We actually doubled up and played Guild Wars on both Saturday and Sunday over the previous week. I had written up the Saturday adventure about getting to Yak’s Bend and had it set on Sunday morning, but then Sunday afternoon, during the Super Bowl, three of us got back online and pressed forward down the mission path. (And then a bunch of other things came up and I took a week to finish this post.)
Guild Wars Reforged
Making it to Yak’s Bend was kind of a big deal as it is a point where we get a larger group to tackle the world and the missions we face. We made the jump from four to six, so the three of us will get three henchmen to pick from.
And there were even some fresh faces on the list of options for us.
We decided to supplement Alesia the healer with Claude the cultist and Little Thom the brawler. I was kind of keen to get somebody else who could get in there and melee with the mobs.
Yak’s Bend isn’t the start point for a mission, but it does have a number of quests, including the main story line quest that does send you to the next mission start point. We scooped up those and went out, feeling a bit invincible with two more NPCs along to help.
Of course, the overland content was also scaled up to deal with larger groups, as we quickly found out when we did what is destined to become a recurring theme of our adventures and managed to get two groups that wander in and out of range of each other, with a named in the middle, ending in a wipe.
At least we discovered pretty quickly that Thom the brawler was a bit squishy to get in there. But we didn’t go back to town, we just sucked it up and moved forwards with the penalties for dying. We had, after all, cleared most of the mobs before succumbing.
The penalty for dying seems to land hardest on me, setup to tank, as the NPC healer jumps in an revives me while mobs are still on top of my corpse, so they turn around and beat me down again a couple of times during a wipe until somebody finally puts paid to the heal. I appreciate the effort, but know when to quit.
We ran down a couple of the quest, including one to escort a some straggler’s back to town. They were a jumpy bunch too.
It isn’t even a dwarf, can you guys chill?
We brought them back to Yak’s Bend but then found we needed to do finish the quest inside and nobody wanted to clear the zone again. So we dragged them forward to our destination, Borlis Pass and they complained the whole way. It wasn’t far, but they helped make it feel like it was.
Yak’s Bend and Borlis Pass on the map
Borlis Pass is the location of the next mission.
There we met up with the Prince formerly known as Rurik… or maybe that is the Rurik formerly known as a Prince. Anyway, that guy was there and he had a mission for us. In order to get him and his refugees from Ascalon on their way we needed to go clear the path forward.
We took a minute to get ourselves set, swapped out Thom for Stefan, who seemed a bit more durable, checked our skills, and then entered the mission.
The party makeup
The first task was set some beacons alight to help guide Rurik and his traveling circus along the route. They were guarded by some centaurs, including a named one, and required one of us to carry a torch that we had to drop to fight, similar to the tome last time around. There were seven beacons, including the demo beacon at the start, and if it hadn’t been for some client problems Holden was experiencing, we would have move along through that pretty quickly.
Claude making stuff awkward while we waited for Holden at one of the now lit beacons
We actually ended up doing the beacons three times as we discovered somebody in the group couldn’t exit the game and rejoin us in a mission already in progress, so we had to leave the mission and start over again. And then, at the end of the beacons we ended up with another convergence of two wandering groups that swatted us down. That again.
But the beacon thing wasn’t all that tough and we were quickly back where we left off, more careful this time not to pull everybody in the neighborhood. This time we succeeded and were then faced with a gate… a gate and also, not too far away, a supply of explosive barrels in the form of a dwarven powder keg station.
Dwarven powder keg station!
We were able to put one and one together and, after some experimentation about how to deploy the powder kegs… drop them and they are lit… and how close they need to be to the gate… you need to be bumping into it to ensure the keg is within range… we were able to set the charge and blow the gate.
Everybody stand back!
We carried on into another area with more gates… and more explosive kegs… and blew open all the gates to see what was behind them. Behind one we ran into Rornak Stoneslegde, and he had a problem.
He has a drake problem
Also, I forgot to mention we were headed to place with the unlikely name of Grooble’s Gulch. There is a joke in there somewhere.
Anyway, Rornak has this ice drake problem… but he also had a solution… a solution we could implement for him.
A simple solution, and one we could understand
We could kill the drake… or try at least. First we had to find it and Rornak wasn’t exactly expansive on that point. We poked around and found that, behind him there was a pile of snow you could walk halfway into and see an ice cave. Where else would an ice drake live? But there was a barrier there preventing us from moving into the cave.
This looked like a job for explosive barrels!
On the third or fourth attempt we found the spot where an explosion would open up the cave. Then it was down the cave, clearing some trash, until we found the Drake at the end.
One ice drake coming up
I ran out to engage the drake, one Whiskar Featherstorm by name, to make sure he did start in on the casters, as mobs seem fond of doing in GW, while everybody else burned down the two minions with him and that was that. Easy fight.
That turned out to be the bonus objective, so we had that completed.
Then it was back the way we came and through another gate to try and find Rurik, which was still on our list of things to do, along with now breaking the siege around the fort where he and the King Jalis Ironhammer of the local dwarves were negotiating passage.
We managed that and ran into Rurik who had his usual pep talk ready, immediately followed by there being much work to be done… by us, not him.
He is still going by Prince Rurik I guess…
He sent us off to speak with King Jalis, who was of the line of Russian dwarves rather than being the more common Scots dwarf. He had his own whole cut scene about honoring old alliances and traditions and that he would grant us passage.
King Jalis Ironhammer receives our group
All we had to do was signal his brother down the way by lighting some more beacons with an enchanted torch… and really, how hard could it be? So I grabbed the torch and off we went. We grabbed one group and then another and it was going fine because there were even NPCs dwarves scattered about ready to help us… and then we got in over our head again.
I was out there fighting when we picked up a whole new group of adds and Potshot asked aloud if I had put that revive skill on my bar because things were suddenly going badly.
Fighting with some of the NPCs by me
I looked at the party frame and it was just me, Stephan, and my pet left… and a whole lot of angry bads loitering about or engaged with the allied NPCs.
I decided to pick up the torch and just run for the beacon. Except, of course, it wasn’t just one beacon but three. I got the first one lit before hostiles started to catch up and beat on me and I was on the steps the second before I was suddenly in over my head being knocked down and unable to move or use the self-heal I did have on my bar. And then it was over.
The party is over
And that was enough for one afternoon. We could have probably made it with some more care, but it was going to have to wait until next time. We were back in Borlis Pass and not prepared to start from scratch again.
I suspect that it is us, the three human players, that are the liability in the group. We are still in the stage where we’re probably not using the right skills or not coordinating our skills correctly.
The problem is figuring out how to get better. The game doesn’t give you a lot of feedback on how effective attacks are. I know, everybody hates damage meters, but I feel like I need something to help me figure things out.
Of course there is a lot of info out there, even on the main wiki. But it is written in its own language using terms and acronyms I do not understand and is usually… as often is the case for older titles… focused on builds to use when you have hit max level and have unlocked a bunch of skills.
So still working on the “new group, leveling up” build thing.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 