As most of you might already know, I spend most of my time either in Darkness Falls trying to season/level or collect diamonds to donate to the Midgard Alliance. I am also out in the frontier slaying our enemies or taking their keeps. As of late only long enough to reclaim DF for the night. Now at 49th season, my concerns are changing from personal ambition to attain my last season to guild and national matters.
Some of you know of our alliance with Northguard. Some of you have had good and bad relations to some of the guilds that participate in Northguard. Here are some factors to keep in mind. Northguard is but one of four major alliances that form the backbone of the offensive and defensive for the entire nation of Midgaurd Nimue. The other major players are the alliances of Strength and Honor, Few, and Kyn Hardrada. These alliances have taken time to work together after much grief in their early workings together. Now a solid team, with only minor infractions, they work toward wagging war and defending our lands.
When your character is in its early stages, before the Battle Grounds it is hard to imagine the "Big Picture". Little concern is put to doing anything past your own personal goals. By 20th season you get your first taste and your eyes are opened up to a new level of ambitions. Realm Points, realm rank and how to fight people instead of monsters who are not just going to sit their and let you camp them for kills. So your perspective changes, but still the realm wide conflict seems so very far away. When time comes that a relic is raided, the trickle down of information finally reaches your ears and you might think to yourself, what could I do at my low level? Here is where I would make some suggestions. The realm is always vulnerable, unless we have eyes out there scanning our borders. Yes, the risk is great to wander the roads in your youth. So I suggest either Skalds, Shadowblades or Hunters take on the peril and run from keep to keep and from Milegate to Milegate. At worst you might die. However, the knowledged gained is invaluable. First and foremost you learn our homegrounds and secondly you can discover enemy movement, numbers, and where they might be headed. This is vital information and could be passed along to even the upper most echelons of the four alliances. Once knowledge is gained of how to avoid aggressive creatures and where to go to find the keeps your participation is forever changed.
At the higher seasons from 30 to 39th participation is hard to come by without risk and patience. Most put off helping for personal ambition. I always hear, "Just one more level before I can gain <some skill> so I can be deadly in RvR". Believe me, even at 49th season you can still get slain fast. No matter what level you are there are risks. I'm almost realm rank four and still death can happen faster than it takes me to type one character in a /tell. So what can you do at this season? You can start to think about contributing a small amount of your time to RvR with friends at your season not on the Battle Grounds, but in the frontier. Yes, encounters might get you slain fast...but each and every time you stand to learn more about how the enemy fights, who to attack first, how to best support your team, what skills can be vital and fast, while others are noted as slow and unworthy for RvR. No one can enlighten you about nuances of RvR battle. You simply have to learn them through death. With a team of two to three groups of 30 to 35 level people, it is even possible to wage war on an enemy unclaimed keep. Keep warfare is a vital skill. If you need practice with the engines of war goto the battle grounds and take on an enemy keep (Even if no one is there to defend it!). Learn how to build and use rams, learn how to work as a team. Now that we have a lot of people in the guild, team up and go try it. Big suggestion here: Learn to get along with people you don’t like! You might say, “What?!! Why should I waste my time with idiots?!” Well friends, there are a lot of idiots who are just unfamiliar with RvR and PvE. Patience is the virtue you must master, and master it you will, or you will not attain level 50 and you will not enjoy the game out in RvR if you blow off everyone who makes you mad. With time, you will glean more wisdom through patience than any season can provide in skills and magic.
At 40th season you start to see the other side of your epic conclusion. The enemy now sees you as a genuine threat. People start to balance whether or not they participate in RvR based on how many times they are dying and giving out realm points to the enemy. This is notoriously referred to as farming. I can tell you right now…get that thought out of your head! The hell with the naysayers. Its time to learn how to do your best, and form up with friends you have learned with in your 30s along into RvR, forget about how many times you die. Get back out there and fight! You will hit the wall of higher seasoned folks who will NOT include you into their groups. So bring friends or again tap that patience pool you have been mastering and keep asking to be included. Shamans and Healers will have a lot easier time getting in the higher level groups than other classes, simply because you can buff and heal. Other classes will just have to be more patient. Money at these levels starts to pour in. Simply by default (unless you craft) the places you go to season will start to pour money into your pocket. Classes that depend on sundries (arrows, poison, etc) will still be pouring some of their coin into those and the others will be trying to ever attain items of power (great armor or weapons). Participation is now full swing into the meat and potatoes of RvR. You will go on the relic keep raids, you must be willing to head out into your frontier to defend, you must devote time gaining realm points (by living and not dying so often) in RvR. RvR starts to really pay off when realm skills get you benefits that are felt in all regions players can kill players (Those being all the frontier dungeons, the frontiers, and Darkness Falls). Besides the heightened RvR activity another major thought now should be donate a part of your earnings toward the realm wide relic keep door fund. The oldest of the alliances, Strength and Honor, has a system setup for collection of funds (Just give what you can to Kalicous and I will move the coin to the fund). This money is then tapped when a relic keep door needs to be repaired. It takes approximately 14 platinum per relic keep door to repair, so having a pool to tap makes fast repair incredibly more powerful vs. on the spot requests for contributions.
I cannot stress this more than all I have stated thus far. Learn to work together as a team in RvR! Be prepared to join strangers often to assist in fights. Do it often enough and you will know how to get along well as a team member. Working together with your own guild mates will have a deadly effect on the enemy. A crack team can take down ten times the amount of people than those put together on the fly. If you work often with strangers eventually they won’t be stranger to you for long and the team work gets better and better. If you are one of the select few who can lead in RvR you will start to see the benefits of working closely with guild mates. Good and bad encounters can be rehashed in guild chat and wisdom can be gleaned. Strangers usually just fall apart when things go bad over the course of two or three visits into the frontier; while guild mates might try to motivate one another to keep trying and not give up.
Once all is said and done, RvR is about our realm controlling the frontier and the relics. There are two different things that go on in the “Big Picture”. One is the relics themselves. The other is the economic war. Midgard Nimue is a rich realm. However, our coffers have their limits. We cannot afford to let our enemy slam our relic keep doors often. We need eyes to watch our borders, report on movement, and forces to respond to a crisis. At these times we need cooperation and participation. If a relic raid is set in motion, try and participate. Sometimes it ends before it begins. Sometimes the forces don’t follow orders and things get messed up. Sometimes just a relic keep door is damaged and sometimes if the need and desire is there a relic is captured. Find out from your group leader or alliance chat what the intension is. Don’t scream out, “Hey lets take the relic!” when it may have just been intended that the raid was to destroy as many doors as possible. If a realm doesn’t have a relic, why repair the doors? Thus at some stages of a war the leaders may leave the relic and just smash the doors. Much planning goes on at the conception of a raid, trust in your leaders and don’t second guess their plans.
Below are some suggestions on relic keep raids:
Before a Raid Starts:
- Group members, target your group leader and type /follow
- Group leaders, /follow <the raid leader>
- Most raid participants should simply AF and use their "look down" key, which is "X" by default, I believe. Use this key and look down at your feet. Less objects will render while you are looking at your feet, cutting down on graphics-related "lag". This is the reason most people get lost, lose af, etc during large operations. Trust your group and raid leaders to navigate and watch for invaders.
- Group leaders and raid leaders, keep asking about every minute if everyone is "with you". This is especially important for group leaders. Raid leaders have enough on their hands already. It should be a group leaders responsibility to make sure their people are following.
- If you become lost, don't try to find the army. Speak up, do not be afraid to let the raid leader know you've lagged off or such. There is no reason 1+ groups should be separated from the raid leader. Group leaders have to communicate with the raid leader, once again.
Patrols:
This is something else we'll have to yell out 20 times before an attempt. If a patrol aggros the army and/or your group... DO NOT attack. Let a healer get into place and mez the patrol. Then have the army move away quickly. Barring LDs or other difficulties, the army should be able to get out of aggro range before the mez breaks. If not, the group that has aggro should run the opposite way and fight the patrol WELL out of range of the army. If you slay just one enemy guard patrol member the enemy claimed keep holders will be alerted and the whole raid could come to a screeching halt.
Other General Tips:
Keep in touch with the goings on in the realm. Join the chat forums at: alliance.wx1.com/ (Midgard Alliance) and northguard.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi (Northguard Alliance). Learn of the people who you can contact in a crisis for information about where to rally, and who to relay information to who can pass it onto other alliances (use the alliance chat if necessary “/as”).
Remember when RvR gets you down, go PvE and save funds collected to contribute to the relic keep door fund. It can be frustrating at times to RvR and die often, but any little contribution either on the field or in coin adds to the cause.
Iggie Registered User
Posts: 35
(10/25/02 8:27 am) Reply
Re: The Big Picture
Well said Kali. I read this a few days ago, but haven't had a chance to pass this note on.
I just want to note that RvR is an entirely different beast, and as you've said in the past a lot of people are quite serious about it. Serious to the point where you have to gain and earn trust/respect. Sadly, many people get turned off by this lack of patience from some of these leaders. There seems to be little tolerance for those who aren't excelled in skill on the Frontier, and while I realize one person can wreck the whole night with one wrong move, its the only way some people learn...To that I say, those who make the mistake and get poked fun of need to take it with a grain of salt, learn from the mistake and get out there and do it again. If you can't do that part, then its likely that RvR isn't going to be for you.
I cannot wait for the day that OFE has a good number of people who can take a keep as a guild. Then we can take beginners out and show them how its done, on keeps that aren't defended.
Finally, its very hard for Season 30-39 to be on the frontier's simple because of the monsters that still Agro us out there. I have had Iggie run between a few keeps and I have to be very careful about which turn I take or path I walk down to avoid death by a hungry monster. Still he's out there and will be moreso since he can be an effective scout now.
*waves*
Iggie Darkfel, Shadowtank
Keeper, Order of the Final Eclipse
Re: The Big Picture
Aye, thanks Ponga. I got here er, I think late november maybe early december, and I wouldn't have seen this with all the other multitudes of posts. I love RVR. I want to know how to be better at it. Hergur is a defensive thane, but seems to do very well when it comes to taking on the enemy. There are many great RVRers in our guild, and I want to be able to join them and those in the alliance as a whole as much as possible, and this post is very helpful in its information alone as far as how to achieve that goal and in an effective manner.
All that said only to say this: Whoo hoo!
Hergur Felhammer
Battleclasher
"If we are to die today, then let us ensure that we have the greatest seats in all of Valhalla!!"
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