Sunday, March 31, 2013

040 - Terrifying Shadows event - map 2

map 2 with all the bosses

First of all, making videos isn't my best skill :)  So be gentle :)

Underneath I will describe or show how to kill the bosses of map 2 of the Terrifying Shadows event.

Devestating Swamp

Nothing special here.  Kill first the little mobs, then circle around the boss and hit when you can.  When he dies, he spawns 5 new mobs, nothing hard.  Just warming up.

Devestating Swamp

Bahadur the Immortal

Similar to Devestating Swamp.  The only difference is that he resurrects 2 times.  You need to kill him 3 times in a row.
Bahadur the Immortal

Dragan

Next boss is Dragan.  Many find him impossible but to be honest, as a dragon knight I don't find him that hard.  In fact I just overpower him with red essence and war banner + smash.  Takes only 30 strokes (100 red essence) and 1 health potion.



Treshold Guardian and Tortured Soul

Again these bosses aren't that hard.  Just don't play to quickly, kill the little ones first and then take your time.  Be aware, the Treshold Guardian explodes when dying.

Neferati Guardian of Wisdom

The 5th boss can be a little difficult solo.  His first hit stuns you and the second one is devestating (sometimes up to 6000 hitpoints).  In fact I find this the most difficult boss.  I often struggle to get started.  Just like in the video underneath.  The start is dramatic but I pull myself out.  The trick here is to keep running, never stand to long in one place.


Sargon

Finally we come to the main boss.  This boss resurrects one time, so in fact you need to kill him twice.

First Sargon :
Actually the most difficult one.  Take the light essence with the most damage (red or blue).  Kill the healers as soon as possible, you will need to take some risks here.  For Sargon, you can circle around him and attack him from behind.

The video underneath begins when the first Sargon is almost dead.

Second Sargon :
The second Sargon is weird.  In the beginning the still spawns healers, again kill them asap.  He also spawns skeletons, DO NOT attack them.  When 5 or 6 skeletons are active, Sargon will stay in one place and won't attack anymore.  Then it's just a matter of pulling the skeletons away from Sargon, rush to Sargon and attack him until the skeletons  catch up to you.  Then you have to pull them back again and so on.



Hopefully this helps some who have troubles killing those bosses.  Have fun !




039 - Easter Eggs - Terrifying Shadows event


Easter Eggs

Easter Eggs in the event maps

Hi all,

haven't had much time last 2 weeks.  I even barely played the event.  Yet today, with Easter, I saw a post on the German forum saying there are Easter eggs hidden in the event maps.  I wanted to share that with you.

Each 'egg' is good for 10 shadows.  Until now they found 5 eggs in map1 and 4 in map2.  Maybe there are more or maybe there are some in other maps too.  If so, please leave a comment so I can update this post.

Underneath you'll see all the locations of the eggs in the event maps.

map 1 - egg 1

map 1 - egg 2

map 1 - egg 3
map 1 - egg 4


map 1 - egg 5

map 2 - egg 6

map 2 - egg 7
map 2 - egg 8

map 2 - egg 9

if you look at map 2, I'll guess there need to be one more on the far east side.

UPDATE :
Tnx to Sper009 from the forum, the last easter egg is located.  Also good news is that the eggs are still there.  Maybe they stay there till the end of the event.

map 2 - egg 10


Some figures about the event

A few quick words about my 'road map' of the event.

-> Farming coffee beans : I farm my coffee beans in Suvius.  This gives on average 4.5 beans per run (15 min).  This also yields on average 115 ordinary light essence.

-> Solo event : As a dragon knight I find it much easier to go solo then in a group.  So I complete the event solo.

-> Map 1 : map 1 gives me between 50 and 75 shadows and around 250 ordinary light essence.  It takes around 20 minutes to complete.  Map 1 doesn't give that much shadows, but you need to do the map in order to obtain the nightshadows from the bosses so you can get the portal for map 2.

-> Quest map 1 : Don't forget to take the quest of killing 1000 monsters in map 1.  There are a little over 400 monsters thus this quest can be done in 3 turns.  This give you on average 25 / 3 = 8 extra shadows per run.

-> Map 2 : Map 2 is the hardest but I find it doable even solo, even Dragan and Sargon.  Can clean the map on my own without dying.  Normal monsters in map2 give around 165 shadows, Dragan drops 70, Sargon 250, 5 amphora give each 25 shadows, quest  2 gives 50 ->  this sums up to over 550 shadows per run.  With the 4 Easter eggs even close to 600 !

-> Quest map 2 : Don't forget to take the quest for map 2.  Killing 500 mobs gives you 100 shadows.  There are 300 monsters in the map so this quest can be done in 2 runs yielding 50 shadows per run.

-> Amphora's : You can 'buy' a key to open a amphora for 200 ordinary light essence.  Not sure if it's worth.  I opened 20 amphora so far, this is what I got :

slot 1 : minion helmet (11) / 2 coffee beans (5) / 500 ordinary light essence (4)
slot 2 : 5 shadows (20)
slot 3 : 1 draken (20)
slot 4 : 4, 5 or 6 copper (19) / scroll of wisdom (1)

-> Uniques : As said before, the uniques from Dragan and Sargon doesn't drop too much ;)   The cloak however is said to drop the most frequent.  Nevertheless, you'll need a lot of luck to get one of those.


So far my experiences.  If I have time I will make some videos on how the beat the different bosses in map 2.





Tuesday, March 19, 2013

038 - Terrifying Shadows on testserver

Drakensang Online terrifying shadows event


Today the new event Terryfying Shadow - Antonia's Abduction went live on the testserver.  So it's possible / probable that this event starts this weekend.

There are 2 questkeepers at Kingshill, John Sunclair and Sir Hardy.  Underneath you can see their quests.  I don't know which quests are repeatable and which are not.

Drakensang online sir hardy terrifying shadows
Sir Hardys quests for the new event
Drakensang online jon sunclair terrifying shadows
Jon Sunclairs quests for the new event

At first there was a little confusion on how to enter the Swerdfield Pastures at Night.  The pouch given when logged in only contained 5 coffee beans while you need 10 to enter.  So I started farming for coffee beans because it was said that worhty monsters would drop those.  But after a while I got none.  The 'ordinairy essence of light' however did drop regularly in drop of 10.

drop of 10 Ordinairy Essence of Light

After a while I managed to get over 500 essences, but still not a single coffee bean.  Back in Kingshill it seemed there was a quest at Jon Sunclair called 'Vigilance' where you could trade 500 light essences for 10 coffee beans.

So eventually I could enter.  I'm not sure how it will be on the live servers.  Coffee beans as a drop too or only light essences which can be traded.

I made a video from the Swerdfield Pastures at Night.  It was not easy to survive because I have only a weak character on the testserver.  Besides the map is designed to go with 5 ... I was all on my own :)
Link to the video on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Ov0470RfY&feature



to be complete, this is the link to the previous post about the Terrifying Shwadows event

Draken :

In total there are 730 draken to be gained. 

  150 progress ->   30 draken
  740 progress ->   50 draken
1830 progress -> 100 draken
3490 progress -> 100 draken
5800 progress -> 100 draken

7800 progress -> 100 draken
9000 progress -> 250 draken



Saturday, March 16, 2013

037 - New event - "Terryfying Shadow" - Antonia's abduction

New event : Awful Shadows

Update : just say the official announcement on the English Forum in this post


On the German Forum there is a new event announced.  Nothing is being said on the English forum yet, so I try to translate the German post.  Please forgive me if there are any translation errors.

The start and duration of events will be announced later.  But this is the story :
Sargon, the terrible is back!

Sargon puts the country in terror. He kidnapped Antonia and carried her in his castle. Forming groups (up to 5 players) with your friends and fight for her safety!

The event will be held in the Swerfield Pastures.  The entrance is on the right side of Jon Sinclair in Kingshill.  You need 10 coffee beans to enter the world.  The coffee beans are a drop from worthy monsters (or can be bought for Andermant).

Once in you must collect shadows for the event progress.  The main boss is Sargon.  But before you may atack Sargon you must first defeat his 4 generals.  Those generals drop a sort of fragment which can be exchanged at Kingshill for a entrance to Sargons castle.  Seems a little complicated to me, but maybe it works out fine once we are in.

If it was not complicated enough, to attack Sargon you need a special light essence which you also get from worthy monsters.

Drakensang Online - Event Awful Shadow
Event progress
 
3 different light essences
Different items of the event

The Rewards :

 If you look at the image of the event progress you can see when you get these rewards.

First 4 rewards

next 3 awards, one emote, one mount and a special gemstone
Last 4 awards, one costume, a larger gemstone, 750 scrolls of wisdom and Sargon's Shoulders.

Event Drops :

If that was not enough, there are special event drops too.

The first is a costume which can be gained in several parts.  The format is similar to the costume of the PvP event last year.

The complete custome from Sargon
The complete costume from Sargon
 Then we have also 2 emotes as a drop

The 2 emotes from a drop
A costume and emotes ... that doesn't please me.  It just get your inventory full.  But this event has also some unique items as a drop !!  This is new I think.

Drakensang Online - Cloak of Gloom
Cloak of Gloom

The first unique is a cape.  I'm not sure this cloak is better the the Cloak of Enlightenment. 3% health is around 200 lifepoints if you have 6600 lifepoints.  No pure damage, but I should calculate how 3% increased attack speed relates to x damage.  This post will help you calculate that.

And it keeps going on.  Beside the cloak, we have a complete unique set for each class !!!  The shoulders are an event reward, the head and torso can only be gained by a random drop.

Unique set for hunters

Unique set for spellweaver

Unique set for dragon knight

Shops :

Some things can be bought from the shop too.

Shop at John Sinclair

Shop at Shady John

Conclusion :

Waauuw, this looks like a main event !!  I guess it will take 10 days or even more.  There are some nice rewards too.  Although we must see if the uniques do drop and if they are worth keeping.  Not sure for that at the moment, need to look a little closer at the stats to be sure.

Anyway, event on it's way !!

again : the original post was made on the German Forum.




Friday, March 15, 2013

036 - Farming Temple Sector

Drakensang Online All kills within Temple Sector
All kills within Temple Sector

In post 014 about the droprate while farming I already said I often farm the Temple Sector.  Temple Sector is not the best for CoT or Andermant, but it is the only dungeon where you can kill level 40 monsters on your own.  Therefor it's also the only dungeon you can get solo a unique level 40 item.

For a list of unique items I refer to the wikia page.

The temple sector has both level 39 and level 40 monsters.  She houses also some level 39 and level 40 special monsters.  Personally I think the chance of getting a unique drop is greater at those special bosses.

I wanted to know if the level 40 monster where distributed evenly throughout the whole dungeon or not.  So I did a run and made notes of every mob I killed.  The result of this you can see in the image on top.

Temple Sector divided in different area's
Temple Sector divided in different area's

It looks like the distribution is fairly even.  Although sector 2 and 9 aren't that dense populated with level 40 monsters.

If I clean the whole sector I use the following route : 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 -5 - 6 -7 - 8 -9 -10 - 11 - 12.  Now that I know where all monsters are, I looks better to use the following route : 1 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 7 - 12 - 11 - 10 and leave sectors 2, 8 and 9 aside.

Anyway, I'm not sure yet.  It's just an idea I had and wanted to share.  Underneath you can see the full numbers.

numbers of mobs across all sections




Tuesday, March 12, 2013

035 - Beginners Guide : Tip 5 - Use Ctrl to see drops

Use the control button

When farming, or just in normal gameplay, it can be difficult to see where to drops are.  In the example underneath you can see such a situation.  The terrain masks the drops.

Drops are hard to see

However, when you hold down the control key the drops are clearly visible.

Holding down the ctrl button



Monday, March 11, 2013

034 - Damage vs Attack Speed vs Critical Hit Value

polished rube onyx sapphire
The 3 Offensive Gemstones (@ a 25% reduced price)

Question :

Which of the 3 offensive gemstones is the best to add ?

I hope to answer this question in this post.  Let me first say that a polished offensive gemstone normally costs 6400 Andermant and not 4800 like in the image above.  But today gemstones were on a 25% reduced price, that's why they are labelled as 4800 Andermant.

I will try to answer this question by adding 3 polished offensive gemstones (ruby, onyx and sapphire) at a time to my character and calculate total damage for each gemstone.

In that way we can see which gemstone has to most influence on total damage done.  But first let us make a formula to calculate that total damage done.

Formula for total damage per second done

Character values with no gemstones
In the image above you see my dragon knight's statistics.  The Legendary Horns have no gemstones inside, I call this my 'basic' character.   Mind that there are 3 (actually 4) values important to calculate damage done.

1) Base Damage :  Gemstone -> Ruby
This is the damage done with 1 stroke.  It has a minimum and maximum value.  So you damage done with a single stroke can vary between those 2 value.  For my calculation I use average damage which is the average of the minimum and maximum value.

avg dmg = (min dmg + max dmg ) / 2


2) Attack Speed :  Gemstone -> Sapphire
The attack speed value gives the number of strokes per second.  When we combine the avg dmg (which is the damage on average done by 1 stroke) with the attack speed (number of strokes per second) we get the damage per second.  In formula it looks like this :

avg dmg/s =  [(min dmg + max dmg ) / 2] * Attack Speed


3) Critical Hit Rate (CHR) : Gemstone -> Onyx

While damage and attack speed is pretty straightforward, CHR maybe needs some explanation.

To explain this we introduce the term 'Critical Hit'.
A critical hit is a hit where the normal damage is multiplied by the critical damage. The Chance of delivering a critical hit is given by the critical hit rate.
Now back to my basic character to explain this definition.  My CHR is 24.90% and the critical damage (CD) is 200%.  This means that in 24.90% a hits of mine does 200% of my avg damage.

This also means that in 100% - 24.90% = 75.1% I deliver a normal hit.  This 75.1% I refer to as Normal Hit Rate (NHR).

Calculating for total damage per second done :

part A : NHR

(100% - CHR)  *  [(min dmg + max dmg ) / 2] * Attack Speed

part B : CHR

CHR  *  [(min dmg + max dmg ) / 2] * Attack Speed * CD

Total formula = part A + part B
{(100% - CHR) * [(min dmg + max dmg ) / 2] * Attack Speed} + [CHR * ((min dmg + max dmg ) / 2) * Attack Speed * CD]

Explanation.  Part A gives the average dmg/s for normal hits.  Part B is the equation for a criticit hit.  Mind that the critical damage is added in this part.

Our Base Character

As we calculate the dmg/s for our base character we get :

- {(100% - 24.9%) * [(317 + 375) / 2] * 1.18} + [24.9% * ((317 + 375) / 2 * 1.18 * 200%]

- (75.1% * 346 dmg * 1.18 attack/s) + (24.9% * 692 dmg * 1.18 attack/s)

- (306.61 + 203.32) dmg/s

- 509.93 dmg/s

Although my character has only 375 maximum damage per swing, it does almost 510 dmg per second.  This is possible because it delivers more than 1 attack per second (1.18 to be precise) and because in 24.9% of the cases the damge done is dubble the normal damage.

Offensive gemstones compared

Now that we have our formula for calculation dmg/s, we can compare the effect of adding different gemstones.  As you can see in the image underneath, I added 3 polished gemstones (or a equivalent of that in case of the ruby) at a time.

Values for each gemstone

In the table you can see the values for the different characters.

Calculations for different gemstone additions

Adding 3 polished sapphire with a total of +15% attack speed seems to give you the most value for money.  It raised the dmg/s from 510 tot 583, that's a raise of 71 dmg/s or 14%.

Adding for 19200 Andermant 3 polished Onyx gemstones raises you dmg/s with 'only' 32 points !!  That's roughly half (read : -50%) of the effect of the sapphires.

The rubies or somewhat in between.  But there is still a 22% difference between the effect of the sapphires and those of the rubies.  Pretty significant imho. 

Conclusion : Adding attack speed seems the best option if you want to inflict more damage.  Adding CHV seems to be the worst choice.

Some remarks

1) CHR increases not linear.  When you have an already high CHR, the effect of adding extra Onyx gemstones will be less than when you have a low CHR.  I found the image underneath on the German Forum in this post.

CHR increase is not linear
2) Adding 30 dmg in gemstones increased my damage with 38 points instead of the expected 30.  This the effect of the base damage bonuses you get in the experience and knowledge tree.  The higher you are on those trees, the greater the effect will be.

3) Some items (mainly weapons) have enchantments which increases damage or attack speed percentage wise.  Adding gemstones of those enchantments will also increase the effect of that gemstone.