Age of Conan: Assassin Leveling Journal

Tips, tricks, theory, and my experience as I level an Assassin in the brutal world of Hyboria

Author: fazor3d

(Post title from a Foo-Fighters lyric)

I'm still around, and still kick'n. I've probably had a total of 2 hours play time in the last two weeks. Still level 50, but I've been working on my gathering/crafting quests. Haven't even done the lvl 50 destiny quest yet.

Apparently there's been problems with FtD since the last patch (8/19/08), but I'm lotus and too low to have it anyway. Ambush was apparently changed and is now awarding a stealth-attack if preformed from hide. The animation is also apparently bugged. I'm not specc'd into ambush, but if the stealth-attack is an intended change I may spec into it in the future.

Maybe I'll get back to focusing on leveling soon...though I'm in no big hurry. The way things are going, by the time I hit 80 I might be the only player left on the server. Oh well.

Well, I'm level 37 now, and as stated earlier (and in the title) I'm going lotus this time around. Since the 'ol blog's been slow, I thought I'd give some first impressions. Bear in mind that I still find the General Tree extreemely usefull considering my tendancy to forego questing/grinding to engage in random world PvP. Excellent Ballance, Escape Artist, and Agile Mind are all musts, in my opinion.

So as with Corruption, I'm near 40 and just now starting down the fun talent tree. As lotus, I feel a lot more underpowered this way, as some of the most desirable lotus feats (Golden Lotus Extract, Cat's Paw wich I'm now at 4/5, and Snap Kick) would be attainable by now had I not gone so deep in general right off the bat. But the thing is, I'm done in the general tree, so will quickly catch up in lotus. By 42 I'll have the afformentioned feats, then by 47 I'll go back and grab 5/5 in Deft Blades.

So damage wise, I feel weaker than a lot of equal-level assassins. Corruption assassins that didn't throw points in general really hit me hard. But lotus assassins are still easy to beat; they have their "sexy" feats but they expect them to work. When they kick you but you have EB up, it typically throws them off.

In three short levels I'll have my "survivability" feats, and once I grab Deft Blades I'll be putting out more damage. At this point, I still prefer corruption, but am enjoying myself as lotus (and, since I know what I'm doing now, have a Kill-to-Death ratio that's not in the black ;)). I'll keep ya posted.