Shroud of Souls Stronghold Additions

A major point in the upcoming Shroud of Souls update are various Stronghold changes that we’d like to preview in this post. The updates come in different areas and serve different purposes. So let’s quickly go through the stuff and talk what players and guilds can expect.

The Guild Hall is open for business and decorating!

The first feature is a major cosmetic one. While players still wait for a true housing feature, at least guilds can now personalize their homes! With the Shroud of Souls update players can enter the Guild Hall within Strongholds and donate furniture, banners and other stuff to their guild. Members with the appropriate permissions can then freely position these items within the hall.

The feature however has no gameplay relevance attached to it whatsoever. So this is a pretty obvious gift to those interested in such things. There might be guilds that do not want to invest into their Guild Hall at all, but I think with the state the Foundry currently is in, the game needs some sort of customization feature that caters to the role-playing crowd. Plus some items are not exactly cheap, so this also serves as currency sink and status symbol.

Items can be acquired through various shops and locations. Masterwork Professions have some, the Wondrous Bazaar, Stronghold General store and the new Mysterious Merchant (see below). The Designer located inside the Guild Hall also hints at “future events”, so furniture could be added as new type of reward in otherwise outdated content. Overall it’s a pretty straightforward feature and it’ll be exciting to see what guilds will come up with. This list of stuff is pretty long and in case you’re interested, our Kolat has posted screenshots of the Warehouse in a thread on our message board!

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Temporary Stronghold structures

Next to the Guild Hall the devs added new temporary structures to the Strongholds that last for a week and then disappear. Those serve different purposes. Most help guilds in Masterwork Professions, which will be subject of another post in the next days. But three other structures finally promise some relief for small guilds that are having a hard time to progress. Although it’s based on some complicated math and data, it’s essentially a trading system. You can sort of spend Wood, Stone, Food, Metal, Labor and Gems for Influence, Gems and Gold. Oh and there’s also a new ZEN companion that enhances Influence gain by 10%.

For me personally it’s a mixed bag. It does indeed benefit very small guilds and give resources in areas most struggle with. But it’s probably not the great push some have been waiting for and it needs some planning and calculation to sort out how and how much you can profit from it. Since this is limited to specific resources it’s also not flexible. If the economy changes at some point, the whole thing will be useless because guilds might be looking to fill other coffers and have a surplus of other resources. I personally would have preferred a much easier system where you can just trade resource A for resource B for some fee (time or currency). This not only would have made it easier for guilds to understand the benefit, but also be the more flexible system in the future.​​

The Mysterious Merchant

Another interesting temporary structure is the Mysterious Merchant. It costs a buttload of gems to build, but brings unique endgame gear and some furniture for the Guild Hall. Vida44 posted the full list of gear on our message board, the Merchant however does only come with a random and limited selection each time it is build. So looking for a specific piece means praying to RNGesus, and summoning the merchant multiple times. Some stuff looks pretty intriguing though and most endgame guilds will probably look into it.

Marauder Event

Last but not least Strongholds will face a new challenge. The Marauder event works exactly like the Dragonflight one in that you can activate it once every two hours. Guilds and Alliances then have to fend off endless waves of mobs and can choose to end the event and take the loot at any time. People that tested the fight say it’s getting really difficult down the stretch. Mobs will eventually hit level 76 and become super strong. Additionally it seems to be considerably longer than a Dragonflight, so guild members should bring some patience. It has the rewards to show for it though. The first completion each week will give 600 Influence and you can earn tons of vouchers as well. Overall this could benefit small and big guilds alike in progression or Guild Mark generation.

There seems to be some promising stuff coming for guilds in the Shroud of Souls. Is there something you are looking forward to the most? Share your thoughts in the comments below or visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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