PoppyMcShotgun
10-05-2005, 07:32
Well, I just did a search on the forums for "drake runs," "drake," and "drakes" and didn't find anything that I'm about to share, so I think I'm safe from the "omfg you n00b we've been over this already" posts that follow most new threads...
Without further ado, I will give a step-by-step guide on drake runs.
For all those people who do not know what a drake run is, allow me to explain:
-The drakes I speak about are level 18 mobs along the coast in the "Gates of Kryta" mission. They have the potential to drop very decent items, along with gaining a LOT of gold in the process. A "run" is starting the mission in the Gates of Kryta area with the sole intention of finding the drakes, killing all you can, wash, rinse, repeat.
A lot of people will balk at this idea, some are doing it all the time, but I tell you with 100% fact, drake runs are easy to do with only two people. I'm sorry all you Elementalists, Necros, Rangers and Mesmers... the best way to do this is to have a W with a nice damage weapon, and a pure healing monk. I was doing this as a lvl 15 monk when the W I was with was only lvl 16.
NOTE: I will be giving this guide from the Monk's perspective (because I'm a monk :) ).
Once you have your two person party, and you are both ready (with many open slots in your inventory) click the button to start the mission. You will begin in a tiny town area. Right off the bat, you and your teammate run to Oink, which is located right out the section you start, to the left through the picket fence. You need to be quick, because there is a small undead party that is coming. While waiting at Oink, have the monk cast "Mending" on the Warrior. (My mending at lvl 15 healing prayers gives +4 permanant health regen) Also, behind the house next to Oink, there is a chest... get it.
If you are quick enough, you can just stand by Oink and watch the undead party walk by. After they walk by, go back outside the picket fence and take a left (which is the direction the undead came from). It is important to note that the monk should always stay about 30 feet behind the Warrior, or the furthest possible distance from him while still being able to cast healing spells. The path will quickly force you to take a right, at which time you will have to face 4 undead creatures. Depending on how good the warrior is and how strong your mending spell is, you may not even have to heal the warrior once. As stated above, just stay within healing range and keep the W healed while he takes out the undead. If you have Bane Signet, you can toss that at the enemy as it becomes available.
Once those 4 undead are taken out, you will come to a big clearing. Facing the direction you enter the area at the other end of the clearing, you will find a unique monster along with about 5 or 6 undead. What your party should do is hug the left wall and wait. Those 5-6 undead will walk past you as long as you are hugging the left wall. This will leave an open path to take out the Unique monster waiting for you. This monster seems to rotate between 4 different uniques, but whichever one is there, you must kill him.
After you kill him, the path will make you take a left. Continue walking down the path until you run into the first undead monster. You can easily dispose of him. You should see another undead monster very close, but not in aggro range while you are taking out the first undead. Dispose of that one after you are through with the first.
After killing those two lone undead monsters, you will come to a depression in elevation with a bridge crossing the swampy water, with a TON of undead waiting for you. If you wait, most of the undead will disperse, and leave you with only 4 to fight, but this guide is about getting to the drakes as fast as possible, so we will avoid those undead on the bridge. If you backtrack about 10 steps, to the right, you will find another depression in elevation which empties out into the swamp water. Cross the swamp there, and hug the wall on the opposite side, walking to the bridge. If you wait for it, the undead will move so that you will be undetectable while hugging the wall and continuing along to the path.
The path will rise in elevation a little bit, and force you to turn left, where you have a few groups of undead waiting for you. The first group has 4 undead, 2 Mesmers and 2 Rangers. Take out the mesmers first, then take out the Rangers. In this area you need to kill all the undead in order to pass into the city. While taking out those 2 mesmers and 2 rangers, you might aggro another set of one mesmer and 2 rangers. Just keep the W healed and you should be fine. There are 4 sets of undead in this area in total, and after you've killed 3 of them, the fourth will be fighting some White Mantle Seekers at the gate of the city (If you are too slow, however, all of the white mantle will be dead by the time you get there). Try to take out the first three groups of undead as quick as you can, then get to the gate of the city. Keep the W as well as the White Mantle healed so they can be extra tanks for your team. You will find that it is much easier to kill with extra NPC's helping you.
After killing these undead, the gates to the city will open, at which time you will need to talk to the Justicar that has the exclamation point over his head. Talking to him opens up the next gate.
Once you go out the next gate, you should be able to see the beach and ocean. In order to get to the beach, you have to fight the first set of Mergoyles. Here's the easiest way to do that: At the gate that was opened, you have a bunch of White Mantle Seekers. Have the Monk stay by the Seekers and have the W go out and attack the closest Mergoyle, but run back to the gate. While I'm sure most of you could take out the mergoyles alone, it goes much faster with 4 NPC White Mantle Seekers hitting them as well. The mergoyles aggro in sets of 5, so after you've killed the frist 5, hug the right wall of the coast. If you time it right, you can get past the second set of mergoyles without having to fight them. If you are unlucky enough to aggro them, however, fight them and dispose of them.
After all of that, you should now be on the beach within visible distance of the drakes. The drakes aggro in sets of two, and I've found the easiest way to handle them is to have the warrior call a target and start attacking. This will prompt the set of drakes to attack the Warrior (as long as you, the monk, are back far enough). Once you are sure they are both aggro'd on the W, cast pacifism on the drake that the W is not attacking, and heal the W for any damage taken. Even with 60+ armor, the "Lightning Orb" skill the drakes do deal a considerable amount of damage. Keep a steady flow of heals to the W to keep him alive, and you both should attack the drake that is NOT pacified. If you both deal enough damage and depending on how long your pacifism lasts, you could probably kill the first drake without having the second one attacking once! This makes for very efficient killing and staying alive.
Basically just follow along all the coastline down there, and take out any and all drakes you see. Keep in mind to get the two chests that appear very close to each other after you've fought about 8-10 drakes. One is a money chest, and one is an item chest.
After you've gone down the coast and gone as far as the coast will allow, you will come to a house with a dock. This area has 3 chests, 2 money and one item. (The one at the end of the pier is the item chest).
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Some strategies to keep in mind while doing the run:
-As the monk, STAY BACK. You are NOT a tank, so don't run in there like rambo.
-Keep the W healed. If you have the spell "heal other" and 15 points in Healing prayers, you will heal for 180, plus your divine favor... An easy 200+ heal for 10 energy. Healing breeze at the same healing prayers level will give your Warrior a +9 health regen!
-Remove any conditions on your W. I've found that "purge conditions" is a decent spell that gets rid of all conditions on your W. The only downside is that it takes a while to be able to cast again.
-If you don't have to fight something on your way to the drakes, DON'T! Waiting for the mob to move and moving around it takes much less time then fighting them.
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Between the two of you, you should get a little over 1000 gold each run, not to mention EXTREMELY good XP at levels 15-18. I've seen the drakes drop between 45-110 gold (when they do drop gold) and items you can sell for just as much. PICK EVERYTHING UP. If you see it as a worthless item, the NPC merchant doesn't... he'll still give you gold for it! Pick it up and sell it!
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Hopefully this has been some help to a few of you, and even if you did know what a drake run is, hopefully I've shown you a few things that can streamline your own process! Feedback is encouraged...
(I'll post maps and directions like north, south, etc when I get home... I typed this all up from memory at work!)
Without further ado, I will give a step-by-step guide on drake runs.
For all those people who do not know what a drake run is, allow me to explain:
-The drakes I speak about are level 18 mobs along the coast in the "Gates of Kryta" mission. They have the potential to drop very decent items, along with gaining a LOT of gold in the process. A "run" is starting the mission in the Gates of Kryta area with the sole intention of finding the drakes, killing all you can, wash, rinse, repeat.
A lot of people will balk at this idea, some are doing it all the time, but I tell you with 100% fact, drake runs are easy to do with only two people. I'm sorry all you Elementalists, Necros, Rangers and Mesmers... the best way to do this is to have a W with a nice damage weapon, and a pure healing monk. I was doing this as a lvl 15 monk when the W I was with was only lvl 16.
NOTE: I will be giving this guide from the Monk's perspective (because I'm a monk :) ).
Once you have your two person party, and you are both ready (with many open slots in your inventory) click the button to start the mission. You will begin in a tiny town area. Right off the bat, you and your teammate run to Oink, which is located right out the section you start, to the left through the picket fence. You need to be quick, because there is a small undead party that is coming. While waiting at Oink, have the monk cast "Mending" on the Warrior. (My mending at lvl 15 healing prayers gives +4 permanant health regen) Also, behind the house next to Oink, there is a chest... get it.
If you are quick enough, you can just stand by Oink and watch the undead party walk by. After they walk by, go back outside the picket fence and take a left (which is the direction the undead came from). It is important to note that the monk should always stay about 30 feet behind the Warrior, or the furthest possible distance from him while still being able to cast healing spells. The path will quickly force you to take a right, at which time you will have to face 4 undead creatures. Depending on how good the warrior is and how strong your mending spell is, you may not even have to heal the warrior once. As stated above, just stay within healing range and keep the W healed while he takes out the undead. If you have Bane Signet, you can toss that at the enemy as it becomes available.
Once those 4 undead are taken out, you will come to a big clearing. Facing the direction you enter the area at the other end of the clearing, you will find a unique monster along with about 5 or 6 undead. What your party should do is hug the left wall and wait. Those 5-6 undead will walk past you as long as you are hugging the left wall. This will leave an open path to take out the Unique monster waiting for you. This monster seems to rotate between 4 different uniques, but whichever one is there, you must kill him.
After you kill him, the path will make you take a left. Continue walking down the path until you run into the first undead monster. You can easily dispose of him. You should see another undead monster very close, but not in aggro range while you are taking out the first undead. Dispose of that one after you are through with the first.
After killing those two lone undead monsters, you will come to a depression in elevation with a bridge crossing the swampy water, with a TON of undead waiting for you. If you wait, most of the undead will disperse, and leave you with only 4 to fight, but this guide is about getting to the drakes as fast as possible, so we will avoid those undead on the bridge. If you backtrack about 10 steps, to the right, you will find another depression in elevation which empties out into the swamp water. Cross the swamp there, and hug the wall on the opposite side, walking to the bridge. If you wait for it, the undead will move so that you will be undetectable while hugging the wall and continuing along to the path.
The path will rise in elevation a little bit, and force you to turn left, where you have a few groups of undead waiting for you. The first group has 4 undead, 2 Mesmers and 2 Rangers. Take out the mesmers first, then take out the Rangers. In this area you need to kill all the undead in order to pass into the city. While taking out those 2 mesmers and 2 rangers, you might aggro another set of one mesmer and 2 rangers. Just keep the W healed and you should be fine. There are 4 sets of undead in this area in total, and after you've killed 3 of them, the fourth will be fighting some White Mantle Seekers at the gate of the city (If you are too slow, however, all of the white mantle will be dead by the time you get there). Try to take out the first three groups of undead as quick as you can, then get to the gate of the city. Keep the W as well as the White Mantle healed so they can be extra tanks for your team. You will find that it is much easier to kill with extra NPC's helping you.
After killing these undead, the gates to the city will open, at which time you will need to talk to the Justicar that has the exclamation point over his head. Talking to him opens up the next gate.
Once you go out the next gate, you should be able to see the beach and ocean. In order to get to the beach, you have to fight the first set of Mergoyles. Here's the easiest way to do that: At the gate that was opened, you have a bunch of White Mantle Seekers. Have the Monk stay by the Seekers and have the W go out and attack the closest Mergoyle, but run back to the gate. While I'm sure most of you could take out the mergoyles alone, it goes much faster with 4 NPC White Mantle Seekers hitting them as well. The mergoyles aggro in sets of 5, so after you've killed the frist 5, hug the right wall of the coast. If you time it right, you can get past the second set of mergoyles without having to fight them. If you are unlucky enough to aggro them, however, fight them and dispose of them.
After all of that, you should now be on the beach within visible distance of the drakes. The drakes aggro in sets of two, and I've found the easiest way to handle them is to have the warrior call a target and start attacking. This will prompt the set of drakes to attack the Warrior (as long as you, the monk, are back far enough). Once you are sure they are both aggro'd on the W, cast pacifism on the drake that the W is not attacking, and heal the W for any damage taken. Even with 60+ armor, the "Lightning Orb" skill the drakes do deal a considerable amount of damage. Keep a steady flow of heals to the W to keep him alive, and you both should attack the drake that is NOT pacified. If you both deal enough damage and depending on how long your pacifism lasts, you could probably kill the first drake without having the second one attacking once! This makes for very efficient killing and staying alive.
Basically just follow along all the coastline down there, and take out any and all drakes you see. Keep in mind to get the two chests that appear very close to each other after you've fought about 8-10 drakes. One is a money chest, and one is an item chest.
After you've gone down the coast and gone as far as the coast will allow, you will come to a house with a dock. This area has 3 chests, 2 money and one item. (The one at the end of the pier is the item chest).
-------------------------------------------------------
Some strategies to keep in mind while doing the run:
-As the monk, STAY BACK. You are NOT a tank, so don't run in there like rambo.
-Keep the W healed. If you have the spell "heal other" and 15 points in Healing prayers, you will heal for 180, plus your divine favor... An easy 200+ heal for 10 energy. Healing breeze at the same healing prayers level will give your Warrior a +9 health regen!
-Remove any conditions on your W. I've found that "purge conditions" is a decent spell that gets rid of all conditions on your W. The only downside is that it takes a while to be able to cast again.
-If you don't have to fight something on your way to the drakes, DON'T! Waiting for the mob to move and moving around it takes much less time then fighting them.
-------------------------------------------------
Between the two of you, you should get a little over 1000 gold each run, not to mention EXTREMELY good XP at levels 15-18. I've seen the drakes drop between 45-110 gold (when they do drop gold) and items you can sell for just as much. PICK EVERYTHING UP. If you see it as a worthless item, the NPC merchant doesn't... he'll still give you gold for it! Pick it up and sell it!
-------------------------------------------------
Hopefully this has been some help to a few of you, and even if you did know what a drake run is, hopefully I've shown you a few things that can streamline your own process! Feedback is encouraged...
(I'll post maps and directions like north, south, etc when I get home... I typed this all up from memory at work!)