Auroria

Discussion in 'ArcheAge' started by Mustarde, Oct 18, 2014.

Auroria

Discussion in 'ArcheAge' started by Mustarde, Oct 18, 2014.

  1. Mustarde

    Mustarde .

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    So, Aurora is planning to open up to us on November 4th.

    This is partially a question for the officers but also for all the members - what are our ambitions for Aurora? Do we want to get land? Does our alliance have any plans? Should we try and make a rush to plop down property or sit by and see what happens with castles/lords etc?

    I heard there are random islands that could be claimed, as well as non-castle run land. It's also not entirely clear to me what the profit or advantage would be in owning land up north - compared to land down south which can make trade runs more efficient. Although I suppose being able to grow more stuff is not a bad thing.

    It seems to me like we could consider either claiming as much land together as possible to allow for a little guild space up there (get some workbenches, plaza, etc), make some solo efforts to claim land in a disorganized fashion, or just sit back and let the madness happen while we pirate the seas killing everyone trying to get their materials across the sea! Or wait until our alliance attempts to get a castle and go from there.

    Any thoughts? I'm interested in personal opinions as well as those of Phaedo/Mortos :)
     
    Sixten and ThaneKrios like this.
  2. DarthXaos

    DarthXaos .

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    I'd like to have a castle up there just for the bragging rights purposes
     
  3. Jaamaw

    Jaamaw .

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    Wtb 16x16 auroria plz. Imo it will be great for farming.
     
  4. Keleborn

    Keleborn The Italian Stallion

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    im looking to place a 24x24
     
  5. Shuzaah

    Shuzaah .

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    Okay so I have been doing a ton of research on Auroria with regards to what we need in order to be at least on par with other mid-sized guilds. There is a lot of false information circulating around so hopefully this will clear a lot up as well as give everyone a pretty good understanding of how things work:

    I. Welcome to Auroria
    Below is the map of the northern continent of Auroria. If you read up on the lore, there were a bunch of adventurers, a lot of them got given powers to be demi-gods, shit went bad when Kyrios decided to bring his Crimson Army to f stuff up. Nui sacrificed herself to let everyone in Auroria get to Nuia/Haranya and then they sealed Kyrios in yada yada and now Auroria is a wasteland. Where our characters come into the story is returning and restoring Auroria with help of magical "archeum". Below is the overall continent you're probably familiar with.

    [​IMG]

    As you can see the continent currently* has 7 regions. With the initial release of Auroria we will NOT have access to Diamond Shores. That is due to it being the lvl 55 "end-game" area (very important dungeon there). So that leaves us with 6 regions on that peninsula that will be open on Day 1 of Auroria release. Out of those 6 regions, only FOUR are able to be built in. Those are: Marcala, Calmlands, Heedmar, and Nuimari. Sungold Fields and Exeloch will not be available for housing at release if everything I have read is correct.

    Here are some images of the four regions which can be built in:
    The Calmlands - Temperate and Arid Zone (yes all regions in Auroria have TWO climate types)

    [​IMG]

    Marcala - Temperate and Arid Zone

    [​IMG]

    Nuimari - Temperate and Arctic Zone

    [​IMG]

    Heedmar - Temperate and Arctic Zone

    [​IMG]

    The zone of Exeloch will be very important as it is the staging grounds for ArcheAge's first raid fight (10-man group). Expect this area to eventually be habitable and highly contested.

    I am currently unsure of the significance of Sungold Fields (if there is any).

    II. The "Iron Price" and Claiming Land
    Auroria is unlike any other continent or region in that it is in a perpetual state of war. That means greens and reds can gank you at any time or place. No peace. The one's you can trust will be your guildies and allies. This is going to bring inter-guild diplomacy/politics to a whole new level.

    If you look at the above listed pictures of the regions, you can see within each region there are a varying amount of spots with a Guard Tower. These are key for power in Auroria. Once a guild activates a guard tower they are given the ability to construct Castles.

    To begin building your own castle, you must first claim the land by activating the Guard Tower. This requires crafting Purifying Archeum, an alchemy skill item made with 100 Anya Ingots and 50 Blood Archeum Crystals (I have read the crystals cost 40g a piece). The Purifying Archeum counts as a trade pack, and with it on your back, you are able to activate a Guard Tower, allowing you and your guild to control the surrounding territory.

    [​IMG]

    The tower is initially unprotected however, making it easy for rival guilds to take control of it from you (once the tower is activated you have a 3-6 grace period where you cannot be put to siege, more on that later). In order to protect it, you must build walls, towers, gates, and ladders to form a castle. The blueprints for these items can all be purchased on Mirage Isle for gold, or you could check the AH to see if anyone is selling them. Once you have the blueprints, you can place the various components in whatever shape and size you wish. Since each of these pieces will cost quite a bit of lumber and stone to construct, it is helpful to set up crafting benches so that you don't have to bring the stone and lumber trade packs long distances or overseas (these can also be purchased for little gilda on Mirage Isle).

    **Important note: there is are varying sources that say that only ONE guard tower can be activated per zone, essentially limiting Auroria to having four controllable towers. The other land is said to possibly turn into open land.

    III. Benefits of the Castle
    There are a few benefits to owning a castle. The first is that Castles help to protect the activated Guard Tower you build the castle around. This guard tower (which looks like a giant stone sword) is what gives you control over the surrounding area. When activated, the sword will float in the air, and it is possible to destroy the stone and take control of the land if it is not protected.

    Controlling this territory opens up new places to build houses and farms. On a crowded server, these may be the only places left to build. Below is an example of what an Activated Guard Tower looks like on a map. The white circle is the "sphere of influence"

    [​IMG]

    Owning this territory means that you collect all of the taxes of properties that are placed on your land (and you can control who builds on your land as well, yes thats right, you can destroy whatever you want within your castle). Keep in mind, no matter who places the castle and activates the Guard Tower, the guild leader is the one who owns that land. You also get access to some resources that will be much easier for you to collect than others trying to invade your space.

    IV. Siege Warfare
    So, you finally get your Guard Tower activated and a nice comfy castle built around it. But now Goon Squad wants your tower. So this is where Siege warfare comes into play. After your initial grace period of claiming your tower, your Castle/Tower can be put to siege once every 3 weeks. This is done by a guild purchasing a siege scroll for 500g. There will be all sorts of special contraptions for both attackers and defenders (I know defenders get anti-glider cannons and regular cannons and attacks will have siege equipment such as towers, mortars, etc. not a lot of details on these).

    [​IMG]

    The semi-shitty kicker however is this: a siege can only be conducted initiailly by 50 attackers/50 defenders and, after a specified time (supposedly 20 minutes) the number for both is increased to a max of 70v70. This is a way does give medium-sized guilds and alliances an advantage to at level with larger blog guilds. Essentially Goon cannot bring 500 people to swam your Castle and take it easy peasy. This will most likely result in a pre-determined group(s) of people who will be siege defenders/attackers. Obviously things like archers and mages will be very effective at defending from walls rather than blighters. If you are successful in defending your tower the guild leader is given the standing of "Lord" and given "Lord's coin" which can be used to purchase all sorts of fancy shit (a few things currently available on mirage isle are all cosmetic-ish but I imagine there will be more later). If the attackers are succesful then they are given control of the tower and are free to do as they please with your castle (or what's left of it) and housing within it.

    V. Beyond Castle Walls
    This is pretty straight forward. Outside of the "sphere of influence" (literally a circle) of the Guard Towers, there will be plenty of open land in which you are free to build on. Taxes will apply as they do on Nuia/Haranya and it will be similar to living in somewhere like Karkasse which is pretty much an around the clock PVP area. The benefits of this will be you do not have to worry about a Lord destroying your house at whim whereas the downside is well...you don't get to live under the protection and benefits of castles.

    VI. Other Important Information
    There are no crafting stations on the continent, so any packs needed for this and any other construction on Auroria will have to be brought in from the nearest convenient location (Growlgate Isle for the adventurous) until crafting/refining stations are built using plans purchased in Mirage Isle. So yes, unless you have a Sawmill, Smelter, and Anvil put down, you will have to transport all Lumber/Iron/Stone packs via Boat (how fun). There are mirage portals and vendors within each zone.

    VII. What (I personally think) We Need
    So here is where we get into the part of figuring out the logistics of getting what we need to activate a tower/do work on Auroria. A guild/alliance will need a miner at 50k proficiency in order to mine Anya pebbles from Anya veins (only found in Auroria) and a smelter at 20k fproiciency to craft 100 Anya ingots and combine it with 50 Blood Archeum (40g each) to create the Purifying Archeum Pack, which is used to activate a guard tower in an area. I have also read we need a logger at 20-30k proficiency.

    In my opinion, to keep with the rush to mine/log/smelt we need at minimum 3-4 50k miners, 2 high level loggers, and 2 high level smelters. Currently, we have 1 50k Miner (myself), 1 30k-ish logger (Sixten), and I believe 2 20k Smelters. Logging is probably the hardest of those to level. We should be able to get another few 50k miners very easily in the next two weeks. Through my experience I recommend underwater mining for the fastest proficiency leveling (Not as good for getting materials though).

    Another recommendation I would like to suggest would be to increase the allocated guild land for Logging. I have a dedicated tree farm in Cinderstone for Sixten as well as a few of our White Arden plots but I imagine we will need some more space in Karkasse if we want to get another logger up to 20-30k proficiency. This will also be very important due to the amount of lumber we will need for construction. For mining beyond what I listed above, for those that have 50k proficiency, a priority should be put on massing raw stone and turning those into bricks (walls ain't cheap in terms of resources).

    As far as I am aware there will be no trade packs for gold/gilda on Auroria (though this is likely to change in the future given the continents importance). However, with the release of Auroria we will now have access to Farm Wagons (4 slots rather than the 2 in the trade cart) as well as Submarines.

    Given what we know about the competition for land and how contested and crowded the waters are going to be my final recommendation would be this: prior to the release we a prescheduled time where a group of us camp the ocean border of Auroria prior to servers going down. With us for our initial landing we should place down at least one house close to the shore and then crafting benches (sawmill, anvil, smelter). This will allow us to (A) set a teleport for the guild/allies and secure spots for our own private construction of the packs we will need to build houses/mats for the tower claiming. I believe a second group should come under extremely heavy escort via ocean with the construction packs needed only to complete the house and workbenches. The less we have to bring the better. once the workbenches are up and a house is built we have eliminated the huge risk of ocean travel to and from Auroria. I will be picking up one of the placeable sawmills this weekend and holding on to it. The more land plots we can place down reasonably the better, even if only to remove them later if we secure a tower or better location. So if you are still holding on to 16x16 farms, cottages, manor designs, etc, it would probably be best to keep them until it opens up. One thing to consider though is that we will essentially be putting the whole server into an area about the size of White Arden/Dewstone/Gwen so while there will be open land...it will obviously go VERY quickly.

    Hopefully Phaedo/AA Officers are able to determine what NNG/Allies are going to focus on for Auroria. Even if it isn't NNG that raises the flag over the tower, it'll be important that we have the manpower and resources to help our allies get going as quickly as possible.

    I hope the information provided is useful and accurate as possible. I think if we start planning this weekend and go into crunch mode we will be in a good position once the continent opens. Let me know what you think of my opinionated ideas and hopefully we can brainstorm ways to make this happen.

    Thanks.
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2014
  6. Keleborn

    Keleborn The Italian Stallion

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    i think phaedo mentioned that he was talking with 903rd, CML and others about this but very nice i am at 8k mining but my focus right now has been leveling so i havent done much im sure i can get to the mining and smelting too
     
  7. Mustarde

    Mustarde .

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    Great writeup Shuzzah, answered many questions I had.

    But here's a few more: I have heard there will only be 4 castles in all of Auroria. Is this true, or is it 4 per zone? If it really is only 4... I highly doubt our alliance will be able to beat GOON and FC to the punch. There are a few other large groups who will also put up stiff competition.

    If this is the case, should we focus on getting a castle or simply setting up a claim of land somewhere else on Auroria. Perhaps we can join the rush and grab a few nice plots of land like we did in Karkassee... preferrably in a more accessible location.

    We also should take a guilda inventory and see who has blueprints and is able to drop claims to land early on.

    With my work situation, I'm afraid i'll be more along for the ride in Auroria. I don't think I'll be able to log in and snag a place early on so it'll just be a matter of either getting lucky or working with those of you who are able to make claims at launch.
     
  8. Nraged

    Nraged I fly things

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    Wow this sounds like so much fun. Especially the sieges. I've done plenty back in Age of Conan and really miss it too.
    What separates us from bigger guilds is our coordination and response time. Let's put those PS2 habits back to work!

    Up until than, gear, gear and moar gear!

    Btw is there an ETA on how soon they will release the expac so we can level up to 55?
     
  9. Keleborn

    Keleborn The Italian Stallion

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    November 4
     
    Nraged likes this.
  10. Shuzaah

    Shuzaah .

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    Mustarde, it appears that my caveat about 1 castle per zone is true. So yes, only four claimable castles at any one time. FC/Goon have stated they plan to take all four lol.

    Another but of anecdotes I've come across through reading is that you actually cannot build anywhere in a zone until a castle is claimed. So that would include areas out the Castle sphere.I cannot confirm this yet but have been reading stuff from those who played on Auroria on Alpha. This would mean we will have a massive bloodbath as guilds try and claim a castle, followed by a massive landrush within the zone. If that's the case, I think it would benefit us more to aid a certain guild in claiming a spot and once they are close (or any guild is close for that matter) grabbing as much land in an area as we can. There is going to be way too much logistical work for a guild our size to handle in securing a castle if we cannot build in Auroria prior to a castle claim imo. Stealth is definitely something we will want to have a spec'd out.