Hail*NOR/

Archeage has exploded with content since our last newsletter. We've had two new expansions, bringing new content including advanced player housing, Faction Heroes, the mighty Leviathan, guild daily quests, and Guild wars. However, these changes came with a small downside.

• The guild cap is now only 100. Because of this change, all guilds were essentially disbanded. If you are a member from another branch, and have not been in game since this change, you will find next time you log in, that you are untagged now. If you plan on returning, let us know on the forums and we can work something out.

With the release of our newest expansion, 2.0, the whole guild really started to work together to complete the guild daily quests and to further advance ourselves. We've also started doing a weekly "Sunday fun day" where we all get together and do something silly. For example, last week we had a race in Swan boats, and whoever won, received several trade packs.

We've also had some internal changes in our guild, Beardyy has been selected as acting branch lead, due to Jara stepping away from the game. Baroness Beann is an acting countess. Mcfitty and Pew are our newest Barons, with Vaddix being promoted to the champion rank. Congrats all!

We've had a few new recruits, but haven't actively been recruiting due to the new 100 member cap. All in all we're having a lot of fun and spreading the joys of NOR! Till next time!

~Santhus
*NOR/BA

Hail*NOR/

The past month has been relatively quiet for the Neverwinter branch, compared to the excitement that accompanied the launch of the Strongholds mod. Work has continued apace on building the guild stronghold, but real-life issues and server problems sidelined several of our regular players this month, so progress was slower. Some highlights:

1. Count Kermit has stepped into the branch leadership role, with Lord Tundrra taking an advisory position. Congratulations Kermit!
2. We just completed construction on the Wizard's Workshop in the guild stronghold. The Wizard's Workshop (at level 1) grants 3,200 extra hit points to everyone in the guild. Each additional upgrade adds another 3,200 hit points on top of that, to a maximum of +32,000 HP at level 10. Not bad considering that most characters top out around 80-90K hit points.
3. The developers made a major change to how the key currency for the in-game economy, the Astral Diamond (AD), is earned. Up until now, the primary way to earn AD without paying real money was through your character's professions. This was a little pop-up menu that started tasks that ran in the background for most of the day; when they finished, you got a small amount of AD. You could do this with every toon you had, and there was a way to pool all of your AD if one toon needed to make a big purchase.

No more: the developers did away with earning AD through professions. Now the only way to earn AD is to run dungeons, skirmishes, PvP, another end-game content. Of course, there are other ways to get AD that the developers (or rather, the shareholders of Perfect World, which owns the company that employs the developers) would like you to consider. *Rubs index finger and thumb together and raises an eyebrow meaningfully.*

It's still too early to know what the full effect of this change will be. Since *everyone* in the game has had the AD spigot turned off, prices on the auction house have fallen. On the other hand, there are several things you need to buy directly from the game with AD, and the prices of those things have generally not been adjusted. We'll continue monitoring the economy.

Best regards,
Baron Tyrandil
*NOR/BA:NW

Hail*NOR/!

Many exciting things have occurred since our last newsletter! The new expansion is almost here and we’ve been utilizing the last few days until it’s launched on Tuesday to level like crazy!  If you want some help for last minute leveling, just let us know, we’ll help!  If you haven’t watched the trailer for the new expansion, here it is!  New Trailer  There are going to be some extensive changes with this new expansion so get ready to read up on it and prepare for the fun!  If you have questions on the upcoming changes, feel free to ask an officer or check the forums. 

Goal achieved!  After many attempts, we were successful in killing NiM Styrak on September 24th!  Then, on October 6th, we obtained the Dragonslayer title by successfully completing the NiM SnV speedrun!  Thank you to all who participated and didn’t give up, but kept going, death after death, until we slayed the dragon! If you see one of us with the Dragonslayer title, know that we worked hard for that one and are proud to wear it!

Congratulations to all who were promoted during the guild meeting on the Empire Guild Ship!
*Crosswalk and Ismene were promoted to Squire
*Deus, Maishka, and RT946 were promoted to Knight
*Sofija was promoted to Champion

After the fun and festivities of promotions, we braved the jumping, dying and obstacles involved in obtaining the Imperial fleet datacrons.  As always though, we were successful!  There’s no stopping NORbies when we set our minds to complete a task!  Teamwork for the win!

Want to join in some October fun?  Several of us have dressed up a toon as an Avenger for Halloween.  Check out our screenshots, and feel free to add yours! check them out here!

We’ve also got a section where you can post your fun/interesting/awesome screenshots!  Have you ever caught a shot at the perfect moment?  Post it here: 

We are happy to announce our new recruits for this go around include Alaina, Vintoley, Zara, and Zojollos.  We look forward to running with our new recruits and hope you love it here as much as we do!  If we have inadvertently left someone out, please bring it to our attention as we want to recognize all our NORbies!

As the Branch moves into the next exciting phase, we invite everyone to keep contributing in whatever ways you can. The NOR Spirit is flourishing here, and we hope that together we all can continue to pull together and take the Branch to new heights. Good luck in your gaming adventures and we hope to see you in game! May the Force be with You!

Countess Galaxiya
*NOR/CS-swtor