[Age of Conan] Atali and Breath of Ymir

Breath of Ymir

While leveling in Ymir's Pass I came across an interesting quest: Breath of Ymir. The final "boss" is a large frozen statue called Frozen Shaman which you need to destroy. Seems simple enough with one exception, if you are too close to the statue you get a debuff called Breath of Ymir with a 35 seconds duration which damages you every second for 3% of your hit points in frost damage. Also, the statue has a lot of HP and taking it down is not so easy.

The trick is to use the large bonfire to get yourself a buff called Soothing Warmth which prevents the Breath of Ymir from afflicting you. Once you have this buff on you, you must sprint as fast as you can to the Frozen Shaman statue so you can nuke it down as fast as possible. Once Soothing Warmth runs out you have about 1 second before Breath of Ymir affects you. This means you have to instantly run back to the bonfire and click on it again.

One slight problem is that Soothing Warmth doesn't always get applied when you click the bonfire. But just keep clicking until you get the buff.

Defeating the Frozen Shaman

Atali
Atali is a quest giver. Your first encounter with her should be at the entrance to the Yeti lair. She will just be there. If you get close she will run away. If you then chase Atali she will take you to an ambush where 2 [Boss] difficulty Frost Giants will attack you. Until this point you will get no quest. I found this quite mysterious and entertaining encounter. As I got further into the Frost Giant's territory I got assigned to a new graveyard spawning point. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time so I just kept killing Frost Giants while doing the quests in the area.

Me and Atali

I then noticed that quite near the graveyard on that area was Atali and she had a Quest mark on her. After many attempts at trying to jump and climb, on foot and with the horse, so I could get to her I decided to try and just get killed. Apparently that is the only way to get to her (after reading some forum posts about it). I suggest getting the quest for her before doing Breath of Ymir's final boss (the Frozen Shaman) since the location of the final bosses are the same.

Don't forget you need to die once again to complete the quest. Chose your blue quality necklace and get ready for a treat... OK, not so much a treat since the screen just fades to black for a second. But imagine your character making love to the equivalent of a Valkyrie.

This was one of my favorite quests so far. Pity it was too short but quite different from the usual stuff.

[Age of Conan] Tomes of the Dead

I had a bit of problems trying to figure out how to do the Tomes of the Dead quest. The start is simple, you need to find a body and upon a quick corpse search you find... nothing. This means the local evil people you must kill have the items you seek. The items are:

• Field Notes (x5)
• Books (x2)

Zaroth the Black

To retrieve the field notes you just move onto the area marked on the map and kill any spellcaster. I had 100% drop chance to get a Field Note when looting a spellcaster in the area. There's a couple of caster types around, some have an entourage of minions others have a normal demon with them. These should give you no problem. If you are melee just make sure you got enough room to charge them without getting the attention of more enemies or just get their attention and go out of line of sight so you can get them in a safe combat zone.

Location of Zaroth the Black

What really made me waste a bit too much time was the Books. I found none on the floor and all the enemies around weren't dropping any. After many, many kills I was about to give up until I came across Zaroth the Black [Boss] which dropped one. Apparently this is the only mob in that area that drops the book, so you have to kill him, wait for a respawn and kill him again. This is one of those little details in a game that just make me angry but oh well... looking around at the amazing graphics helps pass the time. Check out the screenshots to see the location on the map of where the boss is and what he looks like.

Hope I helped anyone else struggling with this quest.

[Age of Conan] Guardian Defeating Mithrelle

I had no trouble doing my Destiny Quests in Age of Conan: Unchained so far. No issues or difficulty on bosses until I had to put an end to the old witch from Tortage: Mithrelle. I actually died the first time I did her. She is found in a cave and, in my opinion, the quests leading there are fun.

Mithrelle boss fight is split into 3 phases. Phase 1 happens only once while Phase 2 and 3 keep repeating until she is dead. Phase 2 is where Mithrelle damages you and Phase 3 is where you get to damage her back. Read on.

Phase 1

Picture 1 - Phase 1

This phase is triggered as soon as you walk into the area she is in. The entrance becomes blocked and you can't go back. Mithrelle spawns at the position marked on picture 1 and is immune to targeting/damage. There are nests on the ground that spawn snakes one at a time. First nest spawns 3 snakes, a few second later another nest spawns 3 more snakes, and so on. Each nest spawns snakes only once so if a nest has spawned sneaks don't worry about destroying it.

Tactics
The sneaks are pretty easy and if you are battling no more than 3 I suggest Frenzy Stance since you want to bring them down faster. If you get 6 or more sneaks around you I recommend putting Defensive Stance up.

You can avoid battling all the sneaks by destroying the nests in the ground (see picture 1). Ignore the first nest since the snakes from that already spawned. After that try to destroy the nests as fast as possible. There seemed to be a spawn order but since I could not redo the fight I am not positive of what it is. A couple Flashing Arcs are enough to bring a nest down so you should have no problems.

Once all the sneaks are dead Phase 2 starts.

Phase 2
This phase starts with a big snake (Solo-Boss difficulty) spawning and Mithrelle teleporting to the middle of the room. Mithrelle casts Shivering Blast which is frost damage and hits for a decent amount. When I had Guardian Stance up it would hit me for 214 frost damage. The Big Snake is not hard and hits for very little in comparison. While Mithrelle is casting Shivering Blast you will be unable to harm her. Your hits will do more than 5-10 damage each time.

Tactics
Put Guardian Stance up to mitigate Mithrelle's damage. Do not hit the big snake and I seriously recommend kiting them and going out of Line of Sight (LoS) of Mithrelle to avoid her damage. This phase lasts at least 15 seconds so you got plenty of time to kite.

Also very important is to try to position Mithrelle close to a rock and, when you do, go attack her and have your back to a wall. See Picture 2 for a good location to kite and position her (X spot). I actually just kited her once just so I could regain some health. Once I got her in that corner marked with the X (see Picture 2) I just stayed there and ate her spells.

Phase 3

Picture 2 - Mithrelle Phase 2 and 3

During Phase 2 Mithrelle will start casting Grip of the Witch, a pushback spell which also stuns you for 3 seconds. This marks the start of Phase 3. During this stun, Mithrelle will also become stunned and loses her invulnerability spell, this means she can be damaged. Once she casts Mithrelle's Illusiveness she is immune again and we go for another round of Phase 2. This keeps repeating until she is dead.

If the Big Snake is still alive, Mithrelle will lose control of it and the snake starts attacking Mithrelle (and actually does some pretty good damage). This also means that when Mithrelle is no longer stunned she will first need to regain control of the snake by casting a spell. Only after casting that spell will she cast Mithrelle's Illusiveness. This is why you should not kill the big snake first.

Tactics

Once she starts casting Grip of the Witch remember to put Frenzy Stance since she and the snake will no longer be damaging you and you need the damage burst. Once she starts casting Mithrelle's Illusiveness go back to Guardian Stance.

Make sure you trap Mithrelle in a corner with a wall close by so you don't get pushed back when she casts Grip of the Witch. This saves you precious time and is the difference between hitting her with an extra Flashing Arc. If you do this plus keep the Big Snake alive you will gain enough time to hit her with 2 extra combos.

In the end a weird thing happened. Her loot was actually a destroyable box named "Mithrelle [Boss]" which after killing turned into the actual loot.

That's it! Hope this helped anyone having problems.

[Age of Conan] Guardian Gear and Stats Guide for Leveling

Age of Conan, much like any other MMO, has a complex system of character stats. I will not address them all in detail in this post but rather give an overview and point you in the right direction of what you should be looking for when choosing gear for your Guardian.

Base Stats

Your base stats are: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Wisdom and Intelligence. Of these five you should be interested only in Strength and Constitution with Dexterity being just a tie-breaker. Anything with Wisdom and Intelligence on it is probably something you should not be using.

Defensive Stats

Your defensive stats can be split into 3 categories: Health, Mitigation and Avoidance. Mitigation means you still get hit by your enemies but you reduce the incoming damage. Avoidance means you avoid the actual hit and thus receive no damage at all. As for Health, you might find it weird that I classify this as a defensive stat, but it actually is and it also includes health regeneration capabilities. The more health you have the longer you are alive and the harder you can get hit.

Your most important defensive stats are:

• Armor (Arm) - affected by Strength (1 STR =  2 Armor) and, depending on your level, gives you a certain percentage of mitigation.
• Evasion (Ev) - affected by Dexterity (1 DEX = 0.5 Evasion)
• Health (HP) - affected by Constitution (1 CON = 8 Health)
• Health Natural Regeneration - affected only by talents and gear.

The armor rating required to mitigate 1% varies with your level, so the higher level you are, the more armor you need. Same with evasion. So far I haven't found a decent formula for determining the mitigation with level but the best guesses at level 80 suggest something like

(Armor - X) / Y = % mitigation

There are other mitigation stats such as Critigation Chance and Amount but there are targeted at a very specific thing and in no way relevant to leveling up. Mostly for PvP and probably for Tanking end-game Bosses.
 
You also have Protection, which cancels out magic damage but I wouldn't focus on it at all. The amount of magic casters you find when leveling can be countered by having a slightly larger health pool and solid DPS to bring them down fast. Of course, if you are comparing 50 Protection against 1 Strength, then the 50 Protection are obviously superior.

One thing to take into account is not to mistake Health Regen with Health Natural Regen, same with Stamina Regen. Make sure it is Natural Regen, which actually affects you during combat. But don't overvalue this stat. It is only a tie-breaker and you should rely more on your talents for this than actual choosing gear for it.

Offensive Stats

Offensive stats are a bit more complex but can be crunched to Damage (DPS), Hit chance and Critical chance. I wouldn't worry too much with critical bonus damage, which increases the damage of your critical hits.

The most important offensive stats are:

• DPS - In turn, this stat is a combination of several other stats:
• Weapon DPS - This is the DPS value shown in the weapon you are currently equiping
• Combat Rating - Affected by Strength (1 STR = 3 CR). You will also find Combat Rating in Gear in 3 different forms: General, specific to a weapon type and in the form of elemental damage. The later is useful to bypass enemy armor and works with any weapon you have.
• Hit rating (HR) - Counters the innate chance of missing a player or monster. I wouldn't focus on this stat too much specially if you go for the Tempest talent tree (Polearm). I'd evaluate it on-par with evasion when quick-judging gear.
• Critical chance rating (CCR) - This increases your chances of scoring a critical hit. I also wouldn't focus on this stat too much.

Stat Priority

By no means is this an accurate way for min-maxing your character but rather a way to cope with constant gear choices which is what you face when leveling up.
 
Main stats to look for are Strength and Constitution independent of the talent choices you've made. Now, depending if you are more focused in DPS or Survivability go for:

• DPS: Combat Rating, Critical Hit Rating and Hit Rating. 
• Survivability: Armor, Evasion, Natural Health Regeneration and Protection as a tie-breaker when choosing gear.

 
If you are aiming at tanking some instances while leveling or just grouping up a lot then some Taunt skill might be useful.

I have chosen the Tempest (read: Polearm) talent tree which gives more DPS but as far as my gear choices, I rather go the middle ground so I can handle groups of 3-4 mobs with little problem. But this is a mater of taste and how you enjoy playing this class.