Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues

[KevinC]

@Desslock

How do I get my house from the kickstarter if I log in?

I believe you go to the bank and click Claim Rewards? That’s how I got my pleb-level rewards, anyway.

From there go to any town (NPC or player-run) and talk to the Town Crier. He will show you all the plots and which are available. There is PLENTY of free lots where I’ve looked, but I’m sure that’s a different story in very sought-after real estate near the market areas.

As an aside, I keep enjoying this game more and more every time I play it. I’m thinking of splurging on a house myself (not the tax-free ones, they are too rich for me).

[Kelan]

Interesting. I may have to look into that further. I didn’t realize there were options to place a house for me right now.

[KevinC]

Just off the top of my head, I had started on the Path of Truth, so down near Blood River / Aerie. There’s a village just east of Aerie on the coast… can’t remember the name, but it starts with a G. Every single plot there is free.

I also saw tons of free plots up north as I was delivering some mail as a way of making a tiny bit of money while exploring. The Harvest area had tons of free lots too, and I saw a player town or three offering lots.

I’m sure space is much more limited/competitive near Brittany, but there’s also about 20 player towns built around it, so maybe not?

[Kelan]

Sounds good, thanks! If you settle somewhere and want help, give me a shout if you place a house and maybe I will hang out near and possibly place one myself someday.

[milspec]

Hi guys,

@KevinC

Earth has some really nice defense in it

For the record, Earth and Life are not subject to fizzle chance, so wear all of the armor you want while you use them.

I am playing Hammer, Earth and a little bit of Air. I wear all Chain. I use the decks but with all locked glyphs, so it acts as a replacement action bar that I can rotate to a second bar as needed. First bar is 2 handed hammer, pulling skills, a root and then lots of hammer offense skills and a few defensive skills. The second bar is 1 handed hammer, a shield, and more defensive skills. I pull with the first bar and usually just try to kill the mob fast. If I need to be careful or tank for a friend, then I switch bars (in the middle of the fight) and go on defense.

I usually travel with a friend who is a Fire and Air Caster, and another is joining us who is Moon and Bow.

In a fight it feels like there is plenty to do with positioning, aggro management, offensive skill usage and cool-down, defensive skill usage and cool down, and energy and health management. I am not using an unlocked deck, which would give me more cards to choose from, but also force more decisions in combat. Its busy enough with 10 things slotted.

I have been playing every day. I have grown to like the game. Its deep, there is a lot to do, its challenging, there is a lot to explore.

I have 3-4 people with me also looking for a town to settle in. We want rented rooms or simple houses, primarily to store extra stuff. We are also experimenting with alchemy, cooking, etc and can contribute to a local economy.

Any idea where to settle? Maybe we should hit up one of the more established, drama-free, newbie-friendly guilds?

[milspec]

And now a story! Very mild spoilers about a T2 zone. This takes place during a 2-hour session from the other night.

My companion, who is a caster experimenting with fire, and I, who is a warrior with a big hammer, traveled to a nearby zone that we knew was around our level. Its a rocky outcropping along a riverbank, with thugs harassing one side of the river and evil elves along the other side. There is a ford across the river where the thugs and elves fight with each other. We had met and gotten a quest from an NPC Bard before, and we wanted to finish the quest.

The quest involving finding a troll, which we had to look for up in the hills, and then trying to free a horse it had captured. I had previously talked to the Troll, which didn’t work because I could only get a few sentences in before it got frustrated and started to attack (massive boulders, lots of pain). This time we kept our distance, found a key hidden under some stuff (not marked), which unlocked the cage and freed the horse. Easy enough.

We noticed a platform along the edge of the hills. We fought some thugs, which were below our skill level and easy unless they grouped up, and then noticed a mine door. We broke down the door and entered a mine shaft, not knowing what to expect. Remember, this mine is not part of a quest, it is not marked, its not on the map.

The mine shaft led to a few smaller caves with tougher enemies, then opened up into a vast cavern complex crossed by hanging wooden bridges. We looked around, determined the safest way to approach it, then started to climb the bridges and fight small groups of the evil Satyrs who had taken over the mines. The smallest ones could mesmerize and confuse, which was dangerous because one wrong step and you could fall from the bridges. Yes, its old school so a high fall can kill you easily (and there is a skill to train to safely fall).

We eventually made our way up to the top of the wooden platforms. It was probably 100 feet above the mine, with a flooded cavern below. We tried to cross to what looked like a rope ladder down, but it was a bad decision because it went nowhere and we got stuck. I looked down, gulped, and jumped into the dark water - and lived.

We cleared the bottom levels, with some close fights, and I mined a lot of ore. So much ore than we were encumbered, which meant we could not use the “Recall” scrolls to get back to town. We thought about it and triggered our strength self-buffs, which meant we were unencumbered for a brief moment which was enough to trigger the scrolls.

Back in our home city we stored some of the ore, sold some of the crappy looted weapons to an NPC merchant, and sold some of the better components to player merchants. We learned a few things, as players, so bought some new skills, then my companion went to practice them on the training dummies while I spoke to an NPC and kept trying to figure out the lore for a hint about where to go next.

[Kelan]

I am finally a back in the groove a bit and setting up to make some armor again. I have my new skills training and got back to the player owned town I was hanging out in, and all my old stuff is still in the bank there, yay!

I am hitting up the mines nearby and loading up on some copper and silver so I can make some armor. Do you have a preference on what bonuses you want on your armor, @milspec? I haven’t researched them in a while, but if you look at mine, you can see some types that used to be available. For now, I will stockpile a bit and wait to talk to you.

I was also going to ask where the adventure level was listed as before you had to open up a text file out of game, but hovering over a part of the character screen I finally found mine. It appears I am now Adventure level 53, and Producer level 47.

[Charlatan]

You guys are doing an exceedingly bad job at making me want to wait until the game launches to play it.

[Kelan]

I was impressed on a couple zones I went back to where I used to hang out. The level design and layout has improved for sure, as has the layout of mining nodes in them. They all have their warts and all, but it is a better experience than when I last played.

[roguefrog]

Wait, this thing is almost done?

[KevinC]

No. But it’s almost out of Early Access. I don’t say that as snarky criticism, although there’s probably some truth to it if you want to look at it that way.

[Gordon_Cameron]

‘It is not the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’

[milspec]

@KevinC

No. But it’s almost out of Early Access.

Great summary. :-)

@Kelan what resources do you need to make the chainmail? I have copper, silver and gold ore saved up, probably 50 pieces of each. I have not come across iron yet. I would enjoy gathering enough materials and then transporting them to you.

What special materials do you need for the enchants? For example, I can tell people pay a lot for beetle carapaces in my area.

I seem to do enough damage, so defensive stats are best. More strength and mana are always good. I use a hammer so anything what that skill-line’s bonuses are good. I also use a shield as a secondary backup weapon.

I will check your stats in game.

I have settled into an open player-run town near Resolute. They offer free Inn rooms to newbies like me. :-) Myself and three friends all have rooms on the same floor, it’s got a communal feel. The innkeeper and residents are polite.

Its primary use is a chest to store more stuff, like all of these extra crafting materials.

The town also has useful vendors, including one that buys a range of raw materials and others that offer discounts to residents. Happy to share the town name via PM if people are interested in a place to live near Resolute.

So far diving into the mines, gathering ore and killing yellow mobs seems like the best gold per hour. Two of us can make a total of about 3,000 gold in one hour. I am sure that is peanuts.

What do others do for money? I am not looking for the perfect power/cash spot, but rather some examples of how others generate an income in this game.

[Kelan]

I will follow up tomorrow more as it is late, but I am bound in Resolute and the player owned town I am hanging out in is sort of close too, so that is awesome!

[Kelan]

Okay, let me see if I can explain the armor a bit, from what I recall and what I can currently find at the recipe page I used to visit at http://sotawiki.net/sota/Recipes

For chain armor, making the Augmented Chainmail is the best way to add stats built in to the armor based on materials, that I can tell. They use coils of metal wire, straps, and bindings of materials that you choose to determine the extra stats of the completed product.

After the armor is completed, you can further use Masterwork on them to add further bonuses and add the +1,2,3 etc numbers to them by using silver ingots.

Boots: 2 coils, 1 strap
Gloves: 2 coils, 2 straps
Helm: 3 coils, 2 straps, 1 binding
Leggings: 5 coils, 3 straps, 2 bindings
Chest: 8 coils, 3 straps, 3 bindings

Here are the bonuses for metal and straps.

For the normal copper ingots, you need either 4 copper ore, or 2 copper ore and 12 metal scraps. The metal scraps are created by salvaging metal weapons at the blacksmith crafting station. Copper can take a really long time to mine so saving your metal weapons and breaking them down is a much better way in my opinion. Plus, this also raises your blacksmith skill fast.

To make Bronze or Constantan Ingots, you need double the total copper and either Tin or Nickel for every copper ingot. So, if you want the special Bronze or Constantan armor, you need double the total copper ingots.

Each coil of wire takes 2 ingots to make. If you are using all ore to make these, you will need 8 copper ore to make one coil of wire. If you are also using the metal scraps, it will take 4 copper ore. If you want the bronze or constantan armor, each piece of wire will either take 16 copper ore or 8 (with scraps) and 4 Nickel or Tin. It can really add up after a while.

The Straps above work the same way. Hardened Leather takes a Beetle Carapace and 4 Leather as opposed to 1 for the normal Leather Strap. Supple Leather takes Suet and 4 Leather. Leather is made from 2 Animal Hides that you skin off animals.

For all of the above there are many store bought materials/fuels and tools that I won’t include, but they do add up.

Once you have your piece of armor, you can choose to try to use Masterwork on it. The higher the skill you have, the better chance you have to succeed, and there is a chance you will also destroy your item also. The more you try to masterwork an item up, the harder it gets. You need 5 Silver Ingots, and each Ingot takes 4 Silver Ore, so 20 Ore per attempt. Grab all the Silver you see!

Gold is used in the Alchemy skill Enchantments, and I haven’t got into that at all yet. This allows you to put further enchantments on items in a different way, and I don’t have any experience in that yet.

So, basically I just need Copper Ingots and Silver Ingots (if you want Masterwork attempts). I have lots of leather and the specialty items including Nickel, Tin, Beetle Carapaces, Suet, I believe. I will double check. If you don’t want to smelt your own, I will gladly do it for you also and turn the Ore or Ore/scraps to ingots.

Please ask if you have any questions.

[Kelan]

I made some Bronze Chain Gloves just to test things again. My initial Mastercraft chance on a fresh piece of armor with no bonuses on it is:

I went ahead and tried to improve the gloves and got these as options:

I chose the middle one. If I was to try again, the chance would be:

To me that just isn’t worth the risk. I am not very far in my Masterwork skill, and haven’t hit 40 in the main category yet which will unlock more specialized Masterwork skills like Armor, Weapon, Shield, and improve the chance to get an exceptional upgrade increasing the durability. Improved skill will also increase the success chance.

[KevinC]

What do you recommend to skill up smithing to start? Got any guides? Ore seems hard to come by!

[milspec]

I have found a lot of ore in mines … I guess unsurprisingly. So far there seems to be one associated with each of the major virtue cities. For example, I know where they are outside of Resolute and also Airie. A single run in and back will net about 30-40 pieces of ore plus more granite, taking about one hour.

The mobs are yellow to me at adventurer level 35. I think they are 2 skull zones.

Happy to share the zone names if you want, or maybe you prefer to stumble across them. :-)

@Kelan thanks for the explanation. I am working on making those ingots.

[Kelan]

Sorry for the delay! It seems that breaking down metal weapons you loot off mobs is the fastest way to gain Blacksmithing levels. You can then use the metal scraps to need less ore to make ingots. I haven’t looked into guides for any optimization yet, though.

I have a bunch of silver ingots it seems, and some copper too, so can help ya make up some stuff, @milspec. The town I hang out in is just through a pass opposite the Resolute area, so really close.

[milspec]

@Kelan Thanks for the tip on metal scrap, I used it to help reduce the amount of ore I needed in my ingots.

I have 18 copper ingots, 17 gold ingots and 6 silver ingots all available to use for this armor.

Is that enough? What else do I need? How do we make this trade?

(Feel free to take it to PM, I thought others might be interested to observe this exchange.)