ZAM Staff Writer Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland Tries Out 1.6's Ember Isle

Souping up the Sourcewells!

Upon reaching the Ember Watch area and talking to Darius, the leader of the Keepers, I received a quest from them to speak with the spirits of the heroes who imprisoned Maelforge in Ember Isle's central volcano. The spirits mention that if the Sourcewells become corrupted, so too shall Telara, and as a result players are granted the Nexus Infusion planar ability to empower Sourcewell defenses. This mechanic is key for Onslaughts, which are a new activated event involving turrets that can be powered up by spending planar charges. On my Defiant rogue, I attempted to start an Onslaught solo; nearby there was abundant deposits of crystallized sourcestone that instantly granted planar charges when destroyed. To reach the first level and become activated, the turrets required about four or five planar charges. Finally, all those extra planar charge abilities from the planar attunements will pay off!

After a few trips I had activated two healing turrets and an attack turret without any invasions appearing. Unlike other quests or events there was no pop-up for a new quest to announce that an Onslaught had begun; instead I just checked my map to see if invasions were popping up. Not until I leveled up the Sourcewell itself did the Onslaught began; and soon, several invasions were headed my way! The turrets are fantastic; the healing turrets will heal each other (and players) for about 150 health every second or two, and they had enough health to survive quite a few hits by the invaders. I didn't get to see a log of the attack turrets, but they were doing significantly more damage than I was. However, just having those few up eventually led to about four invasions attacking at once; I was quickly overwhelmed solo and died. A nearby quest-giver had a daily quest to kill 35 Onslaught invaders in a day; at least I managed to take out 11 before the Sourcewell was destroyed!

Alternate ending to Lord of the Rings, where Gollum survived and populated Mordor. Ew.

After my failure at defending the Sourcewell, I ended my play time by taking a tour of some of the locations on Ember Isle. Employing the time-honored dirty Game Master tricks of invulnerability, invisibility, and teleportation, I went first to the central volcano, teleporting directly inside. Currently, the raid that takes place within the volcano does not exist, so I couldn't catch a glimpse of Maelforge's prison; however, there were plenty of fire spirits swimming in the lava as well as Lizardmen and some new models. The scenery is what one would expect inside a volcano, with the notable feature of some incandescent lines of heat that float through the air like some sort of red jellyfish; those were really neat to look at.

The tour concludes on Page 3!