Dungeon Diving: Finding the Bloodstone and Bloodstone Caves

Yep, I'm still in mourning and wasting my time with Guild Wars. Couldn't begin to tell you why.

Anyhow, on today's menu, I couldn't sleep last night so I tracked down Gadd's Encampment for the next step in the Polymock cycle. Running through the Shards of Orr for my life wasn't a lot of fun but I wiped the smirk off that creepy sharp toothed elemental piece using bastard soon enough. Today, since I'm in the area, I've decided to pick up the next bit of the Asuran storyline. I gather this takes you into an instanced dungeon which is fine by me. Maybe I'll run it again afterwards just for the kicks.

Starting off at Gladd's Hefty Sack, I'm still using my old SoR build. I'm trying a little something with my team, though. I'm still running with 3 Ele Heroes but I've switched out one of the SF for a B-Surge Air E/N who's job in life is to keep big heavy things from grinding me into paste. Again, I like my Heroes to have go-to roles (Powders's a prot Monk, Dunk's a healer, and so on) so that I can slot them into a party quickly. Blech the stupid Asuran with the Brain's voice hasn't quite jelled yet so I'm trying out different stuff with him. My party's rounded out with Cynn, Zho, Talon, and Mhen-i-hanas whom I'm still not talking to because he's the worst Monk ever. But since the alternative means opening up my skill menu and actually switching my build, he's the best option I've got for now. So, the idea is lots of burnination with a lot of melee hate and disruption to help my fragile defensive web survive.

The run to find Gladd Bags and Livia (A name I'm finding hard to mock. That's some hardcore history right there. Although I would have been partial to Julia, her daughter, and her tragic story it doesn't sound quite fantasy-y enough, now does it?) is annoying in and of itself. The mob designers have finally jumped the shark because Sparkfly Swamp is apparently Jurassic Park. There are dinosaurs all around. They're really high level and they hit like freight trains with a Bleeding/Deep Wound monster skill that's ruining my day. It's the Necro ones that are giving me fits since I'm well prepared to deal with the melee Derv, Warrior, and Sin saurians.

But the two quest NPCs aren't too far away. Cutscene! That's a drink. Not because I'm playing a drinking game but because it heavily features the Asura and that drives me to the sauce.

Once that's mercifully over we have to crisscross the zone looking for some Ettins to kill and for Livia to do her thing with their corpses. Which sounds a lot more fun than it actually is. Once we've collected the tattoos off their back or whatever MacGuffin we're doing here, it's on to the dungeon.

Bloodstone Caves is apparently filled with bats. I hate bats and their enchantment stripping Daze skill. There's more Ettin hunting to be done so I'm going to get to that.

There's no bounties in an instanced cave so I don't know why I'm bothering to kill everything. Oh wait, it's because I hate them so much. Right.

Found the Ettin wandering around in a corner in the south and now it's on to floor two. Make sure I have B-Aura and everything up and let's see what's on this floor. Looks like a type of critter I can't place - which means I've probably never seen them before - called Skelk. Vaguely reminiscent of Skale but some odd morphology here. There's a small group nearby so let's pull and see what we've got.

Ah, this should be easy. Their frontliners - Slashers - are Sins, really awful ones, and their Monks are some kind of Smiting crap. I'm well set up to deal with one and I don't care about the other. Other profs for this breed are similarly unimpressive. I was worried I'd be dealing with another over-powered PvE nightmare with a special quirk that took them from pain-in-the-ass to downright annoying.

Gadd has been telling me where to go this whole dungeon. No, I don't care how cute and funny you try to be, I still hate you and all Asura. If I could attack teammates, you'd never stand up again.

Well, this is interesting. My search for the latest Ettin has led me to a room filled with ally-colored green undead. The Inscribed Ettin I need to harvest is wandering around with a small pack of undead so I'm going to go ahead and guess that once I kill him the whole place is going to turn hostile as dozens of undead jump me. As I learned running through the Shards of Orr these aren't your run-of-the-mill Prophesies era roadbumps, these GW:EN undead pack a serious punch. Time to find a safe corner and see if I can't lure the Ettin somewhere out of their aggro range.

Bugger. Just attacking the guy turned some of them red with rage. Fortunately, I wasn't anywhere near them and pulled the Ettin completely away to take down in isolation. Unfortunately, to get to the portal to the next level, I need to get through those undead.... Who've now all mysteriously disappeared now that the Ettin's dead. Huh. That's nice for me then.

Heading down to the 3rd floor. No bounties to get so just have to make sure my enchants are up and my henchies are doing their own things. Looks like more Skelk and more ambush pop-ups on this level. I'm cruising along now, no one's got any DP although not everyone's full up.

And a short trip to the boss. He's surrounded by more passive green dots, just like the last Ettin. As well as free-floating shields. Saw a few of those in the Shards of Orr, love the design. Have no idea what's happening here. I'm going to guess, though, that just like the last Ettin, if I kill the Ettin boss all the bad things go away.

Eh, once you touch the guy all the scythes hanging around decide it's time for reaping. Not wanting to become sliced to pieces, I killed them off, then the shields, and made short work of the Ettin boss. Who, surprisingly, turns out to be a Necromancer and not a melee boss. Go figure.

Cutscene afterwards. Asurans are heartless devils. I already knew that but thanks, game, for confirming my belief that they need to be cleansed with soothing fire.

I'm now 2.5k experience and 3k Asuran points richer (That puts me at rank 2 now. I'm not even going to sully myself by typing out the lame title for it. The Asuran blessing isn't all that inspiring - you get a small amount of extra energy in their territory which is now up to +7 for me - but some of their skills, like Pain Inverter are PvE-awesome, so I'll want to rank that up eventually.), one third of the way through the Asuran cycle and, as an unexpected and pretty much unexplained bonus, Livia's joined my team. Of course, I already have two Necromancers to sling around but at least she has a nicer character model. Oh, and I've also reached the first rank in the Eye of the North title track.

That was so easy that I'm going to run that dungeon again. This time in the non-instanced way. Same party as before since it worked well enough last time. Interestingly enough, the dungeon quest here is in town rather than waiting for you at the door (There's actually three but we'll get to that). That's a good thing, really, since I warped back to Gadd's Encampment after completing the storyline quest. But it does lead me to believe this is one of the starter dungeons. An easy one, readily available to get people into the dungeon diving mood. There's another dungeon, Bogroot Something further north in the zone but I hear that's a tough mother so I'll stick with the Bloodstone's cavern for now.

Certainly tougher this time around. The much beloathed bats have been replaced by more floating weapons surrounding an Ettin. They're interlinked somehow but they die too fast for me to care. The Enchanted Scythes, by the way, have Wounding Strike without any enchantments and Rending Sweep without any hexes. Brilliant. But the traps which were previously inactive are operational, too, and that makes for tighter maneuvering, especially with a pack of idiotic AI surrounding me.

As I mentioned earlier there are three quests operational here, all obtained from the same quest giver in at the pad of Gladd. Each requires you to hunt down and slay a particular Ettin boss. Not sure if you have to complete all of them to get credit for this dungeon but it doesn't really matter to me. I found the first one, the Paranoid Ettin, in roughly the same spot I found the first Inscribed Ettin in the instanced version. I'm guessing that the others will be the same. The next one on the second level. And a final one in the boss spot at the end of the dungeon. (Paranoid skills)

And, yep, that's the case since on the second level I wound up in the exact same scenario as the first time around. Bunch of inactive undead standing around waiting for you to aggro the boss. This time around, though, it seems there's no way to avoid a confrontation. That cost me some DP but, in the end, the Crystal Ettin was dead, its quest reward was mine, and it was on to the final level. (Crystal skills)

3rd Floor. Standard pre-level ritual initiated. Dp check show most of my team is around the 15~17% mar, including myself. Mostly from being swarmed by incubus pop-ups and Dazed out of timely healing.

This is a short level but it's made difficult by the fact that there's a poison gas geyser every fifteen feet. There's an environment effect, too, "Rock Slide" which randomly slams you for 140 damage if you're standing in the wrong spot.

The boss here, the Eldritch Ettin, is surrounded by First Inscribed - tough Ettins - and those enchanted weapon things. He's a big looking fellow, too. Guess there's nothing to it but to get to pulling and killing. The Eldritch Ettin, by the way, uses the special skills of the other two bosses here. Big, tough Warrior boss who goes down easily enough though. A bit of pulling to separate the groups and it's done.

My reward, this time around, is a gold scythe. Poisonous which is lame. Enchanting which isn't but it's only 19%. And it will be traded into the merchant for just over 300 gold. Yeah, I'm thrilled here.

The bigger rewards come from the quests. You get 1.5k Dwarven points for finishing the dungeon. That puts me at 15.2k or in shooting distance of rank 4. The loot from the three quests also nets 7.5k XP and 1.5k in gold. The XP I don't care about since I've got over a hundred skill points in the bank waiting for a good reason to spend them. The gold, on the other hand, I could really use since I'm poor but 1.5k is nothing.