Gundabad Launch

The Noble Gate

Your launcher is updating. You bought the game. Now what? It would be good to read the patch notes. First thing to do is get inside. If you were a good kid, you already did the first four chapters of The Legacy of Durin ahead of time. As the patch notes state: "Speak with Prince Durin inside Annak-khurfu (Elderslade) or Zarkul-sulun (in the War of Three Peaks) to begin Chapter 5.1, "Many Masters." He'll ask you to gather up the forces. You'll also get a chance to meet up with an "artist" called Stali the Hewer that "asks" you to carry his luggage. You'll get a brief encounter of the after-effects from the Bloody Threshold raid where Gorgar runs away and the ice wall comes up. Everyone gets their pickaxes, break through, and establishes camp at Maergrind. I hope you brushed up on your dwarvish because all these locations are hard to pronounce. At least they wrote what part of the region each location is at for your convenience. From this moment, if you want to revisit the area, you can swift travel from Annak-khurfu to Drenghol to Maergrind.

Hall of Vernozal

The next thing you might want to do is get your Missions & Allegiance system going. You could progress through the Fifth Chapter of the Epic in order to "discover" the location alongside the dwarves, or you could follow the main road on the map to the northwest until you discover some doors by a Far-Reaching (Blue Horse Head) Stable. You will want to join the Zhélruka Allegiance. If you once had an Allegiance button added to your toolbar, it would now be gone. Simply press the down arrow by your weapon sphere to open up your UI Settings Options and select "Allegiances" to add the new button. Or use the guide that is listed in the patch notes by click the Start icon (^) at the bottom left of your toolbar - to which I did not know that is what it was officially called - highlight character, and then press Allegiances. Afterwards, the first chapter will become available from Prince Ignore... I mean Prince Ingór on the left side mid-way into the halls. He will ask you to check out a few important characters and wipe out some foes. Depending on how you feel about spoiling the content, half of the missions will be located in areas within Gundabad populated with their new enemies as well. Whether you hold-off on these missions or not is entirely up to you. A quarter of the missions will have entirely original content while the rest will have you visiting old sites. The most important thing is to complete this first chapter to get the 5-minute port: Journey to Hall of Vernozal.

Geode Hunter

The third thing you will want to do is unlock the new "flowers" collecting feature. While at Steepset, pick up a quest to examine some rocks by a table and get permission to hunt the geodes in landscape for items that you can get from the barterer. There are some pretty awesome rewards you can get. The crystal spider requires 150 quartz. A few of the decorations only require 100 of a certain geode (which translates to around picking 50 of the things on the ground). However, not all of them are easy to get to. While Limestone and Granite might be more available on the main paths, Basalt and Sandstone will require a little bit of searching. Rhyolite is perhaps the hardest of them all as they are usually seen in the toughest locations in the corners of the map or behind a chest. The common stones will net you two of the common geodes while the rarer ones will only provide you with one (with a chance of getting a common on as well). If you are able to get 100 each of the hardest types, you'll be able to get the disguise, or costume of the Servant of the First Crafter, which is the wearable version of the housing decoration.

Droprate (Earned after reaching level 140)

Limestone - Agates (Common: 500) & Granite - Quartz (Common: 500)
Basalt - Amethyst (Uncommon: 120) & Sandstone - Gypsum (Uncommon: 60)
Rhyolite - Jasper (Rare: 45)

Gundabad Advancement

Turning in tasks everday, doing every quest, and completing the Epic will still only get you up to around 40,000 out of the required 90,000 for maximum Celebrated status. You could reach that by doing slayer deeds, meta deeds, and mission deeds. Although there is a lot of wiggle room when it comes to getting reputation, I suggest visiting the Skirmish Camp and obtaining some Small Reputation Boosts. You can also earn plenty of reputation through the dailies once you reach level 140. You can use some Silver Coins of Gundabad to obtain new recipes: Level 131 Instruments, Level 135 Shields & Offhands, and Level 140 gear. Each of the recipes cost 15 coins each and is not bound. Most of these recipes will require 3 sunstone shards. There is a small chance of earning them through chest-like means or collecting resource nodes. You can get one from the mission weekly crafting box. However, most can be obtained from looting 3 Sunstone Shards from Rare Chests that are set above level 135. Without using the new Fateful Toolkit item to increase the number of tokens you get, the total amount you receive comes to around 800 silver coins of Gundabad (3 coins from most of the 280 quests that are available). You might want to save 500 for any of the decorations you want at the maximum limit. It is your choice on what to do with the overflow. Geodes are account-shared and have no limit. There are new belt buckles for brawlers. Other classes might also benefit, like the captain's banners nearly doubling in value.

Bugs/Workarounds

As with everything Standing Stone Games releases, there is a chance that something will go wrong. So down below I'm going to list them regardless if I personally encountered them.

• Bundles: This is the first expansion that they instituted the ability to upgrade your expansion bundle. Those who upgraded Collectors to Ultimate accidentally received an additional Character Boost and Supply Package. The developers have not only allowed this, but will proceed to honor this glitch by providing it to all those who originally bought the Ultimate package to begin with.
• Missions: Mission Stable is locked for all levels until you discover the location as reported here & here. This means that low levels aren't able to do them right now without using a mithril coin. The Steepset Stable currently allows you to travel to its own location for 1s. The Gundabad missions do not contribute to the mission weekly; whether this is a bug or intented is questionable. Any Allegiance tokens you receive only provide you with half their amount (2000 gives 1000; 1000 gives 500) and is probably the right amount when the tooltip is wrong.
• Epic: There is a chance during Chapter 9.2 (and perhaps other cinematic sequences) the screen will stay black during any scene. You might still be able to progress by using your mini-map as a point of reference.
• Mattugard: When searching the bounty for Barz the named bat, he doesn't appear on the bottom floor. Travel up the stairs near a small water area [49.5S, 113.8W]."Raiders in Mattuguard" weapon counter is wrong. Keep collecting more weapons from raiders (usually one or two) until the objective updates, the mithril coin option becomes available, and the map highlights changes to the npc.
• Câr Bronach: The NPC outside the gate falls through the ground and completes "In the Wind" questline. You can press F10 to select the nearest NPC or press the quest ring on the mini-map.
• Clovengap: "The Broken Benches of Danakh-Khej" has a point where you need to discover different objectives inside a park. This somehow glitches and requires you to exit and enter back inside the designated area (sometimes multiple times) in order to register all points. There are also reports of some phasing issues when it comes to "Matter of Hurt Hearts" and "Clovengap Mist-Walkers."

 

2021-11-16