Guild Wars – Thwarted at Borlis Pass

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.

Guild Wars – The Battle for Rin and Arrival in Yak’s Bend

Despite the fact that Potshot and I have been devoting most of our gaming time to Project: Gorgon, we have not left Guild Wars Reforged fully by the wayside.  I am pretty sure there will be a post at some point to compare the two, which are different in so many ways.

Guild Wars Reforged

But the group has been aimed at GW for two months now and we try not to inflict too much whiplash on the crew, so we went back to Tyria where we last left off having arrived at Nolani Academy after having discovered missions.

That put us out in the Diessa Lowlands where, the week before, where we spent the week before running some quests and getting to the settlement at Grendich Courthouse, during which we ran into many of the same problems I stumbled across in my attempt to get there solo.

The Bridge of Trouble remains trouble

Henchmen can be more difficult to control, but they are more consistent in how they do things than we were.  Still, we knocked out a couple of quests and made it once we refined out group a bit.  Basically it came down to our group, which was a warrior/ranger, a monk/enchanter, and a ranger/necro dumping the DPS henchman we had been dragging along for a monk henchman.

Our lineup

It turns out more healing to keep us alive is better than more DPS.

At Nolani Academy we had a new mission ahead of us, but decided to jump back to Grendich Courthouse to go do a quest as a warm up.

We had a mission to go slay Garfazz Bloodfang which was not too far away.  How hard could it be?

Well, old Garfazz is surrounded by several roaming groups of Charr and, while you can pull one group easily enough, their ranged members hand back in the area close enough to the paths of the other groups such that adds can start piling on pretty fast.

We held our own for a while and nearly got them all down… but the healers were both down by then and then the pets and soon I was there alone tanking and using my self-heal and it did not end well for us.  We wiped and ended up back at the revive spot just outside of Grendich Courthouse.

Before I could say anything, somebody on our team said, “Let me reset the debuff!” and went back into town.  That was followed by a loud groan by me as, even with the debuff, we only had a couple mobs left to kill.  It would have been a walk over for us.

But, going back into town removed our debuff and reset the zone.  When we went back out again all the mobs had been restored.  So we headed back and, in attempting to scout the right was to pull a group managed a proximity aggro and it was on again.  This time we got down to just me and Garfazz before I went down.  Another wipe.  But nobody moved on revive until we started heading back to finish him off.  Op success.  The quest guide on the wiki says that one can pull just Garfazz if you approach from the correct vector.  Or you can half ass brute force the whole thing like we did I guess.

That done and turned in we decided, on very little evidence, that we were ready for the next mission.  It was off to Nolani Academy where we ventured out with the same composition.  The mission, which put us with Prince Rurik again, gave us the following goals:

• Return Prince Rurik South of the Wall to Safety
• Sneak out and ambush the Charr forces besieging the academy.
• Return to the Nolani Academy to rendezvous with the prince.
• Defend Prince Rurik on the way back to the capital city of Rin.

I figured this was not going to be too tough as I had done this with an alt and three henchmen previously, so had at least learned a bit of the “how to” aspect of the mission.  I had done a lot of that learning the hard way.  I think I spent 45 minutes wandering around before I got to the point of ambushing the Charr.

But I had found the bonus mission and stumbled through that to the point that I knew where to find it and what to do.  And, once you go out the back gate and start following the path… once again GW keeps you practically on rails for a route… finding the bonus quest isn’t too hard.  You end up going left at one of the very few choices of path and end up at the guy.

The guy!

Watchman Pramas took the Tome of the Fallen and found out it was cursed and awoke the dead and could we please put it back for him?

Sure thing. It will be super easy, barely an inconvenience… or so I thought.  I mean, I had managed this once already on my own.  Sure, you have to carry the damn thing, but you can drop it then pick it back up if you need to fight.

We had to wander around a bit to get back on the path that took us to the wall and then down onto the plain before the academy, where you can go one way to ambush the Charr and another was for tome returns.

I had no real memories about how I got the tome returned, just that there was a place in a pit where you had to click on a thing and the quest would update.  So we went down the stairs and through the front door, where the dead were waiting.

I remember fighting some of the dead when I did this, but mostly just avoiding them.  However, they are marked in red and are semi-aggro… some come get you, others won’t.  But I didn’t mention any of this because it was only just coming back to me when Holden opened fire on the dead.

Whatever I did before I don’t think that was it.  That seemed to rile up the dead and they came from all over at us and we were swamped and wiped.

We then learned that when you wipe on a mission you end up back in town and have to start over.  Well, we knew where we were going.  I told Holden he would be the one carrying the tome this time.  That would keep him from shooting things.

So we ran down the path again, found Pramas, Holden picked up the tome, and then we headed back down the path we had just traveled.

The thing is, we had picked up some Ascalonian NPCs who were keen to follow and fight along side us.  So when we got down the stairs to the first set of dead our NPCs immediately went into action, attacked the dead, which got the rest to swarm us and… boom, we were back in town again.

Weren’t we just here?

Back into the mission.  This time for sure!  I dug deep into my memory and could visualize how I went to the tome return point… and it wasn’t down those stairs.  So we ran the route again, picked up our stray Ascalonians, spoke to Pramas, then headed to the dead.  This time I went to the right of the stairs, over a hill, through some of the usual wildlife, to what seemed to be the perimeter of the dead.

I could see where I had to go.  It wasn’t too far.  So, in hopes of not aggroing literally everything yet again, I told everybody to stay where they were and I would just run the tome back trying to avoid dying.

I forgot to tell out monk henchman to stay behind… I know how to do that, but just didn’t consider it… so she tagged along.  But everybody else, including our trigger happy followers, stayed behind.

The dead were not best pleased with me and some began to attack me… but only a few.  I ran to the pit, down the steps, clicked on the tome return dingus, got an update… and the dead kept on hitting me.

Almost to the tome return slot

I did a self buff and a heal, but the monk was down and so was I soon enough.

And then, as I am laying there dead, the quest finally finishes, I get the sword and shield thing, the dead disappear, and the NPC you speak to after returning the tome… I did click on him just before I died… tells you everything is fine now.

Oh, now the spirits are at peace? Why not 15 seconds ago old man?

Fortunately my plan had mostly worked.  While I and the NPC monk were down, Holden and Zbignew were still up and Zbignew, being a monk, was able to revive me and our downed henchman.

I still don’t know how I did it the first time.  There is probably a “right way” to do it, but there is also my way I guess.

That done, things went considerably more smoothly from that point forward.

Surprising the Charr and relieving the siege of Nolani Academy was quick.  There are a bunch of Charr out there, but they are mostly in discreet groups.  Plus we picked up some more Ascalonian stragglers to act as cannon fodder for us.

Having lifted the siege, Prince Rurik was keen to go, racing ahead back to the wall where he badgered the guard on the gate to let us through.  The king had left strict orders to allow nobody through, but it is tough to argue with Prince Rurik and his flaming sword… though, as we saw in a later cut scene, the king seems to hand out such swords like they were on sale at Walmart.  He and his whole royal guard have the same sword.

The guard lets us through, asking the Prince to please let the king know he did this under duress.  Then we’re off with Rurik, who is keen to get to a giant horn that, for some reason, faces the city it is supposed to protect… I don’t know… the mouth piece for which was a plot point at the end of the previous mission.

So we get there and cut scene to Rurik blowing the horn and all the Charr with sudden comic looks of surprise on their faces or some such.

The mouth piece in place, we find that Rurik just blows

I don’t know.  I am not up on the horn lore or why the city of Rin had it installed… or why they built the wall behind the city… but Rin itself was not looking good.

After that it was just keeping Prince Rurik alive and killing one named Charr to finish the mission. I knew this because, when I did it solo I ended up looking up the mission because I felt like I was getting nowhere just schlepping a stupid tome round and saw the suggestion that you just kill the named Charr to keep Rurik from getting into trouble.

The problem was there were a few named Charr and I couldn’t remember the name so we ran about smiting anything with a name.  It worked out in the end because eventually you end up at the right one.  Bonfaaz Burntfur is the right one, btw.

Once he is down it is the mission reward screen.

Shield and double swords for us!

Then it is time for more cut scenes.

Prince Rurik was very happy with us.  Then his father, the king showed up… somehow from the other side of Rin I think… with his whole royal guard… which would have been handy during the fighting… and was also happy about the liberation or Rin, promising a plethora of public works projects to rebuild the place.

Prince Rurik however was not on board with that plan, pointing out that the Charr had been pushed back for the moment but that Rin was still, you know, on the wrong side of the freaking wall.

Rurik’s plan was to abandon Ascalon and go hide in Kryta to rebuild until they have they strength to defeat the Charr for good.

The King was not best pleased by this plan and clearly had his “not best pleased” face on when he heard it.

Either that or this all just woke him up from a nap…

Anyway, he disowns Rurik right then and there and Rurik calls for those who will go to Kryta to follow him.  We’re on Team Rurik it seems, so we lined up and follow him.

Then the mission ends and we were dropped into Yak’s Bend, a settlement up in the mountains with snow about and dwarves running around.  A nice change from the overly seared and mostly ruined regions around Ascalon.  It is a fine place… to be from.

Yak’s Bend is not the starting point for the next mission, but my alt has already been to the next mission site, so I know it is around there somewhere.

Next time out I think we’ll be doing some quests, gearing up, and maybe experimenting with skills… and henchmen.  One thing Yak’s Bend gave us immediately is two more slots in our party and a few more henchmen to choose from.  We can have another melee up there with me!

So figuring all that out is on the agenda.