Al-Merayah

[Bnn1]

I just finished the Siege on the castle.

The rewards are were: 12 fire orbs from the subcommander, and 92 alchemical base from the actual Boss of the Castle.

9000 Gold as well.

And a few scrolls of arcane knowledge, teaching you stuff like Venom infused daggers and whirlwind blades. Stuff you can get for "free" from the library.

Now what did it cost?

God mode and 6 arena champions, 5 of which have received 9 million health via "setfollowerstat Attributehealth".

I did try it legitimately, and died 9 times in a row, with 0 chance.

The enemies respawn infinitely. The castle has 3 layers. Outter walls, inner walls, and then the castle main itself.

In each of these layers, enemies respawn infinitely. Not slow either. You kill a group, and a new group respawns as soon as the bodies of the killed ones disappear. Every approximately 30 seconds you are rushed by 20+ guards. And this continues throughout the raid.

How this is doable, is beyond me.

Furthermore, I dropped about 200 (admin-spawned) bombs on the castle, and then built a trebuchet outside and pelted the castle with siege boulders....

NONE of the WALLS or anything are destructible. But Funcom advertised a "fully destructible fortress"???????????????????????????????????????????????????????

This adds further to my confusion..... how are you supposed to do this, without cheating????????????????????????????????

[EvilVictor]

Are you using custom "server settings" for your SP game? I was able to blow up the walls and while there are a ton of bad guys they didn't re-spawn instantly for me.

However, it does feel tedious for SP, much more than the dungeons already did. I wish they would scale some of this stuff better for SP and Co-op vs. the other server types.

[Sinviras]

Full disclosure: I play solo and dont pvp and I do have mods, but none of which change how this event should interact with things (mostly cosmetic stuff, additional building types etc).

I was able to solo the event without much problem. On the south side the wall is pretty close to the cliff and you can double jump inside. There are large explosive jars on the cart, which seem to unlock the doors when they go off next to them.

I basically ran in, grabbed the jars, set one by the gate, blew it up, ran up to the stairs on the left, blew that up, killed the two skull boss, did a loop around the whole castle because I was getting mobbed, blew up the next door and then killed the leader.

Mind you I died 100x over and spent three hours figuring all that out, but once I did it seemed super easy. Are the doors supposed to be openable after an explosion goes off? Seems weird and made the whole thing super easy.

[Calvin the Cat]

Oh my god, yes. Your experience is the EXACT same thing that happened to me today, I was afraid I was doing it wrong or something

[Akadai]

I also admin spawned in jars, and I blew up the walls and whatnot fine. It did however take a lot of jars. I placed half a dozen at first, but then just 1 jar at a time. They exploded on their own due to the fire already burning. I lost count on how many I used

I also tested a trebuchet with various types of ammo. It took quite a few shots, but it did eventually break walls

I noticed once you're deeper in the castle you need to deal with less respawns. I did not encounter an endless supply of enemies once I made my way in the main tower. There's a few locations to pickup a battering ram, so jars aren't needed for the doors

The end reward was just a little over 13k gold for me, so it would seem the amount of gold is randomized. There a few other various things here and there, like recipes and fire orbs

This was all done in god mode mind you, mainly so I can figure out how to tackle the castle legit and without getting a bunch of my thralls killed. I'm working up a strategy that'll work without cheating

It's also looking like it might be possible to make your way to the main boss just by climbing certain points of the castle

[Arual]

I soloed it with two level 12 Crimerian Berserkers, but my approach to the front gate was poorly planned. I had to retreat a couple of times and had to watched WAK's video, while doing the siege, to locate the battering rams and explosive jars. Apart from my own dumbass mistakes, it's entirely doable. It's way easier if you avoid the front gate, but I personally enjoy a good fight.

[Akadai]

A friend and I assaulted it today. Had no followers. Climbed our way in past the first 2 gates. I rammed the main gate to the inner most castle. Used 4 jars looted from inside to blow the doors open (2 jars per door set) and killed the boss in the final room. Looted about 13k gold. We completely bypassed the mass spawn area

There's actually a way inside the final gate without bashing down the gate it self. There's a door off to the side just above the gate you can climb up to

Also found out the hard way if you get shot by an arrow while climbing, it'll make you fall. So that was fun

Anyway, it's entirely possible to just bypass most of the defenses and ignore the stupid infinite spawn area. I'll admit, it was less fun that what we wanted to do. We'd rather bring in a big follower army, but with the stupid spawn rates, I'd rather not lose a ton of thralls

[Jaq]

Originally posted by Ben1:

NONE of the WALLS or anything are destructible. But Funcom advertised a "fully destructible fortress"???????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Worked fine for me using a trebuchet on an Official server. The ironstone ammunition definitely seemed a lot more effective than the stone boulders though, I was starting to doubt whether I was really doing any damage until I switched to ironstone.

[Leshiko]

We have a stupid and unnecessary Siege. We have constant, unceasing waves of uninteresting enemies. We have a broken imbalance in the form of a hand ram that is lying in the yard. You have unnecessary stupid rewards. We have a bugged-down boss whose death instantly pumps up all your companions.
Did the Funcock want to show sieges or how not to do it?

[Bnn1]

Originally posted by Leshiko:

We have a stupid and unnecessary Siege. We have constant, unceasing waves of uninteresting enemies. We have a broken imbalance in the form of a hand ram that is lying in the yard. You have unnecessary stupid rewards. We have a bugged-down boss whose death instantly pumps up all your companions.
Did the Funcock want to show sieges or how not to do it?

A siege is not a raid. They advertised "PVE Raids", and a raid is usually executed against a small amount of equally strong enemies, that you can kill, and eventually deny the option to respawn by destroying their spawnpoints, making them bound to respawn far from their home.

What they gave us is the inverted Purge, not hordes of enemies attacking a castle with a player and a few thralls, but 1 person and a max of 2 thralls attacking a castle filled with hordes of enemies.

Still, its asinine.

[Stillness]

I play solo. I manage to defeat them many times.
1. Solo. Stealth. You can jump and climb until you find the throne room. Blow or break a wall and fight comander.
2. Speed up in the castlle with my army.
(Multiple followers mod)
3. I tried to fight the way throug the throne room but enemies spawned and spawned and I lost followers.

[Chill°bucket]

The infinite spawn area seems only outside. Idk if this depends on killing the hand of war (1st boss). So if you let the 1st outer gate intact it is pretty easy with poison arrows and a ram/orbs to defeat the inner attackers and get through the other gates, even without sneaking through the side door. Just outrun the attackers and use poison arrows against them and orbs on the gates.

My personal approach is let my 2 thralls behind; sneak inside through side door with battering ram; kill hand of war and his minions with poison arrows/melee; kill with poison arrows enemies near gates; get the musashi sword; get my thralls pretty safe now inside; go against the fortress leader with the thralls and sneak out. Normally a 100% safe thrall approach in ~5 minutes. As the walls have weaknesses in the defenses and there ARE the side doors it seems a valid way the developers build in as alternative. But its for sure not a raid or a siege.

[Solomon Hawk]

Here is a suggestion you might be interested in trying.

Look into sorcery and be able to summon a bat.
Have it fly you to the ceiling tiles right over the "royal chamber".
Place a few explosive jars on the ceiling/roof. Preferably near a wall.
Step back and set them off.
Next use Noxious Gas arrows to take out the royal guards. (2 of them)
Keep soaking the royal A-hole with noxious gas till he's almost down.
Drop in and finish him off.
Grab the loot.
Climb your way back out, then summon your bat and fly away unscathed.

[Gabthelazy]

Originally posted by Ben1:

Now what did it cost?

God mode and 6 arena champions, 5 of which have received 9 million health via "setfollowerstat Attributehealth".

I did try it legitimately, and died 9 times in a row, with 0 chance.

The enemies respawn infinitely. The castle has 3 layers. Outter walls, inner walls, and then the castle main itself.

In each of these layers, enemies respawn infinitely. Not slow either. You kill a group, and a new group respawns as soon as the bodies of the killed ones disappear. Every approximately 30 seconds you are rushed by 20+ guards. And this continues throughout the raid.

How this is doable, is beyond me.

Furthermore, I dropped about 200 (admin-spawned) bombs on the castle, and then built a trebuchet outside and pelted the castle with siege boulders....

NONE of the WALLS or anything are destructible. But Funcom advertised a "fully destructible fortress"???????????????????????????????????????????????????????

This adds further to my confusion..... how are you supposed to do this, without cheating????????????????????????????????

OP. I think you might just suck, if you ain't baiting for replies.

[SaintSubversion]

I guess my problem was thinking that this was an assault with flashing swords and bulging muscles, rather than a heist job where you avoid fighting things and content skip to the end boss. I mean, sure, I do that where I can as a guilty pleasure, but here it's actually required.

[OGPG]

I've been able to Solo run this by jumping over the 1st wall, running past all the guards, climbing the 2nd wall to get to the battering ram and 4 explosive jars and then climbing the Castle up to a spot just outside the Throne room. There I drop the 4 explosive jars and light them.
Then it just takes 12 hits with the battering ram to demolish the wall to the Throne room.
I then use poison arrows to kill the Commander and his 2 guards.
The downside is I can only carry out a small bit of the loot by myself.
Cant bring a Follower as they aggro everything and get killed easy.
No Admin cheats needed.