Curse

Shayne Hawke · Oct 24, 2011, 07:23 PM // 19:23

Introduction

Palawa Joko is displeased with your little adventure into his territory from last year, and he seeks revenge. You have been recruited into the Mad King's army to take down Joko and his generals. The following is a guide on how to complete this mission for speed based on practice with seven hero teams.

How to Start

You may enter this competitive mission from one of two locations: by speaking to The Sorceress of Kessex in Lion's Arch, or by speaking to The Harbinger of King Thorn in Kamadan. After a brief introduction of the situation, you will arrive in Scarred Psyche. Once inside, you may step forward and speak to Colonel Kernel. The Colonel can return you to where you came from, or give you advice on the mission (see below: Objectives). There are two Xunlai Chests, a merchant, and the Royal Bard, who will show you the records set in the past day, month, and quarter for the mission. To begin the mission, simply press the "Begin Challenge" button in your party window. You may play this mission with up to eight players and/or heroes.

Objectives

This mission has the following objectives:

Kill the six generals of Palawa Joko.
Defeat Palawa Joko. This ends the mission.
Protect Mad King Thorn.
(OPTIONAL) Kill the Priests of Joko.

While playing for speed, you will want to focus on the objectives in this order:

Defeat Palawa Joko. This ends the mission.
Kill the six generals of Palawa Joko.
Protect Mad King Thorn.
(OPTIONAL) Kill the Priests of Joko.

Skills

While in Scarred Psyche, you will be given new skills:

1. Candy Corn Strike - 1/4c, 1r - Signet. Launch a delicious projectile at target foe. If it hits, foe takes 50 damage and you gain 1 strike of adrenaline. This spell ignores armor.
- This is your bread and butter skill. Spam this on a target for damage and fueling your second and fifth skills.
2. Rocket-Propelled Gobstopper - 4a, 1c, 5r - Spell. Launch an explosively tasty, high-speed Gobstopper at target foe's location. All nearby foes are struck for 100 damage and knocked down. This spell ignores armor.
- This skill is key for taking down mobs after you've had a chance to build adrenaline. Use this to initiate spikes on mobs, prevent casters from casting, snare melee, and just overall damage.
3. Feast of Vengeance - 5e, 1c, 8r - Spell. Steal 100 health from target foe.
- Spam on recharge to keep your red bars up and do more damage than your first skill. Good for following up a spike.
4. Rain of Terror - 15e, 2c, 30r - Spell. Create a Rain of Terror at target foe's location. For 5 seconds, foes in the area are struck for 30 damage. This spell ignores armor.
- This is your most important skill. Drop this on the edge of a large mob in unison with other teammates, combine with other focused damage, and you can take down bosses in a few seconds.
5. Cry of Madness - 3a, 30r - Elite Shout. Scream like a madman! Foes in the area lose 10 energy and all adrenaline. For 10 seconds, allies within earshot move 25% faster and have +5 Health regeneration and +1 Energy regeneration.
- Chain this with others to maintain a speed boost. Before killing a boss, spam it with your party to reduce all enemies' energy pool.
6. Sugar Infusion - 10e, 1/4c, 12r - Spell. Sacrifice 25% of your current health. Target other ally is healed for 150% of the amount you lost. If this targets Mad King Thorn, this spell heals for 200% the amount you lost.
- Important for keeping yourself and others alive. This is also your lifeline for when Thorn gets low.
7. Animate Candy Minions - 10e, 2c, 45r - Spell. Exploit nearest corpse to animate two level 10 Candy Minions. You can have only 6 Candy Minions at a time.
- Not a great skill. If you don't disable this on your heroes, you run the risk of them getting stuck casting it under Migraine, which is a big slow down. You may be able to get away with having a couple heroes use this, but not your entire team. Humans may be able to manage this skill fine.
8. Resurrection Signet

The Mission

This mission takes place in the old Scarred Earth map from Heroes' Ascent. You will begin in the center of the map with Mad King Thorn and six Candy Corn Infantry. Thorn stands atop the altar in the middle while each of the infantry stand near the mouth of each path leading outside the center. The infantry have the same adjusted skills as yourself, whereas the Mad King has some slightly different skills:

Defy Pain
Hundred Blades
It's Good to Be King - 10e, 60r - Elite Shout. You steal 50 health from all allies within earshot. These allies move 50% faster for 20 seconds.
Maddening Laughter - 3a, 12r - Elite Shout. Let out a maniacal cackle. Foes within earshot are struck for 100 damage, and suffer from Dazed for 5 seconds.
Mad King Pony Support - 10e, 1/2c, 60r - Elite Spell. Summon a level 20 Invisible Pony. This summoned pony prances to target foe. This pony lasts 60 seconds.
- This pony goes under the name "Gum Drops, the Noble Steed" and has the following skills:
- Power Attack
- Trample
- Endure Pain
- Signet of Strength
- Defy Pain

Palawa Joko also has his own skills:

Aura of the Lich
Discord
Icy Veins
Spiteful Spirit
Taste of Undeath - Steal up to 500 Health from target ally.
Scourge of Candy - Target foe and nearby foes are struck for 200 damage, and suffer from Dazed for 5 seconds.
Motivating Insults - Scream insults at your army. For 10 seconds they have 8 Health regeneration, and move and attack 33% faster.

The generals are located in each exterior room of the map. Each general is accompanied by a Priest and a small group of Awakened Guards. These guards have more health than normal Awakened. At each minute, each general will send forth two Awakened enemies and an additional one for each general killed so far. These enemies will charge towards the center of the map, attacking anything in their way. Their composition seems to be random. Your party and the Candy Corn Infantry will res at the middle altar every two minutes. The following map shows the generals' positions:

After five of Joko's generals have been killed, Joko himself will enter the battlefield. He will appear in the room of the last general alive. At this point, killing Joko will end the mission. You do not have to kill the last general. Upon completion of the mission, you will be rewarded with an amount of gold, Trick-or-Treat bags, and Gamer points based on your level of completion relative to the Daily and Monthly best scores. At the end of the event, there may or may not be a prize for being on the highscore list.

The score counter begins at 1800. It drops by one point for each second that passes.

Preparing for the Run

I have tested this mission extensively and successfully with seven heroes. Properly coordinated players can likely do this much better than one team full of heroes, but your first step at doing this mission should be learning how to do it with seven heroes. Once you have become comfortable doing it with seven heroes, you can then move on to playing with other players who have made the same preparations.

In preparing to play with heroes and do the mission as a whole, you should keep the following things in mind:

Disable Rain of Terror on two heroes. You want these skills available when you need them, and the heroes will otherwise spam it as they see fit. When you approach a room, find a suitable target (generally, the closest caster-type enemy that you can hit without drawing aggro, and then the boss) and micro each hero to cast Rain on that target. You should do the same. If you or any heroes have an RPG available, cast that as well to keep enemies inside the AoE. Remember that RPG needs line of sight, so only micro your heroes to use it after they have sight, because they will not move into proper position to cast it themselves.
Disable Animate Candy Minions on at least the same heroes that you want to save for Rain of Terror. You don't want to have them draining their energy before they hit the boss mob. Other heroes might be able to get away with using this, but I considering this the worst skill on the bar by far, and it may not be worth using.
Heroes are not good at dealing with being obstructed (and neither are the Candy Corn Infantry!). Make sure you are approaching each room square on, or else your heroes will shoot at the wall.
Be ready to flag your heroes away from the room after each boss is dead. Time is of the essence! The only reason you should not be running is if there are enemies bodyblocking most of your heroes, which they are too daft to move around themselves. Kill those enemies and move on as quickly as possible.
Your health, energy, and attributes are fixed, and your armor and weapons provide you with no benefits. Morale boosts have no effect.
Consumables have no effect.
The number of enemies spawned by each general increases as you kill them. Keep this in mind for when you plan in which order you want to kill the generals.
Acolytes have Ray of Judgment. Effigies have Earthquake. Defilers have Death Nova. Dune Carvers are strong in their own right. The mesmer boss has Cry of Frustration. There are many AoE damaging and disabling skills here that you will want to avoid. Your only ways to deal with them are to move out of the way, or to kill them before they can use their skills.
Be wary of who is affected by Migraine. Especially if it's your two Rain-in-reserve heroes, get someone else to cast Rain for the spike.

My Run

I have achieved various times through different builds of this mission, but it all boils down to a run that takes a little more than five minutes. This was always done with heroes for me, and I predict players will together be able to post much faster times.

To begin, stand at the north gate. Your first target will be the elementalist boss. When the gate opens, rush towards the room. When you get there, the two Awakened will be just running into you. The other two will be well behind you and go to Thorn. Before you get to the boss, find a suitable target for your nukes. Tell your two designated heroes to nuke that target. Do the same from a different position to avoid AoE. The two Awakened coming from the room may or may not aggro the rest of the normal mobs in the room, so be prepared for this. The first boss should drop somewhere between :20-:30 if you have done it right. Flag your heroes off towards the mesmer boss.

Get into position, find a new target, and blast them to the Mists. If you ever find yourself not targeting the boss for your nuke, make sure to target and call the boss after the nukes go off so that your heroes begin to focus down the boss. Be very careful of Cry of Frustration and your hero micro. If one of your heroes gets interrupted, they may still be trying to cast a skill on recharge. Make sure to pull them off using that skill, or they will do nothing for a long time. After the boss falls, run back to the center. Do not bother with killing Priests or focusing them down. They don't need to die to complete our mission, and you can easily overpower their healing and be out before they res their team. You can safely leave behind one dead teammate. You should be done with the mesmer boss shortly after the 1-minute mark.

Back in the center, clean up any surrounding enemies and help out Thorn if he's low. If he's in trouble at this point, you will probably not make it through this mission in any record time. Our next target is the necromancer boss, so head up the ramp to the southeast. If you are fast enough, you can cut off the patrols coming in from each boss in that direction, kill most of their forces, and still make it to the necromancer boss before ~2:00. Once you get there, nuking down the boss is quite simple.

At this point, based on how well your team is taking the damage, you can run to the ranger boss under the bridges, allowing you to cutoff and kill the patrol coming from that boss, or you can walk around the tunnel to avoid the patrol. You may also want to keep an eye on how many Infantry are up and how hearty Thorn is at the moment. The ranger boss itself tends to sit well outside of its group. This will often be a case where you must nuke down the Awakened mob and deal with the boss only using focused fire. You should be finished with both the necromancer and ranger boss by ~3:00.

WARNING: Based on experience, 3:00 is a make-or-break point for this style of run. It often happens around this mark that Thorn ends up being overwhelmed and dies. The point when it appears that Thorn is on his last laugh can happen any time between when you start to approach the ranger boss and on your way back from the ranger boss. If it happens late enough, you can have a chance to heal him and save him from the oncoming enemies. If not, you're done. Breaking off to attempt to save him before killing the ranger boss will add perhaps a whole minute to your run, which would easily disqualify you from making a record. As such, you can only hope that Thorn will hold out.

Assuming Thorn manages to survive, make your way back to the middle, mop up the enemy, and wait for the wave that had spawned at 3:00. Take out the group on either side of the ramp and leave the other group for Thorn and his troops to deal with. Our next target is the monk boss. You will probably arrive at this boss just before 4:00. Nuke him down fast. This is probably the largest force at once that you will have to deal with all game. If you are lucky, all the mobs will be surrounding the boss, and they will mostly fall due to the AoE. You can use the mobs that spawned at 3:00 to charge some adrenaline and open this spike with a knockdown. At this point, it's almost necessary that you do so. When the monk boss is dead, run back.

At this point, Palawa Joko will enter the field, stationed at the room of the warrior boss. Thorn and his Infantry will march forward to help you, provided they are not still dealing with the enemy mobs from 3:00. Approach the room the same way as you did all the others, this time focusing almost entirely on Joko. Be very careful of Joko's Scourge of Candy skill, as this will render you useless for five seconds. Position yourself in a way that it hits the fewest members of your team as possible. With the potential combination of your AoE and Thorn's Daze, Joko will fall quickly, allowing you to achieve victory around the five-minute mark.

Remarks

Another route besides Elementalist-Mesmer-Necromancer-Ranger-Monk-Warrior that I have tested is Warrior-Monk-(Elementalist/Mesmer)-(Mesmer/Elementalist)-Ranger-Necromancer. Try different things. Just be sure to only leave a branch of the map after you've killed both bosses in that branch.

This is a high failure mission if you are going for a record. If your team gets trapped in nukes, you lose. If Thorn gets overwhelmed, you lose. If the Infantry are stuck trying to shoot through walls, you lose. This will happen a lot. You must become used to it.

Thorn has a behavior where he will refuse to leave the center of the altar unless one of your party or his Infantry is near enough to him and is attacking or being attacked. Theoretically, a party of one player and six heroes going around killing bosses would not be much slower than a party of one player and seven heroes. This would leave a slot open for another player to guard Thorn and allow him to move intelligently.

This mission, as with any kind of timed mission, requires strong coordination between players in order to be successful. It would be much easier for one player to coordinate seven other heroes and complete this than eight players working together. Assuming some can pull it off though, the benefit would be better spikes, less damage from AoE, less bodyblocking trouble, and extra freedom to keep Thorn alive. With a full team of people and a run similar to what I've described, runs as fast as ~4:30 could be possible.

To go even further though, split tactics of sending half of the team to each boss could be explored, potentially shaving off even more time. This could be achieved with as little as two players bringing three heroes each. Splits like these could possibly post times under four minutes.

In closing, good luck to everyone who hopes to chase the record time!

Skyy High · Oct 24, 2011, 07:49 PM // 19:49

Wow. Thanks for this, now to try it with 7 heroes...

mireia_tt · Oct 24, 2011, 08:00 PM // 20:00

ectos!

Da Kenster · Oct 24, 2011, 08:15 PM // 20:15

Yes, I've also heard of ectos dropping in the challenge mission. Very nice post, thanks for the info

drkn · Oct 24, 2011, 08:27 PM // 20:27

I concur, got an ecto drop on my second run as well.
*proof*

Mireles · Oct 24, 2011, 08:38 PM // 20:38

hmmm, i guess we can expect to see a sharp drop in the price of ecto for as long as this challange mission is around.

chuckles79 · Oct 24, 2011, 09:05 PM // 21:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mireles

hmmm, i guess we can expect to see a sharp drop in the price of ecto for as long as this challange mission is around.

They keep finding newer ways to make rare drops less rare. This trend will continue, mark my words.

Mireles · Oct 24, 2011, 09:08 PM // 21:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by chuckles79

They keep finding newer ways to make rare drops less rare. This trend will continue, mark my words.

Trying to make that FoW armor more attainable for the noobles..... but theres always opprotunity in changes of price for the vets.... if you know what your doing

... this thing goes away after the event... right?

ChrisCo · Oct 24, 2011, 09:12 PM // 21:12

Its a lot easier to get an ecto clearing the chamber with a rit then to get one from this mission. So I have no idea what you guys are talking about =p

Mireles · Oct 24, 2011, 09:17 PM // 21:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChrisCo

Its a lot easier to get an ecto clearing the chamber with a rit then to get one from this mission. So I have no idea what you guys are talking about =p

possibly, but it still means a increase in supply... you have many people who are getting ecto via a means that wasn't previously possible... and you have many people who wouldn't normally be creating ectos via UW.... creating ectos via Challange Mission... thats what were taking about

RTSFirebat · Oct 24, 2011, 09:17 PM // 21:17

I've added this to the event guide with full creadit. Fantastic work

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/e...t10495996.html

Andrew Patrick · Oct 24, 2011, 09:22 PM // 21:22

The ecto drop rate is very low, and there are only ~45 monsters on the map that actually drop loot, so the number of ectos dropping in here should not negatively impact the ecto economy.

Shayne Hawke · Oct 24, 2011, 09:50 PM // 21:50

'Sup.

drkn · Oct 24, 2011, 10:05 PM // 22:05

I think that ToT-wise this mission should be more rewarding. You can get ~50 ToTs for getting the top #1 time. Compared to other quests, especially the repeatable Every Bit Helps, it's quite low given the difficulty and time needed to get it. I believe that getting a top #1~#3 times should yield ~100 ToTs, but how to formulate it all mathematically to keep the lower-end rewards not-so-high - no idea.

That said, i love this mission. It's super simple and enjoyable - a combination i really like.

makosi · Oct 24, 2011, 10:13 PM // 22:13

I'm not a fan. Babysitting NPCs is my least favourite type of mission/quest and the rewards appear to be insignificant.

The minions are cute, however.

Skyy High · Oct 24, 2011, 10:18 PM // 22:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mireles

possibly, but it still means a increase in supply... you have many people who are getting ecto via a means that wasn't previously possible... and you have many people who wouldn't normally be creating ectos via UW.... creating ectos via Challange Mission... thats what were taking about

Those people would make ecto a lot faster if they were farming UW instead of doing this challenge mission. Considering that many people who are doing this mission would be farming UW if they weren't doing this (because of the skele farming), the number of additional ecto pumped into the game because of this challenge mission must be minimal, even negligible. Certainly nothing to cry this hard about.

Also: came here to post Shayne's record, beaten by Shayne. Thought you said you were sick of this mission =P Btw, how do points translate to min:sec?

[edit]Just saw a group spamming "LFG more noobs (we teach the Shayne Hawks way)". Brilliant!

[edit2]Just saw that you saw it.

[edit3]OP answered question about the points conversion, herp derp.

Mireles · Oct 24, 2011, 10:34 PM // 22:34

I was under the impression that the ecto drop was more significant with people reporting it so fast... just got home to do the mission... its awesome great job... guide helped, ty.

Ewon · Oct 24, 2011, 11:29 PM // 23:29

I'm guessing you were able to master your technique on the test server to make this guide (and by the looks of it, dominate the high score chart).

Nice job on the write-up, very informative. I'm struggling with my heroes being spiked down atm but I was able to score atleast 1 decent time in 3 runes.

Any tips on handling the mass aoe damage when rushing a boss?

Shayne Hawke · Oct 24, 2011, 11:33 PM // 23:33

How to Deal with Boss AoE

1. Kill boss.
2. Run.

Essence Snow · Oct 25, 2011, 02:01 AM // 02:01

Quote:

The score counter begins at 1800. It drops by one point for each second that passes.

Didn't take long for someone to figure it out.....lol...got it down to 10 seconds!