronicle of my experiences in and out of game, it's occasionally appropriate to throw a guide or two in the mix. Age of Conan is developing into a pretty deep title, and as such it's got plenty of little nooks and crannies that aren't readily apparent to either the veteran skull-splitter or the bright-eyed newb fresh off the boat in Tortage.
Luckily for you, I've been making a list of the oddities I've encountered, as well as the various unanswered questions I've had since my return to Hyboria several months ago. By combining a little in-game and wiki research, I've put together this listing of a few of the game's notable quirks. Some of them involve combat, but as I'm really a PvEer at heart, you won't find much in the way of strategy or advice here. Most of this is along the lines of what I lovingly call fluff, i.e., it'll probably make your game experience more enjoyable, but it certainly isn't required reading if you just want to jump in and pwn face.
First off, let's get the combat stuff out of the way up front. Some of these tips may elicit a bit of eye-rolling from all you Hyborian old-timers, but for newer players (or occasionally clueless vets like me), they might save you some aggravation.
Death is meaningless, and convenient
One of the first things to realize about Age of Conan is that there's really no death penalty. Yeah, you take a slight statistical hit if you're level 10 or higher and decide to check out the big black, but let's be honest here: it's a slap on the wrist. It goes away after 30 minutes (or upon collecting your tombstone), and you'll never have more than four penalties stacking at any one time. As a result, death can be used to circumvent some of the travel time around Hyboria's large zones. If you're just starting out, you probably don't have enough veteran reward points to afford all of the spiffy porting abilities that zip you back to the major quest hubs, and falling on your sword out in the middle of a playfield will get you back to your bind point (and back questing) much faster than hoofing it the traditional way.
The water of life
One thing I learned just recently (yeah, I know Mr. Hardcore PvPer, I should've known this already), is that water makes a good get-out-of-jail-free card when PvP starts going badly. For example, if you're a caster class (or even a squishy assassin like me) who's been set upon by a guardian or any other melee brute who is seemingly impervious to your attacks, make for the nearest body of water and treat yourself to a leisurely swim. Provided that the water is deep enough (and not just a standing pool), melee attacks will be rendered quite useless, so you and your would-be ganker can have a pleasant chat about parentage, politics, or whatever particulars strike your fancy until he inevitably gets bored and looks for drier prey. Keep in mind that you can still be hit by ranged attacks though, so if your assailant has any ranger or demonologist friends, you'd do well to break their line of sight while treading water.
Respec time
Feats and skills are a major part of building your character in Funcom's Hyboria, and fortunately they can be reset at will. It will cost you some coin (more as you continue to do it), but it's nonetheless comforting to always have the option. To reset skills (i.e., change the number of points you assign to things like hide, skulk, and climb) you simply press the P button and click the skills tab, then hold the ALT button and left click on the skill you'd like to reset. After confirming, you'll have those points to redistribute when and where you see fit.
Feat resets are a bit more involved since you have to seek out an appropriate NPC. Once you do, it's a matter of paying the required coin. Currently, feat-resetting NPC's can be found in Old Tarantia (Minerva, near the Temple of Mitra), Khemi (Zahra, on the docks), and Cimmeria (Cowal, located in the western half of Conarch Village).
A final word on combat
Actually there are two final words with regard to combat secrets, and they are "white damage." I've seen people use this term both on the forums and over the game's various chat interfaces, and I was always left scratching my head as to its meaning. Turns out, using your directional attacks by themselves (i.e., not using them to perform combos) results in white damage. So, hacking at a pict with your left arrow attack produces a certain amount of white damage, whereas slicing at him while finishing up a combo with the left arrow attack does not. White damage isn't particularly useful, but now at least you won't feel as stupid as I did when I first heard the term.
And now, the interesting stuff
Age of Conan, while indisputably a fun game, does suffer from a few awkward conventions with regard to its user interface and the friendliness thereof. Adding someone to your friend's list is a case in point. It's quite simple if you're grouped with him (right click on his name, select "add" from the drop-down menu), but what if you and your buddies are doing some alt juggling, or someone has sent you a tell while you were offline and you'd like to add her to your friend's list as a reminder to contact her when she logs back on?
Well, you can click the friends/guild members window, scroll down to "add" with your mouse, and get the job done. Alternatively you could use a slash command, like /cc addbuddy MYFRIEND, and call it a day in about half the time. AoC is filled with similar interesting slash commands, and I encourage you to experiment with all of them to get a feel for their usefulness with regard to your own gaming.
A few of my favorites are /afk, /born, and /camp. Note that typing / and then hitting your tab key will bring up a pretty comprehensive list of slash commands which includes emotes. It's worth noting here that the venerable /who command doesn't really do a whole lot for you in Age of Conan. The search functionality is accessed via the Players and PvP button at the top left of the default interface (the first round button in the row of three). Clicking it will give you a plethora of drop-down menus for customizing your player searches.
Emo time
Speaking of emotes, Age of Conan has them in spades, and they run the gamut from sexy to silly and everything in between. You can access them using the / tab method above, typing the emote directly into your chat box (preceding it with a slash, like /bow_khitai_formal), or selecting it from the emote window, which is another oddity that I only recently discovered. What is the emote window you might be wondering? Hit Shift-Y and see for yourself.
Waypoints, scripts, and colors, oh my
Capping off our look at some of Age of Conan's hidden functionality are three genre stalwarts that, once used, will probably make you wonder how you survived without them. First up is the waypoint functionality and it's quite easy to master. Open up your zone map by pressing the M button, hover your mouse over the desired spot, and right click. You can name the waypoint anything your hardened Hyborian heart desires (most of mine read something like "ambush spot," or "pain-in-the-ass-leather-spawn," but your mileage may vary).
Next up are those wild and wooly scripts that you'll no doubt see if you spend any time perusing the game's global chat channels. Whether it's a guild advertisement, a roleplay event advertisement, or even a gold-seller advertisement, each of those clickable links you see people throw up in AoC's chat channels leads to an info window that was generated using the game's scripting capabilities. There are two ways to avail yourself of this particular functionality: the manual way (which assumes a bit of knowledge about file locations, hex colors, and text formatting), and the automatic way via a third party program.
For the former, check out this helpful wiki page and knock yourself out. For the latter, I highly recommend ShadowScript, available for download via the Curse network. Either of these methods will allow you to generate custom chat messages that incorporate different colors and fonts, as well as clickable links, all inside of the AoC client. You can also make use of the game's scripting capabilities to generate custom textual emote strings for your characters, using the methods outlined in the wiki link or in this older (but still useful) macro and scripting guide.
Sadly, we're out of time for this week. Happily, we do have a very nice parting gift in the form of this one-of-a-kind concept art.
Jef Reahard is an Age of Conan beta and launch day veteran, as well as the creator of Massively's weekly Anvil of Crom. Feel free to suggest a column topic, propose a guide, or perform a verbal fatality via jef@massively.com.
