Volume 17
15 January 2025
Titan Times, A New Edition đź“°
Greetings ANO and happy new year!! It's that time again: the dive into the latest ANO news. Once again, I'm Talkair and I will be one of your captains upon this journey into the waves of ANO. This time, we've got something a little different for all you titans, as I will be joined by 2 of my newest sailors to help you navigate through the sea of ANO news. Hold on tight as we set off and I hope you enjoy the journey.
Recent Happenings đź“…
Greetings to all readers! I’m DragonZftw, and along with Lamplesspost I will be covering the recent happenings regarding Wynncraft, ANO and much more!
First things first, promotion time!
Our ranks are swelling with new Warlocks, so congratulations to (in no particular order), Filda4515, Kyokmo, ElementaStrider, dwagonic, Cutecat42, Xpyouy, PercysPen, Skyson_Exe, Red_Fox_Rogue, RICCIOLINO21, Kindiostro, and TheLuckyWarrior!!
Congratulations also to our two new Artificers, Supa_Knova and Gtloverboy for their epic contributions!
Last but not least, a huge round of applause to Overfears and Lamplesspost on Titan! You have both outdone yourselves with your massive contributions and dedication to spirit, wars, and graids.
I'm thrilled to announce that ANO has reached level 109! That's right, we've gone up not one but two levels since last edition. A huge thank you to everyone who helped us reach this incredible milestone, particularly all the guild raiders out there! GG!
Anyways, in the world of Wynncraft, we have had a sequel to the Seavale Reef - The Outer Void!
It doesn't require a breathing helmet, but you do need level 95 or higher, as well as completion of One Thousand Meters Under. So what is the Outer Void? Well, the premise is that you can get certain items from the area, and can either use it towards crafting armour, weapons and even accessories or even cool mobility items to help you out in the Void, or if all you’re after is cash, sell it!
To get to the Outer Voids, you’ll need to complete the quest as mentioned, as well as travel to 13922, 133, -3625 and if you want to go further, talk to the Scavenger after collecting anything. Keep in mind that items are client-side, so don’t fret about some cheeky bloke stealing your opportunity, it's not first come first serve!
Afterwards, if you have an inventory full of items, you’ll want to store it in your bank. Luckily, the Scavenger’s Hut has a bank (in the form of an ender chest, similar to near Emerald Merchants) and after doing whatever you wish with said items, now would be the time to rinse and repeat the process of gathering, and whatnot.
Do note, spells are disabled in the Outer Voids. If you get a glitch with spells being enabled, you’ll need to go through the launcher and back again. Oh, and don’t worry about fall damage, it's disabled too! There is also little risk in the area, since no hostiles can spawn in the area, and falling too far down would take you back where you started.
So, what are you waiting for?! Get over to the Outer Voids today! This message is no way sponsored by The Outer Void Income Corporation. (Trust me. They paid me a lot of money for me to say that, why would I lie?)
What's in the Cupboard?: ANO Cabinet Review
Back to Talkair, let’s dive straight into the Cabinets!
Spirits
As usual, the spirit crew has once again cooked up insane events to keep the community engaged, with a total of 8 events between this edition and the last!
We started off strong, with the legendary Micah hosting a game of Missile Wars. This time, he did something a little different by making players choose which game they’d like to play between 4 options, and ultimately Missile Wars was the wynner.
We also had KindyyBee who hosted the brain-challenging game known to man as (drum rolls please) Tetris! If you don’t know by now, Tetris is basically putting blocks on other blocks that fit.
The following event was one hosted by the epic Overfears - Piece of the puzzle🧩
There were a total of 3 puzzles, and 12 pieces 4 for each puzzle in which players had to solve. This event was hosted on wynncraft, therefore players were allowed to use any wynncraft resource at their discretion. Players were also expected to solve their individual pieces by themselves (but of course nothing stops you from getting teammates help). Teams consisted of 3-4 people.
The next event was the goated secret santa event hosted by the Llamas! Any participant that wished to join had to enter their private information (ign and budget) into a doc. Tldr; you get the gift at the price you chose while also gifting someone a gift at the same price you chose, but they (or you) never know who they (or you) are. Thanks to whoever gave me that epic Divzer, ily!
Wynnter events were the most iconic with one of them being a Christmas Skin Competition hosted by our very own BlueTheSniper! As the name suggests, participants had to submit their christmas skins in a discord thread with the hopes of wynning 1st to 3rd place. The wynner has not yet been decided, but will be revealed soon, so stay tuned titans!
The Llamas along with some spirit crew pulled through with the most epic wynnter event in ANO! The event consisted of a jaw-dropping 4 mini games and a 5minute break of finding presents in a town in between each game. The games were:
- Hunger Games: Inspired by the franchise, players had the incentive to kill each other until one last wynner survived. Chests were hidden around the map containing random items (it was determined by luck if the item would help you survive or not). As one can imagine, the bloodlust was intense, and to make it even more intense the borders kept shrinking, forcing players to reveal themselves from their hiding spot!
- Platform: It was followed by intense platform holding. Tldr; stay on a platform for points and don’t get hit off by others (while you hit others off).
- Build battle: As the name hints, a christmas build battle where players formed groups of three and had to build (yup, you guessed it!) christmas themed builds! It was an excellent opportunity to put everyone on the pedestal for showing off their building skills!
- Ice Boat race: The final event was an epic Boat race! Players had the chance to hop on a boat and race on a specially built ice race course. Some did well, and some did not (I came dead last) but alas not everyone can be good at everything.
Moving into 2025, the first event was a wynncraft bingo event hosted by none other than Lamplesspost! There were teams of 3, and every player had to start from the very beginning in an ironman class. Each team was given a bingo card of 16 items in which they had to collect (without using totems) - and as you probably guessed, the first to get bingo won!
The most recent event was called “Where in the World is Redmen Foxdiego?”. A mysterious event hosted by the upcoming spirit star Red_Fox_Rogue. The task was as follows: “Track down Wynn's VILE-st globetrotting spy back to their hidey-hole. Answer trivia to learn more about Foxdiego's location, and pose your own cunning questions to extract as much intel as possible!”. The wynner got a whopping 9stx from wynning!
As you have seen from above, spirit has worked extra hard to keep us all happy and engaged (as usual), and if you wish to join us for future events, don’t forget to check out our #events channel to keep yourself up to date! Their doors are also open to new members, so if you’re interested go ahead and apply by navigating your way into our #applications channel.
Brilliance
The brilliance crew as usual has been hard at work fixing up the ANO bots. Recently, quite a few issues had arisen, namely commands such as -warcount or -map (amongst many others) refusing to work, and the crew had to swiftly step in and work their magic to fix everything up to be running again!
On another note, some great news is that they are now working towards increasing the storage for our bots, so keep an eye (or ear) out for good news titans!
As always, brilliance welcomes any new talented coders/writers to join the crew to help us tinker up any problems, or bring new ideas to the ANO community board of suggestions. Head over to the #applications channel and give it a go if you are interested!
Military Updates ⚔️
Hello, sailors, Desertstorm49 here to bring you our guild's military updates since the last edition.
Since the last edition, we have finished the 21st guild season, with Lamplesspost claiming the title of “Champion of the Ocean” with 1,542 wars, followed by Hibikies in 2nd and Supa_Knova in 3rd! After many weeks of thorough warring and dedication from our devoted ocean warriors, we finished the season strongly, coming in at third place with a little over 6 million SR!
A huge thanks to all the members of ANO who helped our guild achieve this rank by warring in every timezone! You all are the foundation of our guild. Keep up the terrific work!
Getting right into it with all of the Strategist promotions since the last edition. These players have truly proved their dedication to the guild and are being duly rewarded. These past few months we have welcomed users Supa_Knova, and Gtloverboy as Strategists of our guild! I believe that I speak for all of us when I say that we at ANO hope they will remain in the guild for a long time.
But that's not all! We are also welcoming user Ezekias as a chief of ANO! They have truly shown just how passionate they are about their guild and how much they are willing to contribute to ANO. They have proven themselves by keeping the oceans safe during the NA timezone while also protecting Gavel with their guild raids. We're glad to have you on our team!
His previous IGN was CrispperPlanet.
Main Stage: What makes a good quest?
Written by Lamplesspost
Hello everyone! I’m Lamplesspost and welcome to the main stage of this edition of Titan Times. Today we’ll be discussing what makes a good quest, and look at some examples of what I think are good and bad quests, and why I think that’s the case. Now obviously this is subjective, but I’ll try to be as general with it as I can. But without further ado, let us begin!
Good characters are arguably the most important aspect of a good story. Characters are what gets a reader or viewer invested in the plot and the world. If there are no likeable or intriguing characters, no matter how exciting or interesting the world or the plot is, people just won’t engage with it in the same way. The same applies to Wynncraft’s quests. Let’s take a look at a quest that I think is enhanced by character, and one that is held back by it.
First of all, Fate of the Fallen, a quest that acts as both an introduction to Theorick Twain and the Ice Barrows Dungeon and an origin story for Nesaak. While the worldbuilding in this quest is overall pretty solid, its portrayal of Theorick is why it’s one of my favourite quests in the game, and arguably one of the best dungeon quests along with AJB and AJF. Out of all the characters in Wynn, Theorick feels the most like an actual person. He has reasonable flaws, but still acts for the greater good and does truly seem to care about the safety of the people of Nesaak. This is best exemplified toward the end of the quest, when his arrogance leads him to think he can end the corruption by himself. It’s what he does next, however, when it backfires horribly and he begins to lose his mind to the corruption, that really establishes Theorick as such an interesting character. Because despite his arrogance he doesn’t hesitate to entomb himself in ice and subject himself to centuries of torture in order to save the people of Nesaak. In his final act Theorick reminds us that despite his grumpiness and pride, at his frozen core he is still a good person. And it just works so well, making Fate of the Fallen, in my humble opinion, one of the most well written quests in Wynncraft.
But now let’s talk about a character that I think isn’t as well written, and in all honesty makes the questline she’s in worse because of it. Yes that’s right, we’re talking about Lari, sorry not sorry all you degenerate Lari fans. In theory, Lari has the potential to be an incredibly interesting character. A pacifist who is forced to abandon their most deeply held for the greater good of the world. In practice however, the portrayal of Lari’s character leaves a lot to be desired. She’s downright insufferable, which wouldn’t be too bad to begin with- we could watch her grow to slowly become a better person by the end of the questline, putting right all the wrongs her selfishness and arrogance caused, then finally sacrificing herself to allow the player to save Orphion. But the thing is, we just don’t. She remains her irritating self basically right up until the end. Sure, she overcomes her pacifism at the end of Realm of Light IV, when she has a temper tantrum and tries to kill the player, which apparently shocks her so much she finally abandons her most deeply held belief. I suppose it kind of makes sense at face value, but you really don’t have to think about it too much for it to fall apart, and it’s just so much less satisfying than a gradual build up to what could have been a really big moment. The Realm of Light questline has so much wasted potential in my opinion, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Lari’s character.
Enough about characters though, let’s talk about what I’d argue is the second most important feature of a good story, and something in which I think most Wynncraft quests do a pretty good job. Worldbuilding. As something of a lore nut, I’m a sucker for a cool fantasy world, and I have to say Wynncraft has an extremely compelling world for a minecraft server. The worldbuilding of Wynn in particular is what got me invested in this game in the first place. There aren’t really any quests that stand out to me as having wasted potential in the worldbuilding department, so I’m just going to be discussing what I think is probably the best example of great worldbuilding in a Wynncraft quest. A Journey Beyond, and A Journey Further.
The primary purpose of these two quests is to introduce the player to the Silent Expanse, and give us a glimpse into what Dern, the location of the ultimate enemy might be like. And I have to say I think it does this incredibly well. The deaths of Elphaba and Lucio, two characters that have already been established as pretty competent, immediately tell us that the Silent Expanse is like no area we’ve ever been in before. It’s mysterious, scary and very dangerous, especially to anyone who isn’t practically a demigod. The fact that most of the questline is made up of the player desperately trying to keep Aledar alive also works as a nice way to show that despite all the fancy magic we’ve seen Aledar, Elphaba and Lucio do, the player is on an entirely different level of power to even the most elite of Wynn’s soldiers. A discussion about AJB and AJF also wouldn’t be complete without a mention of Aledar’s sacrifice too, arguably one of the most emotional moments in all of Wynncraft (second only in my opinion to having to kill poor Winston). I love all the foreshadowing around it that goes completely over your head the first time you do it, but becomes a cool thing you notice on repeat completions of the quest. I also think the power scaling I mentioned earlier also adds a bit more weight to Aledar sacrificing himself too, because it’s pretty obvious the player is the only person with even the remotest chance of being able to defeat the Eye, and it's highly unlikely anyone else would be able to even make it this far. Aledar sacrificing himself is the only way, and the fact that it’s the player who has to kill him makes it just that little bit more tragic. I never really cared for Aledar too much, but this scene is always able to make me feel something when he dies.
Moving away from tragic sacrifices, let’s talk briefly about the final element I think is important to a lot of Wynncraft quests, and something that is a bit more exclusive to this kind of storytelling. It needs to be fun. If a quest isn’t fun then it’s just nowhere near as enjoyable, even if the characters and worldbuilding are solid. Quests like Misadventure on the Sea and Canary Calls are regarded as some of the best quests in the game, and they have barely any worldbuilding and either minor characters or no real characters at all. It’s the fact that they’re fun and bizarre that makes them so enjoyable.
So with all the most important aspects of a good quest out of the way, let’s talk about one final quest- A Hunter’s Calling, the last quest currently in the game. A Hunter’s Calling is the Avengers Endgame meets Undertale genocide run of Wynncraft Quests, it’s a visit back to all the major places and events in the player’s story so far, except now you get to destroy it all by taking the side of the antagonists! This quest has such a cool concept and is a blast to play through. It’s probably one of the funnest quests in the game, and despite the fact it takes place in an alternate universe, it still manages to develop the world and characters. We get to learn a bit more about important characters like Theorick, Maxie and Aledar and Tasim and it also gives us an insight into important antagonists such as Bak’al and the Antikythera Computer. AHC has probably the best mix of characters, worldbuilding and fun out of any quest, which is what makes it my all time favourite and arguably one of the best quests in Wynncraft. There might be a couple of sections that aren’t quite as enjoyable, but there’s always something after that’s more fun.
Well look at that we’ve made it to the end! Hopefully you have a slightly better understanding of what makes a good quest, or at the very least found it interesting. Thanks for reading!
Member Shoutout of the Publication
Shoutout to M(F)arty for defying gravity with me (Talky)
Closing Remarks
This concludes this edition of the times! Thank you so much for reading and trusting me as your colleagues, and our newest sailors. See you next time ANO!
-Talkair