Horses: very cool
250g for one at level 35 (don't need expansion) - doesn't work in the frontier
at level 45 with expansion you can buy a faster one for 1p which works in the frontier as well.
Cooler horses require you to be champion levels (1 through 5 you get more choices but they get more expensive up to 15p+quest for the really cool ones like the undead horse).
These have no effect in game just look cooler - are all the same speed as the first 1p horse.
Need Champion levels to put barding and saddlebags on the horse - crafters make this (LGM)
Barding just looks nice, saddlebags give you another vault basically.
If you attack or get attacked on horseback you're dismounted.
Champion levels:
At level 50 - keep gaining xp, anything that gives you xp (any source - krondon raid, quest, hand in kill task drops, rvr) give you champion xp - the champ xp for rvr xp is about 8 times more, but it'll still require some proper farming to gain your levels out there. Better just to get it on random raids.
For anyone worrying about "grinding" - if you do anything other than craft you will get CL5 sooner or later. If you really want to get it NOW NOW NOW a dungeon task got me about half a bub, cl1 is the same xp as cl5.
Subclassing
With every champion level you get a subclass point which you can use to train at a base trainer - each trainer has 3 and a half lines you can train in with 5 skills in each
(4 and a half because it's a1->a5, b1->b5 and then c1->c2, d1->d2 which both lead onto c3->c5 - I'll find a screenshot of the training window which makes sense)
You can spec in different areas from different trainers if you want but you need to spec the ones before to get the one after (i.e. need a1 and a2 from the fighter trainer to get a3 from the fighter trainer)
These abilities are all fairly minor - nice to have but I'd be surprised if they were deemed game-breaking not to have
Champion quest
Big long epic quest in 3 chapters (each of which have few stages) - can start this at level 30 if you want just for xp, second chapter is level 40, 50 to start the third chapter.
At the start of the third chapter you get your champion weapon (without the secondary ability). If you finish the third chapter you get the second ability activated.
If you hit champion level 5 you can pick up the fully enabled weapon anyway without having to do the quest.
Champion tasks
Despite the name these are actually for levels 1-49 - basically catacombs mini missions in the old world/SI. Can do 5 per level.
New zones
Not really any - it's all based in the old world with some instances for the champion quests. Some of the instances are nice
but they're just really part of the quests.New graphics
DF and all the related monster models along with the capital cities have all been redone - very nice
Thoughts
Must have expansion - hopefully it's as cheap over here as it is in the states (only 20 dollars). Lots of new "things" but not a huge amount more to do in game. Horses however are just fantastic.
You can get everything by buying the expansion, talking to the king and then just going back to whatever you did before which seems a bit cheap to me really
but I think the plan was to not spread everyone out any further with new zones. The new quest is quite good fun, though it's not going to last you forever. A full group can probably complete it in the course of a couple of nights.
If you want new toys for your characters it's good - if you want places to explore or new things to do... it's a bit lacking in my opinion.
