Guild Wars 2

Caution, this is a fairly lengthy tale of hardship and does indeed contain spoilers of an entire path to a dungeon.

Prologue
So, Today at around 8PM I decided that I would do Arah Explorable. I find a group when I arrive in Cursed Shore looking for 1More person with a lot of time on their hands. “Perfect!” I thought, and I joined up. We get in, I didn’t know anybody in my group before then, and the first thing we ponder is what route to take. I cannot remember what possessed us to choose it, but we went with the second path.

First Boss
After fighting some fairly simple mobs(Focus the Deadeyes first!!!) we found our first boss who began the encounter by lighting the room on fire. Her tags where Teleports and Extreme Ranged Damage. This being said, our first instinct was: Wail on her mercilessly with melee. This was going quite well and we were almost laughing at how easily the boss was going down… Then she fired a giant ball that 1shot everyone. Two wipes later of not know what was going on, we realized that it was a giant slow moving ball that was easily avoidable at range. OH Arenanet! You tricky devils, making us think we should be in melee range when REALLY we needed that space to be able to avoid the ball! Needless to say, after working this out it was still a little bit tricky, but we pulled it off okay. And then for no reason everyone was booted from the dungeon….

The Golem
After being slightly demoralized from having to restart the dungeon, we weren’t going to give up so easily! We flew through the first boss and came to a Golem and some sort of power supply that could be carried by players. We dismissed it at first, and went heroically into the next room, to be greeted with hundreds upon hundreds of spiders. When I say spider, I don’t mean a baby trash mob spider. I mean a spider that took some time to kill. We thought that there was no way we were going to kill ALL of those spiders. Then we noticed the Golem had a 10second shield that repelled the spiders! However, the Golem need to be powered before it can use the shield, and said shield consumes all the Golem’s power! So here was the plan:
We each grabbed one of the power supply… thingys… from the ground next to the Golem, and we powered the Golem, one by one. Part way through there were more power supplies on the ground that were needed to make it all the way through this corridor of spiders. We had two people alternate using them.
This got us about half of the way every time, only for our plan to be foiled by several Abominations who were not affected by the shield!
We tried and we tried many times, our spirits breaking and we were contemplating trying a different route. Then, one of the runs, we made it about 3/4 of the way! I fore-saw the whole party wiping, and I made a split second decision to active Endure Pain and Signet of Rage, running ahead hoping to make it across!
My Endure Pain was on its last moments, just as I made it to a waypoint, before being brutally murdered by 20+ Spiders and an Abomination.
I was so filled with happiness that moment that I could do nothing more than just repeatedly spam “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” into the chat! After about an hour of trying and failing, I carried my team through that deadly corridor.

Second Boss
We were walking through what seemed to be some sort of ravine now, after a short break to gather ourselves after what we just went through. It was fairly quiet here, same basic mobs again, didn’t seem to take too much time getting through, until we came to 3 Inquisition Handlers surrounding an Abomination. This was no ordinary Abomination, this Abomination had Extreme Ranged Damage. We were WTFing for a brief moment, before once again heroically charging into battle taking down the Handlers first. Everything was going fairly smooth, until the Abomination grew really big, but it wasn’t very hard to figure out that we merely needed to shoot it with the tranquilizer gun to calm him back down to a more manageable foe.

Third Boss
More basic mobs, easily dealt with, but what we couldn’t quite get our heads around, was where we were heading. We all knew for a fact, that the 3rd boss of the 3rd path, was Giganticus Lupicus. He was the sole reason why we didn’t choose path 3. But we knew, we were heading straight for him. We were at the door, fingers crossed that there would be no Giganticus Lupicus waiting on the other side. But sure enough, we were right, and he was there. Did we give up? NO! We stood there and we said that today was the day Giganticus Lupicus was going to die! Our strategy to start with was simple: Engage, do whatever feels like the right thing to do. And as you would imagine, that didn’t work out too well. So! Second time around! We knew a few things:
1) When he hits 75% health he starts Shadowstepping and causing mass AoEs.
2) When he ate a grub it made him stronger.
3) Locusts are annoying as hell.
So the new plan?
4people killing grubs and locusts. One person downing Lupicus.
Each time he would get just that 1, 2 or 3 stacks in somehow! But then one attempt, we managed to not let a single stack through.
I cannot say whether the stacks make a huge amount of difference to him, It may have just been a fluke that the time we beat him was the time he had no stacks.
This time it went really smoothly, we stacked up so that the three warriors could hit every locust at once and always be in range of the grub to Hundred Blades it to a quick end.
75% came and it started getting really messy. Lupicus found a taste for one unfortunate member who would be jumped on and killed every time he Waypointed and walk back into the arena. It was akittenstruggle, but we eventually got him to 50%!
I died at this time and was just walking back into the arena to see Lupicus in the air looking like he was about to shatter the ground. This awestruck me briefly, but I was kind of disappointed as he landed gently as a feather. He started chasing people down and using AoEs on them, so as soon as you realized who he was going for, you kept the hell away from them.
Finnally, after struggling for what seemed like (And probably was) hours, we downed Lupicus! We rejoiced and took screenshots of us slaying this infamous beast. We felt like we could take on anything.

The Obstacle Course
We pushed on, coming up against more trash that now seamed utterly pathetic! (Completely oblivious to the fact that we were fighting on a mine field) We came to a underwater bit, that looks utterly daunting at first, but with the last Waypoint being back at Lupicus, our many deaths and re-running of this section made it seem all to easy. Back on dry land, we came to a trail, that had many, many, MANY little humps in it. We struggled through this greatly at first, and we made jokes about how we just took on Giganticus Freaking Lupicus, but we couldn’t make it past a simple minefield. Fortunately, we quickly discovered that spamming jump would get you passed these mines quite effectively… at least until the net turrets net you to the spot, then you can only wait for the inevitable downing.

Fourth Boss
More mines, more mobs, blah blah blah, then we came to the fourth boss who immediately stopped us in our tracks with the tag Summons Illusions. This one took us a little while to figure out, but we persisted following the motto of “We took on Giganticus Lupicus! We can take on anything!”
Some things we noticed:
1) There is a signal before she pulls you in and lays her bomb down. Learn this signal and you can avoid being pulled in altogether by dodging at the right time.
2) If you are defeated, Waypointing may not be the best idea because there is a giant bone wall preventing you from getting back into the fight.
3) When she summons illusions, focus your attacking and take down each illusion one by one before going back on the boss.
Knowing this we gave it our all and wiped a few times. And then we discovered the trick to killing her! Now, we thought we learned a lesson back at the First Boss, that beating on a small asuran mercilessly may not be the best option, so at first we decided to stay at range. Who would have thought that the secret to this boss WAS merciless beatings? Normally she would do a thing where she went into the middle of the area, and start shooting lighting orbs that would 1 or 2 shot you, and you’d think you would hide behind the boxes laid out for you? Well no, with this boss, if you continuously beat on her, she won’t be able to do this move which caused every single one of our wipes. When we learned this, being a team of 3warriors and 2necromancers… we destroyed her.

Before the Final Boss
Leading up to the last boss, there was some fun moments with the mobs, that I would love to share, but where really more of a “You had to be there” kind of thing. But one thing we found hilarious was 2 Deadeyes, and 3 Inquest Technicians.
For those of you who don’t know, Deadeyes are undead snipers that seem to be capable of performing collaterals.
An Inquest Technician, channels a beam on its foe, stunning them and damaging.
We started fighting them, and we’re not sure how or why, but suddenly the Deadeyes just turned on the Technicians, whom retaliated. It came down to 1Deadeye being on very little health, and 1 Deadeye on full, against 1 Inquest Technician. We don’t know how that little bugger did it, but he took on both Deadeyes and came out on top, while we cheered at the sidelines taking bets on who would win.

The Final Boss
First thoughts on this boss:
“Oh she’s phased, and here is a machine that phases us… alright simple enough”
One person phases and goes to attack. I try to phase as well, but it said that the machine was out of charge. The phasing on the first person soon wore off, and then i grabbed my turn to go in. I jumped in and started bashing the phased asuran’s skull in with my Hundred Blades, taking her down very quickly. But soon I was kicked out as well. What happens here we believe, is that it puts each party member into a 1v1 with the boss, but after a certain percentage, your whole party phases and things escalate.
This boss was quite cool, but difficulty wise, it was the easiest. Which is kind of a let down it being the last boss.

Epilogue
We all became super excited, lined up and took a screenshot of us heroically standing at the end of the dungeon. And this is probably the nerdiest thing to ever be said, but our journey was quite comparable to the lord of the rings. To start with we were all pugs, who knew barely anything about what was to come, and had no relations with each other whatsoever. And in the end, I feel like we became quite good friends, and that we achieved something worth telling others about
We finished the dungeon at 3am, and I have spent the last 2hours typing this post. I can now go to bed feeling content with my day

I only read the first and last paragraph. I’m glad you enjoyed it that much. This game rocks on bringing strangers together as friends.

Couldn’t seem to edit these into the post, so here is proof of us taking down Lupicus, and one of us with the phasing still on us after beating the last boss.

Read through it. Glad you enjoyed it:) I also agree this is one of the most enjoyable path. Only regret is I died half way during the last boss, and I couldnt get back in. I saw a giant wall blocking my path, and after the boss was done the wall didnt disapear. I turned 90 degrees to the right and there was no wall…was one of my fail moments but we all laughed it off and collected our loots:)

Which path was this?

The Asura I think.

Glad to hear you enjoyed the run. I’ll try that path next. My pug and I finished path 3 earlier (took 3 hours?). If you do that path, you will learn to hate Risen Illusion and Mages. So many of them in tight corridors.