Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

For the first time ever on US servers, the Divine Fortress in Aion Online was taken. The Elysean Council led over 300 Elyos on the Triniel server on this massive undertaking. Ten Ton Hammer sat down with the Elysean Council to get all the details on this monumental achievement.

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Question: First of all, congratulations on such a huge accomplishment! There was a lot of talk early on after the news spread of a successful siege of the Divine Fortress on a Korean server that perhaps a feat this big was unattainable for US servers. What makes this group of players and this server special enough to have accomplished what some thought was the impossible?

Answer: Thanks. The initial talks when Aion first came out lead people to believe it would be impossible for US servers due to the required population to take it effectively. After the 1.9 patch the Elyos of Triniel had finally almost completely banded together. Teamwork, dedication and determination is what ultimately brought home the NA first capture.

Question: Clearly this was a massive server wide effort; however a couple of legions stood at the forefront of this battle. Can you tell us a bit about your legions and what it took to bring an effort like this together?

Answer: Well our ability to be a team has been a long time in the making. Our original long term problem was unity. We had Haven (the PvP legion), SunShine (the boss farmers), and a lot of smaller legions that were essentially scattered. The Elysian council was started by Kaithiel (GM of Kaithiel’s Vanguard), which helped bring some unity to some of the smaller legions. Over time some of these smaller legions have grown such as Kaithiel’s Vanguard, Deviance, and Knights of the Divine Order.

For the first 5 or so months of the game the Asmodians completely dominated the abyss. We as legions have managed to put aside our differences and work together and fight hard beside one another. It’s been along hard road to get to where we are now.  Some of which even changed legion structure to make this more viable. It took us until March 22nd when we finally captured Kysis Fortress away from the Asmodians which was followed up with on Easter by the capture of the remainder of the inner ring fortresses (Miren & Krotan).

This siege however was actually planned only 24hours in advance. The response that our Elyos gave was remarkable. The dedication that our Elyos have obtained for their faction is what has made any accomplishments that we have done possible, including this one. This accomplishment is truly the result of the unity that we worked hard to achieve for months. Because of this, the collective Elyos force is able to come together when it is needed and get the job done.

Question: Could you give us a rundown of how the event went down and the various stages involved in capturing the Divine Fortress?

Answer: Haven started to capture all the core artifacts while the rest of the legions and Elysian Council continued setting up their alliances. We scaled an initial diversion attack on the Asmodian owned Miren Fortress to buy us enough time to get setup, while being unnoticed. After the diversion attack we moved down to the Aetheric Renewal artifact in the core to be ready to get on the gates for the time of vulnerability.

The gates went down very quickly, and we got kisked up underneath in the “fake” deity room underneath by 4minutes into the siege (1minute before boss spawn). The bosses HP went down very fast during the first 50%. These first 2 phases went by in about 15 minutes with only minor issues from the additional mobs. In the meantime the Asmodians capitalized on the situation and captured our Kysis Fortress, which then lead into them attempting to run an interference of our capture. The 50%-25% stage was really rough; filled with reflects, constant spawns of 5 heroic adds, AoE sleeps and asmodian counter attacks. This stage start to put doubts in some of our heads as it took us about 25minutes to complete this stage. Once the reflects ended at 20% we were able to put full force back on the boss to complete the capture.

Question: What was your strategy going in and was there any point during the siege when you questioned the group’s ability to follow through on the attempt?

Answer: The strategy going is was to pretty much give it our all. I had given a rundown of the fight to all the major raid leaders prior to the siege, so there were no real surprises. In the beginning of the siege it looked promising, but the 50-25% stage really made even me start to have some doubts. In the end it was a very superb effort by everyone.

Question: Other than notoriety (ya all are famous now!), what did this siege net you?  Was the loot good?

Answer: This siege ultimately netted us the ability to make all of our consumable items from aether, through morphing. As well as to those that actually held on to the quest, the best run speed title in the game. Unfortunately, the instance is not implemented until the 2.0 patch.

Question: Now that you have the fortress, what is next? Will you continue to defend it and do the hairy-backed Asmodians have a chance in heck to take it from you?

Answer: What’s next? Well, server merges which were announced just a couple days after the capture. Otherwise, I have no doubt that we could have successfully defended Divine from the Asmodians.  Here's hoping the merge brings us new challenges and more opportunities.