Guild Wars: A Journey

Good Times

Chapter 6: New Horizons (January 29th, 2006 to February 14th, 2006)

Spare Time on my Monk

    There were few greater joys for a monk than to visit a late-game mission and just stand there ignoring the hordes of invites that inevitably occur. It was very easy for a monk to be picky as to what group to join, if they feel like joining any group at all. A good monk would never end up in a lousy PUG because they would be able to recognize a bad assortment of players ahead of time. If the group is bound to fail anyways, it is best not to waste time on them. Besides, almost everyone belongs to guilds. They should use them if they are having trouble with the mission. Or join a new guild if their Guild is not helpful.

    On occasion though my monk would feel sorry for a particular group of people and would guide them through a mission, filling any leftover spots with henchmen. Almost all missions in Guild Wars are the same. Pull a group of enemies, kill one at a time, then move on to the next group. Late-game missions are no different.

    Another common task for my monk to be doing was farming for runes or gold. Since I would frequently purchase 15K armor for my characters I needed to keep a lot of money on hand. Most of the time when I farmed any area I would find out the general idea behind how other people are farming the area and then slap together a build and go for it. It often takes a few attempts but before long I was successfully farming the Mountain Trolls outside of Droknars, Desert Griffons, and the Hill Giants of Riverside Province.

    I have a screenshot on February 6th, 2006 that states the age on my monk to be 244 hours and 10 minutes over 7 months and 801 hours total across my account. My monk was chewing up a significant portion of my age and it would not take long before she occupied more time than all of my other characters combined.

    Also on February 6th I managed to join a group of friends and finally complete the new and improved PvE Tombs. As expected though everyone ended up with a Green except me. I had the worst luck obtaining Greens since they were introduced in the Sorrow's Furnace update. My Necromancer would eventually address this problem head on.

Thirsty River

    It took until late January for me to finally start using the final version of my Necromancer that was created last August. I quickly progressed through the game with her and enjoyed the skills her class brought to the table. Once again I decided to rush this character through the game by henching my way past much of the parts I found boring. The game was becoming so easy at this point that I didn't think twice about grabbing henchmen and dashing into the missions and quests. I was confident enough to goof off and enjoy the missions without having to worry about whether I would finish or not. That is, until I reached Thirsty River. I still had never henched Thirsty River before.

    Many of the problems I had henching Thirsty River in the past were the same as I still had. I had trouble killing the enemies quick enough before the two minutes were up. But now I was a much better player and I was confident that I could at the very least grind my way through each mob until I reached the monk boss, which was the main sticking point in the mission. When I was new I never bothered much with interrupts, which made things hard. But now here was my Necromancer, level 16, with only henchies and not enough of her own interrupts to shut down the boss while the priest was killed.

    My first attempt at the mission started off well enough. I went with blood skills and was able to kill well enough. However, I noticed Alesia was having some difficulty keeping everyone healthy at times. It was not enough to doom the mission though. The monk boss though was enough to doom the mission. I wasn't able to overcome all of the healing. The mobs respawned and quickly wiped me out. I looked over my Necromancer skills and the only one I could find that could stop an enemy spell was Mark of Subversion. That one interrupt would not be enough to overcome the healing and I did not want to change my secondary because I felt like I needed Rebirth in case anything went wrong.

    For my second attempt I decided to take a completely different and strange approach. I brought Mark of Subversion and most of my blood skills. But this time, I also brought Life Bond. My thinking was that when I failed to kill the priest in the two minute window (and I expected to fail) I would have Life Bond on my henchies to give Alesia a chance to keep everyone alive while I either ran away or tried to grind the priest to death. I made my way through the first 5 bosses without too much trouble, using Life Bond on occasion to make Alesia's job easier. When it came time for the monk boss, I cleared the mobs and began to focus on the priest while using Mark of Subversion on the boss to slow down the healing. In short, it failed. 

    Rather than give up, I pulled whatever henchmen survived and ran away. I rebirthed the dead ones and tried again. Failure. I ran away and rebirthed and tried again. Failure. And again. Failure. I was mounting a ton of death penalty and I was beginning to feel like I was just wasting my time. I was going to lose anyways. I was so pissed off I felt like quitting and just using a PUG the next day. But I was too stubborn for that. Once again I cleared the mobs and ran in with my henchmen. I kept getting the priest low on life but I just couldn't seem to finish him off before a big heal would come his way making my progress meaningless. I put Life Bond on the squishies and decided to make one final stand, win or lose. The two minutes ran out and all of the enemies respawned again. But then a funny thing happened. In a case of extraordinary luck my relentless grind somehow managed to kill the priest. I was almost in shock but I managed to run out of that death trap before I suffered a party wipe. I went back and rebirthed everyone and FINALLY finished the mission. It took over 38 minutes but my Necromancer can say she was my first character to hench Thirsty River.

Second Best

    After finally overcoming the hurdle of Thirsty River, my Necromancer resumed her quick pace through the game. The acquisition of Spiteful Spirit made my Necromancer even more enjoyable as I found it a valuable skill just about anywhere I went. And of course since I had a brand new shiny elite I needed a brand new set of 15K armor to go with it! I bought her 15K Bonelace so that she could finish the game in style. Anyways, my Necromancer arrived at the vaunted Thunderhead Keep. Thunderhead Keep was another mission that I had never successfully henched before. I decided to try to PUG the mission because I did not feel that I needed the headache of trying to hench this. But after several failing PUGs, I had little choice but to give it a go.

    I decided to use a similar idea that I used for Thirsty River. I was hoping I could get lucky twice. Along with my new Spiteful Spirit, I once again brought Life Bond to ease the load off of my monks. I also brought Well of Blood to further help with the healing. To my amazement, the mission turned out to be pretty easy. Everything leading up to the siege was easy as always and when it came time for the Mursaat boss, I made sure to clear out the minions first before focusing on the boss. Soon enough it went down and the rest of the mission was a breeze. I had vastly underestimated my own playing ability. I was better than I thought. Thunderhead Keep...no problem!

    I joined a PUG for Ring of Fire (it took me a while to finally hench that one) and then easily henched Abaddon's Mouth and Hell's Precipice. My Necromancer become one of my fastest characters when it came to henching Hell's Precipice and would sometimes guide PUGs through the mission. She would run a Spiteful Spirit build and used Shadow of Fear every time a Risen Ashen Hulk was killed to greatly lessen the damage done by Hands and Fists. It made the mission quite easy and she would often do it in roughly 40 minutes.

    During the early part of 2006 my Necromancer saw a lot of playing time. The more I played her the more she grew on me. I found little niche aspects of the game that I could enjoy with her that I could not with my other characters. While she wasn't enough to surpass my monk in enjoyment value, she easily became my second favorite character. I still feel the same about her months/years later even though her playing time has dropped off.

Green Farming

    One of the unique tasks I entrusted to my Necromancer was to finally break my curse of never getting Green drops. Since going through Tombs was tedious and required finding a real group, I decided that Sorrow's Furnace would be my best bet to find Greens. One of the most popular methods of getting Greens was the "5-man Oro Farm" group. A group usually consisting of an MM, a warrior, a damage dealer, a bonder, and a healer would take Orozar Highstone into the furnace and farm the bosses that spawned (no loot scaling back then!). I was not very fond of joining PUGs though so I needed to come up with a different method. At first I tried just a regular full hench party but I came up empty handed. I needed a smaller party.

    Why not go with the 5-man Orozar approach but use henchies instead? After some tinkering, I found a party that worked for me. My Necromancer would use an SS build to deal damage and then bring Devona and Little Thom to act as tanks and Mhenlo and Lina to heal. Right off the bat she found a Green (I forget which one now) before she even entered Sorrow's Furnace. Once inside she was able to kill just about every mob except the areas that had multiple Priests.

    She would make frequent visits to Sorrow's Furnace over the next few weeks and she found a fair amount of Green items for me to disperse amongst my characters. She even tried a 4-man approach using one less warrior hench, but that caused enough of a slowdown as to not be worth it. Finally my bad luck with Greens was wearing off.

A Final Tribute

    All good things come to an end. This was the hardest decision I ever made during my time on Guild Wars. I am still conflicted as to whether it was the right decision to make but after a couple of years I have made up for anything I lost and feel comfortable with my decision. On February 14th, 2006 I decided to delete my Elementalist. I had several reasons for deleting this character. In no particular order: One, I really disliked her hair. Two, I really disliked the name I gave her. Three, I wanted to create a new character and I needed to clear a slot. I definitely was not going to touch my Monk or Necromancer and I felt like I could get a little more use out of my Warrior than my Elementalist. Four, I was being pressured to make a Mesmer. And finally five, I was barely using her anymore.

    While I may have been able to overlook her hair, I really did hate her name and it did not fit my naming style that I used starting with my Monk. I also did not want to buy another game just to be able to use more character slots. I knew Factions was on the way and I did not want to have to get multiple copies of it just to be able to enjoy both accounts. I used to farm with my Elementalist but I found that I was having an easier time farming with my Monk, Warrior and even my Necromancer.

    Her final legacy: Over 234 hours 22 minutes and 7 months my Elementalist obtained at least three sets of 15K armor (I forget if I got her a fourth). She was my first "real" character and first to complete the game. She farmed the majority of the funds I needed for most of my other characters' 15K armor sets. She was my first character to explore the Underworld. I learned the basics of the game with her and most importantly learned how to be self reliant by using henchmen to complete missions and quests.

"Good-bye [Elementalist], my first real character and first to beat the game. You will be missed."