Dungeon Diving: Arachni's Haunt

Looking through my DM's guide, I noticed a gap in the dungeons I've beaten. Since the pages are helpfully grouped by region that means there's a dungeon nearby I haven't gotten to yet. Actually, two since I'm skipping the Shards of Orr for now. I got clobbered with my go-to build while trying to run to there to get to Gadd's. Seems like it's going to be a really tough place to muck out and that I might have to get crazy with my build (I'm thinking 4 Smiters with the two henchie Monks and... I'm not sure yet. Of course, then it's what kind of Smite Monkeys. JudgeSig? Shield of Judgement? Ray of Judgement? Randomly Generated Name of Judgement? I don't tend to play the smiting game so I'm lost when it comes to that sort of build. I'll have to look into it but not right now so I'm holding off.) in order to deal with the well-balanced masses of undead in there. But I have two pages missing in the area that seems reserved for Asuran dungeons which means there's one out there I've completely missed.

I had to look it up but it's Arachni's Haunt. Somewhere in the Southwestern corner of Magus Stones where I haven't been yet. Shouldn't be too hard to find.

Since I looked it up I have a slight idea of what I'm dealing with here - lots and lots of spiders. Low level spiders even. So I'm going to switch my build up here to deal with the low level masses I'm sure to encounter. For me, that means going MM. Lots of weak critters means lots of corpses, and lots of corpses means a moving wall of rotting flesh to mow down whatever's in my way. Since I was adding an MM I'm going to try out Clammy's suggestion of Barbs and Mark of Pain. And while I was at it, I threw in Razah on his support/weapon build, too. For my final Hero spot I added another Necro, my new and lovely Livia who's apparently co-ordinated her outfit with the Master of Whispers. She's on an SS build with Enfeebling Blood and Blood Ritual to help fuel all my casting. Spoil Victor is probably a better bet and that's what I'd be using if I expected a super tough boss battle at the end of the dungeon here but Spiteful Spirit works better with the AoE hexing thing I've got going on.

I, on the other hand, haven't changed a thing. Still rocking my extended SoR build (It works, I like it, and I'm used to it) which I've tweaked to make sure I included Dismiss Condition and Shield of Absorption.

For henchies, I've picked up the usual suspects. Zho who's an interrupting machine, I just wish she'd be smarter about using Troll. Talon has Shield's Up which should help out immensely here. And...sigh, Mhenlo. It's not that he's bad so much that the AI running him is stupid and I want a Hero menu so I can force activate his skills right. Oh, and he uses Vigorous Spirit which makes me want to strangle him. It's not a bad skill mind as it's cheap and spammable but it's a 9th slot skill. Just doesn't make the cut because there's better stuff laying around. It just typifies how many degrees away from functional his bar is. My final spot is usually reserved for Cynn but since I'm not going with massed SF I've instead turned it over to Herta, the warder henchie. Not sure if this is a good idea or not, almost went with the Illusion henchie instead, but I figured I'd give her a whirl to see if she could wow me.

My inventory cleared, my party set, I take my leave of Rata Sum headed due South. Almost immediately I run into a pack of spiders. I suspect I'm on the right track here. It's also a chance to see how my build works against this critters and the answer is...pretty good once I get the minion chain rolling. As usual with an MM centered strat, it's getting that first kill that's the tricky part. Because your MM especially is set up around supporting those minions, without them he's rather useless. But once you have a few then you're a finely tuned engine of destruction that will steamroll across the map.

This is a long run. The dungeon's entrance looks to be in the bottom left corner of the map or below where Oola's lab is. That's about as far from Rata Sum as you can get and, by heading south, I took somewhat of a circuitous route.

Razah is doing pretty well with his channeling weapon build. He likes to put Splinter Weapon up on the casters in the party which is weird but, otherwise, he's spreading things around and making us nastier just like I'd hoped.

Livia gets a similar alright but not fantastic scorecard. I want her to pump out more SS, really, but she's doing a fine job of keeping the melee hate up and the enchantments off, just like I wanted.

Can't really say if my hexified MM build is better than what I've been running or not, really. We are killing things awfully fast but, then, we tend to kill things awfully fast whenever there's an MM around anyway. And thanks to the combination of Necro hexes and Splinter weapon's AoE, I can't tell which is really benefiting me the most. I have noticed that the spider's Monk bar - Lifeweaver - has Divert Hexes which is likely going to spoil a lot of my efforts. Nothign I can do now, though, and most of my hexes will outrace it anyway.

Finally at the gate. Looks like we're playing Aliens today. Game over, man, game over!

As I suspected a lot of spiders in here. They pack plentiful interrupts and a monster skill, Snaring Web which makes that even easier. But my block web's been working so far and I'm not getting many fizzles.

Oozes, too. The jellies are annoying, especially the Ele ones since their AoE wipes out my minions quick.

Have three allies in here. Asuran Warriors, which I never thought I'd see (I'm going to have cognitive dissonance problems when it comes to GW2. Asuran Warriors, Norn Mesmers....Gah!). It's like Gnome Warriors in WoW. So wrong. But life is so much easier when you have lots of Warriors around.

Keep losing my minions to the Ooze but there are plentiful spiders and clearing out the first chamber has restored my shambling army to its proper glory.

The puzzle in this dungeon involves a staff. A staff which lets you burn things. I can live with that.

There's a collector here named Dagnor Grubeater. I initially read that as Gru-beater. Not Grub-eater. I think my way is better.

This is what I hate about the spiders. Pop-ups. Constantly getting ambushed by huge groups of Painweavers - Toxic Shock Sin spiders - and Corrupted Aloe - Rits - and the rest.

Now I'm on to a room that features Forgemasters and Burning Spirits. The former are Warrior Ettins the later SF Djinn. But the real danger in here are the giant balls of fire rolling down the hall which make for instant death. They're sent by the fire elemental boss at the far end of the room. And, it seems, this dungeon really doesn't want me to have a never ending minion army after all.

This is a long dungeon, too. I'm not even trying and I'm already up to 150 kills - note the wimpy spiders don't even count since they're too low a level to give you XP. And my inventory is cluttered.

So, the deal here is you have your fire staff and you have these piles of spider eggs. You interact with the spider eggs and they burn and a half dozen spiders drop on your head. The eggs are in large groups so you can dump a lot of eight-leggers on yourself if you want or you can take it one at a time. The spiders are lv14, though, for the most part except for the last pyre which summons a Spider Matriarch. You need to kill those for the quest.

Easiest dungeon key ever. You walk down the hall towards the gate to the next level and there it is just lying on the floor. And then you're on to the second floor.

Morale check. Everyone's at full morale. Huh, that's nice. Doubt it'll last, though.

Down here there are more spiders, of course, along with the hated bats.

Beetles and Skelks, too.

I'm really beginning to hate these dungeon traps. Just had to run up the stairs of doom. Tightly packed corridor with two pairs of traps. The first some flame jets that my henchies decided would be a good place to stop and die on. The second fire darts. Then there was a fight waiting for me at the top. Nicely designed. Annoying to have to slog through.

It's more of the same down here. You have to hunt down the spider eggs and spawn the boss. Arachni is a Ranger boss, of course, and has a ton of health and armor. She also will pop off Troll Unguent with frightening regularity - apparently henchies don't prioritize interrupting that, either - so you'll be fighting through a lot of regen. That makes it a long fight but not a particularly hard one. Basically, we stood around in a circle wailing on her while protected from her mega-damage barrage by Aegis and Shield's up and Shelter and more while my army of minions pumped up with weapon skills chipped away at her.

My unimpressive rewards for this feat were 1.5k Asuran points. That puts me at 15k, not too far off rank 4. Also up to 19k Dwarven points after slogging through that dungeon and that's also only a thousand or so off the next rank there, too. The quest rewards you with 7.5k XP and 1.5 plat. While the chest gave me a lame gold staff which isn't even good enough to be sale bait. I'm not asking for free epics or anything here, just something that makes it worth the trip, that's all. Because, at the moment, it's not exactly balanced for the amount of effort involved. I'd say a guaranteed gold weapon but looking at the weapons that are being offered from these chests, I don't really want any of those either...