Curse

Englishkid · Apr 01, 2006, 01:46 PM // 13:46

It's taken nearly a year, but we have finally discovered what the Tapestry Shred is for! It's part of an incredibly well-hidden quest which provides access to a totally new area of the game called the Netherworld. However, unless you have the correct items in your possession, you'll never find it or be able to activate it, which probably explains why it has taken so long to figure it out. Someone who recognized my ID in-game whispered me with some of the key details, and then I enlisted several friends and guildmates to help get the necessary items and verify it. To my knowledge, this is the very first official report of it, so Guild Wars OGaming is definitely getting a major scoop with this article. Before setting out, make sure you've read this entire guide in its entirety, especially all of the necessary items. If you don't, you'll likely wind up wasting a trip.

Getting Started
To initiate the first part of the quest, you will need to bring these three items:

* Tapestry Shred (from Gwen in pre-searing)
* Gwen's Broken Flute (found near Sardelac Sanitarium)
* Tattered Girl's Cape (found north of Sanctum Cay)

Next, your country must NOT have favor. If it does, you can't properly start this quest.

If you don't have favor, begin by travelling to Majesty's Rest. Fight your way past the undead until you are close to the boss, Rotscale. Keep an eye out for roving patrols of undead, and beware of groups of Grasping Ghouls hiding just below the surface. Before fighting Rotscale and the 4 nearby bone dragons, every player (besides henchmen) MUST equip the Broken Flute in their off-hand. If you don't do this, the first part of the quest will not activate and you'll have to start over. Once you and your teammates have equipped broken flutes, engage and kill Rotscale and the bone dragons. Then move up near the doorway.

Wait for Favor
The next part may take a while. You must now wait until your country regains favor. However, you can't just sit there doing nothing. There appears to be some code that checks roughly every 60 seconds and cancels the quest trigger if your characters are not active. Luckily, there's an easy way around this - use a repeating emote like /dance. Depending on how quickly your country regains favor, this may take quite a while. In the meantime, open your inventory window, keep dancing and wait.

Summoning Gwen - Timing is key
The moment your country regains favor, you need to act very quickly. All players must drop their Tapestry Shred & Tattered Girls Cape on the ground near the doorway immediately after gaining favor. If you do it quickly enough, those items will vanish and you will see the Spirit of Gwen rise from the ground at that location. If that doesn't happen, it means someone was too slow, and unfortunately, you'll have to repeat everything from the very beginning after your country has once again lost favor. It may take you several tries before you figure out the proper timing. Bringing more henchmen can help reduce the human error factor.

Memories of Gwen
Once you've summoned the Spirit of Gwen, click on her to activate her quest "Memories of Gwen" and then she will begin speaking a series of 10 lines:

"That night Ascalon was destroyed, Aiden found me, and healed me with aloe roots."
"Many charr were coming. Aiden sounded his new horn to alert the nearby soldiers."
"I fled toward the gates, dropping all of my red flowers."
"Suddenly I was struck down by something hard, made of iron"
"As my spirit floated away, I envisioned a book with the tales of Unseen Gods."

"Within the book was a prophecy about a girl with a flute."
"It was an ancient tale copied from a long lost tablet of Orr."
"When I was younger, I thought they meant Ore."
"But now my mind's eye sees clearly."
"I am the one foretold, the vengeful girl in the cape."

Each of Gwen's lines corresponds to a specific item you need to have in your inventory. Furthermore, these 10 items must reside in that specific order in one of your two 10-slot bags. Obtaining these items will probably require enlisting the help of lower-level characters that have not completed the related quests or still have access to these items. To obtain some of these quest items, you must activate various quests, but then not fully complete them. These are the 10 items you need in the specific the order they must be in your bag (row 1, row 2):

* Aloe Root (from Unnatural Growths quest in Pre-Searing)
* Purified Hunter's Horn (from the Hunter's Horn quest in Pre-Searing)
* Red Iris Flower (found randomly in Pre-Searing)
* Iron Ingot (common crafting material)
* Litanies of the Unseen (from The False Gods quest in Temple of the Ages)

* Flute (purchased in Pre-searing)
* Orrian Tablet Shard (from the Orrian Expedition quest given by Magi Malaquire n Lion's Arch)
* Ore Ingot (from Gathering Resources quest in Sorrow's Furnace)
* Lilac Eye (from the Eye for Profit quest in Druid's Overlook)
* Small Girls Cape (purchased in pre-searing)

Unless you have those 10 items in the correct order in your bag, Gwen will continue to repeat her lines. Every player in the party must have the items in the proper order. Once every player has the items in the correct order, you'll now see a new green exclamation. Talking to the Spirit of Gwen will complete the quest which then activates the secret portal where the door normally is. The portal leads to a hidden area called the Netherworld.

The Netherworld
Once you've gone thru the portal, you're in for a major treat. The Netherworld is huge explore area which somewhat resembles the Underworld, The Catacombs or Ring of Fire at various points. The area appears to be populated by the ghosts of every single boss in the game except for Glint, the Undead Prince, or any of the newer bosses like GF/SF Dwarves, Darknesses or The Queen. All the undead bosses keep their original name, but all other bosses get renamed to "Ghost of XXXX" or "Spirit of XXXX". Their stats seem otherwise unchanged. Fighting in the Netherworld is extremely challenging due to the shear density of the foes. However, the drops are totally amazing. Every enemy you kill will drop either a gold item, ectoplasm, vial of black dye or a gold pile worth about 5000 gold!

The Spirit of Gwen is also here and will aid you as an NPC. She wears her cloak and has her flute, and she has some incredibly powerful fire spells. One of these is a special fire spell called "Wrath of Gwen". It deals massive AoE fire damage, and causes crippling and a few seconds of burning. Best of all, it does not trigger the AoE scattering effect on the enemy AI. In other words, it's the ultimate fire skill.

There are well over 100 bosses total, but you can plow thru most of the lower level ones fairly quickly. The areas with the higher level Mursaat and Jade bosses are pretty tough, as are the ones with the Titan bosses. The final area has a nasty battle against The Lich, Rotscale and several other undead bosses. Killing the last set of monsters triggers a cutscene that shows Gwen taking great glee in polishing off The Lich. She says, "That was fun. Let's do it again!" You are immediately transported back to the area where you summoned the Spirit of Gwen. As long as you have favor, you can immediately re-enter the portal to do it over and over.

With Gwen's help, it only takes about 45 minutes to totally clear this new area. From a typical Netherworld trip, each player will typically get about 5-7 gold items, 5-7 ectos, 5-7 black dye and about 30K gold. After a few trips, your bags will be filled. Eventually, you'll either lose favor or decide you just have to make a trip back to town to unload the amazing loot you've found.

If you are having any trouble reaching Netherworld, I would strongly advise you to doublecheck that every party member has the 10 necessary items in their bag in the correct order as listed above. I can't emphasize enough how extremely important that order really is! Heres the map

And credit goes to the original writer kalendraf of the Ogaming fourms
http://guildwars.ogaming.com/forum/i...pic=23851&st=0

Vhayr · Apr 01, 2006, 01:49 PM // 13:49

Haha

.

Matsumi · Apr 01, 2006, 01:50 PM // 13:50

ahaha, I like the IWAY ad, too funny. Nice work

addictedtogw · Apr 01, 2006, 01:52 PM // 13:52

how did u find this btw? just luckily had all the items in ur bag, and ur groups bags?

penguo · Apr 01, 2006, 01:53 PM // 13:53

lol, april fools........

Kakumei · Apr 01, 2006, 01:54 PM // 13:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by addictedtogw

how did u find this btw? just luckily had all the items in ur bag, and ur groups bags?

Well, it -has- been a year. People spend all their time looking for this kind of thing. Only a matter of time before it slips out...

Congrats for this find. Now I have to get some friends together and try it.

penguo · Apr 01, 2006, 01:57 PM // 13:57

Well it seems mighty odd to me it is april fools day.... so for now i think it is a joke

Aera · Apr 01, 2006, 01:57 PM // 13:57

april fools

:/

Eric Deathbane · Apr 01, 2006, 01:58 PM // 13:58

And how excactly did you figure this out?

penguo · Apr 01, 2006, 01:58 PM // 13:58

lol don't fall for it and waste your time

Neriandal Freit · Apr 01, 2006, 02:00 PM // 14:00

*Claps*

Well done, well done!

Now show us pictures and proove it on April First!

Dj Tano · Apr 01, 2006, 02:01 PM // 14:01

WICKED! But wait, lets say i go to the netherworld, get my bags full and go to town to unload, do i have to do everything over again to be able to enter the netherworld again?

*edit* it could be an april joke, but wht are the flute, the broken flute, the strange cape, the found things all for then?

Balance · Apr 01, 2006, 02:01 PM // 14:01

April Fools!

You spent too much time on this.

Lex Talionis · Apr 01, 2006, 02:01 PM // 14:01

April Fools!!!!!!

Mister Muhkuh · Apr 01, 2006, 02:02 PM // 14:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by penguo

lol, april fools........

dito

but its really nice m8

i bet some people logged in game as fast as they could and got all their friends and guildies together to get there as fast as possible :P

Znuggle · Apr 01, 2006, 02:02 PM // 14:02

A place where it's impossible to take screenshots, gg :P Nice joke.

Englishkid · Apr 01, 2006, 02:04 PM // 14:04

I did forget tolink it to the original but it caught quite a lot of people out

Replicant · Apr 01, 2006, 02:05 PM // 14:05

hah nice april fool's joke, would be nice if this place truely existed... even if it did it probably would've only been highly top secret between the guild and guildmates.

If it truely does exist some screenshots would be nice lol.

Ogg · Apr 01, 2006, 02:06 PM // 14:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Englishkid

I did forget tolink it to the original but it caught quite a lot of people out

And half of them now think it's written by you. :/

Give credit where it's due.

Kakumei · Apr 01, 2006, 02:08 PM // 14:08

No One Here Has Any Sense Of Playing Along