Guild Wars 2

Only attemptable near the end of the instance. No Reset/Retry motes like the ones in Glint’s lair if you slip up. And while the wind walls are simple (unless you’re in Challenge Mode), the sand pools can be spawned from the boss and the elementals when they die, have no red circles indicating when they’re about to spawn, and linger on the map making things harder to avoid as the fight goes on.

This has to be one of the most frustrating ones yet, and having to redo the instance up to that point for every slip up is such a waste.

Oh…and just 3 Bandit Chest keys as a reward is lousy for the effort it takes. All I really want now is that Wynn’s Locket, yet you apparently thought us having to go through all those annoying achievements was necessary. It’s not fun.

I had more trouble with the wind walls than the sand pits. The pits from the elementals are easy to see coming since they always happen when the elemental dies, so just range or condition them and its easy-peasy (not to say I didn’t slip up multiple times and melee the things to death >.>).

The pits the boss throws are a bit more of a problem since they come with very little warning (just a small hand wave), but after a while I noticed that he rarely (if ever) spawns sand pits unless you’re at close range, so then I just started to hang back at long range until he started tossing rocks, then dashed in with 2 for a few hits and ran back out. Caithe’s 2 skill does a ton of damage anyway. Either that or just stealth with the elite and he’ll never do anything at all, including sand pits.

The wind walls, though… ugh. They come with absolutely no warning cues whatsoever as far as boss animations and seem to be able to spawn anywhere. Had a fair few runs ruined by them spawning right behind me and giving me no time to respond, and when that wasn’t happening I was thrown off by the fact that they spawn at different times (sometimes during the “burn phase” on the boss, sometimes during the elemental phases, its anything goes).

Regardless of which part gives the most problems, though, I agree that its very frustrating thanks to the lack of a retry node forcing you to sit through the instance every time. And yeah, the individual reward sucks, but most of the individual rewards for the Story Journal are less than impressive (especially more recently) and basically just for building up AP and for getting you that final reward from doing all of them.

I found this one actually more difficult than the challenge mote version since it is absolutely unforgiving with any single slip up ending the achievement. The real problem is mostly the sand pits I think they are basically the same color as the terrain without any circle outlining them and occasionally the boss will throw one right on top of you when you are in melee with him.

The secret is simple to completing this – go with one other person (that person should be playing as Caithe since she is OP). Hit the boss a couple of times at the very start run up on to the ledge (there are two places obvious places you can go to get away from the wind walls and pools) while Caithe kills the boss. Shockingly easy that way.

The thing that made this achievement difficult for me was the kittening bloom and sepia tones.

I get that it’s supposed to be a trip down memory lane, but if you’re going to smear astroglide all over the camera and call it kitschy, then don’t include an achievement that requires you to see things. I was able to get past this by just selecting Best Performance instead of Best Appearance, but video settings shouldn’t be a part of the difficulty.

It’s like Liadri’s whiteout all over again, ugh.

Electro.4173:

The wind walls, though… ugh. They come with absolutely no warning cues whatsoever as far as boss animations and seem to be able to spawn anywhere. Had a fair few runs ruined by them spawning right behind me and giving me no time to respond, and when that wasn’t happening I was thrown off by the fact that they spawn at different times (sometimes during the “burn phase” on the boss, sometimes during the elemental phases, its anything goes).

When the wind wall spawns, there is a ping on the mini map.

NTDK.4897:

Electro.4173:

The wind walls, though… ugh. They come with absolutely no warning cues whatsoever as far as boss animations and seem to be able to spawn anywhere. Had a fair few runs ruined by them spawning right behind me and giving me no time to respond, and when that wasn’t happening I was thrown off by the fact that they spawn at different times (sometimes during the “burn phase” on the boss, sometimes during the elemental phases, its anything goes).

When the wind wall spawns, there is a ping on the mini map.

They also always spawn closest to the outside of the arena and work their way towards the inside.

Just run it with a friend. let them kill the boss while you hide in a corner if it is giving you that much trouble.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Just run it with a friend. let them kill the boss while you hide in a corner if it is giving you that much trouble.

Or up on the ledge (just don’t go too far or you go out of bounds, losing the achievement too). I tried doing it normal, but the sand pits kept getting me somehow.

Yes, if you jump up onto the ledge, it will mark you as being out of bounds and teleport you back into the battle, losing you the achievement in the process.

In any case, I also highly recommend doing these achievements with others. One person can be Caithe and just kill the Elementals, while the others just stand at a safe distance with ranged weapons. Try and keep to the center since that gives you the longest period of time to see the wind walls coming.

Don’t attempt “Dodgy Crowd” with the Challenge Mote active unless you’re a masochist.

You can get “Don’t Tread on Me” fairly easily by jumping up onto the spikes near Nekhii’s tent. The centaurs can’t reach you with their trample attacks there, and you can use ranged attacks to kill them safely. (However, this is harder to pull off with Caithe as she has no good ranged attacks and all the ranged centaurs attacking you will kill you as you can’t use your self-heal without rolling off the spikes.)

I just recently powered through all of the living story season 2 achieves.

This was the worst one, by far.

Having to run through cutscenes, dialogue, porting through various different places, and a long fight just to retry it is the worst setup for an achievement.

Giving us “dodge” skills that just spastically fling you around when you’re supposed to watch where you step is a terrible idea.

Making a map that pings as a warning, but the ping is nowhere near where the wave starts is a bad idea.

None of this was well thought out.

Please, if the options are this or no achievement, just don’t put the achievement in next time.

Zaxares.5419:

Yes, if you jump up onto the ledge, it will mark you as being out of bounds and teleport you back into the battle, losing you the achievement in the process.

In any case, I also highly recommend doing these achievements with others. One person can be Caithe and just kill the Elementals, while the others just stand at a safe distance with ranged weapons. Try and keep to the center since that gives you the longest period of time to see the wind walls coming.

Don’t attempt “Dodgy Crowd” with the Challenge Mote active unless you’re a masochist.

If you jump up all the way up, yeah it’ll mark our out of bounds, but you can stay on the second ledge with no problem (just don’t move back too far), you just need some people to stay on the ground so they don’t go invulnerable. Thats how I wound up doing it.

And yeah, if someone really wants a challenge or difficult content, then do dodgy crowd with the challenge more. I wonder if its even possible?

It’s possible. I actually almost managed it when doing it for the first time with my guildies (I was playing as Caithe, but I unfortunately Dash’ed forward right into a sand pool that was half-invisible thanks to being on the lighter patches of sand.) There’s also a Youtube video someone posted in another thread that showed it being done, I believe.

This achievement won´t be that crucuial if the boss at least did have an obvious animation. All my tries on this failed just because of instantly created sand wells right below my feet, and with little to no indication neither on the target ground nor via boss’ animation this is plain unfair and reduced to lottery instead of skillful play. I eventually got it, but as i said, i had the luck to not have sand wells placed inside my shoes.

The absence of skippable cutscenes and challenge motes did not help either. So here´s a tip, ArenaNet:
– Achievement for one specific fight? Let us start and repeat this, and only THIS particular fight from any point of progression or location using the UI. The existing motes for the Facettes were okay, but you still could not do just one achievement you wanted and you still had to beat the boss first in order to try it for the achievemtn again.

- Achievement applying to the full story instance? Okay, then create a challenge mode in which there are no cutscenes or at least make all cutscenes – and i mean ALL, be it a simple camera ride, dialogue, video or whatever – skippable. Also add a possibility to restart the instance to try again for the achievbement from any point of progression or location through the UI.

Oh, and also please, please, pretty please make more use of the nice orange telegraphs. The fight vs the plant dragon in the Omphalos Chamber was just perfect. More of those, and less non-telegraphed AoE´s. Especially AoE´s with lingering effects like the sand wells need a clearly visible red outline, at least. Maybe in combination with this draw a circle around my character´s feet to mark the hitbox. Sucks to stand outside an AoE as an Asura but still be hit by it because it either doesn´t fit its red circle or because my hitbox is still inside the AoE while my character isn´t. This is especially annoying when you have to evade clustered mini-AoE´s – think of Mai Trin and her cannon barrage.

I will agree that the lack of a mote to reset the fight is disturbing. But the achievement itself was rather easy to do, #8 and #5 skills make that fight exremely easy.

Wolfeng.3784:

I will agree that the lack of a mote to reset the fight is disturbing. But the achievement itself was rather easy to do, #8 and #5 skills make that fight exremely easy.

The achievement by itself wasn’t terrible, it was that it was at the every end of the instance without a reset node that really sucked.

We had several occasions last night where we lost the achievement right after the cut scene, while he was still green and on his way in. We were standing in the middle of the area watching him come towards us and out of 5 tries a different person in the party lost it each time before it even started. It had nothing to do with where we were standing, we were all in a group within a few feet of each other right in the middle.

Nothing wrong with the achievement itself, but it is a bit annoying to have to go through the dialogue every time you fail. Maybe a checkpoint system would help, specially for longer instances.

The reward was lackluster.. as in “okay we have all the achievements.. let’s randomly assign rewards to them”

I have been gaming since the days of Atari 2600 and I have no problem replaying hard content over and over again until you succeed. Challenges are great!

However, the price of failure in this instance, particularly with the second achievement, is entirely too high. Being forced to sit through the same unskippable dialogue and cutscenes over and over again is a cruel punishment.

This is the most frustrating kitten ever! Anet why!

This is an extremely frustrating achievement for people like me who arent good enough to get it in couple tries and require significantly more. i have been attempting this achievement for the last couple days(still havent got it) and just getting more and more frustrated because of the fact that i have to go through the laborious task of listening to caithe and faolain blather on for the hundredth time and defeating the large group of centaurs before i can even attempt to fight the boss and get the achievement only to fail and having to repeat the whole thing again. Can we please get skippable cutscene. Why would you not have skippable cutscene especially for brutal achievement and why didnt we get a mote to simply repeat the boss like in glints lair

Reset Mote would have been a good addition.

If he casts with his left hand Dodge. Stay away from the Earth Elementals as they die.

This seems to be a bug: If I die at any point during the mission, the achievement is no longer listed as being possible. I do not need to have reached the final boss.

Nilkemia.8507:

Only attemptable near the end of the instance. No Reset/Retry motes like the ones in Glint’s lair if you slip up. And while the wind walls are simple (unless you’re in Challenge Mode), the sand pools can be spawned from the boss and the elementals when they die, have no red circles indicating when they’re about to spawn, and linger on the map making things harder to avoid as the fight goes on.

This has to be one of the most frustrating ones yet, and having to redo the instance up to that point for every slip up is such a waste.

Oh…and just 3 Bandit Chest keys as a reward is lousy for the effort it takes. All I really want now is that Wynn’s Locket, yet you apparently thought us having to go through all those annoying achievements was necessary. It’s not fun.

I’ve had no issue or problem with this achievement. do it in a group and run in a circle, you don’t even have to dodge. hope that helped. good luck o7

Yeah…I got it by standing on a ledge and ranging while the others in the group ran him around.

It was easy and completely unheroic. There was absolutely nothing to feel good about with this achievement other than that I demonstrated that I know how to use the LFG tool.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t what achievements are for.

Pipra.7580:

Yeah…I got it by standing on a ledge and ranging while the others in the group ran him around.

It was easy and completely unheroic. There was absolutely nothing to feel good about with this achievement other than that I demonstrated that I know how to use the LFG tool.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t what achievements are for.

Why didn’t you solo it then?

well, today we were a group of 3 people doing this achievment (me just for the fun of helping) and we did it on the 1st try, one even got the instructions of me WHILE the boss was ongoing (he wasn’t even sober fyi) while I tanked and the last tried to merely stay ranged.
I really don’t get how this one can be so hard… just avoid getting tunnelvision, dodge through the walls (and turn off postprocessing)

I did it with a group of 5 ppl while doing the Challenge mote. Let me tell you, the challenge increase with the number of ppl and it was awesome. Took us a couple of try, but it was so fun and challenging. But I agree that a mote to reset the fight like in Glint’s Lair would be nice. Other than that, nothing should change. A bit of challenge won’t kill you guys.

Coulter.2315:

Why didn’t you solo it then?

After a half-dozen tries for the first achievement and then a handful of attempts at the second (while solo), I got entirely fed up with having to sit through all that dialogue over and over again.

Challenges are good. Having to wait 5-10 minutes between tries is excruciating.