Age of Conan at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

You've fought your way though endless hordes of crocs and cannibals - from the sandy shores of your Stygian homeland to the snow-capped peaks of the Eiglophian Mountains. With each step and each hard-fought battle you've felt your diabolic power grow, while unlocking more of your past that's been shrouded in mystery since first washing up along the shores of Tortage.

There's been many milestones throughout your progression – from the summoning of your first demon familiar, to your first curious conversation with a head on a stick. Yet none of it could have possibly prepared you for the awesome power of ...

SPELLWEAVING

You first obtain the spellweaving ability upon achieving level 50. Rather than being another spell from either the Conflagration or Havoc lines, spellweaving is essentially a state the demonologist enters that serves to greatly enhance the effectiveness of both. The longer it's maintained, the more powerful many of your spells become – you'll see a marked increase not only in base damage, but many of your spells gain added AoE benefits as well. You do have to be careful though, as all of the awesome power granted by spellweaving comes at a price – potentially even your life!

Much like the past you slowly rediscover through your destiny quests, many aspects of spellweaving have remained shrouded in mystery. While Kalanthes serves as the guide to unlocking your memory, I thought I'd write a guide of my own to help explain what spellweaving is all about.

THE BASICS

You'll enter the spellweaving state by activating it's icon, which if not automatically added to one of your hotbars will be found under the Abilities tab of your spell book. At this point you'll enter the first of six distinct stages. Right from the start though, you'll begin to lose stamina – the longer you maintain your weaving, the greater the stamina cost becomes. Should it be fully depleted, you'll very rapidly begin to lose health instead, and if you're not careful you can easily wind up dead.

Before getting into some of the specifics on the various buffs and debuffs that occur while weaving, I find it's worth going over some of the ways you can maintain the spellweaving state for longer periods so that you'll be able to see it's full potential.

• Food and drink that grant a stamina bonus and are a good thing to keep a supply of in your inventory. Chances are you'll find quite a bit of both as drops, or if not most larger towns and outposts will have a merchant where they can be purchased relatively cheaply. If all else fails you can take up the Alchemy profession so that you can make your own or purchase some from other alchemist.

• Stamina potions are another option, though I've discovered through trial and error that these will only be usable before the Spellweaving ability is activated, so ultimately they're of limited use but still worth a mention.

• The Vile Ambrosia spell cast by the Demon Slave familiar is perhaps the best overall source for natural stamina regeneration, and is quite effective at helping to counter the stamina drain effect while weaving. Once you reach level 60, I highly recommend picking up the 'Hell's Blood' feat found on the Conflagration tree. The feat on it's own is definitely worth the two points spent for the bonus to all types of regeneration granted by Vile Ambrosia, but to give you an example of the difference it can make while weaving, at level 60 with no other buffs active beyond the Demon Slave's spell I'm able to maintain Spellweaving indefinitely without ever seeing a major loss to stamina.

Here's what the increase to Vile Ambrosia looks like with 2 points spent in Hell's Blood at level 60 – the top line for each entry is the base increase of the spell, with the second line being the added benefit through feats:

UNLEASHED POWER

Now that I've explained how to maintain Spellweaving, it's time I explain a bit more about exactly what it does, or more importantly what it allows you to do! There's perhaps a bit too many subtle things that happen throughout the various stages of weaving to go into all of them in detail, so first I'll give you some of the highlights of the process.

There's a total of six distinct stages to spellweaving, each one granting you a further increase to the effectiveness of many of your spells along with an accompanying change to the active animation that reflects your growing power. The visuals alone are an awesome sight to behold, but I'm sure you're curious about more than the giant swirling portal that rips through the skies above your head!

• Each stage will grant a base increase to your overall magic rating, and last for a set duration; the first stage lasting 12 seconds on up to 32 seconds by stage 6.

• With each new stage, you'll also gain a wide array of changes to many of your spells. These will include things like an increase to base damage, an added AoE splash damage component and a marked increase to the number of targets that can be effected by it. Many spells will also gain a high crit chance along with a higher amount of damage when they do.

• Once per stage, a small casting bar will appear on your screen, granting you five temporary spells for a few seconds. Once you've used one of the skills, you'll have to wait until the next stage has started for the bar to become active again.

DEMONOLOGIST SPELLWEAVING – TEMP SKILLS

NEGATIVE POTENTIAL

All of the increased power you'll gain while weaving does indeed have the potential to debuff you as well. As above, I'll highlight what some of those potential negative effects are so you'll have a better understanding of the various trade-offs made while maintaining the spellweaving state.

• A first, major thing of note is that the act of weaving itself essentially acts as a root spell on the caster. In other words, it renders you immobile until manually canceled although you are able to turn and face in any direction otherwise. The obvious negative here is that all your target has to do is stay beyond your normal casting range to force you to stop weaving if you want to continue casting hostile spells on them.

• At the end of each stage, you'll suffer the effects of Flesh to Dust. What this does is hit you for instant damage, so even if you keep your stamina replenished while weaving, you'll still suffer a minor periodic loss of hitpoints. On it's own it's nothing all too harsh, but it's still something you need to be aware of depending on how much damage you might be taking from other sources.

• You'll also encounter random debuffs while weaving. It should be noted that both Ether Drain and Frailty can stack up to 5 times each, which can become somewhat debilitating. Here's a quick rundown of the debuffs I've encountered so far:

DEMONOLOGIST SPELLWEAVING – DEBUFFS

FINAL THOUGHTS

As you might have guessed by now, Spellweaving is ultimately a very situational ability. Most overland combat, especially while solo, simply happens to quickly for you to see see some of the greater increases in damage it can provide. That's not to say it doesn't have some amazing potential for those types of encounters it seems all but custom built for. Some of the more challenging instanced boss fights later in the game, as well as raiding and sieging will all likely be areas in which Spellweaving will shine brightest.

As of this writing I've not yet had the chance to experience either raiding or sieging, but I definitely look forward to seeing how this ability shapes our effectiveness in those settings. The various stages, buffs and debuffs do tend to come and go quite rapidly so if nothing else it'll keep you on your toes during some of the longer fights!

APPENDIX

The following charts list all of the specific details on the benefits gained through each stage of weaving.

DEMONOLOGIST SPELLWEAVING – STAGE 1-3

DEMONOLOGIST SPELLWEAVING – STAGE 4-6

• Discuss the powers of spellweaving on our forums.