Stalward armour, Horatu's Hope & Dragon Shop

It has been almost two weeks since my previous post, but I didn't have much time to play and blog. And when I blog I want to provide you with some nice info and screenshot, so that's why it has taken so long :)

When I came back from Quarterstone, I wanted to finish some quests in Hawksmouth which I forgot to do. During my questing, I encountered two guildies with Stalward armour, which you can find in Ringfell (screenshot on the left).

After doing the Hawksmouth quests I finished up the quests I had left in Aldenvault and Hoggsridge, which gave me enough xp to ding 16.
One of the last quests in Hoggsridge send me to Horatu's Hope. Horatu's Hope is a very small shard where they are creating the biggest shardship in production atm.

And now a new discovery, someone in my guild noticed there's a Dragon Shop in the Fountain District on Quarterstone. The Dragon Shop is located near the docks and it's not possible to enter it, but the sign displays "Dragon Shop". This shop is there since beta, but hasn't been used yet. Will this be the future mount shop? And will we get dragon mounts to ride on? I hope so :)

Levelling 12-15

I've been running around in Quarterstone now since late lvl 11, and by doing all the quests there I'm almost lvl 15 now. The quests in Quarterstone are a good combination of fighting and fetch quests, and tell some great stories.
Some quests involve some searching and climbing, like in one of the quests in the Aion Core quest chain. In this quest you have to climb a wall by jumping from one stone to the other, which is something I'm not used to in MMO's, so it's nice to see the devs put some of these in the game. You can see a screenshot of it here.
The screenshot on the right is me standing in the Fountain District in Quarterstone with my pirate hat which I can wear now :)


While running through one of the docks I encountered a guildmate of mine, Borfus(screenshot on the left). He was wearing the Adorned set(shirt, pants, shoes, ...) and the armour he was wearing is of the longarm series, which you can find in Ringfell. I really like the shoulders which have spikes on them. The hood he's wearing is now our official guild hood.

Open World PvP Challenge event

Yesterday we had an Open World PvP Challenge event organized by the Forsaken Gods guild on the Deiquonril EU server. Forsaken Gods regularly organize community events which are always very fun.
The event started at 5pm CET near Viola's Hold in Hoggsridge. The rules and objectives where the following:

• Gather as many waste items as your level is by killing mobs located around the lake north of Viola's Hold. So a lvl 12 player should gather 12 waste items, a lvl 40 should gather 40.
• You gain 1 point for every waste item you turn in.
• You loose 2 point for every time you die (by getting killed in pvp or by a mob)
• You can kill anyone you want so he looses points

I was collecting waste items rather fast, and got to +8 points fast. I only needed 4 more waste items to win, and because of that my status was broadcasted so that everyone that participated knew I was getting close. I expected a witch hunt to kill me, but nobody followed me, but my hearth was beating very fast when I was running to the checkin point with my last 4 items. I got there without getting killed and won the event.
I got 2 prices sponsored by the Forsaken Gods guild, a pirate hat and a lvl 40 Cleaving edge sword. I also got a price sponsored by Selachii(one of the developers that attended the event), which was a lvl 40 sigil.

The Athenaeum

Yesterday I went to Quarterstone for the first time to complete my high house quest chain to become a House Rune member. The design of the city is as beautiful as all the other zones, but I was pleasantly surprised with the music. The music is the best I've ever heard in any game.
After running through the Palace, the Oracle and the Fountain destrict I decided to take the ship to the Athenaeum. I boarded the ship as a crew member(for free) without having the safety of a cabin while travelling(which you can rent for 20silver). I had to fight two mobs which weren't that hard to fight, but it made travelling with a ship much more fun then in other games.


The Athenaeum is actually just a dock near a big mountain formation. But again, the music is excellent, and when you go out the gates you see a big mountain in front of you which looks like a waterpainting. The cool thing is, you can run all the way up that mountain and find the Consanguineous Vaults instance there.


The Vaults dungeon is divided in different rooms. In each room is a challenge you have to complete. I've only entered the first room, so I don't know what's behind the others. In the first room you have to kill different kinds of mobs you can find in the Spellborn world. The rooms will open up as you progress to lvl 50, so the first room is for players around lvl 15, the second for lvl 20/25, etc.

Here's another screenshot of me standing near the Vault's entrance looking down the mountain. You can see the dock in the distance. link

Edit: Thanks to Borfus for giving some info on the Vaults dungeon.

Patch 1.0.3 released and High House armour

Patch 1.0.3 has been released since monday, and it's a very nice patch. Those speech bubbles make the world feel much more alive.

One of the developers, Selachii, also visited us ingame near the marketplace in Hawksmouth. He was wearing one of the new House silver item sets of which you can find a screenshot in this post. The hood he's wearing is a new hood from the new instance Exarchyon.
The High House Maul and Shroud armour sets are also finished and the High House rune set is in the works.

Sneak Peak Patch 1.0.3

Patch 1.0.3 is coming near, and it has some very nice changes. The Spellborn team is a rather small team compared to other MMO companies, but they certainly deliver nice patches(only not as fast as the other big MMO's).

First the new features. Patch 1.0.3 will introduce the marketplace. This is like the auction house in WoW or Warhammer Online, but without the bidding on items. When people start to put their found resources for sale on the marketplace, it will hopefully make it a lot easier to find resources for recipes, because these are not easy to find atm.
A new instance called Exarchyon will also be introduced into the Spellborn world. Exarchyon is the headquarter of the Brotherhood of the Glaive. Screenshots can be found here.
Another new feature are the speech bubbles. This is a big improvement for me as I always found it weird to talk in local chat with someone without seeing directly who said it.
Some new quest chains have also found their way into the game, see the detailed patch notes for more info on this so you know which are for your level.

Now the improvements. The respawn timers for mobs in Parliament and Ringfell have been increased, which is very good! Respawn timers for these mobs are currently way too fast, and got me killed more then once because the group that I just killed respawned while I was regaining my health from the fight.
The looting has also been improved so that it won't popup anymore in the middle of your screen while fighting.

The patch also contains various other fixes. See the full Sneak Peak patch notes here

NPC and animal names

I noticed that a lot of animal names in spellborn are derived from the dutch language. Most of the ones I found are in Aldenvault, but I'm only level 8 at the moment, so I didn't progress far into the game world.
Some of the animal names:

• Rahm: from the dutch name "ram" (male sheep)
• Vhark: from the dutch name "varken" (pig)
• Skapie: from the dutch name "schaap" (sheep)
• Kipplet: from the dutch name "kip" (chicken)
• Mooh: from the sound that a cow makes

There's also an animal named "Tanuk". According to another player this was from the japanese language.

Spellborn also has some really funny NPC names. One of them is an NPC called Arnold Shardzenegger located in House Shroud.
Another example of this are two NPC's called Wellis and Nietis which are standing on a cliff arguing who will be taking the "leap of faith"(Assassin's Creed anyone?). The names of those two NPC's are also derived from the dutch language, meaning "yes you do, no you don't".

And the world is full of those little details, but not always as obvious.
Anyone else found some funny named NPC's or animals? Let me know ;)