Guild Wars 2

To complete the Carapace Collection, one needs to get every achievement for the relevant personal story missions. Because of this, these achievements are among the most important ones in the game. Getting them right – that is, making them manageable, but engaging – is thus important. After all, you’ve eliminated the option to do alternative achievements for these.

No Refuge, however, is an obnoxious barrier here. I am, of course, referring to the Dodgy Crowd achievement – which requires players to kill the boss without getting hit by any wind walls or sand pools.

The wind walls should not be an issue. They are easy to see. Easy to dodge. And that’s good enough.

The problem, however, is that this map suffers from a combination of two major graphical annoyances that interact to become downright blinding.

The brightness of No Refuge is just over the top.

Even when gamma is lowered to the absolute minimum, this mission’s terrain is obnoxiously bright. It is physically PAINFUL to look at for extended periods of time.

The particles for the sand pools tend to blend into the terrain at all gamma settings.

When a player is required to avoid something, it should be visible. It doesn’t have to glow like bright red neon, but holy kitten, it needs to be clearly visible. It shouldn’t be very close to the general color and texture of the stage.

The achievement text is falsified.

In addition to the two stated objectives, his earth spikes will also cause players to lose credit. Due to the lack of red circles, this one tends to be just as stealthy as the sand pools. Instead of proper telegraphs, it uses a color that blends into the bright sepia tone of the flashback.

Why is there no repeat mote for this boss? Why?

You had a good thing with Hidden Arcana. Bosses should have instant repeat motes for these types of achievements. Repeating the entire mission for one achievement – which can only be obtained at the end of the mission – is not fun. Not fun at all.

In short….

Remove the bright, high-gamma sepia effects from this mission. Replace them with proper, normal lighting and colors that do not blend with the boss particles and do not hurt the eyes.

Add instant repeat motes to each segment.

If the lighting is an issue for you, turn Post-Processing off in the Graphics options. That will remove the sepia effects and should help your visibility for triyng to complete the achievement.

As for getting Dodgy Crowd, your best bet might be to enlist a friend to help you and have him do all the fighting, while you simply concentrate on staying away from whirlpools and dodging wind walls. Then after that, help your friend by doing the reverse for him if he needs the achievement too!

Run a condition build as Caithe and it will be a lot easier. (Caithe caltrops are pretty OP)
Cast caltrops and run away to where you can safely avoid everything.

Easy solution, find a guy to work together.
With one person hiding and one person killing the boss, you can easily obtain this achievement.

Aomine.5012:

Easy solution, find a guy to work together.
With one person hiding and one person killing the boss, you can easily obtain this achievement.

Attempting to leave the area, however, teleports you back into it.

I did this a few days ago, and didn’t have any problem with the terrain being bright (it just looks like any other terrain in GW2) or not being able to see the sand circles. They show pretty clearly as a swirly dark brown colour. My graphics settings are pretty much normal (meaning I’ve never touched them except to turn post-processing off).

I can also absolutely confirm that the earth spike (which is shown by a very obvious red AoE disk) does not cause you to fail the achievement. I quite happily got hit by it while succeeding.

I did this few days ago with a group. We were having a rough time till we kicked pugs and did it with just me and 2 guildies on vent with me playing Caithe (since I’m Thief main I was more familiar with her playstyle). The pug kept dying as her rapidly.

I put on my full soldier set I use for Teq and focused mainly on killing Elementals~ Her spin attack kills them super fast~ well all her skills kill them faster than a normal person in full zerker it seems, even in soldier. I’d get hits on Centuar when I could but I focused more on Eles and using all her Movement Skills to dodge sand and using my 2 endurance dodges only for emergency. Caithe’s mobility skills are amazing, you barely even need to dodge through 80% of the fight if you know how to use them.

My 2 Guildies stayed on cliff off to the side and ranged attacked them~ apparently the sand couldn’t hit them there, (warrior and ranger). I didn’t die till I fudged when he was at 1% but it was NP and we killed it. Wasn’t too difficult with that strategy.

I didn’t have much problem seeing the sandstorms at all, but I believe there is a bug where the sand wall shows a gap/opening in them that doesn’t actually exist and you take damage. So I just avoided the walls all together or used dodge or evade skill through it.

Togonn’s earth spikes do NOT invalidate the achievement. I can also confirm this from personal experience. However, your complaints regarding lighting is well justified. It IS rather difficult to spot the sand pools on the lighter ground portions.

I also echo the advice of others suggesting that you group up for this achievement. One person is Caithe, while everybody else just equips ranged weapons and stand up on the little rock ledge that leads to the higher ledge. (Don’t go ALL the way up. This will teleport you back into the arena and cost you the achievement.) The wind walls don’t reach there, and since the sand pools only spawn where the Earth Elementals are killed, there is no risk of getting hit by them as long as the Elementals keep following Caithe around.

Zaxares.5419:

Togonn’s earth spikes do NOT invalidate the achievement. I can also confirm this from personal experience. However, your complaints regarding lighting is well justified. It IS rather difficult to spot the sand pools on the lighter ground portions.

I also echo the advice of others suggesting that you group up for this achievement. One person is Caithe, while everybody else just equips ranged weapons and stand up on the little rock ledge that leads to the higher ledge. (Don’t go ALL the way up. This will teleport you back into the arena and cost you the achievement.) The wind walls don’t reach there, and since the sand pools only spawn where the Earth Elementals are killed, there is no risk of getting hit by them as long as the Elementals keep following Caithe around.

I’m not sure which ledge you’re referring to, but I just parked a friend pretty high up, and the wind still hit him.

It’s the part on the north-east side of the boss arena, where you would normally jump up there to reach the upper ledge. (Out in the open world, the upper ledge usually holds either an Ancient Wood node or a Rich Mithril Vein. It’s guarded by a Veteran Lashtail Devourer.)

I should add the caveat that this method worked back when I did this achievement when Seeds of Truth came out. It’s entirely possible that ANet has patched it so that the wind walls now hit that area.

Zaxares.5419:

since the sand pools only spawn where the Earth Elementals are killed, there is no risk of getting hit by them as long as the Elementals keep following Caithe around.

Just a quick side note, the centaur can summon sand pools if you in melee range of him. I found this challenge really hard for that reason. The Elementals had to be killed at range and any melee of the centaur had to be done very carefully. I spent hours doing this, and in the end I still couldn’t read his tell for summoning the sand pool (although there were a few times when I knew he wasn’t.)

This can be soloed, although it might take a few tries.

My biggest tip to you:

The sand walls are composed of projectiles and as such, can be reflected with Caithe’s #3 skill. The reflected projectiles will one-shot the elementals if they hit them.

With this tip I had little problem finishing the achievements.