I was going to help SF the other night with this build to farm Bolten. He's located outside Kodash Bazaar.


He carries a recurve bow
+5e
crippling
+30hp

Here's the code for the build:
A2NRiZ4XHdGP0YsE3GZDXBuD

Skills:
Shadow Form (E)
Sliver Armor
Glyph of Elemental Power
Obsidian Flame
Tenai's Crystals
Crystal Wave
Aftershock
Dark Escape (or Death's Charge)

Equipment:
Anything with extra energy and +enchant.

Earth: 12 + 1 + 3
Shadow Arts: 10
Energy Storage 8 + 1

With a +19 or 20% enchant mod, Shadow form shold last 18 seconds, with the enchant and glyph of elemental power sliver armor should last 14 seconds.

first leave Kodash (without heroes or henchies) and head towards Bolten's area. Wait for the nearest group of 4 heket to walk away. You should see two groups of heket along the shoreline. One group has Bolten in it. The other group should be close by. If the other group has a blue tongued heket in it, resign and come out again. A blue tongued heket will screw the whole thing up. If no blue tongued heket spawned, aggro both groups of heket (make sure you targeted bolten ahead of time) then shadow form and dark escape and run to him or death's charge to him. If you need to, let the heket groups close in a bit before hitting shadow form and going after bolten. I find that running up to most bosses targets sliver armor better against non-monk type bosses. Hit glyph then sliver armor. If bolten is the target then obsidian flame -> tenai's -> crystal wave -> aftershock -> obsidian flame. He should be dead or almost dead by that time.

Of course this build can be changed to farm other bosses as well. Also sins can be used instead of ele's, but against bolten the ele works best.

==========
The sure way I usually kill bolten is to take any melee damage character (sin, war, derv) and load up on attack and degen and bring along my monk mule who throws up 4 enchants. As there's no enemy here that can shatter them, I don't worry about them being ripped.

Basically leave Kodash with heroes, hench, and a bonding prot monk (just take a guildie if you can't use a mule ). clear all the other heket out. When they're cleared, send the heroes/hench flagged away. Bolten will chase them, so you have to body block him along the buildings, then he's stuck and you can just keep attacking him. Sometimes he doesn't even attack you.

Since you'll always kill him this way, your chances are relatively high in getting his bow. I tried this during a non green weekend and got 7 bows in roughly 25 attempts. Had I stopped at my 7th bow, it would have been 7 in 20 attempts.

This is a relatively easy run to do and bolten's recurve bow can be sold for roughly 10-15k I think. I use them on jin usually and use modded recurves on margrid.

I logged in for the first time in a year last night, and even after deleting and recreating Jhaele Flamehair, she was still in [RB].

I guess I have quite a bit to catch up on, being so long out of date and all. See you all ingame!

Now to decide if I should go out and buy the expansions or not...

(I think I like emoticons too much, too)

I have Olias set up as a MM, and with my necro on physical damage hexes (especially barbs and MoP), I have him focus on fiends. With vamps or shambles fpr body block. The long rechage on vamps or shambles allows for many more fiends. (vamps generally result in more fiends)

Olias: (Death 12+4, SR 9+1, Blood 3, Healing Prayers: Everything else)
Dark Bond, AVM or Shambles, Summon Bone Fiend, BotM, Heal Area

For equipment, he carries a +15/-1 and a collectors death focus

-I'm still stuck on an elite (he doesn't NEED one), but Virulence is okay, as is Reapers Mark, but I feel as if I'm just putting them there for show.
- I'm not sure about a secondary class. He seems less effective without Heal Area (especially between battles), but maybe that's my imagination.
- And finally, for areas with fewer corpses, does anyone have any thoughts about a minion bomber build?

Hello guys,

I finally decided to play Warlords 2, as I thought that it would be a nice game. The game deadline was some time ago, but I didn't care. So this is a shadow game, and strangely the very first report on Warlords 2. Maybe some other players are inspired by this report to try the game themselves. Though I have to admit that it won't poise any great challenge to players who win on Monarch+ regularly. But this is as it should be because it was labeled as Gentle Adventure. If you need more information about the setup or even the savefile, then this is the place to click...

The settings in short:

Quote:Sponsor: Sirian
Opening Date: Monday, November 20
Duration: Four Weeks
Game Speed: Normal

Difficulty: Noble
Civilization: England
Leader: Churchill
World Size: Standard
Map: Shuffle, Random Climate
Victory: Any
Rules: Standard
Version: Warlords v208

Variant Rules: You MUST adopt Universal Suffrage the turn you are enabled to do so.

Scenario: This is a Gentle Adventure.

Scoring: None.

Closing Day: Monday, December 18. Reports due by Dec 19.

Hi Guys!

We have finally finished most of the ground work for this years PIE DASH 2007! and we would like to now invite Realms Beyond to register your teams for a race not soon to be forgotten! Last year we raced from Yaks Bend to Dunes of Despair and the teams pushed hard to gain every edge possible! Last years winner Spirits of War with a time of 1:13:00 and giving it all they had came Knights Templar with second place at 1:14:26.

This Year the race will start in Henge of Denravi to Marhan's Grotto!

We invite you to join us in this years event! Will your team blow away the competition and send them packing? PIE wants to put you to the ultimate test of endurance and team work!

Special thanks to Isle for allowing full use of their Teamspeak server for this event.

::Teamspeak Isle::

IP:70.84.196.2:8769
Password: khylo

For SignUp Registration:
http://www.pieguild.net/dragonfly/index....=1007#1007

Frostraven put a post up about having alliance GvG (unrated) nights in the alliance thread.

Would be a good place to practice even if we guest people or use heroes to fill extra slots and get people who may not normally GvG to try it out in a more friendly situation and maybe get them to want to GvG more often.

I've decided to make my own little tournament of my own if anybody will participate ( 5 or more). I hope that you guys will decide to play this, and if you do, it wouldn't come out until this sunday, due to me being in school and having other things to do besides Civ4 during the week (Though i would like to do it all the time ) So anyways the first game would be something like this: Persians, Noble, Pangaea, Many many AI (as in CRUSHED). You would need to capture most of the cow resources ( The game variant being your people being crazy for cows, automatic wars on any civ that has cows until you capture them) Not too hard of a game though... No Culture or Time Victories though, and no founding religions (your people are out cow hunting too much of the time). Would anyone like this? I would have space for up to 20 people(no more, i have other work to do besides scoring and checking that you were at war with every civ that had cows...) If anyone wants to, please post on this thread a) that you want to play, b) suggestions, c) how to post a savegame file
Thanks!

i'm pulling this out of the existing thread since that one is so long already. please understand that i'm asking so that i can learn, i'm not trying to be argumentative or start flame wars. i 100% agree that certain kids who i shall not name here go WAY overboard, post too much, and have nothing useful to say even the first time.

but i see comments in the long thread here like "Serious, really...I tried to follow those threads and have fun comparing them and I get to see lots of spam from him...plus other lurkers 'wisdom' and even spoiler info...it makes following those thread a pain, which is very sad"

i'm going to be very vague here, to err on the side of caution as far as spoilers. in one of the threads on CFC today, i saw a post that read to me as though the author wasn't familiar with the code for how the game does a particular thing. i do not know this poster personally, i've never talked to him, but i've read a lot of his posts and the impression i have is that he likes to learn more about things that he doesn't know, and that there's not a lot about this game that he doesn't know. oops i might be giving away who it is there, but maybe not, that applies to a lot of you.

anyway, i posted my understanding of the formula, based on what i've read a bunch of times and my observations in the games, figuring it might help that team understand what happened, and that it might help them make future decisions.

my question is ... if we assume my understanding there was correct (perhaps i was wrong, but for now let's assume i wasn't), is even that sort of post considered rude and an intrusion, and i should just read but not type?

i very much enjoy reading those threads and i'd hate to contribute to anything that made you feel you have to move them behind closed doors to get away from the annoyances is all. so i'm looking for some guidance.

So, now that we're actually able to hold our own in the lower end GvG, it means our rating will undoubtedly wind up averaging around 1000 for a while. Unfortunately, that means we'll be fighting guilds that do GvG on more than a casual basis. Unfortunately, we're not quite ready for that just yet because we're still having troubles at the flag stand and in situations where we need to split, which are fairly important aspects of GvG.

While it's true that we're still exploring the aspects of the current build and haven't quite perfected it yet, I think we need to put it on hold for a while and use a build designed for splitting. Anyways, I came up with this one rather quickly, so let me know what you guys think.

D/W
Scythe Mastery: 15 (12 +3); Mysticism: 12 (10 +1 +1); Wind Prayers: 9 (8 +1)
Avatar of Melandru, Wearying Strike, Victorious Sweep, Mystic Sweep, Burst of Aggression, Harrier's Grasp, Lyssa's Haste, Res Sig

P
Spear Mastery: 15 (12 +3); Command 12 (10 +1 +1); Leadership: 8
"Incoming!", "Stand Your Ground!", "Brace Yourself!", "Go for the Eyes!", Anthem of Flame, Vicious Attack, Disrupting Throw, Signet of Return

E
Earth Magic: 14 (12 +1 +1); Energy Storage: 13 (12 +1)
Ward Against Melee, Ward Against Foes, Glyph of Energy, Earthquake, Obsidian Flame, Eruption, Earth Attunement, Res Sig

Mo/E
Protection Prayers: 14 (12 +1 +1); Divine Favor: 12 (11 +1); Healing Prayers: 6
Zealous Benediction, Reversal of Fortune, Dismiss Condition, Gift of Health, Holy Veil, Protective Spirit, Aegis, Gyph of Lesser Energy

R/Mo
Marksmanship: 16 (12 +3 +1); Expertise: 9 (8 +1); Wilderness Survival: 10 (9 +1); Protection Prayers: 5
Apply Poison, Burning Arrow, Savage Shot, Distracting Shot, Natural Stride, Mending Touch, Troll Unguent, Res Sig

N/E
Death Magic: 14 (12 +1 +1); Soul Reaping: 12 (11 +1); Curses: 6
Animate Shambling Horror, Animate Bone Fiend, Glyph of Lesser Energy, Death Nova, Discord, Shadow of Fear, Suffering, Res Sig

Mo/A
Protection Prayers: 12 (11 +1); Divine Favor: 13 (11 +1 +1); Shadow Arts: 7
Blessed Light, Dismiss Condition, Signet of Devotion, Spirit Bond, Reversal of Fortune, Shield of Absorption, Dark Escape, Return

Me/E
Domination Magic: 14 (12 +1 +1), Fast Casting: 12 (11 +1); Air Magic: 6
Glyph of Lesser Energy, Energy Surge, Energy Burn, Power Return, Shatter Enchantment, Storm Djinn's Haste, Gale, Res Sig

Here's the basic idea:
The top 4 (D/W, P, E, Mo/E) will go to the flag stand and hold there. Wards get set up at or in front of the flag stand (aka the opposing team's side) and the casters (and para) kite around inside them while the Dervish pressures someone. If the mesmer is there they'll spike someone once "Go for the Eyes!" is ready with the Derv (in Melandru's form) using Wearying -> Victorious -> Mystic; the Para using Vicious -> Disrupting; the Ele using Earthquake -> Obs. Flame (with Glyph of Energy pre-cast for the EQ). If the mes is there it'll help the spike with Surge -> Burn. If the Derv doesn't have Melandru's up then it'll just use Victorious -> Mystic. Eruption should be used primarily for defensive purposes since the blind is applied with every hit now. If need be, EQ can also be used for defense, but you have to be careful not to go down too far with exhaustion (if you normally have about 80 energy, then you probably shouldn't take it below 40).

As soon as the Para sees a spike incoming it should use, well, "Incoming!". Since the skill has such a short duration (I checked, 3s is as high as it goes... it might get up to 4 at 17 Command, but that's not worth it) you can't use it liberally, you have to wait until the spike starts (i.e. as soon as someone gets hexed with Shadow Prison, for example). "Stand Your Ground!" can be used a bit more liberally, but should be used primarily to relieve/cut down pressure. The 4 should be able to hold their own fairly well with wards and shouts, you just need to watch out for hexes.

The next 3 (R/Mo, N/Me, Mo/A) will be the split/gank squad. They will head to the opponent's base at the start of the match and stay there depending on how much resistance they meet. If the other team sends a gank at the start as well, they'll fight them (should have the advantage too, since most teams don't send monks on ganks) outside the base so they aren't fighting the NPCs at the same time. If the opponent does manage to send a gank to our base, then these 3 will be the ones who always go back to defend. The necro should be able to keep several minions going. Also, since the necro doesn't have a direct form of conditions his Discord will be dependent on the ranger to keep someone poisoned, while he makes sure Suffering and/or Shadow of Fear are on the target.

The mesmer runner should always have a flag in hand, which means as soon as you cap you go back to get another flag. If there's no need to cap then stay with the team at the flag stand and work with them.

Well, that's the basic premise of the build. I think there are still some rough spots to work out, but, on paper at least, it seems pretty stable. Obviously the big difference to this build as opposed to the one we've been using is that this one will require a second caller for the second team. Whoever does this *has* to have a mic. Also, like the Ele, the Mes should feel free to use Gale until max energy gets below 25. In case of emergency (i.e. we're a few seconds from a morale and the other flagger is right there) he can go down as far as he needs to (same goes for the ele).

That's about all I can think of for now. Let me know what you guys think. If at all possible it might be worth it to try this build (or whatever it winds up morphing into) on Friday when we meet next.

Our team roster this go around:
Wyrm - W/Rt
Xyn - W/E
SF - Me/E
Mercedes (guest from ZoS) - N/E (later Discord build, read match 4 for the explanation on that one)
Moo - N/A
Fox - E/varied
Ryan (guest from DOGS, aka Moo's friend) - Mo/A
Hawk - Mo/E

Battle #1: Redwood Bandits - Win
Our warmup match. I'm not exactly sure what they were running, it had something to do with earth dervs and a hero necro running minions or something. We beat them fairly easily. We fought at (their) Burning Isle. Don't remember if this one was flawless or not.

Battle #2: You Just Got W T F Pwnzored - Win
They didn't really seem to have their game together for some reason. They tried sending a gank at the start of the match but it didn't last very long. Once their team collapsed the first time we were able to keep enough pressure on them so they weren't able to get back up. We fought at (their) Warrior's Isle. Pretty sure this one was flawless.

Battle #3: Small Gods - Loss
After the last battle our rating hit 1000, which put us back into ladder play (note: ladder doesn't start until rank 1000, but at this point we were close to that) which is a lot more competative. Also, this guild has been in the top levels before (either that or they're a HA guild since I did recognize their name). This match is where our inexperience came into play again as we weren't able to make a strong fight at the stand. They ran a pretty heavy spike build, with Shadow Prison on both their warrior and Assassin so damage would come in a hurry; this led to some people being DPed out when VoD came around. Looking back at this match, we should have split more often (something we need to work on) since their build seemed pretty weak when it was split up compared to ours. We fought on (our) Isle of Solitude.

Battle #4: X X Aztec Obsidian X X - Win
After the last match I lost an RPS match with Mercedes (I still can't believe I did that) so I let him run Discord instead of the Icy Veins. We were in the process of steamrolling this team when they resigned at around the 9 minute mark after we wiped their team a second time. We fought on (their) Imperial Isle.

Battle #5: Spirits of War - Loss
Again, they were a ladder team ranked over 500 and were running a build that was pretty similar to ours in that it was hex heavy with melee pressure. The difference was they were shutting our warriors down a lot more with hexes like Reckless Haste, Price of Failure and Spirit of Failure and had Divert Hexes to alleviate the pressure from our hexes. We did pretty well at the beginning of the match but again had trouble controlling the flag stand area. They tried to invade our base a few times but were somewhat unsuccessful at that, as both times they had to retreat (although they did get both our knights during one push, which may have been their goal) and we were able to kill several people on their team each time. Overall, we held out fairly well, though they killed our GL at about the 23 min mark.

Edit: I think I got the halls we fought on correct this time. Also remembered to add Fox into the lineup.
Edit 2: Oops.