O
old.Trine Aquavit
Guest
Kill task guards - don't you just love em. Just as you get to a level where you know you're weak and feeble, your equipment is worn and the next level of your main damage dealing line is one more level away they send you off most of the way across the zone to kill something you never knew existed, that's almost always yellow/orange and resistant to your damage.
But there are some guards that like to go the extra mile. These jobsworths like to make sure that they really put the 'kill' in kill task. I've been levelling a few alts in the SI zones of all three realms recently and these are my experiences.
Midgard
----------
Midgard has generally been a breeze for kill tasks, at least so far. There's a couple of guards who are very generously placed in the guard tower near a number of good spawn. I'd been doing very well levelling my runie, Fawkes, from the guards in Aegirhamn, with the biggest major inconvenience being tasks from the guards at the 'town' side of the bridge. This is no real biggie, until I get to about level 13. My favorite guards at the tower aren't giving anything up, neither is the guard on the 'right' side of the bridge. I decide that I'm having to travel further and further from town to get my kills and reckon that I might do better with the guards at the other town of Djerfell, so off I trot to see what the nice Trolls of that encampment has to say...
"Hello, Mr Troll, could I have a kill task, please?"
"Greetings, Fawkes, travel to the south-east and kill a Morvalt Fast-Walker"
The Troll seems to snigger as I walk tentatively away.
Hmmm, Morvalt Fast-Walker, eh? I've not come across one of those before. I've killed plenty of Morvalt Ungdoms near Aegir, but that's miles away. I know the Morvalt camps spread widely across that area, but most of those have always been purple aggro.
I try the camp near Djerfell. Plenty of puple aggro Morvalts, but no sign of a Fast-Walker. I cross the river to the East, or at least try to - it's not easy when the banks seem to be full of distinctly slow-walking, but disturbingly purple Morvalts. I decide to cross to the north and use the zone wall to keep my distance. After about half an hour of traipsing the zone wall on the perimeter of the camp I reach a camp of Ungdoms and it dawsn on me that I'm only a stones throw from Aegir! Aaaarghhh! Still no fast-walkers! I head into the thick of the now green and grey Ungdoms and find a small set of tents. Hiding in one of them is a pair of Morvalt Fast-Walkers. They are, needless to say, stationary. I nuke one, then take great pleasure in nuking the whole lot of them - serves them right they should have run a bit quicker.
I head back to Aegir and take a horse back to Djerfell (as it's quicker). I see my friend, Mr Troll and collect my reward. Foolishly, I ask for another task.
"Greetings, Fawkes, travel to the south-east and kill a granulator"
Granulator! What the heck is a granulator! I have no idea whether it's animal, vegetable or mineral, so just stumble blindly to the south east. Mr Troll, meanwhile, seems to be sharing a joke with his buddies - I have a distinct feeling the joke is on me.
After some while searching (and avoiding the same aggro purple Morvalts I'd been avoiding earlier) I come back to an island. It's an island that I'd seen, but mostly avoided, earlier because it was obviously inhabilted by a group of large, purple Dodo-like Boobries. I knew these probably weren't worth messing with as I'd previously passed a group of younger Boobries who were still purple. This, I reasoned, made the Boobries very purple. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I swam to the island and negotiated my way to the far side. And what did I see, right in the middle of the Boobries? A granulator! A small, well-camoflaged mushroom. A small, well-camoflaged, bright yellow mushroom to be precise. On a very small island. With a distinct hump. Populated by very aggro dodos. Ah.
I get my distance as best I can and start nuking. Hit! Hit! Resist! Resist! Quickcast root, run and turn. Nuke. "Your target is not visible". Eeek! Move. Nuke. "Your target is not visible". Move. Nuke. Nuke. Phew!
Just 10 more kill tasks to go from Mr Sadistic Troll.
Albion
--------
I'm very new to Albion. I only got my second account a few weeks ago and, until then, had only really played on Mid/Pryd and Hib/Excal. I decide to try a Friar, name him 'Tavistock' after my home town and get down to business.
It seems that in Alb, the kill-task joke has spread as far as the level 1 quest givers. I tend to always do the lowbie quests for a bit of variety, they tend to be short-lived affairs to get a few XP and some well needed silver (I don't generally twink until I know I'm going to stick with a character, so I'm usually scraping around for cash in the early levels). My acolyte trainer sends me to see another of the townsfolk. After a quick look around the keep of the castle I can't find the lass, so I ask a guard. He doesn't know who I'm talking about. I check the spelling. Nope. I leave the keep and come across a small town, with a different location name and different guards. The guards here point me to the lady I'm looking for - good start.
Now, one of the nice things about kill-tasks is they always give you a direction to start looking in. Without this, some tasks could be even more painful. Unfortunately, quests don't always do this. I was asked to kill a swamp goo. I ran around for a while, in vain, looking for such a thing. I went back up to the keep. I came back to the town. Eventually I found a pair of swamp goos to the north of the town. Both yellow. Ah.
Now, many of you will know that soloing a healer-type class is pretty painful from 1-5. You have no speccable weapon, low weaponskill and lower combat stats than a tank. You don't have the nukes of a caster. Without good equipment and/or buffs soloing a yellow with no armour and the trainer weapon will likely get you killed.
I tried anyway. I was killed. I ran back. The swamp goos were gone and in their place were a bunch of skellies and headless dead! I ran around a bit more before realising that the goo was on a day/night spawn rotation with the undead. Gah!
And all this before I'd even tried a kill task. When I did start kill tasking I found that the guards had the usual penchant for sending you to mobs that are much nearer the other kill task guards than they are to the one that gave you a task. This is compounded by the size of the town which, with the town and castle combined, is much larger than Aegir or Domann.
Eventually, at level 6 I found what I was really expecting.
"Please, good Knight, could you give me a task so that I may prove my worth"
"Greetings, Tavistock, travel to the north-east and kill a giant dragonfly"
Nice. I'd killed plenty of large dragonflies and they were neutral and vulnerable to crush. Giant dragonflies must be more of the same. Time for my uber staff-twirling skills!
I headed north-east and onto the beach of Avalon. After a decent stretch of my legs I eventually found a giant dragonfly. And another. And another. A huge great ball of draginflies filled the air, some blue, some yellow, some orange, some red and some purple. And all aggro.
Now, for many classes this situation would be a doddle. Pull from range and let em have it. For a level 6 friar, with no range attack whatsoever, it was more problematic. I tried some traditional Albion taunts...
"I fart in your general direction!"
"I wave my private parts at your auntie!"
But, in my heart, I knew that I was going to have to get in there and body pull a single blue from that swirling mass. A prospect made even tricker by the fact that all the dragonflies were moving in three dimensions, making it very hard to judge distance. After three attempts, and two sprints down the beach waving my hands around my head and yelling "Gerroff! Gerroff!" I finally nailed my blue dragonfly and "whooped his ass", as they say in the Albion monasteries.
I went back to the kill task guard, got my just rewards and asked for another task.
"Greetings, Tavistock, travel to the north-east and kill a giant dragonfly"
I logged.
But there are some guards that like to go the extra mile. These jobsworths like to make sure that they really put the 'kill' in kill task. I've been levelling a few alts in the SI zones of all three realms recently and these are my experiences.
Midgard
----------
Midgard has generally been a breeze for kill tasks, at least so far. There's a couple of guards who are very generously placed in the guard tower near a number of good spawn. I'd been doing very well levelling my runie, Fawkes, from the guards in Aegirhamn, with the biggest major inconvenience being tasks from the guards at the 'town' side of the bridge. This is no real biggie, until I get to about level 13. My favorite guards at the tower aren't giving anything up, neither is the guard on the 'right' side of the bridge. I decide that I'm having to travel further and further from town to get my kills and reckon that I might do better with the guards at the other town of Djerfell, so off I trot to see what the nice Trolls of that encampment has to say...
"Hello, Mr Troll, could I have a kill task, please?"
"Greetings, Fawkes, travel to the south-east and kill a Morvalt Fast-Walker"
The Troll seems to snigger as I walk tentatively away.
Hmmm, Morvalt Fast-Walker, eh? I've not come across one of those before. I've killed plenty of Morvalt Ungdoms near Aegir, but that's miles away. I know the Morvalt camps spread widely across that area, but most of those have always been purple aggro.
I try the camp near Djerfell. Plenty of puple aggro Morvalts, but no sign of a Fast-Walker. I cross the river to the East, or at least try to - it's not easy when the banks seem to be full of distinctly slow-walking, but disturbingly purple Morvalts. I decide to cross to the north and use the zone wall to keep my distance. After about half an hour of traipsing the zone wall on the perimeter of the camp I reach a camp of Ungdoms and it dawsn on me that I'm only a stones throw from Aegir! Aaaarghhh! Still no fast-walkers! I head into the thick of the now green and grey Ungdoms and find a small set of tents. Hiding in one of them is a pair of Morvalt Fast-Walkers. They are, needless to say, stationary. I nuke one, then take great pleasure in nuking the whole lot of them - serves them right they should have run a bit quicker.
I head back to Aegir and take a horse back to Djerfell (as it's quicker). I see my friend, Mr Troll and collect my reward. Foolishly, I ask for another task.
"Greetings, Fawkes, travel to the south-east and kill a granulator"
Granulator! What the heck is a granulator! I have no idea whether it's animal, vegetable or mineral, so just stumble blindly to the south east. Mr Troll, meanwhile, seems to be sharing a joke with his buddies - I have a distinct feeling the joke is on me.
After some while searching (and avoiding the same aggro purple Morvalts I'd been avoiding earlier) I come back to an island. It's an island that I'd seen, but mostly avoided, earlier because it was obviously inhabilted by a group of large, purple Dodo-like Boobries. I knew these probably weren't worth messing with as I'd previously passed a group of younger Boobries who were still purple. This, I reasoned, made the Boobries very purple. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I swam to the island and negotiated my way to the far side. And what did I see, right in the middle of the Boobries? A granulator! A small, well-camoflaged mushroom. A small, well-camoflaged, bright yellow mushroom to be precise. On a very small island. With a distinct hump. Populated by very aggro dodos. Ah.
I get my distance as best I can and start nuking. Hit! Hit! Resist! Resist! Quickcast root, run and turn. Nuke. "Your target is not visible". Eeek! Move. Nuke. "Your target is not visible". Move. Nuke. Nuke. Phew!
Just 10 more kill tasks to go from Mr Sadistic Troll.
Albion
--------
I'm very new to Albion. I only got my second account a few weeks ago and, until then, had only really played on Mid/Pryd and Hib/Excal. I decide to try a Friar, name him 'Tavistock' after my home town and get down to business.
It seems that in Alb, the kill-task joke has spread as far as the level 1 quest givers. I tend to always do the lowbie quests for a bit of variety, they tend to be short-lived affairs to get a few XP and some well needed silver (I don't generally twink until I know I'm going to stick with a character, so I'm usually scraping around for cash in the early levels). My acolyte trainer sends me to see another of the townsfolk. After a quick look around the keep of the castle I can't find the lass, so I ask a guard. He doesn't know who I'm talking about. I check the spelling. Nope. I leave the keep and come across a small town, with a different location name and different guards. The guards here point me to the lady I'm looking for - good start.
Now, one of the nice things about kill-tasks is they always give you a direction to start looking in. Without this, some tasks could be even more painful. Unfortunately, quests don't always do this. I was asked to kill a swamp goo. I ran around for a while, in vain, looking for such a thing. I went back up to the keep. I came back to the town. Eventually I found a pair of swamp goos to the north of the town. Both yellow. Ah.
Now, many of you will know that soloing a healer-type class is pretty painful from 1-5. You have no speccable weapon, low weaponskill and lower combat stats than a tank. You don't have the nukes of a caster. Without good equipment and/or buffs soloing a yellow with no armour and the trainer weapon will likely get you killed.
I tried anyway. I was killed. I ran back. The swamp goos were gone and in their place were a bunch of skellies and headless dead! I ran around a bit more before realising that the goo was on a day/night spawn rotation with the undead. Gah!
And all this before I'd even tried a kill task. When I did start kill tasking I found that the guards had the usual penchant for sending you to mobs that are much nearer the other kill task guards than they are to the one that gave you a task. This is compounded by the size of the town which, with the town and castle combined, is much larger than Aegir or Domann.
Eventually, at level 6 I found what I was really expecting.
"Please, good Knight, could you give me a task so that I may prove my worth"
"Greetings, Tavistock, travel to the north-east and kill a giant dragonfly"
Nice. I'd killed plenty of large dragonflies and they were neutral and vulnerable to crush. Giant dragonflies must be more of the same. Time for my uber staff-twirling skills!
I headed north-east and onto the beach of Avalon. After a decent stretch of my legs I eventually found a giant dragonfly. And another. And another. A huge great ball of draginflies filled the air, some blue, some yellow, some orange, some red and some purple. And all aggro.
Now, for many classes this situation would be a doddle. Pull from range and let em have it. For a level 6 friar, with no range attack whatsoever, it was more problematic. I tried some traditional Albion taunts...
"I fart in your general direction!"
"I wave my private parts at your auntie!"
But, in my heart, I knew that I was going to have to get in there and body pull a single blue from that swirling mass. A prospect made even tricker by the fact that all the dragonflies were moving in three dimensions, making it very hard to judge distance. After three attempts, and two sprints down the beach waving my hands around my head and yelling "Gerroff! Gerroff!" I finally nailed my blue dragonfly and "whooped his ass", as they say in the Albion monasteries.
I went back to the kill task guard, got my just rewards and asked for another task.
"Greetings, Tavistock, travel to the north-east and kill a giant dragonfly"
I logged.
