Dungeon Diving: Bogroot Grove - Griff's War and Tekk's War

Back at it again. At this point, dungeon diving has become the emotional equivalent of a pint of Hagen Daas for me. The kind of sorrow induced pick-me up that I know I probably shouldn't but go ahead with anyway.

Anyhow, when last we'd left off, I'd beaten up on Bloodstone Caves. I'm not exactly bragging about this because it's slutty girl at prom levels of easy. Since I'm in the area, I figured I'd stop by the Bogroot dungeon I saw when I was adding Hayda the Paragon of the E-Peen to my ever expending party list. She's an interesting character, that one, but unfortunately lost among a sea of other poorly developed Heroes that I lug around with me. Don't get me wrong, I like having the flexibility of different party configurations offered by the sea of Heroes. I just think with so many of them that they're not working well as characters. And the game needs to do a better job of using them if it wants me to care about them as anything other than interchangable henchies whose bars I control.

I have no idea what to expect with this dungeon. I do know that you have to run through a swamp with a bunch of frogmen to get there. And that you have your choice between two mutually exclusive quests once you get there. These quests are inspired by the Red vs. Blue series which means absolutely nothing to me. I mean, I've heard of it but since the Halo phenomenon has passed me by, it's an empty reference. It's like the Great Gatsby. I've heard of it. I know what it is. But I have absolutely no interest in reading/watching it because it's not speaking to me. At all. But I checked them out the last time I was by and I believe they both involve hunting yet more frogmen. Not sure exactly what that means, what kind of twists there are going to be, but I do know from the swamp that the froggies tend to be melee heavy. Warriors and Paragons backed with Rit support.

I suppose I could try to switch things up and make my life easier heading into the place but I'm just going to stick with what's been working so far. Me on the SoR prot Monk. Three Ele Heroes. Two SF E/Me with interrupts and enchantment strips. One a B-Surge E/N with Enfeebling Blood and more enchantment stripping. Talon to tank. Cynn for damage. Zho for interrupts. Mhenlo because I'm not a game developer and I can't make a better healing Monk henchie and while it's a close run thing, he's marginally better than running without a second Monk. The only change I've made is to add Shell Shock to my Air Ele's bar. I'd pretty much forgotten about it but Cracked Armor is sexy in teh PvE and I might as well take advantage of it on the character who's supposed to be spreading around debilitating conditions.

Run through the swamp is uneventful. Can't tell if Shell Shock is working wonders or not. But I feel better having thought of it. Arrived at the gate and now I have to pick which war I want to wage. There's Griff who wants me to kill yelllow froggies. And Tekks who wants me to kill red froggies. Or the other way around, I can't tell the difference. I'm sorry, I know it's specisist but all frogmen look alike to me. I'm going with Griffs by the simple virtue that he's on the left. Most people, when given a choice between left and right default to the right because that's the most common handed-ness. I like to be contrary. But, you know, I'm probably just going to wind up running this twice to see what it's like on the other side. So, really, I'm not helping any frogs out here at all, I'm just a filthy mercenary working for whoever offers me the most fun.

Right, so, killing yellow froggies it is. I'm already learning to hate the Thlawhatchamacallits... the Mesmer ones (Where did they get these names from anyway? Way too mind twisting to remember.). But apparently we'll have the good (for this run) froggies helping me out a bit. Griff is also along for the ride, he's a Mesmer. Some kind of hexer that's not all too effective, really. But at least I don't have to worry about him dying - NPC allies pop right back up once there are no enemies near.

The frogs aren't the only enemy here, there's a big mass of plant monsters in the next chamber. It's the sort of interlinked group I hate because it makes it hard to fight them one at a time. And...wonderful, they're a bunch of degen hexers and I'm light on hex removal. Clearing this place out is going to take a while, I think.

These Blooming Nettle things, the big ones, look familiar. But I can't put my finger on it.

Two wipes later and we're mopping them up now. My DP count is massive, though. As always, it's Mhenlo who suffers the most. Mostly because he has no idea how to use his skill bar. This is the sort of map where I really want to be on the LoD because at least I know how to fight off degen. I mean, Vigorous Spirit? Really? Degen which gets nastier the shorter your health bar is. Which is exactly what happens when you rack up the Death Penalties. Ah well.

Now I'm rolling with a huge posse of red froggies as we roll through enemy groups. Fun. If I didn't have to keep everyone healed up.` They inexplicably stop after we down a boss group and I'm back on my own again.

You know what is a really bad thing to do? To stand in the middle of one of these jet traps - the ones that spew out high damage bouts of pain - while you cast Troll to take care of their poison. My Ranger henchie begs to disagree, though, since she does it all the damn time. Honestly, if I wanted to play with people who thought I was a bottomless pit of energy dedicated to keeping them alive no matter how stupid they were, I'd play with actual people.

Finally got it, the big, immobile nettle guys are reskinned Juundu worms. At least the heads thereof.

At the door to the second level. No boss to kill or gate to open or puzzle to solve, just a portal leading down. Kinda disappointing, actually.

More of the same on the 2nd floor. A lot of killing and the allegiance bonuses that implies has pulled me off the DP mat. I'm now at full morale across the whole party.

Spoke too song as the next chamber from the entrance features more of the plant/spore critters but also some of the dreaded Daze-happy bats. Along with a rather nicely done firefly effect. There are these pale blue orbs floating through the air in here. It's very atmospheric and mesmerizing. Or maybe I just haven't slept more than four hours in the past few days.

Now we're getting beetles, too. Like in Nightfall. Derv guys, haven't seen Sand Shards yet so I'm going to keep putting up Aegis. But they're effectively spreading around bleeding somehow.

Found the mini-boss with the key. Had a boss hunt bonus on at the time. I love it when a plan comes together. It's a bit of an ambush. A scripted one as the boss is surrounded by your allies, making you think it's going to be an easy fight and then a half dozen badies storm out of nowhere. But with the canon fodder helping you, it's still a pretty easy fight.

Damn, took some cheap deaths strolling to the boss. Still not sure why. But my heals were landing a few steps behind the pace or on the wrong target while someone was being spiked down. Didn't wipe but now I've built up a little DP for the boss fight. More importantly, my henchies have burned through a lot of their sigs with no way of recharging them before I might really need them.

Through the boss door it's a twisty, curvy, tension enhancing walk to the boss's lair. There are a lot of froggies inside with the boss in the middle. Pulling protocols now in effect.

Which means, by the way, Prot Spirit goes up on me, the henchie flag goes down, and the longbow comes out. Plink the nearest enemy and run back to my waiting party as the mob follows. Not exactly rocket science but it beats taking on packs of fifteen monsters at once.

A little bit of the old run and gun and we're left with just the boss and a pair of Warrior flunkies. They go quickly enough leaving me alone with just the boss. He's a Mesmer by the way, some kind of Dom specialist which goes with the froggie's special skill which puts -12 degen on you for a little while. He's a tough mother, too. Lots of health and armor or something because I'm just slowly chipping away his health here. Thank goodness for Cracked Armor, that's all I have to say. He doesn't regen at all, though, so although it took me a wipe and a quick run back to him, he falls.

My reward this time around is a Diamond. 1k in Asuran points, too. Not enough to put me to the next rank although it leaves me close. I have ranked up to a Risky Delver (r4) thanks to all the critters I've slain, though. And it's 5k XP and 1.25k gold from the quest reward.

I could run it again but I need to head to town to clear out my clogged inventory. And I'm tired. So it'll have to wait until another time.

Another time has come and gone. I've redone this dungeon with the other quest. A few things to get out of the way, first. Having headed back to town and checked out the quest giver for Bloodstone Caves, looks like only the third quest - the one to kill the Eldritch Ettin boss on the final floor - is repeatable. You have to kill the other two to advance anyway, but the loss of the quest XP makes that dungeon a lot less farmable.

On the way to Bogroot Madlib, I always end up slaughtering a metric ton of froggies. So much for helping out their respective tribes. But that also means I get a ton of Juicy Heket Legs. I've got a stack of them in my storage thanks to an old quest from Nightfall that I really should turn in one of these days. Of course, I have it active on almost all of my characters so I need a lot of Heket Legs and I keep letting it go to collect more and be done with it once and for all. The legs stop dropping once you've gathered enough but, everytime, I put them in my chest and they start piling up again.

As for the dungeon itself and how it's affected by the different quest. It's virtually the same as Griff's. You're just fighting yellow frogs instead of red frogs. The spawns are slightly different, too, but you'd only notice if you're paying obsessive attention and trying to jot down notes as you're slaughtering pixels left and right.

The big difference is the boss at the end. In Tekks's war it's Zhim Mons (Say it out loud if you don't get the joke. Actually, here's another one. I left out a few apostrophes there, the name's actually spelled something like Z'h'im' M'on''''s. Seriously, stop naming people like that Punctuation Jones.) who's also one tough ass mother of a toad. But instead of being a Mesmer he's a channeling Rit with some nasty boss-doubled AoE damage skills like Spirit Rift. Those, of course, tore new holes through my idiotic pack of henchies who like to stand around me like I'm a maypole and, presumably, hold hands and sing songs as we're getting nuked into oblivion. I would give so much for a few formation options to go along with the flags. A "Spread Out!" button or something. Anyhow, it's a much tougher fight because this boss actually does damage and hold Defiant Was Xinrae. In case you don't know what that does, it disables any skills you cast on the holder. So, my SF strike forces was standing there sobbing for lengthy periods of time. 1/4 cast, too, on a 5 second recharge (contrast with Xinrae's Weapon. Which costs a lot more and is down a lot longer for the ability to cast it on your teammates. Not that's much of a drawback when you're a boss.) so good luck interrupting it. He doesn't use Khabus's Tongue Whip special skill, though. And he doesn't have any Rit healing, he's a pure nuking machine with the item based channeling stuff.

I eventually managed to kill the sucker but it was a grindingly awful affair which involve a lot of rushing back to the fight from the rezpad. Prot Spirits everywhere I could to survive the insta-gibs. I am now in the midst of preparing an elaborate proposal for Zho thanks to her timely landing of a clutch Broad Head Arrow that let me finish the guy off. But I'm still so pissed that I've deleted all my notes about the slog to get to that fight because I don't want to talk about it any longer.

Anyhow, that's about the only functional difference between the two quests: the boss fight. Same chest, same rewards (You only get book credit and the increased rep points for finishing the first quest. If you do the opposite one you get the quest's rewards but only the lesser, repeated bonus reward points. Since dungeon quests are repeatable it's as if you just ran the same quest twice, as far as phat loot goes.). Of the two, if you're going for an easy ride you definitely want Griff's. Tekk's is there if you want the challenge and the e-prestige that comes with beating up on a hypercharged AI monster.

So, it's not like the quest you run actually changes the dungeon. Creates new gameplay through clever instancing. New spawns, new scripts, and a different experience depending on which path you choose. It's just kabuki theater with particle effects. You don't affect the world, impact the struggle of the frogmen at all. No, that would actually make sense. Instead, they're just mirrored with a different final encounter.