Without talking about Guild Missions, which seem to be fun and open world based, nothing in the open world is really challenging to bigger coordinated groups. Yeah, World Bosses could’ve been fun if there weren’t 100+ people around every boss and dragon every single time. But I digress. I want to highlight the importance of open world jewels here that can be incredibly engaging for groups, while taking almost no design effort for ArenaNet. Absolute win-win situations.
There is a cave in Mount Maelstrom, the Valley of Gwaun. It is littered with Champion Lost Spirits, (ascalonion ghost models) that all have some amazing buffs/skillsets to boost.
These bad kitten mofo’s were probably never put in that cave with the intention to be fought, even though there is a Point of Interest in the cave. The reason is that an event spawns in front of the cave with an absurd rate. The event NPC wants you to gather plants from the cave, but in turn will turn you into a bunny or other animal.
Now, if you would walk into the cave by yourself, in normal form, you’ll get blasted to pieces. Period. If you become an animal, the Champions will not harm you, you can gather your plants, get your PoI, etc.
However, for challenges, this cave is absolutely amazing. After a long time of not having been there, we took 15ish people in our guild, with the goal of clearing the cave of all it’s 20+ Champion inhabitants. Or so I thought. I sadly came to the conclusion yesterday that the population, at least from entrance to PoI seems to have been halved. If you look at the back of the cave, the area that you likely won’t aggro if you’re just there for the PoI, there’s still a density of 7-8 guys in a small corner. But just 3 guys in the front of the cave.
When I went there over a month ago, just entering seemed scary. Not anymore. I bet I could now get the PoI in normal form on my chars, and live to tell the tale.
What is the point of this thread? These small gems in the game, that can provide entertainment to a large group, for absolutely no effort on Anet’s part, should remain gems to be enjoyed. We cleared the cave in less than 3 minutes. And with the new loot rules of Champs always dropping at least a blue, it’s probably actually somewhat decent in terms of loot drops. But it’s not as challenging as it was when I tried over a month ago. I don’t care about the loot, I’d try to clean this cave if these Champs were special and had no loot table at all. I don’t have to have achievements, or anything, I’ll just take my own stopwatch to time it, only to try to beat it later.
But please, amazing gems like these shouldn’t be nerfed Anet. I realize that the PoI is hard to get if you run in in human form. I can even understand that you get complaints about this from people who don’t know about the transforming event. But don’t solve the issue by removing mobs, if anything, bring the PoI a bit closer to the entrance. Far enough that you get to peek in, but without having any real fear of dying. If anything, I’d hope Anet restores these 10 or so Champions that seem to have been removed.
Anyway, I want to share this particular ‘instance’ with everyone. It is (was) incredibly engaging to try to clear with a dedicated group of players, although, zerging it with more than 10 players is just going to destroy the fun. There are just too few Champions now. I’d love to see 5 or 10 man groups time trials videos appearing on Youtube as an unofficial Valley of Gwaun raid event, haha.
I’d also love to hear from everyone if they know about more places like these. Have you ever ventured into an open world zone, thinking that what you were looking at seems horribly ridiculously hard content to try to do and just dismissed it? Looking back, do you think going there with a group to clear it could be fun and challenging? I’d love to hear about these places. Ad hoc raiding locations like these can be more fun that a bunch of dungeons combined, after all.