Update 1.6: Tier 3 Raiding
In Update 6 Funcom has introduced a whole new raid tier. This includes a massive new dungeon known as Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold, the home to Conan’s arch-nemesis himself, as well as new enemies and new rewards such as new armor. And did we mention that you can fight alongside Conan himself in Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold?
Horrifying enemies
Every person in the stronghold is a powerful and brutal adversary making the quest to conquer the stronghold a challenging but victorious one.
Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold has over a half a dozen great new encounters that introduce players to tier three raiding complete with new armor and other new rewards. Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold also includes several new quests that were designed to immerse players into the history and lore within Age of Conan. Each quest reveals more and more details about the background of each encounter and character within the stronghold.
“The goal of Tier 3 was to shatter player expectations by making the fights different and more dynamic than what Age of Conan has had before. Each encounter has a hook, a puzzle-like mechanic that payers need to decipher before the encounter is completed, even then each fight should be a challenge,” says Peter Rocchio, Game-play Designer and Co-Creator of Thoth Amon’s Stronghold. “Another way we mixed things up was by forcing players to use tools that may have been previously neglected, such as mana draining, and taking advantage of protection on previously ignored gear. We also introduced more positional mechanics which will hopefully force players to have greater situational awareness and make more individual choices within the context of an encounter.”
Shiny new loot
The new addition of raiding content also brings with it the new tier three armor sets. These magnificent pieces of armor are available for all classes in Age of Conan.
Now with new challenging encounters and new additions to our tier armor sets we also have one more treat for you. The highly requested Raid Loot Token System also makes its way into Age of Conan and Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold. The token system is added to Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 raids with our latest update, giving an increased potential to attain the needed armor pieces that you seek with each run you take.
Under this Token System, a player first obtaisn a 'relic' drop from slaying a raid boss. You can then use these relics, which appear in your token window, to purchase items from an in-game vendor that are priced in some amount of tokens plus gold. The token vendors are located in Old Tarantia near the Temple of Mitra, and in Kheshatta near the NPC Nefersuktum. There is a Royal Collector vendor in King Conan's Castle that sells special armor to soldiers in exchange for tokens.
Additionally, a number of rewards have also been introduced through our new token system. We still have regular drops but now, corpses contain both tokens and special rewards that are only available as drops. This makes more gear available through tier three than ever available through tier two raiding. In return, it also offers a lot more choices to the player giving them a safety net that is free from randomness of loot trolls! In the end, it retains the “what’s on the corpse?” factor, which we feel adds a lot of anticipation and excitement to encounter completion.
Just to note, there is a slight difference in how tokens are obtained in T1, T2 compared to T3. In T1 and T2 tokens drop as do other items. This means they may be rolled upon, master-looted, and so forth. In T3, we introduced the concept of a "participation token" which is automatically granted to all members in the raid for killing a boss. This is to represent the difficulty jump between T3 and the other raid dungeons. In T3, in addition to this participation token players may roll on and/or masterloot containers of many tokens called "urns." These urns come in several varieties, including archetype specific. When used in your inventory, the urn adds relics to your character.
Fight alongside Conan
Last, but definitely not least, one should mention that players have, for the first time ever, the chance to fight alongside Conan himself in Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold. We won’t spoil the surprise too much; suffice to say that your journey in the Stronghold will be very, very dramatic. Funcom looks forward to be bringing players new experiences in future free updates, as well as the upcoming expansion pack Rise of the Godslayer.
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