Question about heroes / Nightfall for a new player - Guild Wars Forums

mandoris · Jan 31, 2007, 10:40 PM // 22:40

Hello, I recently started playing Guild Wars, and like it alot. I just have the original Prophecies game, and a friend and I play it together.

I am interested in the heroes aspect of Nightfall to replace the henchmen. We are roughly level 10 in Prophecies, I am not looking to play the Nightfall campaign yet. If I add the Nightfall cdkey to my account, would I be able to have Heroes in the Prophecies game, or would they only work in Nightfall created characters? Can I use my heroes while grouped with a player that only has Prophecies? Thanks much!

Kook~NBK~ · Jan 31, 2007, 10:47 PM // 22:47

With adding the Nightfall CD Key to your account, you won't be able to have heros for your Prophecies Characters until you reach Lion's Arch. There, you'll be able to get a quest called "gain Olias" and the reward for that quest is having the Hero Olias, a Necro. To get the other heros, you'll have to do the quest "Sunspears in Kryta" and travel to Elona, which is the land of Nightfall. and then follow the Nightfall story-line to get the rest.

And yes, you'll be able to group up with Prophecies only characters and your heros. You can have up to 3 of your heros in your party.

DeanBB · Jan 31, 2007, 10:55 PM // 22:55

You can quickly gather a handful of heroes in Elona and then carry on in Kryta with them, picking whichever 3 you wish. If both you and your friend add Nightfall then the two of you can fill the other 4-6 party slots with heroes and skip henchies.

Note that you provide the skills for them, other than some basics. If you've only played one profession combo (say wa/mo) then you won't have a whole lot of choice of builds for those you haven't played (ranger, dervish, etc).

Akshara · Feb 01, 2007, 09:38 AM // 09:38

Quote:

Note that you provide the skills for them, other than some basics. If you've only played one profession combo (say wa/mo) then you won't have a whole lot of choice of builds for those you haven't played (ranger, dervish, etc).

I felt that this needed to be repeated, as it's important to consider. The skills which heroes will have available to them are dependent upon:

1) unlocking skills in PvE either through questing for, capturing or buying them
2) unlocking skills in PvP by earning and exchanging Balthazar's Faction
3) trading in earned hero skill points at the hero skill trainers

The last option above is only available by playing through the Nightfall campaign itself, as all of the quests which give hero skill points are in Elona, and there are no hero skill trainers in Tyria.

For Prophecies based PvE characters, if they simply grab the heroes then return to Tyria without playing through Nightfall at all, the only option for teaching their heroes new skills is to unlock them through questing or buying them from skill trainers. There are two ways to do this in PvE:

Get to the Crystal Desert, do the Ascension missions, and then do each of the quests to change your secondary profession. Each time you change it, go purchase some skills for the secondary. This can get costly though, because skills raise in cost each time you buy one, until they're 1k each. This will take a long time to accomplish, and possibly defeat the point of playing the game with heroes, since you'll be over halfway through it by that point anyway.

Skills unlocked by any character on your account, either through PvE or PvP, are available to all heroes across every character, regardless of whether your main character unlocks them or not. This leads to the second option...

Create new characters in both campaigns, with a primary in each of the heroes' professions, specifically to unlock the skills in pre-searing Ascalon and the Elonian training mission/quests. It doesn't take long to get to post-searing if one follows the primary quests and profession specific quests only. The Nightfall starter mission and primary profession trainers (3) don't take very long at all, though getting to the secondary training takes longer than it does in Prophecies - probably faster to simply start over with a different primary than to unlock the secondary.

Additionally, there are skills which can be purchased immediately in post-searing Ascalon City (along with skill quests in the immediate area), or in Kamadan (which you get to right after primary training). With a Nightfall character, the starter skills are a little different than the pre-searing ones, and you'll have earned a couple of hero skill points by the time you reach Kamadan, which can be traded in at the hero skill trainer there who offers a few skills per profession.

These characters can either be deleted after that or not, but any skills unlocked this way will be available to the heroes on your main character.

In PvP, there is the third option of creating PvP characters in each hero's profession and earning Balthazar's Faction, which can be traded in at the Great Temple for skills. This could take awhile, but you'd learn PvP.

... I should also mention the more expensive options.

If you have some gold stored up and are adventurous... once in post-searing, it's fairly easy to find runners who will take you from Ascalon City to outposts with good skill trainers, like Yak's Bend, Ice Tooth Cave, Lion's Arch, or even Beacons Perch to Droknar's Forge. It would cost about 2k for the Yak's > Ice Tooth > Beacon's > LA trip, and another 2k to 3k to get to Droknar's Forge. Besides having a good skill trainer and max armor there, there are many elite skills to capture in the surrounding area.

If you got Factions as well, then once in Lion's Arch you could travel to Kaineng City, which offers a ton of skills for purchase, much more than the other two campaigns. Plus the levelling and gold gain is much faster, there's cheap max armor right there, and you get an Assassin hero - who would need skills unlocked just like the others.

And finally, if you can afford to purchase the PvP edition of Prophecies, which unlocks all of the skills for PvP play, I'd imagine that all of those would be available to the heroes, even though they wouldn't be to your PvE characters. Of course I've not tested this, so you'd want to find out for sure.

Here are the six characters a Prophecies character with Nightfall can get in about an hour or two of reaching Lion's Arch:

Olias - Necro
Koss - Warrior
Dunkoro - Monk
Melonni - Dervish (no skills in Prophecies)
Tahlkora - Monk
Acolyte Jin - Ranger
- or -
Acolyte Sousuke - Elementalist

Hope this helps, and good fortune.

*Darcy* · Feb 01, 2007, 12:11 PM // 12:11

Great explanation Akshara.

I would just like to add that the quest "Gaining Olias" is not easy for a under-lvl20 character to accomplish with just the available henchmen. You will need to solicit the help of some lvl20s if you want to do the quest as soon as you reach Lion's Arch.

Jan 31, 2007, 10:40 PM // 22:40	#1
mandoris Pre-Searing Cadet Join Date: Jan 2007 Profession: E/Me	Question about heroes / Nightfall for a new player Hello, I recently started playing Guild Wars, and like it alot. I just have the original Prophecies game, and a friend and I play it together. I am interested in the heroes aspect of Nightfall to replace the henchmen. We are roughly level 10 in Prophecies, I am not looking to play the Nightfall campaign yet. If I add the Nightfall cdkey to my account, would I be able to have Heroes in the Prophecies game, or would they only work in Nightfall created characters? Can I use my heroes while grouped with a player that only has Prophecies? Thanks much!

Jan 31, 2007, 10:47 PM // 22:47	#2
Kook~NBK~ Grotto Attendant Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: A little chalet outside Drok's Guild: Natural Born Killaz	With adding the Nightfall CD Key to your account, you won't be able to have heros for your Prophecies Characters until you reach Lion's Arch. There, you'll be able to get a quest called "gain Olias" and the reward for that quest is having the Hero Olias, a Necro. To get the other heros, you'll have to do the quest "Sunspears in Kryta" and travel to Elona, which is the land of Nightfall. and then follow the Nightfall story-line to get the rest. And yes, you'll be able to group up with Prophecies only characters and your heros. You can have up to 3 of your heros in your party.

Jan 31, 2007, 10:55 PM // 22:55	#3
DeanBB Forge Runner Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Arizona Guild: Wizardry Players Guild, http://4guildwars.7.forumer.com	You can quickly gather a handful of heroes in Elona and then carry on in Kryta with them, picking whichever 3 you wish. If both you and your friend add Nightfall then the two of you can fill the other 4-6 party slots with heroes and skip henchies. Note that you provide the skills for them, other than some basics. If you've only played one profession combo (say wa/mo) then you won't have a whole lot of choice of builds for those you haven't played (ranger, dervish, etc).

Feb 01, 2007, 12:11 PM // 12:11	#5
Darcy Never Too Old Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Rhode Island where there are no GW contests Guild: Order of First Profession: W/R	Great explanation Akshara. I would just like to add that the quest "Gaining Olias" is not easy for a under-lvl20 character to accomplish with just the available henchmen. You will need to solicit the help of some lvl20s if you want to do the quest as soon as you reach Lion's Arch.