Expansion ETA has been given

Finally. Tasos has posted a very propable ETA in Forums. Nothing to add really. I hope they release tomorrow the expansion notes so we can spend the weekend tinking about it. Maybe this ETA is a ruse to release it on monday and make a lot of people happy after so many sad delays.

Milestone 1

Yiha! This blog has reached 1.000 visits! Thank you all and keep coming!
If I can ask for something would be more comments. The main reason for this blog is to discuss about Darkfall stuff. Conversation and discussion are the key of interaction!

A change of routine

These past few days I've been back in Mahirim lands to do some questing and advance a bit some Title Quests. In Frostbourne I did little PvE and it wasn't very rewarding. I could get a very income of money, some R40 knives, some Q1 mats to skill Enchanting and that's it. Back at my race territory I was able to do some quest that even with their limited reward got me some very nice and useful items like catalysts, lots of Q1 mats, selentine ingots, major potions and gold. It has served to clear my mind aswell and now I want to do some PvP again. I still got a big way to become a true warrior but my magic skills are slowly catching up and little by little I'm getting there.
In newb lands I've been seen some people, it's not empty neither full. I can only imagine how nice will this cities look when there's lots of mahirims and orks wandering around. I'm sure that will improve player relationship aswell and give more meaning to being blue. We'll still waiting for the expansion but it sure seems close now and a lot of people is already making unofficial lists of expected features in forums.
Many of you will know that NEW is back. After Torinar left and disbanded the clan, Kimoshu Grakenshalmn, a player from Canada formerly playing in US1 decided to transfer to EU1 to help recreate it with some important and welcomed differences.
Can you imagine the expansion comes today? Or do you think they'll announce it in advance?

Forum Suggestion: Increase Random Chest Loot Over Time

Hi! Today, I've posted a Forum Suggestion that I believe could improve this beloved game of ours. You can find the suggestion and the poll attached to it here. Basicly, I'd like to see the random chests that keep spawning all over Agon increase their loot over time instead of just despawning after some time. Right now, those chest loot table is ridiculous and there's no incentive to go out there to explore weird places because you aren't gonna find anything. Maybe even static chests like Food Crate or Weapons Rack could use some of this loot increasing over time. If I decide to check that hidden and hard to reach cave on that snowy mountain, I'd like to have the chance of finding something nice to remember that. Well, check the forum thread and vote! Maybe Av will se the good on this suggestion and implement it someday.

Darkfall Postcard 9: MetalFace

In here, I posted a picture of big face-shaped rock. Well, some days ago, while exploring our Frostbourne city I saw a face in the rock. So, am I obsessed or are they? This is your decision to make. Do you see the face in the mine too? I can very clearly see a nose and the left eye of a very rich (Selentine and Veilron) face.

Siege Report: Skaranibben 26th September

Yesterday, Lux Arcana was sieging Pandora's Skaranibben in return for their Ichan Siege three weeks ago. Some problems with LA forums delayed this siege until yesterday. The siege started pretty good, we had some good tactics and were a lot of people. Unfortunately, it went down pretty bad. The first fight were in a tunnel, Pandora were waiting for us at the end of the tunnel in a very big cave. The battle started with a lot of confusions blinding me for a very long time. I don't know why I felt I could advance a bit but I obviously shouldn't because other clan mates were moving in the other way. I soon was dead and ganked. Once again, I was not paying attention enough at the minimap and the position of other clanmates. My character is not that strong to survive kamikaze attacks and that's what I did there without fully knowing. I really need to be more cautious and fight among my group and mostly behind the hard and tough meleers. In the second and final fight we were the ones in the cave in they were coming from the tunnel. Our mistake was to let them in the cave, we should have hold our positions at the end of the tunnel, going to any side of the tunnel's mouth to heal and buff and slowly killed them one by one.  From my personal perspective, as soon as Pandora entered the cave in full force I was completely lost. I don't have the cold blood needed to survive in such uncomfortable situations, yet. When pursuing a fleeing enemy (stupid action, we was far and I was low on health) someone killed me with a couple of hits in the back and ganked.
We have learned a lot from this fight and a lot of discussion is still ongoing at the clan forums. I hope this makes us stronger and a better figthing force. One of the bery good things about Darkfall is its deep fighting gameplay that encourages a good strategic organization for the group and in-battle tactics for every individual. So, there will be always some room for personal and clan improvement. And that's pretty nice!

Why do I love the bag?

There are some people out there who still go out without their Gear Bag and their most quoted explanation for it is that without a GB, their enemies have a harder time to loot them. I'm gonna explain my point of view through a little story.
A couple of days ago, Pandora came to PvP to Frostbourne (check the video below) and it was a long and very fun battle. On that battle, I died and was ganked. As I respawn, I quickly grabbed a GB and a mount from the bank (very few clicks and two drag&drops) and started riding towards enemy while putting my armour on. Fortunately, I was ganked when we were doing the final push and I managed to recover my previous GB. In that specific case, my quickness was not needed because we were already winning the battle but, nevertheless, I was ready to keep fighting in less then a minute. Readyness is quite important in Darkfall.
Few hours later, Pandora came back to Frostbourne and, this time, the battle was inside the walls. After an unsuccessful attempt to flank them I ran to the Clan Keep where the main battle was. A short fight later I died and was ganked again. In the loading screen, I heard in Vent that our main force on the roof was completely wiped. After respawning, with an iron faith and my Invulnerable Shield on I ran to the roof again. There were 4 Pandora ganking-looting  and I saw a Pandora dwarf looting one of three graves in the same spot where I had just died. As I ran towards him, I locate my grave but the dwarf, having already looted the previous grave, turns around, steps over my grave and stops in front of it. In despair, I ran towards it too and, one or two seconds later than him I press Use. Very nervous, I saw my GB appearing in front of me and without hesitation I drag it to my Backpack. I must have yelled something when I saw my GB in my Backpack. In a blink of an eye, I'm already jumping from the roof expecting the dwarf to follow me. I actually don't know if he did it or not but when I hitted the ground I had 0.1% of health left. I ran through the Keep, turn to the bank and press Use. After what seemed like an eternity, my bank opened and I managed to drag my GB back to safety. Hell yeah!! The best thing is that we even won that second fight agains Pandora in the end.
I hope now it's clear that using full GB is more efficient than dragging every necessary item to your Backpack. It also makes easy for a fellow clanmate to save your gear and offers the chance to do what I did with that Pandora dwarf. The only situation where not having a GB might be useful is when the enemy has ganked you but they are in a hurry; unfortunately, in that case, the enemy will most likely loot your best items and leave the shit behind. So, that's why I love the GB and I hope now, more people does.
An now a video from Van Dali from that first figth with Pandora. You'll see me die and rise again!

More Tasos feedback

Well, well, it certainly looks like the expansion is coming very soon. 2 weeks maybe? In his last Activity Report post, Tasos has given us some nice bits of information even if I was expecting a lot more than that.

We’re doing well on the expansion activities, features are locked down, most of the checklist is checked off, and it looks like we’re good for next week.

Come on! If you have your features locked down, why don't you make a nice Spotlight explaining some of them? That's what I've missed the most from Av these days. I expected to see a lot more information about confirmed features but Av has been very quiet about them. In the post, among other things Tasos had this interesting and new thing to say.

Vendor inventories are now more complete and vendors have been added to dungeons. 

Vendors in dungeons! I guess they will be the ones giving out the repeteable quests we'll be able to do in dungeons after the expansion. Tasos also teases us with graphic improvements, more communication and, the best, some epic events in the horizon including some dynamic unannounced events. This looks nice! 

A happy escape

Yesterday I went for some PvE with some clanmates: Franko, uiskaM and Ankan. We wento down to a dungeon where we hunted some high level mobs, Menhir Sentinel, with classic tank and healer tactic. Our first recall didn't went very well for three of us. We were on top of a rock while Franko was recalling with all the loot from behind it. Then a stupid mob saw us and we three had to leave the recall but fortunately Franko could finish it. After that we decided to go to the exit and rode back to Frostbourne but then some zZzZz appear, I only could see Ellianor but Ankan said we had seen at least 2 of them. Right now, two zZzZz mean a tough battle and we decided to run. After the loading screen I quickly mount up and start riding looking my back. Lucky me, I fell in a hole. I hid there, I heard the sound of the enemy mounting and riding and I'm already thanking my wolfi gods when I goddam Windgraive found my hole and started hitting me. I jumped out of the hole and I saw the enemy, maybe Ellianor maybe not. Once again, I turned around and started riding but the Windgraive kills my mount. Some shrapnel and bunnyhop down later, when I looked back there were no enemy signs. I don't know what happened there but I'm surely grateful. After a too long recall I arrived home and among other stuff I received 3k gold, a portal shard, two r60 Greatclubs, a pair of full plate leggings and some nice enchanting mats. You gotta love this kind of stuff.

Offline Character Progresion

In a past interview Tasos said they had specific plans concerning AFK/Offline skill gains but people still discusses about it like in this Forum thread. There are some interesting bits in that I'd like to comment so here we go. First of all, we need to establish if there's a real need for a system like that. JCatano, among others, say that if the game needs offline skill gain, something is broken and that should be adressed first. Well, having a long term character progression is a good thing but, even with a skill cap, everybody wants to race through that progression to become as good as possible as fast as possible. That's human nature and that develops into AFK macroing or terrible grinding. Maybe instead of offline progresion, we need a XP limit like Final Fantasy. Another option is the "rested experience" system proposed by Fazar; this system works very good for players with less time to play and I think that this could be implemented even if other systems are implemented too.
There is another issue in all this that Lee Lonewolf has addressed: an offline progression system saves subs because people will not unsub if they aren't completely sure about leaving the game. All this people taking breaks would keep paying the sub price to Av so they can keep on improving their toon.
An offline progression system is not the panacea for every wrong in this game but I believe it would help those casual or non-macro player to catch up with everybody else. Of course, this system needs to be very well balanced and coded, else it will create more problems than it solves. As with everything else, we'll see!!

The Blue Hunt

In my second post on this blog, I wrote: "Probably I'll never steal an allied's horse, it's just my way of playing". I've never stolen an ally's mount but I've surely killed some blue players. Today, I was planning on hitting a hamlet's mine and in the way there I started hearing fighting noises. I quickly dismounted, unspawned it and hid to take a look. After some nice and quiet crouch walk I was in position to see what was happening: a blue ork player from the clan owning the hamlet I was going to hit was fighting a Vilegaunt with a Fire Bow. When I scrolled over him I saw he was at 30% of health so I gotta admit, there wasn't a lot of thinking involved. I rushed against him and after a non epic battle (he was just blocking and my aim was awful due to The Rush; yes, still) I managed to kill him. Then I realized my alignment received another serious hit (I'm at -22 now) but it was too late, I couldn't wait to see if their clanmates were coming or not so I ganked him, took all the unbagged loot (damn!) and got the hell out of there. It felt nice because the poor ork was carrying very nice bows among other stuff but I hate having a bad alignment since I'm a very nice wolf!
Right now, there aren't a lot of consecuences for being red, I just can't deliver the finished quests and I can farm alignment on someone's alt any day. In a proper alignment system, my action would have granted me negative points towards the clan and not the NPC cities. Av hasn't said anything about the alignment system but I surely hope they have it in mind.

What is your dream sandbox feature?

The sandbox theme is very common in Darkfall forums. Most of the threads about sandbox ask Aventurine to introduce "more sand to the box" or more tools to play with it but nearly never do they propose something. Av said that Funhulks and Flags are some of those tools and I'm eager to see what can you do with them. Now, there is a thread with the same title as this post and even now, some people ask for more mobs, so the sandbox concept is not as clear as it may seem. In said post, there are very good suggestions that I'd like to quote the ones I liked the most.

[by krag] being able to sit on chairs 

[by ChinaCat] Hot Air Baloons that can be crafted

[by Bomanz] gaming houses for player cities with tables inside for Chess, Checkers, poker, blackjack, slot machines, roulette.

[by many people] Custom city building

[by Signus, my favourite] being able to write books in game and leave them in places

[by xpiher] territory control that actually affects other people's game play

[by Troy McShall and wicked] Free placeable houses and Customizable housing would be really cool.

[by TheDave] The option to make fake Chaos Chests so that u can use them to make traps for people

[by halldorn, this one might need tweaking but it's some clan content, much needed] Have the surrounding areas of a city be resource nodes, such as farms a high concentration of tree´s(grove) rocks rare metal rocks etc etc

[by Cunning] Boat collisions with consequences; chat bubbles options; meaningful economy; engaging crafting

[by noycex] hire npc workers that would go to nodes and harvest resources for them

[by Kyrer] add more clothing options

[by Master Isaac] Local goods / global cash. Tiered clan banks

That's a lot of things, huh? It would be very nice to see all of this suggestions implemented, right? Well, We'll see what Av have for us. My suggestion would be to add a more complex holding owning system, with taxes, building decay if not used, free configuration and so on. That would make alliances and clans work harder if they want to grow or maintain a vast empire. That might start some kind of politics!

What politics need

What does Darkfall need to have some politics in each server? Some players might say there already are politics in Darkfall and it's kinda true but I don't like the current style of politics, at least in EU1. This is something I was trying to change with my politics section but I don't see the light right now. Politics in EU1 are based on two things: forums and mines. Mines are of course a very important thing for any clan in Darkfall and it's logic that they cause wars and battles. Forums are also important since it's the main communication tool for players; there someone would say something other people don't like and that might start a war, a siege or some asset destruction. That's what this is all about. Right now, in Darkfall there's not a lot of things to do besides fighting somebody. You can't do economic war or guerrila warfare. You can raid any city you want but the only thing you'll win or lose are gear bags.
Well, today I'm not very inspired nor clear minded but I hope you know what I mean. I'd like to be able to cut some clans supplys, kidnap some valuable object or NPC, sabotage their objectives and so on. This might not come any time soon but I hope that ClanVsClan options grow sometime. We'll have to wait and see.

Some awaited developer feedback

Today, Tasos has once again appeared to give us some insight on what's going on in Aventurine. You can find the whole post here but I'd like to highlight some of the most interesting parts.

This week we had engineers visit us from our hosting provider to work with us and to set up a new basis for cooperation following the recent problems with the EU server connectivity. (...) As far as the player experience goes, the recent issues have been mostly addressed, but we’re not happy yet, so there’s quite a bit of work ahead of us.

The lag issues in EU1 are not as bad as they used to be but there's still a lot of sudden and unexplained lag spikes. Performance is a very important aspect of every multiplayer game and I truly hope Av improves it until the game runs without any problem.

The upcoming expansion is undergoing final testing and there are many last minute additions wherever we can make them. The delay has had a positive effect on the number of dungeons that are revamped and now about 50 percent of them have been redesigned, themed up, have repeatable quests added to them, new monsters, balanced rewards, and have generally become much more meaningful and connected to the lore.

What does final testing means in days? That's the question everybody is asking right now. We can only hope is sooner rather than later. It also seems that dungeons are the main objective in this expansion and that's not bad news at all but I'm happier with the general PvE news: better AI, new attacks, new monsters, better loot... Tasos says that the new terrain system is nearly concluded aswell but it still looks like a mere graphic revamp that doesn't imply any gameplay change. Graphic revamps are good and will help to bring more players to the game but it's not what current players are expecting.

About the lore, there are significant updates in progress which put things into perspective, old questions are being answered, hints and teasers offered on major world-events to follow. We’ll try to do better at communicating changes like this in the future.

I truly hope this becomes a reality as soon as they can. The Dinamic Lore System was one of the main things that made me buy Darkfall but I've only managed to participate in one event and it wasn't lore related. I'd like to see a lot of events going on weekly. I know it's hard to pull that but I believe this could be a major improvement for Darkfall.
The rest of the message showed me something very important: Aventurine is still growing and that means Darkfall is still a healthy game. Keep on playing!!

Weird Windlord Chest

Yup, weird things still happen to me. Last week I was looking for a Selentine Chest out in the open, very close to Velmuna to cash those little keys when I see a chest in a Windlord nest. Surprised I see that the "use" hand icon appears when I roll the mouse over the chest. I look at the tag: L22 Windlord Chest. Unfortunately I wasn't able to use it and neither was Brutal. What's this chest? Maybe some time ago, Devs thought about Mob Chests? Is it an inside joke? Am I allucinating?
Seriously, this is good news. For me, this means that Aventurine still has many things to implement. It's like all those empty but very nice spots, they say: We're empty NOW but there might or will be some interesting things here. Keep exploring!!

My pregnancy is over

It's been a little over 9 months since I started playing Darkfall. Time goes by very fast, yesterday I was telling Kall, a fellow clanmate, that I've been playing for 5-6 months. So after the 9 month period, how's my character? Well, I like it, that's for sure, but when I started playing I thought that it would be a lot stronger than it actually is. My stats are nothing special: STR 49 VIT 53* DEX 39 QUI 47 INT 35 WIS 59. As you can see, I haven't been using a lot of magic but this DEX thing is kind of weird because archery is my main weapon. Skillwise it's more of the same, I got good archery skills with Sharpshooter at 93 and using R50 and R60 bows and so is my melee but a little bit lower: Knives at 89, Knives Mastery at 47, Power Attack at 61 and Whirlwind at 57. I still got a lot of training to do with my one hander (1h Axe at 35) but I don't do a lot of mounted combat anyway.
The problem comes with magic. You can't be competitive (you can if you have some friends with you) if you don't have some utility and damage spells. The ofensive spells can be discussed but they remain a very powerful tool for any player, mostly due to rays. On the utility side, it cannot be discussed; without them even entering your own city can be hard (Elendil knows ;-P). Moreover, most of them are not easy to get; you need 100 GM before you can use Confusion (a must if you are outnumbered) and 75 WC before you get your third "heal self" spell. I wonder how long will it take me until I got 75 Spell Chanting if I gotta raise it with Adept and Stamina Bonus. Then I'll be able to buy Arcane and I will have to train it until it dings 50 and I can use Wall of Force.
It's overwhelming and I've already decided not to get stressed by it. I'm gonna use whatever I got when I need to and train certain skills while waiting for an event or a siege to start. I guess this was the way Aventurine intended this to work: most of the players with a set of skills and spells and only a few with the most powerful of them available. Sadly that's not the way it is but I still enjoy the game anyway and I believe Av needs to work on other things aswell ([cough]expansion[cough]).

I love Darkfall and you don't :-P

The winners of the suculent 5.000$ prize of the "I love Darkfall" contest have been announced and as many people, me included were expecting, the fabulous concrete dragon got it. It's creators, Albatros and Gervantes, earned it with their effort and their love for the details (the dragon breathes fire!).



The second prize was for Khor Syon a fellow mahirim that carved on stone his adventures. I also like this "entry" (I don't how to catalog this, esculpture maybe?) because of its originality and inmersion. It's a really good idea for a contest like this and something that a lot of people might see and wonder what it means. Some pictures ahead.

Today, Resfelm has spotlighted a special mention; TPTON created a schoner replica made of sticks. It's also a very nice piece of work but it lacks some detail love. Maybe it was a matter of time but TPTON should have painted the ship and taken the picture in a more suitable place. Take a look.

  

Congratulations to the winners!

The Unpolitic Post

Well, this wasn't supposed to work like this and I'm seriously rethinking the Politics section again. Some days ago, I sent my questions to the SGs of the four main clans involved in the recent Server War. The first one to answer the questions was Krankone Hsler and you will find his answers a bit later. The second and last until now was Frank Sinatra and his responses saddened me a bit. Here they come.

1- Can you describe your recent activities and your reasons for it?

Recently we deallied zagenda since the alliance leader felt the war was over. but we havent really done anything after that except selling eronetil to Greece. We have close to noone playing actively anymore. When you have stood up for a company for as long as we have, you also tend to feel betrayed when they keep making obviously lies to you. I think we have around 70 people paying subscriptions to support av but we only have around 10 who play the game right now. So in short, then there wont be any activities as such from Sun until the expansion, and the feature list will decide if we move on to another game - but we are gonna wait for the expansion before deciding.

2- Which clans are your clan allied to? Which clans are your enemies?

We are not allied to anyone, allthough you could consider us as being friendly towards zagenda since its the only group left worthy of any respect. We do however fight on a daily basis, and lately they wiped us at the seatowers and got 2 ships from us. So I guess its friendly but fighting each other.

3- What is your clan going to do in the near future? Any plans?

I think I covered that in question 1. We are not playing Darkfall as a guild right now. We are split between some testing of upcoming games, Heroes of Newert, World of tanks and then a bunch playing Starcraft2.
We are all ready to play again once the xpac hits - but we have lost all faith in Aventurine by now so its not like we are holding our breath anymore. 

4- Free statement

I do totally beleive that darkfall has the potential to be the best game ever, and i cannot to the death of me understand why Aventurine does what they do - it seems to me they have everything but at the same time throwing it all away. It's really sad actually, I'm not sure even. shakespeare could have written it. I could hold a 5 hour speech on this topic, but my short version would be that I dont understand why they dont finish the game when its so close - and its the saddest thing ever because I love the game and all it could be.
Thats it from me, unfortunately not as positive as usual - but I've been a major fanboi and even I have lost faith, and tasos last public post was the last straw for me so i have now joined the inactive group.
As for politics i dont think we really have one single officer playing the game right now, and as said - the expansion will tell if we are in or out, but you wont see much of us until it comes.

/Frank

I agree with Frank about some of the things he says, mostly about Darkfall's potential to be the best MMORPG out there (check the vision) but I'm not leaving the game depending on the expansion. I haven't played the game as long as Frank has and I'm not that burned and still enjoying the game. Well, in any case, I'm leaving you with Krankone words.

1- Can you describe your recent activities and your reasons for it?
Eating Victims, because thats what we do.

2- Which clans are your clan allied to? Which clans are your enemies?
No allies, everyone is our Enemy.

3- What is your clan going to do in the near future? Any plans?
Eating every Victim and Humiliating them 4 Life.

4- Free statement
FU ANG FRISST KINDER IRL !

ANG doesnt give a shit since ´97

Bad luck, bad mechanics or badly done?

The other day was great and yesterday was shit. That's the nature of Darkfall and one of the best parts of it but when you have a bad day, it sucks. It started with some PvP around Eslingar where I performed really really bad and lost 2 low gear bags. That part was completely my fault, not only I didn't play very good, I even forgot to load the arrows before a combat and I'm pretty sure that stupid thing made us, Zig Zag was with me, loose a combat.
Afterwas, I was riding with Brutal around alfar lands when we spotted a fleeing miner that gave me 120 iron ore and a very nice leenspar ore. I thought "this is improving" but then after some wandering we got hit by those damn alfar underground NPC towers and they killed us. We tried to come back to save our loot and I might been able to save mine but someone did it before we arrived there. Brutal was killed again by the towers trying to get his stuff and I was killed again trying to rez him.
That last part was actually a little bit of bad luck and lot of bad mechanics and badly done. The bad mechanics thing is pretty obvious. Why the hell do this towers hit you through the damn ground? Buildings block the zap ray but tons of rocks doesn't? Also, a fellow clanmate told us that arcane rings doesn't protect you from NPC towers so, combine that with their stupid range and you got a perfect death trap. Who says there is no safe zone in Darkfall?
But, and there's always a but, I knew those towers could hit you through the ground. A long time ago, I red that in the forums but I wasn't really aware of that at that time. I guess that won't happen again to me, lesson learned.

Toad's Tongue: The Big Depresion

The World War 3 is over and here in my cozy swamp it never felt like a World War. Despite that, it certanily has been important for some people. The ANG FRISST KINDER alliance lost the war and DPS, one of the biggest clans in Agon until recently, has disbanded. Some of their members went to NA1 where the population is suposed to be bigger. The rumors in the swamp say that most of DPS members who stayed in EU1 belong now to NoCry clan. The SUN clan has left the Zagenda alliance to reform the SUN alliance now the war is over but it looks like they are still in good relations with them.
News from people moving to NA1 or even leaving the game are alarming and the waiting for the expansion is killing everybody. Our beloved gods don't answer our prayers and a lot of people is tired of waiting, claiming they're going to sleep until the expansion comes.
In this quiet panorama SUN, Zagenda and Shadowlords (former allies in the war) have 31 holdings while ANG FRISST KINDER have 10, Pandora 8, The Fremen Knights 6 and Lux Arcana 5. There are a lot of holdings owned by unallied clans and I believe that's good news for the players.
Well, that's all for now, as many of you, I'll be putting candles to every saint I can think of so the expansion comes as soon as possible.
From the little swamp, the Toad says: Don't leave us!

The good, the fun and the ugly

Today was a very joyful day in Darkfall for me. It started after luch with a couple of hours of gameplay. In those two hours, even if I was suposed to be PvEing, 10 of us (aprox.) went to raid some nearby places for PvP. When I joined the group, we first went for Silmiyat as usual (it's so close...) and unusually they didn't teleport in to defend their mine. So, we decided to go to Ghanalag and set a little ambush there, unfortunately there weren't many people in the city and we wiped them. Next stop, Ul'Sulak, same thing. More people but not many more. After that, we split the loot and I had to log. That first part wasn't very exciting but I was happy to see that my skills were improving.
Four hours later, I logged back in and we had three raids into the city in a very short time and the three of them were really funny. We decided to use one of our buildings as a fortress and we all were inside. The three battles went down in a similar fashion. We hold our grounds while trying to pull the enemies inside the building to kill them one by one but, meanwhile the attackers were trying to do the same thing from the outside. Arrows and spells were shot out the windows and the main and only door was literally in full of flames, walls of force, arrows and everything a Darkfall player can throw to another player. It felt like a true battle with a lot of heal other and sacrifices, shouting in vent, rezing and ganking. Really funny. I don't who ordered "¡Charge!" but it was amazing to see everyone with their blades in hand leaving the building to kill the enemies. The two first times we won the charge and took the loot but on the third time (I'm pretty sure that the 3rd raid enemies were the same from the 2nd and they were better organized this time) they killed us. I've lost a bad gear bag and got some nice things from the looting so, all in all it was a very good day.
What's the ugly then? Well, the ugly part is losing after repeating the same tactic with the same enemy. It's not really bad and wasn't a bad call at all but it never feels right to lose against someone you just wiped with the same tactic.

Siege Report: Ichtan

Yup. At last, a siege! It's been a long time since my last siege and I was eager to enter in battle. From now on, I'll try to make a siege report of every siege I play.
This time, the Pandora alliance sieged our beloved hamlet in Yssam. We found the enemy in top of a mountain while we were on a little hill just below them. We fought a bit there, close to their big siegestone SE of the hamlet, and then after a push, a retreat was called, but when we were at our hill top again, they pushed and wiped us. Fortunately, the clan used 3 nexus to teleport everyone back to the fight, this time in north side of the hamlet. Again, as usual, I wasn't cautious enough and I got caught too close to the front line where I was killed and ganked again. When I managed to get back to the fight through the nexus, it was over! I just needed to stay alive a little bit longer but well, I'm so impatient. At this point, we first destroyed the cannons around our clanstone and then went for their siegestones, all of this unopposed. In my second port, I got my 2nd bag so I only lost one gear bag and when the loot was splited I kinda got it back. All in all, a very good siege despite it was short and I didn't perform too good.
The siege was won because we had more numbers but our second push was very well done or so I'm told. The healers stayed in the back healing and buffing while in the front line, the meleers retreat to heal and went back to battle. My place should have been with healers but... Maybe next time.

Clans for politic section

First, a little piece of the grand boredom some Darkfall player's feel inside, here.
Also, I've finished writing down the list of clans, whose SGs will be questioned for the new politic section (I almost got a name for it). The list of clans are:
zZzZz (also speaking for Zagenda)
ANG (also speaking for ANG FRISST KINDER)
Nadirian Hordes (also speaking for Shadowlords)
Pandora (also speaking for Pandora alliance)
Snailparty (also speaking for I'm with stupid)
I know my Chickens (also speaking for Chickens Club!?)
Mental Disorder (also speaking for Insanity)
SUN
Devil Preservation Society
NEW
The Fremen Knights
Lux Arcana
That's it. If any other clan wants to make use of the politic section, he can PM me or leave a comment. Soon I'll start to send the questions to the SGs, those I can't find by Forum name, I'll try to contact them ingame. I see it's quite a list so I'll go little by little. Also, I've decided to include NEW because I believe it's interesting to see what's their view on political status as Agon's Switzerland and to support them.

Sweet dreams are made of this

The server seems to be working better and today I've had a nice little sesion with some nice loot but nothing to talk about really. So I've decided to rescue a very nice post Dawkinson from US1 posted in Darkfall Forums some time ago. You'll find it here.
Thinking about it, I realized that maybe, only a big maybe, that's what Darkfall 2010 is. Tasos have said that it is a very big upgrade and Syncaine even called it Darkfall 2.0. So, why not? A man can dream. Would you like Darkfall to be like Dawkinson says?