Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War - Tips and Mission Walkthrough

This post lists our tips and mini-walkthrough for Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War.
Unlike a typical walkthrough, we will not be holding your hand for every action, but rather give you general advice and for individual missions, give you specific tips on tricky situations.
The tips here will not be applicable to the expansions as the AI uses different tactics.
The missions were mostly played on Normal. On harder difficulties, generally the enemy will be harder to kill and you will probably need stronger units or a higher unit ratio to overcome their advantage.

General Tips

• Projection of Firepower
• Any army is basically about the projection of firepower. You want to hit the enemy from as far as you can and without them hitting back.
• Hand-to-hand or other close-combat assault forces can win, but they are also a lot more micromanagement. When you start having 3 or more units you can get traffic jams and some units will just stop and idle, apparently having timed out on movement orders because they can't find a path to the target location due to being blocked by the units in front.
• In a "real life situation", having some strong hand-to-hand troops is essential to block the enemy shock-trooping your units with them.
• This is because there is the possibility of friendly fire. In Warhammer 40K, you do NOT have full friendly fire rules. Your Space Marines can safely fire pretty much anything they want into a melee and you won't hit your own units. (There *is* friendly fire when it comes to artillery, however).
• Also, the AI generally just goes for the nearest enemy unit, so you can bait them into directing all their attention on that one unit, which just has to survive long enough for you to rain concentrated firepower on them. Which is why you want a LOT of ranged units that can shoot at anyone you want, instead of a bunch of melee units that can only fight when they are in contact with an enemy model.
• You won't have every unit at the start, and depending on the terrain you may not want to field everything because of traffic jams, but in general you will want to...
• Send Scouts ahead to locate the enemy.
• Hit them with Whirlwind artillery fire, unreliable as it is. 2-4 whirlwinds is generally a good number. The AI does not generally attempt to locate the source of attacks originating from the fog of war.
• Intercept anything approaching your Whirlwinds with long range fire such as missile launchers from space marine squads, or long-range weapons on Dreadnoughts or Terminators. Use tanks if you can't get anything else but they are very prone to traffic jams.
• Intercept anyone who gets closer with concentrated ranged fire.
• Fight hand-to-hand as a last resort. If you build a unit specifically for hand-to-hand, you are using up your troop and/or vehicle cap with a unit that may forever be in reserve.
• Fighting on more than one front
• Don't do it. Sometimes things happen very quickly and if you are flipping back and forth you may be too late to set Reinforcement on overwatch for a unit, or to pull them out of being overwhelmed.
• When you are attacked from multiple directions, hold ground and build turrets to cover your position so that, preferably, you can hold the position with just turrets alone and for a long time. Then, move your assault force to advance and hold more ground. A single, strong, and mobile assault force is better than spreading your force too much and leaving units scattered around to defend your territory.
• Identify the battle front. You will still want to protect your strategic locations with Listening posts and 1-2 turrets each (against teleported-in enemies), but in general, once you have eliminated your blind spots and cleared the enemy from them, you can focus on advancing the battle front. Knowing where your enemy is not is just as important as knowing where he is.
• Scouting
• Utterly invaluable. If they come across a lonely strategic point they might as well capture it. Otherwise they are really just spotters.
• Do not reinforce Scout units to more than 2 units since they aren't meant to fight and you can only get 2 sniping rifles.
• Sniping rifles will be the only attack you want to use, and only if you are sure the scouts are not going to be detected while firing from the enemy's fog of war. It takes a heck of a long time to kill anything this way, but the range and firing from the fog of war makes it viable to kill the odd target now and again.
• Do not click movement target locations too close to a capturable point such as a Critical Location. The scouts will immediately drop their Infiltration invisibility.
• Attacking
• When you have a lot of troops, you may need to manually move them or they get stuck behind other troops and go idle. A unit of infantry occupies its own space and has space in between. Automatically path-ed movement won't overlap infantry, but you can by choosing a single unit and using the green move arrow to direct them. They can in this way be made to overlap into another units.
• Having a lot of units may also mean that some units will not simply follow the ones in front if they are all going to the same place. They may calculate those units as obstacles and start going the long way around, through dangerous or unexplored territory if necessary. Keep an eye on your minimap for units headed the wrong way.
• If the enemy is in cover and you can move in without coming under fire from too many other units, you might as well move your attacking unit into the same cover. That way you will both have the benefit of cover.
• Retreating
• Typically if you run directly away from the enemy, you cannot return fire. Instead, try to retreat from shooting enemies in a sideways manner, and heading for cover. That way, you can still fire back.
• Wherever you are, look for a good fallback position, such as Heavy Cover or one of your own listening posts (preferably upgraded and additionally defended by turrets).
• To force a unit to keep moving instead of stopping to attack, use the green move arrow (hotkey "V"). They will still attack if something comes in range, but won't stop for anything.
• Turrets
• Build these early and often to keep the enemy tangled up on the battle front. Enemies generally have attack-move orders (they stop to attack whatever is in range) instead of just-move orders where they are going to a specific location and won't linger to attack.
• Turrets don't count against your squad or vehicle caps. Visit them with your builder gangs to repair them if necessary, but if you have enough of them around a Listening Post, that generally won't be an issue.
• Missile launcher upgrades have longer range and can shoot targets in the fog of war. Although they are slower than anti-infantry turrets against infantry, they have a knock-down and knock-back effect against infantry.

Specific Mission Tips
Mission 1 - Planet Fall
The mission babysits you through this tutorial. Nothing special here except to note that events are scripted to trigger when you get close, and generally do not play themselves out while you are busy elsewhere.

Mission 2 - Infiltration
A nice, linear map.
If you don't want to do the Scouting way or if you fail it by losing your scouts, the mission does not fail. Instead, the Captain will take over the mission, but without scouts.
Once you establish the base, hold the southeast side and clear the way you came first since you've already mapped it out.

Mission 3 - Under Siege
You come under fire from vehicles who can spot your infantry before you can spot them. Keeping scouts/lookouts ahead of you is definitely key, as is outfitting your space marines with as many missile launchers as they can have to take down ork armour as quickly as possible and from as safe a distance as possible.

Mission 4 - Destroy the Xenos
Early on you will encounter some enemies on a ridge. There's a message about using Rhinos but ignore that. Instead, use scouts to find them, missiles from your space marine squads to clear them, then assault marines to fly over and capture the strategic point there. Afterwards, you can probably delete the assault marines to make room in your troop cap for something else if you really need it.
This is probably the most annoying mission because that Gargantuan Squiggoth can probably flatten your entire army, or lay waste to enough of it for any remaining orks to overwhelm you. Fortunately, it is scripted to return to protect the main ork base, so if you flee all your units enough you can save it for last. Be careful of the traffic jam possible at the corridor leading to the ork base.
Slowly scout the base, pounding everything with Whirlwinds. Clean it out until the final plateau with the ork boss and orkamungus. A small, mobile force with scouts and space marines standing far enough off to just use missile launchers might be all you need initially. Bring in the Whirlwinds later.
Pound everything with Whirlwinds, including the Sqiggoth and the ork boss Orkamungus. Try to clear all buildings if possible, then weaken the orkamungus, then clear it too.

Mission 5 - A New Lead
Eldar teleport and can pop out of nowhere, but it is still not really necessary to have very strong hand-to-hand units. Maybe just one unit, but your space marines are generally hardy enough that you can survive a unit long enough for the rest to shoot the enemy to death.
They don't try to get behind your front line yet. Not until the next mission.

Mission 6 - Into the Maw
Once you've reached the Gate, some Eldar will pop in far behind to try to take some strategic points, so fortify them with turrets before you get too far.

Mission 7 - Sacrifice
The Avatar is essentially a hand-to-hand unit, so whichever unit it is chasing should be manually controlled. Don't use attack-move, just plain movement (big green arrow). Units will still attack if possible, but won't stop to engage. In this way, lead the Avatar to a bunch of turrets around a listening post and let it get shot to death. Do the same with the Bloodthirster in Mission 10.
Instead of retreating, if you are feeling bold and have anti-vehicle weapons on your units, you can let them do the shooting while you lead it around with the one unit it is chasing.

Mission 8 - The Chapel
The steps of the chapel have a mess of units that are best handled by drawing them out or pounding them down with Whirlwinds. Scouting is key, either with regular scouts or the skulls from listening posts. On Normal you can fight it out, but casualties are typically very high.
Once you reach the Chapel doors, if you want to look around and clear the map (not really necessary), you can work on the doors right away. Any anti-vehicle weapon will do, including missile Turrets. Tanks not required. If you build turrets near the Requisition points, they will immediately attack the door and once that is down a swarm of enemies will come out, so know what you're getting into and get ready.

Mission 9 - Unholy Ceremony
The Guardsmen here are actually not pushovers IF you get them grenade launchers as soon as possible. The mess of them can hold ground quite easily since the enemy typically sends only one unit of anything to capture or recapture strategic points. You may also want to consider NOT reinforcing their numbers too much so that the smaller, more maneuverable squads can be positioned more quickly to focus their long-range grenade fire.
At the start, grab strategic points but don't enter the inner area where you can come under fire from listening posts and too many Chaos forces at the same time. Instead, sit your Guards at each Listening Post until you've fortified it with 3-4 turrets and possibly a Leman Russ tank (you get them free periodically -- they all start out as neutral units in disrepair and slowly get repaired and ready for action)..
When the Captain appears in the southeast, you will ideally have your western forces easily holding their positions so you can focus on fortifying the Captain's position. Upgrade his Terminators then start your attack.
At this point, I moved the captain up north until he reached the Guardsmen there. This way, if I needed to suddenly help one force with the other, there would be no terrain surprises delaying things. After that, just the Captain's force was enough to clean out just about the entire map.
The minimal win condition is to hold the relics long enough, if you don't want to grind the enemy down.

Mission 10 - Old Friend
The Bloodthirster is near the Relic location that is near your starting base, and it can chase you all the way back to your base, so be sure your base is already fortified before you draw it's attention.
The rest of the map is just the usual take-and-hold.

Mission 11 - All Out War
The demon lord more or less stays near the Chaos base slightly northeast of the map centre, and won't chase you too far, so if you flee far enough it will leave. It will not retreat if you are within its pursuit radius, so if it is chasing one unit, move that unit constantly and have the rest attack it with anti-vehicle weapons. The initial batch of Space Marines, fully upgraded with 4 missile launchers per squad, can kill the demon lord in this way on "Impossible" difficulty. You do not have to clear the map, only to kill the demon lord.
The Eldar allies basically send a stream of units to try to capture the northern relic and eventually get beaten back to their base. If they run out of units and resource, they will go idle and can't even try to capture any strategic points. If you reach their position and capture all strategic points (e.g., because they were captured by Chaos units), then they may also go idle once they run out of resources as they can't use yours and won't try to capture yours.
Draw the Demon Lord to a bunch of turrets if possible, but otherwise just mass a bunch of heavy anti-vehicle units and slowly beat it down. Nothing too special here, and an easy mission even on Impossible difficulty.

Wings of Destiny - Auction House

This post is one of our series of tips for Wings of Destiny, a 2.5D MMO. It is free to play, with optional features and conveniences you can purchase with money.

In this post, we will talk about the Auction House. For a list of our posts, click here.

General

• Depending on your particular server, typically the Auction House will have ludicrous prices and a lot of it will be based on what the market will bear. A lot of it won't even make sense, so try to ask around for what sells at what price instead of simply pricing things to sell or buying things based on what the going rate is in the Auction House.
• Generally you will get better trades if you try to barter directly with someone else, especially if you can find a trustworthy and helpful person and start a cooperative relationship.

Coin Auction

• It's best if you can watch the auction for a while before diving in. Sometimes items are priced at too high a value and when you put in the same item at the same or even slightly lower value, it won't move and you've wasted coins on the auction fee.
• It is best to have an alternate account that makes coin with Alchemy. That way, you can have your alt buy your own auctions if they fail to move. It is typically cheaper to transfer coin this way between alternate accounts and your main account than to mail coin.
• For sending people small amounts of items, you can try going through coin auction instead of mail.
• Mail has a flat cost of 50 coin per mail plus 5,000 coin for a stack of any one item type (for coins, the more you send the more it costs, with no limit).
• For coin auction transfer, have the person stand by, and then put the item to be transferred up on auction at a low price (or even 1 coin). Then have the person immediately find it and buy it.
• There's slight risk involved, but it's cheaper if you have to, say, send 1 unit of 5 types of blueprint materials. Sometimes the price of mail will exceed the value of the item.
• You can also transfer items to warehouse with your alternate account this way by pricing them at ludicrous prices, and having your alt buy them.
• Look for items that are priced less than the value indicated when you examine the item. The value indicated is what a store in a town will pay for it, so if an item is priced less than that in auction, buy it immediately. When you are in town next, retrieve it from your e-mail and sell it.
• Also look for gear of level 40 and higher. When you degrade gear of that level, you get Equipment Essence as well as at least 1 Runestone, which could have a value of 500-1000 coins. Better gear and higher-level gear will give you more Runestones -- possibly enough to offset or exceed the auction price. Equipment Essence also tends to sell at a stupidly high price, so can be a roundabout way to get some at a lower price.
• Definitely look for auction accidents, such as items priced suspiciously low because someone forgot to change the currency to Cash.
• If an extraordinarily pricey item appears in this way, you could be nice about it by buying it and e-mailing it back to them.
• Remember that you can e-mail someone without knowing them as a friend by simply typing their name in the e-mail composition name box.

Cash Auction

• If you do the Free Cash offers and get a bit of Cash, you can try the Cash Auction to make even more cash.
• For example, if stacks of 250 Runestones will sell in auction at 5-7 Cash, you can try to confirm that from someone who sells them, and sell your own, possibly buying stacks from the coin auction to put in Cash auction.
• If you are shopping in Cash auction, be mindful of what rate your Currency Exchange will give you per 1 Cash, and then look in coin auction for the same item but a cheaper price.
• For example, if 250 Runestones are selling at 250,000 coins in coin auction, but 6 Cash in cash auction, then try to get it from coin auction first, since 1 Cash could net you 80,000 or more coins, depending on your toon's level.
• If you are looking for materials to complete your blueprint, remember that you can use the "Craft All" button on a blueprint to immediately pay for materials with Cash. Note the cost there and compare it to the cost in the coin auction before buying.

Wings of Destiny - Dungeons

This post is one of our series of tips for Wings of Destiny, a 2.5D MMO. It is free to play, with optional features and conveniences you can purchase with money.

In this post, we will talk about various dungeons. For a list of our posts, click here.

General Tips

• Dungeons have no time limit, so if you are low on potions or elixirs, you can simply idle to get your health and mana back. The only danger is if you can't kill the bosses, in which case you can choose to kill as much as you can for EXP, coin, and blueprint material drops, then use the Leave button to exit.
• The higher-levelled dungeons are very hard and around level 50 or level 60 you will probably require a team to help you kill the bosses.
• If you get too close to any creature, it will follow you until you die, whereupon it will return to its starting location. Knights can have a really hard time if they are not careful. A knight may want to have a ranged-attack pet to draw enemies to them instead of charging in and getting the attention of too many enemies.
• Bosses typically appear only after the previous boss is killed. You can sometimes avoid the bosses and kill just the grunts.
• Typically you will need to do the dungeon at Elite difficulty to get any blueprints.

Abyssal Quarry (level 20)

• Nothing too special here. Blueprints start at level 30, so no blueprints drop here, and no blueprint materials either.

Abandoned Cellar (level 30)

• You can sneak by the first boss Roderick by staying close to the south, and thereby clear out the entire dungeon first.

The Infernal City (level 40)

• The first two bosses have a pull attack and will try it even if there is an obstacle in the way and you can't be pulled to them. Shortly after, even if you moved away, they will slow your movement and drop a priest-skill type Circle at your location.
• If you are a knight who doesn't want to be in the circle and take continuous damage; or a priest who wants to have both yourself and the boss in your own Circle of Refuge; immediately move away when pulled. When the boss conjures the Circle, run out of it and back toward the boss.
• Vlad
• The final boss, Vlad, has no ranged attack, so you can run from him and your pet will continue to attack him. This is a very slow way of killing him, however.
• If you are a priest, you can use Disintegrate to stun him, Infuse to cause continuous damage, then flee. Run to the fountain and go in circles to keep him at bay. Repeat until he is dead.
• When his fire shield comes up, you should run unless you can really soak up all the damage. Your pets are not affected by it.

Subterranean Prison (level 50)

• Probably the first dungeon where you'll need a team even if you are level 60.
• The Guard Chiefs are very tough but have no ranged attack, so the priest Disintegrate-Infuse-run circles trick will work on them, but it is very slow. Still, you can use it to clear the minions without using any potions.
• The boss, One-Eyed Wen, has 1128k health at Elite difficulty! However, you can bypass him and grab the various treasure boxes elsewhere in the dungeon. If you are careful, you can draw the Guard Chiefs near him away first, and draw him out of the room alone.

Wings of Destiny - Daily Activity Points

This post is one of our series of tips for Wings of Destiny, a 2.5D MMO. It is free to play, with optional features and conveniences you can purchase with money.
In this post, we will talk about daily Activity Points (Login Rewards, Activity Points tab). For a list of our posts, click here.

Whenever possible, you will want to hit 100 Activity Points because the prize there -- a total of 10 elixirs -- is worth over 1.7 million coins were you to try to assemble it by buying from the Mysterious Shop. Elixirs are otherwise available by cash or vouchers. They are hard to get, and should not be squandered. They can get you out of serious trouble or when you are in an extreme time crunch and can't stop to recover health or mana. Although you can do something similar with a large stack of potions, that just takes up more inventory space, and you can get these elixirs for free.


Rewards are at 45, 60, 80, 100. Activities are:

+5 Stay in the game for 1 hour.
+5 Collect the "Online Reward" three times.

+5 Obtain 2 "Souls".
+5 Spin the "Lucky Roulette" TWO times.

+5 Complete 10 Daily Quests.
+5 Complete 5 Guild Quests.

 +10 Participate in Alchemist's Request Event.
+10 Participate in the Astral Trials (Solo) Event.
+15 Participate in 3 Daily Dungeons.

+10 Participate in the Recover the Wings Event.
+10 Participate in The Demon Dilemma Event.
+15 Participate in 3 Arena Fights - practice sessions count.
+15 Participate in Deathmatch Arena 5 times.

• There are a total of 115 points possible, so not every event is critical.
• If you are very short on time, the Alchemist's Request, Demon Dilemma, and Recover the Wings events can be short-cutted: You can simply enter solo, and immediately exit. As soon as you enter, your participation is recorded for points.
• You get one free Roulette spin each day and can get vouchers for free spins randomly. If you don't use them, you can actually accumulate quite a bit. It is up to you whether you want to save one or two in order to get the extra points needed for a reward on a day when you can't do all events to get 100 points.
• Free spin vouchers often show up in the Mysterious Shop for about 170,000 coins, although in rare instances you can get them for just under 10,000 coins there.

Wings of Destiny - Events

This post is one of our series of tips for Wings of Destiny, a 2.5D MMO. It is free to play, with optional features and conveniences you can purchase with money.

In this post, we will talk about various Events. For a list of our posts, click here.

General Tips

• The events are typically the same amount of work no matter how many teammates you have, and you can generally go solo if you really want, but there's often no point in going solo.
• If you can go solo and you can't find enough teammates, you might as well bring in one of your alternate accounts and leave them idle while one account completes the event. Even if someone does absolutely nothing, if the event is successfully completed, they still get one of the Instance Rewards.
• The highest-levelled teammate determines the level of the event. For example, if the highest-levelled teammate is Level 60 in The Demon Dilemma, the salamanders in that event will be level 60 even if the other teammates are level 30 (the minimum required to participate in any Event). This can be a big problem. The treasure will also be level 60 gear, however.
• In all Events, you can enter and exit without trying to complete it, and still be awarded Daily Activity Points.
• If the monsters are of a level much higher than your own (over 10 levels), you receive no Experience points.

Alchemist's Request (open any time)

• Some people believe that doing the larger potion sizes gives a better chance of a better reward, but this does not appear to be the case. If you really want to test it, you could do a few Medium or Large potions and let the Instance Reward timer run out, whereupon all prizes are revealed.
• Typically the Alchemist's Request will have at least 2 blueprint material rewards, but often at least one of them is of a type that can be gotten elsewhere. Try to get a full team of 5 because all non-material-reward prizes are just bags of coin.
• To reduce frustration, try to have a full five-team although typically there is typically enough time for one character of the same level as the Instance to complete it solo at Small Potion size without using elixirs.
• Anyone who can enter the event can join the team, even if their level is grossly lower. The creatures and rewards are based on the highest-level member.
• If you are going solo, you can avoid using potions or elixirs by idling a while to get health and mana back. If you have weak team members who happen to be Priests, they can help without fighting by just healing you.
• If you are only level 30-45, you may need potions or elixirs to do this event solo.
• Characters who are disconnected from the game, even if they were not kicked from the team, do not draw a reward unless they reconnect before the event is concluded. The event is concluded by properly fulfilling the kill requirements and talking to the NPC inside (Frey).
• If you are working on blueprints, you will need certain materials that can ONLY be gotten from this event. For example, if you are working on Level 40 blueprints, you may need a Blade of Missed Chance, Source of Pestilence, Pestilence Blood, or Twisted Soul.
• Once you are level 50, it will be IMPOSSIBLE to get any of those if you are in the team because the rewards will be selected from level 50 materials, and those are level 40 materials.
• You can either get someone else to find them and trade for them, or buy them in auction (typically at outrageous prices), or make an alternate account that isn't level 50 yet and go on an Alchemist Reward mission.
• You can also level-hold -- Stop trying to gain experience points and slow your advance to Level 50 long enough for you to get the critical materials.
• Another way to get them is to join an event already in progress: For example, suppose you are level 60 and need level 40 materials (e.g., a Source of Pestilence) from the Alchemist's Request to finish an old blueprint.
• First, you need to make a level 40's Alchemist Request event by having a team with at least 1 character of level 40-49, and no other characters of a higher level. If no one is willing to cooperate, you could make an alternate character of the appropriate level and enter the event as a team of one. Once inside, start the event by talking to the NPC there.
• Once the event is started, have the team leader issue an Invitation to your level 50 character. You can be accepted to the team, but will still be outside the event.
• Have your character enter the event by going to the Alchemist's Assistant in Forrester City, and entering via dialogue. You will now be in the event.
• Although you are level 50, the creatures you have to kill will be based on the event already created, and the rewards will also be based on the event already created.
• You can additionally use this method to help lower-level characters speed through the event.
• If you do this event solo, you can exit the event and re-enter, and the creature count will accumulate from the last time you were there. However, each time you enter counts against the two times you can do this event each server day.
• In addition to the Alchemist's Request, you can get blueprint materials from:
• Dungeons
• The Guild Dungeon: A random quest from a Guild Admin. You receive 1 material based on your character level IF you clear the dungeon before the time runs out.
• The Dealiest Hunt daily quest from the Guard Captain in Forrester. However, all materials are Bound and won't stack with unbound materials from elsewhere. Save the prize boxes to be opened when you are ready to complete a blueprint, and use the bound materials first (by moving excess unbound items to warehouse, or in the worst case mailing them to yourself as temporary storage, so they won't get picked up by the blueprint).
• Auction House, typically at outrageous prices, especially if the material is only obtainable from the Alchemist's Request.
• Trading directly with other players, especially guildmates. Barter is typically better than going through the Auction House, but harder to arrange.
• Using Cash and the "Craft All" button on your blueprint.

Arena (server time 1230h and 2200h)

• Whenever possible, do the maximum allowed (5) matches every day because, win or lose, you get Battle Points.
• For Team Arena, you can enter solo. The process is basically the same: Create a team (e.g., of just yourself), then go back to the Arena interface and click "Register". You have to Register every bout.
• On Sundays there is no Arena, but you can still do Practice Arena three times for Daily Activity Points (no Battle Points, however).

Deathmatch (server time 1130h and 2000h)

• Whenever possible, do at least 5 matches not just to get Daily Activity points, but for the literally hundreds of Battle Points you get for free if you can participate in 5 matches.
• Be helpful and do more (even if you lose) to help others get their "Daily 5" since you will probably end up begging for help yourself one day.
• In the worst case, have some alternate accounts join. Which Deathmatch Stage a character is in depends on weekly participation and not on actual fighting ability, so an alternate account solely to help fill Deathmatches does not actually need to be developed beyond the minimum level to participate.
• There is very little reason not to participate every day, but if you start skipping, you will eventually slide down in Stage.
• If you are too diligent, you will move up and encounter too-strong enemies before you are ready. Even so, the free Battle Points you get for doing 5 a day make any participation worthwhile.

The Demon Dilemma (server time 0900h and 2110h)

• The Demon Dilemma is just a grind where you fight lizards, then a demon boss. You do not have to kill all the lizards to get the boss to appear, but you must kill everything to "succeed" and be awarded a prize.
• Although the prizes list only gems, that is a random prize for succeeding at the instance. Most of the time you get blue-rank gear or bags of coin. Overall, for just the mere chance of getting a gem, this is a lousy event. You can get gems more conveniently through the Lucky Roulette or the Auction House.
• Go with the highest-levelled team that will accept you. As characters near level 50, typically their gear and resources will be such that they can breeze through this event quickly and you really need to just stay alive and keep away from the salamanders . (If you are a Priest of any level, you can help by staying in the rear away from the monsters, and healing the front-line attackers).

Guild Dungeon (Guild Admin quest only)

•  Sometimes you will be asked to kill Skeletons in the Guild Dungeon by the Guild Admin. If you really, really, don't want to do this, you can Abandon the quest by clicking on the magnifying glass to look at the details, then clicking "Abandon". If you do this, you lose one of the limited number of daily guild quests available to you.
• If you are unable to kill all 30 skeletons before the timer runs out, you fail the Instance (you won't get a reward, which is typically a blueprint material, bag of gold, or in rare cases, Guild Supplies), but you can re-enter the dungeon and kill more skeletons until you reach the 30 kills you need. You can then exit and talk to the Guild Admin to successfully complete the Guild Quest.

Hot Springs (server time 1300h and 2130h)

• Also known as Lands of Purity or "LOP". When you are in a "seance" (paired up by clicking on someone and "inviting" them to a "seance") your EXP and Coins gained per unit time doubles. You need to be a STAR5 or higher member to have a seance with toons of the same sex.
• While in Hot Springs, because it is typically a very well attended event, you may want to announce requests for items or barter.
• Also, this is often an idle time, so either announce to your guild you are going "AFK" (away from keyboard) and set your toon to always accept invitations (to seance), or work on your character (e.g., soul draws, card and gem configurations), or shop in the auction house.
• This is also a great time to have an alternate account run around the map harvesting materials since most people will be in the Lands of Purity.
• If you are willing to give up the free EXP and Coins, this is also a fairly good time to run Carts for your guild. Even so, try to arrange an escort.

Recover the Wings (server time 1300h and 1910h)

• The idea in Wings is to kill the Demon Slaves before they transform into Angels. And honestly, you'd be surprised how many people don't know this and hold back on area of effect attacks for fear of drawing too many attackers.
• Demon Slaves don't fight back and clump tightly enough that in general Mages can hit them all with their wide area of effect spell. If you can do this quickly enough, and none of the Slaves turn into Angels, you only have to gang up and fight the demon boss at the end.
• Wings is necessary to get certain blueprints. Only a few blueprints are obtainable at the Elite level of dungeons. The rest must be gotten through direct barter with other players, purchase in the Auction House, or through Wings.
• You may want, early on, to ask the team to barter prints with you if you draw them. Otherwise people may simply leave immediately after the event.
• Wings is also one of the few places to get a pet (Shivra) or Guild Supplies for free. The former is typically purchased with Vouchers or Cash in the Mall; the latter is typically available only in the Mall or as a random drop from bosses on every 5th level in the Astral Trials.
• Unless you need a particular level blueprint, try to go into the highest-levelled team that will accept you. As characters near level 50, typically their gear and resources will be such that they can breeze through this event quickly without any Slaves turning into Angels.
• Like the Alchemist's Request, the blueprint level that drops is based on the highest-levelled character in the event at the time it is created. New team members can retroactively join by talking to the Holy Guard in Forrester City.

Wings of Destiny - Getting Started / Basic Tips

This post is one of our series of tips for Wings of Destiny, a 2.5D MMO. It is free to play, with optional features and conveniences you can purchase with money.
In this post, we will talk about the very basics of getting a game going, and other tips that don't really fit elsewhere. The topics are: Choosing a Server, Choosing a Character, Currencies, and Miscellaneous Tips.
Our other posts cover the Auction House, Daily Activity Points, Dungeons, and Events.

Choosing a Server
Before you commit to playing the game -- and definitely BEFORE you spend any money -- check out the game on an older server where there are seasoned players. Also look at any events that may be running on new and upcoming servers. Most of these are cash events, so before you dive in and spend cash, check out the game first.
Once you choose a server to play, you will likely want to commit to that server because the game gives you increasing and often irreplaceable benefits for continuing to log in every day. These range from holiday events (e.g., log in 10 consecutive days to get a special Santa Pet during the Christmas event) to mundane daily rewards that reset if you miss even a single day but that build to otherwise expensive or hard-to-get (even impossible-to-get) items if you don't miss logging in on any day.

If you pick an older server, you are more likely to get a lot of established guilds to join for more immediate benefits. If you pick a newer server, there's a chance you'll end up in a guild that will eventually fizzle out, forcing you to start all over again. However, that is actually not a particularly huge concern compared to just picking one server and staying.

Alternate Accounts
I recommend that you do NOT use any main e-mail address or other account (e.g., your Facebook account), especially if you are going to try some of the "Free Cash" offers, where you do online surveys or the like and have to give out your e-mail address.
For various reasons which we'll get into later, you will probably want to run multiple accounts (alternate accounts or "alts"), sometimes concurrently, and in order to do so you will need multiple e-mail addresses as well as one different type of browser (e.g., Chrome, IE, FireFox) for each toon you would like to be able to have on at the same time. You can get multiple accounts quite easily through a free service like mail.com.

Shared Accounts
An interesting idea is to share one character between two or more players. In this way, between the two (or more) of you, the character can do a maximum number of activities per game day while no one person is committing an excessive amount of time each day. It can get confusing when it comes to participation in World Chat, however; and only one person can be logged in at the same time.

Choosing a Character

You can have multiple characters on the same e-mail account and the same server, and with just a few hours of work you can get a character that accesses the basic skills of each character type, so you can try it out. You can easily erase characters and start over. So, if you are able to, try to play a character until level 30-35 to get a feel for it and whether you like the character type. Eventually levelling slows down a lot and you will probably want to focus on just one character just so that you can start to unlock various level-locked aspects of the game.

It is advisable to have a toon (your character in-game) match your own gender, as it can feel like lying (or at least confusing) when someone starts referring to you, the player, by the gender of your toon. However, there are a lot of people with gender-mismatched toons, so this is by no means absolutely necessary, nor is revealing the difference in gender necessary.

Currency

Coins

In the worst case, you can make multiple accounts and have them send you coins, either through the mail or (slightly more cheaply) through the Auction House by having them buy a trivial item you have priced in Auction at an obscene amount.
Despite the relative ease of making coins, you will never have enough. Auctions for rare materials for blueprints can easily run into millions of coins. Attribute slots 2 and 3 on your Faith Badge cost 5 million and 10 million coins respectively. Even converting cash into coins won't get you a lot of coins so you should avoid doing that.
Whenever possible, do transactions in coins because it is freely obtained in the game.

Vouchers

Vouchers are quite hard to come by, and their use is rather limited in any case. Try not to use them if you can use coins, but use them instead of Cash if you can (e.g., to buy Pets in the Mall). There is a limited time event that gives out vouchers as well (The Great Voucher Giveaway).

Cash

You can get a bit of cash through the "Free Cash" tab, where you participate in offers and surveys to be awarded cash. But you are given very little this way. To get cash, you typically need to buy it with real money.

Even a bit of cash can net you extraordinary benefits and get you ahead very quickly and conveniently, but it is all to easy to spend it like water. Unless you have real world cash to burn, be very stingy with Cash no matter how you get it. Try to spend it on permanent things you can't otherwise get. For example, you can complete a blueprint by using Cash to buy the missing materials. However, if you are smart about acquiring blueprint materials, you can get materials with coin or trading with others instead of spending cash on it -- especially as you will come across materials for blueprints anyway.

BEFORE you spend any cash on a convenience in the game, think very carefully about whether that is worth the cash. For example, for a bit of cash, you can try to reset a quest to give you more of a reward, close to 10x as much in an extreme case. But it is extremely random, and you could be throwing away a lot of cash -- real world money -- for a comparatively small and temporary gain.

Cash is also important for improving a guild, because to start avenues of research in a Guild, you require Guild Supplies; and other than a low chance of getting them through various events such as Recover the Wings or Astral Trials, units of Guild Supplies have to be purchased with Cash. There are some (tedious) ways around this and we'll discuss it when we talk about Guilds.

Battle Points

You can get hundreds of Battle Points every day by participating in at least five DeathMatches. You can also grow your own Battle Points through Alchemy. And you can get tiny amounts by participating in matches in DeathMatch or Arena. However, the cost of anything in the Mall that requires Battle Points is absolutely cut-throat and you will likely want to spend your Battle Points only on your Faith Badge, which sucks up a lot of Battle Points and Coins but give you a basically permanent bonus.

Miscellaneous Tips

• Once you finish one tutorial and understand how to play the game, start it over. You will realize there is a LOT of waste if you are locked into what the tutorial tells you to do.
• For example, it instructs you to use WingTips to teleport when the destination is close enough to conveniently walk. WingTips are expensive to buy and somewhat hard to come by, so you may want to start conserving right away. Also, it will instruct you to use an Elixir. These are hideously expensive to get, although you can get five a day if you invest enough time playing the game each day. Nevertheless there is no reason to waste them in the early game when you can breeze through the tutorial with auto-combat.
• In order to get out of forced tutorial steps, look for the red button in the upper left side that allows you to end the tutorial. You will get a WingTip message that won't clear, but just ignore it and instead use the map to find the person you need to speak with, and click on their name to auto-path there.
• Always have an escort when running Carts for your guild. Popular family holidays are the very best days to run carts because a lot of people will be offline doing real-life holiday chores.
• You cannot erase a toon/character if it is in a Guild. You cannot leave a guild if you are the leader and the only member. In such a case, make a throwaway alternate toon to promote and kick you from the guild.
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Oblivion Mod Review - Claudia's Little Secret

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Mod Review - Claudia's Little Secret (ver: Gold Beta) Alternate Download Location
Score: +14/-4

Edit: Dec-28-2012 -- Oops! Looks like some text from another review got pasted into this one. Incorrect info has now been removed.

Summary: Plays like an adult movie, but a lot of gratuitous sex; however, it actually has a decent story and many interesting events.

Why Get This: Claudia's Little Secret is an Oblivion mod that gives you an extraordinarily different experience compared to just about every mod out there, and in so many ways. For its size, there is also an amazing amount of content, not just in quest length and number of quests, but story length and visuals. More so than any other mod I've played, this is absolutely one you MUST try.
It's worst part is the grammar and spelling, but compared to it's plusses, this is pretty minor and tolerable. Definitely get the walkthrough or you'll miss out on a lot that's hard to find. For additional support, go to the official forum.
++ Complex and interesting story and some parallel side stories involving NPCs.
+ Handles multiple characters well, with cutscenes to "what is happening in the meantime" events, adding to the broader story context.
++ Alternate endings, and very, very, good ending cutscenes.
++ An amazing amount of content and quests.
- Some quests and hidden quests are so obscure that you really need the walkthrough.
++ Tons of complex cutscenes, most of them quite interesting and plot-advancing, and really quite long. A huge amount of work has gone into this.
+- Sex scenes with good scripting so that for the most part it looks pretty decent. But there's way too much of it. Although that is part of the point of Claudia's Little Secret, at some point it becomes so predictable and tedious that you just want it to be over with so you can continue the story.
- Way too much overly buxom women. This is a design choice, and may appeal to some people, but too much of it makes it a bit too comical / silly.
++ Many quests are interesting without being combat oriented. There are so many that this deserves more than one point.
++ Some very interesting locations, with occasional stunning and/or epic visuals.