Guild Wars 2

GUNNAR’s FORGE

To ArenaNet forum staff, i will save 5 posts to write there my boss encounters, so please do not ban me and please don’t delete this thread. Thank You.

Sorry in advance for my poor english, i checked this wall of text 2 times, but ofc i can lack of language knowledge in some aspects so i can’t correct all mistakes.

Sorry for the infantile story, i couldn’t come up with sth better. I don’t have such talent like Ree Soesbee, i rather want to show my boss designs, how i see their mechanics and how i see this dungeon overall. I leave story for ppl that have way more talent than me. I just wrote the basic story behind this dungeon. It will probably not fit into the main lore of Tyria, maybe some of our community members can rewrite and make that story better. I just gave You the basic idea. As i said i want to focus on mechanics, loot and stuff like that. Artistic side of this „project” i leave to someone else.

1.Story

Tip: If it’s to long, just skip to the paragraph 2 „Main Mechanism”

Over 400 houndreds years ago, great forgeman Gunnar Fireborn created the great forge, where dwars in their prime made the most impresive armor and weapons. Unfortunately 20 years later some terrible thing has happened. Gunnar has built the forge deep under Shiverpeaks Mountains, but he didn’t know who was there before him.

It was Firelord Zanzul, ancient elemental, father of all fire elementals in Tyria. He’s been sleeping there, after he was sealed during elemental war. Airlord Nostram, Waterlord Lenfaz and Earthlord Galwan has stopped his destructive vision. All three elementals decided to sacrifice their power to seal him.

Gunnar, unaware of the history if this place, removed the seal, waking Firelord up. Zanzul didn’t react immediately, because his power was almost lost during the war, so he decided to meditate and gather his old ancient power again to fulfill his vision. He wanted to create the world only for elementals, destroying all life (dunno how write it well, basicly he wanted to destroy all humans, dwarves etc. He considered them as the worst pollution, that Tyria suffered from). Twenty years later Firelord Zanzul was ready. He released his fire children, that burned everything in its path.

Dwarves fought with the elementals, but soon the ancient power of Znazul filled the whole Forge. Firelord Zanzul showed himself to the dwarves. He looked like the huge titan covered by lava. His aura incinerated the area around him. Dripping lava created more elementals (dunno how cover it in better sentence) and his breath burned everything in its path.

Gunnar decided to close him inside the forge. He didn’t want to let Firelord go outside the forge, so he ordered his comrades to distract Zanzul while he was closing and sealing every possible way that Firelord could use to go outside. It was obvious that he sacrificed life of almost all dwarves by doing this. Some dwarves escaped from the forge before Gunnar sealed the doors.

After closing all doors and ways, Gunnar prepared the plan to drag Zanzul into the deeper parts of the forge. They brought the most durable chains and wrapped Zanzul around. The temperature of Firelord was extremly high, so they had to pull him very fast. They made it. They pulled him down to the deepest part of the forge, Gunnar’s chamber. It was Gunnar’s room where he created the greatest creations. Zanzul fell into flaming steel boiler and „rolled” down to the lava hole. Steel binded his movement. Gunnar decided cool down the lava, so they could close the fire elemental lord in the hole. They made it, but before they closed the last „hole”, Firelord made his last fire breath, incinerating everyone inside the room. Gunnar and all dwarves inside died, sealing Firelord and protecting Tyria from the disaster.

Over 370 years later, Flame legion shaman Nezaja Flamefoot found out the old scrolls, written by dwarves that survived. He showed his finds to the Flame Legion leaders, but they ignored it. They were involved in war with other clans, and had no time and resources to find the forge.

Nezaja decided to search for this forge on his own. He gathered some forces and convinced dredges to come with him. After some years of searching, they found the forge and started to dig into it. Obviously they destroyed the seals on the doors. They started to look for the Firelord. Firelord felt the persence of charrs, and dredges. (and here is the most stupid thing i came up with) He started to communicate with them, by using telepathy (like u know, C’thun in Ahn’Qiraj…well in one sentence, shaman Nezaja Flamefoot and his crew started to hear voices). They began the process of releasing Firelord.

Some agents from other charr clans tracked Nezaja’s plans, so they decided to look for „heroes” that will stop shaman.

2. Main mechanisms

In this paragraph i’d like to write about my thoughts on what mechanisms and features should this dungeon have.

• Dynamic difficulty scaling

What it means is to adjust the difficulty of the content based on the players actions. For example, the first boss i have, Dredge Driller Supervisor, when You explore the forge You will see „Dredge Supervisor Assistants” that keep an eye on the other dredges while they are digging. If You avoid them and not kill them, they will help the boss (boss will have 2 special abilities involved Dredge Supervisor Assistants”), making the encounter harder. More? Ofcourse, there will be dredge suit that some technican will work on, if You don’t kill them, Dredge boss at some point will hop in to this suit making the fight even more complex and difficult.

Let me wrap it up. When You kill technicans and Dredge Assistants, You will enter the normal difficulty level of the boss.
When You kill technicans and not kill Dredge Assistans, You will enter heroic version of this fight.
When You not kill technicans and Dredge Assistants, You will enter survival version of this fight.

• Rewards

Loot from hard dungeons should be worth more. I came up with an idea to bring tokens for which we can buy crafting recipies, that will allow us to create ascendant and legendary gear. I want to introduce 2 types of tokens:

heroic forge tokens – allows to buy ascendant gear recipe, aviable only by killing heroic and survival mode bosses
legendary forge token – allows to buy legendary gear recipe, aviably only by killing survival mode bosses.

LEGENDARY WILL ADD ONLY COOLER LOOK NOT STATS ON IT. ASCENDANT GEAR HAS BEEN INTRODUCED ALREADY SO PROGRESS IN THIS AREA ISNT AGAINST THE ARENANET PHILOSOPHY.

On top of that bosses will drop crafting materials required to craft gear from the recipies:

ancient power saturated steel – steel saturated by the ancient power of firelord
ancient power saturated leather – leather saturated by the ancient power of firelord
ancient power saturated cloth – cloth saturated with the ancient power of firelord
ancient power saturated gem – gem saturated with the ancient power of firelord

Steel will be required to create heavy armor and weapons from weaponsmith
Leather will be required to create medium armor
Cloth will be required to create light armor
Gems will be required to create trinkets, rings, staffs, scepters (jewelcrafting, artificers etc).

Loot tables:

- Normal mode bosses:

Dredge Supervisor:

1 random rare item
1 random green item
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

Blademaster Jerga Slainfrau:

1 rare random item
1 random green item
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

Fire elemental:

1 rare random item
1 random green item
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

Nezaja Flamefoot:

1 random exotic item
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

Firelord Zanzul:

1 random exotic item
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

- Heroic mode bosses:

Dredge Supervisor:

1 random rare item
1 heroic forge token
1 random „saturated” crafting ingredient
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

Blademaster Jerga Slainfrau:

1 rare random item
1 heroic forge token
1 random „saturated” crafting ingredient
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

Fire elemental:

1 rare random item
1 heroic forge token
1 random „saturated” crafting ingredient
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

Nezaja Flamefoot:

1 random exotic item
1 heroic forge token
1 random „saturated” crafting ingredient
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

Firelord Zanzul:

1 random exotic item
1 heroic forge token
1 random „saturated” crafting ingredient
2 random „normal” crafting ingredient

- Survival mode bosses:

Dredge Supervisor:

1 random exotic item
1 heroic forge token
1 legendary forge token
2 random „saturated” crafting ingredient

Blademaster Jerga Slainfrau:

1 random exotic item
1 heroic forge token
1 legendary forge token
2 random „saturated” crafting ingredient

Fire elemental:

1 random exotic item
1 heroic forge token
1 legendary forge token
2 random „saturated” crafting ingredient

Nezaja Flamefoot:

1 random exotic item
1 heroic forge token
1 legendary forge token
2 random „saturated” crafting ingredient

Firelord Zanzul:

2 random exotic item
2 heroic forge token
1 legendary forge token
3 random „saturated” crafting ingredient

You will be able to kill those bosses only once per day (If You kill boss on whatever mode, u wont be able to reset the dungeon and kill it again in whatever mode ).

• Bring wipe factor to the dungeons and please the hardcore pve players

I want to introduce one more mechanism, or rather expand on survival and heroic modes.

If You choose to fight boss in heroic or survival mode, all waypoints in the dungeon becomes unavaiable untill all ppl in pt are dead (sth simmilar to fractals).

Survival mode brings wipe counter. When You wipe 5 times on boss, this boss become unavaiable in survival mode again untill next day(reset).

• If sth is good and it works, why we want to get rid of this?

Yes, bring more than 5 ppl to party. Make dungeons more epic, force players to coopearate on the higher lvl, bring back the guild factor. I’d like this dungeon to be 10-15 man. Having more than 5 ppl brings more difficulty aspect to the encounter (spacing, timing, less space problem to solve). Give ppl chance to think about tactics and cooperation.

If sth works (in other games) why we want to get rid of this? I know ArenaNet want to diverse them from other games, but some aspects are superior and should be implemented in the Guild Wars 2 to please more hardcore audience

• Make bosses more „active”

I try to design bosses for this dungeon, to make them more active. I want to get rid of tank’n’spank scenario. I want to take adventage of non-animation lock combat that GW2 has and i want to make no-trinity to shine even more.

3. Crafting

I will now write the average token and mats requirements of the items from recipies.

20 heroic tookens for every ascendant recipe
50 legendary tokens for every legendary recipe
20 random „saturated” ingredient for one piece of ascendant armor
50random „saturated” ingredient for one piece of legendary armor

It gives around 40 days of „farming” stuff if You kill 5 heroic mode bosses every day and around 30 days if You kill 5 survival mode bosses every day to get full ascendant gear (head,shoulders,chest,hands,boots,legs,2xrings,necklace, 2 sets of weapons). And some more days to craft legendary weapon. Ppl want to farm sth? Give it to them.

Everyone will be able to get Ascendant gear in this dungeon, but not everyone will be able to kill survival bosses quickly.

4. Boss Encounters

Coming soon…first boss should be up sometime this week

First boss post saved

Second boss saved

Third boss saved

Fourth boss saved

Fifth boss saved