BMP Grand Prix: Gwen and the Great Escape

And now the one you've been waiting for. At least, I have. I don't know if it's just me but I find if I have a box of treats, say some chocolates or a gift basket or something, I like to save what I think s going to be the best, the tastiest, the most delicious, for the very last. One last burst of excellence as the experience finishes, in so many words. And that's why I've kept Gwen in reserve for now. I don't have high hopes for the gameplay, I expect all kinds of funky Mesmer crap, to put it bluntly. But I have a special place in my heart for Gwen and what she means to the Guild Wars story. A chance to play as her, a chance to experience some of the adventures, the hardships, that turned her from the sweet young girl with the magic flute of healing who'd frolic after me in Pre-Searing into the bitter, suspicious young woman I encountered in the Eye of the North is one I've been relishing.

I'll save you the trouble right now, though, it's a big let down. Probably nothing could live up to my expectations but they were rudely dashed upon the cold, hard concrete of reality like a porcelain plate dropped from the heavens.

But, if you're not put off by that and what's sure to be my unrelenting negativity then we can continue.

Okay, well, to start off with something positive, the illustrations in Gwen's book are like something out of an illustrated children's story. Nice touch that.

There's no weapon for this mission so, to start it, you need to make sure there's nothing in your hands.

The storyline here is that you'll be reliving Gwen escaping from the Charr to find the Ebon Vanguard.

As for Gwen's bar, well, thankfully, it's not some Keystone madness (No, for that, you need to go to Saul.) or a metabuild full of Echoes and Arcane Mimicries.

Unthankfully, you start off with a mere four skills.

Flee. Stance. 30recharge. For 10 seconds, you move 33% faster.

Throw Rock. Skill. 3/4cast. Throw a rock at your target. If it strikes a foe, that foe is knocked down and becomes crippled for 10 seconds.

Hide. Form. 1cast. While you are hidden, enemies cannot see or target you for up to 60 seconds.

Feign Death. Form. 1/4cast, 300recharge. Play dead, causing all enemies to cease attacking you. This skill ends when you move.

And, to top it off, you only have 300 health and 20 energy. I'm not liking this already as I smell yet another stealth mission afoot. Looking at those skills the plan seem obvious. You'll use Flee to run around as fast as your little unprotected legs can carry you while you use Hide to duck away from enemy patrols. Throw Rock will be used to plunk anyone giving serious chase, allowing you to skate away freely. And, if all else fails, you feign the aggro off and wait until your foes wander away.

I am so not liking this at all. Interestingly, Throw Rock is grayed out to start, as is Hide. Maybe you have to find the rocks to throw? And places to hide in? You have to supply the ammunition to use those skills, it seems. Interesting idea, actually, I always wanted to see more skills like that - you could do a lot of neat things with skills that require you to pick up and use up bundles.

Gwen, herself, looks great, though. In that she looks completely awful. Like she's been dragged through a war zone on her face for the past three years and then beaten with the "street urchin" stick for several more. She's dressed in a tattered, torn white dress and her face is dusty, dirty, her hair tangled and caked with mud. That, right there, is superior art direction at play. The bonus missions have all been well designed but they've taken this one step beyond. That, I'm liking.

You start off in a cell, appropriately enough. I'm back to the not liking it state, though, since it means I have to sit around and wait fr the dialog to get finished. There's some Ascalonian noble delivering important plot points and probably telling me how to beat the mission but I'm more concerned with trying to find the best lighting angle for a screenshot of little orphan Gweny. Then, a big Charr boss comes by and tells us it is a good day to die. For him, that is, because we're going to be the one's dying and he's getting a cut of the gate receipts. I hope he chokes on the ball of wadded up leaves and filth encrusted sticks that the Charr, no doubt, use as currency.

I hates the Charr. I am looking forward to killing them en masse by the end of this mission. But, as it is, Big bad boss Charr leads Gossipy McExpositionfairy (Is that...Damn. Too many letters.) off to an Arena to face a Siege Devourer. I notice he's only lv1. The results are predictable.

After they clean his entrails off the Arena floor - no doubt with their prickly cat-like tongues - it's my turn on the bloody stage.

Heading in I scope the place out, immediately noticing a bunch of rock items littered about the floor. There are two red objects in my view, one's the Devourer of Doom, the other is a Cracked Pillar. Ye gods, could this be any more blatant?

I pick up a rock, and, yep, my Throw Rock skill turns active. Hitting Flee, I run in and heave it at the pillar and....nothing happens. Well, wait, I took off a sliver of its health bar.

Unfortunately, the Siege Devourer takes off quite a bit more of mine. Fortunately, not all of it. He hits for something like 140 damage and I've got 300 health. And, not being entirely stupid, I was already running for safety while our respective projectiles were in the air. Just to be on the safe side, though, I feign off. I immediately pitch over face first in the dirt. And I stay that way until I regenerate.

Anyhow, here's how the rest of my "battle" with the dread Siege Devourer works. I'd noticed playing through the campaign that Siege Devourer shots obeyed obstruction rules. That is to say, if there's something relatively solid, like a wall or the edge of a cliff between the Devourer and it's target, the shot will hit that and not its intended target. Unlike some AoE spells, you don't get hit by the splash, either. So I duck behind a large pillar, wait until the Siege shot fires, rush out, grab a rock, chuck it at the damaged pillar, and duck right back. It takes four or five hits but, eventually, a cutscene is triggered and the devourer is flattened with a satisfying crunch and a spray of purple blood.

That opens the gate behind the Devourer as well and I run through it as dozens of Charr follow. There's a gate lock up ahead and I press it to make sure they can't follow.

Now, I find myself in some kind of catacombs along with some ghostly ex-heroes. Blah blah blah, they say stuff but as it does not directly lead to me laying waste to the huge army of Charr behind me, I'm not interested. There's also a book on a pedastal that gives me my fifth skill and it's....Illusion of Haste. Oh, just perfect.

Yeah, that's right, I have two run buffs now. Except the one has a long enough duration to cover the recharge. And also happens to cripple me whenever it runs out so I'm forced to cast it over and over just so I don't limp around the place. There's no point in using Flee now, is there?

Conning around I can see some other tomes tantalizingly out of reach. I guess I'm supposed to run around and touch them to unlock my hidden Mesmer powers. Or something. I'm not really feeling the whole "Gwen gets the strength and power she needs to defeat the Charr from a trip to the library." It's...an outside solution, a deus ex machina, and that's inherently unsatisfactory. Especially when it just comes out of the blue without any build-up. Yeah, sucky-poo.

Also on the floor is an unlit torch and nearby, a flaming brazier and another one. Oh, I know what that means. Once I go through some mist, the ghosts reappear along with some ghostly Charr down the Hall. They don't attack me but they've apparently left a bunch of traps on the floor that cause crippling. Almost makes me thankful I have Illusion of Haste. If it didn't take nearly as long to cast it as it does to struggle forward like a gimp.

Lighting the Brazier takes care of that and there's another book nearby with Distortion in it. That's....decent enough. I guess. If this was January 2006, maybe.

The door next to it is locked, though, and I have no way in. The ghosts have disappeared and I'm forced to run around to find them. Backtracking I find another book with...Shared Burden. Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I couldn't at least get Crippling Anguish? That one at least causes some degen.

But, it turns out to be useful, here. This is the one time in the history of people playing this game has there ever been a use for this clunker because the next step in finding my way through this increasingly wretched mission involves helping the ghosts flee from a pack of spectral pursuers. They're nicely clumped up so I can snare them all and, then, recasting all the while, I lead my ghosts to freedom.

Freedom defined here as "unlocking the next door." Outside of it is a rock. Inside another cracked pillar. And a bunch of dart throwing flame traps. This is apparently where the mission "lets" me make good use of Distortion as it blocks enough of the shots for me to run up and peg the pillar with my stone. Which does...something.

Honsetly, I don't even remember because I suffered a psychotic break when I opened up the next book and got SUm of All Fears.

Sum of All Fears. Because I needed another snare, I guess. Instead of...anything. Anything else that I could have used to do something instead of running scared. Honestly, it's a good thing there's no 9th skill because I have a feeling I'd be uninstalling after I found it.

Right, so, anyway, after all that the ghosts are freed or happy or reunitied with their loved ones or just saved a bunch of money switching to Geicho. I don't really care because they're characters I never met and have no emotional investment in whatsoever. Could have been a lot more effective if they're resurrected some old NPCs from Pre-Searing - so to speak. And if the whole thing is an exercise in heavy-handed design forcing me to do things rather than allowing me to succeed. Feh on it, says I.

And now I'm standing (Well, okay, I'm seething. Stupid language hasn't caught up with virtual avatars and the bifurcation of identity in an online world just yet. My character is standing...) in the middle of a valley with free roaming Charr standing between me and my destination. There's a little icon on my mini-map. One I've never seen before, actually, but whatever, I know that means I need to make a mad dash for it, I'm just trying to pick out the best route here.

I decide, as I usually do in these things, that it's best to go left? Why left? Well, most people are right-handed and given a choice between turning left and turning right, will tend towards the right. Designers are also aware of this and if there's something nasty waiting for me, it's more than like as not on the right side while the left might not have seen as much attention because it's not where most players would go. Yes, I do overthink these things. Have we met before? Because, you should know, I overthink everything.

There's a Seige Devourer along the way. He's a bit tougher than the Charr patrols that I've snared and Distorted my way away from. But there's a cliff lip right next to him that I use to obstruct his shots long enough to fly past him.

After that, it's a straight run into the snowy foothills where I encounter... a cutscene.

Fuck me. Seriously? Seriously, that's it? The end of the mission is me running like a little punk throgh a bunch of enemies so I can stumble half-dead into a bunch of Vanguard who are inexplicably camped nearby?

I couldn't, say, run into them while they were desperately fighting off a bunch of Charr and use my awesome (Yet inexplicably) found new skills in order to help them survive? I couldn't actually do something besides solve a ghost mystery that would make Scooby-Doo groan?

Gah, I have to go pound rusty nails through my dick to calm down. Because that's going to be a less excruciating pain than the headache I have now.

If I had to rank the bonus missions this one would be well far down on the list. It just does not, to me, work well. Other people might disagree. And, perhaps, my expectations were too high heading in since I'll cop to no small amount of fondness for Gwen and the Guild Wars of yesteryear. I expected... I don't know what. But something awesome, something good, something better than what I wound up getting, anyway.

Okay? Everything I said about stealth missions with Saul? Goes double for cases like this where you don't even have any offensive skills, just defensive stuff and the crap to keep you alive. But, Saus, I hear you ask? Wasn't your complaint that it felt wrong to have a bunch of awesome killing tools at your disposal only to be told you can't use them? Wasn't your concern about the loss of flexibility and being strapped to the railroads of plot contrivance when there are other options available, just not made valid? Don't, by removing any skills outside of what the developers want you to be doing, the designers also remove that sense of a false choice? Which is, granted, a good point.

But my fundamental issue with stealth elements goes deeper than that, so it bugs me even more here. And that's because I play games like this to feel empowered. To feel like I'm in control of something, that I'm powerful and can take matters into my own hands and accomplish things because that's just how wonderful and amazing I am. Running around, sulking away from detection, and being scared I'm going to get killed at any moment with little way of defending myself does the exact opposite. If I wanted to feel disempowered, I'd go talk to my boss or try and get a date or think about all those songs I haven't sung and those mountains I haven't climbed and the inevitable rush of time that means I'm closer to death now than I ever was before and there's nothing I can do to change that. I can already feel weak and small, in other words, just fine on my own, in the real world, and I play games to escape that. Not reinforce it.

This mission is all about feeling afraid and feeling hopeless (And, granted, it's also about fighting back and regaining some small measure of control in a world gone wrong. About learning to seize destiny rather than be tossed about by it which is, you know, nice and all but that's the storyline. The gameplay itself doesn't bear that out.) so it's already got a strike against it, in my, of course, all-important book (Because, it's all about me, after all. No one else's enjoyment matters. This is, in case I'm not being clear enough, being typed with heavy sarcasm. I am sneering at my keyboard even now.). It's not helped by the fact that it's really, really, really easy. Once you figure out how to beat the Siege Devourer - which you should be able to do if you've just been lobotomized what with all the clues the game throws in your face - then all you have to do is run. Just run to the exit. I got wrapped up trying to help the ghosts and collect awesome new skills but I didn't need to. The exit was right there, in front of me, I just missed it. And I could have made it to the finish line with the skills I had on my bar at the beginning. Or even just by watching the radar map. That's a good thing as far as speed runs and setting records are concerned but not so much for the difficulty level.

And the worst thing is that, after the mission was done, I wasn't left feeling satisfied or content, instead I was left wondering, "That's it?" I got through it all without feeling like I'd accomplished much of anything. I threw a rock at a pillar, ran to a switch, ran through a mausoleum, and ran across a field and....that's it. There was no grand, climactic event. No boss fight or final puzzle to solve that wrapped up the experience. No climax before the denouement to release all that pent up tension and emotion created by, and I'll give full credit here, the excellent atmosphere and bleak sense of desperation created by the skillful designers. The details, the environment were note perfect, it was just in service of mission goals that weren't much of anything.

BMP Grand Prix: Turai and the Battle of Jahai

Now for Turai. Or, as he's better known, the Ghostly Hero. This mission reaches back into the past to when he took on my old buddy Palawa Joko and his undead hordes.

Turai gets a sword and shield so, yes, it's a sword Warrior's bar. And, as expected, he gets a few unique skills to play around with as well. He's a D-Slash warrior with For Great Justice so, again, at least the devs have passed build making 101. He also gets Endure Pain and Healsig which means the devs have yet to take buildmaking 201, I guess. And he also has Distracting Blow. I used to love Distracting Blow. I still do, it's like an old friend I've outgrown. He also has Whirlwind Attack, one of the PvE only skills. As well as a Turai only skills, For Elona! and the monster skill Giant Stomp. Well, not really the monster skill since it works slightly different but it's nothing fantastically new, either. I am well acquainted with that one from long hours of farming Riverside and look forward to using it to good effect.

Giant Stomp. Skill. 5en, 3/4cast, 30recharge. Knocks down foes in earshot and deals 100 damage.

For Elona!. Shout. 4adren, 4recharge. Shout. Allies within earshot gain +25 armor and attack 33% faster for 10 seconds.

Both are solid and I have no real complaints about the bar. Like to see a run buff of some sort but as I imagine this is a zombie stomping mission that would make Romero proud, I don't think I'm gong to have to run down many foes.

For stats it looks like Turai has only 11 in his primary attribute, Strength, and 14 in both Tactics and Swordsmanship. He's also a tower of power with 700 hit points. I wouldn't disbelieve that he's also got some boosted armor as well. Only 25 en and a Warrior's regen, though, but it shouldn't matter too much.

Turai looks just like he does in the HA. Just not so...ghostly. Armor is nice and bronze looking and, yes, his sword is massive. Really, really massive and phallic.

He starts off on a hill with 9 lv20 allies. Three Elite Kournan Troopers who are Warriors. A Paragon, two Rangers, and three Elementalists (One's a water snarer which is nice, the others are lightning zappers. I'd have liked some Fire for the AoE but, hey, what can you do?). They overlook a frozen tableau of soldiers readied for battle. There are hundreds of them and that's, perhaps, why the game doesn't actuall render them as individual characters, instead keeping them as background pieces.

Oh, yeah, baby! I feel like Dicky V on Tobacco Road here. First encounter is a bunch of low level undead soldiers who rush the party. Giant Stomp works beautifully. Caught them all. Never seen so many 100s flash across the screen at once in my life nor so many helpless foes waiting for me to deliver the coup de grace, either.

As we round a bend there's a scripted scene, complete with trumpet sounds, where my characters spout off about the army on the move and then a ton of green triangles start herding across the screen. It's a nice touch. Makes it seem like those soldiers in the opening scene have come to life and are charging at the undead horde. They haven't, really, it's just that old trick of spawning them right out of sight, marching them across the screen and getting rid of them once they cross the horizon that makes a few animated characters look like thousands. I've taken film classes, game, I'm wise to your tricks.

I'm finding that I don't have much use for Distracting Blow - although I'm probably going to regret saying that - for its intended purpose. Instead, I'm using it for the Prot-Strike effect of increasing my swing rate. My Joyfulness is through the roof but it lets me get to the D-Slash/Whirlwind spam just a little sooner.

The encounters are toughening up, plenty of lv24s sprinkled in. My bette noir now are the Awakened Defilers who'll summon minions from the corpses I'm strewing across the countryside.

Huh, I just realized his profession is listed as the same as the character I went in with, who happened to be my Monk. That's pretty weird.

Okay, so I like to rambo or, as the kids of yesterday were calling it, go balls deep. Just charge into the enemy lines, pausing to smack them with hardened steel as the spirit takes me, and then beat a hasty retreat once I catch enough heat. Struggling back to my own lins where my waiting healers can pump health back into me. It's, you know, establish Warrior tactics. But, here, I lack a run buff when bugging out so I head back to safety with all the grace of a druken water buffalo. More importantly, there is no safety to head back to since there are no Monks in the party. None. No one to heal me and I'm forced to rely on HealSig and Endure and kiting around to survive. Not saying I can't do it just that I'm not used to it and I'm rusty and it's going to get me in trouble sooner rathre than later.

We come across a Corsair camp. My aide asks me how I want to procede? How do I want to procede? I want to slaughter them, drive them before me, and hear the lamentations of the their womenfolk. I want none left alive to tell the stories of the carnage of this day! This. IS. ELONA!!!

Yes, a 300 joke. Yes, I went there. Yes, this isn't exactly a proud moment. I went through the whole Togo mission without making one Kill Bill reference but I couldn't resist here.

Hee. They have a boss named Admiral Jakman.

The next encounter is a tough one. The big new foe are awakened Clay Giants. Not only do they use Roaring Winds - the anti-shout ritual that's deviously clever to throw against me although it doesn't exactly hurt since I'm mostly adrenal - as Giants, they're immune to knockdown. Giant Stomp still causes damage and it acts as a nice AoE interrupt which helps when they try to Troll up but these buggers annoy me.

Okay, so there are two times when you want to use Endure. Remember that the health it gives you is temporary, it disappears when the skill is over and will come off the bottom, not the top of your health bar - that means if that extra health was all that was keeping you alive, you will find yourself with 1 hp and less if you don't act fast. You cannot rely on it for healing, it's purpose is to act as a buffer, like throwing on an extra bit of armor for a short while. The first is when you're charging into the enemy and you know you're going to take damage. You want it up so you can weather the storm of arrows and lightning bolts that ranged attackers are going to throw at you before you can get into clobbering time range. The second is as an emergency brake when your health is getting low. It buys you enough time to get out of danger, pop off a few HealSigs and get back to the fighting before it fades away. The second is really important to master when trying to survive this mission. Basically, you want to save Endure for when you're getting spiked out then use it to run away like a little baby in order to heal. It might seem cowardly, it might unman you in front of your soldiers but if you die the mission's over. But what you want to avoid, more than anything, is flashing it up in the middle of the fray and then Sigging off right where you were standing. That's a surefire recipe to attract focus fire that's going to wipe away both the bonus health and the healing you're summoning from the ether. You want to be behind a rock or your immortal allies (If they're killed, they'll come back, eventually. You? Not so much.) and in relative safety before you try and push your red bar back up.

That's me talking advice to myself by the way. Stupid Rex, have to keep in mind I don't have a healer monkey.

Our next encounter is a bunch of Paragons on a bridge backed by yet more Giants and a Defiler. Sigh, it's like this game knows what gives me problems.

Past that it's a huge group with our first Effigies and Acolytes. Those are the Elonian undead Eles and Monks, respectively. I can see some of Joko's minions lurking around the back, too, so I must be making progress here.

My mistake, those were Acolytes of Joko who turn out to be lv15 Necromancers. I had a bit of a tense moment with the Thought Leaches surrounding them, though. Hit with massive degen, my health was bottoming out. I threw up Endure and raced away from danger, then Phantom Pain expired and I got slammed with a Deep Wound. I couldn't sig up fast enough to keep my health from bottoming out as Endure was wearing off. Fortunately, neither Endure or degen can kill you by themselves. I was stuck at 1 health with four pips of degen and desperately hoping no enemy noticed to wand me off. But, whew, I survived.

Then, there's a choice between three bridges to cross. Each is guarded by a group of undead. It looks like if you take the rightmost one guarded by the largest group including some Clay Giants, you can skip some fights beyond them. The middle route is a medium sized encounter with some Paragons. And the leftmost one is the smallest group but, afterwards, you have to dispatch several more smaller groups to procede which might take a while. Since I'm not in a rush, I went left and mopped up the small groups one by one.

After that, we arrive at the fateful bridge where I and Palawa are to have our duel. I wave off my helpers because I'm an idiot, apparently, and stride forward to meet Mr. Joko alone.

It's a tough fight, he's a life stealing Necro, and there's no retreat and no way to run him around. I'm pretty much going Korean here and Sigging it as soon as I'm even breathed on. But I manage to land a clutch D-Blow on a Vamp Gaze and stomp off a Life Siphon which sets me up for one last adrenal spike to finish him off.

Cutscene time! We're totally redoing 300 now and... Holy crap! Clong to the head with the shield! I am totally flipping out now!

Er, not really. Kinda trying too hard to be cool to be cool for me. But definitely a nice use of the game's cinematic engine.

Hey, look it's up on YouTube now:



Reverse the order of D-Blow and Stomp and that's pretty much how my fight went, too. Although I got a little more degened at first as I was trying to spy out his bar and his casting patterns. Generally, when I have the choice, I like to cast skills with longer recharges (Like Giant Stomp's 30 as opposed to Distracting Blow's 10.) first because that means you're more likely to be able to use them again in the space of the battle. That's just me, though.

Whew. Finished just before I had another brief internet outage. But I got it done.

And I feel good about that because this is the most difficult mission. For me, at least. Comes down to playstyle. But it's not completely brainless. You can't win this mission while you're eating a sandwich, checking your e-mail, talking on the phone, and trying to catch up on your TiVo. You actually have to pay attention to what you're doing. Which is, you know, a good thing. It's the lack of a healer, more than anything else, that prevents this from being a C+Space button masher. And I like that. and I think that there should be a range of difficulty represented here. I don't mind that one mission is harder to get through than the rest (Even though the rewards are the same, apparently.) and I wouldn't mind if one one them even had the Master's tag. Because just like you need easy missions to keep the bottom half of the player skill level entertained you need some harder ones for the people out for a challenge. I'd put myself in the latter group. The absolute bottom percentile of it but, still, I'm someone who's seen and done it all when it comes to Guild Wars and I don't scare easily. You have to throw some pretty nasty stuff my way before I start getting worried about completion. This mission doesn't go that far, exactly, but it's closer to the direction I would want while still retaining the fun factor.

That said, this is a fun little mission. You roam around in an armored tower of hitpoints with massive AoE damage, slaughtering everyone in your path. Not at all hard if you're a little careful and remember to heal up every now and then. I still prefer Togo's but definitely well done.

BMP Grand Prix: Togo and the Tengu Accords

Before we begin, again, I should point out that this series is being done "live bloggy" style. Which means that I did most of the stuff I'm talking about some time in the past and, while I was doing it, I jotted down some thoughts and comments in the form of a running journal (Or, to those who would denigrate my sanity, an ongoing conversation with myself. We are inclined to believe these people are more than likely right about us.). And, now, some time later, I've taken those notes and spun them into a post legible for those who haven't suffered the unique form of head trauma responsible for someone like me. I try to refrain from editing or altering my thoughts and, instead, to keep things as true to my opinions and insights at the time. It's like getting a peak inside the diary I write in my head, basically, and while it might not be one-hundred percent live, it's as close as I can get to replicating the emotion, the excitement, of exploring something new. But, y'all don't want to hear me, you just came here to read, so without further ado, it's...

Togo time!

Togo's story is about how he ended the Tengu Wars and something about an ambush or betrayal of something (If I were a generous armchair critic I'd say that the writers were engaged in what we, in the biz, call "foreshadowing". Alluding to Togo's eventual fate in Factions with events of his past. But, then, these are the same people who thought up the Undead Lich so....yeah, I don't know if I can give them that benefit of doubt.). I'm too busy looking at the pretty psuedo-Japanese (style?) in his book to care about the backstory, honestly. Mmmm....pretty.

I guess all the narration is going to ominously repeat the last line in the book, huh?

Anyhow, Togo's staff is a channeling one and his bar does not disappoint with Essence Strike, Spirit Burn, and Spirit Rift. Those are ronded out with Disenchantment, Mend Body and Soul, and Offering of Spirit. Like, Saul (I'm sensing a pattern here.), he also has a few outrageously awesome new skills.

Call to the Spirit Realm. Binding Ritual. 25en, 3cast, 30recharge. Create three level 7 Spirits. These Spirits deal 30 damage with atttacks. These Spirits die after 60 seconds.

Dragon Empire Rage. Enchantment Spell. 15en, 1cast, 30recharge. Unleash the rage of the Dragon Empire bloodline., dealing 300 damge to all nearby enemies. For 15 seconds you gain 200 maximum health.

The first, telephone, lets you summon your own private army of spirits (Called Anger, suffering, and Hate. Hee!). This is a good thing.

The second, although it doesn't say, requires rage. It's grayed out and I'm guessing it's like adrenaline, it'll build as you go along, but there's also a little bar down there for you as well.

In case you can't tell, Togo's a spirit spammer and one who's bar depends on getting a lot of spirits out and supercharging his skills. Not a lot of healing which worries me but what can you do?

For stats he's got Channeling of 14, Communing of 11, and Restoration of 10. If he has any Spawning Power, I can't tell at all and I'm not about to sit there and try to figure it out. 550 Health and 40 energy, plus the 10 from your staff again. Might as well be bolted on to you because you can't swap to something else and you don't have an item skills.

Togo looks like, well, himself. But younger and clad in drabber attire. It's brown instead of his normal resplendent purple. He's accompanied by a pair of royal guards with him and his mission is to track down some peace delegations, talk to them, talk to the lord of the huge mountainside estate I'm wandering into (Map says it's somewhere to the east of the Kurzick territory), get betrayed, kick ass, and find some bubble gum to chew.

Oh, hey, there's Talon acting all NPC like. Hey Talon! He even has an exclamation point over his head, how cute.

As expected the minister is evil and tries to pull a Braveheart on you. He sets all the guards in the room on you. They're lv10 Warriors and all I have to say about that is that Spirit Rift is fun.

Weird. Once your rage meter is filled up you can use the Dragon Empire Rage skill normally. You don't have to refill it by killing more stuff it just recharges for you. Well, that's more high damage AoE nuking for me, then.

For the fight, you get the named Tengu as allies. There's a Necro, a Ranger, and Talon on the tank.

After the guards are mopped up some Sins pop out of the woodwork. They're lv15 and a bit harder but die all the same.

After that, looks like it's time to hunt down the minister and kick his lying and no doubt bony arse up and down the mountains. I lose two of the Tengu since they're going to stay behind and have a tea party or whatever but I get to keep Talon with me. He will, what's the word? Ah, yes, tank while I Rift off the enemies near him. This should be fun.

The Sins are annoying. They like to head straight for my spirits and that can wreck my energy curve. I find that camping in the middle of them and letting loose a rage blast tends to work wonders, though.

Ahahahahahah! Big huge group of guards. All lv10. Caught them all with a Rage Blast. Oh man, I wish I had a screenshot of them as they all pitched over and planted their faces in the dirt in unison while a swarm of gigantic yellow numbers float to the heavens like their newly released souls.

Now this is totally Kung Fu movie time. I get a cutscene introducing my opponent, Yuri the Hand. And then it's time for a man to man fight. Well, okay, a man and tengu on man fight. So cool.

Despite what he says it's not a quick fight. Although not exactly a challenging one either. Basically, it's spam all the skills I can on him while pausing to throw a Mend Body at Talon every now and then. But he uses a bunch of Sin healing enchantments and my Disenchantment just can't get rid of them fast enough so it takes a while to spike him out.

Round two! It's Riyo Tamaguchi time! This is totally Enter the Dragon stuff. I'm loving it. I hope there's a giant black man with a vision problem up ahead.

He's surrounded by a bunch of "students". I figure I'm going to have to fight my way through them but, no, they back off and let me have my duel with him. Riyo's also a spirit spammer so this could get messy.

Talon doesn't seem very interested in fighting. Then I realize I've bodyblocked him in. Whoops. And....now I've been spiked out. Ouch. Riyo'S tough. He uses several of th skills I have along with Boon of Creation and more for healing. I got a bit careless and stood in the middle of a forming Spirit Rift tring to peg him with my DDs while my health was low. Oh well, time to restart.

You know, the scenery here is really nicely done. On this second trip through I really have the time to appreciate it. Because it's not like the fights are challenging. Mostly because Dragon Rage Blast one hits almost everything.

Oh, and I fogot to mention the Skeletor mask on Yuri. Looks like something out of a Jim Balent book. I so want that for my own Sin. I managed to time my Disenchantment spirit much better with this rematch, though, so the fight went much faster.

On to Riyo again! My strategy this time? Stick and move, stick and move.

Also to use the time he spends speech making to walk up and lay my spirits. Then, once he uses his, Dragon Rage them out of existence so his skills don't meet their conditions. The mega nuke on his own health bar doesn't hurt, either - thing is affected by armor but it still hits him for 200+.

Surprisingly, the students don't turn hostile and try to gangpile on me for revenge. Maybe the are learning.

The guards in the next room where my next two opponents are waiting, though, do. Some well timed Dragon blasts and Spirit Rifts - basically, if you have trouble here just wait for them to ball up to swarm you and, then, take them out - take them out and it's time for the main event.

We're definitely playing by Kung Fu movie rules since the bosses play nice and take me on one at a time. Saddly, there's no NBA stars moonlighting as silver screen badasses. Instead, first up it's the big bad's lovely bodyguard. The comely Captain Sunpu. She's a hammer Warrior (With Forecful Blow?) who gets into a duel with Talon which lets me Rift and Rage in her face. Yeah, her strategy needs a little work.

After that blah blah blah, Wona, you killed my brother's peace accords prepare to die. The evil minister what did you wrong is an Earth ele, by the way. He's got huge range and some AoE spells making for a tough fight. You have Rage of the Dragon Empire making for not such a tough one. It's just hard to keep your spirits up if he gets them and since he uses Ebon Hawk/Stoning, you'll need to keep Talon clean with MB&S or else he's in for some hurt. While he's got a lot of armor, it's still not hard to chip him down.

After that, it's cutscene time wherein we learn why some Tengu are green and why others are red in Factions.

As for Discovery Mode, I've heard from various sources that the reward for finding the bonus objectives is something like a few plat each. So, in total, you can earn something like 8~10k (I'm getting conflicting reports.) gold. That's money in the bank and good to know but doesn't exactly encourage me to replay and figure this stuff out. Instead, it's more like I'll wait a week or two until the diligent explorative types comb through and figure out what they are, the best ways to accomplish them, and then post them up on some forum or wiki for me to grab and run with because I'm not interested in the mental challenge of figuring them out, not so enamored with the content as to want to replay it over and over again, and I don't really need the money at the moment, if at all. So, we'll just be skipping those entirely for the time being.

Before we move on, a one word review: Awesome.

This mission is pure awesome and I only wish it went on for 36 more chambers of rumble-esque boss fights. It's fun, it's fast paced, and it's got some great humorous touches while still taking itself seriously. Could be a little tougher, if you ask me. That Dragon Rage skill turns everything into a laugher. But it would also be hard to finish the mission, as constructed, without it.

I'm probably in the minority on this (I am, after all, a complete Johnny on these things.) but in a preplanned mission, like this, with a preset bar, I'd rather have been given something lousy like Nightmare Weapon and struggle to make it work, somehow, rather than be handed ungodly powers right out of the gate. It's nice to watch the big numbers and everything but it's not actually satisfying. A fleeting pleasure because it lacks a sense of challenge. And if I'm not pushed to some sort of limits then there's no adrenaline rush, there's no enjoyment, and it's just not fun. Hand me a bag full of crap and let me make the most out of it and, while I'd be groaning and making fun of the designer's skills at build construction (Like all players, I can always find something to complain about and cheerfully will.), I'd feel much better about myself when I actually did finish things off.

It's the difference between getting a T-Ball trophy and winning the Little League division championship. One's an accomplishment, the other is just an inevitability. And, yeah, yeah, general audience and bottom half versus top half of the playerbase and all that. I'm not saying the developers were wrong to make these fun little missions as easy as they reasonably could I'm just saying that, for me, that doesn't work as well as it could.

But, for this mission, the design, and the script make up for it. We'll find out if that holds up, so join us again next time when we slip into Turai's skin and see what a Warrior's life is like.

BMP Grand Prix: Saul and the Rise of the White Mantle

As I expected it took less than 12 hours for detailed walkthroughs to go up on the wikis. All except the one I really need, of course - Turai's mission gives a frensigger like me fits. But even though it's rather unnecessary I'm still going to go through with this series and detail my trips through the bonus mission pack.

Okay, so the deal is this. Saul's staff is a Monk's. Togo's is a Ritualist's. Turai gives you a sword and shield so, yeah, Warrior. And Gwen's going to be a little Mesmer. I'm guessing that's going to be the flavor of each mission. Since I've been playing a Monk a lot lately, I went with Saul, founder of the White Mantle for my first run. Boy, was I mistaken but we'll get to that in a while.

It's about Saul, obviously, and how he leads his followers to battle back the Charr when they tried to invade Kryta with one, final suicide mission. Sounds promising.

You start off with Saul overlooking your ragtag army. He looks nothing like I imagined him, be rather scruffy and, well, white. I always pictured him as a black dude or at least Kytan caramelly colored, kinda Brazillian thing. The perils of filling in backstory that I've already thought about, I guess. He does sport a huge White Mantle cape, though.

Saul's bar is a Monk/Mesmer one heavy on the signets. Oh, I knew I was in trouble when I saw it was a Smiting staff. It also features a few brand new skills which kinda defeats the point a little if you ask me but, hey, whatever.

You'll have 550 health and 50 energy to work with. And since you can't look at your stats, a little detective work reveals that you have 16 Smiting, 10 Inspiration, and 2 Domination.

He's got Castigation Signet, Bane Signet, and Unnatural Signet. Along with Mantra of Inscriptions so at least the designers aren't high on the supercool. Then the special skills kick in. He has Banner of the Unseen, Form Up and Advance!, and his elite is called Signet of the Unseen.

Banner of the Unseen. Ward Spell. 15en, 1cast, 10recharge. Create a Banner of the Unseen at your location. For 5 seconds, all allies in its area are healed for 25 Health each second. When this spell ends, all allies in its area are healed for 100.

Form Up and Advance! Shout. 10en, 15recharge. All Saul's trusted White Mantle followers fall back to your location and run 33% faster. For 10 seconds, all moving allies are healed for 15 Health each second.

Signet of the Unseen. Elite Signet. 1cast, 7recharge. Target foe and all nearby foes take 80 damage and are knocked down. If any of those foes are summoned creatures, those foes begin Burning for 6 seconds.

Those skills don't have any variables but since you can't mess with your stats, it doesn't matter.

Okay, so the Ward is a cheesy kind of Heal Party and probably what you're going to have to rely on for healing. It's 225 health over 5 seconds across whoever's in the ward so that's not bad.

The Shout is super-Fall Back! It's also going to act as a way of controlling the NPC army you spawn with.

And I'm going to learn to love Unseen Sig since that's super-Judgment on an insane cooldown with MoI up. Damage seems to be affected by armor, though. Oh wait, no, I'm wrong. It's holy damage. What I'm seeing is that it sometimes doubles against the undead.

Yes, that's only 7 skills, I imagine you either get one along the way or you do without.

Anyhow, you start off in a little path just in front of a Krytan village besieged by mid-level (ie lv15~18 Charr). The map says this takes place somewhere north of Beetletun. Along with you are some White Mantle troops - the usual smattering of Knights along with some named NPCs. As soon as you move the town is attacked and you're forced to defend the villagers as those named NPCs (Including old pals Habilion and Dorian) become allies forming an eight person party. They range from lv16~18 themselves and include two Warriors, a Ranger, an Elementalist, A Necro, a Mesmer, and a Monk (Who actually has healing spells, not the lame sig stuff I'm running.).

Since Dorian's the only Monk and I have to rely on running around and placing wards to heal anyone we get hammered pretty badly. After a certain point I stopped worrying about healing and concentrated on blasting away since massive AoE damage is fun. A few in my party get killed but they're rezzed up quickly once the Charr are dispatched.


Okay, now that I have time to see what I'm doing here, the quest log tells me I'm going to earn a whopping 500 gold for this (Along with that perfect weapon. Um...yay?) and that I need to let people say their goodbyes and gather by the gates. There's also a little meter on my screen now that says Charr alert level. It is empty and not moving so I'm taking my sweet time and typing this all up.

In the village are various bombs you can pick up. Rations will restore nearby allies for 100 Health. While Explosive will deal 100 damage to nearby enemies. The Barbed Bomb will do 100 damage, as well, and also cause bleeding for 5 seconds. 5 seconds? Really? While the Stun Bomb will knock them down. And the Balm Bomb will remove 3 conditions from adjacent allies. They all have an infinite supply but the only problem is that you have no weapon swap which is how I usually handle getting rid of a bundle. My "Drop Item" icon is burried under so much stuff I don't even know where it is in my UI and it's the only way to get rid of the things. Little detail but still annoys me. I've had to do some tweaking because I think these things might come in handy. Since I already do a ton of damage and can't heal worth a damn, I'm taking the Rations.

Once I finish mucking around with pots, I head to the gate where the NPCs I remember from Prophesies are patiently waiting while their wise, holy, and most sacred leader who's going to lead them to salvation as the world ends is acting like a time-wasting moron. Just like good little AI. We head out the door, the rest of the group in tow and....you have got to be kidding me.

Apparently the point of this mission is to skulk around avoiding combat because the more Charr you kill, the higher the alert level rises and when it's full bad things happen. Freaking Krytan stealth missions. I want to kill things with my uber-sigs.

Ugh. Well, I have to head to the back of the camp and kill the Charr leaders so maybe there'll be a little combat to sate my bloodlust. I, though, have no idea where I'm going since there are no green arrows to guide me.

Super-shout does make for quick and easy travel, though.

Oh, good, as I explore further, running from all red dots like they'll give me some kind of horrid pox, there's some dialog telling me where to go. Thanks game. It'd be better if the path was, you know, actually readily apparent but at least I'm not stumbling around completely lost now.

It also says I need ot hurry because dawn's approaching. Ha, yeah, I'll take my sweet time, thanks because that's not actually happening until I get to the right trigger.

Still running and hidding like a punk. Managed to elude all the patrols so far.

Ran into the first patrol I couldn't avoid. Only six or eight enemies - including a lv28 Charr Beast ele thing that just...wouldn't...die. And now my Alert level's almost full.

The stealth portions are almost comically easy. I imagine someone will post a map/guide soon enough and better than I ever could but, in general, you want to veer right and if the game puts a deadend little niche in your path it's probably a good idea to duck in there until the oncoming patrol passes.

Found the camp, now to avoid the patrols while I get to the back and find the Titan effigy the bosses are around.

There are three of them. Gathered, alone, in fron of one of those wooden flaming deals that old school Charr are so found of. There's a Necro, a Ranger, and a Warrior. Not that it really matters. They die easily enough.

Killing two of them fills my Alert meter. Killing the third triggers a cutscene where the Murssaat gate in and I'm still rocking my huge barrel like I'm headed to the worst kegger ever.

And then my frat brothers show up for some hazing. Evil hazing.

Now, I get three new Mursaat allies including Optimus Caliph, twee! He's an Ele, the other two are also Proph bosses, a Mes and a Necro but I remember Optimus because a) the name. And b) he's a tough son of bitch to put down. We're squared off against the Charr army gathered before us to block our way.

I also get to rock Spectral Agony now. It's that mysterious 8th skill I lacked at the start. Unfortunately it's not the ultra mega, instant death version the Mursaat get. Although still very nasty.

Spectral Agony. Hex Spell. 5en, 1cast, 8recharge. For 5 seconds, target foe moves, attacks, and uses skills 80% slower, suffer 4 Health degeneration, and loses 80 Health each second.

Now we have to survive against 4 warbands. I'm jinxing myself but so far it's pretty easy. It doesn't hurt that my dead allies will revive when there aren't any more enemies near.

3 down now. So far my winning strategy consists of standing in the healing wards and spiking the hell out of everything that comes in range. There are many things to call this but compelling gameplay is not one of them.

Stupid internet connection conked out on me right in the middle of the final wave and now I have to start all over again. That sound you don't here is me swearing profusely. I've been having little hiccups all day - sort of a "yeah, you're connected, whoops, now you're not, ha ha! Ah, just fucking around with you." kind of thing - and I came back from one to find myself wiped out. Lag 1, Rex 0. Fun.

Still, it's not exactly long or hard, especially if you're not pausing to gaze at your navel.

The trick to the "survive the onslaught" portion, I think, is to let the Mursaat tank for you. They have Spectral and a ton of armor and health, it seems so you want them to take the brunt of the damage while you hang back and use Form Up! as needed to draw your forces back to the saftey of your wards (There's your healing stuff but your Ele also uses Elements, too.) as needed (The Murssat, not being White Mantle don't listen to it.). The high priority Charr are the various Ash ones since they're Orders spammers who'll summon minions from the plentiful corpses. Or they're annoying Rits. And the Sootreigners since they'll drop Firestorms on your head. Basically, you want all the casters dead. The Charr Beasts are annoying PBAoE guys but they're also well armored tanks. You can't spike them out quick so focus on downing the easier prey and put a Spectral up on them.

Okay, finally back to the point I was before and, yes, where I dropped was in fact the last wave to deal with. So aggravating. Cutscene rolls as scores of White Mantle pour in. After the battle is over. Freaking useless White Mantle.

And, uh, spoiler alert but the Mursaat? They're not really nice people after all.

Back to Durmond I go. As promised, you can "authorize" the book which prevents you from trading it, I guess. I could care less about a perfect rare weapon at this point so it's not much use to me. As promised, though, you can replay the mission (Same exact way as the last time, there's no special button or anything) and unlock "discoveries". So, it's Prhopehesies mission bonuses all over again. I'm going to leave that for later though (Although a quick run through seems to indicate they won't be so hard to figure out as the game prompts you with "historical points of debate". For example, I got one asking if Saul could have saved the villagers in the attack on the village. Hmmm...wonder what that could be implying?)

Now, if you'll excuse me, time for some of my thoughts as a review. Not exactly hard although a mite more difficult than I feared. Surviving the waves of attacking Charr isn't quite effortless but it's not exactly going to tax you, either. I wasn't really trying the first time and if it hadn't been for a faulty connection, I would have had it. No troubles the second time around. My main problem with this mission, though, is that I really, really hate stealth elements. I have all these neat toys for killing and I have to skulk around avoiding combat? Lame. Overall, though, a nice little mission that's only whet my appetite for more.

Dungeon Diving: Vloxen Excavations

Working my way out of the Asuran lands. Skipping over the Shards of Orr. Which means the only dungeon on my map that I've yet to conquer is Vloxen Excavations which I briefly ran through to get to the Polymocking.

Finally switched my build from prot to healing. In retrospect, I'm really glad since it meant I got to use LoD a bit while it was still in its golden age before the nerf (Again, we're running behind current events with this series here.). A moment of silence for dear old LoD, please, before we continue. But I didn't switch up because I knew what was coming, instead, I wanted to try out the appealing newness of things like Cure Hex and Spotless Soul. And also so I can drop Mhen-do like a stone into a very deep ocean. Good old Lina Inverse is a decent enough prot Monk. I really need to get a Healing hat, though.

For the Hero squad, I'm going back to a full compliment of Eles. Two Searing Flame nukers to power through the baddies. One is an E/Me to pack an interrupt and an enchantment strip. The other is E/Mo to pack in some hex removal with Remove and Convert Hexes - I'll hate out conditions with my roomier healing bar but I'm concerned about the hex stacking. And I've set up Blech as an Earth ele warder with Unsteady Ground to make up a bit for the loss of Aegis. He'll still be rocking slash Necro for Enfeebling Blood and splashed into Air to get him a halfway decent Shell Shock for that all important Cracked Armor. It really makes things easier although not quite as much as the Weakness.

For my henchie squad I've grabbed Cynn, Talon, the aforementioned Lina, and I have to give the final nod to the standout henchie, Zho. I'm used to the Ranger henchie being forgettable. Carrying useless crap like Kindle and Dual Shot instead of the important things like Distracting Shot. Having an effective Ranger henchman changes everything. Now, I don't have to devote a Hero spot to one of my Ranger Heroes and can spend it elsewhere.

Word is this is a pretty minion heavy place, especially the last boss. So my plan is to have a lot of brush clearing AoE damage. I've used my secondaries to take care of some weaknesses while my E/N is responsible for a lot of my mitigation.

Alright, enough fiddling with bars, time to get rolling. I've mapped not to Umbral Grotto like the green arrow says but, instead, to Vlox's Falls. I've run this before, you see, to get to the Asuran lands and I know that this entrance is closer to the next level. Sure, I could start at Umbral if I was interested in farming more Dwarven points but I'm not. I'm really, really not.

Right, so, in the dungeon, fighting Skelks that ambushes me off the zone. It sucks to kill things when you're not under a bounty. But it's rather nice to be playing with someone who actually knows how to use LoD. That's me, by the way. That's right, Mhenlo! I hates you! I'm talking smack about you behind your back! On my blog which is read by, literally, dozens of people! I...am really sad now.

In the next room it's a bunch of Stone Summit. Fortunately, their Monk build isn't the same annoying rez machine they pack in Sorrow's Furnace. There's also a boss battle in here with a Warrior boss who coughs up a key with his dying breath.

In the corridor to the next room are some minions sitting around degening. First chance to see if my burninators can brush them away. They're lv12 or so and fall to the SF spam quickly. Midlevel PvE is no match for me, no sir.

On to level two. Let's remember to grab the bounty here. Always paranoid that I'm going to forget it one day and wind up cleaning out a whole dungeon level with nothing to show for it. Except, you know, XP. And loot. And access to the next level. And that Dungeon Master page if it's the last one. You get some bonus points just for finishing, too. Oh, and the quest rewards. Good lord there are suddenly a lot of carrots in this game. Why, I remember the good old days when you'd run five hours uphill in the snow just to get to Droknars for a measly perfect weapon as a quest reward - not even a fort mod on it! And, why, when-- Yeah, I'm sorry, I'll stop now. It's just weird seeing Guild Wars turn into a pinball game with counters and lights constantly flashing when it started out by making progress deliberately, frustratingly slow.

Where was I? Ah, yes, actually playing, not just thinking about playing. Moving on. Looks like more Stone Summit Dwarves down here and some green Dredge Slaves.

Sigh, the game isn't awesome enough to let me recruit an army of rebellious slaves. I so wanted to play Spartacus of the Deeps. Instead of sticking around to help, the green Dredge make a beeline for the door when you kill the hostile Stone Summit in the area.

And, oh boy, gearboxes. I had just about enough of those in Sorrow's Furnace, thank you very much. I was afraid this was going to turn into a mini-version of that slog. Don't get me wrong, I liked the Furnace. I've enjoyed the Furnace. But this place shouldn't be the Furnace. I've just played it to exhaustion by now. This time around you have to kill off Summit Gatekeepers to get the gears to open the locks which is a sight better than having to run around the map with the one you picked up at the entrance, I guess.

Okay, for the Dwarves the priority targets are the Gnashers. Otherwise they're going to be raising a minion army to overwhelm you just as you're starting to feel the attrition of a prolonged fight - these Summit packs are large and well organized. Not exactly tough but the battles will last and you'll suck dry or hit recharge hell if you're not careful.

Here's an interesting encounter. I round the corner and con some Panicked Stone Summits. They're running pell mell towards me shouting about something coming after them which turns out to be a spider boss just a short way ahead. Of course, you know, this means it's killing time. There doesn't seem to be a point to killing the thing - it's a Poison Arrow Ranger surrounded by a mob of spiders - beyond proving yourself to be a well oiled killing machine.

This place is supposed to be a riff on the Raiders of the Lost Ark and I'm not seeing it. Oh, wait...Taskmaster Bellok. Heh. "There is nothing you may not loot which I may not ninja away from you, Dr McJonesy."

PvP slot going to be filled with a placeholder so I can hang on to that name, thank you very much.

After killing Bellok, who's a Necro boss if that matters to you, I'm told by the grateful slaves - whom I used as a moving meatshield during the fray - that liberating the untermensch is not my ultimate goal here. Apparently I have to go down one more level and kill off an end boss named Zoldark - I mean, uh, yeah suspension of disbelief, uh, the Summit dug too deep and woke up an ancient evil which I, valiant hero that am - and totally not opportunistic asshole of a mercenary that I am not - need to go and slay. There, all those tabletop sessions weren't wasted after all. Can I give my tragic backstory for some bonus XP now?

Gee, with a name like Zoldark the Unholy, which class do you suppose he is? I'm awash with anticipation here.

I am liking the look of this place, though. Very ancient and mysterious temple of doom.

Of course, now I'm paranoid that there's going to be one of those rolling balls of instant death that's going to pop out of nowhere as I try to run back to the entrance.

Too easy? Yeah, I'll stop with the Indiana Jones references now.

There seem to be two routes through this level. You can either go left towards the spider boss or right through the cavern with Bellok which requires you to use some powder kegs to open up a wall. Both lead to the same place. I've, of course, managed to do both since I'm a completionist. Oh well, more Dwarven points for me.

The next area features some undead. The type you'd find in the Desolation. They're tough, though, at level 28. And they seem to respawn every so often which I learned much to my regret when I was standing around checking on my inventory. Note they don't give XP or up your kill count again when they return from the land of the dead. Lots of poison turrets around, too.

I think I've reached my final verdict on Cure Hex and Spotless Soul here. Cure Hex is a keeper. I'd like a shorter recharge but it's powerful enough to warrant the longer one. It's everything you want out of a single removal since it'll wipe off a hex and take care of any degen along the way. It's like a mini B-Light, really.

Spotless Soul on the other hand, I'm going to toss on the junk pile. It's nice enough for what it does which is remove a lot of conditions but it's slow to work and hard to get it to when you need it. Worst of all you can't target yourself with it.

Screw this, I'm making a run for the portal.

Really wish I could tell Lina to put up Prot Spirit on me but what are you going to do? Spec prot myself so I can carry PS instead of investing in Holy Haste like a scrub? Why, that's...I.... Shut up, that's why.

Made it easily and we're headed down to the third level. Which is hopefully the basement floor since I can't take much more of this without going slightly more crazy.

Guess what kind of enemies are on this level? If you said hordes of respawning undead, give yourself a gold star!

Jebus, this is like playing WoW. And not in a good way. Makes it hard to find a good rest spot. I'm used to monsters not reappearing every few minutes.

The boss key is guarded by a Paragon boss named Thanatos Backwards who's surrounded by a bunch of Crypt Keepers. Someone in the PvE department had way too much fun with that.

Sotanaht isn't the problem here, it's the Crypt Keepers - they're Vow of Silence Dervs who are running rampant through my backlines. If these guys respawn, I swaer I'm going to ragequit.

I've nearly wiped. Just down to me and Talon by the time I finish them off but Talon is tanking Sotanaht. Actually, he's pwning up on the guy, giving me enough time to rez up everyone while he chips away at his pile of health.

Boss key in hand, it's time to backtrack to the door.

DP check. The fight with Sotanaht was costly but, really, I'm not doing so bad. Took some chip deaths on the last level while I was trying to gauge just how well the undead could spike (The answer turns out to be really, really well, by the way.) I'm personally at 2%. My Heroes are at -1%, -4%, and dead even. I'm more concerned about my not-so-heroes. Lina seems to have inherited Mhenlo's tendency to crumple when the enemy breathes on her and she's died a lot. Her health is falling down way to fast now and I suspect she's DPed out. The rest are in better shape but they've taken the most deaths of anyone here.

Now to face off with old Zoldark. He's in a huge circular room, surrounded by a bunch of Zoldark's Minions. And taunting me. Oh, he'll pay for that.

The Minions have been sprinkled through this level, they're lv20 Warrior guys that aren't very threatening but I have the feeling there's a twist coming up.

Yeah, there's a trick. Zoldark is packed with special skills and he seems to have the armor rating of a late war Panzer tank. He's got a bunch of orders that send his minions into crazy town.

If Lina wasn't DPed before, she is now. I'm getting rocked. Time to pull out, rez up and think this through.

The saving grace here is that Zoldark doesn't have any healing and he isn't regenerating at all. That and there's a rezshrine right outside his door. This is doable, even if have to zerg it from the shrine a few dozen times before he's dead.

Ah, I see what you're supposed to do here now. When his minions die, Zoldark rezes them with a life saccing skill. Keep mowing down the minions and he'll kill himself to death - or close enough for a finishing blow.

Easier said than done, though, with all my DP. We're definitely in rush from the rezpad territory here.

I really wish Lina would use something like Prot Spirit instead of trying to combat rez. Or Aegis - oh wait, she's a prot Monk and she doesn't use Aegis. Why? Because she's a bleeding idiot, apparently. I'm really regretting switching from my prot build now because this would have been a much easier fight with some blocking and mitigation around.

....I just saw Lina use Zealous Benediction. I need to reboot my brain now.

I thought Mhenlo was stupid but apparently he only nibbles at the paint chip stew that Lina feasts upon.

Just on a completely unrelated note totally disconnected from that previous thought but does anyone know the address of the person responsible for the henchie bars? And, while you're at it, the name of a reputable arms dealer?

Sigh, I finally managed to bum rush my way to victory. Once his health was near the danger zone, Zoldark stopped rezzing them up. He also seemed to lose a lot of his staying power, falling incredibly easy once we focused on him.

Final DP toll? I'm at 51% because I actually know how to kite. Everyone else is 60ed.

My rewards? A diamond from the chest. 1.5k Dwarven points. 7.5k XP from the quest. And 1.5 plat.

Cool dungeon. The final boss fight was pretty neat, too. I wouldn't like all my bosses to be like that but every now and then an interesting quirk makes for an interesting battle. But awful rewards. I do these dungeons because I want to see what they're like not because I'm tempted by the chest at the end. And that's a problem. I know these dungeons are repeatable and would lead to farming problems with people were to run them over and over if you were to give away big money and prizes but, still, it just doesn't feel like it's worth the bother. Has to be a better way.

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...

Dungeon Diving: The Elusive Golemancer and Oola's Lab

I should point out before we start that these Dungeon Diving posts are time displaced. I ran through four or five dungeons over last weekend and decided to keep notes which I could bleed out when I needed a shot of content. I know they're labbled "liveblogging" but that means thatI wrote them as things were happening as a record of events and haven't bothered to do much editing beyond making them readable. So, they're lagging behind reality by about a week or so by this point. And won't include the recent skill update for a little while at least. If you want to imagine what it's like picture me playing a healer other than an LoD Monk and not bringing Mhenlo along. There, you've successfully transported this series into the future. I've been playing a bit but mostly by stealing a few minutes here or there to fill in my map or complete part of the primary quest cycle.

Back at it again. (I figure, at this point, that it'll be alright if I can at least make something productive out of it. Hence, brand new series - Dungeon Diving. Recording my exploits in the Depths of Tyria or whatever region they stick these damn dungeon quests under so I have to look through half a dozen quest menu tabs before I can find the right one. Seriously, is it that hard to parse these quest list better? Or give me more options for sorting through them? At the very least, make it so the ones nearby show up and things like quests from freaking Shin Jea Island are automatically collapsed? Every time I load the game I have to play the same game of find the right quest in my huge list of unfinished tasks. It'll save which regions I collapse during a play session but switch characters or reload for a build? Argh.) I'm in the Asuran lands and I have one third of their quest cycle done so I figued I'd give the next part a go. Which means I'm playing Office Space and hunting down an elusive geomancer somewhere in some instance somewhere.

For my group, I've decided to mix things up a bit. Dropping the SF Eles for now in favor of dueling Paragons. I hear this is the hotness right now and I'm inclined to agree. Again, I'm not entirely sure how you go about maximizing their awesomeness but I figure it starts with Aggressive Refrain and Defensive Anthem and gets filled out with a bunch of party support chants to go along with a pretty solid ranged DPS machine. Two Defensive Anthems along with the Aegis I rock means we should have pretty much universal 50% block coverage and that'll soak up a lot of damage. Throw in things like Aria of Restoration and more and it's a lot of defense in an attractive package. I almost went with a MM Necro here but, instead, I'll keep my E/N melee hater around for the Cracked Armor and more. And I'll stick with the same henchie team I've been using - Talon, Zho, Cynn, and, sigh, Mhenlo.

The run there on a gentle run through the country side of Magus Stones. Gentle except for everything trying to kill you, of course. Like large packs of Wind Riders who are still annoying with their interrupts. I remember the first time I encountered them - probably in the test somewhere - they were th efirst critters to really pack effective interrupts. And this was back when queued up attacks could still be interrupted. I went charging in with my Warrior only to get slammed with Cry of Frustration, forcing whatever crappy attack skill I was running at the time as the start of my chain to get blow. Picked myself up, pressed the next skill to start running back into what I liked to think of as the whomping zone only to have it happen again. And again. That's what happened every single mob. If there's one forgotten update I'm glad of it's that you have to be actually attacking to have your attack skill interrupted now. Now, imagine that, except it's me trying to heal everyone through a boatload of degen arriving from the Isle of Pain. Five or six Cries of Frustration going off is unhappy sauce.

What else? oh there are froggies here, too. They're as wimpy as they always are. Oh and Krait who are some kind of distant relatives of the Naga. They have low level ones that cast a skill spawning a random "adult" version. Which, generally, means some kind of nasty caster trying to pound you into dust. The Krait are actually a fairly tough fight but nowhere near as annoying as the Wind Riders - again, it's a numbers thing. Three or four I could pick off easily but they travel in large, diverse packs that force me to target around to find the best target to direct the wrath of my AI forces upon. It's easy to get overwhelmed if you're not careful because they can spike pretty hard. But, again, every thing can when there are enough of them around.

Okay, so I've arrived at the dungeon's gate and I've stood on one leg, hopped around, punched the machine that goes parp, sworn eternal fealty to the dark elder god responsible for spawning this devil race of piranha-faced cannibal pedophiles, and done whatever else I need to do to satisfy the entry requirements. Now it's time to get this show on the road.

And, yes, I know the quest giver here is being all quest and quoting Office Space at me. I'm not falling for it. That movie had some cultural cache some five, six years ago. Now it's just a played out reference. Just one more reason the Asurans will eventually have to burn.

First level. Apparently we're playing a game of spot the right Golem. The one who has the magic power to open up the door to let me continue - and incidentally turn every other freaking golem in the place hostile - hidden amongst a sea of identical duplicates. I, of course, blame the Asura.

Glad I dropped the SF ele because it seems these golems are immune to burning. Brought Anthem of Flame on one of my Paragons and they are not getting set on fire at all. Oh well, the real point of having it is to make sure Aggressive doesn't drop anyway. Have Blazing Spear slotted, too, which means those are just costly +dmg spear skills now. Hate wasting skill slots like that but nothing I can do about it now.

Next cavern you have to hit the lever yourself. You still turn the terracotta army surrounding you hostile when you do and need to fight your way to the newly opened door through a floor littered with the twisted, smoking corpses of automatons. You know, the usual.

On the next floor, it's more of the same. There's a mystical key in the center of some passive golems, when you pick it up they turn hostile. I figured out a little trick here: you can drop the key to turn them passive again if you get in trouble. There's no point to fighting them, though, since they periodically respawn. It's best just to run to the door and unlock it so you can move on.

Running might seem like your best move in the next level, too, although I wouldn't advise it. While you're in the room you'll be under constant bombardment by fire arrows which deal a bit of damage and set you on fire. At the same time there'll be plenty of golems trying to pound you into the ground. However, there's a worker golem near the door whom you can activate. As long as you stay within ward distance of it, he'll protect you from the fire arrows. He'll walk slowly but surely towards the next chamber and let you take down the sentry golems along the way with ease.

Unfortunately, henchies aren't so good about not wandering outside of the safety zone and I lost Mhenlo along the way. He's heavily DPed by this point and the fire degen ate through him in seconds when he stopped to do whatever the hell it was he was doing instead of the right thing. Going back to rez him would be problematic, too. So I'm just going to press on and wait for the next wipe to get him back. Honestly, at this point I feel like I'm better off without him, anyway.

The next chamber features some nasties. Once they're dead it's another game of find the hidden golem and then dragging them over to some switches on the floor so they can play boulder. Got through this room, by the way, without any deaths and without that leecher Mhenlo weighing me down.

In the next room, you're up against an unkillable, gigantic golem. There are some other hostiles to kill as well and I took some frightful losses clearing them out. But once I noticed the Autobot Matrix of Leadership - I'm sorry, the Flux Matrix - on the floor, the solution was pretty simple. You pick it up, run it to the Unstable Energy object to charge it up and then drop it near the golem to cause a groan inducing 1337 damage. I hate the Asura. Took me three drops and some henchie flagging to keep him running around and not pounding on me but then it was on to the next level.

Here, it's a quick jaunt to Oola. There are some golems that turn hostile once you get in range but, by now, they're old hat. And, yes, for the record, I did manage to run the rest of that instance with my healer henchie's corpse rotting in some murky swampy waters after his self-immolation of heroic stupidity. Mhenlo, your bravery in reminding us all of what a dead weight around this group's neck you really are will not be forgotten.

Cutscene time! Oh god, the Asurans have speaking parts, where'd I put the hard liquor? Right, got it. The Asurans are selfish and would rather argue than help me to save the world. But they're also stupid and fall for head games that wouldn't work on a four year old. Thanks game, I already knew that but it's nice to know that I was right about the little piranha mouthed knee biters.

Quest earns me 2.5k XP and 3k Asuran points. That puts me at r3 with 10k or so and now I get +8 energy in their lands. I'll schedule the parade later. I'm also dumped in Rata Sum afterwards which means I can't just head right back into the dungeon to run it for real. Although I needed to stop back there, anyway, to pick up the dungeon quest.

It's not a long run back, though, and I'll use this opportunity to tweak my build a bit for the return trip. I'll keep Anthem of flame around because, really, there's nothing better that will keep Aggressive up consistently - and you just know that if I drop it then the dungeon's going to be full of enemies who take triple damage from Burning or something. But I'll drop Blazing Spear and rotate in a few different attack skills for a try-out.

This quest is worth 7.5k XP, a bit more than the 5k I was getting around Gadd's. So, I'm expecting it to be slightly tougher than usual although not Shard of Orr levels of insanity.

Back at the entrance. Time to run this place for real.

Instead of talking to the Milton-wannabe this time you just have to stroll through the portal. Inside are more and better golems. A few different critters like Skelks and other fodder for your kill count. The most annoying are the Forge Imps but we'll get to those later.

Alright, so it's basically a repeat of the instanced version. You have to slog your way through room after room filled with hostile golem occasionally stopping to solve a puzzle that should only give a mentally challenged third grader pause. The golems aren't too hard to handle, by the way, since they're all melee - either Warriors or Dervs - with the occasional air nuker thrown in for good measure. I, though, have an Air Ele of my own who's packing Blinding Surge. I tend to win those fights.

There are also boss creatures called Flame Guardians who are huge, hulking versions of the caster golems. When they're killed they disable any flame traps in a large radius. So, yes, I kill them whenever I can to prevent Mhenlo from becoming a habitual suicide case.

The map is wrong, by the way, about the boss key. It tells you you'll find it somewhere in the middle of the map when, in reality, you don't get it until the final chamber. Here's how it works. Throughout the dungeon there'll be this Assassin who'll pop up and talk smack at you. Say your mother smells. Your father was a diseased hamster with a speech impediment. Oh, and he's not going to let you have whatever treasure's at the bottom of the dungeon. I try to tell him, "Dude, I'm telling you it's, at best, a crappy rare. You can have it if you want it that bad. I'm just here to fill out my DM's guide." But he's not buying it. And, in truth, he's annoying enough that I'd probably try to gank him while he went for the chest anyway. But, whatever, he'll pop up throughout the dungeon, fight you for a while - which only gets problematic when he spawns while you're pulling something else - until he takes enough damage to go away. You meet up for the last time right before the locked door to the next level where you'll finish him off and he'll drop the key. It's a scripted event, however, since he hams it up on his way down to that great pixel graveyard in the server farm in the sky, and not a real death. You don't get credit for it. Which sucks for me since I had a boss bonus active at the time. That's how annoying this guy is, he cost me 200 Dwarven points just to spite me. I'm convinced.

Second floor. It's more of the same here. Golems. Skelks. Beetles. Endless slaughter that makes me long for the fields of Gual where I can retire to become a farmer. And apparently, make me hallucinate that I'm Russel Crowe. You know, come to think of it, I'm surprised there's not a Gladiator themed reference around here somewhere.

This is the level where last time around you had a helpful golem with an aura to protect you from the fire arrows. This time around he's put on a stick-on goatee and joined the darkside. Because instead of a protective shield, there's now a Malfunctioning Shield Golem in here who pumps out an aura that bestows -50AL against fire damage. Right in the middle of a room full of fire turrets. My prediction? Pain.

First wipe of the day thanks to the crossfire of a half dozen augmented fire turrets. If Mhenlo could actually cast LoD instead of starring at it longingly while thinking of all the girls he's banged we probably wouldn't have. I'm just saying. He's useless.

Past that another invicible golem guards the dungeon key. The same trick with the matrix as before still works and it's on to the boss level.

Down on the 3rd level. Made sure I grabbed the absorbive goodness of the bounty at the door but, really, it's a short juant to the boss.

The end guy who's not, I repeat, not a boss here is the TPS Regulator golem because the allusions to Mike Judge just weren't blatant enough. He's not so tough in and of himself but the environment around him is what makes it difficult. He's flanked by two Flame Guardians and a half dozen fire dart turrets. Taking out the Flame Guardians disables the turrets and makes the fight much easier.

The TPS Golem's a Warrior boss. Pretty easy once you get rid of the Guardians at his side. He has one trick, though, and it's a doozy. He has a skill called Unstable Pulse which is some kind of stance on a quick timer. It says it the golem is stuck by elemental damage for 175 seconds, its damage is converted to that type. Which is nothing major as the Unstable Golems in here do the same thing. But it goes on to say that when it ends, it hits everyone adjacent for 175 damage. What it neglects to mention is that it ends prematurely when it's struck for elemental damage. And that, as a cheating boss monster it deals double damage so it really hits for 350 damage whenever someone wands the fucker.

Talon got shredded by that. But everyone else was mostly okay since they were standing out of range. It didn't take long for the boss to fall and the chest to pop. I scored another useless diamond (Guess I was lying to that Sin all along. But, really, I think a vendor bait gold would be worth more at this point.) along with 500 Dwarven points for finishing the dungeon. Up to about 18k now. And returning to Rata Sum and turning in the quest netted me 7.5k XP and 1.5k in gold.

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.