Guild Wars 2

Hello retribution is bugged for me also, i alrdy soloed it on 4 other toons, but now mobs just keep poping faster than you can kill it, pls fix.

Those “Story Line” dailies are awesome for those of us stuck waiting for Devs to fix their mistakes. I didn’t realize how much I liked having my face slapped before now. Who knew?

Spent all weekend and Monday trying to beg help from the masses with no luck, so in before the fanbois start in on the “get help” posts. If you’re willing to post but not willing to actually help, then spare us the post please.

Just wanted to add that I am also having “issues” with this quest. While I do not expect or want an easy mode, I also do not want impossible….

Well while I’m glad to see I’m not the only person having this problem (I mean that in relief that its an issue gameside and not me personally), this quest is beyond infuriating. I already have issues fighting zergs of what I think is horrible enemy type, but now they’ve been buffed past the required level – and I have to clear a ton of them by myself because all my allies are dying pretty fast. Awesome. I’ve pretty much given up on getting past the story now The thread was started a bout two weeks ago – Devs , please fix this.

Shaen.1729:

First of all, I have no doubt it’s doable with a Guardian or Ranger, two of the most powerful solo professions. Second, there’s no pull strategy that can overcome the fact that you often get a dozen +2 mobs on you at once even if you pull carefully. These Risen run faster than you by a lot and once they catch up, there’s no getting away for every profession. Third, “resetting” does pretty much nothing. When you die and respawn, the courtyard gets even more full of undead as the Veterans continue spawning more mobs even if you’re not there. The quest is broken and a dev even said so. I’m all for difficult quests and I’m glad you had so much fun with it, but this is not the correct kind of difficulty.

Funny, I forgot that I neglected my ranger’s personal story and I got to the same mission — result … done without any deaths, even easier than with guardian…

It was just matter of timing pulls from ramps so you can pull one group and always concentrate on veterans only, especially on summoners. Also with a little patience and some luck if you manage to “persuade” your NPC allies to stay and fight on the opposite side, using one usable trebuchet can help a little (not much tho).

BTW … guardian, hmmm, maybe, but ranger is far from “most powerful” solo class

I have a level 66 Mesmer (fully decked out) and it is still too hard: npc are of little help (BTW, I had a huge problem with my guardian also, it took like five tries) and the enemies are too overpowered compared to the allies. Its not fun, but frustrating to try and avoid twelve+ undead coming for you as soon as you begin to rez. The other npc’s that rush the courtyard have a foolish A.I., they really are of negligible help. I don’t mind a difficult level, but this is just not worth playing thru.

This is so beyond infuriating. The NPCs all die immediately and as soon as one thing dies, 5 more respawn. There is no completing this mission which is clearly a new thing as I’ve finished it with 5 other much squishier characters. I don’t know why it’s all of a sudden rediculous but there’s no reviving the npcs, dropping a battle standard on 5 dead guys just kept them up for about 4 or 5 seconds…and warrior is far from underpowered.

UPDATE: A necro in LA just helped me with it and it seemed pretty balanced for 2 people. Maybe it’s just an issue of scaling…it went so well I was kinda embarassed for asking.

I honestly think this mission is not physically possible to complete solo. How are you supposed to do the mission when every time you kill one risen, 5 more spawn?

I did this at level a few days ago with my conditionmancer. I died several times in the courtyard before it finally dawned on me that the acolytes were raising them (I mean, duh…). I’m not really sure how many acolytes were there at the start but when I figured it out there were two left.

I barely managed to kill the first one right as I died. I rez’d and ran back and killed the other one without dying. I’m honestly wondering now if I could have cleared the entire thing without dying as, by that point, my armor was shredded.

It’s certainly tough and required a lot of kiting and Death Shroud but it’s (obviously, as thousands and thousands of people have done it…) doable.

Bring a couple Repair-in-a-Can consumables.

I hope this bug will be fixed soon. I was getting really frustrated with my lvl 59 warrior. It is simply “uncompletable”. I tried to use a rifle instead of sword and axe (which I use most of the time) but it didn’t help one bit. I got swarmed too quickly and the Rifle Butt reloads too slowly to keep off that many minions.
Well, thank god for this forum; after 5 attempts I really started to question my gaming abillities. But luckly it’s just a bug.

It was pretty funny watching them chase me after I “liberated” Claw Island. They even spawn after you kill everything and win the mission.

I’ve just completed this mission in an easy way. After you take Trahearne to the bridge, you have to repair a catapult, a cannon and another thing (i forgot what it was). The trick is that the cannon is aiming to the courtyard and you can actually use it!.

I used the cannon to kill the acolytes and then killed any remainig mob on the courtyard using my sword.

I tried this again earlier today and wow, what a difference! Trahearne actually followed me this time and I focused on the Acolytes like others have suggested and as soon as they go down poof the mobs disappear. Of course, I’m now a level 80 with better weapons and gear but this mission no longer seems frustrating. Thanks for fixing it.

Tried everything suggested and this is near on impossible , I understand that people have done it , but I’m fighting mobs 2 levels higher then me and like other people have stated , you kill a few of them and more rise in their place and yes I am trying to target the summoners first. I can not advance in my personal story till this is fixed.

I just completed it with my 80 guardian. (Laurel amulet but all other gear green.) That cannon on the corner helped clear out the hordes and a couple of veterans first. The NPCs actually were alive this time. I knew to watch out for instant exploding death from the acolytes. The mortars from the Vigil are a lot more hepful than the zappy gizmo the Priory has. It all just sort of came together in an anticlimactic way.

Just came here, after trying pointlessly to complete the courtyard part. Same issue as everybody else, but thought I’d post just so whoever has to fix this remembers than several weeks later the mission is still not fixed (slightly more tolerable if it was a less important mission, but this one is supposed to be one of the highlights of the game, common to every personal story).

I tried for a long while, trying as well to kill the summoners and well I simply couldn’t so I quitted. I have done it five times already and this is the first time I have trouble finishing it, and as its been said its both because of over-leveled enemies, and extremely high respawn rate, the latter something I feel shouldn’t not exist at all in this mission since all it does its add pointless, bothersome padding that doesn’t add anything to the enjoyment of the mission, actually detracting from it.

The character I used this time was a SB thief, so the class should in theory have had an easy time in dealing with the large amounts of mobs. Obviously it went wrong and I’m averse to having to use buffs and res orbs and the like since I’ve haven’t needed those at other times while doing this mission, even when I did it with more problematic and less apt classes like GS ranger. Not much else to say, just hope they take seriously the matter of fixing it.

Did this yesterday. Initially I was LB and GS – but same problem everyone had – constantly died in courtyard. After reading a bit I repaired, swallowed my hurt pride and went LB/SB and put Spirit of Nature in my elite slot. My main pet is a devourer who likes to attract mobs. Also on entering fortress I stayed with the pack of NPCs; rezzed them when I could if they died up top; used LB to start and as soon as mobs closed on me I switched to SB. On entering courtyard we (pack and me) took main mobs down one at a time. I and my pet focused on the veterans and let the NPCs worry about the others. I ran around alot using my SB from every angle I could on the veterans – particularly the guy that keeps creating risen. When I needed to I switched pets (alt is a brown bear), and if a pack of my NPCs were dead I used Spirit of Nature. This worked – might have been luck, but beggars can’t be choosers. Finally killed the big lizard, but then got wiped by risen still running around the courtyard – and not dying – after event finished and I was trying to talk to the required NPCs. When I rezzed and returned all was well (the last bit must have been a bug). ……. Hope this helps. Oh, I was level 63.

Just found this thread as thought it can’t be just me. Completed this quest months ago on Mesmer np. Now on warrior getting swamped to hell really fast over and over again. Don’t understand but understand its bugged so…

……please fix. ty ty

You have to use the sonic cannon in the corner of the courtyard. I tried to wade in and kill them all with my warrior but got overwhelmed too fast. Once you start focusing fire on the veterans with the cannon, you can start seeing a big difference within a few minutes. Don’t use brute force. Use the tools you have available and win. You don’t think we setup those machines for nothing do you?

I ran around that courtyard looking for the stupid cannon until the only thing still alive was me and Traherne. The only cannon I could find was a freaking ornament up on the wall – unusable. SO before I bother to get completely PO’d again cursing Arenanet with every breath, please explain exactly where this magical cannon is.

ARENANET better fix this issue… People will lose interest in game if they don’t fix it…

Yes , I would also like to know where this cannon is ? I can only fine the 3 trebuchet , that you liberate earlier in the mission.

Whether or not you have the cannon may depend on your mission selections along the way. You can check the walkthrough on the wiki for more info.

I think part the reason that the buffs to krait and risen have screwed over the story missions so much is that the mobs were tuned to encourage more cooperation and use of utility skills by groups of players, but the NPCs that accompany us on story missions that are supposed to provide the role of support have really terrible AI and aren’t able to react to enemy actions the same way a player could.

For example, the krait for the lab invasion event north of Tequatl’s spawn point have been buffed to scale aggressively with the number of players in the area. After a day or two, people got used to the buffed mobs (sometimes 2 champs in the same wave) and we never have any issues with that event. When players get downed, the ones that are up always rez them up pretty fast. If you took the same event and replaced all but one of the players with NPCs, that’s kind of what a story mission is. The NPCs, however, don’t dodge out of attacks, they don’t cleanse debuffs, they don’t rez you if you get downed. They also have much weaker attacks, and, it feels like, much lower health pools.

Another way to see this same issue in action is in the Temple of Balthazar invasion chain. While the players have no problems handling the buffed risen that spawn during the event, the NPCs seem to be having a real hard time of it.

It probably wouldn’t be possible to solve these issues by making NPCs behave exactly like a real person, but I think a health pool buff and maybe toughness buff would help tremendously. It’s tricky territory because you don’t want to overdo it and make the NPCs OP, especially in the context of other escort events that don’t have risen and krait, but if there was a way to specifically buff the NPCs that need to fight krait and risen, it would make the encounter a lot more balanced.

Well I completed the mission yesterday (around 10:30 PM). I passed the quest with the same level (59 warrior), same weapons, skills and armor. So looks like it’s fixed. I didn’t find it much harder than any other previous mission.

Thanks to the developers and/or the person or group who have fixed this bug.

the cannon is for people in The Vigil, I don’t think my engineer can ever complete this mission when he can stay alive longer than the solders in heavy armor

SlavospevSLO.8342:

Well I completed the mission yesterday (around 10:30 PM). I passed the quest with the same level (59 warrior), same weapons, skills and armor. So looks like it’s fixed. I didn’t find it much harder than any other previous mission.

Thanks to the developers and/or the person or group who have fixed this bug.

I don’t see what’s fixed about it unless it was broken again after you posted this. Still spawning level 61s while you’re stuck at 59. No amount of careful pulling will allow me to complete this with my elementalist as I go down with only one hit from one of the Veterans. All the NPCs in the yard are dead the entire time and the Vets keep spawning minions.

I tried this for the first time with my Ranger and got wiped out by the mobs – badly. After reading the advice to focus on the summoners, I did that on my second try and it went very easy. As soon as the courtyard mission popped up I went after them (there are only two) – ignored everyone else until I killed them. After that the rest of the mobs were easy to mop up. Give it a try and see if it works for you. Good luck!

brandname.4736:

the cannon is for people in The Vigil, I don’t think my engineer can ever complete this mission when he can stay alive longer than the solders in heavy armor

re-geared re-traited and leveled to 60 did the trick, you just gotta fight like mad against the veterans, this mission should probably suggest level 60 before starting also making my build focused more around damage seemed to help.

I got stuck on this too last night for nearly 2 hours with my lvl 80 mesmer.
There is no way to kill the vet risen acolytes without getting swarmed by risen at lvl 61.
Yes, they are still at 61, so no fix yet.

NPCs might as well fix themselves a coffee and watch me getting owned for all the use they are.

Thought it was just me until I found this thread!

I was able to do it after changing my strategy a bit. Upon claiming the last trebuchet where you first enter the courtyard just find the acolytes (summoners of silly level 61 risen) and focus them both down first. After doing this I cleaned it up with little to no problems at all.

I guess it’s just the way you tackle it, but it was insanely annoying and maybe needs a little tweaking.

See, but this is what’s weird. There were 5 veterans for me, which meant tons and tons of minions who would just swarm me no matter what I did. After about an hour and a half, I was able to revive enough NPCs to peel the minions away from the Vets so I could take them down without being swarmed. I appreciate difficult missions, but this was a bit much. It probably wouldn’t be nearly as bad if the mobs were matched to your level instead of all being +2.

I did this with my ranger, ele, thief and necro previously with no problems. Why is it that my level 61 Guardian is the one dying repeatedly after kiting mad mobs for over 30 mins? Rezzing NPCs immidiately bring mobs over, even if they’re on the other end of the courtyard. Is this really necessary? Capturing the area should not take this long. It’s bugged.

I came in to say that this is probably the worst mission so far in the game. Being perma-stunned is more fun than this. I too died loads of times on my 65 warrior before I found this thread which gave me some comfort at least (first time I’ve done it).

i ended up doing it by exploiting it tbh. there is a pile of wood on the right, and some barrels on the left side of the arena by the steps that lead to the walls. i discovered that you can get on them and take out the acolytes at range, the minions can’t reach you.

i managed to take out both the summoning guys by doing that and was left with the captain and brute, which was also not fun.

I’m level 80 and I can’t do this. The instant I come down into the courtyard DOZENS of mobs spawn and all of the friendly npcs are dead. The mobs run around in large packs, seemingly at random, one-shotting npcs. The completion bar does not move. Trahearne does not follow me.

The sonic cannon was destroyed by mobs early on.

I just finished “Retribution” Story for my Level 63 Guardian. After defeating the dragon and supposed to talk to the 3 representatives of the orders, I noticed there are still undead on the courtyard so I decided to kill them thinking I’ll finish them all. Then theres the Veteran Risen Acolyte that keeps spawning more undead. I died and had to go back to the waypoint in the beginning of the story, run all the way back to talk to one of the representatives then get attacked by the swarm of undead and die again. I did not die at all for the whole part of the story but now that it’s supposed to be over, I had to die like 3 times before I could get to Traherne and end the story. I’ve tried and tried but it seems impossible to kill the Veteran. I hope this bug gets fixed before my other characters have to go through the same agony?

Okay so I tried this again today. This time, no huge packs of mobs in the courtyard. Instead, there was a huge pack of Vigil npcs running amok! Needless to say it was very easy, as a result.

Not for me (Priory). They ganged me tons of times and no single friendly npc alive in the area, I guess I’ll retry another day.

I’ve done this on 3 characters previously, but with the 4th character now it’s beyond hopeless. What a waste of time.

Haha I havent done story in months and I thought this was quite tough. I never noticed the acolytes at the start and went afk after clearing part of the area. Came back and was dead along with NPC’s, but lots of risen!

Broke every piece of armour but I managed to kill the acolyte in time and all his friends went poof. Courtyard literally went from being choked with undead to a day out in the park. Was actually kind of fun.

After several deaths, came close a couple of times to taking out one of the Acolytes, but not quite. Finally just jumped on the pile of lumber and ranged one down. At that point, plenty of NPCs rush in and make killing the second Acolyte reasonable.

Today is March 22, 2013. I just tried Retribution 3 times with my level 61 Asura engineer and failed. I completed this personal quest with my guardian back in January 2013 with little problem. All three tries were going ok until the courtyard. At the beginning of the courtyard fight the undeads were level 59, but it did not take long before they were all replaced by level 61 undeads. Yes, the two level 61 veteran undeads were there and one of them kept summoning level 61 undeads, non-stop. My support npcs, the Tenstrikes mercs, all went down pretty fast, probably because two of them, the Asura and the Sylvari, were just standing around and did not fight, even when the undeads were pounding on them. Simple math why the current set up does not work: your reinforcement npcs are level 59 and they come in one at a time while the undeads are level 61 and they come in three at a time. Whoever claims this is fixed is not correct.

Took me about an hour to do this on my level 60 warrior, and it was horrible. I didn’t know about the cannon at the time, so I got spanked pretty hard by the acolytes and masses of mobs, as well as something occasionally 1-shotting me. I really don’t think I could have done it without dropping Battle Standard on masses of dead allies. I had to resort to my bow’s adrenaline skill and kiting mobs through the aoe quite a lot, as well, since there were spots where melee was just suicide. I had no problem with this on my Engineer ages ago.

I got one acolyte down and things thinned, but it took me a long time to kill the second one regardless. Every time I fought the acolytes I would periodically get 1shot. This was not challenging in a fun way, it was difficult by bad balancing (and bugs?) to such an extreme degree that I wished I could throttle the game itself. A desire to inflict violence on your game is not really a feeling game designers should inspire in their players. Why do you refuse to do hotfixes, anyway?

Strange to see this, I did Retribution earlier today and didn’t notice any issues at all.. just rolled over the mission and went onto the next one, was there a fix made?

The first time I tried this I had the same problems everyone is mentioning above. I even tried to use the cannon, but there was big boat mast in the way and nothing would come in to the small area I was able to shoot at.

The second time I tried it, I cleared the walls as quickly as possible, so that I could get to the courtyard before all the NPCs down there died. I then immediately focused on the summoning acolytes. Having the NPCs alive to keep some of the mob swarms off me was helpful. After that wiping up the rest was fairly simple.

This was a few weeks ago that I did it, so hopefully some changes have been made since.

I just attempted this with my elementalist, and it ended with me quitting after an hour. I’d done it months ago on my mesmer, thief and necro and thought it was really easy then. Now? The risen wipe out all the NPCs so quickly and then it’s game over. A few new allies spawn at the boat and slowly run into the courtyard one or two at a time, but they are ripped to shreds by the packs of turbo-zombies.

After three attempts I managed to get things done the fourth time round. I lost quite a lot of repair silver, but hey. Unless I’m very much mistaken, I did not have access to the cannon, only the trebuchet on Trahearne’s right (human ranger, Order of Whispers). The acolytes walk in range of the trebuchet a few times, but I was a little too slow to spot them at first. In the end, I managed by selecting an acolyte and keeping track of its path across the courtyard. While it was out of reach, I killed everything and anything in range of the trebuchet. When the acolyte walked in range, I killed it. You have to be quick, though, and start targetting them immediately. By the time the two acolytes were dead, every other mob had died save for a few more brutes. I was left alone on the trebuchet, no mobs came up to kill me. If you’re patient, this should do the trick, I think.

I also had the same trouble with the mob respawn rate and allies dying right from the start the first time I did this quest. After about 20 deaths on my Ranger I finally managed to complete it. Then I did the quest on a Mesmer and Elementalist with no problem at all which made no sense whatsoever. With them, I went straight for the Veterans ignoring everything else, took out 2 of them, (at this point ALL the allies were still alive, with my Ranger All allies were down as soon as I entered the courtyard) and the cut scene started, and like the other posts stated, there was a Veteran on the field after the mission was completed.
One thing that got me thinking was all 3 of my characters are Order of Whispers, but my Ranger did the “Azura weapon” prequest, while my other 2 did the “save Ben Tenstrikes” quest, just wondering if Retribution bugs depending on the prequest…

FINALLY completed this last night on my mesmer.
One of the ramps leading down into the courtyard has a pile of wood next to it, and another ramp has a stack of barrels nearby. If you hop up onto one of these, the summoned undead won’t swarm you (you can still be hit with poison though). From there you can just focus ranged attacks on the acolytes until they go down.
I guess it’s also worth mentioning that my character was level 72 at the time, but wearing crappy level 67 gear.
Good luck, and don’t get too frustrated!