Guild Wars 2

I actually gave it two tries. One yesterday and one today. As a new player doing dungeons for the first time, I have to ask, how are these even possible to do?

I know that there are always people saying how they wish things were more challenging or that the difficulty is fine, but it is impossible for new people to do AC with a pick up group. This is the first dungeon in the game, I don’t think it should provide a challenge that basically just causes the party to die every time there is more than one ghost at a time.

After spending 3+ hours getting blue items that are worse than my current gear that I’m wearing at level 30 (the dungeon’s level) and then failing trying to kill the two lovers over and over (not to mention the repair cost), I’m extremely disappointed. I’d like to say I will wait to do the dungeon again, but wait for what? Better gear? higher level? It doesn’t seem like that will help.

There is absolutely nothing before this dungeon that has prepared me, a new player, for this. I feel like the game goes from easy, casual solo questing to slightly harder world event bosses to crazy insane, impossible dungeon.

I’m sure it’s a lot easier if you can find a group that knows what they’re doing, but what’s the point of that? It’s sad that I can’t just join a group of fellow noobs and attempt the first dungeon in the game together, learning as we go. Instead it was just a frustrating waste of time.

The point of my post is that I hope ArenaNet can address this issue. So many other people have already posted valid points on why exactly these dungeons are so hard, but I just wanted to give my experience as a new player for perspective. Overall feeling from dungeon experience: super disappointed.

I’d like to point out to you, at least in my experience, in life things are either a guided learning experience, or the they are a frustrating mess that makes you want to quit. Those who didn’t quit gained a mastery of the material never to be achieved by those who were guided to it.

Let the frustration wear down, and give it another go later. Look at all the tools you have at your disposal (hint: boulders) and formulate a plan with your group.

@Ender: (sorry, no quote buttons for me today)

That’s all well and good, but mastering dungeons is a colossal waste of time, as opposed to many real-life endeavours. Mastering the art of playing dungeons has no application other than playing more dungeons. I guess there might’ve been a point to it if dungeons were actually fun to play, and not a dull, monotonous chore.

The Story mode in most dungeons is a joke, maybe you got a terrible team, or you didn’t know what you were doing.
I recommend looking up the wiki or youtube if you are having trouble in some parts of a dungeon. Sometimes the answer is incredible stupid and obvious but no one was able to figure it out.

Excuse me, but where did you get the idea that I ever failed a dungeon? Surely nothing in my post you quoted.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Excuse me, but where did you get the idea that I ever failed a dungeon? Surely nothing in my post you quoted.

Was supposed to quote OP, my bad.

whoa whoa WHOA.

You do NOT need to find level 30 gear. You can wear whatever your wearing at your level your stats will scale down by themselves. You basically kittened yourself because i’m assuming you’re higher than level 30, but you put on level 30 armor, and then the game scaled you down anyways since its scales based on level, not armor your wearing.

So the first fix is to use your normal equipment.

As for the Lovers fight, its pretty hard for first timers, hopefully you know the strategy (hint, use nothing but rocks)

@Redamz:

Oh well, nevermind then. At least you can quote. Buttons aren’t showing for me today. Weird.

I dit AC at lvl 30ish, with my mate and we had hard time. We are pretty experienced mmo player from Rift, don t think it’s doable in pick up.
The first story mode dungeon should be a kind of tutorial.
And caduceus mansion ( the 40 story dungeon ) is a lot easier than AC

I remember doing the dungeon for the first time and none of us knew what we were doing and it was hard to learn. That said we did get through it and started to do harder explorables.

It takes time to learn your profession and skills and how to apply them in a dungeon, It’s not the same as out in the world. Looking back now I can’t imagine how I found storymode difficult. Sure it’s still not a walk in the park but after having done so many explorables I can look back now and see that AC storymode was actually a good introduction to dungeons.

If you’re on desolation EU, feel free to contact me and I’ll help you if you want.

To the OP.. yea, AC is hard at first.. the lovers have a trick to them but the rest of the dungeon (at least the trash) can be hard.. it IS a bit odd that a lot of the trash can be harder than the actual boss fights.. but it DOES get easier, Caudecus’s Manor is a lot easier than Ascalonian Catacombs and then Twilight Arbor is more difficult than Caudecus’s Manor but easier than Ascalonian Catacombs etc.. the dungeons are all a mix of difficulty and some bosses have nice mechanics that are a nice break from the pain in the kitten mechanics that other bosses have (last boss in Citadel of Flame or Sorrow’s Embrace). Anyways, point is, don’t judge all dungeons from a few experiences with one specific dungeon ;-)

callidus.7085:

To the OP.. yea, AC is hard at first.. the lovers have a trick to them but the rest of the dungeon (at least the trash) can be hard.. it IS a bit odd that a lot of the trash can be harder than the actual boss fights.. but it DOES get easier, Caudecus’s Manor is a lot easier than Ascalonian Catacombs and then Twilight Arbor is more difficult than Caudecus’s Manor but easier than Ascalonian Catacombs etc.. the dungeons are all a mix of difficulty and some bosses have nice mechanics that are a nice break from the pain in the kitten mechanics that other bosses have (last boss in Citadel of Flame or Sorrow’s Embrace). Anyways, point is, don’t judge all dungeons from a few experiences with one specific dungeon ;-)

Wait a second, are you still regarding Story Mode ONLY when you compare dungeons in this post? If so, that is awesome!

See, I do AC explorer mode every day that I get on. I did it all day last Saturday 7AM to 1AM. Same thing on Sunday. So you can imagine how many times I have done that dungeon.

I did CM explorer path 1 & 2, the HARDEST dungeon I have ever done. The rifleman have an eagle eye range and can two shot you if you move, but if you don’t move than you’re getting pelted by multiple rifleman at once since the mobs are formed in groups of 20+. Maybe I was just completely clueless at this dungeon, along with my guildies except one person, but CM just sucks. lol.

DivineBeing.2086:

Wait a second, are you still regarding Story Mode ONLY when you compare dungeons in this post? If so, that is awesome!

See, I do AC explorer mode every day that I get on. I did it all day last Saturday 7AM to 1AM. Same thing on Sunday. So you can imagine how many times I have done that dungeon.

I did CM explorer path 1 & 2, the HARDEST dungeon I have ever done. The rifleman have an eagle eye range and can two shot you if you move, but if you don’t move than you’re getting pelted by multiple rifleman at once since the mobs are formed in groups of 20+. Maybe I was just completely clueless at this dungeon, along with my guildies except one person, but CM just sucks. lol.

CM is not a hard dungeon but it does require some really good tactics to overcome the problems. Path 2 is quite a tough one though. There’s other dungeons and paths higher up that are much harder.

lol yeeeeaaaa… I haven’t done any explorables yet.. I want to do all the dungeons on story mode before I do any explorables. I just don’t have a lot of time and with a family and all that I need to split my attention between I get 2 – 3.5 hours a night on the week days to play. I think I’m lucky to have an 80 at this point. But yea, I’ve actually run story mode on the first few dungeons a lot.. it’s a great way to build up influence for your guild and to build teamwork/snyergy amongst your guildmates.

callidus.7085:

lol yeeeeaaaa… I haven’t done any explorables yet.. I want to do all the dungeons on story mode before I do any explorables. I just don’t have a lot of time and with a family and all that I need to split my attention between I get 2 – 3.5 hours a night on the week days to play. I think I’m lucky to have an 80 at this point. But yea, I’ve actually run story mode on the first few dungeons a lot.. it’s a great way to build up influence for your guild and to build teamwork/snyergy amongst your guildmates.

I would suggest if you don’t have a lot of time to find people who have already done the explorables so you don’t have to waste time learning all the tactics yet it’s still hard enough that it’s challenging and you get to do the content.

Rekia.1480:

It’s sad that I can’t just join a group of fellow noobs and attempt the first dungeon in the game together, learning as we go. Instead it was just a frustrating waste of time.
(

don’t worry it’s a learning process..i’m like you too at first doing dungeons.and i don’t have any friends at all,just a PuG..i even got kicked out from the group because i was a noob..

but then again i refuse that,i tried to renew my playstyle..from there i knew if i want to learn, i have to try something different..from playstyle into build…

and eventually i never been booted by anyone and now i gain many friends after that…

don’t give hope

@Fay
Nooo nooo nooo lol I don’t mind my pace at all.. I’m just saying that’s why I haven’t done explorables.. to be honest, I hope to find a pack of noobs when I start doing explorables and suffering through the dungeons together :-P And no.. that’s not sarcasm.. I would like to do this.. but I’m just hoping that when I do it will be with like minded people that don’t mind dying and enjoy taking their time. I think one of the funniest moments so far with the group I’ve been doing dungeons with in storymode was when I attempted to leap at an effigy in CoF while it was still friendly (not activated) and i fell to my death behind him lol my group had a nice laugh at that.. things like that make the game fun/funny.. being able to make mistakes with your friends and laugh about it later once you’ve completed the dungeon.

callidus.7085:

@Fay
Nooo nooo nooo lol I don’t mind my pace at all.. I’m just saying that’s why I haven’t done explorables.. to be honest, I hope to find a pack of noobs when I start doing explorables and suffering through the dungeons together :-P And no.. that’s not sarcasm.. I would like to do this.. but I’m just hoping that when I do it will be with like minded people that don’t mind dying and enjoy taking their time. I think one of the funniest moments so far with the group I’ve been doing dungeons with in storymode was when I attempted to leap at an effigy in CoF while it was still friendly (not activated) and i fell to my death behind him lol my group had a nice laugh at that.. things like that make the game fun/funny.. being able to make mistakes with your friends and laugh about it later once you’ve completed the dungeon.

That’s the way we did it Friendly group of people suffering together, having a laugh about it. Then eventually succeeding is very rewarding and fun. I just have to warn you that figuring out some of these paths (without looking up tactics) can take hours. I remember being stuck on one of the TA paths for 8 hours because we just couldn’t figure it out.

I have done ac countless times. I took a bunch first timers in last night. We did Ghost Eater.

One of the harder fights for a first timer is Kholer(sp). There were deaths and a few wipes. What I saw though was people learning. They figured out what his different attacks looked like. You can explain something to death and never understand it till you see it in work.

Now that they know it will be an easier time the next time they do it.

I enjoy going with new people having them learn. It a different experience and I sometime shave to work at staying then just blowing through it half assed and surviving.

Oh and the beside me (lv80) the highest level in party was 38.

" I guess there might’ve been a point to it if dungeons were actually fun to play, and not a dull, monotonous chore."

And that’s my point, these things are fun once you’ve mastered the encounters. Even once your running things with no wipes and sub 1hr times you still see room for improvement. It’s all based on communication and group synergy, dont expect to nail it first or second time.

Ye I know how you feel :/

Going into dungeons for the first time is a bit of an unpleasant shock, the best advice I can give you is to not give up, once you level up and get more into it, the dungeons get a lot better and more fun.

AC has a lot of problematic ranged trash mobs, try getting as much of anti projectile abilities as possible. If nothing works just come back after you’re a higher level. It’s not perfect but it’ll get the job done.

The OP is talking about SM, not EM.

Also everyone saying “just wait for CM” has obviously not run it since the ‘fixes’. It’s no longer faceroll, and in fact probably one of the harder SM instances I’ve ran because of the absurd amount of high hp, high dmg trash (and cc chains).

Overall, I feel like the difficulty of SM dungeons could be toned down considering the rewards for them are fairly inconsequential. At the very least, the sheer amount of time spent killing trash should be reduced. And yes, maybe some sort of ‘tutorial’ for first time dungeon seeker, although, so far AC seems to be pretty easy in comparison to other SM.

As people have said, there are tricks to every boss in the instance.

@Ender:

See, that’s where I get off your rails. Games for me aren’t something I want to ‘master’ and spend boring time on, organizing things with other players or even communicating to a greater extent than “hi” and “thanks”. They’re supposed to be entertaining pixels bouncing on my screen.

I can do multiple DEs in the time it takes to cut down the first few trash mobs in CA storymode because of their pointlessly inflated health. The prolonged fights with mobs that are essentially the same ones you meet outside the dungeon, just a bit more buff, will never ever become fun for me.

Manasa Devi.7958:

See, that’s where I get off your rails. Games for me aren’t something I want to ‘master’ and spend boring time on, organizing things with other players or even communicating to a greater extent than “hi” and “thanks”. They’re supposed to be entertaining pixels bouncing on my screen.

Then Multiplayer games are probably not for you. They kind of need those things. I hear WoW is easy enough without co-ordination. You should try that MMO, Seriously.

- Xhaine

Manasa Devi.7958:

See, that’s where I get off your rails. Games for me aren’t something I want to ‘master’ and spend boring time on, organizing things with other players or even communicating to a greater extent than “hi” and “thanks”. They’re supposed to be entertaining pixels bouncing on my screen.

then GW2 may not be a good choice of game

Xhaine.4120:

Manasa Devi.7958:

See, that’s where I get off your rails. Games for me aren’t something I want to ‘master’ and spend boring time on, organizing things with other players or even communicating to a greater extent than “hi” and “thanks”. They’re supposed to be entertaining pixels bouncing on my screen.

Then Multiplayer games are probably not for you. They kind of need those things. I hear WoW is easy enough without co-ordination. You should try that MMO, Seriously.

- Xhaine

Nonsense. Only a small subset of multiplayer games require those things, and most of that small number only require it for a small subset of the things you can do in them.

Disconnected.9253:

Manasa Devi.7958:

See, that’s where I get off your rails. Games for me aren’t something I want to ‘master’ and spend boring time on, organizing things with other players or even communicating to a greater extent than “hi” and “thanks”. They’re supposed to be entertaining pixels bouncing on my screen.

then GW2 may not be a good choice of game

No, GW2 is perfectly viable except for a tiny bit of content that is totally out of place in the larger game that perfectly suits my style of play. I think they made a mistake to put dungeon story mode on a different level of play.

What we have now is a game that you can spend weeks having fun on, happily ignoring dungeons (because frankly, I don’t even care to miss out on them) only to run into the final story step requiring the Arah dungeon, leaving me with a game I can’t even bother to finish.

Can’t quote anymore,

GW2, Dungeons are that small subset of things you can’t do without communication. You can do some of them, you can’t do all of them. Once you’ve got them on farm, communication is less on the fight and more on How is ones day/weekend/stuff.

- Xhaine

Leveling, crafting, farming, pvp, and some dungeons you can do without communication. You should stick to those if you don’t like that aspect of multiplayer game play.

I have only done AC so far too, me and my friends wait for times that we all have off so it takes a while for that to happen.

We were so excited to try the first dungeon and we got wiped many times. throughout the dungeon we all thought that it was too hard and very frustrating and even discouraged to try another. However we did finish it and now that I have had time to think about it I feel that the difficulty at least makes the dungeons kind of intimidating. Next time we go do one me and my friends need to be very serious with a strong plan, we went in the first one thinking we could just do whatever we want, even one of us kept initiating fights when the rest of the team wasn’t ready. So I am sure our inexperience and lack of organizing was our downfall. I think that like so many here have said after I play it a few times it will actually start to feel much easier.

The biggest problems we all have is our perspective, a challenge sometimes makes us feel like not good players, so we like it to be easier so we can feel that we played well. Those who like a challenge think its great, because they keep trying until they feel they have improved and overcame a great and difficult obstacle.

Kiyoki, exactly. My first time in AC we wiped 4 or 5 times in the first room because everyone was opening coffins. We had NO CLUE how to play it right and pulled tons of mobs without being prepared.

Now we can run every Ex path with very few wipes. Dont get disheartened, just learn from your mistakes.

Ender.3508:

Kiyoki, exactly. My first time in AC we wiped 4 or 5 times in the first room because everyone was opening coffins. We had NO CLUE how to play it right and pulled tons of mobs without being prepared.

Now we can run every Ex path with very few wipes. Dont get disheartened, just learn from your mistakes.

Learning and adapting, it’s one thing as Humans we are good at and should use it more often!

- Xhaine

@OP, I agree with your first time impression. The rewards are not worth the effort while leveling. You’ll level faster doing events and WvW.

I know that there’s a trick to the Lovers, I actually really like that it kind of gives you a hint what to do and that the fight implies you will need to think about a way to kill them. I would think it was a fun and challenging boss fight if they didn’t kill us almost instantly with one lightning storm before we even had time to dodge out of it.

I’m sure the dungeons are really easy, like all things, once you’ve done them a bit. I’m just upset that there is no preparation for this. There is no easing in to it. It’s like learning to ride a bike without training wheels or assistance of any kind. And like learning to ride a bike, I’m sure it’s probably super easy once you get the hang of it and you wonder to yourself how it could have ever been hard. It just sucks that the very first impression that new people get of dungeons is this.

Also, I would really expect to get much better gear from a dungeon than I could get on my own, especially with the difficulty, but instead I got white and blue items that were worse than the gear I was wearing (I was wearing level 30 gear because I was level 30). That was part of the disappointment I felt.

I think I’ll probably just stick to leveling up until I’m strong enough for another attempt, which is a shame because normally I really like dungeons in MMOs. I think these ones just might be balanced for people with the gear and level that the dungeon suggests.

If it makes you feel better, I ran AC Story for the first time today. Not only was I not prepared for the difficulty (every official source said story modes were the “easy modes”, but whoever said that about AC I call shenanigans on) but I was also not prepared for the LENGTH! None of us were. We spent 2 hours in there, and still had content left (the lovers, etc). We were all getting tired, and we were baffled.

We’d run AC Explorable paths 1 and 3 several times already, and to be honest, they were not all that difficult. Why does AC Story feel as difficult, if not harder, than the explore modes? The trash pulls were ridiculous, the East path off the Lieutenant platform with the 3 ranger ghosts?? Holy cow…wiped there over and over without killing even one of them from their slows, stuns, poison, etc.

I’m sure it all takes the right strategy, but I agree 100%, it’s a huge leap in difficulty from PvE.

This thread has to be revived because this specific dungeon and story mode desperately needs to be addressed. Currently it’s the worst enemy of the dungeon community because it’s face stomping people who just want to experience the game and it’s a terrible introduction to dungeons – it’s pushing people away in a really bad way. I will start this post by admitting we did the dungeon after the first room with four people. On an Oceanic server on a saturday night we were only able to get five people together after two hours of searching (our group was just sitting around wasting their lives searching for a fifth, if this is working as intended and it’s not your first priority to fix this problem I might want to quit now). I spent 7 silver (at level 35) waypointing between a few maps looking for someone. When our fifth dropped after the first room, we didn’t want to spend another hour looking to replace him and no-one else wanted to repeat story mode (incredibly short sighted design there). I’m trying very hard not to be offensive to the devs with this post but this experience was downright miserable.

I’ve run done all of the story mode dungeons in the game except for CoE and this one is by far the worst. It’s the first one players experience and it’s the one those timid players trying to wet their toes are going to experience before moving onto other stuff. It was seriously overtuned. It takes a great deal of experience, knowledge and skill to deal with the stuff in this dungeon – and there is a lot of stuff to deal with. Traps, warrior visual cues for heals, elementalist AoE death rings (all the AoE death rings need to be toned down, players are used to living through them in PvE, make them less punishing but still severe so players have some breathing room for dodging and mistakes). Target priorities, of conditions which might require class synergy to best deal with and overtuned health pools on mobs so high I kinda don’t like the person who decided to make them that way.

I was with a group for over three hours trying to slog through this place. We wiped on almost every encounter, three and certainly four mobs was too much for us. Pulling wasn’t something the group was experienced with and I was finding it difficult to separate mobs using the weird aggro leash pull (not to mention my party didn’t help out in that regard). We usually wiped and only had one engaged, killed that one, then moved on. I am fairly experienced with dungeons in general and I was instructing the group in detail (similair to how detailed my posts are) on how to deal with stuff, dodging, reviving etc. Nente and Kasha were the easiest part of the dungeon (easier than the trash) and we finally got to the lovers. This fight is garbage. I was holding Vassar on my own for a good period of time while my group struggled to DPS Ralena down. They were corpse running this part and there wasn’t much I could do to make them better at dodging. Between mesmer greatsword 5 knockback and focus 4 pull I was able to keep Vassar away but I eventually went down to the incredibly overpowered confusion causing summons which I couldn’t kill fast enough (not to mention killing them killed me via confusing). We ended up wiping with many different strategies used, all of them solid strategies but this group was very inexperienced with dungeons, people went down too fast and DPS was poor (again I admit we only had four, but I’ve run several explorable dungeons with only four people for half of them and we were fine).

One of the problems with this experience is I believe that the content was designed for better equipped players. I don’t know for sure, I didn’t inspect, but I strongly suspect they were wearing lower level gear. This is very normal in PvE. Story Mode dungeons shouldn’t be balanced for level appropriate gear, that’s not going to be the case for many people. My group probably didn’t have many stats in vitality or toughness never mind good power stats to DPS mobs down efficiently (not to mention everyone else being downed most of the time).

I wiped more times on this dungeon than I did against Giganticus Lupicus. I’ve breezed through this dungeon with more experienced teams (back when dungeons gave silver on repeated attempts – I didn’t farm – only about four times) so I know it can be done easily, but this is a garbage execution for people’s first dungeon. I had one ele in the group, she was doing a dungeon for the first time. She was patient and tolerant the whole way through, a little timid going into it because she didn’t know what to expect, I reassured her it shouldn’t be that bad (I didn’t realise anyone with any experience with dungeons is never going to do AC story mode again and our whole group was full of dungeon virgins except for me) and by the end of it, she was still polite, but she despised dungeons and never wants to do them again. I told her this was an unusually bad experience and we were a man down, but it was truly a horrid experience.

To summarise
*We were a man down
*AC story doesn’t take into account many level appropriate players have inappropriate gear
*Mob sizes are too big for new players, DPS is too great (taking people out too quickly) and generally not forgiving enough for people to learn
*Ralena and Vassar are overtuned

The current design for the first dungeon in the game is pushing people away from all dungeons in the game. It’s bad for the entire dungeon community because it decreases the active player base instead of giving them a healthy place to learn the way dungeons work and the kinds of strategies and skills they will need to use. When the first dungeon is obviously harder than most explorable modes something is seriously wrong.

If you think AC story is hard, wait until you do the rest of the dungeons on story

This again?

Acs hard? If acs is hard then I dont want to know what you will think when you get Bandit rushed in CMS or chain feared → kD by the dogs, or Sniped.

ah why do I bother. I sound condescending but I really am not? Its jsut that I know me and a lot of other people did ACS and had very little problems with it with NO experience and it just frustrates me that people complain about it when I find in groups that I lead, its purely that people dont use their “brains” they dont observe they dont think they dont communicate they just act and assume things should just die because they swung a sword.

but meh why do I care? it just means its going to get nerfed and it will be easier for me to run later on, so i should say thanks i guess. can you say cms is too hard also? I hate having to slot team stability because no one else thinks about what counters kd and fear.