Velious Faction Guide from a fellow Shammy

[Mortiis]

I personally haven't seen this posted yet. I quit sometime just after velious came out on live to focus on school and didn't get a chance to explore or choose sides.
I thought this would be a great intro to those like myself who are starting out.

If anyone else has anything to add p1999 wise please do so.


Great guide from Gikk the Unholy posted on the Shaman's Crucible.
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Hopefully this guide will help people new to velious on deciding what faction route to take. Generally people are either sided with giants, or sided with dragons and dorfs. It is possible, although difficult, to side with dragons and giants. It's also possible to side with giants and dorfs, but again, very difficult. As far as I know it is impossible to have decent faction with all 3.


Giants:


the city: As a city Kael sucks... pretty much the only useful things sold there are food and water (i've checked every vendor in the city probably 3 times, NO bandages anywhere). In fact i tried to find some kind of containters to buy here, and the only vendor that sells them is behind tormax (meaning you need hard-to-get tormax faction to even get to him).

quests: Some good easy quests in kael. A 12ac 5agi 3dex shoulder piece that a lv 30 shaman could do in about 30 minutes, the 12ac 6wis belt (although this quest is broken at the moment), coldain skin gloves, and there are a few others. No matter what class you are, once you become amiable in kael there are a few easy to do quests that will give you some nice equipment upgrades. For higher end players, there are some excellent quests involving fairly common drops in dragon necropolis and western wastes.

travel: Being friendly in kael obviously makes it easy to travel through the city itself, and through Kael is the only way to get to the rest of the continent. Giant faction also makes it somewhat easier getting through eastern wastes and wakening lands.

how to faction: There are 3 seperate factions in Kael... frost giants (the bearded fellows), storm giants (the football player looking guys), and king tormax. The majority of the city is frost and storm giants (actual factions are kromrif and kromzek, never remember which is which). Storm and Frost giant faction can be gotten by killing dorfs. In the great divide, just outside of thurgadin, lots of coldain wolfmasters (~ lv 35) roam around, along with coldain wolves (~ lv 30). A good group around lv 40 can tear through these and get some good faction really quick. Killing mobs in skyshrine will give giant faction, but only frost giant, so this is not a good option. King Tormax faction is very difficult to get. You can kill Lord Yelinak, Velketor the Sorcerer, Dain Frostreaver, or the Dain's guards to get large increases in this faction. Otherwise you just have to do quests in Kael to bump it up slowly. Probably the quickest way is turning in coldain heads (uncommon drop by dorfs... you'd think each one would drop a head, no?) to one of the guys in the bank (forget which one). It took maybe 30-40 heads for my iksar to get from scowling to dubious. Dorf heads will also drop uncommonly from mobs in icewell keep underneath the caste.


Dorfs:


the city: Probably the best city in the game, sells everything you could possibly want all in one zone (except fishing poles, those are only sold in kael, go figure). If you're big into trade skills this city is a gold mine.... there's merchants for everything (even alchemy!).

quests: There are only 2 dorf quests to speak of, but they're both outstanding... the coldain ring quests and the shawl quests. The 10th (and final) ring will most likely be put in this next patch. Right now only the 4th shawl exists, but now that all the ring quests are in game they're working on completing the shawls. Make no mistake these are end game items, so they're nothing to blow off lightly. The best ring in the game is BY FAR the 10th coldain ring, with the 9th ring coming in second. I'd expect nothing less from the high ends shawls.

travel: Being friendly with dorfs offers no real advantage as far as being able to travel around velious.

how to faction: No need! Every race/class starts out non kos to dorfs. If you want better faction, killing giants will do the trick. If you want better Dain (the king of thurgadin) faction, killing tormax and his guards, or yelinak, will provide big faction boosts. Also the thurgadin quests all give Dain faction.


Dragons:


the city: As far as vendors go, Skyshrine isn't much better than Kael. Don't expect to do much more than bank and buy food/water here. The city itself however is massive, definately the largest city zone in the game.

quests: The skyshrine quests are not fully implemented yet, but they're being worked on. The easiest quest to do is the bracer of the hammerfall, a bracer that summons throwing hammers (a very usefull thing for pullers). The dragon tooth choker is harder to quest for, although not overly difficult, and is an very nice meele neck item. Recently the toolset delivery quests have been put in the game, and they result in outstanding items for meele, casters, and priests. The quest itself is fairly difficult, and is in fact broken at the moment. Hopefully VI isn't finished with skyshrine quests just yet.

travel: Dragon faction allows travelers to use the wakening lands and cobalt scar portal with more safety, since Wuoshi, wyverns, and cobalt drakes wont' kill dragon huggers on sight. Dragon faction also makes it easy to travel through skyshrine, and somewhat easier to travel through cobalt scar and western wastes. Sontolak is a huge, powerful see-invis dragon who guards the portal to the Temple of Veeshan, making entrance to this zone difficult without good faction. Mobs in the entrance and west wing of the temple of Veeshan are also on dragon faction. The west wing dragons give quests that are extremely difficult to complete, but the only item reported from them so far has a clarity effect, so it looks like they might be worth it.

how to faction: Dragons are probably the most difficult to gain faction with. The only way to get dragon faction (actually called "Claws of Veeshan") is to kill giants. Giants, unlike dorfs, are generally higher level and have a ton of hit points. This make mass genocide of giants for faction more difficult and time consuming. Once you get to indifferent however, you can turn in giant helms and toes for quests in skyshrine and get some decent faction that way. Lord Yelinak is on his own faction (called appriately "Lord Yelinak"), but as of right now he's the only mob in the game on that faction, and he's not really guarding anything, so there's not much reason to work on it.


Quest Armor:


Each faction has their own quest armor for each class. This stuff is generally speaking the best armor in the game. For each piece of armor, you must obtain the correct quest piece (unadorned chain greaves, ancient silk robe, etc) as well as several rare gems. The gems are dropped of many of the mobs in velious, but the armor pieces drop in specific places. The quest armor for Thurgadin is dropped by high level giants near the arena in Kael. Skyshrine quest armor is dropped in the halls of testing in the Temple of Veeshan, and Kael quest armor is dropped in the west wing of the same zone. Since the Thurgadin armor is obviously dropped in an area much easier to get to (and fight in), the rewards are not as great. Skyshrine and Kael armor is quite a bit better than Thurgadin armor. Comparing Kael and SS armor, the Kael versions generally have higher AC, while SS armor (for the most part) has more hps, mana, resists, and stats. They are generally considered to be fairly equal.


So there you have it... everything you ever wanted to know about velious faction (and quite a bit i'm sure you didn't). In general, people are either aligned with giants, or with dragons and dorfs. Whatever choice you make, you won't be able to change your mind without some serious work. VI changed how faction works a little so there are serious obstacles to switching sides. For example, if you kill a giant, you might get 1 point of faction with dragons, and -3 points of faction with giants. So by the time you've gotten 1000 points of dragon faction and can do their quests now, you've take a 3000 point hit with giants. To get giant faction back now you'll have to do 3 times the work you did to get the dragons to like you. To make matters worse, they increased the total range of faction points. Before velious i think the worst your faction could be was -2000, making it not so difficult to build it back up. Now the cap has been raised... from what i hear it's now at -10,000. Keep this in mind when you and your guild make your decision. Good hunting!