Survivor-track character wants to do missions

How do I know ahead of time that my Survivor-track character is reasonably prepared to handle each next mission?

Are there recommended gear/character levels, stats, etc, for each mission?

Once I complete a mission, should I 'farm' it several times before attempting the next mission?

I'll admit that I'm a former WoW player where the game simply denies me entrance into instances when I am too low or under-geared.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.

Check this article on the wiki for detailed information on the title http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Survivor

You should play through the game at least a few times before trying to take a survivor through missions, to be honest.

I agree. There are many missions that can easily result in death if you don't know what to expect and aren't prepared for it, even some of the beginning area missions can be deadly for a new player.

Like already said, don't put the cart before the horse. There are guides to survivor, but reading the guides alone will not prepare you properly. I tried 3 times with I was fairly new to GW and was sorely disappointed. Only when I tried it after beating the campaigns again was I able to manage to get it.

That being said, I'm sure you're going to try it anyways So from personal experience, always be prepared to map out at a moments notice if things get iffy. I did this by having my guild window open at all times and clicked it if the battle was not going my way. Also, use sweets like candy apples to help you along the way.

How successful you will be with a Survivor character depends on who is making up your party. Do you belong to a guild and can get help from people who won't think it's funny to get you killed? Do you have well-equipped heroes, especially monks, to keep you alive until you can map out when things go wrong? With either of those scenarios, you would have a good shot at making it. As a newbie, your chances are much closer to zero.

If you have to ask here, you're not prepared for survivor.

Get a few alt characters through the game before starting on a survivor.

I agree, play through the game. Or, imo, you could do a mini cheat, get a run to La, go to EotN and do punchout to 20, buy max armor, rune it, fix up heroes, then do missions..... It'd be safer, kinda.

Hi

I agree play through the game a couple of times first.

On a personal note i think it also depends on what area you start in, personally Phrophicies was the easiest for me, I went through the whole campaign with just Henchies and was only killed once during the 25 missions

Unfortuantly that was on the last mission Hell's Precipice, this was long before survivor appeared, so I wasnt aiming not to get killed, there were lots of touch and go moments though and I nearly lost on the Ascension the first time. Also the whole of the Ring of Fire can be disasterous for a first time survivor, beware the Crystal Desert aswell as you have to get past the Hydras.

As mentioned above play through the campaigns first to get a feel for them. Nowadays probably start in Nightfall to get the heroes, take your time, watch your pulls and aggro range, survivor playing the game takes patience and sometimes hair pulling moments, I currently have 4 survivors, 2 from playing the game, 1 from the old HFFF Farm and 1 from the Boxing in EOTN, the last 2 mean nothing for a survivor, the first 2 were an achievement.


Cheers

Druid

You prepare for survivor by playing through the campaigns with other characters first. Before I tried my first survivor, I completed all campaigns with 3 characters, including many missions in hard mode and vanquishing many areas.

With that knowledge, it was very easy to do the survivor. I didn't plan it, it simply happened. Currently, I'm doing it for the 3rd character, and I'm not preparing at all. I simply play through it all. It's only knowledge how the missions and areas are designed to know the right tactics. Hell, I even vanquished a few Echowald and Jade Sea areas with my 3rd out of boredom and did the Bogroot Growths dungeon in hard mode.

My core decisions/strategies for playing as survivor:

- play a ranged character
- get heroes as early as possible and use them.
- only play alone with h/h. Never with PUGs. (Bogroot was an exception. It was my guild and a very good group setup)
- upgrade yourself and every hero you use with the most appropriate runes and equipment. Each hero I use has 5 insignia and 5 runes and an upgraded weapon. Cost doesn't matter. Functionality matters.
- have consumables ready in case of problems. Or abort and start all over and redesign the team before the situation gets worse.
- sacrifice your heroes if in trouble. Put the group flag into the middle of the enemy mob, run away and resurrect them afterwards. Heroes don't do survivor.

I agree.

Also if you don't have your Heros Elite skills yet I recommend unlocking them with Bathazar Points. Until you get the hang of most of the missions you really should run with a Protection Hero.

So far, so good, at level 10. I got two characters to 8 and no deaths (War and Necro), but feel safer with this Mesmer at 10. Lots of close calls, but hopefully I'll stay lucky.

I agree with all of this. I twinked my mesmer to LS with Snow Wurms, but for my other characters, I wanted to earn the title legitimately. Except for gifting each of them with about 200k experience from skeletons over Halloween, I've done just that, pretty much following this plan. My dervish either did spirit spam or a Balthazar spear build, my assassin is doing crit-barrage, and my warrior ran /R until ascension, then switched to a Defy Pain spear build. High health, high armor, nothing will want to touch you. Just make sure your heroes are outfitted to take the heat.

It took me about 1 Hour to get to survivor title on my ele during Halloween Event. I did the repeatable Cap Skele quest and farmed around 200 capped skeles in turned in for the reward, the rest I did it by turning the Kath Hammer

If I were you, I'd go to the Kath Hammer path, you need about 160 Hammers(assuming you are level 10), get a friend or a player to run you to Cathacombs of Kath entrance, zone out to Sacnoth Valley, talk to the guy and turn in the reward. The only problem with this is that the hammers altogether cost a bit expensive, but after turning in the reward, you are basically spending 80k to Max to survivor title, not as bad as taking a riskier route of doing the brawl tourney in HM(with chance of disconnects), and spending money for LB scrolls

Just make sure that you create a NF char, and get the max armor from Docks(ferries) and go all out surivor insigs, sup vigor, and get a ferry to LA.

If you only want the first tier of that track, which means reaching 20 without deaths, maybe you could manage to do it even if you are unexperienced, but it's a big "maybe".

Instead, if you want to max it out (1.337.500 XP without dying), and, furthermore, the "regular way", which means without farming kilroy or kathandrax or whatever else, then you should definitely be a lot more experienced to hope to reach that goal.

I've noticed that i've been able to max that title while playing with the classes i was more experienced with. When you are able to use your character to do a lot of damage (which means you have already seen which builds are strong with that class and which aren't) and to understand when the battle is going to turn bad, then you can hope to reach rank 3 just playing the game. If you aren't so much experienced, there will be a lot of situations in which you will run the risk of dying, and in the long run, the chance of you actually dying will be very high, almost certain.


If you don't want to wait and build up some experience, i suggest you to farm Kilroy's dungeon with scrolls. Follow the wiki guide and remember not to play when your ping gets high.

If you are only going for survivor for the sake of survivor follow the advice of above posters and play the game through a couple times for practice.

If you want to go up the kobd title track and need survivor farm it in kilroys or worms then play through getting all the protector etc titles.

My advice is just to wait until you hit R3 Survivor. ;[

I've always found some dumbass way to kill my Survivors because I wanted to try to get them through certain missions. If it's not lag, it's my own stupidity for forgetting something in a mission (siege, not wearing Infused armor, etc).

Really, just grind the R3 and then do things. :/ You'll hate yourself for getting so close and then screwing up.