jyangwrites
14-05-2005, 00:55
Hey all, I made it to Camp Rankor (and subsequently Draknors) last night and thought I'd share this tale for all the wound-be travelers who want to make that horrible, twisted journey.
My first and foremost advice, make sure you have a reliable ISP and computer, we lost two good men during our trip, including a friend of mine who toughed it out to the very end only to be disconnected right before we hit the gate to Rankor.
This is going to be very long (4+ pages), so if you’re still willing to read, grab a cup of coffee and juice up.
Beacon's Perch.
Me and a friend of mine started here looking for people to join up for a party. I know what you're thinking, a random group of people making it through Lornar's? You're crazy, stupid, and you must be high on something or at least suffering brain damage.
It's such a gamble to do this with complete strangers, who knows what could happen? What kind of party members might you get?
A griefer with a wurm fetish? Or maybe the countless low level people who believe Lornar leads to the next town. It was tough finding a party and we failed a couple times before we met what would be our final troupe.
2 Warriors, 1 Ranger, 1 Monk, 1 Necromancer and 1 Elementalist.
And incase you were wondering...there wasn't any Sprint!! or Endure Pain.
Yep, the most common and talked about method of running through Lornar's and we didn't try it. There was one moment when we regretted it, cursing ourselves, and we almost gave up. Instead, we forged on and learned to make the best of our situation.
Lornar's Pass
Our leader was a Ranger/Monk with a penchant for luring in creatures. He had tried and failed Lornar's over fifty times. The experience had paid off, he told us we'd have to fight our way through. If we ran, we'd simply die and rack up an early DP. So he lay out his plans for us. The Imps, Pinesoles, Ice Golems, even the Frost Wurms, we'd slaughter. Lay them into bloody heaps for our Necro to feast on. And the Aviraca? Well, we'd avoid those like fresh yellow snow.
Outside the gate from Beacon we took the left path because of the Aviracan patrol that comes on the right. Imps and Pinesoles were there to greet us. Since Pinesoles are just regular melee ranged attackers they were nothing to give a second thought to. However, the Imps are a different story. They carry magic, like Mind Freeze, that can hamper your ability to fight. So we took those out first, then the Pinesoles.
Further ahead were the Ice Golems, and they were no trouble either. We only had one main strategy at this point.
Our leader ranger would draw them in, small groups at a time, and we would bury them into the cold. Our warriors rushed them, pounding their bodies with steel, while the casters, me and my friend, sent them a fiery welcoming. Our brave monk covered our wounds with incredible healing prowess.
This continued on, as we cleared most of the creatures away from the area right outside Beacon’s.
Past the triple fork and near the tunnel at the end. There were the Frost Wurms waiting for us. 4 of them, 2 of which come as an inseparable couple. We cleared away all the other monsters so we could deal with these scaly monstrosities on our own terms.
Our ranger lured a wurm (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/frost_wurm.jpg), and another. And then the final two. And we slayed them all without any real harm. The same procedure each time. The warriors tanked, I cursed them, followed by fire from me and my friend. The ranger injected his poison arrow and the monk kept us alive. After each battle we’d recharge in a blood well. This was our strategy, and although it was very time-consuming, it worked very well.
Lornar's Pass wound up being the easiest part.
We passed through an ice cave (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/ice_cave.jpg) and found a unique Pinesole, Quickroot (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/quickroot.jpg) . No problem for our team.
We passed an exotic, abandoned temple (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/temple.jpg) , which one of our party members warned us to not enter for fear of a quick death.
And finally, as we rounded a mountainous bend, we saw it: a shining resurrection point and an icy red flag (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/end_lornars.jpg) proudly proclaiming...
Dreadnaught's Drift.
Once we got in, we came face to face with a giant circular mining area filled with Doylaks, over twenty strong. Their patrols had spotted us and already descended to mutilate our party. Now, we have a problem.
We took hits and were being swarmed. Luckily one of us re-zoned and we went back to Lornar’s to regroup.
But something was off, we were missing someone. One of our warriors had disappeared completely from our party list. Possibly dropped right before we rezoned. Whatever it was, we don’t know. More importantly, he was gone, and he was one of our tankers.
He helped us get through Lornar’s so I was thankful, but also sad that he had left us at such a dangerous time. Here’s where things started becoming…difficult? No, insane, impossible?
Bottom line, we were screwed.
We reentered the Drift and after many futile attempts at running, we realized that the Doylaks round the path on patrol and if we waited we could piggyback behind them and not be noticed. This worked, until we got to the other side and saw the meat market of Tundra Giants waiting for us.
There was only one plan now that we could think of. Run. Run for our lives and pray that one of us survives and makes it. We had no Sprint, no Endure Pain, we really shot ourselves in the foot, didn’t we?
Over two hours ago, way back at Beacon’s, we had decided against it. It came up in conversation. Big mistake, but there wasn’t anything to do about. That was the past, this is now, and our impending doom and ever-increasing DP is what is at stake.
We tried flanking, we tried running in a straight wave, we tried a buff-decoy using our only warrior and nothing worked. Too many giants. Too many stones. Too many concussions.
By now we all had -60%DP. We had failed at killing off the Doylaks, only managing to take out a few. The two Doylak Masters and their healing spells proved too much for our less-than full team. It was getting hopeless.
There was talk of quitting and giving up. But we worked too hard and too long just to get here. And this is the smallest of the areas we needed to pass through to get to Camp Rankor. We needed a new plan.
As it turns out, one of the Tundra Giants stood apart from the rest of the group. It just kinda hung around, watching the Doylaks for fun. This would be our target, we lured it over and killed it. Easy enough.
Then we lured two more over, the Giants don’t seem to care that much about protecting their own, and we killed those as well. So with their numbers reduced somewhat we gave it another go. Buffed-warrior + suicidal decoys = success.
The warrior crossed over and we were resurrected in the third and final area leading to Rankor.
Twin Snakes (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/twin_snakes.jpg)
This was it, the final stretch. A long path filled with many different twists and turns and a ton of Tundra Giants, Mountain Trolls, Blessed Griffons, Doylaks, uber-Grawl, and whatever other icy treats lurked between us and our destination.
Again, our best bet since we could not sprint was to fight it out. Same strategy, same methods, one less tanker, and we’re still achieving success. No kidding, our monk could heal with the hand of Dwayna. Although, with our max DP we also died a lot more than in the Drift.
We respawned a lot to fight through the Giants. Luckily there are places in the hills where you can hide behind a wall and the Giants won’t be able to hit you. Their targets, i.e. you, are obstructed and they’re too dumb to move around. So we cursed them, and firestormed them to death. This worked and we were working up our arrogance again. Some of us even had under -30%DP. Then it happened.
Our warrior went AFK while the rest of us were dead.
Yep, that’s right, more than halfway toward Rankors and we had an AFK’er. He had an emergency in real life, but we didn’t know that. And the rest of us were going insane, not sure what to do. We kept hoping he’d disconnect. (Although in hindsight it would’ve been infinitely harder without him) All of us swore we wouldn’t leave the instance, not after 4 hours of traveling south in this damn frozen wasteland.
Not after having to resort to eat food at our desks and stare at the screen, not moving an inch and always in fear of a disconnect. We even lost one of our members and we kept going.
An hour later, our warrior returned, surprised to find us still here. My friend had gone out to get a slurpee and I had to tell him over the cell phone to get his *** back to his computer so we could finish this. He hasn’t run that much the whole year. But we got back into action and pressed on.
After the giants were the Mountain Trolls, and we took out our pent up frustration on them. Lure, tank, kill. Lure, tank, kill. It was an endless stream of furry bodies.
We continued south-east picking trails by our maps and killing whatever got in our path including something I never saw before. An azure shadow. It was during this entire ordeal that we made the best use of the DoT-and-run. An invaluable tactic when you’re overrun with monsters.
Hit them up with a Damage over Time attack, whether it be curses, poison or mesmer spells. Anything of the sort, hit them and run. Run in circles if you have to. Just don’t let them touch you. That worked all too well, and then we reached the Doylaks.
These things had given us a major problem before because of the Doylak Masters and their healing skills. But they’re in our way, so they’ve gotta go. Unfortunately it didn’t work out as planned. Me and the other caster tried rushing the Master and got killed. The ranger also died. So all that was left were three Doylaks completely surrounding our warrior, who was stuck and couldn’t move. And our monk healing him.
Every time the monk tried to rezz, a Doylak would stomp, timed perfectly so that it would always be right before the spell was about to go off. We didn’t want to make the long journey back from the resurrect point but it wasn’t working and we got wiped out.
It was at this point that my friend got disconnected. His name just went grey in the box all of a sudden. Angry is an understatement. Do you know how rare it is to find a good group going to Lornar’s? A good group of strangers? It’s like getting that perfect seat in the movie theater where you actually have leg room.
But he was gone, and we died. And that’s when we found out about the second respawn point. If you should make it that far, the gods were kind enough to provide another point very close by.
We got up and had our revenge on the Doylaks. There was another group after that and we got those too. And then came the Doylak field. Just a huge amount, another twenty, it was like some kind of convention. Really now, is this some sort of cruel joke? I mean, the level 10 Stone Summits and Ice Golems, yeah that’s kinda cute in the ironic way. But this? This is downright torture.
So what happened? This time we ran. And this time it worked. We attacked the Doylaks and they all came rushing at us. Me and monk we ran backwards and they chased after us. Our ranger slipped ahead, up the path and into the gate. We made it to Rankor.
In closing, I hope you enjoyed this little story of mine. Despite the fact that it was excruciatingly difficult and nerve wracking, I have to say, that it was all worth it and hopefully everyone will find the time to make this long journey.
If you’re thinking to just run and not duke it out. I went from level 19 to 20 in the span of this trip. I also found some rare items and just had a plain ol’ lot of fun.
As you can probably see from the pics, our lowest level members were 17. Our ranger knew what he was doing as well as our monk and everyone else. Fire spells help a lot, DoT is a huge plus. Although we only had one healer. Our ranger was capable of restoring life too. I regretted not bringing a rezz signet but I wanted 2 higher damage fire spells to switch between.
If any of the members of my Lornar's party is reading, a huge shout out and thanks again for your devotion.
And incase any of you are wondering. Here's the finish line (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/draknors.jpg) .
My first and foremost advice, make sure you have a reliable ISP and computer, we lost two good men during our trip, including a friend of mine who toughed it out to the very end only to be disconnected right before we hit the gate to Rankor.
This is going to be very long (4+ pages), so if you’re still willing to read, grab a cup of coffee and juice up.
Beacon's Perch.
Me and a friend of mine started here looking for people to join up for a party. I know what you're thinking, a random group of people making it through Lornar's? You're crazy, stupid, and you must be high on something or at least suffering brain damage.
It's such a gamble to do this with complete strangers, who knows what could happen? What kind of party members might you get?
A griefer with a wurm fetish? Or maybe the countless low level people who believe Lornar leads to the next town. It was tough finding a party and we failed a couple times before we met what would be our final troupe.
2 Warriors, 1 Ranger, 1 Monk, 1 Necromancer and 1 Elementalist.
And incase you were wondering...there wasn't any Sprint!! or Endure Pain.
Yep, the most common and talked about method of running through Lornar's and we didn't try it. There was one moment when we regretted it, cursing ourselves, and we almost gave up. Instead, we forged on and learned to make the best of our situation.
Lornar's Pass
Our leader was a Ranger/Monk with a penchant for luring in creatures. He had tried and failed Lornar's over fifty times. The experience had paid off, he told us we'd have to fight our way through. If we ran, we'd simply die and rack up an early DP. So he lay out his plans for us. The Imps, Pinesoles, Ice Golems, even the Frost Wurms, we'd slaughter. Lay them into bloody heaps for our Necro to feast on. And the Aviraca? Well, we'd avoid those like fresh yellow snow.
Outside the gate from Beacon we took the left path because of the Aviracan patrol that comes on the right. Imps and Pinesoles were there to greet us. Since Pinesoles are just regular melee ranged attackers they were nothing to give a second thought to. However, the Imps are a different story. They carry magic, like Mind Freeze, that can hamper your ability to fight. So we took those out first, then the Pinesoles.
Further ahead were the Ice Golems, and they were no trouble either. We only had one main strategy at this point.
Our leader ranger would draw them in, small groups at a time, and we would bury them into the cold. Our warriors rushed them, pounding their bodies with steel, while the casters, me and my friend, sent them a fiery welcoming. Our brave monk covered our wounds with incredible healing prowess.
This continued on, as we cleared most of the creatures away from the area right outside Beacon’s.
Past the triple fork and near the tunnel at the end. There were the Frost Wurms waiting for us. 4 of them, 2 of which come as an inseparable couple. We cleared away all the other monsters so we could deal with these scaly monstrosities on our own terms.
Our ranger lured a wurm (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/frost_wurm.jpg), and another. And then the final two. And we slayed them all without any real harm. The same procedure each time. The warriors tanked, I cursed them, followed by fire from me and my friend. The ranger injected his poison arrow and the monk kept us alive. After each battle we’d recharge in a blood well. This was our strategy, and although it was very time-consuming, it worked very well.
Lornar's Pass wound up being the easiest part.
We passed through an ice cave (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/ice_cave.jpg) and found a unique Pinesole, Quickroot (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/quickroot.jpg) . No problem for our team.
We passed an exotic, abandoned temple (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/temple.jpg) , which one of our party members warned us to not enter for fear of a quick death.
And finally, as we rounded a mountainous bend, we saw it: a shining resurrection point and an icy red flag (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/end_lornars.jpg) proudly proclaiming...
Dreadnaught's Drift.
Once we got in, we came face to face with a giant circular mining area filled with Doylaks, over twenty strong. Their patrols had spotted us and already descended to mutilate our party. Now, we have a problem.
We took hits and were being swarmed. Luckily one of us re-zoned and we went back to Lornar’s to regroup.
But something was off, we were missing someone. One of our warriors had disappeared completely from our party list. Possibly dropped right before we rezoned. Whatever it was, we don’t know. More importantly, he was gone, and he was one of our tankers.
He helped us get through Lornar’s so I was thankful, but also sad that he had left us at such a dangerous time. Here’s where things started becoming…difficult? No, insane, impossible?
Bottom line, we were screwed.
We reentered the Drift and after many futile attempts at running, we realized that the Doylaks round the path on patrol and if we waited we could piggyback behind them and not be noticed. This worked, until we got to the other side and saw the meat market of Tundra Giants waiting for us.
There was only one plan now that we could think of. Run. Run for our lives and pray that one of us survives and makes it. We had no Sprint, no Endure Pain, we really shot ourselves in the foot, didn’t we?
Over two hours ago, way back at Beacon’s, we had decided against it. It came up in conversation. Big mistake, but there wasn’t anything to do about. That was the past, this is now, and our impending doom and ever-increasing DP is what is at stake.
We tried flanking, we tried running in a straight wave, we tried a buff-decoy using our only warrior and nothing worked. Too many giants. Too many stones. Too many concussions.
By now we all had -60%DP. We had failed at killing off the Doylaks, only managing to take out a few. The two Doylak Masters and their healing spells proved too much for our less-than full team. It was getting hopeless.
There was talk of quitting and giving up. But we worked too hard and too long just to get here. And this is the smallest of the areas we needed to pass through to get to Camp Rankor. We needed a new plan.
As it turns out, one of the Tundra Giants stood apart from the rest of the group. It just kinda hung around, watching the Doylaks for fun. This would be our target, we lured it over and killed it. Easy enough.
Then we lured two more over, the Giants don’t seem to care that much about protecting their own, and we killed those as well. So with their numbers reduced somewhat we gave it another go. Buffed-warrior + suicidal decoys = success.
The warrior crossed over and we were resurrected in the third and final area leading to Rankor.
Twin Snakes (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/twin_snakes.jpg)
This was it, the final stretch. A long path filled with many different twists and turns and a ton of Tundra Giants, Mountain Trolls, Blessed Griffons, Doylaks, uber-Grawl, and whatever other icy treats lurked between us and our destination.
Again, our best bet since we could not sprint was to fight it out. Same strategy, same methods, one less tanker, and we’re still achieving success. No kidding, our monk could heal with the hand of Dwayna. Although, with our max DP we also died a lot more than in the Drift.
We respawned a lot to fight through the Giants. Luckily there are places in the hills where you can hide behind a wall and the Giants won’t be able to hit you. Their targets, i.e. you, are obstructed and they’re too dumb to move around. So we cursed them, and firestormed them to death. This worked and we were working up our arrogance again. Some of us even had under -30%DP. Then it happened.
Our warrior went AFK while the rest of us were dead.
Yep, that’s right, more than halfway toward Rankors and we had an AFK’er. He had an emergency in real life, but we didn’t know that. And the rest of us were going insane, not sure what to do. We kept hoping he’d disconnect. (Although in hindsight it would’ve been infinitely harder without him) All of us swore we wouldn’t leave the instance, not after 4 hours of traveling south in this damn frozen wasteland.
Not after having to resort to eat food at our desks and stare at the screen, not moving an inch and always in fear of a disconnect. We even lost one of our members and we kept going.
An hour later, our warrior returned, surprised to find us still here. My friend had gone out to get a slurpee and I had to tell him over the cell phone to get his *** back to his computer so we could finish this. He hasn’t run that much the whole year. But we got back into action and pressed on.
After the giants were the Mountain Trolls, and we took out our pent up frustration on them. Lure, tank, kill. Lure, tank, kill. It was an endless stream of furry bodies.
We continued south-east picking trails by our maps and killing whatever got in our path including something I never saw before. An azure shadow. It was during this entire ordeal that we made the best use of the DoT-and-run. An invaluable tactic when you’re overrun with monsters.
Hit them up with a Damage over Time attack, whether it be curses, poison or mesmer spells. Anything of the sort, hit them and run. Run in circles if you have to. Just don’t let them touch you. That worked all too well, and then we reached the Doylaks.
These things had given us a major problem before because of the Doylak Masters and their healing skills. But they’re in our way, so they’ve gotta go. Unfortunately it didn’t work out as planned. Me and the other caster tried rushing the Master and got killed. The ranger also died. So all that was left were three Doylaks completely surrounding our warrior, who was stuck and couldn’t move. And our monk healing him.
Every time the monk tried to rezz, a Doylak would stomp, timed perfectly so that it would always be right before the spell was about to go off. We didn’t want to make the long journey back from the resurrect point but it wasn’t working and we got wiped out.
It was at this point that my friend got disconnected. His name just went grey in the box all of a sudden. Angry is an understatement. Do you know how rare it is to find a good group going to Lornar’s? A good group of strangers? It’s like getting that perfect seat in the movie theater where you actually have leg room.
But he was gone, and we died. And that’s when we found out about the second respawn point. If you should make it that far, the gods were kind enough to provide another point very close by.
We got up and had our revenge on the Doylaks. There was another group after that and we got those too. And then came the Doylak field. Just a huge amount, another twenty, it was like some kind of convention. Really now, is this some sort of cruel joke? I mean, the level 10 Stone Summits and Ice Golems, yeah that’s kinda cute in the ironic way. But this? This is downright torture.
So what happened? This time we ran. And this time it worked. We attacked the Doylaks and they all came rushing at us. Me and monk we ran backwards and they chased after us. Our ranger slipped ahead, up the path and into the gate. We made it to Rankor.
In closing, I hope you enjoyed this little story of mine. Despite the fact that it was excruciatingly difficult and nerve wracking, I have to say, that it was all worth it and hopefully everyone will find the time to make this long journey.
If you’re thinking to just run and not duke it out. I went from level 19 to 20 in the span of this trip. I also found some rare items and just had a plain ol’ lot of fun.
As you can probably see from the pics, our lowest level members were 17. Our ranger knew what he was doing as well as our monk and everyone else. Fire spells help a lot, DoT is a huge plus. Although we only had one healer. Our ranger was capable of restoring life too. I regretted not bringing a rezz signet but I wanted 2 higher damage fire spells to switch between.
If any of the members of my Lornar's party is reading, a huge shout out and thanks again for your devotion.
And incase any of you are wondering. Here's the finish line (http://home.nyu.edu/~yty200/gw/draknors.jpg) .