What's next for the Stronghold

nmates
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What's next for the Stronghold

Post by nmates »

This is a bit of a topic split, via copy-pasta as I don't have board admin abilities. Original topic was here. From there, I said:
We've acquired all the prereqs for Guildhall 13, and can now work on GH13. I've updated the spreadsheet to match. Haven't thought about what's next after that, but we do have another boon structure we could build. The proper list of what can be built is here. We could build a Barracks, an Explorer's Guild, a Mercenary Outpost, a Temple or a Training Yard. All of those should be clickable links to see what they give and cost -- e.g. Barracks gives Power, which is great, but requires Conq Shards from PVP. We already have Wizard's Workshop & Stable. Let the debate begin. :)

There would be another (4th) boon plot at GH17, but that's for later.

Also, next Siege of Neverwinter event starts Aug 31st. Taking your DPS-est toons in there for as long as you can stand per day of grinding vouchers will do amazing things for feeding the mimic. :)
There's 5 options for boon structures built after GH13 is achieved, see those links above. Looking at the GH requirements in-game, it looks like we could go to GH14 almost immediately -- we'd need a little bit of resources like Surplus Equipment, but nothing like the HSOP grind we've been under for months. So, we could do boon structure rank 1, GH14.

After that, GH15 will require 10 structures at rank 7+. That means, we'd need to be able to bump all our existing structures by 1, and also get the boon plot to rank 7. Alternatively, we could do less on the boon plot and start up some support stucture -- e.g. smelter's yard, animal pens, milling yard, etc -- but that other support structure would need to get to rank 7. Booting up a support structure from zero to 7 would also be a resource sink. And no, I've not done the math to see what the cheapest support structure would be.

Looking at the boons from the 5 boon structures listed above,

Of the other options, they seem pretty meh -- click thru the links above on each building, and also click thru on the boons. Note that only 1 boon from a given SH category (offense, defense, utility & PVP) can be active at once. Yes, there's loadouts or manual switching, but we can't have multiple active at once. Most of my toons have +HP (SH defense), +Arpen (SH Offense), and +Movement (SH Util) active all the time. Look ingame for the full list of boons -- see the character sheet, boons tab, Stronghold category.
  1. Explorer's guild seems nice, but we'd have to get to Explorers 6 to get the real payoff from the boons. Only Explorers 6 gives 2x resources for masterwork; below that it's just + gamegold or +control resist. (Seriously, if you need a dozen or more gold, take it from the guild bank. I've got thousands of gamegold across my toons and can top off the guildbank).
  2. Mercenary outpost gives bonus critical resistance (rank 3) and crit severity (rank 5)
  3. Temple giving lifesteal seems nice -- that stat really starts paying off at 8+% per users. But, as a SH defense boon, we'd be giving up the extra HP
  4. Training yard helps w/ overload enchants (rarely run with those), glory boosts (PVP only) and AOE resist.
  5. Barracks giving power is nice, but as Rain pointed out on the other thread, we couldn't get it above rank 5 w/o a ton of PVP shards. Doing Barracks at GH13 would require raising a new support structure to go to rank 7 for GH15 - the resource sink. Thus, waiting on Barracks until GH17 seems most prudent.
We do have some time to decide. Let the comments (re)begin!
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Re: What's next for the Stronghold

Post by Phelaia »

Thank you, Benn, for doing this analysis!

Barracks would be nice, but really, let's be realistic here. When was the last time any of us did any serious PVP? It's been about 2 years for me.

I vote Mercenary Outpost. A lot of people gravitates towards DPS, or bashy-tanks. Come on now, it's fun to bash things no matter what class you are. :tongue2 Therefore, there's no such thing as "I've got enough crit."
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Re: What's next for the Stronghold

Post by nmates »

One thought experiment on SH boons: go to your character sheet for any active toon(s). Click on character sheet -> Boons tab -> Stronghold at left. You can see all boon possibilities in each of the 4 categories: Offense, Defense, Util, PVP. Mousing over them will say which building produces that. Assuming we don't do Barracks now, what other boon(s) are appealing?
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Re: What's next for the Stronghold

Post by Ziek88 »

On the other thread I was leaning towards Explorer's but I think most benefit may be Mercenary Outpost. Bonus Crit Severity would be fairly significant for anyone already at the armor pen cap.

I have started farming conq shards and am dipping my toes back in to pvp strictly for this. There is a campaign upgrade in Elemental Evil that yields 2 conq shards per completion. Requires 12 total HEs completed of any difficulty. Agreed, this will be slow. I intend to farm this between now and GH 17.
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Re: What's next for the Stronghold

Post by Phelaia »

@Ziek, I once accompanied Thorgrim into PVP to earn his Raven Skull. I would not mind occasionally being Orisa to your Reinhardt.
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Re: What's next for the Stronghold

Post by nmates »

FYI - I've updated the spreadsheet for the SH costs. It sums up the costs of ranking each of the 5 boon options to level 7 -- scroll down to rows 31+.

And, at top of the spreadsheet, I refilled the "what's upcoming" list. That list is NOT in order of what to upgrade, but a list of what we'd need to accomplish before we can get to GH15. And, until we decide on a boon struct, I slipped in the averaged cost of boon struct 1-7 from below.

As usual, let me know if there are any errors, comments, etc.
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Re: What's next for the Stronghold

Post by tornnomar »

Hmm, didnt even think about Mercenary Outpost as I was thinking that is was between EG and Temple. Cool. As a main TR, crit severity is something that I treasure:)
Reiterating Benn's point, I dont think any of us are going to drop the defense or HP boost to take Lifesteal, unless a tanky type who gets all that from their armor. But there are ways to get these stats with enchants. Darks in the defense slot can provided all the LS you may need, Radiants in DEF, HP and so forth, so there are options. And doing some forward thinking, enchants will soon be upgradable to Rank 14! providing even more stats gained from them.

There seems a concensus on the Outpost happening..... :hailnor
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Re: What's next for the Stronghold

Post by Dlandru »

Well met, Outriders

It would be useful for all of our family to post on this thread. Juez is unable to post on the forum and asked me to put his vote for the ExGuild because of the control resist, group stat buff, and apparently, there's access to rare resources for master crafting after a few upgrades. Four other Outriders have told me they lean toward the ExGuild, though more because of a lack of interest in PVP than in the mentioned benefits. People want power. Crit boons would also be useful. But one wonders if the group stats bonuses will convey to PVP. If I had battlescarred armor or better for pvp, and if I was grouped with family while buffed with group stat bonuses, I might find it more enjoyable. My vote is for the ExGuild.

Another point of discussion is the fact that we can upgrade no current structures passed r6 until the Stronghold is r14. We have an opportunity to put all of our resources toward r14, or ... we can build the next boon structure and upgrade it to a rank where it provides benefits. A third option might be to build another set of support structures. The lumberyard, quarry, mine, and farm have structures that support them to increase their production and storage capacity. At higher ranks, our structures will need more capacity than they currently carry.

It will be interesting to see which paths the guild wishes to walk as we move toward our future.

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Re: What's next for the Stronghold

Post by Ziek88 »

I had a different answer a bit ago and discovered I read how the exp guild stat bonus works wrong. I thought it randomly gave 1 of those 5 stats and multipled the bonus by the number of party users. That is apparently wrong. For each character one more stat gets the bonus so at a full party of 5 we would see the 1200 power at rank 7. All 5 members do have to be using this boon for this to work. Outside of a 5 person group, this boon won't do much but I suspect we will all be running it.

I'd vote Explorer's guild.

In regards to PvP the best approach is icewindale Black Ice Domination. Tedious waiting for it to pop but generally empty zones. If there are 4-5 of us on one side there is a high chance the other team will be 0-1. Even if that one person can beat us all they will still lose because they can't stand on 3 points. This approach removes the need for crazy pvo gear that still is usually broken.
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Re: What's next for the Stronghold

Post by Dayda »

Looking at the discussion here it seems the Mercenary Outpost would give us the most bang for our collective guild buck. Crit is always a good thing. I would vote for that! :)
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