GWOnline - Blogs - Lytha's Blog by Lytha

Hm... let's get some order into the hospital induced GWAMM progress chaos

Lytha — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 06:32:29 GMT

Vanquishes missing:
Tyria:
- Lornar's Pass (party size = 6)
- Kessex Peak (ps = 8)
- Talmark Wilderness (ps = 8)
- Majesty Rest (ps = 8. req. change in team)
- The Falls (ps = 6)

Cantha:
- Pongmei Valley (ps = 8)
- Rhea's Crater (ps = 8)
- Raisu Palace (ps = 8)

Elona:
- Sunward Reaches (got a bounty?) (ps = 8)
- Floodplain of Mahnkelon (ps = 8)
- Yatendi Valley (ps = 8)
- Resplendent Makuun (ps = 8)
- Wilderness of Bazdah (doh, I thought I did that?) (ps = 8)
- Hidden City of Abadashim (ps = 8)
- The Alkali Pan (ps = 8, wurms suck)

EotN:
- Verdant Cascades (ps = 8... Asura faction needs some boost, so maybe wait with that until december for real)

Missing missions:
Tyria:
- Aurora Glade (ps = 6, req change in team)
- Sanctum Cay (ps = 6)

Cantha:
- Nahpui (ps = 8)

Elona:
- Dasha Vestibule (ps = 8, bleh, with useless Margrid...)
- Dzagonur (oh ffs) (ps = 8, ooooh ffs)

[x] EotN

Missing Dungeons:
- Temple of the Damned (ps = 8... hm, never done it normally in HM)
- Frontis Irontooth (ps = 1, no issues there, I guess)
- Darkrime Delves (ps = 8, should be ok)
- Bloodstone Caves (ps = 8, I foresee no issues there)

What I find interesting about this is that the nasty parts are part of what's left. I mean... Joko's Domain? Arrrgh. Dzagonur? Meeeeeep. Eternal Grove? Aaaaaah no!! Majesty Rest, the only Tyrian area with a really special someone? Gah.

Alright, also some really simple stuff.

So, since the map rotation means that I'd have to wait until Christmas until these vanquish quests become active again, I'll do them without the guidance of the zaishen. Missions and Dungeons, I don't know. The zaishen rewards for these ain't that special and the rotation is a lot faster with them. I just ignored them for the last three weeks because I really only did half a GW thing per day, and the speed will continue to be at this pace.

Edit, months later:

Well, I've done a few things, finally. I think it's obvious that progress towards GWAMM is a lot faster if doing things in a sensible order and at my own speed instead of listening to the zaishens' ideas about the ideal order of doing things. Of course, the extra loot given by the zaishen is nice, but it sucks that a few weeks in a hospital can essentially stop the progress completely... "because I want to wait until the zaishen give me the quest again" - and then I happen to be in rehab or whatever when the zaishen do this at last.

-----------------

I had a few goes at Eternal and it sucked.

Anyway. Solution: Don't be shy, bring 3 monks (Razah, Ogden, Tahlkora). Plus prot on Olias and MoW. Plus Shelter on the SS Xandra.

Xandra and Razah were more than capable to hold a gate while the rest of the team ran around.

I had swapped Gwen out in favour for the extra monk.

Oh, and no Death Pact Signets here, just FomF.

It went surprisingly easily and well in the end, actually.

Xandra needs to do some running between the gates because she can poop spirits in both gates.

For the Afflicted stage, Olias and Razah held one side (with Xandra's spirits), while I and the rest (incl juggers set to follow-mode) kept the appropriate (overcrowded) side.

Sucked over all. But now it's done.

Back to the important things. ;)

Lytha — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 11:27:37 GMT

Alright. It looks like I missed out a lot of zsquish quests in the last 18 days. Even though I had a laptop with me, including a mouse, there just wasn't room or time to sit down and vanquish a bit.

What am I going to do about these and Nefertari?

Anything that doesn't give reputation points that I still need, I can probably just do anyway. However, things like Varajar Fells and suchlike are a pity that I missed out on them. So... vanquish some easy areas a few more times to grind reputation points, or wait for another 3rd of a year until the quests return?

I am utterly unsure about that, right now.

But I think I'll do one or two of the 3 random vanquishes that I grabbed while in the hospital (and back at home yesterday) now.

The missions and bounties are too bad that I missed out on them as well, but they cycle by far quicker than the zsquish quests.

----------------

Alright. I tried to keep up with the zquests since my release from the clinic, and it somehow worked. They piled up quite a bit though.

So...

-> Lightbringer is at the max. Still plenty of LB areas left to vanquish, and I still got the Night Falls HM book.

-> Norn is 3k points from the max, and I think one of the missing dungeons might give some norn points. Also, Norhart Domain is still missing.

-> Asura is as of now about 7k points from the max. Verdant Cascades are still missing here. If that's not enough, there's a Hero Book HM.

-> Deldrimor crept up to ~140k points by now. I am scared that Vloxxen HM, which I did yesterday, happened without any deaths at all - the team must be really good. Since there's still a few dungeons left and A Time for Heroes HM, I think Deldrimor might just max out by itself, without the need for the Dungeon Book HM. I can turn that in though.

I am very glad to see that the missions and bounties will give me a break now and that only the daily zsquishes will need to be done for a while.

Still not sure how to handle those vanquishes and missions that the zaishen don't deem to be necessary to do for another couple of months now though - just wait until the zaishen think it's time for that, or just mop them up at my leisure at some point?

Sooo...

Lytha — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:11:56 GMT

Well, since last Friday, I know officially that I've cancer on the side of my tongue. Next week, there will be some intense extra diagnosis fun in the hospital; and according to the results of these, then there will be therapy. This will inevitably involve a surgery at the tongue, which, according to my sources, can last 10-20 hours (it's not really something you'd want to do.)

There are several things that annoy me about all of this: from fear of loss of my ability to speak, over fear of loss of the teeth due to the x-ray therapy stuff, over to more simple things: like my cats not being allowed to visit me in the hospital (and me probably being in no shape to go and visit them too often).

And, ridiculous enough, another detail that annoys me is the fact that I'll miss out on the Zaishen quests. With the insanely long quest rotation time of the vanquishes, this means that I won't be able to take advantage of them and use them as my guide when I keep pushing Nefertari towards GWAMM... because, yeah, it's ridiculous, but I want to do that.

Yeah well, also it's scary what kind of emotions pop up at the moment. It goes from extreme, utter depression (I've had crying fits that I wouldn't have thought possible and my friends and family don't want to hear anymore about death now... how helpful); to some sort of hysteria that unleashes itself in form of some manic euphoria; over to massive anger and hate against everyone.

There are nightmares too, now. I haven't slept at all last night because one of these popped up when I was about to fall asleep.

So. I think that blogging about it might be somewhat therapeutic - and I even fit in a connection to GW! I really can't be arsed to set up a blog somewhere else right now just for this, so this here will have to do.

Gogogo Reputation Points

Lytha — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 22:09:41 GMT

Sweet. Nefertari's Sunspear points are maximized now.

Next could be Vanguard, then Norn, then Asura, then Lightbringer, and finally Deldrimor... but the Zaishen have a weird order for the things to do.

It helps to try and not be in any hurry or anal-retentive mode there - the latter meant that my other vanquishers did Tyria and Cantha before Elona, so their Cry of Pain (the only PvE skill that I really like to use) was sub par.

Nefertari can now do the last half of the vanquishes with the CoP at the max. :smiley:

Sunspear: 50,011 (yay!)
Vanguard: 153,586
Asura: 135,006
Norn: 129,484
Deldrimor: 102,475 (thank you, Arachni HM for the ~10k points :cloud9: )
Lightbringer: 41,527

hrmmmmmm... oh how pathetic can you get. I am a bit annoyed that Nefertari's progress will be put on HALT next month due to me apparently going to spend most of that month in a cancer clinic. Would've liked to have another GWAMM, but I guess the priorities are in flux now.

.............. Anyway, Agent just hit the max.

Still undone Vanguard stuff:
- Sacnoth Vanquish
- Temple of the Damned
- Warband of Brothers HM
- Assault on Stronhold HM

In other words, there are plenty more reputation points.

The secret for Kathandrax, well, the many secrets:
- Someone needs WW, another one needs Pain Inverter => Gwen doesn't mind being micromanaged with the WW
- Flag management. 1 Flag for all H is enough
- Isildur itself: Flag Olias (or a more or less redundant hero without res) near the shrine.
- Also, just run into a magma ball when you're the last one standing.

Wasn't that bad in the end. I needed no DP removers at all.

Well... that was fun.

Lytha — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:34:38 GMT

I had done almost all of the Slavers' semibosses before, while I was juggling my dungeon master books and my EotN NM points. Forgewright I had done after the accident in the Snowmen dungeon - so there was only Duncan left.

I had accepted the Zaishen bounty for him, thinking that it might be manageable.

Spoiler

Livia brought her own pet, since she hadn't used her Swap last time in NM anyway.

So it was. It had looked quite a bit hairy at the first mob (not enough minions on my side or something), but after that, it all went remarkably well. Even a triple aggro of Restless Dead was no problem, same for a double aggro of Restless Dead and a group of Summit.

However, cleaning the chamber of spirits is just boring. Alright, I overdid it by pulling them all really out of the room, into the corridor. The furthest ones were down the first set of stairs outside of the chamber. I did that so that I could pull the other spirits in peace without getting attacked by 30 mad spirits.

I died once while doing so; that was because after one hour of spirit pulling I had forgotten that there was still 1 Restless Dead in the way, and he bodyblocked me. Ogden was away at that time.

So, I have done now what I swore never to do - a Slavers' Exile in a HM dungeon master book. And it didn't even suck too badly. Crazy.

WoC Minister Cho HM is worse.

Also, I don't understand how the morale boost works in there. I didn't notice any boss creatures; I didn't use DP removers or Morale Boosters; and yet, there they all sit on +10% Morale. Some of them had died during the first few Summit encounters.

What's more - I am positively sure that I was as -7% when the Restless Dead had killed me. And afterwards, I was at -5%. The 50xp that you get for killing a Restless Dead don't remove 2% of the DP.

Are Restless Dead bosses or something?

How to waste a perfectly nice day

Lytha — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 13:28:17 GMT

WoC, Minister Cho HM.

Well, I had a team that somewhat worked. It was based on very early HM nightmares, i.e. "Tahlkora will maintain PS and SoA on me, while I tank a billion sickened animals and crap like that. While she does that, Ogden will heal me, and Xandra will provide some extra damage to my hexes."

That should have worked, in theory.

There is a problem. Tahlkora sucks.

She refused to use SoA on recharge, unless I had a sword in my hand. That was not too bad of a problem, because I had a sword with me and used it to please the moron.

Next issue was that she happily let PS run out all the time.

It was not as if she was actually doing anything most of the time when that happened. She was just standing there, in casting range, with a nice amount of energy for all her needs.

Right, so I forced her to cast these spells, and I somehow made it to the ****ing final peasant.

That one had somehow aggroed the afflicted already when we arrived and before he became vulnerable. He seemed to spend the time running around in "panic" or some other aggro wonder activity.

We arrived, the mob wasn't too bad (i.e. not 2 interrupt mesmers plus too many enchantment removers). And the wonderboy had the aggro of 3 shambling horrors (where did they come from, by the way?) on him, so I couldn't just try and pull stuff away as I had planned. Instead, we had to rush in like we were all having the IQ of the AI programmer that contributed to Tahlkora's retardedness, i.e. proud members of Densa (that's the opposite of Mensa, in case you're wondering. And no, it probably doesn't exist.)

Things came as expected and we wiped.

Then, as expected, they all rounded up on the ****ing last peasant and he was dead while we were waiting to be revived at the shrine.

1.5 hours down the drain.

Well done, Anet! Crappiest quest you ever came up with.

Err... didn't I just write "no FoW armor yet"?

Lytha — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 14:39:24 GMT

Spoiler

So, here is it. I got the money from plundering my other characters of their last few gold coins.

I didn't go for pure white, because I am really not much a fan of the pure dye colours. It would look good on the top piece, but I think I like white+yellow+orange better.

The skirt simply has to be brown+black, because it clips horribly into her butt when zoomed out or while running. At this colour, the clipping buttcheeks fit right in, and it isn't obvious anymore.

Oh yeah, and I also got the boots, but I have already put them into the shelf. That's no boots that Nefertari would wear.

... yeah anyway. You could do some spiffy things both with the top and the skirt and other armor pieces. Like FoW top + Vabbi pants, or some other pants. The FoW skirt might also go well with things like the luxon tops.

------

I also got the missing Luxon gloves and boots for my monk after checking out that the FoW armor would indeed have looked stupid on her.

Then I checked out the luxon armor on Nefertari and it would have looked extremely slutty on her indeed... :tongue:

The FoW set would've looked decent on Juliania. I guess that if I should become too wealthy again at some point, she'll get the top and the skirt as well. Well, at least the skirt.

FoW set on rangers looks stupid - but oh yes, I am still in love with that Vabbian set.

So, what's the status on my EotN point troubles?

Lytha — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:41:29 GMT

Well, first of: Nefertari has done some FoW in the mean time and gotten 6 shards out of that run. I thought that might be noteworthy as well. :wink: I am still a few shards short of for the full FoW set, and I believe I should have 60k in cash then as well. I am reluctant to raid my xunlai chest even further for this at the moment, so the progress is as fast as 1 vanquish+mission per day allows.

Aaanyway. Reputation point statistics:

Sunspear: 47k
Vanguard: 140k
Asura: 128k
Norn: 116k
Deldrimor: 89k
Lightbringer: 31k

Sunspear in particular profits extremely from doing things in the Zaishen order of missions and vanquishes. I am not even halfway done with the Sunspear yielding areas and missions of Elona, and yet, it's almost full already.

Lightbringer is alright. I have to say here that I went into DoA for fun (...) with Nefertari and after some initial difficulties in City, I made it all the way through in one go from the City through the Veil through Gloom, up to the room #3 of Foundry. I attempted Foundry again then and I think I know now how to get through room #3 reliably (don't leave Olias behind, just walk in with the whole team and wait a bit before proceeding to "that corner" - this way, the misery titans shouldn't be aggroed and all is well). That DoA stuff must've been worth about 7k LB points.

Agent is more than alright, given that I still haven't vanquished 2 of 3 maps and I haven't done Cathedral of Flames in HM yet. I also have only done the first of Keiran's adventures in Kryta yet. But there are 30k points in that title track that I farmed last wintersday.

Asura is a bit more awkward. All areas except the one in the north have been vanquished already before, so I will have to repeat some of them a bit. It's still manageable, even without the use of a book.

Norn has only seen 2 vanquishes yet, so there are plenty of maps left. Also I don't mind repeating Path of Revelations + Haunted in that one map.

Delver.

Delver is interesting. I have done Rragar HM when the Zaishen told me to, and I expected to get my butt kicked. Instead... well, there were casualties, but not too many. It was fine, really.

And just now, I did HoS HM, also expecting to wipe a few times at Magmus... well. The only one that died was Ogden, when a bunch of Shimmering Oozes gangbanged him.

So, I think I may be doing more dungeons in HM than originally planned; and the two HM books will be given to Deldrimor to complete the set.

All is well.

Speaking of Ogden getting gangbanged. Yesterday, the afflicted in Shenzun Tunnels (HM) also gangbanged one of my monks; in that case, they all went for Tahlkora. And repeatedly so. Of course, her high DP didn't help in the end, but she was the primary target in the first place as well.

I have the shadow of a suspect that monster HM AI was a bit tweaked to aim more for the monks than before. I will observe this further.

Breaking news: Male mesmers can be hot!

Lytha — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:39:31 GMT

I think that he is very, very hot indeed - and he won't even require a makeover credit (I'm just at the makeover npc to check out the spectacles in this face). With the right outfit, he'd be downright dreamy.

He's got it all: dreamy eyes that look good with these spectacles (which make him look like a smart guy), a well proportioned mouth and nose, a cute little beard, a nice facial expression instead of that nasty smug face that blemishes too many mesmer faces, and the hair is not too bad either.

The rear view could be improved though:

Then again, he shouldn't run around naked anyway. Or should he? Mhmm... :wink:

Hrm. I really do hope that some of the mesmer trousers give him a better butt.

So, who gets the FoW armor?

Lytha — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:45:50 GMT

Four choices, basically.

The oldest character.
The currently only GWAMM.
The GWAMM in progress.
The monkit.

A little background for each, perhaps?

The oldest is a female Tyrian mesmer. I had stopped playing her in around year 2 of her life, recently I turned her into a survivor. I then intended to use her for my new HM attempts, but then I realized that she just looks too much like the currently only GWAMM on my account.

She would deserve a FoW set, because she's the oldest character of the account, looks nice, has a decent name, and wears black rogue outfits anyway. FoW wouldn't break her style.

This GWAMM, Juliania, is also a female Tyrian mesmer. She looks *identical* to the oldest one, because I basically had re-rolled that oldest character on a new slot. Juliania does not wear that armor type at all.

She would deserve the FoW set, because she is the GWAMM, has the highest amount of XP, and could use more stuff in her wardrobe.

The GWAMM in progress is an Elonian mesmer, definitely the prettiest face+hair combination I've come up with yet. But ... no, scratch that. FoW is absolutely not her style.

The monkit is the only monk on my account, occasional PvP toons aside. She's relatively old, but stuck in her HM activities because she's only getting playtime outside of FA and JQ when guildie is online, and guildie seems to have lost interest in GW for now.

She would deserve the FoW set because I think that I am not doing too bad a job at monking, and who knows, maybe the pants would match some of her other armor choices. Somewhat.

Well, so it's down to oldest vs. GWAMM now.

Juliania would probably come up with some armor combinations for the skirt and for the top, while the oldest character would just have that armor set and do nothing with it.

This time, I'll talk about both of them. Ranger and Mesmer.

Lytha — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 22:26:10 GMT

I am really in sort of a GW frenzy at the moment.

Nefertari has done most things that I wanted to do outside of HM already. Her questlog is still a complete mess, but we're slowly getting somewhere.

My current plan about her EotN points troubles is that I'll either do the next dungeon bounty or SoO (the next Fendi Nin bounty is too far away, I don't want to wait an entire month) soon, which will increase Deldrimor to ~79k. Then, I'll turn in the 1st hero book.

I won't get any points for doing the last few dungeon bounties then, but I should still get points for Forgewright and Duncan, who are upcoming in the next couple of weeks.

And then I can finally give the 2nd dungeon book to Asura and the 2nd hero book to the norn and finally get rid of the two Asura zsquish quests which I've been carrying around for quite a while now.

The rest of her guardian and vanquisher titles will happen as the Zaishen say. This means it will take longer than it needed to, but I'll get more money for my troubles.

Alright, and now for the ranger girl, the one from the "Oh my, oh my" entry. She's level 19.75 now! And still surviving. Also, she has hit 55% exploration of Tyria and 11 protector titles already.

I've finally gotten Savage Shot and enjoy that and Distracting Shot now, but I still suck at interrupting with a bow. It's really pathetic. I'll probably need to drag an illusionist along later on, if I want to keep to try to interrupt stuff.

In The Falls, those popups of 3 monk plants near the behemoth things were much more of a pain than I've ever experienced them before... but I am not sure if I ever ventured into that map except on mesmers and my monk before. I probably have been in there with other professions, but it's been a long while.

On the other hand, the windriders were not bad at all. I attacked them with the flatbow at first and then I walked away from the henchcluster so that the Cry of Frustrations didn't hit me. In fact, nobody died at all in the entire Falls; and that's a new one. On all other characters, Alesia was usually pretty much DPed out in the end.

Survivability of the team has increased dramatically since I've changed the setup to Mox (Dwayna's Healer of sorts), Alesia, Dunham, Claude, Orion - Orion instead of Thom. Stuff dies faster now and Alesia stays alive much more easily.

My own survivabilty has also increased because I am now a proud owner of an (almost) full set of AL 61 collector gear. Just the mask is only AL 55 from Ventari's Refuge, because I really didn't want to try and farm 5 behemoth jaws for the expertise mask.

The next mission to do is Aurora Glade, and I think it will work somehow as well.

Oh yeah, speaking of missions. I was worried about Bloodstone Fen's bonus last time. Turns out that it was easy. I took Dodge and Stormchaser, flagged down the henchs outside of the bonus area, set Mox to avoid combat and disabled these of his enchantments that hurt adjacent foes, and then we ran just in. He kept me alive well enough when I was carrying seeds to the druid spots and fighting moss scarabs on the way.

I still think that this will be trouble in HM, but that's true for all professions, isn't it. I guess I'll see that soon with Nefertari.

--------------------------

Yeah well, [insert 4 letter word here][insert some more 4 letter words here].

I did SoO, hit 78.2k.

Triple checked the wiki and found out that you get 1500 points for the moron lair of the morons. Went in. Hit randomly 80.093 points.

And dearest sweet anet decided that you may not turn in those ****ty books if you have a whole 94 points more than the precious 79.999 points.

GREAT.

****ers.

....

Alright. I would maximize this ****ty title anyway if I'd do dungeons in HM, which I won't.

So, what to do now.

80/2.5 = around 40 times through the moron lair of the idiots in HM? For ****'s sake.

Also, I can trash that book now. Or the 2nd one.

Soooo funny. It's almost as if the game was like "haha, I couldn't stop you from hitting s(3), but I found another way to completely screw you over!!!!"

Anyway. -ing Forgewright + -ing Duncan: 6k.

80k - 6k = 74k.

If I could do a -30k for the freaking book from that, it'd look at least manageable now, but now... oooh no. How utterly funny they are.

So, 74k points.

74k / 2.5 = too many times.

Good.

Which of these crap design failures might be somewhat interesting to do in HM?

- Rragar.
- Cathedral of Flames.... maybe.
- Moron Lair of the Morons
- Frontis... sucks, but can do.
- Arachni.
- the jotun dungeon.

The rest has too many damn elementalist/ritualist bosses, or HM summit, or necro bosses with deathly swarm (or similar). Might be ... interesting to check out how this team would fare against them, since it somewhat kicks butt everywhere else.

Or let's look at them again.
- Kathandrax - no -ing way.
- Ooze Pits - yeeeeah sure. After the multiple earthquakes wiped us, we'll do good against 3 ele bosses. Nope.
- Frostmaw - 5 levels of hell.
- Sepulchre - ele bosses everywhere, and an ele boss in the end.
- Raven's - I remember those deathly swarms of the endboss too well.
- Vlox - haha.
- Bogroot - spirit rifting dungeon boss. Nope.
- Bloodstone. Ah, that would do. <---
- SoO - lol.
- Oola's Lab - miiiiight do, but there are ele bosses.
- Slavers' - rotfl.
- HoS - well... I really don't think so.

If I may extrapolate from the NM experience, It should be around 1-2k points per dungeon level. I got 0.5-1k in NM per dungeon level, and the HM bounty gives 2 points instead of 1.

I'm estimating around 30k points from the dungeons through which I am somewhat willing to suffer.

74k - 30k = 44k left.

44k / 2.5k = still too many repetitions of that stupid place.

If I'd manage to suffer through 9 dungeons, I could turn in a HM dungeon book for 16.8k.

There would also be some rewards for doing Time for Heroes and Destruction Depths the couple of times needed to fill 3 HM hero books.

... looks more manageable now. But I am still pissed off.

-----------------

Niiiice hissyfit there. But it didn't turned out not too badly in the end. I just turned in all of the books as they were: Asura increased to 90k; Norn received the halfway filled hero book (8k) + the almost filled dungeon book (25k), which raised it to 99k.

So, from now on, I am not troubled by the point & book & zaishen rewards here anymore. Just vanquishing in peace now without having to hold quests in the questlog without doing them just yet.

Deldrimor will be a female dog to maximize now though.

I am more troubled now because US just won against North Korea in the only type of football that I find vaguely interesting. Boooooo. :angry:

More trouble with the EotN points

Lytha — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 12:03:13 GMT

Alright, I had put the pursuit of the 2nd dungeon master book and the 2nd hero handbook on hold, or rather, I only did these quests when the Zaishen told me to.

And today I became a bit impatient and did Rragar before the Zaishen Bounty and then used my 1st dungeon master book to raise Vanguard to 119k points. Very nice.

However, I noticed then that Deldrimor increases abnormally fast if you only enter dungeons when there's a bounty inside. It's already at 64k now, and I still have Time for Heroes (repetition), as well as 12 more dungeons to go, of which a bunch give Deldrimor points upon completion.

All of these dungeons, plus the bounties for Forgewright and Duncan (why do you get Deldrimor points for the bosses in Slavers' when the dungeon quest itself gives Norn?) will push Deldrimor above the desired 79k before the 2nd dungeon master book is complete.

While I could just give the Deldrimor then the 1st hero handbook instead of the incomplete 2nd dungeon master book, I know that increasing that title from reputation rank 9 to 10 will be the hardest task - no, I won't do dungeons in HM, unless I think that they might be funny... which covers about 0.5% of the lot.

I think now that I should abandon my idea of "only do EotN stuff if there's a zaishen quest for it" and hurry up and do at least all of those dungeons that will give dwarven reputation points.

That's because I am absolutely not sure if the completion of a dungeon in NM gives any more reward points when you are already over the 80k benchmark. Maybe I should quickly test this with Juliania though - but that is not really a valid way to test it, if it should hit a negative... anyway:

Juliania: Deldrimor 163,894 now.

No change after completion of Frontis in NM. Of course, rank 10 isn't rank 8, but I think it looks like you won't get any points for doing a dungeon in NM after rank 8.

-----------------

70.9K now, and still about 7 dungeons to go.

It is quite possible that I'll have to avoid taking the deldrimor bounty before this 2nd dungeon master book is complete - and let's not forget that I still have to do a quest or two for them as well.

In retrospect, it was a bad idea to give the 1st dungeon master book to Vanguard. The first one should go to Deldrimor - if 2 dungeon master books are a good idea at all. It takes longer than a hero book, and only gives 10k more faction points.

Maybe the better course of action would be to fill the 1st one by following the Zaishen Bounties, and then the Deldrimor faction bar should already be quite well-developed, thanks to the 5 bosses in Slaver's Exile and other dungeons for which the Zaishen oddly enough gave Deldrimor faction instead of whatever seemed to be normal for that dungeon.

But I want to finish what I started now.

Erm yeah, and I am now also a little bit worried about Lightbringer, in fact. By doing Vabbi (or especially Desolation) vanquishes early on, I probably won't be able to turn in my NM Night Falls book, won't I? It's probably time there to just move on and warn the Merchant Princes at last.

---------------

Ahem. I was just mopping up quests while leveling up the loser heroes (Zenmai, Sousuke in this case - Margrid and Goren were leveled to 20 yesterday in Pogahn and Hidden City). This time, I went for the Mirzah Veldrunner quests, starting with the Bushel of Trouble.

They really tested our limits concerning "kill 10 rats" there, didn't they? Only that it isn't "kill 10 rats", but "frob 10 bushes", "kill and 'purify' 10 tormented lands", "kill 3 roots", "kill 5 more roots". :rolleyes:

Aaanyway. So. It's definitely either the SoS Xandra or the Panic or the combination of both, but I just defeated Mirzah's Last Stand by standing next to Mirzah and just defeating whatever came running towards us. This is something I wasn't able to do before. I had to sneak around before and try and pull stuff carefully. Now it was just stand there, shoot Panic over the place, and hit some random target.

It would have been even funnier if I had wandered away and waited until they all were on one spot on the corpse of Mirzah. The "!!"s would've filled the entire screen.

But it's nicer this way. Now I don't have to walk all the way back to Mirzah from an outpost again.

None of his donkey friends died, by the way.

Oh my, oh my

Lytha — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 20:34:38 GMT

Look at this:

(Canthan skin colour, Elonian hair colour black, Canthan haircut, and the cutest Tyrian face)

Also, I'm in love with Vabbian armor.

Looks like this new ranger has some goals, because I won't waste the make over tokens on anyone whom I don't play.

First, she actually needs to do Nolani and Althea's Ashes though.

-------------

Finished the Ascalon area and done some quests in Traveler's Vale/Iron Horse Mine.

Observations:

Huh, interrupting with a bow sucks. I can only interrupt stuff with activation times of about 2 seconds reliably so far. (Yes, I suck, too). The problem is that I attack happily with my two attack skills, then I notice something going on that I want to interrupt - and the babe queues the distracting shot up for after all the other attacks. Ouchies.
Everyone switching to my target sucks as well, especially if there's a Stefan or Little Tom or Pet around.
Damage output in comparison with domination mesmering is hard to compare, but it gives me the gut feeling that it sucks.
Been using flatbow with Read the Wind now. The other bows did suck in different ways. Yes, even Recurve Bows didn't strike my fancy even though I give every Jin and Margrid one (the furry doesn't ever get used so he can keep whatever random crap he came with.)
Point Blank Shot's recharge time and damage don't suck, but it sucks to watch her run around on the battle field to get a shot into the target.
Alesia sucks, but that's nothing new.
I ran into two Dolyak Riders (& company) in the Iron Horse Mine just now. I already dread the bonus of Frost Gate now.
Well, now some good points: I did Althea's Ashes from Grendich Courthouse at level 12, and while Alesia sucked and Stefan died a couple of times, the ranger was perfectly safe at all times.
Also, I then moved with the slightly DP heavy team into Dragon's Gullet and cartographed it, killing a bunch of hydras and stuff; and again, the ranger neither died nor was ever in danger. Alesia hated it though, but that's why I am a R/Mo with Resurrect (I only use skills as they become available during skill quests or skill capturing, so I am out of luck concerning Rebirth or stuff yet.)

I think I'll get the MOX as soon as I am at LA and turn it into either a decent monk, or into an orders provider. It could also be a splinter weapon provider. Decent monk would be the wisest option though - I just hate Miss Bald Blonde "I use Healing Breeze against Shatter Enchantment mobs".

Also, given that Borlis Pass is the next mission, I am wondering and worrying what a person who actually relies on the usage of the weapon does with these missions in which you're carrying random crap as bundles around. Here in Borlis Pass, it shouldn't really matter - but I've never played an attacker in time critical missions like Arborstone or Boreas Seabed.

And finally, there's of course the option to rush to LA instead of failing in Frost Gate. I don't like that option though.

-------------

Yeah, okay. Deldrimor Bowl and Griffon's Mouth remain, then I'm done with the Northern Shiverpeaks.

Recurve Bows don't suck. With Read the Wind and a recurve bow, I can interrupt by far more easily than with the flatbow and Read the Wind. The problem is that I now have a not yet customized 10-15 dmg recurve bow, while the flatbow is a customized 11-18 dmg. This small and pathetic difference does make a significant difference when actually attacking something.
I've the feeling that I contribute about 33-50% to each kill. Killing mobs one by one sucks though in comparison to typical mesmer habits of calling something and hexing the rest of the mob.
Still using the same skillbar as in the Breach: Penetrating Shot, Distracting Shot, Point Blank Shot, Read the Wind, Lightning Reflexes, Troll Unguent, Comfort Animal, Resurrect. I put the points into Expertise until I rarely saw these annoying "not enough energy" messages anymore; now I put some points into marksmanship.
Upgraded most of the armor to Northern Shiverpeak collector standard. Except the boots, because I didn't find enough seeds yet.
Frost Gate bonus went strangely well. It's possible that here, unconditional damages dealt are more effective than reactive damages + interrupts. Alesia died a couple of times while I was exploring the village in the southeast though. Well done!
Also, I myself had to run away at one and a half points here. I try to make a point and stand and tank stuff, because I clearly have more armor than the caster henchs do; however, Alesia usually also gets attacked and she has these inefficient crap skills that make her run out of energy so fast. So, when I was tanking in these 1.5 spots, I noticed that she wouldn't heal me no longer, so I ran away a bit.

Oh! And I have a plan for missions in which I'll spend most of the time being useless because I have to carry some random crap and/or chamberpots around: Go beastmastery there. That's still rangerish and I can direct the stupid cat with its control panel. Another reason to keep Comfort Animal on the skillbar for now, so that the cat can level up some more.

------------

On the way to Bergen Hot Springs, Alesia performed really admirably. With that, I mean that she died over and over again, until the henchs had run out of res signets and until I had grown bored with having to resurrect her.

Might have been my fault for not bringing Throw Dirt (for the tengu warriors that all went for Alesia, I mean)? But where would I fit Throw Dirt onto my bar? I still need to level the cat, so I can't just dump it, and with only 2 normal attacking skills, I already feel quite naked and useless.

Alright then, MOX it is. I am not sure how to turn a useless dervish into a useful "monk" though. He could go prot/smite and lack energy management. Or he could go orders and provide some bad extra healing (and some extra enchantments to shatter, which might be problematic or useful, as then Alesia's healing breeze won't be the only enchantment to entertain the enchantment-shattering mobs).

I guess I'll try both.

And no, he won't run a normal dervish build at all; I don't want a level 20 to run the game for me. Not while I experiment with a class I never really learned much about.

... he could also spam spirits and steamroll the place. Hrm. :tongue:

... and where do you get Rebirth, anyway? Fisherman's Haven or somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the Maguma Jungle?

-----------

"Dwayna's Healer" - I am sure that I could've picked better enchantments to feed the MOX, but it worked anyway. I just finished D'Alessio, and I had left Alesia at home. MOX did the healing through Avatar of Dwayna plus Infuse Health (I wasn't sure if the avatar still had a downtime or not, so I brought Infuse just for the case that there was a downtime.)

With the power of 4 offensive henchs, me dealing an astonishing ~150-200 damages per each ettin-type foe (Read the Wind, 13-25 15^50% dmg customized recurve bow, Penetrating + Point Blank), and the mad golem running around in the front lines (I guess he was eager to give the foes a taste of his flash enchantments, even though he's wielding a staff instead of his scythe), the killing was done speedily and it was fun.

A lot safer than with Alesia, too: nobody died or ever got close to dieing. That's a novel thing to experience after 16 levels in the lousy company of Alesia.

That MOX build might even work nicely in the Maguuma Jungle; though he needs some better self healing there, when they shatter all his enchantments and thus heal my party.

Still a survivor. I didn't mention yet that I am going for it in the hard way. (So, messing around with the healer seems like an excellent idea.) :wink:

One more observation: Playing ranger does not go well with testing new hero builds. When I do the latter, I tend to stare mostly at their skillbars to see if there are any problems. This meant that I missed a bunch of nibbles, animate minions, earth quakes, phantom pains, and even healing signets.

I should head towards nasty western Kryta next to upgrade at least some armor pieces to the new AR level. I mean, I got a bunch of collectables now, just waiting to be turned into a bunch of new socks.

Oh, and the chamberpot carrying in this mission was done nicely old school: defend Dorian first, then clear the path, then go and fetch the item and carry it all the way to the table.

------------

IMPORTANT Note:

Don't visit Verata with 2 warrior henchmen, a pet, no protector monk or rit, while wearing an amazing mix of AL 31-37 collector armor garbage pieces. Yeah, I am slowly beginning to appreciate armor now. :tongue:

I seemed to remember that my survivor mesmers did just that, but it's possible that they had a Tahlkora at that point (and most certainly not 2 warrior henchmen, heck, not even one of these aggro multipliers).

Anyway, I didn't die. But that was thanks to the guildhall button in the end, because I thought it would still be a good idea to try and hug the southern edge of the map a tiny bit more. Those two mobs that Thom and Stefan had accumulated and who had sent Alesia into a state of 60% DP so quickly also thought that it was a good idea that I was wallhugging there and made a beeline towards me. Meep!

I'll call it a complete wallhug for now. That was a bit too close for my taste though.

That's the 2nd massive fail of this character, not counting the amazing trip to Bergen Hotsprings or all these failed interrupts. First fail was the encounter with 2 Dolyak Riders in the Iron Horse Mine.

----------------

I got Concussion Shot now. :smiley: Now failing at interrupting will hurt my energy pool quite a lot.

Wandering through Stingray Strand, I was wondering if I shouldn't just upgrade at least some armor pieces by the means of the armor crafter there; but then I decided against it. This is probably foolish, because at the moment, I seem to be the yummiest target in the middle of lvl 15 henchmen.

I could only upgrade the boots to Krytan collector standard yet, because it turns out that I had quite a lot of collectables indeed, but not enough of the sorts that the armor collectors wanted. I've still hopes for the remaining collectors in Talmark Wilderness and Majesty Rest though - and if they fail me as well, I'll just skip them and work harder on the collectables in the Maguuma Jungle. If I recall them more or less correctly, then they weren't that hard to please.

Oh, and if there's more armor collectors in Twin Serpent Lakes, they're out of luck. I won't travel there yet; Twin Serpent Lakes is strongly connected to "past Hablion's death" in my mind.

Sure, you could say the same for anything taking place westward from the Temple of Ages, but I get around these quests (and their implication of "we're working against the white mantle now!") by not reading what the NPCs actually say.

Plotwise, I am a goon of the white mantle right now.

Anyway, I was thinking a bit about "how the plot of Prophecies could've been better". One thing would have helped for sure: if the chosen wouldn't just be called "Chosen Villager", but have names and perhaps a little quest involved or two. Then whatever happens to them in the Jungle would've had some impact on the player, contrary to how it was done in the game.

--------------

Uhm... I am not there yet, but Bloodstone Fen Bonus? With henchs and MOX? Ouchies.

Perhaps MOX will really run some sort of Alesia/Lina hybrid for that specific mission and be set to avoid combat. But... can I solo those moss scarabs?

Huh. All I know is that I definitely want to finish all the Prophecies missions properly this time. The title mess of Nefertari is giving me a headache, because she's doing everything and hasn't finished much yet. So, the ranger is supposed to be the complete contrast for that.

Hmm... what to do with these unfinished EotN faction point bars...

Lytha — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 16:29:04 GMT

Norn: 48k (was 26k 2 hours ago, then I vanquished Varajar with Path to Revelations + Haunted)

Asura: 59k

Vanguard: 64k

Deldrimor: 41k

I am thinking now that I will fill 1 additional hero book and 1 additional dungeon master book. This should increase Deldrimor to 55-60k points (perhaps more), and bring Vanguard quite close to the desired 79k, if I pay attention to the Zaishen Bounties and Zaishen Missions.

Then I'll grind the Snowmen, vanquish Varajar/Magus Stone or one of these maps, and one of the Vanguard maps; all up to 79.999 points. Then I will turn in these books.

One dungeon master book will go to Deldrimor. The other should probably go to Vanguard or Asura - the Tarnished Coast is already almost completely vanquished; so doing it again would be a stupid repetition; and Vanguard is notorioulsy hard to get points for. Then again, I think some of these annoying missions of GW:B give Vanguard points? I have to check that out before I turn in the books.

This would reduce the grind quite a bit for the moment.

The only problem I have with this is that it means that I have to do Kathandrax and SoO again so quickly. :tongue:

--------------------

Vanguard: 66.7k
Deldrimor: 43.6k

Looks like it's around 1k per 3 level dungeon? I could have killed more stuff in Cathedral of Flame, but I took the other way in level 2 this time. No idea why you take the long way as a 600/smite team.

Oh yeah, and Kathandrax still sucks.

So, right, anyway.

Outstanding Vanguard points:
- Zaishen bounty for Murakai (2.5k)
- 1 encrypted Charr Battle Plan (1k). Perhaps I'll find another one.
- 1x Rragar NM repetition (1.5k)
- various side quests: anything about Vael & that Assidiot hero, additional rewards for some quests already done - but I don't think that they add up to more than 2-3k. (Let's call it a 2k.)
- 1 repetition of Warband of Brothers (200)
- 1 repetition of Assault on Stronghold (100)
--------------------
= ~7k in total, plus stuff earned by fragging foes while doing Vael/Anton quests.

I definitely SHOULD do the two missions when there's a zaishen mission for them. That would be additional 1.5k and 2.5k.

Both are coming up next week.

Looks good, then.

Hrm, and the rest I should also do according to the Zaishen quests and bounties. However, that leaves a mess, when I do everything in the random order that the zaishen lunatics suggest.

I've been following their suggestions about vanquishes already, though. Wasn't too bad - the problem in that regard is that the character isn't done with Factions past Tahnakai Temple, or with Nightfall past Dzagonur.

--------------------

Nefertari went to the Jade Sea and did exploration & elite capping & questing & some vanquishes.

I'm somewhat itching more to finalize the NM EotN run, but I try to be patient and do it only when the Zaishen tell me to. Rragar for instance will be a bounty again in 3 weeks.

All this chaos and these dozens of unfinished title bars and dozens of quests spread all over the world are irritating though. Heck, I don't even know if I captured all elite skills in the earlier Factions areas yet and if I cartographed Nahpui and Vizunah properly or not. For now, I'm assuming that I did that.

But instead of mopping this up, I used one of my new character slots to roll a ranger for whom I have an interesting plan: no xunlai chest access, and doing everything in the "right order" (no LDoA and I left pre-searing as a lvl 4). She needs a makeover though, because the Tyrians haven't got real black hair. That she will get as a s(3)-present.

But already, I am hating the way the rangers interrupt. :tongue:

And my last Tyrian character has been too long ago. I've forgotten the ideal path through the newbie quests, which eliminates the need to run through the explorables repeatedly. For instance, I must've run through Old Ascalon towards the gate to the Breach at least 3 or 4 times now.

Well, if I'd say that I am now appalled at Slavers' Exile, I would be exaggerating...

Lytha — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 08:36:56 GMT

... but it still wasn't as bad as last time.

Nefertari is mopping up the dungeons of EotN (in Normalmode) at the moment, so that I know which faction I need to grind some more before I fill up 2 or 3 more hero handbooks, grind to 79.999 faction points, and turn in the books.

I'm not doing this in any particular order; for instance, it was not good for the motivation to start with Kathandrax, but so I did - it's good that I don't care if she dies. Let's leave it at that.

Anyway, I was facing the prospect of having 4 massive piles of trash left in a grand total of only 8 dungeons left in total - SoO, Vloxen (was it that bad in NM as well??), Frostmaw, Slavers'.

I started with SoO, which wasn't that bad until Fendi itself; but we got him down in the end. Yeah.

Then I looked at the list and decided to go for Slaver's Exile next.

The team looks like what I am using just about everywhere, and since I only have 1 mesmer so far, the interrupter is replaced by Dunkoro as a smiter monk.

That's:

Me: Panic & co. (last skill was LoD at first, then replaced by Pain Inverter in Slavers'.)

Olias: AotL & co & prot.

Tahlkora: UA & prot.

Xandra: SoS & co & shelter

Ogden: Healing Burst & co.

Gwen: Ineptitude & co & res

MoW: SS & co & prot & a res

Dunkoro: RoJ & smite & Fall Back & res.

Thommis/Thingie was actually fun. Not that much different to the City in DoA, I'd say, only made a bit annoying because of all their res skills.

Forgewright wasn't that funny. But also manageable with only 1 total wipe or so. We had to run away a couple of times in the corridor of hell though, and then we could take them out one by one, because there was always someone who chased us further than his pals did.

Selvetharm was alright. I didn't remember this at all, even though I actually had done this part twice with Juliania: once by myself in NM, once in HM with mesmers. I found this actually quite enjoyable, in fact. Pretending to be Gandalf at the gate of the boss' room was fun - I should read LotR again, since I didn't get the elvish words quite right. "Edro!"

Yeah, and then there was Duncan. I gathered that some changes were necessary.

MoW got kicked out for Livia (Spoil Victor, bunch of signets (SoLS, Barbed Signet (bad idea), Sig of Sorrow), blood ritual, awaken the blood, swap).

Gwen took her pet instead of the res.

All went quite well (1 wipe) until we were in Duncan's room. There I noticed that Livia wasn't on party slot #2-#4; no solo flag for her. I tried anyway for about a quarter of an hour, and oh man, it sucked.

Next attempt: I took Swap instead of Pain Inverter. Livia kept hers for redundancy (I thought that it might speed up the swapping phase if we could do it as a team... yes, in theory, this is a good idea. In practice, the flag work bothered me too much to do it). Livia wandered to party slot #4.

All went well again (0 wipes, 0 deaths), and then I started swapping. I swapped all 25 spirits into that corner near the entrance, which was probably an overkill. But I didn't know if any of sweetum's skills requires a spirit in shouting range or something. I got zapped two times, but all went well.

Then the pet was launched and slowly killed, then the heroes were flagged down and set to "avoid combat" so that they didn't feel like running into the spirit rifts, but could heal and prot Livia, and Livia was set to work.

At first, she randomly teleported over the place, until I realized that she was swapping happily with Olias' minion(s); this could drag Duncan away from the dead pet.

Then she happily ran back to the other heroes to give them some blood rituals, so this had to be disabled as well.

After that, it went well. I forced Tahlkora to refresh PS and SoA on Livia at all times, and I was happy to see that she seems to have a weapon set that increases the recharge of her prot skills quite some. Or something like that - she could more or less maintain SoA at all times.

Almost exactly 10 minutes of this, and Duncan was down.

Spoiler

Looks like I forgot to pick up the random gold item from the chest, eh? That's right - but when I logged in on this character on the next day, the game offered this bow to me. Nice game.

Oh, before you guys comment on all the hero control windows again - nope, I don't play with all of them open like that. Gwen, Ogden, Livia, Dunkoro, Pet were closed until they became relevant; and Tahlkora and Livia were dragged into the center of the screen so that I could micromanage them more easily.

That leaves the Norn dungeons and Vloxen. I'll aim for the other piles of trash first, I think.

So. Slavers' is a bit harder than DoA, I'd say - because you need a special setup for the final part of it. Yes, I wiped by far more often during my attempts to get to the endboss of DoA, but when I got into his room, my random selection of heroes could finish him. I don't think that this would have been possible with Duncan.

Of course, Foundry is harder than anything in DoA itself. Especially since you're not allowed to wipe - that's a completely sadistic backstabbing move by the devs, if you ask me.

-------------

Okay, Vloxxen in NM is fun and easy. I guess I was just so utterly traumatized by it in HM that my memory failed me. I even recognized some parts of dungeon level 2 and wondered where the extraordinarily nasty summit were.

5 more to go.