The latest Grab Bag contains information about the forthcoming Live Event, The Wild Hunt.  With an all-new dungeon available for only one week, this one promises to be interesting!

Q. At what level of difficulty (Blood/Bile, Lost Vale, Tomb of the Vulture, ect.) will The Hunter’s Vale dungeon be comparable to?

A. The Bleeding Hart Charm goes into the new “Event” item inventory slot.  The charm has archtype-specific stats that are useful to your career. It actually has no physical appearance when equipped.

A. The Hunter’s Vale dungeon isn’t warded, so the closest comparison will be the Bastion Stair.  The difficulty of this dungeon is more weighted toward figuring out how the encounter works rather than how hard the monsters hit. You don’t need to have the perfect group make-up. (Fun fact—when we ran through The Hunter's Vale during core testing, we completed the dungeon with a group that had three healers in it.) The Hunter’s Vale is meant to be a quick, but fun and engrossing experience that all players of all Ranks and skill levels can enjoy.

Q. What will the Bleeding Hart Charm do?  Is it for aesthetic purposes only, or does it have a useful function like the Herald's Cloak?

See the full Q&A after the jump.

Welcome to The Wild Hunt special issue of the Grab Bag, where we're answering all your questions about the very special upcoming Live Event! This Live Event will be arriving on August 31st, after the release of Game Update 1.3.1, but you can get all the details right now! Read on to see what lies in store for you during The Wild Hunt, and in The Hunter's Vale ... if you think you have what it takes to face the Spirit of Kurnous himself!

Q. What will the Bleeding Hart Charm do?  Is it for aesthetic purposes only, or does it have a useful function like the Herald's Cloak?

A. The Bleeding Hart Charm goes into the new “Event” item inventory slot.  The charm has archtype-specific stats that are useful to your career. It actually has no physical appearance when equipped.

Q. Will we be able to slot past Live Event Rewards into the new Event item inventory slot being introduced with The Wild Hunt Live Event?  I would love to use my Aviator Goggles without having to give up my Helm slot/stats.

A. The Event item slot is for Event slot items only. Event slot items are a brand new inventory slot item type being introduced with The Wild Hunt; these items have archetype stats and bonuses, decay with a real time counter, and currently have no visible appearance on the character. We do really like the idea of allowing vanity items, such as the Aviator Goggles or some of the special cloaks to be displayed while still wearing your functional armor, but this is something that, if we do implement, would be later down the road.

Q. If you are a stag running at mount speed, will that buff break if you are attacked?

A. Yes, the stag buff will break if you enter combat.

Q. By what means would one transfer Kurnous's curse to an ally or enemy player? Will there be a spell given to you if you have it to use on someone? Or will it be like one of the previous Live Events, where you get an inventory item and you have to click it on someone, like throwing the pies?

A. If you’re cursed, you’ll have a temporary ability appear just above your hot bar (similar to a Runepriest Rune or a Zealot Mark).  Clicking on an enemy or ally and pressing this ability will transfer the curse to them…that is unless they’ve been recently cursed.

Q. At what level of difficulty (Blood/Bile, Lost Vale, Tomb of the Vulture, ect.) will The Hunter’s Vale dungeon be comparable to?

A. The Hunter’s Vale dungeon isn’t warded, so the closest comparison will be the Bastion Stair.  The difficulty of this dungeon is more weighted toward figuring out how the encounter works rather than how hard the monsters hit. You don’t need to have the perfect group make-up. (Fun fact—when we ran through The Hunter's Vale during core testing, we completed the dungeon with a group that had three healers in it.) The Hunter’s Vale is meant to be a quick, but fun and engrossing experience that all players of all Ranks and skill levels can enjoy.

Q. Will there be criteria for entering The Hunter’s Vale, such as Rank, Wards, quests that need to be completed, or "glyphs"?

A. The only criteria required to enter The Hunter’s Vale is that you have only the duration of the event to enter it.  There are no lock out timers or Rank restrictions, so enjoy it while you can.  There is a version for every Tier in the game, and you’ll be bolstered up just like in open RvR.

Q. Will there be a lock out for The Hunter’s Vale?

A. Nope, but it’s only open for seven days!

Q. What, in greater detail, is this Stag that gives an experience boost and how does it work? Do we just click on it to see it? Do we talk to it? Is it a random spawn? Is it always in a set location, etc.?

A. The White Stag will appear around the world from time to time.  We don’t want to reveal exactly how that works since that’s part of the Live Event; however, once you see him, all you need to do to get credit for sighting the mythical beast is to left-click on him.

Q. Generally speaking, will event slot items have any stats or are they pure vanity? If they have stats, are we talking 5-10 Toughness, or something larger?

A. Stats all the way!  They’ll be geared toward archetypes, (Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, etc.) and will expire after a real-time decay timer.  Oddly enough, the timer will be roughly equal to the time before the next Live Event begins.  There are also rare Event Slot items that drop that have higher stats but a shorter duration timer.

Q. Will we see this dungeon get converted to an all-the-time dungeon? Possibly another dungeon that can drop greater ward gear? One outside the city would be great!

A. Anything is possible! :)

Q. Because the new dungeon is located in the RVR lakes, will this be an invadeable instance or just an instance for each Realm?

A. It’s instanced for each Realm, though the entrances are in the RvR areas in the middle of an open RvR Public Quest. The instance itself is not invadeable.

Q. Will the boss drop a cloak for every player who downs the boss or are we looking at running it six times, potentially?

A. He drops one cloak every time he’s slain. So, if you are running through The Hunter’s Vale with the same group of six people, you would need to run through it six times for everyone to get the cloak.

Q. Are we going to see useful gear drops in The Hunter’s Vale dungeon?

A. Yes—though some of this will be affected by how well you’re currently geared.  Obviously if you’re running around with a full suit of Warlord or Invader gear, you might not find as many useful pieces here, but even then there are some items in this dungeon that will be useful to everyone. The Tier 4 Hunter's Vale, for example, can yield a special event item that will be appealing to everyone.

Q. I love the Live Events, but I think they should be longer than one week and there should always be one going on.  I never seem to be able to complete them.  And it would be nice to be able to complete them on a few characters if they're fun enough. Would you please consider making Live Events longer and have one going on almost all the time?

A. We’ve had similar temptations as well.  One of the reasons why we believe Live Events to be so much fun is that they’re limited-time engagements, but we do understand where you’re coming from.  We balance the Live Events to take roughly two to three days of casual game playing or 8-10 hours of game time.  In addition, we’re looking forward to running more “weekend” events, such as Return to Nordenwatch, which will be right up your alley, I think.

Q. This Live Event has Wood Elf written all over it.  Are you hinting that Wood Elves are going to be included some time in the future?

A. Even if this were true, I’d have to kill you after I told you…

Q. I'm curious as to why it is that offering a new PvE dungeon for only a week seems like a good idea.  I run all the PvE stuff to sample it and because it can be a fun team activity, but I don't grind on 'em ever, as a rule.  I want to see this one, but the entire duration of the Live Event, I'll be out of town and far away from my monstrous gaming rig.  Why is a PvE instance going away after the event?

A. It won’t be going away forever.  The Wild Hunt is a seasonal holiday, meaning it comes back each year at roughly the same time.  Big pieces of awesome like The Hunter’s Vale also tend to find ways to sneak back in from time to time…

Q. How long and how many people does it usually take to create such a Live Event?

A. Each Live Event has differed in scope, so the number of people involved, and how long it takes from start to completion, can change.  The Live Event Team has 10 dedicated developers, but that doesn’t include the Artists, Sound Engineers, Software Engineers, and Producers (let’s not forget those guys!) who add their considerable skills to Live Events.  So, to answer your question—it’s a lot!

Q. Are there any plans for Live Events to be longer and have more impact on the game? For example, a story Live Event, advancing the campaign, or a Live Event that introduces game improvements/new mechanics?

A. Live Events have already been used in this fashion, actually!  Consider the Heavy Metal Live Event that introduced the Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun.  The Bitter Rivals Live Event, too, which preceded the introduction of the Slayer and Choppa careers. Or the Call to Arms three-event story arc that heralded the Land of the Dead launch, and also permanently brought airships into each of the capital cities.  You can expect more of this as we introduce more features and enhancements to the game.

Grab Bag Tip

If you ever find yourself in a predicament where you need to remove a guild from your guild alliance, here's what you do. Go to the Alliance tab in your guild management window, rick-click on the guild name you wish to remove, and you will see an option to create a poll to kick that guild from the Alliance. Once you open the poll, a boot icon will appear next to that guild's name; this can be seen by all Alliance guild leaders, except the guild that is being voted on. If the majority votes to kick the guild from the Alliance, it will happen automatically.