The Story

This kind of tells the entire story, doesn't it:

Patch Notes

If you don't read the main site often, you may have missed the fact that the full patch notes are now available right here.

Quest Guide: Coldberg

Coldberg is a relatively short zone, which introduces the first of the daily reputation grinds, this one for the Free Traders. As you can tell by the full quest list here, you won't be here for a terribly long time, which is a bit of relief after the very long-seeming Eljune and Coba Plateau.

Plate Wearers: Be Warned...

Don't ever buy these:

Unless you want your feet to look like this:

Quest Guide: Coba Plateau - Part II

 Welcome back to Coba Plateau, and Part II of the guide. If you missed it, Part I is right here. When we stopped, we were just about to head toward the Cordon and points beyond. Let's get started shall we?

Morning in Novograd

Here's a nice view of the main tower in Novograd for any Imperials that wonder what it looks like.

Quest Guide: Coba Plateau - Part I

Coba Plateau is the last part of the Holy Lands Allod. It lies to the east of Asee-Teph, and can be reached by traveling east from Kotick, the Dead City. Follow the road to end up in Brazen Hill, the first quest hub for this zone. There are several reputation quests in this zone, which are listed in the Reputation Guide. Information on the zone's treasure can be found right here. The full quest list can be found right here.

A Nice Guide

Saw this Heroic Darkblood Citadel guide mentioned on the official boards, and thought it worth a link. Great job!

http://allodsonline-en.ning.com/profiles/blogs/guide-compendium-heroic-dark

All's Quiet

It's been a while since I posted anything here, but never fear, there is progress! Daily quests for reputation have been consuming a lot of my playtime lately, but I have most of the first part of the Coba Plateau quest guide done, and I hope to have it finished up in the next couple days. I've also updated the reputation and treasure guides with new zones, so if you haven't looked at them in a while, take a peek. I've also been chipping away at the travel guide, but it's been slow going.

As always if you find errors or omissions, please leave a comment so I can fix it!

Quest Guide: Eljune - Part II

This is part two of the Eljune quest guide. Part one can be found right here. When we left off, we had just done the first round of questing started in Maddox and had started working on quests from the Bazaar as well. Let's move on to the next wave.

Guide: Racial Quests

Each race in Allods receives a racial skill at 7th level or so. Here's a breakdown of the process required to get the racial skill for each quest.

Quest Guide: Eljune - Part I

After the chaos and strife of Asee-Teph, Eljune is a nice change of pace. This zone seems empty by comparison. Once again there are quest givers scattered all over the map, though not quite so many as Asee-Teph. The reputation grind here is a bit long, as the Forestfolk don't offer that many quests to advance reputation as you level. On the plus side, Eljune offers your first shot at an Adamantite treasure chest. You can find a full list of quests for the zone here.

The View from Above

Asee-Teph is often a tense area for players, since there is so much PvP around. Once in a while though, you have to stop and take in the views. Here's a screenshot from one of the cliffs surrounding the central temple area.

Sometimes you have to stop and smell the ravenous plants...

The Grind

As you can probably tell from the fact that I only talk about questing here, I'm not much of a grind-player. Now that I've crossed the 30th level line with a couple of characters I've started to see that a little grinding is probably a good thing.

Blog Progress

I just wanted to share something with the readership, a bit of data from Google Analytics...

Quest Guide: Asee-Teph - Part II

This is Part II of the Asee-Teph quest guide. You can find Part I right here. I'll be talking about the quests in this zone area by area, more or less in order of difficulty, since there is no clear linear progression through the entire zone. As I mentioned in the previous part of the guide, you should be ready to adjust your questing plans based on the PvP situation in the zone. Let's begin.

Quest Guide: Asee-Teph - Part I

Welcome to Hell.

I've heard people say that Asee-Teph is the zone that causes many people to quit Allods, and I can see why some people could get frustrated here. There are major changes in the style of play when you hit this zone from both the PvP and PvE perspective. Hopefully this guide will help you avoid the frustration and get through this area with your sanity intact. You can find the quest list for this zone right here. You can also read about the zone's treasure  and reputation. In Part I of this two-part guide I'm going to cover general information and tactics for dealing with this zone. In Part II I'll move on to a more quest-oriented discussion.

Quest Guide: Tenebra

Tenebra is another divided Allod, with a northern and southern half. The instance here, Darkblood Citadel, sits between the two halves. The quests for Tenebra can be found right here. This is a relatively short zone, if you know where you're going you can clear it in one or two play sessions.

Quest Guide: Frozen Frontier

Frozen Frontier is the zone following Siveria (quest guides for Siveria: Part I and Part II). To reach Frozen Frontier, use the June Stone at the Cape of Good Hope in Siveria. The complete list of Frozen Frontier quests can be found right here. The reputation faction for this area is the Gibberlings, and, as noted in the Reputation Guide, it's one of the easiest factions to grind rep for.

Quest Guide: Siveria - Part II

This is Part II of a two-part guide to Sivera. Part I can be found here. I ended part one in Gravestein, ready to head north to Sieged Stronghold, but that wasn't quite accurate. There's one loose end to tie up in Gravestein. Let's get started!

Quest Guide: Siveria - Part I

Welcome to Siveria, the first of two icy zones you'll face on your path to level 40. To reach this area, travel north-east through Lightwood to the big waterfall and follow the trail up to Molotovka in Siveria, the first quest hub. As always, a full list of quests is available. Siveria is another long zone, so this will be a two part guide.

Suggestion Hit List

No, this isn't a post about skill changes, nerfs, or patch problems. I think anyone that's been browsing the forums over the last few days has had their fill of those conversations. Nope, this is about Allods as a whole and some ideas and suggestions about how the game could be made better for everyone involved. This is opinion only of course, and I'm sure at least a few people will disagree with what I say here. Such is the nature of MMOs. Here we go, my hit list:

Quest Guide: Darkwater

Welcome to Darkwater, a very atmospheric and fun area full of folklore and creepy quests. So far this is my favorite area in the game. What follows is a quest guide to help you through the many twists and turns of this shadowy wood. While you're there you may want to check out the reputation guide for more information on the zone's repeatable reputation quests.

The Warden Effect

If you follow the official forums I'm sure you've seen the storm of Warden comments concerning the changes to Renew in the current patch.

Reputation Guide

This article covers the various repeatable reputation quests zone by zone. Hopefully it'll help you obtain your reputation gear for each zone in a pain free manner. It pays to get the reputation for each zone done as soon as you can manage the reputation quests. The respected gear obtained from the various reputation vendors is some of the best gear available at the appropriate levels. That said, there's no need to grind all the rep for the zone as soon as you get there. Most of the quests in the area will give you reputation for the main faction, reducing the number of repeatable quests you have to do.

Status Report

Just a brief update on current state of play...

Updates

I went through part II of the Lightwood Guide and cleaned up quite a bit of the quest ordering there. It should be much more useful now!

Treasure!

Allods has a pretty nifty system for insuring every character can accumulate some nice loot on a regular basis. The daily treasure chest. This article highlights the mechanics of the treasure chest system and shows you where to find treasure chests in each zone.

Updates

Two quick updates on the site today:

• I've added a Table of Contents page to the site. This should provide more organized access to articles.
• I've updated the Evermeet Isle Guide with a few minor details surrounding the last couple of quests and departing the Isle.

A fellow player has pointed out a few niggling errors in the Lightwood Quest Guides, so I'll be touching those up in the coming week.

Quest Guide: Lightwood - Part II

This is part II of a two part series on the many quests of Lightwood. You can find part I right here. The first part covered the northern part of the zone, this time I'll focus on the southern reaches, including the Dead Thicket, Southern Birchwoods, Adder Plateau, and Farshore Shipyard. As always you can find a full list of quests for this zone right here.

Things MMO Players Assume You Know

This article is aimed at players new to the MMO scene, those who have no idea what LFG means or that haven't ever seen a Need / Greed loot window pop up on the screen. I'm going to try and cover the really basic stuff that manuals and tutorials gloss over in hopes of helping out newcomers. It's going to be a challenge, as I've been playing massively multi-player games for what can best be described as a very long time.

Almost Famous

A big thanks to the Gala-net team for their shout-out to this and other fan blogs. I'm sure I speak for my fellow bloggers when I say this kind of support from the official site makes us happy!

Quest Guide: Lightwood - Part I

As I sat down to write this, I realized it's been a while since I've actually done quests in Lightwood. Luckily a friend of mine just started playing, so I was able to use some of his experiences to uncover the more difficult quests in this large zone. As I mentioned in my previous article, Quest Guide: Novograd City, many of the starter quests for this zone begin in the city. Be sure you've done a good circuit or two around the town before heading out into the wilds. The full list of quests for Lightwood and Novograd can be found here, but be warned, the listing includes a huge listing of ship-building and higher level quests, along with many world mystery quests that lead through NPCs in town.

Survival!

Over at Life in Tensess there's a great article on surviving PvP, which covers some important considerations for those about to enter the Holy Lands for the first time. The article provides a link to a forum post, and covers some of the main points of PvP survival. I'd like to comment further on point six, which is: Let things go.

Gala-net Announces Major Update: Soon

You can read the news on the main site here.

This looks like a great update, and I hope soon is SOON. I'm really happy to see the trade window issues fixed, along with the new commands to split stacks. I'm also glad to see a reply to last whisper command implemented. It looks like there are a bunch of fixes to flag of war issues too, which is nice, considering I'm now questing in Holy Lands.

In other news, there are reports of rabid squirrels running loose in Novograd!

Talking to Yourself

For people familiar with MMO's the chat interface in Allods is pretty standard. There are a few quirks that might throw new players (and even some old hands), so I thought I'd run down the basics here.

Blog First!

Many thanks to Duet, for being the first follower of this blog. I really appreciate readers showing their support by choosing to follow. It definitely avoids the "shouting at an empty room" feeling!

Quest Guide: Novograd City

When you leave Evermeet Isle, you eventually end up on the docks outside Novograd City, which is located in Lightwood. Congratulations on making it to the real world! The first thing you'll want to do when you arrive is familiarize yourself with the city. You'll be spending a fair amount of time here, so it pays to know where things are. There are also quite a few quests in the Novograd / Lightwood area.

Tenebra Reputation: How to Kill Sparkly Vampires

The Tenebra Elves reputation quest On the Other Side of Darkness is pretty fun, and pretty funny if you're a Twilight hater too. The basic idea of the quest is you turn into a werewolf using a potion given to you by the quest giver (Raymond de Ardeur in Summer Manor), and go kill sparkly vampires. What's not to love?

June Stones, Portals and Astral Ships

Portals and June Stones are the basic mechanisms used to move between Allods as you play. Here's a bit of information on how they work.

Quest Guide: Evermeet Isle

I'm not going to be posting detailed walk-throughs of each zone in Allods, that spoils the fun. Instead I'm going to be writing up brief guides that cover the basics of the zone, along with hints on the more obscure or difficult to find quests. I'll also post reference links that may be useful. Here we go with the first quick guide: Evermeet Isle!

New Playable Race!

I for one, welcome our new Space Marine Overlords.

Translation

Here's a useful guide pulled from a WoW blog that translates some common game phrases and terms from various languages into English. Give Allods' international community, it might prove useful!

Fatigue and You!

Allods, like most MMORPGs, has a pretty well defined system of levels. Allods is a bit unusual in that it has a fatigue system overlaid on top of a generic "kill and quest for XP" mechanism. Understanding fatigue is a critical part of the game and based on zone discussions it seems like there's quite a bit of confusion on the subject, so here's a brief guide, complete with pictures!

Efficient Questing

Quests are a huge part of Allods. If you're not questing, you're doing it wrong! There are a few important points to cover for effective questing. Being aware of these elements can lead to faster leveling and more enjoyable gameplay.

Essential Commands

There are a few extremely important things every player should know that aren't covered in the tutorial introduction:

An Introduction

So Allods is featured in the title of this blog, but there's no content yet. What's it all about?

Allods is a free to play MMO by Gala-Net and Astrum Nival. It is currently in open beta in North America, and that's where I happen to live, so that's what I'll be writing about here.