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(Collector #1)
Zoey Daniels has been tossed from foster home to foster home, where she grows up fast and tough. When she is placed in her “last-chance” home, she finds a reason to stay and turn her life around: her foster sister, Lexie, who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Zoey will do anything to keep her safe. After high school, Zoey is hired by a special government agency, t..more
Published February 4th 2015 by Twisted Fairy Publishing
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LiseNop! Read the first chapters and you'll be fixed!
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Rating details
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Jan 28, 2015Aly Locatelli rated it it was ok
To read the full review, CLICK ME!
It was a good book but it had the potential to be amazing. What started off as an action-packed, action-driven story quickly melted away to inconsistent writing, plot holes, sex-oriented thoughts/conversations and a palpable awkwardness in terms of Zoey’s past. We’re told she was a good street fighter, yet the few times she is seen fighting, she is quickly knocked out and waits to be saved.
Zoey is revered as “The Avenging Angel” who beat up a gangster’s sister...more
May 16, 2017Sh3lly (GrumpyBookGrrrl.com) rated it really liked itIt was a good book but it had the potential to be amazing. What started off as an action-packed, action-driven story quickly melted away to inconsistent writing, plot holes, sex-oriented thoughts/conversations and a palpable awkwardness in terms of Zoey’s past. We’re told she was a good street fighter, yet the few times she is seen fighting, she is quickly knocked out and waits to be saved.
Zoey is revered as “The Avenging Angel” who beat up a gangster’s sister...more
Shelves: buddy-read, paranormal-romance, i-love-peer-pressure, 4-stars-romance-or-smut, fae-sidhe-fairies-elves, hot-guys-alphas-rawr, read-2017, paranormal, urban-fantasy
Well, I had no plans to read this, but then my MacHalo peeps wanted to, so I had to give it a try. #peerpressure
And.. I liked it!
Zoey is tough-skinned, growing up in foster homes, before being recruited to a super-secret special fae investigative agency. She learns to train hard and hate the fae, until a catastrophe forces her to rethink her training and prejudices.
Ryker is a Wanderer, a powerful fae who is forced to team up with Zoey after a freak fae induced lightning storm that reduces Sea..more
And.. I liked it!
Zoey is tough-skinned, growing up in foster homes, before being recruited to a super-secret special fae investigative agency. She learns to train hard and hate the fae, until a catastrophe forces her to rethink her training and prejudices.
Ryker is a Wanderer, a powerful fae who is forced to team up with Zoey after a freak fae induced lightning storm that reduces Sea..more
Such a brilliant book! i HAVE FALLEN INLOVE WITH THESE CHARACTERS AND I CAN NOT WAIT TO READ THE NEXT BOOK OMG SO GOOD
Apr 30, 2015Elise ✘ a.k.a Ryder's Pet ✘ rated it liked it · review of another edition Shelves: fantasy, read-in-2015, first-in-series, new-adult, pn-romance, urban-fantasy, covers-i-love, read-in-2018, pn-faeries, 3-stars
⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱*Not bad, but still not good enough*⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱
Re-read: 17.06.2018
The book centers around Zoey Daniels (22, turns 23 at the end of the book (view spoiler)[though she is actually a year older (hide spoiler)]) and a ruthless dark fae, a Wanderer (a jumper. They can blink in and out of time and space. Travel anywhere they want in the world in an instant.) named Ryker. Zoey's life turned up side down and will never be the same after devastation hits Seattle. The one who hunted and collected, is..more
Apr 26, 2016Casey Ann Books rated it it was amazing
This is my first book of Staceys that I’m reading and it won’t be the last. This women talent for writing is impeccable. She is a pro. let me tell you why - From the first page the reader is thrown into a battle of good vs. evil.
Relationships!!!! Stacey can write relationships so addictively. Ryker and Zoey are my spirit animals! the pace in their two relationships made for a great hot exciting read. The plot was fantastic. I really enjoyed how Stacey describes the destruction in Seattle… it set..more
May 11, 2019Vaishali • [Vicarious Living] rated it really liked itRelationships!!!! Stacey can write relationships so addictively. Ryker and Zoey are my spirit animals! the pace in their two relationships made for a great hot exciting read. The plot was fantastic. I really enjoyed how Stacey describes the destruction in Seattle… it set..more
Shelves: bold-brave-females, drama, dystopian, fantasy, paperback, adult-fantasy, dominant-alpha-males, new-adult, urban-fantasy, apocalyptic
Rating: 3.8 stars
‘Keeping my multiple lives straight and the lies accurate to the right people was a constant dance.’
‘Horrific dreams layered the surface of my sleep, keeping me from truly falling under.’
‘City in Embers’ is written by Stacey Marie Brown, who also authored the ‘Darkness’ series. I didn’t have the best start with the ‘Darkness’ series but it was one that inevitably grew on my skin, soon calling to me like the night does the moon, and as an author who wrote my darlings Eli..more
Shelves: bbb-book-boyfriends-and-barrons, the-walking-dead-post-apocalyptic, 2015, wished-more-people-knew-about, urban-fantasy, mouthwatering-alphas-with-scars
What a pleasant surprise this book was in the end. It has all I’ve wanted: I spunky female lead, a ferocious fae warrior, an apocalyptical setting in today’s USA, a fast moving plot with some surprising turns and an adorable fae familiar in the guise of a monkey. The little guy made my day, every fucking time. And take a closer look at the cover! Aint't it beautiful? Better as some covers that I have seen lately with male nippels in the center.
Oh and the romance was brilliant. Even though they..more
Oh and the romance was brilliant. Even though they..more
Jun 07, 2017Julie Zantopoulos rated it liked it
Sexy alpha fae? Check. Badass female character? Check. Hate to lust? Check. Other than that this story was lacking plot movement and action. The tension was great and the backstory was there but the entire book was stolen by a lovable side character. It was a fun read but given that it's an indie author that's expensive and hard to come by I probably won't be continuing with the series which sucks because ..well spoilers so I won't say..but suffice it to say I wanted more from the ship in this..more
Dec 08, 2015Beth rated it really liked it Shelves: netgalley, arc, paranormal, kindle, own, urban-fantasy, february-2016
City in Embers is a marvelous new urban fantasy.
Zoey Daniels', a survivor caught in a fae created electrical storm, life is turned upside down when the very organization she worked form DMG, turns against her. Her job, collect fae for a highly secretive government organization in attempts to build weapons against them as well as use them to develop medical advancements for humans.
On the run from the DMG, Zoey find herself in a positon to lean on the very creatures she’s come to detest, the fae…..more
Dec 14, 2016Petra rated it really liked it · review of another editionZoey Daniels', a survivor caught in a fae created electrical storm, life is turned upside down when the very organization she worked form DMG, turns against her. Her job, collect fae for a highly secretive government organization in attempts to build weapons against them as well as use them to develop medical advancements for humans.
On the run from the DMG, Zoey find herself in a positon to lean on the very creatures she’s come to detest, the fae…..more
Shelves: audiobooks, for-review, series, fantasy, 2016-audio-book-challenge
My original City in Embers audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.
Zoey, a tough and independent young woman, who has learned to fight for herself growing up in various foster homes, is a Collector working for a secret part of the government called the Department of Molecular Genetics (DMG). Together with her co-worker Daniel, with whom Zoey is desperately in love although he is considerably older and hasn’t been reciprocating her advances, they track and collect fae...more
Zoey, a tough and independent young woman, who has learned to fight for herself growing up in various foster homes, is a Collector working for a secret part of the government called the Department of Molecular Genetics (DMG). Together with her co-worker Daniel, with whom Zoey is desperately in love although he is considerably older and hasn’t been reciprocating her advances, they track and collect fae...more
Jan 29, 2015Lanie (Lanies Book Thoughts) rated it it was amazing
My Review:
I was blown away by this book. I absolutely loved Zoey and Ryker along with their little buddy Sprig.
Zoey is in her early twenties which means she's still trying to find her place in this world, she's still trying to figure out exactly who she is. Most of her life has been spent hopping from home to home, with time spent on the streets. It wasn't nice or safe anywhere Zoey happened to get placed, she was always made to be a victim, except she got tired of being one. She got tired of b..more
Mar 05, 2017Meg (booksandwinewithmeg.blog) rated it liked itI was blown away by this book. I absolutely loved Zoey and Ryker along with their little buddy Sprig.
Zoey is in her early twenties which means she's still trying to find her place in this world, she's still trying to figure out exactly who she is. Most of her life has been spent hopping from home to home, with time spent on the streets. It wasn't nice or safe anywhere Zoey happened to get placed, she was always made to be a victim, except she got tired of being one. She got tired of b..more
Shelves: paranormal-urban-fantasy, i-own-on-kindle, cheese-fest, cliche-storyline, eye-roll-smh, fae-magic, stupid-female-character, stfu-already, fight-club-like, emotionally-disturbing
3 STFU Stars
Do you want to know my problem with this book, Zoey, Zoey was my problem! She was Horrible! She went on rants about psychological issues regarding other characters, but that chick was fucked up. 'She tried so hard to be the woman Daniel would love and be proud of'
Shut up! You stupid stupid girl. We get it, you had a shitty upbringing, horrible in fact, but trying to please someone else or meet up to their standards by not being you is dumb to me.
Before we get into the meat and potat..more
May 08, 2019Maggie rated it liked itDo you want to know my problem with this book, Zoey, Zoey was my problem! She was Horrible! She went on rants about psychological issues regarding other characters, but that chick was fucked up. 'She tried so hard to be the woman Daniel would love and be proud of'
Shut up! You stupid stupid girl. We get it, you had a shitty upbringing, horrible in fact, but trying to please someone else or meet up to their standards by not being you is dumb to me.
Before we get into the meat and potat..more
Shelves: audiobooks, scribd, series, fantasy-paranormal, serial-reader, romance, magic
Nov 12, 2014Becca rated it it was amazing Shelves: love-this-author, its-the-mixing-pot-of-paranormal, big-girl-books, potato-chips-reads-and-authors, i-ll-eat-you-up-i-love-you-so, im-no-tinker-bell-i-am-fey, and-i-am-waiting-for-the-next-one, im-a-warrior-hear-me-roar, indies-that-are-drool-worthy-good, so-this-is-a-new-paranorm
Seriously I probably should warn you: I am a devoted and loyal fan to the Stacey Marie Brown because seriously, how can you not? Just to give you an example - her books are huge, filled with adventure, challenges, excitement, sexy, tension, amazing unique and fantastic characters. There isn't just one huge problem, there is so much but its never overwhelming, it never feels like it is over stretching either, like stretched too thin. Okay before I just go all i wanna have a baby with this book....more
Jan 27, 2015Melanie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
4.5*s
Review posted here..
http://bookpassionforlife.blogspot.co..
Stacey Marie Brown wowed me with her Darkness series so I was thrilled to see that she has started a new series and she really comes through with this one too.
City in Embers is set in the same world as the Darkness series so we are already aware of what kind of people/species that we will meet and the tensions that start to happen between humans, Fae and such. What we didn’t know was that some humans already knew of the Fae’s exis..more
Apr 03, 2018Bunnycore rated it it was amazingReview posted here..
http://bookpassionforlife.blogspot.co..
Stacey Marie Brown wowed me with her Darkness series so I was thrilled to see that she has started a new series and she really comes through with this one too.
City in Embers is set in the same world as the Darkness series so we are already aware of what kind of people/species that we will meet and the tensions that start to happen between humans, Fae and such. What we didn’t know was that some humans already knew of the Fae’s exis..more
Shelves: trade-paperback, fantasy, 2019, urban-fantasy, 5-bunnies, 2018
City In Ember by Stacey Marie Brow this is from her Collector Series. I have decided to do a re-read of this series. I really enjoy Brown's work. So like before let's start with a blurb.
Zoey Daniels has been tossed from foster home to foster home, where she grows up fast and tough. When she is placed in her “last-chance” home, she finds a reason to stay and turn her life around: her foster sister, Lexie, who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Zoey will do anything to keep her safe.
A
..moreMay 17, 2017 Simply Sam ツ rated it liked it · review of another edition
I'm shit on writing reviews at the moment so here's a short recap on my feelings:
1. Zoey annoyed me. She was supposed to be some badass street fighter chick but, for some reason, she could never get herself out of any situation. Ryker has to come to the rescue a million times. Example A: They are running, she falls off a bridge or some shit, she can't swim (of course), so he dives in and saves her from drowning and hypothermia. Example B: They are hiding from bad guys, a guy gets shot, Zoey star..more
1. Zoey annoyed me. She was supposed to be some badass street fighter chick but, for some reason, she could never get herself out of any situation. Ryker has to come to the rescue a million times. Example A: They are running, she falls off a bridge or some shit, she can't swim (of course), so he dives in and saves her from drowning and hypothermia. Example B: They are hiding from bad guys, a guy gets shot, Zoey star..more
Feb 02, 2015Philomena Callan Cheekypee rated it really liked it
Sometimes on the rare occasion I read a book that's out of my normal genre. This book was one of them. This is the first book I've read by this author. It was a little slow for me at the beginning but maybe that's because I had to read slower and kinda concentrate (and maybe look up some words in the dictionary).
However once I got my head into it I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to reading book two.
This book has taught me that I should branch out to different genres as this was an unexpecte..more
Jan 27, 2015pearl. rated it really liked itHowever once I got my head into it I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to reading book two.
This book has taught me that I should branch out to different genres as this was an unexpecte..more
Shelves: that-cover-though, romance, whoa-that-s-some-hot-sex, arc, paranormal, alpha-male
*I received this Advanced Reader Copy from publisher in exchange for my honest review*
I hadn't read too many books about fae in the past, but City in Embers was definitely a great introduction to that world! The mystery behind DMG intrigued me, the romance had my stomach fluttering, and the end had me worried for what is yet to come! When The Barrier Between (Collector #2) comes out, you can bet I'm going to get my hands on it ASAP!
What I enjoyed:
Ryker. (spoilers ahead) In all honestly, I was pl..more
I hadn't read too many books about fae in the past, but City in Embers was definitely a great introduction to that world! The mystery behind DMG intrigued me, the romance had my stomach fluttering, and the end had me worried for what is yet to come! When The Barrier Between (Collector #2) comes out, you can bet I'm going to get my hands on it ASAP!
What I enjoyed:
Ryker. (spoilers ahead) In all honestly, I was pl..more
Again Stacey has delivered a book that sucked me in! City of Embers is a book that will take you on a adventure you will not forget!
Zoey oh Zoey what a bad break this chick gets. I felt so sorry for her but loved that she was so strong through most of it! After losing everything and being stuck with the one thing she has been trained to hate, Zoey will have to find a way to stay alive with a Fae named Ryker after a event that transfers his powers to her.
Oh this book is just that good, from the..more
Zoey oh Zoey what a bad break this chick gets. I felt so sorry for her but loved that she was so strong through most of it! After losing everything and being stuck with the one thing she has been trained to hate, Zoey will have to find a way to stay alive with a Fae named Ryker after a event that transfers his powers to her.
Oh this book is just that good, from the..more
Dec 05, 2017Rachel Beamin' rated it really liked it
There isn't anything I can say that hasn't already been said.
With that, let's make this short and sweet -
It was a good book, fast read, enjoyable.
I would lean more toward YA Genre than NA.
The MC is a badass fighter.
The main male is a hot-broody-alpha, so of course sign me up.
All in all, worth a gander.
With that, let's make this short and sweet -
It was a good book, fast read, enjoyable.
I would lean more toward YA Genre than NA.
The MC is a badass fighter.
The main male is a hot-broody-alpha, so of course sign me up.
All in all, worth a gander.
Jul 21, 2017Jaime (Two Chicks on Books) rated it it was amazing
Loved this! Loved Zoey, Ryker, and omg Sprig! I need a Sprig!
Feb 22, 2015The BookWhisperer rated it it was amazing
City in Embers will be that book of 2015 to which I compare all others. This is a debut novel for The Collector's series that can be shortly summarized in a paranormal novel about human Collectors and the Fae. Zoey is an amazing character packed full of spice and vinegar. Having learned to be a survivor at a young age she is a force to be reckoned with. There are two other main characters, but this was a unique twist that had us following a main character about half way through, and then it swit..more
Jan 31, 2015Kimber Wheaton rated it really liked it
I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review
City in Embers is an action-packed urban fantasy featuring lots of fascinating magical creatures and an addicting plot. Zoey is a kick-ass heroine with a traumatic past, coupled with an uncommon ability to see fae when most humans can't. Add in an adorable half-sprite/half monkey sidekick and you have the makings of a fun read.
The beginning of the novel was almost overwhelming. So much information so quickly, like massive info-..more
Nov 10, 2016Sabrina rated it it was amazingCity in Embers is an action-packed urban fantasy featuring lots of fascinating magical creatures and an addicting plot. Zoey is a kick-ass heroine with a traumatic past, coupled with an uncommon ability to see fae when most humans can't. Add in an adorable half-sprite/half monkey sidekick and you have the makings of a fun read.
The beginning of the novel was almost overwhelming. So much information so quickly, like massive info-..more
Shelves: books-i-need-to-own, reread-bc-perfection, 2016
I don't understand myself sometimes..
I loved Stacey Brown's Darkness series, so I'm not sure why I didn't just hop into another one of her series before now? She's easily become one of my favorite authors. And that's a short list.
I honest liked Zoey much better once I learned about the hardships shes gone through in her life. Ms Stacey really brings these character's emotions from the page, straight to my heart. When she throws in those moments of comedy, I really just sit there laughing out l..more
Jun 24, 2018Marianne rated it liked itI loved Stacey Brown's Darkness series, so I'm not sure why I didn't just hop into another one of her series before now? She's easily become one of my favorite authors. And that's a short list.
I honest liked Zoey much better once I learned about the hardships shes gone through in her life. Ms Stacey really brings these character's emotions from the page, straight to my heart. When she throws in those moments of comedy, I really just sit there laughing out l..more
Shelves: audible, fae-faeries-elves-pixies, ya-or-na, urban-fantasy
Jun 27, 2019Gaby★Me Myshelf and I★ rated it it was amazing
PNR perfection
Couldn’t find anything to mark this down for!
Listened to on audio and I’m moving swiftly onto book 2, no time for reviewing sorry. Not sorry.
Couldn’t find anything to mark this down for!
Listened to on audio and I’m moving swiftly onto book 2, no time for reviewing sorry. Not sorry.
Aug 21, 2017Pam Nelson rated it really liked it · review of another edition
4 City of Embers Stars
Holy Smokes!
I gotta say I wasn’t expecting to like this story as much as I did. I am all for paranormal but Fae is a paranormal I just don’t seem to like much.
So I really wasn’t sure how I was going to like this. But hot damn I am impressed. The world really unfolds well. And I am hooked I need to know what is going to happen to Zoey.
It did take me a little bit to get into the book but once I was in I was IN!
DMG an organization of people who do testing and research on..more
Aug 16, 2015Jess rated it really liked itHoly Smokes!
I gotta say I wasn’t expecting to like this story as much as I did. I am all for paranormal but Fae is a paranormal I just don’t seem to like much.
So I really wasn’t sure how I was going to like this. But hot damn I am impressed. The world really unfolds well. And I am hooked I need to know what is going to happen to Zoey.
It did take me a little bit to get into the book but once I was in I was IN!
DMG an organization of people who do testing and research on..more
Shelves: in-denial, i-m-in-love, epic-exciting-adventure, new-adult, na-paranormal, messed-up-shit, kickass-heroines, cool-powers
Before Reading
I mean it's Stacey Marie Brown.. so umm, HELL YES I will read this.
After Reading
She has done it again ILOVETHIS and that ending was fantastic.
Zoey: fae hater (collector)
In the beginning, she is in love with Daniel
Then, shit happens and she meets Ryker
Ryker: fae (the Wanderer)
Zoey and Ryker
You can just imagine the love-hate relationship that ensues. It's great.
I mean it's Stacey Marie Brown.. so umm, HELL YES I will read this.
After Reading
She has done it again ILOVETHIS and that ending was fantastic.
Zoey: fae hater (collector)
In the beginning, she is in love with Daniel
Then, shit happens and she meets Ryker
Ryker: fae (the Wanderer)
Zoey and Ryker
You can just imagine the love-hate relationship that ensues. It's great.
topics | posts | views | last activity |
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What's the Name o..:SOLVED. Fae boy gets powers stolen by girl [s] | 4 | 21 | May 19, 2016 08:21AM |
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Stacey Marie Brown is a lover of hot fictional bad boys and sarcastic heroines who kick butt. She also enjoys books, travel, TV shows, hiking, writing, design, and archery. Stacey swears she is part gypsy, being lucky enough to live and travel all over the world.
Collector(4 books)
“glued them to me. It was like tearing off duct tape. With a harsh wrench, I went on my back. “Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound sorry. He finished taking off my pants and straightened. His arms slipped under my legs and around my back, collecting me in his arms. My cold, bare skin burned where it touched his warm body. The numbness of most of my skin kept” — 0 likes
“You always think there will be a tomorrow. More time.” — 0 likes
More quotes…http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal
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Tales of Maj'Eyal is a Roguelike with a long history, stretching back at least 10 years. Originally titled Pernband, it was a variant of the classic Roguelike Angband with Pern influences — although all Pern influences were removed following a Cease and Desist letter in the late 90s. It was then renamed Tales of Middle Earth, the various Tolkien elements refined and perfected, and development continued on it off and on for a decade.
Like its parent game and other games in the genre, TOME revolves around the player character delving into a dungeon with limited resources. What separates it from other Angband variants is its scope — whereas most Angband variants have a single dungeon and small town at the top, TOME contains an entire world map based on Tolkien's Middle Earth, complete with multiple towns and dozens of dungeons, all with different themes. In addition, the game has a quest system, giving the pointless dungeon crawling some actual point.
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Another thing that differentiates TOME from early Angband variants (with the possible exception of Zangband) in the genre is the sheer number of classes, races, and subclasses — wish to play as a Vampire Troll Druid? Ok. Barbarian Kobold Monk? Done. Spectral Dwarven Axemaster of Tulkas? Go for it. Each character class / race / subrace has its own ups and downs, and creating interesting combinations is part of the fun.
An attempt to recreate the game from scratch, avoiding some of the development problems of the 2.x line, started and stalled out. In the meantime, the author and primary developer got married and vanished off the face of the planet, leaving development of the new 3.x line in doubt. Around the same time, a script kiddy broke into the forum's admin account, wiping them clean of ten years worth of posts - with no backups.
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However, in 2010 development was restarted after the Author returned, resulting in the 4.x line - a complete rewrite of the game. Moving away from Tales of Middle Earth to Tales Of Maj'Eyal to avoid the possibility of a second Cease and Desist letter, as well as making the High Fantasy elements (fireballs and teleportation spells) make more sense, the game is currently going through a development version of Wiki Magic.
A 'mini' expansion titled Ashes of Urh'Rok was released on October 27th, 2014. It expands on the demon race and their world, Mal'Rok, and adds classes and races focused on harnessing their powers.
A larger expansion pack titled Embers of Rage was released on February 23rd, 2016. It takes place one year after the events of the main campaign. The protagonist of the main campaign, known by the Orcs as the Scourge of the West, has single-handedly decimated the Orc Prides in the Far East. Meanwhile, the Sunwall, now in possession of a Sher'Tul Farportal linking them with Maj'Eyal, has entered an economic and military alliance with the Allied Kingdoms. With their help, almost all of Var'Eyal is now under their control. What little remains of the Orc Prides is now locked in cages. However, not all is lost for the Orcs. Kruk's Pride was left untouched by the Scourge, and remains as the only Orc settlement left. Unfortunately, they are nevertheless facing mortal peril: The Sunwall has them besieged and unable to enter the mainland, and on their island they are at war with the Atmos Tribe, a civilization of technologically advanced giants that are determined to keep interlopers out of their territory. As one of the last few Orcs that remain, your only hope is to reverse engineer the Atmos Tribe's technology and use it to reclaim your land and your future.
The expansion pack 'Forbidden Cults' was released on May 16th, 2018.
Be warned: The Embers of Rage section contains unmarked spoilers for the main campaign.
It can be downloaded here.
Tales Of Maj'Eyal provides examples of:
- Adventurer Archaeologist: Technically speaking, you. The world is recovering after a 10,000 year old dark age, and there are all kinds of shiny objects hidden in those dungeons.
- After the End: The Spellblaze devastated the land and destroyed true magic, however it has 'been tamed,' the planet is entering a golden age, and the ruins of the Age of Allure are being explored and reclaimed by intrepid adventurers. It's worth noting that these are pretty much the same conditions that led to the founding of the first halfling empire, the wars of the Age of Allure, and the Spellblaze.
- Already Undone for You: In the alternate layout of the Ruins of Kor'Pul, a bandit tribe moves into the ruins and kills the Shade of Kor'Pul before you can..only for the Shade to possess the bandits' chief.
- Amulet of Dependency: Ogres require runes to maintain their unnatural bodies. This isn't normally a big deal, and in fact their experience with runes means that they are more capable of using all kinds of inscriptions, but adopting the practice of Anti-Magic leaves them with a shortened lifespan because their enhanced bodies have to hold together without magical aid. Until the Ziguranth learn to turn them into Krogs, anyhow.
- Anti-Grinding: TOME does its best to employ this, despite being part of an infamously grind-heavy subgenre of roguelikes. Monsters don't respawn, XP gains hit diminishing returns extremely quickly, and anything that can be fought multiple times either gives no XP or scales up into unbeatableness. The sole exception is the Sher'tul farportal, which sends you to randomly generated otherworlds with the usual sanity checks on random generation turned off — using the portal is a lot like playing Russian Roulette with your character.
- Antimagical Faction: The Ziguranth oppose the use of arcane forces (though not other sources of power).
- Apocalyptic Log: Once per dungeon, you find the records left behind by some previous explorer. Typically, the final record either ends abruptly after a reference to the boss (and has bloodstains on it), or describes how the writer was corrupted or hypnotized into allying with the boss.
- Archer Archetype: Unsurprisingly, the Archer class. Includes unusual abilities such as Piercing Shot (which hits all enemies in a row) and Rain of Arrows.
- The Atoner: It's implied in the unlock texts that classes that are normally inherently evil in-universe (Cursed, Reavers, etc.) have become this when they're player-characters.
- Author Avatar: Linaniil of Angolwen is a recurring character of the developer DarkGod.
- Ban on Magic: Arcane magic used to be forbidden across Maj'Eyal, with even those who sympathized with spellcasters being burned at the stake. Now, the only ones who still care are the Ziguranth, though that's partly because the true mages are all in hiding for one reason or another.
- Black and Gray Morality: The Ziguranth are, by and large, psychotic Knights Templar who ruthlessly murder mages, mage sympathizers, and anyone who might kind of look like a mage. But..
- They're often the last line of defense against genuinely evil mages, such as High Tempest Urkis.
- The only ones actually working to fight against them are the Rhaloren, wicked elven renegades led by the Grand Corruptor, and they're only doing it so that there'll be nobody left to stop their own ambitions.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Linaniil just wants responsible magic users to be able to operate openly. Back during the Spellhunt, she was notorious for slaughtering Ziguranth kill-squads to rescue other mages and acquired a reputation as a fireshrouded demon. These days she's stronger than the final bosses, only somewhat weaker defensively than the bonus boss and has the strongest offense in the game.
- And her active days were BEFORE she stole the power of a dead god - and stayed sane and herself. There is a reason she has six prodigies when the player can only get two.
- Black Magic: Vim, Necromancy, and Hate. All of these can be used for good, but they're all fueled by murder and have connections to the Fearscape.
- Blood Magic: Wielded by Defilers. Vim magic is regenerated through bloodsucking and murder.
- Body Horror: The vast majority of the enemies in the Deep Bellow are this. They used to be a dwarven expedition which got corrupted by the presence of Amakthel. The boss is the transfiguration of the foreman's mouth.
- Oozemancers seem determined to do this to themselves. Mitosis causes you to generate ooze escorts when you suffer damage. Which suggests that a piece of your body fell away from the wound to become this ooze. And then there's Indiscernible Anatomy, which reduces all enemies' critical chances and lets you resist more status effects. How? Your organs are melding into each other. The skill descriptions in general suggest that Oozemancers become 'closer to nature' by becoming oozes themselves.
- The ogres of the Conclave Vault were created when the various soldiers therein popped themselves into the ogre transformation tanks so that they could remain in stasis until the Conclave found them. Some of the transformations went bad, and the transformed humans were left as nothing more than 'ogrish masses.'
- Bonus Boss: In some sense, most of the bosses are technically optional (like most dungeons), but some are more bonus than others.
- Bill the Stone Troll, who used to be an outrageous Wake-Up Call Boss before was replaced by Prox and moved to a secret optional level.
- Kryl'Feijan, who is summoned if Melinda is sacrificed.
- The second bosses, which are level 40-50 bosses who appear in several low-level areas after returning from the other continent.
- Atamathon, a sleeping level 70 golem in the Golem Graveyard. He is far more powerful than the end bosses.
- Anyone in the game is killable, which means that terminating Linaniil is a popular Self-Imposed Challenge.
- In Ashes of Urh'Rok, the three elder demons. Kryl'Feijan (mentioned above), Shasshhiy'Kaish, the Queen of Pain, who only pops up if you kill her cultists, and Walrog, who's wandering the seas, and can either be found randomly, or summoned if you backstab both Slasul and Ukllmswwik. Killing them unlocks the Doomelf race.
- Bow and Sword, in Accord: While you can technically do this with Bulwarks, Berserkers, and Archers (they have access to both missile and melee skills..if you're willing to spend a skill category point for it, anyway), Temporal Wardens are the resident lords of this art. Not only do they have default melee and bow categories, their Blade and Bow Threading skillpaths let them auto-switch to the appropriate weaponry.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Those unfortunate enough to be captured by Demons and manage to survive their 'experiments' are fashioned into Doombringers and Demonologists, powerful unholy warriors whose minds are completely enthralled by their Demon 'controller'. The player Doombringer/Demonologist was like this until a freak meteor strike killed their controller, allowing them to regain their free will and fight back against the Demons.
- Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Played with during the Allure Wars. The Conclave of that time weren't exactlyrole models, but one thing that made them slightly better thantheir rivals was that they placed some value on their citizens' happiness, best exemplified by the Overseers loaning out their agents and amnesia-inducing spells to hospitals, using them to treat war veterans' PTSD; it's implied that Healer Astelrid specifically requested that they wipe her memory of having to euthanize a loved one (or several) to prevent their transformation into a ghoul (or ghouls). Granted, they ALSO used said abilities for more nefariouspurposes, particularly when the war turned to a stalemate..
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Patch 1.6 inverts this with Pay2Die, where you can make a small donation to instantly summon a level 500 Bonus Boss to kill your character.
- Burn the Witch!: Very common during the Age of Dusk, when mages were thought to have activated the Spellblaze intentionally. They did, although they were only expecting the orcish armies to get blasted, not everyplace with a leyline running through it. Not to mention thought to one and all be necromancers and warlocks. One document from the time says that this is a pretty ineffective way of ridding yourself of a warlock—like they wouldn't think to ward themselves against this—but still likes it for setting an example when magic sympathizers are killed this way.
- Card-Carrying Villain: The Master. Unlike most villains, who act for their own power or some twisted ambition, the Master is a stereotypical necromancer who lives up to the role For the Evulz.
- Cast from Hit Points: Corruptors can use a talent to do this temporarily, while Solipsists invert this: their resource bar also doubles as a second health bar, and they take damage to it based on their Solipsism talent.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Potentially at the very beginning of the game, you can purchase (for cheap!) Linaniil's Lecture on Humility in Angolwen. At the beginning, she refers to her worry over two promising students who'd had enough of Angolwen's strictures on what can and cannot be done by archmages, and fled the coop. At the end of the game, you meet the Big Bad Duumvirate trying to bring about The End of the World as We Know It—and their descriptors speak of them as renegades from Angolwen. You don't suppose they got in an argument with Linaniil about constraint, do you?
- Character Tiers: The monster tiers. You have Critter, which is basically cannon fodder, Normal, which is your average enemy, Elite, which is fairly dangerous and has similar stats to you, Boss, which is a seriously major enemy you need to be prepared for, and Elite Boss, which is limited to the most powerful, important and dangerous characters in the game. Your PC is Elite, by the way. [invoked]
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Lampshaded. If you awaken Walrog by killing both Slasul and Ukllmswwik, and then offer to side with him instead, he points out that after you backstabbed both sides like that, you're hardly someone he wants to have to share the seas with.
- The Chosen One: Averted. At the start of the game, you're just an adventure who's out to explore the various ruins, forests and dungeons of the world in search of treasure and adventure. It isn't until you clear the first half dozen dungeons that you stumble upon the plot.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Solipsists run on this; if they don't believe they've been hurt by something, it doesn't hurt them. Too much of this, though, and they can descend into a mental echo chamber and lose touch with reality (which is a Bad Thing; their power to rewrite reality according to their whim has its limits).
- Cosmetic Award: Most of the achievements are like this, but some unlock bonus classes and races.
- Cursed with Awesome: The Afflicted character classes and even more so the 'Defiling Touch' and 'Dark Gifts' talents of the 'Cursed Aura' tree (if you level them high enough). Literally.
- Dark Is Not Evil:
- Not hardly, seeing how the Anorithil regard a light-darkness balance as vital to the world's well-being. There is an inherently evil element out there, still; it's called 'blight'.
- Black Magic exists, and it's rather hard to be a nice person when your powers (and in some cases, your physical form itself) are fueled by murder, when your necromantic abilities draw whispers into your mind from the depths of Hell itself, or when you exude a paralyzing, debilitating gloom composed of hate. However, this setting lacks any objective standard or judge of morality, and there's nothing stopping someone with these powers from using them for good, or at least using them as weapons against people who need to be killed anyway.
- Deal with the Devil: How to become a Doomed in three easy steps: 1. Make one of these. 2. Suffer the inevitable betrayal of your demonic ally, who takes a good chunk of your powers with it. 3. Declare vengeance against all of creation.
- Tannen makes one for research data on Sher'Tul farportals, thinking he's getting the upper hand by feeding them faulty data in return. They know, and they're getting far more information out of him than he realizes.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Oozemancers. They are Zigur-aligned by default, meaning they can't use a good amount of otherwise very useful items, but they've got a reputation for being incredibly powerful due to their low-cost summoning abilities.
- Difficulty Levels: Five general difficulty settings and three extra life settings, plus a tutorial, make up for a whopping sixteen difficulty levels. It's also worth noting that each achievement has about 12 variants, one for each difficulty and lives combo, making qiute the list. The general difficulty settings are:
- Normal: Is Exactly What It Says on the Tin as far as difficulty levels go in the game. Hard, but nowhere near the challenge level provided by other classical roguelikes.
- Easier: Suited for more casual players or those who want to learn the game before tackling higher levels. Damage done to the player and the duration of detrimental effects are both reduced significantly, while player healing is boosted. However, achievements are not granted when playing this difficulty.
- Nightmare: A hard mode of an already hard game, zone levels are increased and creatures's talent levels as well. As a minor boon, the player levels up faster and gets better loot, but often not enough to compensate without showing some great skills and knowledge.
- Insane: Compare Nightmare to Normal. Take the result and compare it to Nightmare. Calling this setting Nintendo Hard might be a slight underestimation. You must win the game (on any difficulty/extra lives setting) to unlock Insane mode.
- Many players prefer Insane to Nightmare - Insane adds vast numbers of mini-Bosses to the levels, but they all drop boss-level Randomly Generated Loot. This can compensate for the increased enemy powers in the late game. It also means more friendly NP Cs generated as mini-bosses who you can get abuse Super Drowning Skills to get experience and boss loot from. Most guides for Insane recommend 'Drowning' to be the very first thing a player should do.
- Madness: Basically, it's Nintendo Hard taken Up to Eleven and beyond. Compare Insane to Nightmare and apply the result to Insane. It's so difficult that even given all the knowledge and resourcefulness of the most veteran players, only thirty Madness wins (out of over 19000 attempts!) were ever recorded since the introduction of this difficulty in 1.1.0 (as of July 2 2015). And of them at least 11 was with a custum race and/or Class which might not count due to being overpowered.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The Master, the vampire lord of the Dreadfell, is the first Elite Boss you face and the ruler of the longest single dungeon in the game. However, his death is only the beginning of the plot, not the end, as he's holding on to a Plot Coupon.
- Disc-One Nuke: Bill's Tree Trunk. Assuming you're able to beat Bill and the RNG is in a good mood when you do and it drops, it's one of the best two handed weapons in the early to mid game.
- Do Well, but Not Perfect: Unlocking the Doom Elf race requires you to find and defeat 3 Demon Bonus Bosses. One of them, Kryl'Feijan, only spawns if you fail the Melinda sidequest. (Though given how notoriously hard that dungeon is, this may actually be the easier alternative)
- Dual Wielding: Favored by Rogues, Shadowblades, Marauders, Reavers, and Temporal Wardens. Reavers are unusual in that whereas the other dual-wielders can only use a dagger or a whip for the main-gauche, Reavers can use any one-handed weapon for the purpose.
- The Krog race (from the Forbidden Cults DLC) can also dual-wield one-handed weapons as a racial ability.
- Dumb Muscle: Ogres subvert this. They're big guys made for combat and labor, and generally prefer direct and simple solutions to problems over complex stratagems. The subversion is that none of this makes them dumb, and in fact they can be even cleverer than humans if they need to be. Likewise, even though most ogres prefer more martial professions, they're naturals at magic.
- Dummied Out: The Orc Pits, presumably due to how SquickyThe Reveal is.
- And almost immediately recreated as an add-on.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: According to the records in the Doombringer/Demonologist areas, most of the worlds that had Sher'Tul farportals were annihilated by the Spellblaze.
- Eldritch Abomination: It shouldn't be much of a surprise that the Horror super-class of monsters is this. The noteworthy part is that the fabled Precursors, the Sher'Tul, were themselves Eldritch Abominations created by Amakthel expressly to conquer the world.
- Endless Game: The Infinite Dungeon.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Tren-method necromancers use all manner of stratagems to avoid being corrupted by infernal presence. The Beinagrind-method necromancers, on the other hand, welcome this corruption, which they instead see as perfection of the psyche. The author of the necromancer primer wonders in-print why this 'perfection' always seems to result in Beinagrinds becoming Omnicidal Maniacs. The Tren, on the other hand, see no need to go beyond 'lots of obeisance, respect, and fear'.
- Everyone Has Standards: The PC at least. No matter how questionable your power source, race, or behavior they will never consider joining some villainous factions.
- Evil Counterpart: Ben Cruthdar is this to PC Cursed. You can also find a second Evil Counterpart in the Cursed-exclusive Tranquil Meadow dungeon.
- Evil Is Visceral: At least when you're a Defiler. Sanguisuge (i.e. bloodsucking), plague, bone, blood..you get the idea.
- Evil vs. Evil:
- At the time of the Allure Wars, the Conclave had become a totalitarian state, ruled by Overseers who had no ethical qualms with wiping inconvenient memories or sentiments from their citizens' minds, including those of wounded soldiers so they wouldn't object to being experimented on and converted into Ogres, and encouraged said Ogres to eat Halflings alive if the spectacle would be demoralizing to the enemy (and good for their troops' morale).. but they still come off as a nicer bunch than the Nargol Empire, who kept an entire species as secret slaves and test subjects, experimented on prisoners of war, committed the first act of mass necromancy in history, had at least one squad that feigned surrender, called humans 'lank-legs,' and were generally the root cause for quite a lot of Maj'Eyal's currently ongoing problems.
- If you're a Cursed and take the book in the Cursed sidequest, you end up accepting that you're a murderous monster by your very nature and decide to turn your destructive ways toward greater evils.
- Fantastic Nuke: Two examples in the Age of Allure:
- The Nargol Empire issued necromantic charms to its ranking officers, then activated them all simultaneously when pushed to the brink of losing their war with the Conclave, reviving most of the war's casualties as undead in one massive attack. This was more of a Fantastic Mustard Gas Attack - it didn't end the war, but it bought the Nargol enough time to ensure that it turned into an increasingly vicious stalemate, and they openly used necromancy from that moment onward. The surge of necromantic energy is responsible for wild undead roaming around to this day, thousands of years later.
- The Shaloren attempted to use the energies of the Sher'Tul Farportals to power a fire spell to incinerate an invading orc horde; it incinerated them, all right, along with about a third of the planet in an incident now known as the Spellblaze, and has had countless long-term ramifications, from inciting the wrath of Demons to breaking reality badly enough to allow Chronomancy.
- Fantastic Racism: Not a major plot of the game, but it exists. Halflings and yeeks are old enemies—especially since the halflings originally enslaved the yeeks (and the first orcs, too!)—and everyone hates the Shaloren (especially their Thaloren kin). In the Back Story, halflings and humans were enemies, but since the marriage of Toknor and Mirvenia, they've been allied together.
- Many old halfling texts show heavy racism towards humans, whom they believe are intellectually inferior, with one mad scientist gleefully (and very brutally) experimenting on humans (and yeeks). Shaloren tend to think that non-elven races are inferior as well. Higher humans are very racist towards other humans, claiming a superior bloodline; complete with superior intellect and better looks, and generally avoid mating with non-higher humans. All races are, unsurprisingly, highly racist towards orcs and most people seem to have no remorse for wiping the orcs out of existence though unbeknownst to all but the dwarves, they did not actually wipe out all of the orcs. On that note, the orc texts, even less surprisingly, reveal racism towards all of the other races; as well as massive contempt for the hostile attitudes that other races have towards orcs.
- Fate Worse than Death: According to the text blurb, dying against High Tempest Ukris results in him using your still living body in his mad electricity based experiments.
- The Master is even worse. He takes great enjoyment of using slain adventurers as new ghouls and skeletons and ghasts and spirits to wander his halls for all of eternity (well, at least until another adventurer comes along and slays them). He enjoys tormenting his victims ruthlessly. He tortured a dwarf to find out where the dwarf's companions were, even though he admitted that he could have simply used divination magic. He chased a halfling around his halls for weeks for pure enjoyment, and only ended up killing the halfling (and raising him as a skeleton) when he got bored of watching the halfling pathetically eat his own feces to survive. It's implied that he tempted a human into betraying her companions for power (or perhaps he used some form of mind control). Instead, he tore out her soul and forced her to wander his halls as a spirit.
- Demons want to do this to everyone on Eyal that they don't have to kill during the initial invasion. Thaurheregs, in particular, are made from the bodies and souls of captives they got toorough with, and are implied to have some level of consciousness in their current state, albeit manipulated by enchantments to make them seek out 'revenge' on their former allies instead of their actual tormentors. A demonic statue-plaque describes this as 'hilarious.'
- Fighting a Shadow: Shasshhiy'Kaish is unique in that she learned how to create new bodies from Walrog; and is the one working to maintain Kryl-Feijan soul in limbo; and is working a cult to Human Sacrifice his body back. You can fight her more than once, and she will comment even that won't kill her permanently.
- Final Death: Averted in some of the difficulty modes, but those lock out Achievements. Also, unlike most Roguelikes, Maj'Eyal allows you to immediately restart the game upon death, either as your original character with the same initial stat allocations, or as a new character.
- Final Solution: Toknor ordered this upon the orcs after his halfling queen and their unborn son were nearly killed, the capstone for him of all the marauding the orcs had done towards everyone else during the Age of Pyre. The Orc Prides who were safe in the Far East aren't taking this lying down.
- Flash Step: The Skirmisher's Tumble ability basically works like this; it's an instant, short range 'teleport'. As a bonus it gives you a boost to your critical hit rate immediately after using it.
- Flunky Boss: The Mouth, boss of the Deep Bellow. Nothing hurts it. What you have to do is wait for it to use Gift of Amakthel (and duck behind a plant in the meantime to avoid Call of Amakthel and Drain) to generate a Slimy Crawler and kill that, which will result in the Mouth suffering about 1000 damage. You'll need to take down 10-12 Crawlers to finally do in the Mouth.
- Genius Bruiser: Ogres' might goes without saying, but despite being stereotyped as Dumb Muscle, they are also more intelligent than humans in many ways, not less. While they do prefer simple and direct solutions over complex ones, they are more cunning than humans when it comes down to it, their magical proficiency is equal to that of the Shaloren, and due to the need to maintain their magically-enhanced bodies, they are Maj'Eyal's foremost rune masters.
- Glass Cannon: Any race-class combination with a life penalty tends toward this. It's particularly common among yeeks.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: After millennia of being stuck in the interstellar void, Gerlyk—the primary creator god of Eyal—has fallen prey to this. Violently so.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Brawlers' specialty.
- Gravity Master: Paradox Mages can become this if you so choose. The Gravity powers lack raw damage but work together well and give you lots of control and positioning options.
- Guide Dang It!: The Derth Stormcloud quest. See Unwinnable below. Also, many of the requirements for unlocking classes and races.
- The order in which you're should clear dungeons in order to not die a quick horrible death isn't explained. Basically, you need to ignore the second dungeon in the first quest you get and do all of the other starter zones first.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The King of the Allied Kingdoms is the son of King Toknor (a Higher human) and Queen Mirvenia (halfling). He appears completely human, however, and he is the first known example of this happening.
- Have a Nice Death: When you die, the death message is customized to the kind of weapon or element that killed you, from the mundane (e.g. 'skewered', 'frozen') to the not-so-brief ('slowly cooked', 'grandfathered' for dying to temporal damage, 'treehugged' for dying to nature damage, etc.). In addition, if a boss kills you, a very special fate is added to the message. The Mouth: 'turned into a shrieking drem bat'. Prox the Mighty: 'eaten raw'. Subject Z: 'bloodily smeared across the walls'. Bill the Stone Troll '(method) to death (yetagain) and cooked into stew'. And so on.
- Note that in later versions, these always have 'to death' somewhere in them, usually at the end ('frozen to death,' 'skewered to death,' etc.) This can get quite weird, e.g. 'replaced with a temporal clone (and no one ever knew the difference) to death.'
- He Who Fights Monsters: The document that doesn't think burning warlocks is good for much more than making examples of sympathizers does have a deeply recommended way of definitively dispatching mages. When you read it, you'll find yourself wondering how they managed to miss the sheer sadism of the method..
- In one of the loading screen blurbs of the first RC, it's mentioned that the Ziguranth were founded by escaped test subjects of the Conclave. They ultimately became the resident KnightsTemplaragainst magic.
- After the Spellblaze wrecked Mal'Rok, the demons dedicated themselves to avenging all the trillions of souls who lost their lives to it. One problem—they want to visit upon those responsible the accumulated pain of all the Spellblaze's victims, as that will be needed to even approximate 'justice'. It doesn't help that they think the mortal races are actually Sher'Tul creations, and that even Eyal itself is guilty in some fashion.
- Hive Mind: The yeeks have one in the form of The Way. This is the first version of a Hive Mind, where it's just a case of all the minds being in constant contact. Their aqueous cousins the yaech want nothing to do with it.
- Hobbits: Maj'Eyal halflings are mostly common farmers, but that's because most people are common farmers. In the past, the Halfling race created the first great empire of the Age of Allure by military force and magical Mad Science, enslaving and experimenting on humans and yeeks, and halflings retain their militaristic traditions even in the modern era. The Allied Kingdoms, the dominant power in Maj'Eyal, were formed by a union of the Human and Halfling kingdoms.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: You're not supposed to successfully beat Ukruk, though it's do-able if you've got the right loadout and stay on your toes. If you do succeed, the game forces you to hand the Staff of Absorption over to the Last Hope elder, where it will promptly be stolen by the bad guys. So while you win the battle, it doesn't actually make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
- Humans Are Average: The Cornacs fit the trope to a tee, being the baseline race and having no particular racial abilities, but having an extra category point allows them to unlock other ability trees much more easily. Highers avert the trope.
- Human Subspecies: The Highers are the purebred descendants of humans who were experimented on by The Conclave during the Age of Allure. They're longer-lived and gifted with great magical potential, but don't advance as quickly as Cornacs and lack their versatility.
- Hypocrite: After her lover was tortured and nearly destroyed by Spellhunters, Shasshhiy'Kaish concluded that Eyalites were hateful, barbaric and sadistic. Her response? She plans to laugh as the Fearscape plunges all Eyalites into death or endless torment, because they clearly deserve it, and to amuse herself in the meantime by torturing cultists almost to death before mailing them to the Fearscape for experimentation.
- If It's You, It's Okay: If you're female, Melinda will comment on this after you rescue her.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Skirmishers' Called Shot skills let them do various special things with their slings. Kneecapper: snare an enemy. Kill Shot: do more damage to more distant enemies. Noggin Knocker: stun an enemy, or keep them stunned longer. The 'Improbable' part comes from the fact that you get to ignore enemies between you and your actual victim—and sling shots don't normally deal in arc shots.
- Inescapable Ambush: Averted in general, with one notable exception.
- Jack-of-All-Stats: In races, the Cornac and Higher. In classes, the Mindslayer.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While the Ziguranth do actively encourage members to kidnap innocent mages or mage sympathizers and send them to Zigur for torture, magic does not have a good history in this setting, and evil mages are almost completely impossible for anyone else to control.
- Killing Your Alternate Self: The only way to unlock the Paradox Mage class is to play as a Temporal Warden and allow your future self to kill you.
- Knight Templar: The Ziguranth have not left behind the magic-phobia that permeated the Ages of Dusk and Pyre. You can't even get in there on your own volition if you have any kind of arcane ability, and if you're brought there, you're in for a round of torture followed by death. If you believe'The story of my salvation,' though, they do have some standards. According to that narrator, the Ziguranth actually saved her from a Torches and Pitchforks mob, despite her being an alchemist; she may have been involved in using minor arcane magic, but she wasn't evil, and she wasn't what the Ziguranth were looking to destroy. They're also very sympathetic towards those whose involvement with the arcane isn't their fault, as with Melinda being tainted with demonic power during the failed attempt to sacrifice her.
- Light Is Not Good: Amakthel created the sun for one purpose — to lay claim to everything its light fell upon. Read: the entire world.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Averted since it became 'Tales of Maj'Eyal.' The many varieties of warriors and wizards mostly grow at the same rate due to a standardized progression of class talents, and warriors receive their own martial techniques to balance out wizards' and Magic Knights' magic; while some classes, races and race/class combinations do have easier early games, midgames or late games than others, it's not nearly as simple as wizards and warriors.
- Living Relic:
- Subject Z was a human of the Age of Allure, the subject of experimentation on the part of a halfling Mad Scientist, and is still alive in the present day. His sanity didn't make it, though.
- Linaniil of Angolwen is also a survivor from the Age of Allure.
- Shasshhiy'Kaish, Walrog, and Kryl-Feijan are the only demons around who still resemble the pre-Spellblaze demonic race.
- The Conclave Vault contains survivors from the Age of Allure, who've been forced to turn themselves into Ogres to use the stasis-tanks therein using the original forms of the Ogric inscriptions, which were less stable and tended to promote aggression.
- Living Shadow: In particular, the Necromancer and Shadowblade classes. They both have abilities that can literally summon a shadow of themselves to fight alongside them. Another mention is the Doomed class, which can summon shadows to flit around and attack enemies.
- Living Weapon: Krogs were created for one reason: to destroy magic and magic-users.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Most notable for the Bulwark and the Sun Paladin, who each have a number of shield-based attacks and abilities. Other classes (like Wyrmics and Curseds) sometimes will use shields as well. The new Skirmisher class specializes in using sling and shield at the same time, and uses Cunning as the requisite for the shield. This results in a halfling with 18 Strength carrying around a shield bigger than he is.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: The entire point of the Writhing One class in Forbidden Cults.
- MacGuffin: The Staff of Absorption.
- Magic A Is Magic A: There are at least seven forms of magic in Maj'Eyal, all of which channel different forces and operate on completely different principles.
- Standard magic (also known as 'arcane magic,' but that descriptor also applies to chronomancy, vim and celestial magic), which relies on Mana. Includes Necromancy and Alchemy among its many forms. Those who specialize in magic use can regenerate mana naturally, but others need to find items that help them with mana regeneration if they want to use it.
- Chronomancy, the ability to effect changes in the fabric of space, time, matter and energy. Not limited by Mana, but meddling with the timestream creates Paradox, which simultaneously makes a Chronomancer's abilities more powerful and increases the chance of bizarre anomalies, explained as reality snapping towards a more likely timeline.
- Celestial magic, which draws on The Power of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars to invoke miraculous effects. Positive and Negative energy decay over time and do not regenerate naturally, but are refilled by using certain abilities. A lost art in Maj'Eyal, best known in the Far East.
- Vim, used by Defilers. A nasty form of magic that does not regenerate naturally, but is refilled by bloodsucking and murder, and is used to damage people's bodies directly.
- Wild Gifts, which draw on nature. These are limited by one's Equilibrium, a measure of one's harmony with nature; if someone gets too far out of balance, their powers will cease to work. The specialty of the Ziguranth.
- Psychic Powers, most commonly found among the Yeek race. Psychic energy naturally regenerates slowly, but can be regained quickly by conversion of other energy (such as the kinetic energy of an attacker's blow) into psi.
- The Power of Hate, weaponized by the Afflicted. The Afflicted suffer from various curses, but through their own hatred and rage, they can turn their curse outward and use it against others instead.
- There are also devices powered by 'unknown forces' and about the only thing we know about them is that they're not any of the others, that they're not any kind of arcane magic (at least so far as the Ziguranth can tell), and that the Sher'Tul made extensive use of them. It's unclear whether these are all the same kind of magic or whether it's a catch-all for 'magic we don't understand.'
- Forbidden Cults brings us Insanity, magic based on alien forces, entropy, and tentacles. The Demented do increasingly random damage with their attacks as their Insanity meter gets higher.
- Magic Knight:
- In many different types - about one for each of the (numerous) power types. Arcane Blades channel regular old magic though their melee attacks, Wyrmics use the power of nature to emulate dragons to things like breath fire/sand/ice/lightning, Reavers use corrupting magic to give people diseases and then hack them apart, Sun Paladins sustain themselves through the power of the Sun, Cursed sap their enemies' will to fight with their hate, Temporal Wardens use Chronomancy to achieve a high-speed, high-mobility combat style, and Mindslayers use Psychic Powers to enhance their abilities and fight with telekinetically-wielded weapons. With Forbidden Cults, you get Writhing Ones, who turn their off-hands into Combat Tentacles.
- Mindstar Mastery allows any non-arcanist to become a Magic Knight wielding psionic Laser Blades.
- Make an Example of Them: One piece of lore, written during the period where mages were actively persecuted, suggested that those who sympathize with mages who 'mysteriously vanish' (as mage sympathizing technically wasn't illegal at the time) can serve as this.
- Me's a Crowd: Temporal Wardens have a few abilities that let them call on versions of themselves from alternate timelines for temporary aid.
- Mind Manipulation: A specialty of the yeek and yaech races. There's a gang of land-dwelling yaechs that use it to run a slaving ring.
- Mind Rape: The mind damage type does this to enemies. Cursed do it naturally, by means of an aura of palpable bad mojo called a Gloom that surrounds them and constantly forces all enemies that draw near to make saves to avoid being overwhelmed by it.
- Monty Haul: The amount of treasure behind the sealed doors in Dreadfell and the guaranteed gigantic equipment stash in the Vor Armoury mean that you seriously won't have to upgrade your equipment ever again. If, that is, you can put up with the ultra-powerful goons in there, seeing how these are the equivalent of Angband's greater vaults.
- More Dakka: Temporal Wardens can pull off an archery-based version of this with combination of Speed Control, Arrow Stitching, Arrow Echoes, and Warden's Call. It's easy to have multiple arrows in the air at the same time.
- Multiple Endings: Upon defeating the Big Bad Duumvirate, you will have multiple choices on what to do with their evil portal. If you were able to interrupt the ritual at the Charred Scar, that's that, but if they were able to finish that ritual, you will be forced to choose whether Aeryn or yourself performs a Heroic Sacrifice to close it. Also, if your character is a Yeek, you have an additional option to sacrifice yourself to use the portal to forcefully convert the rest of the world to The Way. Later versions of the game add a second ending option for Yeek characters, where you succeed in stopping the Sorcerers' ritual at the Charred Scar, and at the end allow yourself to be killed by Aeryn to prevent The Way from taking over the world.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Unlocking the doomelf race requires killing the only three demons who have been on Eyal since before the Spellblaze, effectively eliminating any chance of the demons learning that their planet's destruction was largely an accident, and that in any case only the Shaloren were at fault for it. Maybe not a bad idea if you're a Shalore, but otherwise..
- Given that one of them explicitly states that she doesn't care about that, and the others are MIA, it wouldn't help.
- Not Using the 'Z' Word: Most fantasy worlds give necromancers zombies and skeletons for their expendable goons. Here, it's ghouls and skeletons. Probably justified on account of ghouls being known for their endless hunger for humanoid flesh; that's not something voodoo zombies (i.e. the source of the word 'zombie') were known for, but very much so for the original ghuls of Arabian and Persian lore, even if they were demons rather than undead.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Elandar and Argoniel are trying to use the Staff of Absorption to summon Gerlyk back, in hopes that he'll destroy the hopelessly strife-addled world and rebuild it in a better, not-nearly-as-strife-prone form.
- One Bad Mother: Tragic example in the (now-Dummied Out) Orc Breeding Pit. After the Orc Pride was nearly obliterated at the close of the Age of Pyre, the last remaining orcish medical sciences expert came up with the idea of turning a good chunk of the remaining orcish women into comatose baby generators. Which involved imbuing them with blight-corrupted blood, causing them to generate multiple generative/sexual organs, and produce and bear young at a frankly ridiculous rate. When the clinician put one of the Orc Mothers out of her coma to check on her mental situation, her sheer agony, from both her monstrified form and the pain of the new generative organs squashing up all her other organs, brought home the enormity of the act to him, and he was Driven to Suicide. The military captain who came to check up on him, sadly, failed to understand what had horrified him—the plan was an astounding success for the Pride, after all. And as for the Mothers' pain..well, a doping infusion should fix that, right?
- One Stat to Rule Them All: Willpower for Solipsists. Willpower is used to determine mindpower, maximum psi capacity, and mental save. All Solipsist talents have their effectiveness keyed to mindpower, the Solipsism talent lets them absorb damage to psi, and another talent lets them use mental save in place of physical or spell saves.
- Our Demons Are Different: Ashes of Uh'rok reveals that the Demons were once peaceful and enlightened aliens, but were intimidated by the Sher'tul into depowering their god, allowing the Sher'tul to place portals on their planet for trade.. which worked out pretty decently until the Spellblaze turned the portals into magical bombs, turning their home of Mal'Rok into a charred, shattered wasteland. Ever since, the Demons have been obsessed eith taking revenge on not just the Sher'tul (believing the accident to have been deliberate betrayal), but anyone they suspect of carrying their 'taint', which unfortunately for you includes all the mortal races.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Pretty much; stout, strong, tough and greedy miners who live in the mountains. One quirk, however, is that the dwarven kingdom (the Iron Throne) is one of the rare factions that openly uses both natural and arcane magic equally, and the only class to wield both is the Dwarven Stone Warden. The tradition of nonmagical dwarves is downplayed: Dwarves as a whole are not very good at magic, but they do employ it and have no axe to grind with either side of the Spellhunt - 'gold doesn't take sides.'
- However, the Drem, mutated faceless dwarves, are quite different. Most are mindless but a sapient group were added with the Forbidden Cults DLC so they are now a playable race. Their common origin is also quite atypical: Dwarves are the descendents of a spacefaring high-tech race, with the original generations being created by a cloning system in a crashed and buried spaceship; over time the machine has malfunctioned, which is how Drem came to exist.
- Our Elves Are Better: They come in High Elf (Shaloren) and Wood Elf (Thaloren) varieties, but only the Rhaloren (Shaloren renegades) actually act like they're better. The rest of the Shaloren mostly try to keep their heads down to avoid another crusade.
- Our Ogres Are Hungrier:
- Ogres in Maj'Eyal were created by the Conclave's Overseers to serve as soldiers and laborers by way of loading conventional Humans up with a combination of runic and natural energies, and are accordingly enormously strong and unconcerned with most higher intellectual pursuits. This doesn't mean they're dumb; they're more than capable of mastering the runic magic they're dependent on to live, and in general can do scholarly tasks if they have to, but would rather solve their problems through tried-and-true methods like brute force. They've gotten along very well with the Shaloren elves, having taken refuge with them to avoid extermination during the Spellhunt, but are only recently starting to come back from the brink of extinction.
- Krogs are an offshoot of ogres, created by the Ziguranth from ogre defectors through replacing the ogres' usual runes with drake blood and infusions. They are inherently antimagical and are fanatical about abolishing magic. They aren't as talented with infusions as ogres are with runes, but they have limited draconic powers and are far more aggressive in channeling their native wrath, particularly against arcane foes.
- Our Orcs Are Different: Maj'Eyal's Orcs are essentially Tolkienian, though they're of human intelligence and very capable with magic (in particular, Blood Magic was an orcish invention). They're believed to have been wiped out in the Age of Pyre, but survivors occasionally pop up from time to time in Maj'Eyal. They actually control most of the Far East, and have also seized the Dwarven citadel of Reknor in Maj'Eyal.
- Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles: There are a few underwater levels with stationary (and depleteable) bubbles that you have to travel between to avoid suffocation if you don't have a way to just breathe water outright.
- Perception Filter: Lore-wise, this is a Required Secondary Power of the Writhing One class from Forbidden Cults as a Hand Wave to explain why plot-critical NP Cs arn't running away from you screaming.
- Pet the Dog:
- One piece of lore details how the Ziguranth once saved the life of an Alchemist accused of poisoning her town's elder, despite her use of minor arcane magic. (Though they did manage to persuade her that her mutiliation at the hands of the mob was her own fault for using magic in the first place.)
- The Ziguranth also don't blame those who are touched by the arcane through no choice of their own; in those cases, they genuinely want to help. They accept ogres into their ranks, replacing the runes that keep them alive with all-natural mad science, and try to free Melinda from her curse when she's tainted by demonic magic.
- Through all the demons' horrific alteration projects and sadistic tortures, there's one they seem to genuinely regret: turning dollegs, once a sort of cross between a golden retriever and a pack mule, into ruthless killing machines. 'Of all the sacrifices we've had to make for our war, it may be the loss of our gentle companions that troubles us the most.'
- Plague Master: Reavers and Corruptors can develop a set of disease talents which inflict damage over time and stat debuffs.
- Playing with Syringes: A sign of sufficiently advanced magical study is that mages start doing this. Angolwen is pretty much the only exception, and they don't use the widespread Magitek of older civilizations either.
- Tannen of Last Hope is experimenting on Disposable Vagrants and the Sher'Tul farportals.
- The Orc Broodmothers were created by a desperate orcish scientist trying to stave off extinction.
- In the Age of Allure, this was nearly universal. Both the Nargol Empire and the Conclave experimented on humans and other races, along with other delving into magics that they really shouldn't.
- Doomelves are what you get when the demons get to play with Shaloren.
- Even the Ziguranth get in on this, though for a nobler reason than most: Their ideology forbids the use of arcane magic, but Ogres can't survive without runes boosting their artificially-enhanced bodies. They experimented on ogre volunteers who wanted to reject magic until they came up with Krogs, an offshoot of the species empowered by nature instead of magic.
- Poor Communication Kills: The Ogres in the Conclave Vault simply start attacking when they realize that you aren't Conclave. They aren't automata, either, so if even one of them had retained enough brain capacity to talk to you for two minutes, there would have been no reason to fight.
- The Power of Hate: Afflicted run off of it.
- Powers Do the Fighting: There's a lot of ways to do this. One way is to stack damage-when-hit effects such as Elemental Armor and let your opponents kill themselves. Other tricks involve spells that automatically attack enemies on their own. The Anorithil in particular are famous for the latter, since their Hymn of Moonlight gives them automatic darkness blasts and their Corona ability projects multiple light or darkness bolts when you get a Critical Hit, and Anorithils are critical machines. The end result is that, so long as you kept your energy full, you could burn entire zones to the ground on autopilot (until a later patch toned down the critical boost on one key buff).
- Precursors: The Sher'tul were the world's ruling race during the Age of Haze, when even halflings (the first modern race to establish an empire) were still living in caves. Their Lost Technology remains today, powered by alien forces that no magician of later Ages can understand (though the Forbidden Cults are trying).
- Protection Mission: Unlocking the yeek race; you have to defeat Subject Z (but not as a halfling) without letting the Yeek Wayist die. Then you have to do this as a yeek to unlock the mindslayer class.
- Proud Scholar Race: The Shaloren are immortal high elves with a vast talent for magic, and most of them choose to remain aloof from the affairs of the shorter-lived races.
- Proud Warrior Race:
- Halflings are an example of the soldier variation. Not only were they the first post-Sher'tul race to establish an empire (through armies as much as through sorcery and science), but they also retain their methodical and militaristic instincts even in the modern day, when most are simply peasant farmers.
- Orcs, of course, live to fight and test their abilities. A quirk in the formula is that they consider magicians to be perfectly respectable so long as they use their talents for war.
- Psychic Powers: Available to Mindslayers and Solipsists, though the two classes use completely different ability sets.
- Rage Against the Heavens: During the Age of Haze, the Sher'tul went on a crusade against the gods to put an end to their selfish manipulation of mortal life. One of the hunters and his current quarry are still at it, in the form of the Infinite Dungeon—the trickster god in question keeps creating new dungeon levels to delay the hunter, who keeps slicing through the goons and traps.
- Then again, according to Word of God, the real reason most of the Sher'tul decided to go on a deicide spree was that, being the creations of Amakthel, they had a measure of his dominant personality traits. Namely, pride, arrogance, powerlust, and a general unwillingness to have any peers or superiors, only subjects. The only divinity they spared was a sea goddess who had no interest in terrestrial dominion. Note: She's not Amakthel.
- They also spared Urh'Rok, in the sense that they let the demons seal him. Note that he didn't even have any interest in Eyal - they had to go looking for him.
- Quirky Bard: Paradox Mages' abilities are weird, and no other class can match them in controlling the battlefield or performing trick plays. But their defenses are subpar, their escape abilities limited, and while they can do decent damage when they finally attack, their attack spells won't carry the game for them. Players can and have won with them, but they're not an easy class to win with.
- Since a rework a few years back the Paradox mage is now considered one of the better classes. They have several viable builds for high-difficulty play. The Damage Over Time attack of the 'Flux' tree is one of the best attacks in the game, and the alternative 'Stasis' build has a lot of ways of shutting down enemies.
- Randomly Generated Loot: So very, very much.
- Taken to a whole level with The Wondrous Emporium in Last Hope. If you save the shopkeeper in an early optional quest, then get to Far East and back, and then pay a hefty sum in gold, the shopkeeper will create a randomly generated item of the basic type of your choice (axe, gloves, armour, slingshot, you name it). This item is always top-tier and, unless the RNG is really generous later, one of the best items of its type you'll find in one game. The gold price is really high though - in most games, you can afford no more than two such items throughout the whole game.
- The Red Mage: Anorithils. They use both light and darkness-based celestial magic, giving them amazing healing and defensive capabilities along with nuclear-level attack capabilities once they get going. They have a very simple playstyle (barrier of light, blasts of darkness, heal when weak), but suffer from a lack of utility powers or trickery.
- Regenerating Mana: The game has a number of different resources. Stamina and psi points always regenerate on their own, albeit slowly. Mana points, however, only regenerate naturally for certain classes; otherwise, you need to get lucky with equipment drops or rely on the Level Up Fill Up. The other resources don't regenerate; you have to fulfill their particular esoteric requirements to get more of them.
- The Remnant: The Conclave Vault is filled with loyal personnel who, having been in stasis and sealed underground, never got the memo that the war ended thousands of years ago, and the Conclave doesn't really exist anymore.
- Rising Empire: The Allied Kingdoms. Ever since the Orcs were rendered extinct in Maj'Eyal, and the human and halfling kingdoms united under Toknor and Mirvenia, the Allied Kingdoms have been rebuilding from the Age of Pyre, exploring the ruins of the past, and rediscovering the power of magic.
- The Sacred Darkness: The Negative energy that the Anorithil wield along with Positive.
- Sanity Meter: Downplayed in Forbidden Cults. The Demented meta-class uses Insanity, which can be consumed to use some abilities, but also turns your other spells into Randomized Damage Attacks.
- Screw You, Elves!: The Shaloren Elves suffered a massive drop in popularity after the Spellblaze. The Thaloren Elves are more tolerated due to their preference to nature over magic, but most of the other races are still suspicious of them.
- Serial Killer: The Cursed in a nutshell. For the most part (like the one slaughtering lumberjacks, who you have to stop in order to play Cursed yourself), they're Hedonistic-thrill. Presumably, your Cursed are either instead or additionally Mission Based.
- Schmuck Bait: Go ahead, give the Master's staff to the Apprentice Mage and see what happens.
- Shout-Out: The endgame quest is named Falling Toward Apotheosis
- Square Race, Round Class:
- The randomly-generated rare enemies get talents from a random class. This can result in things like an eel being a deadly archer or a slime blob pummeling you with Brawler talents.
- You yourself can play class combinations that make no sense from a lore perspective. For example, a Halfling Celestial is a valid PC, even though before the events of the game, Celestial magic was restricted to the Sunwall (whose population is composed solely of humans and elves).
- Squishy Wizard: Played with. In general, every spellcasting class has ways of averting this, and any successful player will go out of their way to do this. In the early game, or without taking advantage of your defenses, wizard classes do tend to fit this. And shields or not, nothing's going to keep a Yeek Archmage or Paradox Mage from fitting this trope.
- Stable Time Loop: The Temporal Rift in the Daikara was formed by your Temporal Warden PC being killed by your future self. Or something.
- Story Breadcrumbs: Lots, mostly journal entries. They rarely end well.
- Sword and Fist: The Flexible Combat 'prodigy' gives you a free unarmed attack after every strike.
- Suffer the Slings:
- Prior to 1.2.0 Archers could choose to concentrate on sling talents. You lose some of the AOE talents of bow archers, but gain some extra control in the form of Eye Shot (which blinds an opponent) and Inertial Shot (a handy knockback). Slings use Cunning for their damage instead of Strength, and therefore can be especially useful for Halflings or Yeeks.
- 1.2.0 added Skirmishers, who use slings in tandem with shields. Slings use Cunning for their damage instead of Strength, and therefore can be especially useful for Halflings or Yeeks.
- As of 1.5.0 the Archer has sling specialisations again, based on close-range agile combat rather than long-distance sniping.
- Super Drowning Skills: Technically, the game uses an Oxygen Meter system for both players and NPCs, but in practice the rules are wildly different for each. NPCs in towns, for example, don't move on their own, but if the player walks into them they'll swap places. This means it's possible for players to move them step by step into any nearby water sources, where they'll continue not moving and eventually drown. This is considered by some as a viable strategy for collecting minor loot to sell for pocket change.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: As mentioned above, while it's possible to drown, there are plenty of ways for the player to avoid it. Players can avoid drowning by taking breaks in oxygen bubbles, wearing equipment for breathing underwater, or simply not needing to breathe in the first place.
- Additionally, NPCs who are supposed to be underwater will, understandably, be able to breathe underwater.
- Surrounded by Idiots: If the signs are anything to go by, the Master of Dreadfell feels like this a lot.
- Swallowed Whole:
- The Wyrmic can do this using Sand Drake powers, instantly killing an enemy.
- Writhing Ones love doing this, devouring and slowly digesting weakened enemies.
- There are multiple Sand Worm type enemies who can do this to you, along with tentacle trees doing the same thing. In this case, you can fight your way out of their guts.
- Teleport Spam: Paradox Mages can engage in this, including moving their opponents around with Banish and Wormhole.
- The Power of Hate: The source of the abilities of Cursed and Doomed characters. If you're Cursed, your hatred oozes out of you in a constant debuffing cloud. For Doomed characters, their hateful mind lashes out at their enemies.
- There Are No Rules: The only rule of Kroshkkur is maintaining the secrecy of the fortress and the research within. There are no constraints on the subjects or methods of research, and no obligation to defend the fortress.
- The Worm That Walks: A Writhing One ability let's you summon one of these as a traveling companion, complete with his own inventory equipment slots.
- Time Crash:
- The result of a Paradox malfunction. If you build up too much Paradox and use a temporal effect, weird and unpredictable stuff can happen.
- How one unlocks Paradox Mages in the first place. If you're playing a Temporal Warden and explore the Daikara, you encounter your future self and have to fight him. You unlock the class by being killed by your future self. The event nullifies itself, kills your future self, and creates a temporal rift as the universe divides by zero.
- Time Master: Time Wardens and Paradox Mages. Abilities include the typical 'speed up, slow down, and stop creatures' but also some stranger ones like Help Yourself in the Future and Ret Gone.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Paradox Mages' powers don't even obey the rules of sanity, let alone causality. For example, one spell lets you call a future self of yours back in time to help you, and the future self can be killed without affecting you..and at the end of the spell, you're pulled back in time, and you can let your past self be killed, and that also doesn't affect you. And yes, both your future self and past self can die in the same casting of the spell, while you continue to exist.
- Turned Against Their Masters: The writer of the necromancer primer anticipates this to happen to the would-be rulers of the Blighted Ruins. If you play a ghoul or skeleton, you actually bring it about — you start out inside a broken summoning circle with a terrified (but hostile) necromancer shouting orders at you, and it all goes downhill from there.
- Turns Red: The Rat Lich, boss of the Forsaken Crypt Bonus Dungeon. Once you kill it once, it immediately resurrects with double health, the ability to summon an infinite amount of rat minions, and tons of high level spells.
- Unequal Rites: The Arcane does not have a good reputation in Maj'eyal, particularly among nature-focused groups like the Ziguranth and Thaloren, and the Wild Gifts include a lot of abilities that are good against the arcane. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule, however, and not all wilders follow Antimagic. Furthermore, this rivalry doesn't exist in orcish or dwarven cultures, and Dwarven Stone Wardens even combine the two talents.
- Unlockable Content: Most classes and a few races start out locked, and must be unlocked by completing in-game achievements. This is for three reasons: to avoid an Interface Spoiler before players have learned enough of the game's lorenote , to provide a sense of accomplishment to players who unlock them, and most importantly, to keep new players from being overwhelmed by the sheer variety of possible race/class combinations, each of which plays completely differently.
- Unwinnable: This can happen if you kill Aerwyn the Sun Paladin before she tells you about the slime tunnel. You need to go through the tunnel in order to reach the final dungeon.
- If you do the following, the special quest where there's an electric storm cloud above Derth becomes impossible to finish.
- Pick up the quest.
- Get Antimagic at Zigur, so you can't get help from Angolwen to dispel the cloud.
- Kill their leader, so you can't get help from Zigur to dispel the cloud.
- Complain that it's impossible.
- If you do the following, the special quest where there's an electric storm cloud above Derth becomes impossible to finish.
- Villainous Valor: In the Ashes of Urh'Rok expansion, the first Quasit Squad Leader you encounter intends to hold the line against what he knows to be an impossible fight, buying time until his allies can cut off the portals and oxygen to the platform you're both on, condemning both of you to suffocation so you can't cause any more damage. It's almost a shame you get to him before he can finish writing his order for a courier. Demons in general are prone to self-sacrifice for the good of their comrades; Lithfengel subjected himself to an unsafe experiment to spare any other test subjects from the consequences of failure, and Wretchlings fully embrace their role as expendable distractions.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Ziguranth seek to protect the world from the dangers of magic (and they have a point, since reckless use of magic led to the Spellblaze), but they are very indiscriminate in who they attack. The Rhaloren seek to end the oppression and bigotry that the Shaloren have suffered since the Spellblaze..by subjugating the rest of the races.
- Tannen is another, seeking to run all sorts of unethicalexperiments with the full knowledge that his peers and society at large wouldn't approve; his justification is that adherence to experimental ethics prevented study of the Sher'Tul farportals, contributing to the Spellblaze, and someone needs to catalogue the risks, hazards, and applications of taboo subjects before desperation pushes someone to toying with them anyway. The problems arise with his guiltless abduction of new test subjects, and when the hero's existence threatens to cut off his funding, jeopardizing his experiments.. If that's not enough, he got the demon's help to try to reconstruct farportal, thinking he can use the demons to his end, but it end up being reverse: the demons are using him to study how the portal works so that they can make one to fully invade the world.
- What the Hell, Hero?: One literal achievement in 'Unneshasshhary Kryl'ty' where a Possessor Class possessing the body of the demon Shasshhiy'Kaish kills the demon Kryl'Feijan (her love); and or vice-versa. The first makes Kryl'Feijan's body cry (indicated that the possessed are in an And I Must Scream situation) and the second makes her comment on how she knows how cruel people on your planet is; and that she'll revive her body and Kryl'Feijan eventually and will get revenge.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Apparently, this happens a lot to mages who practice lots and lots of Lightning magic. Exhibit A: Urkis.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: The Sher'tul fortress needs to be powered up by dumping objects in its reactor core. This produces useless gold as an undesirable byproduct, and is thus given to you to dispose of as you see fit.
- Yin-Yang Bomb: The Anorithil use both Positive and Negative energy.
- Zombie Puke Attack: Ghouls have the Retch ability, which creates a large puddle that heals undead and harms others in an inverted Revive Kills Zombie.
The Embers of Rage DLC provides examples of:
- Abusive Precursors / Benevolent Precursors: Strictly speaking, the Weissi are nothing but helpful to you, and wholeheartedly share your goal of liberating the Orcs and stopping Amakthel's rebirth. They're also very clear that this is only because they intend to return someday, and to secure their existence by dividing the planet into feuding factions, ending in a massive war which will leave its only survivor weak enough for them to defeat. The Orcs just happen to be one of those factions, which would have otherwise been absorbed into a larger, more formidable nation.
- And I Must Scream: The Weissi carry out their plans through psychic precognition that is so potent and detailed it is essentially the same as experiencing the events. Meaning they have lived through every timeline in which they were exterminated and felt exactly how much the universe wants to erase them. Small wonder they've gone a little bent.
- Antimagical Faction: The Menders are mentioned as having taken the place of the Ziguranth, as Zigur was destroyed after the last game after the Ziguranth started resorting to terrorism against the Allied Kingdoms. Unlike the Ziguranth, their methodology is to promote natural alternatives to arcane magic, possibly even developing a synthesis between magic and nature that won't harm Eyal or risk another Spellblaze, and otherwise to act as a lobbying group for nature. They've also developed some pretty fine natural drugs for sale.
- Anti-Frustration Features: an interesting example is that several quests in Embers of rage are like versions of quest in vanilla with the frustrations removed.
- The 'yeti-meat' quests are like a less-annoying versions of the escort quests, in that the rewards are additional talent or category choices/stat bonuses not normally available to your character. The frustration-relieving bits are a)no need for painful Escort Missions with fragiles, slow escorts and and b) You can choose which perks instead of the random selection from each escort.
- The Ritch hive is similar to the sandworms burrows in that it involves fighting invertebrates in sandy tunnels that can collapse in on themselves. The anti-frustration features here are that you can dig your own tunnels this time as opposed to relying on erratically-burrowing sandworms.
- Asskicking Equals Authority: The Chief Councillor of the Steam Giants isn't directly elected; the voters choose the competition that the candidates will participate in to decide the Chief. Chief Councillor Tantalos was elected by a contest of fisticuffs. His opposing candidate didn't campaign, but one group campaigned for a Tabletop Wargaming platform. This is generally a negative portrayal and a perversion of how the Atmos Tribe's elections were supposed to go.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: The Steam Giants' Councillors are, one and all, Elite Bosses who are even stronger than Aeryn.
- Beware the Silly Ones: There's a reason you're repeatedly warned that Nektosh the One-Horned, an undead minotaur who thinks he's part-unicorn, has a beam spell that tends to blow holes through mountains. It's the most powerful attack in the game on its first shot, dealing an utterly unsurvivable amount of damage (barring a few edge cases). Unsurprising, considering he stuck a Sher'Tul death-wand in his horn..
- Bonus Boss: Maltoth the Mad, a time-shifted possible version of the Scourge from the West.
- Boomerang Bigot: The High Priest of Amakthel hates all Sher'Tul, including himself, for the crime of turning against their god. He fully expects - even wants - Amakthel to destroy him for the sins of his people. Interestingly, it's unclear whether Amakthel shares his opinion, as the reawakening god helps him out to the limit of His ability in the final battle.
- Chainsaw Good: Sawbutchers use steam-powered circular saws in battle, often heating them red-hot for extra damage.
- Climax Boss: Aeryn the Sun Paladin, ruler of the Sunwall and arch-enemy of the orcs. After she bites it, the Steam Giant Chief Councilor panics and rushes off to the Loyalist.
- Cutting Off the Branches:
- Aeryn's status as a story boss means she canonically survived the final battle of the main campaign.
- Zigur survived the main campaign, though it was destroyed afterwards because the Ziguranth couldn't tolerate the alliance between the Allied Kingdoms and the Sunwall.
- Averted in the time pocket. When you fight Maltoth the Mad, the Hero of Maj'Eyal and Scourge from the West, you're fighting a character from a possible universe and not necessarily the actual Scourge from your world's past.
- Cyborg: Instead of infusions or runes, steamtech uses implants; steam generators and medical injectors are implanted into the user's body. An implanted generator is necessary to use steam power, so all Tinkers qualify as this. Additionally, the expansion adds six new Prodigies (available to anyone who meets the prerequisite, not just tinkers), most of them themed around cybernetic implants.
- Cycle of Revenge: Orcs and every other race in Eyal have been fighting genocidal wars against each other for Ages. Since the main campaign ended in the near-annihilation of the Orc race, this iteration involves an Orcish war of extermination against the Sunwall. Many fragments of lore from the human side claim that they wanted to make peace with the surviving orcs after that, and to forgive the orcs for the past, but their actions suggest otherwise.
- Fantasy Gun Control: Averted by Gunslingers and Psyshots, though this technology is canonically limited to the Atmos Tribe and the Kruk Pride. Gunpowder doesn't seem to exist, however - steamguns use steam pressure to shoot sling bullets.
- Final Solution: Humans' policy towards orcs is either an internment camp under psychic domination, or extermination. They're trying the former as a more merciful option than the latter, now that most of orc-kind has been wiped out.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Steam technology is unknown in Maj'Eyal proper. Tinker characters can nonetheless be unlocked for the Age of Ascendancy campaign; this option is 'not lore-canonical, but fun!' Likewise, tinkers can appear as escorts in Maj'Eyal, and you can learn their abilities (which in turn causes tech items to become available in the main campaign for that playthrough).
- The Zigur are a Knight TemplarAntimagical Faction who punish even the smallest use or even collaboration with magic with a painful death. They send (randomly-generated) patrols out who will hunt down and attack any magic-using characters. These patrols have random player skills, and can contain archmages, necromancers, demonologists, and the like, all of them wielding magical staves and arcane-powered items.
- Genius Bruiser: The Steam Giants are supposed to be a race of these; a highly-advanced and intelligent race of giants. Their leader..doesn't really live up to the ideal; he's a combination of a brutish thug, a Smug Snake and an Upper-Class Twit.
- Going Cosmic: The ending abruptly shifts gears from the Kruk Pride's two-front war for survival to an ancient evil trying to resurrect his God, seeking to atone for his race's deicide spree. The only connection to the previous war is that Councillor Tantalos traded the MacGuffin to the Loyalist for power.
- Gray and Grey Morality: The Kruk Pride is fighting for the survival of their species. To ensure their survival, they're willing to wipe out humanity across Var'Eyal. Meanwhile, the Sunwall have attempted to put all surviving orcs in internment camps under mind control, because the alternative is to deal with vengeful orcs trying to wipe them out for the Scourge's destruction of the Prides. It becomes Black and Grey Morality once the Sher'tul enter the picture.
- Guns Akimbo: Gunslingers use paired steamguns in battle.
- Hero Antagonist:
- Haze Commander Parmor, general of the Steam Giants, is a decent person who is just trying to save her people from the disastrous consequences of Tantalos' attack on the Kruk Pride. She also despises the Chief Councilor, and refuses to waste any parts on repairing his teapot.
- Aeryn, leader of the Sun Paladins, helped save the world in the last game. Now she's defending her people - problem is, your people are her people's hereditary enemies, and you've been committing genocide against each other for Ages.
- Hypocrite: The Steam Giants turned against Kruk's Pride because the orcs used their steam-tech as a weapon. The majority of Steam Giants use steam weapons. This is taken to cartoonish levels when you consider the fact that the orcs adapted this weaponry out of sheer self-defense, when the Atmos Tribe refused to help defend them against another orc army's invasion. Actually, the motivation is that Chief Councilor Tantalos wants the steam vents underneath the Pride's current location and doesn't care to negotiate with the orcs.
- Item Crafting: Tinkers do this a lot, turning monster bits, gems and scraps of metal into new devices.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Bits of lore reveal that the Ziguranth, already extreme Well Intentioned Extremists, did not take the Allied Kingdoms' alliance with the very much magical Sun Paladins well.
- Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Ever since Garkul, the great unifier of the orcs, was killed, the Kruk Pride have been treated like crap because their focus was always on support and logistics. Garkul was a brilliant general who understood and respected that an army fights on its stomach, but later generations of orcs have only seen a bunch of orcs who spend their time building things and providing food, instead of killing humans like real orcs.
- Lord British Postulate: People have killed the god's body parts, that appears in the final plot battle using Mercy, a dagger that does percentage damage based on how much damage has already been done.
- Moral Myopia: King Tolak of the Allied Kingdoms claims that he tried to show mercy to the orcs and that your retaliation against the Sunwall is a sign that orcs feel nothing but a lust for death and destruction. Given that the Scourge from the West nearly wiped the race out, and that he's been supporting the use of internment camps, he's got very little room to talk - you can't unilaterally break a Cycle of Revenge when you dealt the last blow.
- No Blood for Phlebotinum: The Atmos Tribe are attacking Kruk's Pride in an attempt to take control of the steam vents under the Pride's territory.
- No Fourth Wall: The Pocket of Distorted Time has the Eidolon acting as Author Avatar and chatting about its role as a storyteller, and examining the possible Character Customization and possible events available to the Hero of Maj'Eyal from the previous game.
- No Kill Like Overkill: Kaltor's finest creation, DESTRUCTICUS, IMPOLITE PENETRATOR OF THE SKY, is designed as the ultimate luxury purchase for an upper-class society with a macho streak, and is specifically noted as being able to destroy 'golems smaller than a medium-sized village.' When you find it in the epilogue, the 'merciful' option involves launching it at a single imp.
- Oh, Crap!: Councilor Tantalos completely panics after the PC annihilates the Sunwall and kills Aeryn, and runs off to beg help from the Loyalist.
- Our Orcs Are Different: This expansion is all about the orc perspective. Orcs are generally no more evil than humans, and are divided by Prides based on specialization. The Kruk Pride is the last remaining Pride, having avoided the genocide of the other Prides because they specialized in logistics rather than combat, and they've also adapted the technology of the Atmos Tribe to their own purposes.
- Phlebotinum Rebel: Doombringers start by breaking away from their brainwashing when they realize they are about to be used to invade their former home. After killing the demons in their way using their dark powers they return to Eeyal to begin adventuring like everyone else.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: You can meet a possible version of the Scourge from the West, the hero of the Age of Ascendancy campaign, in a pocket of distorted time, courtesy of the author bending the fourth wall to bring your legend and that of the Hero of Maj'Eyal together. Cutting Off the Branches is averted; while Maltoth the Mad is a defined character, the Eidolon makes it clear that there is no canonical Hero of Maj'Eyal, since the story can be retold an infinite number of times.
- 'The Reason You Suck' Speech: King Tolak's Condemnation is one by letter, where he delivers his statement that he had tried to show mercy to the orcs, but that all that exists in the orc heart is rage and death. He further urges the PC to come and challenge the armies of the Allied Kingdoms. (You have other things to do, however.)
- Sequence Breaking: Aside from such things as your level, there's nothing forcing you to actually go ahead and pick a fight with the Sunwall. However, if you defeat the Atmos Tribe without challenging the Sunwall, the game won't recognize it: Councilor Tantalos will still be an abomination, the Loyalist will still be on his way to restoring Amakthel and the ending will talk about how you slaughtered the humans of the Sunwall.
- Shout-Out: The name of the final quest is another Babylon Five reference. This time it's Deconstruction of Falling Stars.
- Smug Snake: Councilor Tantalos combines the worst parts of slimy politician and would-be dictator, and doesn't mind mocking his rival councilor's bruises after beating him up in a contest. And that's before he rushes off to the Loyalist and becomes an abomination.
- Steam Punk: Atmos Tribe technology (and by extension that of the Kruk Pride) runs on steam. Spinning sawblades and steam-powered guns are the most common weapons, and steam in general is another power source much like psionics, nature and magic.
- Un-person: Something is doing this to the Weissi, most likely an exceptionally thorough bad-luck curse; however, their psychic precognition makes them precisely aware of the curse's limits, allowing them to set plans in place to recreate themselves through layers upon layers of indirect intervention. If this doesn't work, their Plan B is to spread as much evidence of their existence around the universe as possible, in hopes that the reality that's so insistent on destroying them will destroy itself in the process.
- Upper-Class Twit: Tantalos insists on having his steam-powered teapot functional at all costs, even on a trip to the center of the Earth.
- Was Once a Man: Tantalos the Abomination and the sher'tan were once Steam Giants, now transformed by the Sher'Tul High Priest into monstrous creatures.
- Yet Another Stupid Death: The achievement 'We Weren't Kidding!' is awarded for dying to Nektosh the One-Horned's extremely obviousOne-Hit Kill. What pushes this into YASD territory is that the achievement is only awarded if you had no movement-or-control-impairing debuffs on you, meaning you stood in the brightly-colored targeting path for several turns of your own free will.
Tales Of Middle Earth (TOME 1 / 2 / 3) provides examples of:
- Anti-Grinding: Completely averted. Want to spend a few decades loitering around at the bottom of the Sandworm Lair, looking for potions that will get you additional stats and spellbooks that you need for progression? Not only allowed, but encouraged. You do have a time limit in the name of food et all, but this is averted due to the ease of teleporting in and out of dungeons.
- Bonus Dungeon: Several. Only a few dungeons are actually required for the main game, the rest are optional but have bosses with set drops of varying use. Playing the trope more straight is The Void, a huge dungeon with enemies that are scaled (somewhat unfairly) to your own level, and with no air — finding an item that makes it so you don't need to breathe is a major part of the early postgame.
- Escaped from Hell: Playing as a Lost Soul, one has to fight their way from the Halls of the Dead. It's..very unlikely that you succeed, but if you do, you'll be WELL on your way to leveling up enough to beat the game.
- Excuse Plot: Averted. The 2.X series follows the Tolkien worldverse somewhat closely, having the character go through the quest of the ring, ultimately destroying it on Mt. Doom — or dooming the world by putting it onnote . There's a Playable Epilogue after destroying the ring that involves you finding your way into the Bonus Dungeon to kill Mograth's soul itself.
- Final Death: There is a rare one shot item called the Blood of Life that will bring you back to life — once — if you die; and ultra-high level Necromancy can do this, but other than that, once you die, you're dead.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: A combat option for Loremasters. Monks specialize in it, but Loremasters and Possessors can do it as well. Gives bonuses to dodging as long as you avoid heavy armor, but also scales very well and avoids the problems (and benefits) of weapons. In addition, Possessor forms such as, say, Dragons are technically unarmed, meaning that a Possessor with Barehand Combat skill an fight just as well in Dragon Form as Humanoid Form.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Played with. Wizards die a LOT early on, whereas Warriors.. die a LOT early on. Both can get to very respectable levels of power, but Warriors are far more reliant on items. Meanwhile, a Wizard that loses his or her spellbook.. ugh. Summoners, on the other hand..
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Part of the charm of the 2.X series — the sheer number of class / race / subrace / skillpoint build combinations are nearly endless. Some are incredibly powerful. Some.. aren't.
- Permanently Missable Content: By default off, but you can disable the system that protects unidentified artifacts from being lost, causing them to be lost forever if you leave a dungeon floor with them on (the tradeoff is that you are told, explicitly, that an artifact exists on a floor you enter). In addition, any artifact that is IDed and later lost is lost for good, even with this option on.
- Randomly Generated Levels: Everything not a town or special level. Dungeons do have themes, however — for example, the Orc Caves are, well, caves; the Sandworm Lair is a long twisty dungeon of nothing but sand (easily dug through). The 'Ironman' option changes the engine to always generate 'interesting' rooms — interesting as defined by special rooms filled with instant death.
- Randomly Drops: Very very random, although traditionally the best loot is found either on the floor of vaults or on Dragons (which can be scummed from Quylthulgs later in the game). 'RandArts', randomly generated artifacts, are also worth a mention, as they can be based on any basic item in the game and have a rather large number of stats.
- Warp Whistle: Scrolls of Word of Recall, as well as the various spell versions. Required for any dungeon dive past a few floors. Bring extras, cause they're not fireproof. (Unless they are.)
- Yet Another Stupid Death: Lots. Getting paralyzed by an eye is one of the top early ones, however, leaving you to slowly starve to death as the eye paralyzes you over and over again. Later on, anything that uses water attacks — as there is no water resistance in the game.
Index
So you're playing the lastest World of Warcraft expansion, Battle for Azeroth, and you've hit the new level cap of 120. Now what? While there's tons of endgame content to enjoy, one of the best activities you can partake in is World Quests. This feature, first introduced in the Legion expansion, lets you complete a rotating selection of quests spread across the map that will reward you with loot, gold, resources, and artifact power to make your character stronger. But you won't get access to them just by hitting 120; there are a few hoops to jump through first.
So just how do you unlock World Quests in Battle for Azeroth? Follow this guide and we'll show you.
Hit level 120
I know, I know. I just said you won't get access to World Quests simply from leveling to the new cap of 120. However, that is one part of the requirements to unlock World Quests. You can focus on this first and power your way through levels 110 - 120 as fast as possible, or you can multitask and earn XP while focusing on the other criteria we're about to dig into. Either way, your screen will need to have that lovely one-two-oh staring back at you. So, what's next?
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Reach Friendly status with your faction's three major allies
This will sound old hat to WoW veterans, but if you're new to the game, you might have heard the phrase 'rep farming' / 'rep grinding'. This refers to Reputation, a sort of secondary experience bar for your character.
While the Horde and Alliance are the two main factions in WoW, they aren't the only ones. So for example, doing quests for the Kirin Tor (a powerful assembly of mages) will earn you Reputation with that group. With most factions, you'll start off at Neutral rank. Earning enough Reputation will bring you up to Friendly status, then Honored, then Revered, and finally Exalted. If you ever want to check how far you are with your rep, just open the Reputation tab (default U).
To unlock World Quests in BfA, you'll need to reach Friendly with the three main factions associated with the new areas you'll be exploring. For the Horde, that's the Zandalari Empire, Talanji's Expedition, and the Voldunai. For the Alliance, it's the Proudmoore Admiralty, Storm's Wake, and the Order of Embers.
You should be able to reach Friendly relatively quickly just by doing a handful of quests in each zone. For Zandalari Empire rep, head to Zuldazar; for Talanji's Expedition, head to Nazmir; and for the Voldunai, head to (you guessed it) Vol'dun.
For the Proudmoore Admiralty, focus your efforts on Tiragarde Sound; for Storm's Wake, head north to Stormsong Valley; and for Order of Embers rep travel to Drustvar.
You can run around the world willy-nilly if you like, but the fastest way to reach Friendly with each of these factions is to follow the Battle for Azeroth main story quests. Unfortunately, WoW doesn't clearly mark which quests are main story quests. Still, if you follow instructions and don't wander off the beaten path, it should become clear pretty quickly.
If all else fails, you can download add ons (think of them like quasi-mods) to help you organize your quest log, or follow step-by-step guides at fansite Wowhead. Lastly, you'll need to..
Establish all three footholds as part of the War Campaign
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth's story is broken into two distinct chunks. There's the main story, full of beautifully-rendered, fully-voiced cutscenes, which tell the story of your faction recruiting either the nation of Kul Tiras if you're Alliance or the Zandalari Empire if you're Horde. Then there's the War Campaign, which is a bit more basic (meaning no cut-scenes, and relatively little voiceover), though no less time-consuming.
You'll get access to War Campaign quests early on, but you should only follow through on them up to the quest War of Shadows. After finishing that quest (it's the one where you send a follower on a mission that takes two hours), hold off on completing them until after you've reached Friendly with the factions listed in the previous section. If you're not sure where to begin, head to Nathanos Blightcaller in the Port of Zandalar if you're Horde, or Mathias Shaw in Boralus Harbor if you roll Alliance.
Similar to completing each zone's story content, you'll need to progress through the War Campaign missions until you've established a foothold in each of the three new zones. Basically, whatever team you play for, you're going to the other team's base and setting up camp. You can set up your first foothold at level 110, your second at level 114, and the third at level 118. Simply visit the War Campaign headquarters in your respective capital city to choose whichever you'd like to focus on and follow through on the quests you receive.
Enjoy World Quests
Once you've knocked out all three of the above criteria, you should see World Quests start populating your map. You can hover your mouse over a quest to see what you'll get from it, but in general expect artifact power (which unlocks extra traits on your Azerite Armor, essentially granting you access to miniature skill trees) and reputation. That's important because there's some really cool gear gated by your reputation status, and you'll need to be on extra good terms with the new factions if you want to unlock all Allied Races. So go on, get out there and enjoy World Quests!
Looking for more tips? Then be sure to check out our World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth - how to unlock every Allied Race and World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth - how to get secret battle pet Baa'l guides.
Tome4 Eor Zone Order
Posted by9 months ago
Archived
I just finished the Embers of Rage campaign, and I really loved almost everything about it. This is what I needed to enjoy ToME again, just playing through the same campaign with different classes wasn't working for me.
I loved everything about it.. except myself. My treatment of the Atmos was very poor, but at least it was somewhat motivated by their attack. I also had the option not to kill any civilians in the Vaporous Emporium, so that was something. I had no such option in Sunwall, or the Sunwall bridge outpost, despite finding numerous indications that Sunwall and the allied kingdoms could be reasoned with. By all appearances, I and the rest of the orcs are every bit as inherently evil as Tolak and Aeryn believe.
Embers Of Rage Zone Order Form
I also had a quest to murder the weapons merchant.. but I just never did that one. It seemed optional, even though I had no option to complete the quest without his death. So I'm wondering if it's possible to finish the campaign without ever going to Sunwall, despite what the quest log is telling me to do. Can I just skip that? And maybe the observatory too?
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