Brewday is back with a new quest, a limited collection and new crafted items. This year the live event will last until the 22nd of March.

If you’re doing all the quests there’s a lot of running around involved.

Luckily, I met a ratonga brigand at Brell’s Bar who was celebrating as she had just completed all of the Brew Day activities. She was exhausted but happy. She told me she’d worked out the best route for getting everything completed so I offered her a drink to tell me of her exploits. Typical ratonga, she accepted the drink but then after she drank it, she told me she wasn’t sure she wanted to share her secrets. Luckily, I spotted a sheet of paper tucked into the back pocket of her backpack. I bought her another drink or two, until she was quite merry and not paying quite so much attention and then I stole liberated her notes. I must admit, they look very helpful for getting everything done with a limited amount of backtracking. Here’s a copy:

Pickett’s Brewday travel path:

Antonica

Speak to Brell (the Avatar of Below) for the quest Beers for Brell
He wanders around the fields to the east of the Qeynos Gates.

Once you have his quest, proceed east to the lower levels of Blackburrow.

Blackburrow

Pick up a sample of Blackburrow Stout from The Blackburrow Brewery at 20,-40,59.
If you are a lower-level character, the safest route is to jump down waterfall. There is just one pair of heroics between you and the keg.
Pick up Bixie Honey Lager, Windstalker’s Hard Cider and Crossroads Ale for your Brews Across Norrath collection.

Return to Antonica and use the portal at 65,-20,5 at the North Qeynos gates to go to the Bar of Brell

The Bar of Brell

Speak to Gergy Gigglegibber for your ginger ale. Purchase ale from Mraugl Stonecrusher and give to Gergy.
Get Brell’s Everlasting Brew from Rasel Alechaser
Get Ale Goggles from Gilin Rockbreath
Get Valla Brewhammer’s Special Brew from Valla Brewhammer
Get Snoogle’s Presentation from Snoogle Blizted
Purchase crafting recipe book from Balin Copperfoot
Go upstairs to the private lounge to speak to Jimmy Runner and get the barley
Pick up Somborn Sanguine Ale, Miner’s Milk and Bog Water Brew for your Brews Across Norrath collection.

[More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

I was on my way to my flat, lost in a daydream of a steaming porcelain cup filled with freshly brewed Rosie, when I heard a scratchy voice. It sounded something like “Oi you,” a disturbing phrase at the best of times. I kept walking, hoping that perhaps I’d imagined the hiss in the general rumble of the ‘Neath.

“Pssst, over here.”

There was a gloomy silhouette leaning against a pillar, only just visible in the half-light of the arches. I looked behind me. A rat scurried across the pavement. I could hear the hiss and groan from the Underground station. A tendril of mist curled around my feet. There was no one on the street but me and my unseen assailant.

“Yeah, you,” the shadow whispered. “Is that a mandrake in your pocket?” [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

This is Part Five of our series on how to succeed at Evony without paying money.

Be sure to read the previous sections in order to maximise your chances of success at these strategies: City Placement, Evony Heroes, Production and Playing the Market and Leveling heroes and farming medals.

Summary: Archers are key troops, they need to be layered to be effective. Try to fight a lot and scout so you know you’ll win. Develop “combat technology” and “hero attack” for an advantage. Ballista is a key troop for farming.

Archers are the best troop type in most circumstances. Whoever designed the combat in this game seems to think that the Battle of Agincourt was typical.

The main combat strategy is to layer (or rainbow) one of each infantry troop with a mass of archers (exceptions detailed below).  Valleys ranging from level 1 to 3 never have archers in them: you can guarantee a win with 50 archers and rainbow (1 warrior, 1 pikeman, 1 swordsman and 1 worker) and probably much less.
[More...]

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

This is Part Four of our series on how to succeed at Evony without paying money.

Be sure to read the previous sections in order to maximise your chances of success at these strategies: City Placement, Evony Heroes, and Production and Playing the Market.

Executive summary: Attack each valley you can every hour. Attack often to level heroes. Scout L8 to L10 valleys for easy targets. Capture valleys to stop them changing on server restart.

Once you have the maximum number of valleys captured you can continue to attack valleys – this gives experience, loot, resources and (rarely) a medal. Each valley can drop a medal once per hour. If you do not have a target rich environment (e.g. you can only attack low level valleys) then you can release a captured valley to refresh the troops and loot. However, this does *not* refresh the medal drop chance, that is fixed hourly.

It works like this:

1. Attack a valley (‘A’) and capture it.
2. Attack another nearby valley (‘B’). It is now empty.
3. Release the valley ‘A’
4. Attack the valley ‘B’ again and capture it
5. Now attack ‘A’ which is full of troops (exp) and loot
6. Release valley ‘B’
7. Attack valley ‘A’ again and capture it.

Repeat the whole sequence again to get lots of exp and some lumber, stone or whatever.

Troops in a valley refresh on a server tick so it is worth sending a modest force to recapture an ‘empty’ valley unless you know when the server ticks and are not at risk of a respawn. In that case, capture the empty valley with 1 scout. [More...]

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

This is a great video – I really want to take one of these home to keep and love and cuddle and call my own!

The Best of Dance Compilation from the 2009 Hexapod Championship in Austria:

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

This is Part Three of our series on how to succeed at Evony without paying money.

Be sure to read the previous sections in order to maximise your chances of success at these strategies: City Placement and Evony Heroes.

Executive summary: Monitor the market: buy low, sell high. Maximise your lumber production to give yourself working capital. Research to improve production. Level mayor and hold forests quickly.

The best item to produce is lumber. Produce as much lumber as you can and sell it to buy the other items that you need. The exception to this is if you are starting up on a mature server, in which case it may be better to focus on iron: it can sell for similar prices and you may find less competition for capturing hills. [More...]

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

I have always had advertisements on this website and deep down, I’ve always hoped that I might make enough money from it to support my gaming habit.

To be honest, it’s never even covered my monthly Everquest 2 subscription. I get to take part in interesting discussions and I’ve met a lot of new people, so I’m really not complaining. I don’t think very many people actually make money from their hobbies. But I have kept an eye out for advertisement and sponsorship opportunities anyway, just to defray the costs.

That’s how I stumbled upon ebuzzing, a French advertising company who was just starting to expand into the UK.

I specifically like the system because of the freedom it allowed. They listed a number of different “campaigns” and I could choose whether I wished to take part in one or not. They actively encourage bloggers to take part in only those campaigns that are relevant to their blog. I initially signed up and didn’t see anything that particularly caught my eye and then the Quitter’s Arcade campaign came up and I decided to try the system. The specifications were pretty simple – I had to write a minimum number of words (usually 250) which included a specific link to the Quitter’s Arcade website and I had to mark the post as sponsored.

[More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

This is Part Two of our series on how to succeed at Evony without paying money. You should read Part One, City Placement, first.

Evony is a real-time game and the secret is to optimise what your cities are doing and make good use of heroes. Your opponents are doing the same – so you need to be better.

Part Two: Heroes

By now you should have the following in your developed cities:

• 4 x Cottages level 2
• Sawmill level 2
• Inn
• Sawmill
• Farm
• Quarry
• Ironmine
• Rally Spot
• Barracks
• Feasting Hall

Executive summary: Keep inn at level 1, demolish to reset it. One base stat 65+ hero per stat. Level these three key heroes fast. Keep hero loyalty at 100%.

[More...]

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

It isn’t difficult to do well at Evony without paying money. This is a real-time game and the secret is to optimise what your cities are doing and make good use of heroes. Your opponents are doing the same – so you need to be better.

Let’s get started. [More...]

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

I received this information about a new game for the PS3, White Knight Chronicles, which is being released this month. The developers, Level-5 and SCE Japan Studio, describe it as “the first true Role-Playing Game on PS3″ with a epic fantasy storyline and multiplayer aspects.

G4tv.com described it as “like Farmville with boss battles” which is somewhat hard to imagine but could be a winning combination? [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.