Mobs you Respect

So I've been playing some Final Fantasy XIV a bit lately, and overall having a great time.  One of the things I enjoy is a return to zones that have some genuinely rough monsters, mixed in with the fodder.  And it got me to thinking, over the course of all the MMO's I've played - what are some of the mobs that have really earned my respect!  And it seemed like a fun topic for a blog, so there you are.

The Last Guild Wars Post?

The first time I really got a chance to play Guild Wars 2 was that first Beta Weekend Event, back in April.  I was of course aware of the game, had seen some screenies and a little bit of footage, but by far and large had been postponing really digging into it.  It was that weekend event that caught me, hook line and sinker, on the game.  And after the weekend was over, I decided I would boot up Guild Wars 1 again, and renew my effort to get at least a few points in my Hall of Monuments.  I think at the time I had like three - the ones you get for owning all of the expansions.

But I gotta tell you.. it was hard!  I had already become so used to so many of the features in Guild Wars 2, coming back was.. well to be honest it really did feel a bit like stepping back in time.  Being unable to jump (again), the loneliness of the instanced explorable areas, the auto-attacking & movement, the arcane armor crafting mechanics, the complete lack of modern ameneties like mail and auction houses - all of it bespeaks of a game designed seven years ago.

Meet Kerelyn Redfeather

So after completing The War in Kryta last week, I took a few days off from Guild Wars, and spent some time thinking about what I was going to do next.  But starting something new just didn't really appeal to me, and my mind kept wandering back to my Hall of Monuments.  (This is a clear sign of addiction, btw.)  The Oppressor Weapon you get from finishing WoK nets you two more Hall of Monument points, which was a pleasant surprise and a big motivator for pushing through that last tough mission.  Honestly, I never expected to have even one weapon on my Valor Monument, so this was a nice accomplishment.

Of course though.. that left me at an odd 17 points.  No one wants to be at 17 points.. halfway between the solid milestones of 15 and 20, right?  If I added a single hero statue, my Fellowship statue count would be at 10, and that would get me another point.  Well, I could run Remains of Sahlahja a few more times - all I needed was one piece of Ancient Armor Remnant - that couldn't be that hard right?  Wrong.  After running it another six times, three different times with three different characters, I still didn't have a single drop.  So I stopped doing that in frustration. But as luck would have it, at that very moment, a fellow was selling Cloth of the Brotherhood in Kamadan for 5k a piece.  You can use those to upgrade your Eye of the North heroes if you have finished Eye of the North (or at least have access to the Central Transfer Chamber) - which I have!   So I bought four of those, outfitted for of my heroes, and now I have 18 points.  But now what!  With 18 points, I needed just 2 more to get to a nice, even number again, and satisfaction.

After spending way too much time looking at each of the categories, and evaluating what would produce the best results for the least amount of effort - or at least in the most satisfying way - I decided that the Honor Monument would be my best bet.  I currently have two statues - one each for finishing the campaigns of Nightfall and Factions.  If I could get three more statues, I would get a full three points for having a full display, which is five statues.  If I just completed the Prophecies campaign, I would get one statue - Hero of Tyria.  And as I already had most of the missions in Nightfall completed with a Masters score, if I went back and picked up the few that I had missed, I could get another title - Eternal Protector of Elona for a second statue.  But to get that third statue.. I would have to do all the missions in the Prophecies Campaign, and get their bonus accomplishments.  The thing is, the first six of those missions require a prophecies character.  That's right, I would have to create a new character from scratch, in the prophecies campaign, and start working with her.  And this would be a huge disadvantage to finishing it quickly, as I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the hundreds of hours I've put into Kaytte, and more importantly, her extremely well outfitted heroes.  In fact, I'd have no heroes at all!  The only thing I could count on would be having enough money to properly outfit her with armors and weapons as she leveled up, and to buy the skills I've unlocked with other characters.  It was a tough decision.  I spent a solid ten minutes or so considering whether or not it would be worth it.

Of course, you already know what I did.  Meet Kerelyn Redfeather, young ranger from Ascalon, whom was there the day the Charr broke the sky and rained fire and brimstone down upon the country.  So far, things have gone pretty well.  Don't worry, I won't be burdening you with a picture-by-picture account of my journeys.  But I have had a better time of it than I thought I would.  My memories of the Prophecies campaign are mostly negative, formed from several aborted attempts over the years that never saw any character get any further than post-seared Ascalon.  But with strict focus and attention to walkthroughs, I've already accomplished more this weekend than I ever did in any of my previous attempts.  Kerelyn is a bit of an over-achiever, and at level 12, she has already completed all of Old  Ascalon, led the refugees through the Shiverpeaks, through the undead riddled Gates of Kryta, and seen them safely to Lion's Arch.  In game terms, I've completed 7 of the 25 missions that make up the Prophecies campaign.

Now that I'm in Lion's Arch, I feel I might be a bit underleveled (ya think?), so I'm going to do some pickup missions here and there to level up a bit, before continuing with the campaign.  The amazing thing I think is, how possible it is to really make progress in these campaigns when you have a goal and focus.  In pretty much every attempt I'd tried before, I always end up floundering, buried in a miasma of secondary quests, losing sight of the goal, before getting bored and wandering away to something else bright and shiny.  In this attempt, I've done pretty much zero side-quests. I check the wiki before every mission, and if it doesn't have the word Primary next to it, it's a safe bet I skip it.  And a few times along the way, I have done some extra things, just to level up a bit.  But the important thing is - the different thing is - this time I'm keeping my eye firmly on the ball.

Once I get to level 18 or 20, I'll jump over to Eye of the North, and do just enough of that content to get Ogden, Vekk, Jora, and Gwen in my party.  With those four heroes, I should be able to do the Lion's Arch quest to travel to Elona, and do the first mission there, which will add Koss, Duncan, Talkora, and Melonni. Though that isn't even half of the heroes Kaytte has at her disposal, I'm hopeful that mix will give me enough to have an easier time of it as I progress through Prophecies.

And that's what I was up to this past weekend!  Hope you are having fun in whatever game you're currently playing, and of course, I'll see you in Guild Wars 2 in 4 weeks!

Final Note - It turns out I actually could take a non prophecies character all the way back to post-seared Ascalon, and do those first, initial six missions.  The wiki and documentation, such as it is, is not very clear on this.  Regardless, it's too late now!  Committed we are!  Proceed we shall!

The War in Kryta

So it took a bit longer than I had anticipated. It turns out, some of the missions in The War in Kryta are, well, as hard as anything The Eye of the North or Nightfall is going to throw at you. Once again, I found myself scrambling to find the right build for my character, and more importantly, the right makeup of heroes, in order to succeed in many of the missions.

Lion's Arch - 250 Years Later

The Lion's Arch of long ago was gone, its only remaining memory consisting of the battlements that survived the great waves from the rising of Orr.  When Zhaitan, the undead Elder Dragon, brought long-sunken Orr back to the surface, all lands surrounding the Sea of Sorrows were awash in great waves.  Lion's Arch was almost utterly destroyed, and it its place was left a swamp of broken ships, snapped trees, and dead creatures.

Guild Wars' Curious Carry Mechanic

 So by now you've heard that Guild Wars 2 has announced their launch date - August 28th, 2012.  And suddenly, those of us that have been poking along in Guild Wars 1, attempting to get a few points for our Hall of Monuments, suddenly have deer in the headlights looks on our faces, as a deadline suddenly looms before us!  Though I rarely do very well at actually completing things, recently I've been fairly good about keeping my eye on my objectives, and have actually finished a few things.  Last week I finished at long last, the Nightfall campaign, and this week I finished the Eye of the North campaign.  Suffice it to say, I've been spending a good amount of my free time in Tyria.  And it was while playing - one session in particular - that I was reminded of one of Guild Wars' more quirky mechanics.  And one - for better or worse - they've carried over into Guild Wars 2.  And that is.. carrying something.

So, in most games, picking something up means simply that it goes in your inventory.  And in Guild Wars, they have that kind of picking something up too.  But they also have a whole different category of possession, which your character physically carries an item.  You get an animation for it and everything.  After you pick up the item, you are holding it in your hands.  You get a special button that displays on your interface called "drop item".  As you run around, you look pretty silly, carrying whatever it is, but there you are.

Carrying Buckets of Oil

Interestingly enough, the Guild Wars 1 designers were pretty much in love with this mechanic.  It was, considered a pretty important mechanic, and it factors into many quests and activities.  The consider it important enough in fact that the very first mission you do in NightFall requires you to show that you know how to pick something up, carry it to another place, and put it down.  They loved it so much, they built an entire classes combat mechanics around carrying items, and then putting them down.  For instance, here's a typical ritualist ability:  Pure was Li Ming.  First, I love the ritualist spell names, because they most all sound like they were written by Yoda.  Here's the description:  

Hold Li Ming's ashes for 5...17...20 seconds. While you hold her ashes, conditions on you expire 10...42...50% faster. When you drop her ashes, all allies within earshot lose 1...3...4condition[s].

First, it's a bit morbid isnt it?  But that's how it works.  When you activate the spell, you're holding a little urn, which we can only presume are Li Ming's ashes.  While you carry her ashes, you get a nice effect.  Drop her ashes, and you get another effect. Why do you drop the item?  Oh because while you're carrying an object, you can't use any of your abilities that require the use of your hands!

A Ritualist is never far from her handy
collection of ashes!

So, a warrior - whose entire skill bar is pretty much filled with weapon based abilities, is pretty much completely crippled while carrying an item.  Curiously enough, spell casting, even though you play animations that wave your arms about, is seemingly unaffected by the fact that you might be holding a barrel in your hands.  So strangely elementalists are still mostly effective while carrying an object.  Considering that many requests and activities require you to carry objects, it was a hugely unfair disadvantage for weapon based classes.

Around the time Eye of the North came about, they introduced a variation to the carry mechanic.  They would give you an entirely new skill bar when you picked the item up.  This is very similar to how vehicles work in WoW.  Now - me personally, I'm not a huge fan of this either.  You spend an extraordinary amount of time and effort putting together your build and acquiring your skills, and then you go and pick something up, and poof, all your skills are gone and replaced by some collection of things you didn't choose and most likely don't know.  But it is what it is.  The designers are fine with it, and the presumption is, you carry whatever it is enough, and eventually you'll learn those skills as well.  And it does have the advantage at least of being equally fair regardless of what class you are. 

This is, by the way, the version of the mechanic that lives on in Guild Wars 2.  However, it seems in Guild Wars 2 that the designers have relagated carrying objects to somewhat of a pure flavor role.  The world is filled with objects lying about just begging to be picked up, and when you do, you typically get some small collection of abilities that are associated with that object.  But I haven't seen entire quests built around your ability to pick up an object, carry it somewhere, and put it down - no wait, you do have to pick up those water buckets in one of the first karma events - so yeah, I guess you are using them.  Well at least there aren't entire classes built around using it as a mechanic.  

One humorous anecdote to share, which is actually what prompted me to write this blog.  In one quest in Eye of the North, your party is faced with an indestructible golem.  However, it can be beaten by picking up a nearby object, charging said object up by interacting with a second object, and then putting the object down at the golem's feet.  All the while the golem is hammering you with various attacks, and generally wrecking havoc with your party, while your party assails away at him to no avail.  So I picked up the object, charged it up, but then I couldn't find the drop item button!  I looked all over my interface and it wasn't there!  So my poor heroes are fighting for their lives, healers trying vainly to keep people alive, warriors dying left and right, and Kaytte, prancing around like an idiot, carrying this stupid item, with all of the NPCs pleading for her to put it down, and her player going I can't find the button!!  Thank gawd there were no actual other people in the party.  Turned out it had appeared beneath one of the interface elements that you can move around.  Once I moved the element out of the way, there it was.  Kaytte deposited the charged thingamajig dutifully at the golem's feet, blowing it up.  

Anyway, if Guild Wars 2 is actually your first foray into the world of Guild Wars, and you are wondering why there are cow paddies that you can actually pick up and throw - well now you know.  Just one of the many quirks that came through from the original game, and lives on in its newest incarnation. 

The Sun Also Rises

with apologies to Earnest Hemingway.. 

So it's only taken me some six years after purchase to do so, but this weekend, at long last, I completed the Guild Wars Nightfall campaign with a single character - on Normal Mode!  And I gotta say, when you do at last get through that last mission, you are filled with an incredible sense of accomplishment.  Because make no mistake about it - the last few missions in Nightfall are hard.  In fact, what I thought I might do in this post is spend a little bit of time talking about the last two missions specifically in the Nightfall Campaign, and then close with some comments about the difficulty curve in general in Guild Wars, and what it might mean for Guild Wars 2. 

Hunting for Heroes - A Guild to Skill Capturing in Guild Wars

So the first open beta weekend of Guild Wars 2 has come and gone, and it's left a quite a few of us eyeing our Hall of Monuments, and thinking You know.. maybe Guild Wars 1 wasn't so bad.  Maybe I should give it a try one more time, and see if I can get a few of those HoM points.  If anything, it's testimony to just how good that darn Guild Wars 2 was, that it has many people whom have by far and large moved on from the original game coming back, and poking around in it.

In which we discover Jennur's Horde is hard!

So with all the buzz about Guild Wars 2 these days, I've decided to return to Guild Wars 1, and see if I can work on my pathetically outfitted Hall of Monuments.  I already had a few points, as I've actually got one statue for completing the Factions campaign.  And I spent enough time running the Dajkah Inlet challenge mission to outfit four heroes, plus a pet, to place in my fellowship monument.  So I'm up to ten points.  The next goals I'd set for myself were to complete the Nightfall and EothN campaigns - both of which I have made numerous forays into, but have never actually completed.

So last night's adventure in Nightfall had me making attempts at a mission called Jennur's Horde. There is a description and walkthrough at that link.  The thing about this mission that makes it especially difficult is there are multiple paths to failure.  First, there are fairly large numbers of static mobs milling about in close proximity to one another.  If you're using minions, and pets, and/or henchies and heroes, then it's extraordinarily easy to aggro nearby groups, and to quickly find yourself overwhelmed.  And because it's a mission, party wipe means mission failure.  Second, there's the dreaded vulnerable NPC that must be kept alive.  He stays near the mission entrance, but every two minutes a group of mobs is spawned at the back of the zone, and starts making a bee-line to the NPC.  Miss that group of runners - let them get past you, and the NPC is quickly killed, and mission failed.  Finally, scattered throughout the mission are these deadly melee creatures called Harbingers.  Harbingers are immune to all of your forms of attack.  The only way they can be killed is to carry an item that is given to you, and drop it at their feet.  This makes it even more difficult for melee classes to complete, as most of theirs skills are turned off while carrying an object.  Thankfully I'm a caster, so I can still be effective while carrying things.  Oh - and to make it more interesting, for each of these Harbingers you kill, the size of the group that is spawned and runs towards the NPC gets larger.  Fun, right?

So there are several walkthroughs for this mission, and I definitely suggest reading them.  What I'm going to do is offer some additional tips on completing this solo, with heroes and henchmen.

Flag your group to the top of the stairs at the end of the hall

First, as the walkthrough suggests, it may be wise to leave the first two Harbinger's alone, so as to keep the runner group spawn size low.  I too definitely suggest this.  However, with a group of heroes, this can be easier said than done.  What I found worked for me was not to lead them through, but before you aggro the first harbinger, flag your heroes to the stairs at the end of the hall.  They will run past the harbingers, and through the static group at the base of the stairs, taking some damage, but that's okay.  Let them.  Hopefully, by the time you get to the top of the stairs, you'll be beyond the leash range of the second harbinger, he'll run back to his spawn location, and you can finish off the static group.   One note here - I definitely recommend waiting for and killing the first running group before you drop the Light of Seborhin at the harbinger at the top of the stairs and kill him.  If you kill him right away, the first run group will run and attack the Spirit of Seborhin, and trying to kill them will mean you will almost certainly also aggro one of the static groups at the top of the stairs.  This can get pretty ugly pretty quickly.

Once you have your beachhead at the top of the stairs, from this point on, you want to practice a slow and methodical approach of alternating between killing static groups and runners.  This is not a mission that you want to rush through.  But there are times when you need to hustle.  Essentially, you kill a running group, then immediately kill a static group.  When you finish off the static group, return to the middle and wait for the next running group to intercept and kill.  If you're super fast, don't be tempted to take on two static groups between runners.  Rest up, mana up, and be patient.  And if you take too long killing a static group, then keep an eye out for that runner group, and be prepared to break off if need be and flag your heroes over in front of them to intercept.  If a single runner group gets by you, the mission is all but assured to be failed.

Figuring out which order to tackle the static groups was tricky for me, and again took me a couple of attempts to get right.  Especially if you're going for the Masters reward, and want to get the two Harbingers and their groups up the stairs to the right and left of the center chamber.  The order that worked for me is that pictured here.  Clearing these floor groups before attempting the stairs helps in not accidently aggroing them when attempting the stairs, plus if you have to break off and race across the floor to intercept a running group, it's much easier if the floor has been cleared of enemies.

Among Nightfall missions, this one definitely stands near the top for me in terms of difficulty.  But like all things that present a challenge, there's a huge sense of accomplishment when the Master's Reward double-sword and spear sing across the symbol.  If you're just returning to Nightfall or Guild Wars and your travels take you through this mission, I hope these tips help you out some.  And don't get discouraged if the walkthrough's you read were written in.. say.. 2006.  We tackle our MMO's when we're darn good and ready by gawd!