So That’s What the Dark Elf Fortress Looks Like

Apologies for the lack of screenshots, but I mostly write this blog on my lunch hour at work.  On Ostermark, we managed to lock Dragonwake and Caledor last night.  I missed most of the battle, but I joined when Caledor was unlocked.  Caledor fell less than two hours into the fight – the organizers had this event firing on all cylinders.  I didn’t see much sniping or animosity, but I can’t say that everyone was on friendly terms with each other.  Anyway, about the fort (Fell Landing).

The outer walls of the fortress are pretty much like the ones at Drakebreaker’s in Dragonwake.  However, it has three gates, of course.  And the gates, just as with previous experience in a fortress, get knocked off of their hinges very, very quickly.  The courtyard is littered with tents, wagons, and cages, but it’s not nearly as interesting as the interior of the Empire fortress.  So, let’s focus on the inner keep.

The best way to think of Fell Landing is “Spite’s Reach on steroids.”  It’s a big, spiky dark elf keep with posterns on both the north and south sides (and one on the back, I think).  The terrain is such that reinforcements coming from the front of the fortress (and they will, since the read entrance seems to be bugged at this time) will get funneled down two narrow paths on each side.  Incoming Destruction players can and should be targeted at range, before they get near the walls.  After the door is down, the postern teams should move inside to cover the ramps on the second floor – these are great chokepoints.  As an engineer, that’s where I made my home, dropping napalms and tossing grenades into clusters of enemies.  The rest is largely up to the primary tanking force – march up and give the fortress lord what-for.

I did mention that it was like Spite’s Reach, didn’t I?  Remember that damned AoE-through-the-walls keep lord in Spite’s Reach?  Well, this is their relative.  This one hits people for about 11,000 damage, with no line of sight being required.  Our force did pretty well against the players, champions, and heroes in the fortress, but the lord’s AoE eventually wore us out. 

I wasn’t disappointed.  While it would have been nice to take the fortress, we did a great job of getting that far in a single evening, and I got to see new stuff.  From my point of view, it was an excellent evening.  Hopefully, the alliance leaders on Ostermark will continue to cooperate.  We don’t need them to be friends, just to shut up, stow their egos, and let the rest of us play the game.