Shades of Twilight

Ok I didn’t try to clear the “Closer To The Stars” quest last night on my Necro. Instead, I went ahead and tried to advance the story on my Assassin character. I went ahead and did the run from Senji’s Corner, through the 2 new zones (I forget the names now), into the Temple zone. The Temple is marked as an “outpost”, so that is where I can adjust my attributes again if I need to.

It must be that I got used to being a Ranger on my Assassin the first day, because yesterday when I was playing my Assassin, as an Assassin, I didn’t die all that much. In fact, we took on the mobs without much problems, and nary had a group wipe. It was because of this that I managed to complete the run through the 2 new zones (to me) and enter the Temple zone. It was also because of this that I encountered and completed 2 new quests found in these zones. I am sure there are more quests to be found, but at this moment my concern is to make it past the mobs and into the Temple.

I sort of “tested” the quest at the temple. On the surface it looks doable, although with a time limit of 10 minutes. Each time you kill a “boss” and release the spirit (the aim of the quest), you add like 3 minutes to the clock. So you can more or less consistently stay at 10 mins if you are methodical enough. However, due to not knowing the layout and the tricks of this quest (much akin to the Closer To The Stars), we had a party wipe about 40% of the way into the quest.

Tonight I am going to try this again, this time more methodical. I hope I don’t have to revert back to being a Ranger to beat this one.

Technorati: Guild Wars, Main Quest, Spirits

HAH! After numerous attempts, and finally figuring out the “trick” to the quest, I am finally “Closer To The Stars!”.

This is one PITA (Pain-In-The-A**) quest. As posted in my previous entry, I finally figured out that I needed 2 healers (henchmen healers, that is). If you’re a melee char, the henchmen will run with you towards the bulk of the enemies. Since the red dots respond to YOUR “danger zone”, you will be triggering every red dot in your zone to be hostile to both you, and your henchmen. I figured out that with henchmen (since you can’t tell them what to do), you need to be a ranged attacker instead of a melee one, in order to keep the henchmen back and if you’re back there with them, your “danger zone” won’t be triggering on any of the red dots in the big mess up ahead.

Last night’s attempt was done with my Assassin. Good thing I picked his secondary as a Ranger – a ranged attacker. I had decided to pick a ranger to complement his close-quarters skills as an Assassin back when I first started this character. I was thinking back then that I would want to be able to attack at range sometimes. For this quest, I literally had to turn him from an Assassin into a full-fledged Ranger. I removed all his attribute points from all his Assassin skills, and put them all into his Ranger skills. He was literally transformed. It would have been funny if I had been playing this with a party of real humans, where they would probably be confused to see an Assassin using Ranger skills only, throughout the whole quest.

The outpost we arrived at after the quest is completed is Senji’s Corner. Amazingly (to me at least) there’s an NPC called a “Secondary Profession Changer”. I am amazed because this would be yet another no-no in other MMOs… but they have it here in Guild Wars. In other MMOs. once you picked your secondary, you live with it. Again, this is probably to fortify their motto that “you won’t be stuck with a gimped char in Guild Wars!”. Yup, since you can freely change your attributes (like I did with my Assassin), you can change your secondary class too (although at 500 gold a pop it’s pretty expensive).

I tried to proceed with the main quest at this point but either I got used to playing a ranger, or I didn’t put my attribute points back to the way it was, or the mobs suddenly got more powerful, or something. I suddenly faced a party wipe with just ONE group of mobs. I tried going another way, and got wiped again by ONE group of lvl 20 mobs (no nameds, no bosses). After a few tries I kinda gave up and decided to call it quits for the night.

Tonight I’m going to do this quest again with the Necro. Let’s see if he handles the situation better than the Assassin in Senji’s Corner.

Technorati: Guild Wars, Weh No Su, Assassin, Ranger

Last night I decided to try the main quest in Naphui Quarter again. I had failed this numerous times before. Each time it seemed that no matter what I do, there will be a party wipe. Sometimes we die at the 2nd Celestial… sometimes right after the third.

However, last night I seem to have “figured it out”. I found a clear path from the Phoenix, to the Dragon, to the Turtle. I was doing great, and had no party wipes even after killing the Turtle celestial. It’s true that the essences of the killed Celestials keep popping up and generally making everything a pain in the ass for us though.

So the trick, I found, was to engage them at range. Let the “Star Blades”and other mobs come to us, out of range of the Celestials. Seeing as I was running through this mission with only Henchmen, it was kinda hard to do on my assassin character since that is a melee char. My necro character however had no problem attacking at range. Debuffs and Vampiric Horrors helped alot too. It was on the Necro that I found the “correct path”. Attacking at range, the henchmen do not run towards the mass of red dots and die horribly. Only the tank and assassin henchies ran forward, which was good, since the healers (yeah I brought 2 healer henchmen along) can each heal one. The rest are ranged attackers. Elementalists, Illusionists (for debuffs), Ritualists (for buffs). My only complaint with henchmen is that the necro henchman does not seem to know what she is doing. She does not conjure up minions. I only visibly saw that she puts up those Wells of Weariness group debuffs.

With this newfound knowledge, I might have to look into re-allocating points on my Assassin to turn him into a Ranger, and spend money and skill points to buy Ranger skills, so that he can attack at range. Also, I need a good bow to do that, which means more money need to be spent. That is the good thing about Guild Wars – you can “respec” any time. Just as long as you’re in a town or outpost, you can redo your whole char all over. I just hope I didn’t sell off those good bows I picked up along the way. If I did I’d be kicking myself.

Or I could run through this mission on the necro and hope the mobs drop some good bows for me to pass on to the Assassin via the bank.

Technorati: Ritualist, Guild Wars, Necromancer, Ranger, Assassin, Weh No Su