Eternal grove hard + masters with h/h

Hi,

I have just completed The Eternal Grove with myself and heroes/henchies. There are plenty of guides as to how to complete this with full teams or with 2 players plus heroes, however I havn't come across one for the sole player so here it is. If this has been done before plus remove.

Firstly, it is easier to do this with at least 2 people with good heroes, but seeing as I quit GW for over a year and just came back, none of the people i used to play with are around anymore, hence I ended up trying it on my own.

I played as a ranger/derv with the following skills:
Wounding Strike
Mystic Sweep
Chilling Victory
Whirling Defence
Throw Dirt
Aura Of Holy Might
Asura Scan
Res Signet
*Note - I only have Rank 5 in asura, but it was sufficient - Throw dirt was mainly for afflicted warriors who were at one of the tree's and the warrior boss, as I had no curses necro for enfeeble/reckless/ss etc

Heroes were two minion masters with jagged bones, animate minions, death nova, aegis, spirit bond, prot spirit, sig of lost souls and res sig
Other hero was necro/rit sabway build, with recuperation put in - if you dont know it its -
[Build;OAhiYwhMZtV9INN5MMNOlAKAAA]

Henchies were Devona (for 'charge'!), Cynn, Erys Vasburg and Redemptor Karl.
Cynn was handy for aoe fire when minions and juggernauts were blocking gates.
Vasburg was brought due to his insane interupt speed, to stop monks using ROJ to decimate minions, empathy on warriors/rangers etc
Karl for aegis chain/spirit bond/life sheath/draw
I used slices of pumpkin pie to speed up my attack speed.

Ok to the mission I will do this step by step

1. At start all team heads out west and takes down seige turtle and warriors and rangers - Speed is the key here, call targets and kill quick
2. Once they are dead and mm's have summoned some minions flag the three heroes to the front of northern tree and space them apart
3. You and your henchies head south and quickly despatch of seige turtle, you can kill the warriors first, but afterwards kill the turtle and run back to the northern tree -Devona's 'Charge!' is very handy here, im sure there are some other group speed boosts available now in PVE but I didnt bother to look
4. Your heroes should have the couple of rangers who come almost dead, but more importantly the tree singers are still alive
5. Run out through the northern gate and kill the seige turtle on the other side - Kill the turtle first and dont worry about the rangers/warriors and head back to the south post again and kill the ele's that come quickly, as they target the singers straight away.
6. The pattern for the Seige turtles in West, South, North, South, North and then west. Kill them first and run back to other side. Minions have a tendancy to mindlessly attack so let them keep the other ranger/warriors with the seige turtles busy while you run back.
7. Be careful of the lone warrior after the 3rd seige turtle, if you have gone out to far he likes to sneak in behind you and he will kill a singer quickly if u dont get to him - This is where throw dirt came in handy as well.
8. The last seige turtle comes from the west so kill the rangers first so your mm get a few more minions and after you kill the turtle you have the cut scene.
9. Skip the cut scene quickly and talk to the three juggernauts at each tree and put two of them on the south side, with one of your hero mm's and your necro/rit healer. I flagged them all well in from the gate, as once the enemies approach they will run mindlessly out of the gate and get killed straight away.
10. You and your hero mm and the henchies + 1 juggernaut take the north gate, again staying well inside of the gate. Get your necro healer to throw up recupuration and life around the middle so all team gets benefit from their effects.
11. As I didnt kill many of the luxons with the seige turtles they come inside to help you and for some reason the enemies like to target them first (and their crab pets!) so this also helps.
12. The juggernauts are very slow to move so place them a little ahead of where you have your teams flagged so they are the first to aggro, followed by minions.
13. The afflicted will usually attack you or you heroes first and leave the tree singers, but keep an eye for a warrior attacking them, most notably the west tree.
14. The only difficult wave is the third one with the warrior boss as he hits hard - He comes to the south gate and his party is larger than the northern one so you can bring all your party over to take him down first - Again blind helps here plus the aegis chain - Take down eles next, then monks/mesmers and you should be fine.
15. Just as the final wave with bosses comes to the northern gate, two warriors come up from the south - Flag your team to stay at the northern gate (bring necro healer if necessary) and go kill the warriors - With throw dirt and wd i killed them quick, for other professions just bring a damage dealer if you are a healer.
16. By the time the final wave comes all your team can head for northern gate and have your team target the monk and rit boss first, while you blind the sin boss - He uses shadow form so minions with death nova work nice.
17. And that should be that!

It took me a few attempts to get masters as I kept missing a luxon warrior or ele heading straight for the tree singers.
Preparation is the key, know where you have to be and flag heroes/hench as appropriate.
I will be happy to help anyone as well, as I actually like this mission as for once it requires a little bit of thought and planning.
Any questions leave here or pm me - IGN Ghost Moonspell

This is really awsome mate, I have for long only missed masters on Eternal Grove as the last mission to complete with perfection in all of guild wars, and i've failed a couple of times.
I had to do 3 tries but I followed your guide exactly and nailed the masters pretty easy.
Only change is that I placed all of the 3 juggernauts together and summoned a golem with a summoning stone to assist me on the north gate.
Worked like a charm, thansk for the guide.

/claps

Yeah,back on my HM mission runner thread i did had a bad time going through Eternal Groove with H/H,defently had to use 2 MMs to hold all the dmg.

Well done,especially with the current buff on RoJ

OK, some folks insist on doing things the 'hard way' and the Eternal Grove is one of those places where the adage "Don't bother running, you'll only die tired!" was never more true!

A couple of points to note about the Luxon attack...

1. Siege Turtles are lightweight hitters.

2. The Siege Turtle attack platforms are out of range for Luxon Rangers to hit Tree Singers.

Bearing this in mind, and remembering that keeping the Tree Singers alive during the Luxon wave is the hardest part, let's go play, camp the Tree Singer!

Use 3 Necro/Rit Heroes + the four henchies above. If you have ConSets save them for the Afflicted.

1 Necro/Rit with Recuperation & Life I used Icy Veins as the elite the other two as MMs with Shadowsong (blindness is your friend).

Plonk the Recuperation Necro right in the middle of the Grove. Make sure you set him to 'avoid combat' and remember that you might have to micro manage Recuperation.

Take everyone else and camp the Western Tree for the 1st group of Luxon Warriors. Do not, I repeat, do not go charging off to intercept them.. it'll only end in tears and a /resign.

Kill them.

Now flag each of your MMs to the Northern & Southern Trees, just on the hills between the trees and the gates.

Wait.

Kill every Luxon that comes to the grove - don't worry about the siege turtles, the healing from Recuperation and Life will keep the Tree Singers all alive even from taking hits from 2 turtles.

Wait until all Luxons (6 waves) have charged the hill.

Now, go North or South, take the local MM and kill the 2 siege turtles and their Ranger pals. Once done go kill the ones on the opposite side leaving the West group til last.

Kill the West turtles to get the cut scene - plain sailing from here on in.

Running about here and there almost guarantees repeated frustrated attempts at keeping the Tree Singers alive. Simply know your enemy and wait.

Quote: Originally Posted by Notorious Bob

OK, some folks insist on doing things the 'hard way' and the Eternal Grove is one of those places where the adage "Don't bother running, you'll only die tired!" was never more true!

A couple of points to note about the Luxon attack...

Thanks... I got masters my first attempt with this and completed the Canthan Guardian title. And then I tried to show a dervish... replaced devona with him, we tried three times and we kept losing a tree singer on the Northern Tree.

Quote: Originally Posted by lakatz

Thanks... I got masters my first attempt with this and completed the Canthan Guardian title. And then I tried to show a dervish... replaced devona with him, we tried three times and we kept losing a tree singer on the Northern Tree. The Northern tree does seem more susceptible to a Luxon Warrior running past and lumping the blazes out of a tree singer.

Shadowsong is your friend... even if you sometimes have to micro-manage it. Even a few seconds blindness can buy you enough time to get up close and personal with that pesky warrior. It's almost a good option to take a Ranger secondary just to be able to use Throw Dirt.

The other trick is not to position the MM's to far up the hill. If you push them to close to the trees then they're unable to summon minions from corpses that fall at the gates and generally this is where all the luxon's save the warriors will be taken out.

Glad you've had success... see, all that running about like a mad thing isn't necessary.

NICE! I mastered all but this one HM, didn't even try it for almost 6 months.

Was gunna 6 hero it (2 acounts), but did h/h instead. First try was cake - thought I had it, but 11/12 somehow >.<

Second try just as easy, but 12/12 =D

Quote: Originally Posted by Notorious Bob

OK, some folks insist on doing things the 'hard way' and the Eternal Grove is one of those places where the adage "Don't bother running, you'll only die tired!" was never more true! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Following your strategy made Eternal Grove HM so incredibly easy, I had to keep checking the upper left corner of my screen to make sure I had remembered to set HM. No more frantic running around and frantic reflagging of H&H between gates. I did pop a conset after the cutscene, but I could probably have gotten by without it.

I have tried Notorious Bob's method with great success for the luxon attack part. But when afflicted arrive, I keep getting teared appart. How would you suggest splitting the teams? Would using a conset do a huge difference?

Some good comments above.

In my case, I have H/H Eternal Grove in HM multiple times using a slightly different configuration.

LEFT SIDE

(1) Human Damage Dealer (I have used multiple options, but found a spirit spammer to be the easiest)
(2) MM #1 (OAZEQTxWm5sUrC4B0QnAZw0OFA)
(3) ZB Prot Healer (OwYT0mHD5BZcprHrk76mGq9OBA)

RIGHT SIDE

(4) MM #2 (OANDUspNSGNLVVBoB4BJgLC6EA)
(5) Cynn [Mage Henchman]
(6) Sheena [Vile Henchman]
(7) Lukas [Guardian Henchman]
(8) Redemtor Karl [Protection Henchman]

SUMMARY OF TACTICS

Put hench and MM#2 at the north gate (at the top of the stairs, just inside the gate). Remaining characters and juggernauts to the south gate. Manually move groups to turtles as needed, then pull em back to the gates. After the 1st cinematic the first big challenge is the war boss. Pull the entire team to south gate for war boss, then fight in the middle with the whole team for all other mobs before the final assault. Re-set MM#2 and hench to north gate, moving over to help them if needed. After killing the 2 runners on the south side from the final group, move entire team to north gate for final battle against sin and rit bosses.

Although I have never used cons when doing this mission, they certainly won't hurt if you want to use them.

Wow that was really detailed I'll try that out, thanx a lot to you and notorious bob!

Quote: Originally Posted by scratchdude

I have tried Notorious Bob's method with great success for the luxon attack part. But when afflicted arrive, I keep getting teared appart. How would you suggest splitting the teams? Would using a conset do a huge difference? The afflicted part is easy as long as you follow a couple of basic 'rules'.

1. Camp the Western Tree (at the front) and direct traffic to one side or other as needed (don't split your team).

2. Leave your 3 heroes where they are for the entire mission

3. Make sure your MMs aren't to far up the hills as they need to be able to exploit the corpses that fall at the gates.

4. Call targets

5. Activate the juggernauts (although you don't really need to)

I did this a while ago pretty easily on my rit. Put heroes on right, henchies on left and set up spirits on both sides.
Also did it with my necro with MM build.

I was having problems with the aflicted too, so ive made some changes.

1) Got rid from Devona, since her role was to use charge, which was not needed in the 3x N/Rt strategy and melee henchies usually have lower DPS (they have to run to the enemy, wasting time)

2) Took: Brutus (for icy veins), Jamei (i dont like prot henchies), Erys and Cynn

3) Flagged Hero 1 (builds below) in the middle, near the west tree. micro managed recuperation, casting whenever it was avaiable. This is very important.

4) Pulled the 1st groups of warriors to the middle (one from each gate) and killed them

5) Flagged Hero 2 near the south gate and left 1 juggernaut with him. It is important to leave hero in a short distance from the gate (between gate and tree, but closer to gate), so he can explore the corpses. The Juggernaut must be taken back close to the hero whenever he goes down the gate, or he will hold the luxon far from the hero, leaving corpses too far. Manually casted shadowsong whenever it was avaiable.

6) Same thing with hero 3, but on the other gate and with 2 juggernauts. With that set, my 1st attack was always on the south gate, where there was less protection.

7) After all waves were dead, unflagged all and reflagged hero 1. Kept casting recuperation.

8) With all the other H/H, i killed luxon/turtles in the south, than north, than west.

9) After cut scene, i flagged the hero who had more minions on the road, just between west and north trees, to slow down the mobs comming from north (the strongest groups) while i was dealing with the south mobs and bringing them to the middle. Left 2 juggernauts near him and the other one near the south gate.

10) As soon as it was possible, i was bringing the mobs to the middle, close to the west tree. On the 1st 3 waves (which come together), the biggest problem is the boss, who hits hard, but not a major problem. The other waves are not very hard, you can easily pull them to the middle. The guys comming from north will waste time enough with the minions, juggernauts and NPCs while you pull the south guys to the middle.

11) Last wave is not hard, but requires some attention. Almost all afflicted will come from north, where they will face loads of minions and 2 juggernauts. Those will resist enough time for you to deal with the 2 warriors who will come from south. Dont forget them, or they will kill the guys in south tree.

12) The most important part in the afflicted phase is to keep the fight in the middle, close to the west tree. The flagged hero role is to slow down the north waves while you pull south guys to the middle. Killing casters 1st and fast is recomended, specially the elementalists.

Build for hero 1: N/Rt - 12+3+1 restoration, 12+1 soul reaping
- Recuperation
- Icy Veins
- Life
- Spirit Light
- Mend body and Soul
- Protective Was Kaolai
- Flesh of my Flash
- Signet of Lost Souls

Build for heroes 2 and 3: N/Rt - 10+3+1 death magic, 11+1 soul reaping, 10 communing
- Jagged Bones
- Animate Bone Minions
- Animate Shambling Horror
- Animate Vampiric Horror
- Shadowsong
- Putrid Bile
- Death Nova
- Ressurrection Signet

I was splinter/barrage (R/Rt), which is pretty useful in the afflicted phase. Also had Throw Dirt, which was specially nice to kill the siege turtles and rangers with them.

Remember 1: always manual cast recuperation and shadowsong
Remember 2: skipping cut scene is good to your minions
Remember 3: when juggernauts die, they respawn in the northern tree

Tip: if you are a ranger with a flat/longbow, you can kill the west turtles from the platform using barrage or other skills that add damage. Normal skills do like 1 damage, so they are useless. This is not required, since recuperation will do its job to leave the people alive.

Probably there are better builds, specially for hero 1, but i never play Rits, so i dont know much about them.

Hope it helps.

I have struggled with this mission, both NM and HM... I never thought it was possible to do this mission with a H/H group.

I am a Ranger and I was going to use Slave_scream's build but I didn't feel like getting the Derv skills... so I used the build I've been using for everything... A 100% Rit SS build.

Pain, Bloodsong, Vampirism (R12 Sunspear), Signet of Spirits, Shadowsong, Armor of Unfeeling, Painful Bond, Summon Spirits (R6 Luxon)

Expertise: 8 + 1 + 3 (12)
Communing: 8
Restoration: 10
Channeling: 10

Weapon:

Insightful Communing Staff of Fortitude
Energy + 10
Dark Dmg: 11-22
HCT/HSR Restoration spells 20%
Health + 25
Energy + 4

Armor is all Radiant/Attunement except for Superior Expertise rune.

Heroes:

Olias, Master of Whispers: OANDUspPOL1qAaIgoFrHVVBA
20/20 Death set
Survivor/Vitae with Superior Death, Major Vigor and Bloodstained Insignia

Livia: OAhiYwhMZtV9INN5MMNOlAKAAA
20/20 Restoration set
Survior/Vitae and Rune of Major Vigor


Henchmen: Devona, Redemptor Karl, Erys, Cynn

----------------------------------------------------

So, I pretty much followed Slave's strategy. After the cutscene, I planted Livia in the center of the grove and had her cast Recuperation and Life... for some reason she'll cast Life automatically but you have to manually cast Recuperation which, by the way, totally saps her energy at a 25 energy cost. However, I kept forgetting to make her cast it so she was still good to do some healing and whatnot in the meantime. Recuperation/Life are pretty good at keeping the Tree Singers alive.

I ran to the West first, called targets and killed EVERYTHING. Then I flagged the 3 necros on the north end between the tree and the ledge where the turtle stands. On my first attempt, they were overrun by rangers. IDK why, but they were everywhere. The second attempt was totally fine though (???)

While they were handling that, I took the henchmen to the south end and cleared the turtle group. Casting all my spirits, then using Armor of Unfeeling and then hexing the groups with Painful Bond can be a bit costly with energy but easing up on Painful Bond and just letting the spirits do their thing while your energy recharges is okay. Summon Spirits when you want to move them out of immediate danger or heal them a bit. The turtles will attack them, or you, diverting its attention from the Tree Singers. The spirits can take down a turtle quite nicely.

So, back to the North end to help the henchmen finish off the rangers and the turtle.... then back to the south gate because of that pesky Warrior that tries to sneak in. Once these first few groups are cleared, you can split the 2 groups up and flag henchmen on the south and heroes on the north. This allows you to move back and forth between the 2 gates and use your spirits to deal some good damage on whichever side needs help. There is enough distance between the gates that you can cast 2 sets of spirits without auto-killing them. You just can't use Summon Spirits... But sometimes you just have to...

Once the 2 groups are flagged, start positioning the juggernauts. 2 at south, 1 at north with the minion masters. Occasionally, you'll have to run outside the gate to take out the turtles. I did get killed once at the north side right under the turtle... stupid rangers... I had to wait until the 2 groups had cleared their own targets and then flagged the henchman over to rez me. All went well after that. With Livia posted in the middle, the turtle that comes in from the west is no match. Once everything else is cleared you can take him out. Somehow I ended up with a few rangers leftover at the south end, I think I manually flagged my henchies away after the turtle died.

Cutscene, then reflag the same formation for the afflicted. MM's inside the north gate with 1 juggernaut, henchmen inside the south gate with 2 juggernatus. I was so busy helping out the MM's that I didn't get to the Maaka group in time, but somehow they managed to kill him on their own. I did help clear the monk and elementalists though. They held it together pretty well. After that it was clear sailing. At some point I got sick of tagging the juggernauts around after they died so I just made all 3 follow me. Doing this makes them automatically come to you when they die instead of you having to retrieve them. After Maaka, I pretty much focused on the north end anyway, letting the henchmen handle the south with OCCASIONAL help from me.

The multi-boss group at the end was easy. They held out for a while but that was because I couldn't get a clear shot of their monk so we had a stalemate for a minute or 2. I had to help the henchies take out the couple afflicted at the south end because they got stuck or something, but once they're dead, I brought everyone to the north side and they kicked butt. When the juggernauts died, they'd walk back over in about 10 seconds, so they weren't really missed. Meanwhile, I'm just spamming spirits where I needed them, hexing when energy allowed and calling the priority targets (monks, elementalists and turtles, mostly)

I got Masters in HM without another human player. It sounds complicated, it really does. It was just a matter of covering your bases and watching the minimap and the health bars to gauge which group needed help.

Just watch out for that darn solo warrior that goes after the southern Tree Singer. Sheesh!

Quote: Originally Posted by dhawke20

So, I pretty much followed Slave's strategy. And the moral of this story... read the whole thread then do much less running about

did this earlier in hm for masters.. I'm glad I read this- didn't know you could have the juggers follow

used cons on the last part.. it was pretty easy to take out all the turtles solo as an assassin.. flag the heros and hench right and they can take out the waves without all the drama

did use shadow meld though and played as a crit ranger on assassin.. nice guide =]