Thursday 3/9/06

[Raveneye]

Who's in for the bonus from Frost Gate and hopefully the next mission in the chain (Gates of Kryta) tonight?

9:00pm EST, meet in Frost Gate on American 1.

[Erudite]

We left the bonus mission at The Frost Gate (clearing a path through the Stone Summit in the Shiverpeaks for the refugees), so if we're going to go back for that bonus - which I definitely want to do - we have to meet at The Frost Gate, district 1.

The Gates of Kryta is our next mission up. I think D'Alleserio (sp?) Seaboard is the one up after that.

Edit - Yes, I'll be there at 9:00pm EST.

[GravenStone]

Yeah, what Erudite said about the Frost Gate. I should be good to go tonight.

[Raveneye]

D'OH! Edited the original post to correct names...

[Erudite]

So, says I, UGH.

I did not anticipate making three runs at that bonus mission to get it nailed. We had the right idea the second time (after finding the decrepit ballista the first time), but we just didn't clear far enough in before grabbing the daintly little dorf. :~

Ah well. Live and learn, I suppose. We'll know better if we ever get around to marching alts through this thing.

Not much accomplished other than the 1000xp for the bonus. Most of the mobs didn't give experience, and no real loot. An axe haft of some sort and few weak purple items with no runes. I'm still a long ways from 17 - 7500xp or so. I probably need to do some questing/grinding this week.

[Raveneye]

Yup, we buggered that mission up good. It seemed like there were even more healers and grunts on that secret path every time we failed. We simply needed better strategy, we assumed we could whip anything, and while we were mostly right, facing 4 healers and a mob of melee mobs wiped out our henchies and the NPC pretty fast. We had the right idea the second time through, but the numbers were higher (or we didn't see the extra healers the first time) and that got us. Live and learn.

I too gained only the 1000xp for the bonus and am still along ways off from 17th. Got lots of quests out of Lion's Arch though, so that should help. No good loot to speak of save a sword hilt I may be able to apply to my next weapon. I saw a crafter made sword in Lion's Arch I want to upgrade to. I will likely grind this weekend, plus play my alt some.

[GravenStone]

I think I came out the best last night, since the 1k made more of a dent for me at 15th. Now about 4800 from 16.

Raveneye gave me a nice gold staff. Runs off Curse level, though, and I'm not presently a Curse build. But between the staff and the Major Rune of Curses I got, I think I'll give it a go. Not sure whether to despecialize in Blood or Death magic to accomodate the new build. Ah well, experiment time.

[GravenStone]

Made it to Lion's Arch this morning. Picked up a few quests there, and a couple along the route. Getting to be a rather nasty environment down there. Along with the Gates of Kryta plot mission, we might want to look into grouping for one of the Lion's Arch missions - The Villainy of Galrath (obtained from the skills vendor). It's worth 4k so I imagine it's a wee bit involved and deadly. - Looked into this a bit further, seems the place he's hiding is in South Kryta. Yeah, he'll be a ways down the road.

Okay, so I went a little nuts this morning and ground halfway through 16th. In the process I opened up D'Alessio Seaboard (looks like next plot mission after Gates of Kryta), Bergen Hot Springs(dead end player town) and Beetletun (player town that bridges Nebo Terrace and Watchtower Coast - nice armor upgrades available).

[Raveneye]

Over the wekeend I opened up D'Alessio Seaboard as well. I also gained and ran quests out of the "in-between" towns in and around Lion's Arch, like the Ascalon Settlement and the villiage with the White Mantle Inspector guy.

It's getting progressively more difficult to play "solo", as the level 10 henchies do not fare well against large groups of mobs in these zones.

[GravenStone]

I can run you guys to Bergen Hot Springs and Bettletun if we have time Thursday. Both those areas have 12th level henches, but both also have a fair number of nasties about. I agree that the soloability seems to be tailing off in this region. And this is barely a third of the way through the current content.