Curse

Caged Fury · Feb 08, 2006, 01:53 PM // 13:53

Quote:

I've been stuck here for a while now, but at the moment I have only been trying to do this with Henchies. I will be looking for a group soon as I am now getting bored of restarting the mission...

I think I should look at updating my armour first though? Only wearing a set with 51 armour on my necro.

Elona Reach, Dunes of Despair and Thirsty River missions can be done with henchies. Just need to control and manage them well.

Having better armour may help, but if your tactics and strategy is bad then better armour may just prolong a mission destined to fail. I had armour from Ventari's Refuge on my characters (apart from Monk who had Sanctum Cay ones) when I did these missions. Didn't see the point in upgrading to Amnoon armour since Droknar was only afew missions away.

My warrior had the easiest time through these. Even though I knew what to do and what to expect, my other characters had a harder time and had to try many times. Worse time was against the last monk team in Thirsty River, spend ten minutes trying to take down the monk boss. Had him pinned and surrounded against a wall and door and just beated on him non-stop. Their team keep being ressed and it was really a stalemate. But a lucky hit managed to put things in our favour.

kicks66 · Feb 08, 2006, 02:24 PM // 14:24

for thirsty, mm is awesome on the mission. i just got my necro through there with henchies at lvl 17, i suggest anyone doing the mission should try and find an mm necro to come with them :P

Jetdoc · Feb 08, 2006, 03:29 PM // 15:29

Dunes of Despair was probably one of the hardest missions in the game for me to solo without henchmen with my W/Mo.

Some very brief pointers as how to handle the final fights doing this...

1) Go to the left immediately and kill ONE of the Forgotten Arcanists. You don't have time to kill them all. If you do that, they will (most of the time) follow you instead of attacking the hero.

2) Go to the right and kill ONE of the swordsmen. The remaining ones should again follow you instead of attacking the hero.

3) Go attack the bows in the middle. Attempt to lure them a little to the left so that when the second wave of arcanists appear, they attack you as well.

4) If you've aggroed right, you should have several arcanists, the bows, and a hammer or two pounding on you at the same time. If you use many of the stance tank builds in the Warrior forum, you should find ways to survive this. Focus on killing the bows first so you can avoid them blinding you, which is a pain to keep removing. Then work on the arcanists and finally the warriors. You should have enough time to gradually wipe them out.

5) After that wave, no more forgotten will come from the left. Attack the right immediately (before they start moving down), and lure them to where the bows normally appear. You should have the same situation where several guys are pounding on you at the same time. Gradually wipe them out, and there will be one last group (particularly nasty if they have the healer boss with them), but that should be manageable.

6) Watch your health with the seige wurms blasting you. It's easy to get distracted by this, but if you keep up constant healing, you should be able to offset any losses.

The key is to control your aggro and make sure that none of the forgotten get in range to start pounding on the hero. This takes a ton of practice...I think it took me over 50 times before I successfully completed it solo. If they start attacking the hero, it's over, so that's your main objective.

Bleidd · Feb 08, 2006, 03:44 PM // 15:44

1. Two Monks are not necessary for success in any of these three missions.
2. All three of these missions are relatively easily henched provided you know how to work with and to fill in the gaps in the henchbot AI.

ShadowVoid · Feb 08, 2006, 04:55 PM // 16:55

Ascention is nothing in this game, all it is a big level jump for the more experienced players so they wont have to waste there time lvling there characters up.

But for new people all missions are most of the time very exciting and you wouldn't want to spoil it for them

Raptox · Feb 08, 2006, 06:34 PM // 18:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caged Fury

[Elona Reach]
1. When going for the left encampment, never use the bridge. Go pass it and use the back door.
2. Between the two encampments, there is a hill with a path behind it. This path links the two encampments and provides a nice, quiet route between the two base. Thus avoiding the various mobs in the middle open space.

Bingo. Furthermore, you don't have to return the first crystal before going after the second. Just drop it on that little path or a little before, go get the second crystal, and pick up the first on your way back. I learned that one from GuildWiki.

Ken Dei · Feb 09, 2006, 02:13 AM // 02:13

The Crystal Desert has always been the first Anti-Noob Barrier. Back when it was nice to farm Sanctum Cay, whenever I finished with a group, I had a little speech.

"Congratulations, welcome to hell. Here in Amnoon they have new armor, weapons and collectors. From now on be at your best or the Jade Scarabs will drag you screaming into the rolling sands to feed upon your sun bleached bones. Good luck"

The group subsequently would ask how to survive. Fear is a good way to get players new to the desert to shut up an listen. ^_^

For those of you who are curious, the other Anti-Noob Barriers are as follows:
2nd: Ascension itself, cept for maybe Warriors.
3rd: Dragon's Lair
4th: Thunderhead Keep

I rarely found stupid people past Thunderhead. Usually if someone got the group killed it was an accidental aggro in a tight space and the like.

T1Cybernetic · Feb 25, 2006, 01:19 PM // 13:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manic Smile

Guys these missions are real easy if you have friends.

Dunes = book trick with stance tank

Thristy = MM mass / Dual Ele nukefest / mez stance tanks(funny)

Elona = ranger/war runner

It's funny that you should say that to be honest, because the last three
or four time's i've had to do these missions for myself and times before and
just recently for friends, i've done more or less exactly the above, .

When i've needed to go through those missions myself, i've logged onto both
my accounts and left myself afk while my other account either ran it, or i've
just taken a few henchmen and completed it myself, .

Having two accounts and doing almost everything yourself for your other characters
pretty much always makes life a hell of alot easier then most pug's to be honest, ...

unholygod · Feb 25, 2006, 01:36 PM // 13:36

Thirsty Tip: mobs of different bosses fight each other (O_o some kind of tuff-war). use that to your advantage. Its funny seeing the Monk boss fighting the Ranger boss mobs while u sneak in and lay waste to his priest

kalvon · Feb 25, 2006, 04:17 PM // 16:17

Before you start a cinema scene or talk to a ghost make sure all the mobs are clear. I have had to many groups start the cinema scene while a mob was smacking on us and we could not defend ourself.

Snograt · Feb 26, 2006, 01:33 AM // 01:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ken Dei

For those of you who are curious, the other Anti-Noob Barriers are as follows:
2nd: Ascension itself, cept for maybe Warriors.
3rd: Dragon's Lair
4th: Thunderhead Keep

I struggled with the desert missions.
Ascension? No problem for anybody with the dedicated thread here.
Dragon's Lair? Maybe I've just been lucky so far, but I've never had a problem - even with PUGs! The bonus, however...
Thunderhead Keep? Hoo yeah.

Former Ruling · Feb 26, 2006, 01:53 AM // 01:53

^I can't count how many people per day I see in Rock repeating "I'm a necro, how to kill mirror?" and such all day.
Dragon's Lair...typically if your party can beat the mission..they can beat Glint..I've never had a PUG get to Glint then die (I'm serious. If they have enough brains to make it to Glint 99% of the time they can kill her).

Elona:
You can try PUGing it (This one has a decent PUG success rate), or People do free/500gp Runs for it all the time. Cuase even rangers run it decently easy.

Dunes:
This one has a REALLY high PUG Success rate..Unless someone is completly braindead this one usualy goes by smooth. The Bridge stay-at tip is good. Also If 2+ siege worms get on you (the dmg can start to hurt) - then you can actually make them stop by having your team go up under the bridge again (this is a highly known about tip). BUt seriously...The mission is dog easy with Henchies..and I mean EASY..You can let the henchies fight them themselves and just stand there if you want its so easy.

Thirsty:
150% of the failures (over 100% lol) are because 2 people or more in the PUG think they know exactly what to do, and their methods aren't the same. Also a BIG killer is at the last 3 when part of the team sneaks into the warriors base to ninja the priest and the other part of the team doesn't understand whats going on so they just run around or Leeroy the 3-4 groups near the base and everything just falls apart. This happens SO much I acutally advise you NOT try the sneak into the base trick.

Lord Ertihan · Feb 26, 2006, 02:58 AM // 02:58

Easy ways to finish them (if you're willing to fork over cash):

Elona Reach:
Rangers actually run this BETTER than warriors, because their Elite running stance Escape gives them a 75% evasion tech, whereas the Warriors are stuck with "Charge!", which does not give them an evade-tech. The quickest way to finish this is to hire a runner; the high-end can complete it within 2 minutes while you stand around doing nothing (go eat some sandwiches or something).

Thirsty River:
Minion-mancers can "run" this one fairly easily (you might be able to hire one if they're around). Barring Minion-mancers, a good, high-damage warrior should be able to take out a priest in less than 10 seconds (I suggest a Tiger's Fury axe warrior, myself -shameless plug-). Thusly, such warriors can (usually) "run" the mission with just the henchies (and you tagging along for the ride). Hiring a warrior in that regard can be iffy at best though, the quality for warriors in Thirsty River varies greatly.

Dunes of Despair:
You really don't need anybody's help for this mission since it's SO amazingly easy, I managed to finish it as a level 12 Necromancer with just henchies to help me. All you need is a bit of patience and nearly anyone (unless of course you're level one or something, that could present problems) could hench this thing successfully.