Guild Wars: A Journey

The Early Months

Chapter 3: The Wonders of Tyria (July 10th, 2005 to August 10th, 2005)

A Time to Farm

    Now that I had beaten the game twice I decided to branch out and explore some of the greater nuances of the game. I had more characters to try, skills to use, areas to explore, and armors to collect! One of the priorities on my list was to get a set of 15K armor for my Monk. My Elementalist had to spend two days doing mind numbing farming of Scoundrel's Rise to raise enough money for her armor. That just wouldn't cut it this time. I needed to farm a more difficult area and raise money for not only armor, but anything else I may want to buy for my characters. I decided to change my Elementalist's secondary to monk so that I could better keep myself alive while killing multiple enemies.

    I forget now how many areas I tried but I eventually attempted to kill the skales in the Black Curtain. There were a fair number of these melee necromancers out there for me to kill over and over. Apart from their Putrid Explosion they did not do enough damage to really threaten my Elementalist. I loaded her up on some area of effects skills as well as Flare to finish individuals off. Back in the good old days not a single enemy would run away from these spells. These skales simply crowded around my Elementalist and proceeded to die very quickly to her Meteor Showers and various other spells. While the items she picked up made her a fair profit, the higher gold coin drops here were what made it far better than farming Scoundrel's Rise.

    I chose to get my Monk the 15K Wanderers set because I had been using the regular Wanderers on her throughout the game. I did not like the overabundance of tattoos on the arms and legs of the armor so I decided to just skip them and get the chest and legging pieces. That meant I only needed 30K total for the set and with the money I made playing through the game with my Monk it only took me a couple of days of light to moderate farming to earn the 30K I needed.

    Around mid-July I discovered another form of farming that was popular to do, chest running. Back then all of the chests were unlocked and all you had to do was run over to them and open them up for a few random (mostly lousy) items. There was one chest in particular that I liked and that was the one outside Marhan's Grotto. It was only a short run from the town which made it a very attractive run for someone as lazy as I. Chest running wasn't the best form of making money, but it certainly was a lazy way to make a quick buck. There was only problem with this particular chest though. It was guarded by a giant mob of Ice Imps. Sometimes the mob was far enough away that you could grab the items and map out before aggroing them. But most of the time the chest was swarmed by upwards of twenty of those nasty creatures.

    The first build I came up with used Mending and Mark of Protection to keep me alive just long enough to grab the items and map out. The problem with this build was that the imps could still use a slow hex on me and if there were too many imps too close to the chest I would not be able to reach it before dying. Therefore the build would only work maybe fifty percent of the time causing a lot of wasted time. Eventually over the coming weeks I captured more elite skills and continued to refine the chest running build until I came up with the build on the right which allowed me to run through any number of Ice Imps with the aid of Spell Breaker. Whenever I was bored I would hop on my Monk and periodically do a few chest runs for some easy money. This lasted until the Sorrow's Furnace update introduced keys into the game, putting an end to the free and easy chest runs.

    On August 10th, 2005 my Elementalist finally entered the age of tengu farming. Runes were quite expensive back in the day with some runes such as Superior Vigor and Superior Absorption topping out at 100K a piece during their peak. Many other runes also provided a tidy profit to those lucky enough to find them. Unfortunately I never seemed to find any useful ones. That was until I discovered tengu farming! It turns out that just outside of Riverside Province there were several mobs that consisted of nothing but Caromi Tengu Elites. Better still, the tengu dropped a lot of purple and gold armors which corresponded to a lot of major and superior runes. My Elementalist already learned the joys of farming melee-only monsters but these tengu packed more of a punch than the skales.

    However, with the capping of Mist Form, the tengu's strength was rendered meaningless. My Elementalist would run out there and gather up upwards of 15 tengu at a time and use area of effect spells to kill them all in one fell swoop. This began earning me a lot more money than I had ever had before. I was now able to buy more sets of 15K armor just on a whim. The picture shows my Elementalist in her new 15K earth set that she had recently bought. Other characters which I will get to later also have received sets of 15K armor. I almost felt like I could buy anything. Alas, tengu farming was eventually shut down when spell casting tengu were introduced into the melee mobs to prevent them from being farmed.

New Characters

    I did a lot more than just farm during the months before Sorrow's Furnace. Back on July 10th I created a Warrior. I barely advanced him over the next couple of weeks but I finally got him to Beacon's Perch. The town was always full of W/Mos advertising runs to Droknar's Forge for 3K a head. I had never even seen a run before but from what I understood it was fairly difficult and took some time to perfect. I don't have any problems with people getting ran except for if they are new to the game. When a new person skips most of the game they are libel to screw up parties in later areas of the game because of their lack of experience. Then they ask questions that were answered many times along the way during the game that they missed because they chose not to play it. New players being ran to Droknar's just makes PUGs even worse than they already were. Fortunately though, I fell into the already-beat-the-game category. While getting max armor for early areas of the game was enticing, I really just wanted to see what a run looked like. It took some time but I finally found someone to run me for free (I had no intention of spending money for a run).

    After buying max armor from Droknars, my Warrior had no problems beating mission after mission with henchmen. He had already done all of the Ascalon and northern shiverpeak missions so he continued on with Kryta. I decided to have him take the shortcut to Sanctum Cay after Divinity Coast because I did not care much for the Maguuma Jungle. Once again I did Sanctum Cay with a party of 8 henchmen from Temple of the Ages. The Crystal Desert was fairly easy to complete except that I needed a PUG again for Thirsty River. That monk mob was still too much for me. I forget exactly how far into the game my Warrior made it until I eventually deleted him on August 5th. I had created a Warrior because a lot of people were using them to farm or run but I just could not get excited about playing a melee class. I just enjoy spell casters too much.

    For my fourth character slot I created a Ranger. I had this crazy vision in my mind of a Ranger/Necromancer that was able to solo the entire game by using an army of minions along with a pet. After running around Old Ascalon alone with the pet and minions for support, I quickly realized that this combination would not allow me to solo the game, or even a small portion of it. I ended up deleting the Ranger after only two days.

    To replace the Ranger I created a Necromancer. I ended up turning her into a blood/smiting spell caster. She solo'd the Great Northern Wall for kicks and then set out to do the other missions with henchmen. I picked and chose which ones I felt like doing. I did some missions and skipped others. I managed to solo most of the Diessa Lowlands and reach the courthouse with 3 dead henchmen. She had an uneventful trip through the shiverpeaks and Kryta. She made it as far as the Maguuma Jungle before I lost interest in playing her. She only lasted 9 days.

Pre-Searing Revisited

    After deleting my Necromancer I decided to create a Mesmer using the same name. I liked the name I chose and didn't want to lose it to anyone. Missing the innocent days of pre-searing, I decided to stick around with this Mesmer and see if I could find anything interesting there that I had missed before. It turns out one of the things that I had missed was the Tapestry Shred. I gave Gwen all of her favorite items until she gave me the shred. Over two years later I still have the shred in my storage (and I can finally put it to use). I went all over pre-searing and explored probably every inch of the map and did every quest I could find. It was interesting to meet a lot of the NPCs that you come to know in post-searing Ascalon.

    I also did a lot of idling in Ascalon City and talked with people about this and that. One day some random person whispers me. He introduced himself and starts talking about events as if he actually lived in Ascalon. I quickly realized that this was an actual Role Player. Imagine stumbling across a Role Player in a role playing game! I was bored at the time so I decided to play along. We talked for a little while before agreeing to leave the city and talk outside without the prying eyes of the masses. I made up some random story about the origins of my Mesmer and he went on about the origins of his. Not much but talking took place for about 30 minutes before calling it a night. We were in contact a few more times continuing whatever story we were working on where we left off.

    We stopped role playing after a few days but I remembered one of the made up stories I gave was of going over the wall and battling Charr. It may have been made up, but that was something I could actually do. All of my past experience of going over the wall was centered around that one quest there. I never really tried to clear the Northlands out before. So after asking around in town I finally found a partner to go over the wall with. He was some random level 9 W/N and I was still at level 6 as a Me/N. It was a lot of work but we ended up clearing the entire zone except for the altar. I was able to use my spells from behind walls and other obstacles to kill a lot of Charr without putting myself in danger. We made a good team. This going over the wall thing was pretty fun!

    My Mesmer began to spend the majority of her time going over the wall. On occasion I would find someone just to help me open the gate while I cleared much of the level alone. When I reached level 9 I found a monk to team up with. We went over the wall and proceeded to take out the Charr quite effectively. Our expedition went so well we decided to try to take out the bosses around the altar. It took probably 30 minutes of pulling, hit and run attacks, and dying, but we finally managed to clear the altar! We had successfully averted the searing. Game over!

    I made many more trips over the wall and cleared out the altar area a couple more times with different people. I eventually reached level 11 I believe before I started to tire of the place. I wanted to get back to playing the regular game. After a week of pre-searing I finally sent the Mesmer to post-searing to drop off whatever materials and dyes I had collected. In a cruel twist of fate, apparently the Charr had other altars past those annoying closed doors in the Northlands that you could never pass. The searing went on as scheduled and my Mesmer ended up in the ruins of Ascalon. Oh well! I soon deleted the character as I never really got into playing a Mesmer. But it was an interesting week.