Guild Wars Nightfall: Progress Update Twelve

Way behind on these so it's time for the lighting round.

Moddock Crevice. Dumped Master of Whispers (Or the Lawn as I've taken to calling him. Give it a minute, it'll make sense.) who I'd been using primarily to level him up to 20 and had a janky SS build for Tao, my sweet little Assassin. Resolved to try and get the bonus on as many missions as I could. Headed in and promptly failed the mission – first time since running up against the Apocrypha. The first few parts of the bonus were easy but the last one where the two runners take off gave me problems. Took me a few tries but I finally just loaded me, Tao, and Godiva with snares. Assigned the Heroes to the one runner with the longer path while me and the henchies worked the one with the shorter path down – scrambled back to kill him in time and complete the bonus. That left the rest of the mission, which led up to another battle against another demonic opponent – the Hunger. He and the Monk Kourna boss he rode with were pushovers but the area to face them presented an interesting problem – it was ringed with archers attacking at elevation. Attempting to pull the bosses out or fight underneath the overhang and block the archers proved fruitless so I finally just had Dunk preprot me up and raced past the archers to the far side of the room. Once my party was out of their range it was simple to take down the Hunger and his lackey. Full bonus.

That let me roll around the new area of Vabbi for the first time. Awesome looking place. Seeing as how Nightfall has the whole “African” theme going I was fully expecting a Middle Eastern type place – and looking forward to it, of course – but Vabbi just blew me away. It's something out Arabian Nights or Gaiman's Ramadan. The graphic designers have always impressed me with their ability to present old standards – recognizable tropes like Dwarves and giants, say – in a way that's familiar but distinctive. The whole place and the gorgeous palate of blues and greens and yellows that it's constructed from is just the latest example.

Tihark Orchard. This mission was an interesting one – completely a solo affair. Getting the bonus was easy but the first time I tried it I failed because my build was light on the self-healing (I'd been playing around with the various god forms and neglected to put it back in after using the Dwayna form.) and I got away from my NPC escort. The second time around, I swapped some things out so I was more resilient and breezed through it. Full bonus, once again.

Dzagonur Bastion. Got this mission – which quickly became a favorite - instead of Dasha because I picked the Master of Whispers or Margrid. Around this time realized I was being foolish by ignoring Lawn and Olly, my two Necro buddies. Having played around with skills and taken a critical eye to the game's balance over the PvP weekend, it became clear – to me, at least – that Soul Reaping's still pretty broken. It's always been, of course, and it's never been fixed. But the thing about it is one minion master Necromancer allows any other Necros in the party to go nuts. My first instinct when picking up Olly had been to try and turn him into a MM but since the skills had been tweaked around my favorite way of doing so in the past had been nerfed into oblivion. Enter Jagged Bones – which I'd unlocked with the fat faction from over the weekend. Set Lawn up as an MM – since he leads an order and everything, I figured he'd be better off controlling lots of minions – and then turned Olly into an SS guy just loaded down with nasty yet expensive hexes. They became mainstays of my team which helped out immensely when running this mission. A failed attempt to get my bearings – I tried but quit out when I lost a bombard and then the gate behind it – and I was ready to run this thing. I tasked the Lawn to guard one of the side bombards and directed a group of his Order of Whispers friends over there to hopefully get some kills and start his minion ball rolling. The other two NPC groups I stationed in the center while I took the rest of my party and set up camp around the western bombard. I'd also picked up Fall Back! through Hero Skill Points and had been using it to help run around – it helped out immensely during this mission as, with Devona's Charge! (Probably the first time I've ever found it to be so useful) I was almost always speed buffed when racing between points to defend. At first I roamed around and killed off the groups but when the bosses spawned, I hung by the western bombard – rushing to the other points if there was a warning or if they looked to be in trouble – until I saw an opportunity and took out the Warrior boss (On the first run through I noticed they hung back unless the bombard went down – going for them too soon was my mistake last time around.) then rushed over to the east and took out the Elementalist. After that, it was a simple matter to down the Paragon then the Monk bosses. Finished the mission without losing a single point. Full bonus 10 out of 10.

Took the time to pick up the Mesmer Hero Norghu and level him up. Have no idea what to do with him at the moment (I set him up as an interrupter with a side order of hex and enchantment removal for the time being) but that means I'm only four away from completing the Hero set – another Ranger and Warrior along with the Ritualist and Paragon henchies I lack at the moment.

Grand Court of Sebelkeh. Although I'd been using my Necros that wasn't going to fly for this mission – Minion Masters are based on the steamroller principle but it takes time to get them going. Since this is a timed mission, I needed to kill a lot of things and quickly. So, I switched to Godiva and Uzimaki for dueling Searing Flames action – they're not really the best at using it but, man, that's mad AoE damage. I'd have left Lawn in for the minions but I was required to bring Powder, my second favorite Monk Hero (Since there are only two of them...that's really not saying much.), so I couldn't. This was a slugfest and it took loading my party with Monks – Powder plus the two henchies – before I could last long enough to figure out just where to go. I started off trying to rush the portals around the side but I wound up camping in the center until the spawns stopped and then taking care of the portals around the edges – heading back to take care of the Blasphemy after each one. Ran it a few times looking for the masters but, unfortunately, my best time was still several seconds over the magic 6 minute mark. I'm resolved to waiting until I can trick...er, convince some other people to come back with me and try it out – with several people in the party hitting the Lightbringer's Gaze those demons don't stand much of a chance and that should let me shave a few more seconds off, I think.

That's right, I've capped out on Sunspear points now – putting me at rank 8 until the way to get the max level's implemented, I guess – but that's not a problem because I've moved on to a title track that actually has a benefit to it – Lightbringer. Oreon's at 554 points at the moment, which puts me at rank 2 and lets me use the nifty Lightbringer's Gaze – just a shame I can't slot it on my Heroes (Though the change that lets them benefit from the title's effect is nice.).

And, for the record, Oreon's at 454k XP with 72 skill points and 17 elites captured. I'll probably pick up some more caps before I head off into the Desolation, though. That'll have to wait until next time. And, you know, for me to actually do it.