Lytha's Blog

Interesting. I seem to be unable to edit this year-old entry? Anyway...

Why is Dzagonur on the list of things still to be done for this character? I don't know how I'm supposed to do this mission anymore, especially after chemo and all that and a year long break from GW. You see, I played GW during the treatments, if I recall correctly. And thus I associated it strongly with being 90% dead and miserable.

I've logged in yesterday for a few minutes and looked if the game is still running. It is, but it is very, very empty now.

And then I crossed off from the list:
[x] The Falls
[x] Majesty Rest
[x] Talmark Wilderness

Now thinking about doing Kessex Peak.

One thing is important for Majesty Rest: While I switched Gwen with Livia in her boss-killing skill setup (pet and Signet of Sorrows), I screwed up and had her on the not individually manageable party slot #8. So, the old strategy for Rotsy didn't work, and I couldn't be bothered to restart. It just worked as well by frontal assault, after carefully taking out his little friends one by one. It would have been easier with Gwen, due to Wastrel's Worry... especially given that I screwed up getting the pet killed at the feet of Rotsy at all. Ahum.

Well... I've finished off Tyria and Cantha. So, "only" EotN and "only" Elona remain. I went for the Alkali Pan first. After feeling very happy about a very unproblematic defeat of that mesmer undead boss and after cleaning out 75% of the area, I ran into a mob looking like it might've been actually 2 mobs combined, with 2 acolytes and 4 cavaliers. The heroes in junundu mode went moronic (I hate junundu mode, anyway). Then I discovered that I had forgotten how to disable skills on the skillbar of heroes, so we went for a straight 60% DP on almost everyone at that mob. Because the morons kept resurrecting everyone. ... That was the problem on both sides, actually. I thought I could maybe overwhelm this giant mob outside of junundu form and tried to stop the heroes from DPing us out, but it didn't work.

Well, I figured it out in the end, when it was too late already (presumably, that is). Shift + mouseclick on the undesireable skill.

GW seems to be the master of undocumented features, such as the shift+mouseclick thing, isn't it? All these things that you only know if you've been religiously following a forum, since it isn't documented ingame at all.

Yeah well... given that Alkali Pain has to be repeated and that there will be more mobs of this sort then, and that Dzagonur is left, my motivation to play this game is greatly diminished again.

(Also my motivation to give Anet more money for any of their products, but that was already next to zero anyway. The development they took with PvE in the course of the 4 GW1 games did tell me more than enough - I want to play to relax, not to have reasons for raging fits. And anet does not provide that.)

Wow...

Soooo... that mob in Alkali Pa(i)n seems to be there always. Just east of the area south of the mesmer boss, it is wandering about. I had Frozen Soil (3 points in Wilderness Survival) on Xandra, this time, left her out of the jundundu and let her keep it up. The tricky part was to be sure that the mob was in the radius of the Frozen Soil. Did work flawlessly on the 2nd attempt with this strategy (we wiped 1x first, and thanks to the FS spirit, no junundu-wail + DP accumulation on part of the heroes!). We wiped on the 2nd attempt one time again as well, but we had all of the cavaliers and acolytes down at that point. So I left the remaining mesmers, necros and rangers wander about.


Dzagonur worked on today's first attempt. (I am not really awake yet).

Xandra (Spiritspam) and Razah (some restoration with Union and Life) were with the 3 NPC groups at the eastern side.

Olias, MoW, Tahlkora, Ogden, Norgu and me with Backfire instead of Powerspike (no idea if that was necessary, but it worked) defended the rest.

Now, the thing is really that new mobs only spawn once the previous mob has been totally defeated. By leaving lone rangers about, you get a lot of breathing time. Also, I positioned my group right next to where I expected General Dorian to spawn while some minions kept hitting on that last lonely ranger: Instant-aggro of Dorian = very fast disarming of his spawning point!

It was a tiny bit hairy when because we had also aggroed some of his Margonite friends while more kournans came running down the hill already, but the NPCs of the center of the map distracted them from capping.

I then went for the Monk General and he instantly got his Spellbreaker up, but a group of Kournans without such protection against my group appeared and stood next to him, involving him in their Panicked state. No issues there.

I got the Paragon General before his next group of Kournans could spawn, he was eager to trigger Norgu's Inepti and my Empathy.

Xandra and Razah needed a bit encouragement to spam their spirits during the course of the mission, but their Shelter, Union and Life definitely helped to keep their NPCs alive and well against a large amount of red dots.

And then my entire group helped them and it was over quickly.


Soooo..... no more worries that Nefertari will be stuck at 29/30 titles.

This was my 3rd attempt at this mission since my cancer diagnosis. 1st was when I took the Zaishen bounty at some time in the fall of 2011, then another attempt yesterday, and today it worked with some slight modifications (i.e. don't place the minionmaster to the east - place the spiritspammer there and take the minionmaster with your own group! And some minor skill changes on Razah's skillbar.)

Finished her title progress last week.

Then I started to go a bit for her black moa chick - hadn't done this at all on this character yet, except for collecting all the ingredients. But Sorrow's Furnace is boring.

Anyway... I scrolled through my characters, tried to play the "Ranger without Xunlai Storage access" for a short while and didn't like the ranger gameplay immediately.

Then I noticed a male Tyrian mesmer who had achieved "Legendary Defender of Ascalon", and I decided that it's time to pull him out of the guildhall, and back into the early stages of Prophecies. He's unique, as in "he has actually got whiteish skin and matching hair instead of following the 'drow' look", and he's named after one of my cats. He just hit "survivor [1]" by doing Augury Rock and has 75% of Tyria explored. I grabbed Mox for him as soon as he hit L.A. (Mox ran a dervish build for the shortest of times, and is now working as a SoS spirit spammer with Union, Shelter, sometimes Displacement, sometimes a Mend Body And Soul). And for the Crystal Desert, when Alesia became more trouble than tolerable on a survivor who returned from a GW-break, I grabbed Ogden (heals) and Vekk (since I've got no use for an elementalist, he pretends to be an illusionist.)

Nice, so far.

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Oh yeah, I also noticed that my oldest mesmer girl (the one wearing black rogue armor) somehow turned into a legendary survivor over night. Her "/deaths" say that she has died over 1400 times, but has received 1,9mio XP after the last death. I have no idea how that happened, but it makes her another option to play with after I gotten bored or finished with this Julian.

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Account-wide achievements look somewhat bleak.

Maxed:
- Lucky
- Unlucky
- Treasure Hunter
- Kurzick

Not Maxed:
- Luxon (~1mio out of 10mio)
- Wisdom (~6,1k out of 10k)

Maybe I'll switch my guild (not that any of the members would care, lol) over to Luxon and grind 9mio Luxon points, buuuut.... do I really want that? Having newborn characters "Kind of a Big Deal" would be kinky though. And it would relieve the pain that is:
- Dzagonur (Guardian of Elona + Legendary Guardian)
- Cartography of Cantha, and perhaps Tyria now as well (no more necrotic traversal in Dunes of Despair)

Yeah well, I don't know.