If you’re doing all the quests there’s a lot of running around involved.

Luckily, I met a ratonga brigand at Brell’s Bar who was celebrating as she had just completed all of the Brew Day activities. She was exhausted but happy. She told me she’d worked out the best route for getting everything completed so I offered her a drink to tell me of her exploits. Typical ratonga, she accepted the drink but then after she drank it, she told me she wasn’t sure she wanted to share her secrets. Luckily, I spotted a sheet of paper tucked into the back pocket of her backpack. I bought her another drink or two, until she was quite merry and not paying quite so much attention and then I stole liberated her notes. I must admit, they look very helpful for getting everything done with a limited amount of backtracking. Here’s a copy:

Pickett’s Brewday travel path:

Antonica

Speak to Brell (the Avatar of Below) for the quest Beers for Brell
He wanders around the fields to the east of the Qeynos Gates.

Once you have his quest, proceed east to the lower levels of Blackburrow.

Blackburrow

Pick up a sample of Blackburrow Stout from The Blackburrow Brewery at 20,-40,59.
If you are a lower-level character, the safest route is to jump down waterfall. There is just one pair of heroics between you and the keg.
Pick up Bixie Honey Lager, Windstalker’s Hard Cider and Crossroads Ale for your Brews Across Norrath collection.

Return to Antonica and use the portal at 65,-20,5 at the North Qeynos gates to go to the Bar of Brell

The Bar of Brell

Speak to Gergy Gigglegibber for your ginger ale. Purchase ale from Mraugl Stonecrusher and give to Gergy.
Get Brell’s Everlasting Brew from Rasel Alechaser
Get Ale Goggles from Gilin Rockbreath
Get Valla Brewhammer’s Special Brew from Valla Brewhammer
Get Snoogle’s Presentation from Snoogle Blizted
Purchase crafting recipe book from Balin Copperfoot
Go upstairs to the private lounge to speak to Jimmy Runner and get the barley
Pick up Somborn Sanguine Ale, Miner’s Milk and Bog Water Brew for your Brews Across Norrath collection.

Once you’ve completed all that, you can use the portal. Exit to Timorous Deep or Greater Faydark to take a carpet to Sinking Sands.

Maj’Dul

Speak to Amorous Ali at -228,161,-96 for Love on the Coast drink
Take the Sinking Sands carpet to Darklight Woods or Qeynos Harbor and run or use the bells to go to the Commonlands.

Commonlands

Harvest pure water from any water source (do this first before drinking)
Run to Pride Lake and sip from Snoogle’s Special Flask
Collect pink elephant from around 432,-47,-331.

Rush to spires to get to Enchanted Lands before the drink wears off.

Enchanted Lands

Collect a strange cabbage from the tree in front of the docks at 57,-1,14
Run towards Runnyeye to Charvis Drunkhoof at 92,25,-692. Tip him over to get his Hero Brew.

Return to the docks to travel to Nektulos Forest.

Nektulos Forest

Jump into the water at the docks to collect pure water.

Use the dock bells to make your way to Feerrott.

Feerrott

Run to the tunnel by the dock and sip from Snoogle’s Special Flask
Pick up a Small Lizard Toy from 74,4,-93

Rush to bell on the dock to get to Thundering Steppes before the drink wears off.

Thundering Steppes

Put on Gilin’s Ale Goggles and find Gurag Bloodwart at -573,-14,-486. Take off goggles and get update.
Run to Thundermist Village
Sip Snoogle’s Special Flask if needed and collect flying pig from the stables at 562,3,-133
Run to 595,-1,-60 and tip over Betsy then run to 549,-0,-67 to steal some of Prew’s Hops.
Collect pure water from around the docks.
Take boat to Butcherblock.

Butcherblock

Speak to Glug Irontoe at 692,24,602 for update.
Take the griffon towards Greater Faydark and get ready to jump off. You need to watch for Tumpty Irontoe on the road in front of Kaladim somewhere around -278,150,-420 and then speak to him to get Liquid Courage.
Return to the docks and drink the Liquid Courage. After streaking, collect your Tumpy Tonic Max from Tumpy Irontoe.

Take the griffon to Timorous Deep.

Gorowyn

Put on Gilin’s Ale Goggles and find Smurg Fleshreaper on the beach at 2159,21,1167. Take off goggles and get update.
Put the ale goggles back on and find Tarcha Niba’dn at 2341,20,1339 at the docks. Take off goggles and get update.

Use the portal to return to the Bar of Brell and then exit to Antonica or Commonlands and take the wizard spires to Antonica.

Antonica

Travel to Windstalker Village.
Pick up pure water from the lake.
Put on Gilin’s Ale Goggles and find Dala Plateheart at -1908,-36,-618 at the Tavern.
Return to the fields east of the Qeynos gates to find Brell and complete quest.

Bar of Brell

Speak to Rasel Alechaser and read the Prayer to Brell he gives you. Drink from the wooden mug in the Sanctorium of Brell and then return to Rasel to complete the quest.

Speak to Snoogle Blitzed to complete his quest.

Speak to Gilin Rockbreath to complete quest and receive Improved Ale Goggles. Now you are able to complete Valla’s quest.

Put on the Improved Ale Goggles and go to any of these locations: Antonica, Commonlands, Greater Faydark, Darklight Wood or Timorous Deep. Gorowyn in Timorous Deep seemed the best location for quickly collecting the bushes.

Gorowyn

Whilst wearing the Improved Ale Goggles, search around the grassy areas for shrubs with a green sparkle effect which are called bountiful Brewday gardens. These are common in the grassy areas where there are the standard shrub harvests (salty gardens).

In Commonlands, harvest around the wizard spire area and in Antonica search around the water.

Bountiful Brewday gardens have a variety of harvests:

• wild yeast
• nobel hops
• golden grapes
• emerald clovers
• Brell barley

You need one of each of item in order to complete Valla’s quest. You’ll also use these items for the brewday crafting recipes. The emerald clovers are rare and you’ll need one for the quest, one for each backpack, and one per set of three meat pies.

Bar of Brell

Speak to Valla Brewhammer to complete her quest.

Get a Drink

Many of the traditional bars in Norrath have the remaining drinks you need for the collection. EQ2i has a full list of locations.

Pick up Sapling’s Raspberry Lambic, Ashfall Crag Lager and Claymore Ale to complete your Brews Across Norrath collection.

Notes:
If you’re not doing all the quests just skip the bits you don’t need and adjust travel destinations as necessary. Don’t forget that you can now travel directly among all the spires.

You can’t do Valla’s quest nor collect the tradeskill harvests until you’ve completed the Ale Goggles quest from Gilin Rockbreath. The bountiful Brewday gardens will disappear after the event so if you wish to keep using the crafted recipes you will need to stock up.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

“Pssst, over here.”

There was a gloomy silhouette leaning against a pillar, only just visible in the half-light of the arches. I looked behind me. A rat scurried across the pavement. I could hear the hiss and groan from the Underground station. A tendril of mist curled around my feet. There was no one on the street but me and my unseen assailant.

“Yeah, you,” the shadow whispered. “Is that a mandrake in your pocket?”

I looked down in embarrassment and then realised it was a serious question. I pulled the dirty root out of my pocket. “Yeah, I, uh, it was abandoned, honest.” The mandrake giggled. I tightened my grip but that just made it giggle louder. I needed to find a way to get rid of the damn thing. I shoved the mandrake back into my pocket, trying to mute it with my handkerchief.

“Giggling mandrake, huh? How much you want for it?”

“What I want … ?” I pulled my hand out of my pocket. “It’s not for sale, mate.” I leaned against the opposing pillar. I’d seen a deshrieked mandrake in the bazaar for 16 Echoes. This one was quite a bit louder but it had to be worth a few bob. I could use some readies right about now.

“You play Knife-and-Candle then?”

I straightened up again. Polite murder, that’s what they called Knife and Candle, a game for the most dangerous denizens of Fallen London. I was out of my league. “I don’t, I’m not…” If the shadowy figure had stayed silent, I probably would have dropped the mandrake and run off but luckily the hoarse whisper interrupted my stuttering.

“Tell you what. You give me the mandrake and I’ll tell you how to ambush your way to the top. Deal?”

I swallowed hard. “Deal.”

A perilous and wily lady wearing a stained, red velvet gown stepped out from the shadows. “Hand over the mandrake.”

I handed it over and she smiled. “Lovely.” She lifted her iron top hat and carefully tucked it in. “All right, now listen.”

“Knife and Candle isn’t for wimps. You need to be able to handle yourself in a dark alley. So start off by hanging around Watchmaker Hill and learning from the hunters there. They won’t hurt you and they’ll be happy for the help with the wildlife. No point in playing before you know the practicalities of bringing down someone or something bigger than you.” She gave me a long look up and down. “Everyone will be, I think.”

The ground rumbled below our feet as a train pulled away.

“Then you need to just jump in. You’ll lose. You will lose a lot. But it’s the only way to learn and you’ll just have to accept that. You’ve got one chance to make it work and that’s to guess your opponent’s strategy. But all you’ve got is your fists to start so you’ve got no advantage at all. Just pick on the lowest level person you can find and maybe you’ll get lucky. After a while, you’ll start to recognise strategies and be able to second-guess your victims. You’ll start going up in rank and once you get rank 4, you’ll start to see results.”

She smiled at me like an adder smiles at a field mouse. I think it was meant to be encouraging.

“Rank 4,” I repeated, to show that I’d been paying attention.

“You’ll learn to hunt. That’s important. Choose your victims carefully – in fact, if you can, spy on them and try to see if you can catch them when they are not paying attention.” She waved a steam-driven iPhone at me. “Twitter’s good for that, just watch for them to go quiet. Hunt increases your attack and Stealth increases your defence, those skills will make all the difference in the world to you.”

My head began to pound. I was only understanding half of what she said and she didn’t look like the patient type.

“Look, you start out with nothing, so you don’t care about losing. It’s not like you stay dead. So go out there and attack. If you win, your score goes up. If you lose, well, you can’t get much lower. And if you get lucky, you’ll guess strategies and get a bonus. That’s all it is to start, luck and your dangerous skill. Once you learn to hunt, well, you can gain quite a large bonus just by being patient and choosing your victims carefully. Being watchful will help you there. And if you are shadowy and can learn how to use stealth, well! Then it’s simply a minor gamble that they won’t notice you for an hour or so. Hunt and Stealth will net you some very high bonuses in attack and defence, making it almost impossible for your victim to defend against you.” She laughed happily at the thought.

My nervous smile was beginning to hurt. “Be watchful for hunting and shadowy for stealth, got it.”

She pulled on a pair of gloves and stepped up close to me. “And always remember that style and distinction counts,” she whispered into my ear and I saw the blur of her hand moving towards my chest. I closed my eyes, ready for the knife to the heart. By the time I dared open them again, I was alone.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Be sure to read the previous sections in order to maximise your chances of success at these strategies: City Placement, Evony Heroes, Production and Playing the Market and Leveling heroes and farming medals.

Summary: Archers are key troops, they need to be layered to be effective. Try to fight a lot and scout so you know you’ll win. Develop “combat technology” and “hero attack” for an advantage. Ballista is a key troop for farming.

Archers are the best troop type in most circumstances. Whoever designed the combat in this game seems to think that the Battle of Agincourt was typical.

The main combat strategy is to layer (or rainbow) one of each infantry troop with a mass of archers (exceptions detailed below).  Valleys ranging from level 1 to 3 never have archers in them: you can guarantee a win with 50 archers and rainbow (1 warrior, 1 pikeman, 1 swordsman and 1 worker) and probably much less.

Once you have scouts and a decent Informatics technology you can take on Level 4 and higher valleys.  Send one scout per valley level and if your Informatics tech is equal to the valley level you’ll get some info which you may have to interpret [http://www.evonies.com/index.php/Tips-Tricks/Tips-Tricks/evony-scouting.html].  Informatics is an important technology – low level becon tower will limit scouting too.

You need an equal number of archers to the number of troops the enemy has in his largest group  and at least triple the number of archers he has. You can omit the worker and/or warrior from the ‘layer’ to speed up travel time but it is a risk, especially if there are several troop types in the defending force (these act like an enemy layer).  More archers is safer.

All foot soldiers (no archers)
Send archers layered with 1 of each foot soldier.

All archers
Send cavalry and 1 scout.

Archers and foot soldiers
Send twice as many archers layered with 1 of each foot soldier type (some loss).

In the above example the worker and warrior could have been omited to speed up march time.

All cavalry
Send 1 ballista, triple the archers.

Cavalry and foot soldiers
Send 1 ballista and archers plus rainbow.

Archers and cavalry
Send double archers plus 25% more sword (losses).

Bit of everything
Send archers plus 25% more sword plus layer (losses).

These assume equal tech and a competent hero and are probably overkill.  If you get a vague scout report you can still take a shot particularly if there is a single troop type.

You should eventually be in a position to overpower valley attacks with a large army and, if you have significant overkill, you can reduce any losses you are likely to sustain by using a high intelligence hero. Even level 10 valleys can be hit for little or no losses.

Technology and hero level influence the battle outcome. Valleys have technology equal to their level. There are heroes in valleys of level 4 and above (which is why some over kill is recomended – a tough hero in defence can give you a shock loss).

It is a game of perfect information so you could work out exactly the right troop make-up to send to any particular fight but it really isn’t worth the effort. Just do a rule of thumb as indicated above and send the attack.

Fighting NPC cities (barbarians) is done mainly with ballistae and transports. Ballistae are slow to build so NPC farming takes a while to get going.

http://www.evonypedia.com/evony/npc/npcs-vs-ballistae shows how many you need for each level of NPC (you can cut back as hero attack level raises and that may let you attack more simultaneously) and http://www.evonypedia.com/evony/npc/npc-ballistae-farming-archery-and-hbr-levels explains the danger zones of archery and Horse Back Riding (HBR) technology for attacking a level 5 NPC (which you’ll do a lot of – they have 3 million food which refreshes every 8 hours). Tivie’s battle calculator is pretty good for NPC fights. Hod’s has a good guide on level 10 capture, don’t bother until you have a level 10 Rally Point. Scroll down the Hod’s guide for the level 10 version.

If you ever lose a fight, make sure you repair the hero’s loyalty back to 100% using a cash reward. Heroes are very important and you’d be foolish to lose one for the sake of a few gold.

By farming local NPCs you can sustain a huge hungry army and use it to attack valleys or players. Eventually you’ll be attacking Level 10 NPC cities with your main army but that is a ways off.

Aach has reached the top ten prestige list and the top of the honor ranks without spending a penny. He has written a whole series on playing Evony more successfully, which will be appearing exclusively on MMORPG Info over the next few weeks. Subscribe to the feed to be sure not to miss it.

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Be sure to read the previous sections in order to maximise your chances of success at these strategies: City Placement, Evony Heroes, and Production and Playing the Market.

Executive summary: Attack each valley you can every hour. Attack often to level heroes. Scout L8 to L10 valleys for easy targets. Capture valleys to stop them changing on server restart.

Once you have the maximum number of valleys captured you can continue to attack valleys – this gives experience, loot, resources and (rarely) a medal. Each valley can drop a medal once per hour. If you do not have a target rich environment (e.g. you can only attack low level valleys) then you can release a captured valley to refresh the troops and loot. However, this does *not* refresh the medal drop chance, that is fixed hourly.

It works like this:

1. Attack a valley (‘A’) and capture it.
2. Attack another nearby valley (‘B’). It is now empty.
3. Release the valley ‘A’
4. Attack the valley ‘B’ again and capture it
5. Now attack ‘A’ which is full of troops (exp) and loot
6. Release valley ‘B’
7. Attack valley ‘A’ again and capture it.

Repeat the whole sequence again to get lots of exp and some lumber, stone or whatever.

Troops in a valley refresh on a server tick so it is worth sending a modest force to recapture an ‘empty’ valley unless you know when the server ticks and are not at risk of a respawn. In that case, capture the empty valley with 1 scout.

There is a lot of guff out there in Internetland about medal drops. The drop rates and mechanics have been tweaked as it is the main thing that people buy with cash. You want to be hitting Level 10 valleys as medals drop much less commonly as you go down in valley level.

The type of valley also influences the type of medal – rose medals, for example, drop most commonly from flats which has made rose medals extra rare as flats are quickly turned into NPCs.

Any medal can drop from anywhere but at the moment it seems that the following improves chances of specific medal drops.

• Rose: flats
• Lion: hills/grasslands
• Honor: forests
• Fredom: swamps
• Wisdom: deserts/ random
• Courage: hills
• Nation: hills
• Justice: swamps/deserts

Drop rate is almost 10% from level 10 valleys and, as you can hit the same valley every hour, the medals will come quite quickly enough that you should not need to buy them.

You can hold as many valleys as you have town hall levels. All valleys (except ones held by players) gain one level at server restart (variable time but generally early morning US time) and level 10 valleys become level 1. So if you are farming a particular level 10 valley for medals then make sure you hold it during the server restart.

Sometimes a server will restart again in the middle of the day, but it is rare.

Aach has reached the top ten prestige list and the top of the honor ranks without spending a penny. He has written a whole series on playing Evony more successfully, which will be appearing exclusively on MMORPG Info over the next few weeks. Subscribe to the feed to be sure not to miss it.

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

The Best of Dance Compilation from the 2009 Hexapod Championship in Austria:

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Be sure to read the previous sections in order to maximise your chances of success at these strategies: City Placement and Evony Heroes.

Executive summary: Monitor the market: buy low, sell high. Maximise your lumber production to give yourself working capital. Research to improve production. Level mayor and hold forests quickly.

The best item to produce is lumber. Produce as much lumber as you can and sell it to buy the other items that you need. The exception to this is if you are starting up on a mature server, in which case it may be better to focus on iron: it can sell for similar prices and you may find less competition for capturing hills.

The politics score of your mayor is a direct multiplier to production: 57 politics is 57% extra production, etc.

Also keep in mind that valleys boost production. Any square on the map that isn’t a city is a valley, even the hills. You can click on the squares to check.

Build a market!

A key to doing well early on is to play the market – you can continue to play the market later in the game but it is very important early on.

Certain times of the day or week certain things change value, it may vary per server but assume that most players are in the USA and that means they’ll be buying things like lumber when they log on in the late afternoon / evening but may be selling excess as they go to bed to avoid over production. Similarly early morning US times food is cheap but as people log on and see their army hungry the price goes up.

You’ll have to monitor your market but early on the prices can fluctuate by over 100%. Prices tend to go up overall though with the usual fetish about round numbers: prices rise slightly slower coming up to a round number threshold than they do after that threshold.

All this money comes in handy for research and the first thing you’ll be researching is ‘lumbering’ to improve productivity. The market will probably be your main income, so don’t throw all your capital at some bit of research if it means you can’t take advantage of good deals.

Once people start to farm NPCs, money and food become less valuable.  After most people have completed their building stone tends to plunge in value.  When PvP starts in earnest, lumber starts to be very valuable and stone can fluctuate greatly over the day.

Tax, Population, Loyalty and Levy

If you leave the game for a day the total population is your maximum population adjusted by the loyalty percentage.  Loyalty plus tax will equal 100 so if you log off with 100% tax you’ll have zero loyalty and population within 24 hours.

You can keep 100% tax and 95% loyalty while you are on line because loyalty drops one point per six minutes and you can ‘comfort’ every fifteen minutes.  When lumber is valuable you can ‘Levy’ lumber and ‘Pray’ to keep high loyalty, otherwise ‘Disaster Relief’ is likely to be cheapest.

Stay tuned for the next post: Heroes and Medals!

Aach has reached the top ten prestige list and the top of the honor ranks without spending a penny. He has written a whole series on playing Evony more successfully, which will be appearing exclusively on MMORPG Info over the next few weeks. Subscribe to the feed to be sure not to miss it.

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

To be honest, it’s never even covered my monthly Everquest 2 subscription. I get to take part in interesting discussions and I’ve met a lot of new people, so I’m really not complaining. I don’t think very many people actually make money from their hobbies. But I have kept an eye out for advertisement and sponsorship opportunities anyway, just to defray the costs.

That’s how I stumbled upon ebuzzing, a French advertising company who was just starting to expand into the UK.

I specifically like the system because of the freedom it allowed. They listed a number of different “campaigns” and I could choose whether I wished to take part in one or not. They actively encourage bloggers to take part in only those campaigns that are relevant to their blog. I initially signed up and didn’t see anything that particularly caught my eye and then the Quitter’s Arcade campaign came up and I decided to try the system. The specifications were pretty simple – I had to write a minimum number of words (usually 250) which included a specific link to the Quitter’s Arcade website and I had to mark the post as sponsored.

I liked that I could write posts which fit in with the style of the blog – and especially that I wasn’t being pushed to write about subject that I had no interest in. Ebuzzing makes me aware of campaigns that I would not otherwise find and gives me the option to write about them or promote a video if I choose to – or do nothing if I don’t.

You can see the two articles I chose to write: Quitter’s Arcade and SmallRivers.

I get a lot of mail from people who would like me to write about their game or product – as do most Game bloggers, I think – so I don’t have an issue with this. I like this system as the choice still resides with me and I can focus on including content that I think might be interesting to you.

Ebuzzing is now fully operational in the UK and I received an email asking if I would like to share the announcement with my readers. I thought about it for a bit and then decided, yes, I would.

I know a lot of you have blogs of your own and might be looking for opportunities to cover costs. Besides, as more bloggers take part, more advertisers will sign up, allowing for more choice for me when I look through the campaigns. So everybody wins!

The details are pretty simple. There are three different options for “monetising” your blog:

• Video campaigns with a dedicated player
• Video campaigns using “syndicated players” and banners
• Articles written about brands and services that you want to recommend to your readers

They have a good advertising base already, including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Warner Bros.

The video campaigns are pay-per-view and are generally limited to specific regions, much like traditional blog advertising. The difference is that you can choose which advertisements you want to display and how you want to display them rather than random content appearing on your page.

The content creation campaigns have a set price per article and a wide-open spec. You’ll generally have a minimum wordcount and you may be asked to mention specific features (so for Quitter’s Arcade, for example, I was specifically asked to mention that you could embed the video for blog competitions) but in no way are you given an agenda.

The focus is on getting people talking, not telling them what to say, which is a lot of the reason why I’m comfortable working with them.

It’s free to register on ebuzzing.com and take a look at the current campaigns, which cover France, the UK, Germany, the US and Spain.

Note: This article, about Ebuzzing Monetisation, is in fact part of the ebuzzing content creation system – so that’s three articles I’ve written. And I stand behind every one. :)

Sponsored Post

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Evony is a real-time game and the secret is to optimise what your cities are doing and make good use of heroes. Your opponents are doing the same – so you need to be better.

Part Two: Heroes

By now you should have the following in your developed cities:

• 4 x Cottages level 2
• Sawmill level 2
• Inn
• Sawmill
• Farm
• Quarry
• Ironmine
• Rally Spot
• Barracks
• Feasting Hall

Executive summary: Keep inn at level 1, demolish to reset it. One base stat 65+ hero per stat. Level these three key heroes fast. Keep hero loyalty at 100%.

Don’t build the Inn above level 1, you don’t get better quality heroes and higher level heroes just confuse you about their real base stats.You’re looking for a base stat above 65. 

A hero has base stats plus one to a stat per level.  When you find a hero the points will be allocated quite randomly.  Holy Water is best spent on a hero you are certain to keep (e.g. a Level 5 hero with a 71 stat).

You want one hero for each stat so you’ll need at least a level 3 Feasting Hall to host them. To start with you only need politics but you’ll want all three and then more attack heroes as time goes on.

 To refresh the Inn demolish it and rebuild it.  It takes about 30 to 60 minutes to find each decent hero. If resources are expensive it may be cheaper to just hire and sack the incumbent hero, this is quicker. Do not use ‘hero hunting’, they’re useful later.

Your aim is to have at least three heroes: one with high int, one with high attack, one with high politics. Any further heroes should be high attack.  Max their loyalty with frequent cash payments.

Swap in the Attack Hero when you start a troop build, swap in the Inteligence Hero when you start research and have the Politics hero the rest of the time.

Once you have three heroes with good stats, concentrate on getting them experience. Send them on attacks constantly. Even the politics hero should be attacking nearby things.

Captured heroes are almost always worthless and too high level to be sure of their base stats.  Heroes captured from players can be worth having.

Next » Production and Playing the Market

Interested in hearing more? Aach has reached the top ten prestige list and the top of the honor ranks without spending a penny. He has written a whole series on playing Evony more successfully, which will be appearing exclusively on MMORPG Info over the next few weeks. Subscribe to the feed to be sure not to miss it.

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Let’s get started.

Part One: City Placement

You can abandon your first city after a look about and get a new location for no real loss. It is worth doing this repeatedly to get a decent start. Click the portrait and then click ‘restart’. You may find that you need to be out of beginner protection for this (click ‘change’ in the portrait menu) but that shouldn’t be a serious issue. You could just start a new account but that’s more of a hassle.

Aim to be close to a border between two regions. Check the maps. This gives you a nearby area that isn’t likely to be highly developed or occupied by enemy cities. You don’t want a crowded area but Romagna / Tuscany is a common battle ground so within 30 miles of 375,375 or 375,449 should be perfect strategically.

You want to find a location that has a decent number of plains about it (you are looking for 10 plains within about 5 miles). Plains can be turned into NPCs by the simple expedience of abandoning a city that you build there.

The second city you develop should be near to your first city but with a view to abandoning it. Don’t do anything lasting, just have a second academy and some lumber mills (and whatever else you need urgently) – the second city should churn out more material than it cost to build. Set it up on a level 3 plain so you will have a decent but still easy NPC to hit when you abandon it.

You should treat the second city slot as just there to make NPCs – you’ll use it a bit sometimes but mostly it is going to be abandoned. This ’spare city slot’ also lets you capture enemy cities – provided they have more than one city. You may even be able to capture a very well-developed city (which presents a dilemma of course – give up the ’spare city slot’ or give up a well developed city).

You can ‘walk’ your cities to a good location, build a new one in the direction you want to go, abandon the first one and repeat till you get to the destination you desire – it’s a pain but it can pay off.

You don’t want your developed cities too close to each other, 20 to 30 miles apart (or more) is fine even though it seems like a long way and will be irritating at first to move things between cities. Well spaced cities don’t compete with each other for valleys or NPCs. Also, they can threaten weaker players and support allies over a wider area: they are also stronger defensively.

It will take a fairly long while to get more than 2 cities if you aren’t paying money. Be patient.

To build your cities up, follow this sequence.

1. Build the following, in order:
• Cottage level 2
• Inn
• Sawmill
• Farm
• Quarry
• Ironmine
• Sawmill level 2
• 3 x Cottages level 2
• Rally Spot
• Barracks
2. Turn in quests
3. Build Feasting Hall

Do a bunch of quests by using ‘overview’ options while you’re waiting and then start developing heroes.

But that’s a subject for a different day…

Next » Evony Heroes

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Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

G4tv.com described it as “like Farmville with boss battles” which is somewhat hard to imagine but could be a winning combination?

The game launched in Japan in 2008 and received an 8/10 from Eurogamer based on that import. They’ve spent a year preparing White Knight Chronicles for international release, including the patches and online content released for the Japanese version and the sound all redubbed with American voice-actors. The online aspects have been enhanced with GeoNet, giving the players the opportunity to communication with each other through game blogs.

White Knight Chronicles Hands-on – PlayStation 3 Preview at IGN

If you’re checking in on Level-5 and Sony’s baby for the first time, the short story is that you’ll see the events of the world from the perspective of Leonard. Big L’s been living in Balandor Village his whole life, and it’s been pretty run of the mill. However, during the princess’ 18th birthday celebration, an evil force arrives and steals her away. Sensing the call to greatness, Leonard picks up a sword and sets out to make the world right again. Or at least that’s what the story is supposed to shake down as. My demo was all about single-player gameplay and not the fact that you’ll get to play as six different characters, lead three-character parties, and take the fight online in some four-player quests.

I’m interested in the concept of an online RPG on a console but initial reviews imply that this game is stronger as a single-player game and that the online features are focused on players who have already completed the single-player quest.

‘White Knight Chronicles’ Review – In The Heat Of The Knight » MTV Multiplayer

In addition to the standard JRPG single-player campaign, there’s an online component which is basically a collection of quests featuring objectives like “kill the monster” or “collect this.” Four players can hop into a lobby, called a hometown, before they venture out into the wilderness. But don’t expect this mode to represent meaningful content. It’s merely something extra to do, and more importantly, something interactive to do.

On the other hand, the single-player content of the original Japanese version was 20-30 hours worth of playtime, so with the additional online content and the ability to customise your town as a trophy, it should be diverting enough even without true co-op within the primary storyline.

Reviews from the US are mixed, showing disappointment in the multi-player aspects and primarily complaining that White Knight Chronicles hasn’t lived up to Level-5’s reputation for bringing classic Japanese role-playing games to a Western audience. Even the negative articles, however, are quick to reassure that it’s not an awful game, simply not as good as it could have been. So if your expectations are not too high, you may find this game – cited as “flawed but game changing” – an interesting introduction to the console RPGs of the future.

And I have to admit, the promo video made me laugh:

White Knight Chronicles is already out in the US and due for release in Europe on the 26th of February. You can find out more and see user views at PlayStation.com – White Knight Chronicles or preorder a Euro version at GAME.co.uk.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.