aos_spoiler

Age of Shadows

Spoilers

This page will be updated regularly

Well, it wasn't an easy one to figure out. The trick was simple (though really out there). Scattered throughout the land, there is a series of small pouches (like the ones you trap) that cannot be picked up. If you drop a blank rune in that bag, the rune will become marked with a secret location in Malas. Just recall on that rune and it takes you to the sandy areas trapped inside the mountains. A special thank you to Lady Tygress for providing the map below and locations of most of those pouches.

This one is behind a tree, within one screen of the northern mountain.
Behind a large group of trees that border the woods near the Grimswind Ruins. It's very difficult to see, even with a circle of transparency
Inside the orc fort, up against the eastern wall.
There is a white tree and 2 white skulls. The pouch is hidden behind another tree west of the white one.
The pouch can be found under the bar in Hanse's Hostel.
Right where the crystal fens meet up with the mountain, you'll notice a huge patch of bright green on your in-game radar. The bag is in that patch behind a large crystal.
Lowest level of the corner tower in Luna. It's against the southern wall
Inside Dungeon Doom. This time, it is the dark blue bone container against the northern wall near the tall candelabra in Victoria the Sorceress' mage shop.

As you can probably guess, most if not just about all the locations are already filled up on many shards. Good luck to anyone still trying.

The solution to the Lever Puzzle can be found here. You can also access that page directly under the Q&A Menu - Puzzles.

Some of you may have started seeing people selling uber rares, it's not a scam and it's not an exploit. There is an extensive list of rares to be found in Dungeon Doom. You need a GM thief to get the goodies. Most of them spawn once or more a day in various areas of the dungeon. Others won't spawn more than once a week and others only once a month. The rarity of the item will be displayed. To know which item is steable, just run your cursor over it. If it is a stealable rare, it's name will highlight and underneath it will say rarity and a value indicating how rare or not it is.

Here is a picture of one thief's collection (I dunno his name nor which shard he plays, sorry :-/). The only rare he's missing (from those I've seen or stolen myself) is the lamp post. But from what OSI said, there is over 100 rares to be found in the dungeon, so we're far from the complete collection. It's just painful to get because stealing each rare takes between 10 mins to 2 hours. I had the pleasure of racing another guy for the large cocoon. I was at it for an hour and 45 mins, unfortunately, he beat me to it *cries* oh well. Hopefully, another will spawn sometime this week.

Here is the walkthrough to access level 2 of Dungeon Doom and what awaits you on the other side. Dungeon Doom now has it's own link also under the Q&A menu. Because of all the picture, I'm keeping it as a separate file to reduce download time. I am still working on putting together the images an info of Doom level 1. In the meantime, enjoy Doom Level 2.

New info is slow coming in mainly cuz loging in is a nightmare, and lag is simply too horrible to do any hunting.

Thanks to Oceania_Rose and Postponed we get to go on a little tour inside Doom. Unfortunately, some of those pictures were taken during death (not surprisingly). But this is mouth watering.

When you walk into the hole, you will drop into the entrance. Keep in mind that the entrance is not the same place as the exit so getting out isn't easy.

Anyone who goes to the forgotten pyramid...good luck, that Sphinx is one really mean guy! However, if you go to the bottom of the pyramid theres a fake wall that you can open and lure the sphinx outside to fight him.

There is one good thing that OSI managed to do out of this whole housing mess and that's the house transfer deed. Remember how scammers often try to cheat people out of their homes, well this time, if you fall for the blank scroll scams, you're really asking for it. The new house transfer scrolls are now a ice blue deed (just like the vorpal bunny).

Here's some more updates on the first hours of exploring Malas (tkx Tygress)

Here are some screenshots of some areas of Malas. To go there, as been mentioned before, just run up to the moongate, and you'll get the Malas option. You account needs to be AoS upgraded to see it

To reach Dungeon Doom, go to the city of Umbra and take the Southeastern bridge out of town. Once you leave town, go north a slight bit, and then straight east until you hit the void. Follow that north and circle around until you come to a strong structure with a cave entrance (it will be away from the edge of the void a bit). Go in that cave entrance, and drop down into the hole at the other end, and you're there.

The Corrupted Forests contain a lot of the creatures commonly found in overland Trammel and Felucca: Air elementals, ettins, ogres, etc. The Grimswind Ruins have the flesh golems, among others. Quite a few Undeads in the area. The brige leading to the Ruins is broken. There is a single rope stretched across the void that you have to walk on to get to the other side.

The crystal elementals lurk in the Crystal Fens. They'll cast as you run by them. Anywhere with a crystal patch seems to have a chance of spawning a crystal elemental. The dry highlands, and surrounding desert have the same creatures you find near the Compassion Shrine in Trammel and Felucca. The Northern Crags have typical ice animals (snow leopards, white wolves, etc) plus they have ice snakes.

Brigands are also common anywhere you see a tent. Vampire bats seem to be scattered out, and skittering hoppers are EVERYWHERE. Also, the forest just to the north of Gravewater Lake has pixies.

On the test shard today, I got the occasion to try out a couple of things. I wish I had more time, but hey, I guess that's better than nothing.

Trapped pouches: They totally suck. And I mean BIG TIME!! Magic Resist will do absolutely nothing for you on this one. I tried popping a pouch at 0 resist, got hit for 42 HP. I tried again multiple times at 100 resist, got hit on average for 34-50 HP. I tried again at 120 resist, and still got hammered for close to 50 HP. Conclusion: if you're gonna use trapped pouches, make sure you have some high fire resistance items or just wait for whomever/whatever to hit you again, hence knocking you out of paralysis. Because otherwise, you're pretty much guaranteed to kill yourself.

Necro Regs & Necro Spell Book: They indeed spawn on NPC mages. The necro spellbook was 116 gp and the regs cost either 3 or 6 gp each. And yes, I'm pissed to see my serpent's scale selling a 6 gp a pop when I paid mine 1.5 mil a year ago. GRRRRRRR

NPC Architects and House Placement: I made a little walkthrough for this one with pictures and all. Don't throw away your land surveying tools, the graphic is the same.

Battle Focus: It's simply called Focus. It works exactly like meditation and is just as easy to gain. It is movement based so you'll simply have to run or sail (preferably in a north-south) direction while either at low mana or low stamina. Note that unlike Meditation, Focus is a PASSIVE skill. You cannot decide to focus, just like you decide to med. In other words, there are no blue gems next to this skill. If you have invested skill points in it, you will automatically use it. You also earn the Stoic title for it.

Here's what everyone has been waiting for, the maps of Malas. Those maps were found in the Prima Guide to AoS (tkx Coll_GL for the scans).

It will be interesting to see who is the first one to discover the way to the secret Mage shop. That will certainly be extremely useful when doing champ spawns. Nothing blows more than running out of regs in the middle of heated battle.

Some of the following information has been gathered from the AoS Play Guide (tkx to Goddess, Satis, Moiraine and Coll_GL)

All "new" necro regs are recycled pagan regs. 2 of them kept their former names. The 3 others have been rebaptized.

Batwing
Grave Dust (former volcanic ash)
Daemon Blood (former blood vials)
Nox Crystal (former serpent's scale)
Pig Iron

Dungeon Doom first level is where you will find most of the monsters. The second level has a healer and a secret mage shop. The rest of the level is champion spawns.

We have the name of 6 of the new champions: Darknight creeper, Fleshrenderer, Impaler, Shadow Knight, Abyssmal Horror and Daemon Knight. Still one missing. Though I suspect the 7th one is another Harrower.

The Inquisitor's Resolution (this could be a quest and not a weapon), Titan's Hammer, Blade of Insanity, The Living Bow, Gauntlets of Nobility, Midnight Bracers, Voice of the Fallen King, Ornate Crown of the Harrower, Helm of Insight, Holy Knight's Breastplate, Armor of Fortune, Tunic of Fire, Leggings of Bane, Arcane Shield, Ring of the Vile, Bracelet of Health, Ring of the Elements, Ornament of the Magician, Axe of the Heavens, Blade of the Righteous, The Berserker's Maul, Breath of the Dead, The Taskmaster (warfork, lots of poison damage); Frostbringer

Below, you can see the tracking icon of the new creatures (extracted from yesterday's patchfile, tkx to Dtx01)

From left to right: Crystal Elemental, Tree Fellow, Skittering Hopper, Devourer of Souls, Flesh Golem, Gore Fiend, Impaler, Gibberling, Bone Daemon, Patchwork Skeleton, Wailing Banshee, Shadow Knight, Abyssmal Horror, Darknight Creeper, Ravager, Flesh Renderer, Wanderer of the Void, Vampire Bat, Demon Knight and Mound of Maggots.

Most of these creatures have the ability to dismount you from your horse. Most have fairly high resist as well. Sounds like Dungeon Doom will be more approriate for vets riding ethereals. I'm curious to see how well tamer rides will fare against the creatures.

Again, from left to right: Bladed Staff, Crescent Blade, Composite Bow, Double Bladed Staff, Lance, Pike, Scepter, Scythe, Paladin Sword, Repeating Crossbow (top) and Bone Harvester (bottom).

Weapon	Skill	Damage
Bladded Staff	Swords	13-15
Bone Harvester	Swords	12-14
Composite Bow	Archery	15-17
Crescent Blade	Swords	10-12
Double Bladded Staff	Fencing	10-12
Lance	Fencing	17-19
Pike	Fencing	14-16
Repeating Crossbow	Archery	10-12
Scepter	Macing	14-16
Scythe	Swords	17-19

If you notice, there are only 19 houses up there. The full collection counts 20. I'm curious to see which one it will be

A dragon trophy!!! At last!!! *dies and goes to heaven*. Again, the 2 bagball pictures. The 3 scrolls seem to be the necromancy spells scroll art. Those bones piles will make wonderful decor.

Boy, am I ever loving this one... Have you GM'ed a skill then kicked yourself for training it on the wrong char? Here's the answer to all your trouble. This is the exact text found in the patchfile (tkx mithy):

The question now is, how many times can you transfer skills around your chars? How hard are these stones to come by? Can they be bought? Crafted? or are they found as loot ? I'm thinking it would make a logical loot off the Devourer of Souls. If a char is already 7x GM, does he need to free a skill slot first by transferring one to another soul stone beforehand or can they be simultaneously exchanged? Considering the last line of the patch says "your about to destroy the Soul Stone to absorb the following skill" then it's safe to assume there will be no skill exchange there. Obviously, it can't be done cross-shards since you physically have to use the stone to absorb the new skills. It is also safe to assume that we will not be able to "stack" points. For instance, if you have 50 resist on one char and 50 resist on another, absorbing 2 soul stones of 50 won't give you 100. Otherwise, everyone and their brother would be 7x GMs overnight.

As a fyi, you will not be able to build a 4-story small house. Those of you who were thinking of transforming your tiny 1 room wooden house in a 3-story small house (plus roof), sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The number a story a house may possess will be based upon it's size. At least, the lowest number of floors any customizable house will have is 2 plus the roof, so essentially, 3. Again, from Inside UO (i will not put up the whole list because it's too extensive), the minimum size requirement per floor is as follows: