Hello, my name is Ysharros and I’m a recovering altoholic. Just kidding–I remain an Unashamed Altophile, and that’s not about to change. However, due to various real life issues, this week’s confession may be on the short side, and was inspired partly by questions I was asked elsewhere (thanks to my e-Muses). So here goes.

Q: How do you decide which alt to play at any given session? Do you level alts sequentially? Do you keep them approximately the same level?

Some people are very organised. Me, I play whoever takes my fancy that day/hour. It also partly depends on who else is playing, what might be going on, how much time I have (lower level chars can get more done in a shorter amount of time, usually), and what sort of playstyle mood I’m in.

I’m not a serial altoholic, I’m a mish-mash altoholic so no, I don’t tend to level characters sequentially. It keeps me sane not to, since I have so many alts usually that leveling, say, 5 chars from 1-10 in WAR will eventually drive you batty from content repetition. I have a high tolerance for repeating content, but even I have my limits; taking breaks between doing exactly the same content can help refresh said content a little. Right now I have 3 WAR alts firmly in T2 and another several who could adventure in T2 and, not surprisingly, I am somewhat jaded with tier 2 as a whole right now. Taking a break for a bit (playing higher or lower chars, playing something else) will recharge the enthusiasm battery. However, it leads to:

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Hello, my name is Ysharros and I’m an altoholic. By now, I’m sure you know the drill.

Many careers in WAR take a little while to mature, and going at least to Rank 10 is helpful if you think you like a career but you’re not entirely sure. What may seem underpowered at 3 can change quite drastically by 8 or 11, and a lot of the “core” abilities are handed out right around 7-11–such as taunts (or detaunts), Guard for tanks, stealth for Witch Hunters and Witch Elves, and so on.

I was finally able to take a few *cough* of my other alts to 10 in the last few days, which while technically not exactly all the way through tier 1, is still within spitting distance. Joining the ranks of the other alts whose path through T1 I previously described, this week we have Misericorde the Witch Hunter, Incendia the Bright Wizard, and Meabh the Ironbreaker. I should have made a Rune Priest and then I’d have had all four archetypes, but even I have only so much alt-stamina in me. Even so, those three characters were an interesting contrast to each other.

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My name is Ysharros and I’m an altoholic– err, altophile. Just in case you’re new to this column.

This week, I’m going to take a quick(ish) look at the alts I’ve got on Averheim and their progress through Tier 1, since I spent much of the past week playing one or the other of them up to R10 or so. See, now I can add journalistic obligation to my reasons for altoholic enablement! Grab a drink, sit back, and get comfy, for while I’ll try to keep each mini-review short and sweet…I do have a lot of alts.

This is not a career guide, as there are plenty of good, in-depth ones already out there, including right here at Hammer of WAR. It’s more like a travel journal: what I’ve played through Tier 1, how much I liked it, what I didn’t like. It probably won’t help serial monophiles figure out what to play next, but it may well be of use to the hesitant or choice-paralysed altophile.

Ysharros, R21/RR16 Shadow Warrior

Shadow Warriors can be a challenge to play, certainly to play well. In the first dozen or so levels, you’ll have to learn to stance-dance: shadow warriors get their three stances within the first 6 levels, and each stance has its own specific abilities (many of which are shared across 2 stances) and benefits. Scout stance is the classic “plink from a distance” stance and gives ballistic & initiative bonuses; assault stance favours limited but mobile shooting and hand-to-hand attacks and gives strength and weapon skill bonuses; and Skirmish stance is a mobile, shoot and scoot type stance with toughness and crit chance bonuses.

Knowing which stance to use when, and being able to switch between them at the right time, can be a challenge, especially in RvR. Hotbar organisation can also be a real pain in the backside to begin with, since many abilities can be used in more than one stance, or across all stances; making sure all relevant abilities are present in each of the bars used by a given stance isn’t always easy, but it’s essential.

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While there are a few other crafting guides out there for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, I didn’t feel that any of them answered all of my questions. So, I’ll attempt to do that for you here. If I’m missing anything, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or , and I’ll see if I can’t find an answer and add it in.

Firstly, there are two types of crafting skills. Gathering skills are just that. You gather stuff. Appropriately named, eh? Production skills are almost as blatantly obvious. You produce stuff. Right. Moving on. (The rest of this guide IS more informative, I swear.)

Here’s an outline of the crafting skills that are in the game so far:

• Gathering
  • Butchering
  • Cultivating
  • Magical Salvaging
  • Scavenging
• Production
  • Apothecary
  • Talisman Making

There are trainers for all of these in each of the Chapter 2 cities, for each race or army. Now, to break them down and give a description of each.

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Open beta is upon us! Now is the time to ready our arms and steal ourselves for battle. Are you prepared? Great, let’s go.

We’re out on the battlefield and ready for action. *hums a little song* Oh look, a snotling. *THWACK* He’s dead! *cackles maniacally* Wait, what’s this? A green ring! Yes! Wait a minute; what the heck does +2 wounds do? Am I going to take more damage? And willpower? I have the will to kill but I just don’t know…

If you’re new to WAR, then you’ve probably been in this situation at least once. We here at HoW understand, so we’ve drafted up an introductory guide to the item modifiers you’ll encounter in Warhammer Online. Want to know what +2 to wounds really does?

Read on to see.

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I wanted to put together a neat little outline with information about the races, classes, and sexes of the characters of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. These are the descriptions of the armies and careers as they appear within the game itself.

ORDER

The stalwart defenders of the Forces of Order form the Warhammer World’s first and last defense. Set upon by foes bent on their total and utter annihilation, they fight a war that most of them will not see the end of; but fight on they do… lest the world be lost to shadow and despair.

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