Guild Wars 2

Just tried to do this personal quest on my 61 Guardian. Currently the Risen mobs you’re fighting in the courtyard of the fortress are all level 61 while the quest downlevels you to 59 and all the friendly npcs are 59 as well. It was tolerable while taking back the siege weapon placements because there are small mobs of risen protecting those locations and with the npc escort killing them is doable. The problem starts when you’re supposed to take back the courtyard, because there are three level 61 veteran risen and two of them are summoners who summon more level 61 minions and all of them swarm you as soon as you attack even one. They easily murder every friendly npc present and then you’re left trying to kite the two dozen risen that are 2 levels above you, which is completely pointless because the two veteran summoners keep summoning more minions faster than you can kill them, and they are all so fast they can easily chase you down.

Well… at least it’s not just me.

I’ve done this with 4 other characters – no problem. But today…

Ran into trouble where you ran into trouble. Courtyard fills with roving packs of a dozen or more linked risen. And a bunch of plague bearers mixed in too. Touch anything and it’s poison, cripple, poison, poison, die.

Try to wear them down and a bunch respawn. Revive most of the named NPCs and they promptly all die again. You just can’t get ahead of the curve – at least solo.

Dang…I’m stuck there too.

I’ve been stuck in the courtyard for well over an hour. Is it supposed to be like this? I’m level 73 and am using a potion and food, and I’ve been swamped by all the risen at once, all the named npc’s are dead, I keep raising them, they keep dying, I’m naked, have killed easily a hundred risen and they keep on respawning. Every time I die, I go back in and the tide never turns.

I’m not sure if reducing veterans by 2 levels is going to do the job.

I’m also stuck on Retribution. For about an hour now, actually. I can’t get past the two Risen Acolytes that summon hordes and hordes of undead that just kill all of my npc allies. Is this supposed to happen? Getting decimated right before almost killing one Veteran Risen Acolyte and then coming back from the waypoint to its health bar full again really puts me down. :/

I did Retribution yesterday with my ranger. I failed the first time, which is funny considering I have done Retribution already 4 times before with other characters. I was considering it to be easy, but clearing the courtyard was ridiculous. I usually consider pve too easy. My first time in Arah exploration mode I was like is this Lupicus supposed to be difficult? Now I experienced the pve hard mode, which was more difficult than soloing the Orr temple group events alone. There was a never ending army of risen. My only area attacks were entangle (elite), barrage from a long bow and then axe in my hand, not fast enough to kill all Risen. The problem was that ALL the NPC allies were dead before the court yard even began and kept dying if I revived them.

I then restarted the mission and chose Spirit of Nature as my elite. I made sure no NPC died before the courtyard part. I used spirit of nature to mass clean the conditions and revive all near by NPCs. I also had signet of renewal, brown bear (F2 skill) and transfer stunned, knocked etc to pet as my condition and CC removal. I was also using potion of undead slaying and foodbuff which gave me regeneration on top of signet of the wild and troll unguent. This made the courtyard part easy. I didn’t die, but thinking about it. Most professions don’t have anything similar to Spirit of Nature, so they are probably stuck there right now.

Ayna Wise, Norn Ranger 73 now
(yes, I did more missions and map areas yesterday to level up, gonna get her to level 80 very soon)

Did it yesterday on my necro. I can’t remember what level I was, but I think I was under the recommended level at the time.

I died a few times, then I resorted to taking advantage of pathing to drop them. I just applied cripple + bleeds, then kite them up the stairs by the gate. When they get to the top, jump down and continue to bleed + cripple. When they get on top of you, dodge roll through and back up the stairs.

Rinse + repeat.

I did try kiting them away from the courtyard, but always found the entire pack following the one or two I’d singled out, so kiting didn’t help me. They want my braaaiiinsssss.

Also struggling VERY badly with this one. 5 deaths in a row as my 64 Guardian. Every time I would go out into the courtyard fight after regaining the siege weapons, it’d take only 2 or 3 risen plus an ever-present veteran to stomp on me in a matter of seconds. They are all hitting FAR too hard to be fair, especially to melee types. Plus NPCs don’t help you while you’re downed, which makes it all the more tooth-gnashingly frustrating. NPCs go out there just to die, which makes the fight even worse. Guardian has several things to help the conditions, but they just slap the conditions right back on as soon as you remove them. =\ The burst damage is the worst part, honestly.

lets go devs fix this problem i been stuck on this quest for hours…. personal story should not be this impossible

Request: if at some point this quest is repaired in Live, could someone please post in this thread that it’s been changed? Then we can continue our storyline without wasting a whole evening checking to see if it’s still broken.

So I tried to do this quest 6 times last night (stopped after 3, repaired equipment and started over)

Things I noticed;

If you wipe and choose “restart from checkpoint” you run back into the courtyard and all the NPC’s are still dead, yet the mobs are still in full force. So restarting from checkpoint is almost entirely useless.

I didn’t notice this the first 3 attempts, but when I came back fresh on the 4th attempt I had all NPC’s alive and well, huge group of us run into the courtyard and were doing good, taking out a couple groups of mobs. Then all at once (with no red circle notification anywhere) ALL of us instant down. All the named NPC’s and non named NPC’s my character (mesmer) and my girlfriends character (guardian) instantly dead and had maybe half a second of downed time before finished off.

So I checked the combat log. Hit by Unknown with Explode for 6000+ damage. Couple more of the same thing in a row, all of them in the thousands.

Restarted from checkpoint, went back in fought for a bit and kaboom dead again. Same Unknown/explode/tons of damage thing going on.

So maybe the mob level isn’t the main problem? Anyone else notice this?

Teknotronic.8263:

So I tried to do this quest 6 times last night (stopped after 3, repaired equipment and started over)

Things I noticed;

If you wipe and choose “restart from checkpoint” you run back into the courtyard and all the NPC’s are still dead, yet the mobs are still in full force. So restarting from checkpoint is almost entirely useless.

I didn’t notice this the first 3 attempts, but when I came back fresh on the 4th attempt I had all NPC’s alive and well, huge group of us run into the courtyard and were doing good, taking out a couple groups of mobs. Then all at once (with no red circle notification anywhere) ALL of us instant down. All the named NPC’s and non named NPC’s my character (mesmer) and my girlfriends character (guardian) instantly dead and had maybe half a second of downed time before finished off.

So I checked the combat log. Hit by Unknown with Explode for 6000+ damage. Couple more of the same thing in a row, all of them in the thousands.

Restarted from checkpoint, went back in fought for a bit and kaboom dead again. Same Unknown/explode/tons of damage thing going on.

So maybe the mob level isn’t the main problem? Anyone else notice this?

I think those are caused by Risen Plague Carriers. Those fat undead run towards the enemy and then explode doing huge nearby AoE damage. You better kill them from distance or dodge roll.

That is why I used the Spirit of Nature to mass revive all NPCs. Warrior has a similar elite skill, Battle Standard, but it has longer cooldown. Unfortunately mesmer nor guardian have anything like that. For that mission I would recommend the mesmer to go with as many clones/phantasms as possible (use traits to get skill cooldown to minimum, I was also running 3 signets to get max health and max boons). Constantly detonate your illusions and summon more. That is how I did it. There is a tanky build my mesmer is using and I did that mission with her. By the way I use: staff, sword/torch, mass invisibility as elite (torch #4, prestige, also gives stealth and then explodes AoE, blinding and burning all nearby foes, very good with sword against mobs)

I hope this helps!

I would just like to add that I have had the same problems as everyone on this thread. Mobs in the courtyard wiped all the NPCs within 30 seconds of battle in the courtyard on my first attempt. Everything was good up until then. Veterans in courtyard are 61, and so are minions. Knowing I couldn’t take on all the mobs (and trying to rez NPCs only draws attention from mobs), I exited the instance, repaired, and restarted. Upon restart, it got even stranger for me… Trahearne stopped at the top of the stairs on the path to the bridge that overlooks the courtyard and, despite clearing the way several times, would not move on. So, I left the instance once more, shut the game down thinking that maybe I was lagging, and restarted. Just as a test, I tried the story one last time, and Trahearne stuck once more. Maybe he knows that there was no point since everyone is destined to wipe in the courtyard anyway?? I know its suppose to be challenging, but my 59 Guardian plus 10+ NPCs should be able to take out 4-5 mobs at a time and its not gonna happen at this point. I second placing a post here to let us know when this issue is resolved. Thank you for looking into this, Jeffrey.

This is bs.. I’ve played through this mission three times and never had such a hard time. I’m level 72 and am just hitting it on this char and I’m downscaled to 59 while I have 61 vets summoning 20 risen at a time.. NPCs drop immediately.. I also experienced MAJOR wall glitching on the Vigil mission that you go in the sewer under LA to investigate. Vigil Warmaster and jellys were going through the walls of the sewer and wouldn’t come back. Couldn’t advance without warmaster and had to restart 3 times.. That’s why I’m so far behind on the story line. Got so kitten I left for 15 levels before I went back to it. Last patch really seems to have screwed w storyline missions… :’ (

@ajwhitti Had the same problem with Trahearne as well. He got to the top of the stairs and sat there like a ja.. I ran around and killed all risen within 100 yrd radius and he finally got going.. Please fix storyline!!!!!!

Okay, all armor is broken now.. Fix this please so I can continue w the story. Have 4 characters 65+ and have never run into such bs…

Oh, and how about a little experience for the kills?? Mowing down mobs 2 levels above me with no help from npc’s and receive 0 xp?? Storyline’s becoming a waste of time…

I spent more than an hour just in the courtyard, died maybe 20 times (level 73 with undead potion and regeneration food.) After all that effort I got about 3 drops of white or gray junk and no experience. It’s interesting to learn of the 6K bomb. There are, of course, other problems with this besides mob levels, such as the perpetual spawning of Risen and the swarming behavior which prevents kiting.

I hope someone looks into the code regarding this.

Got home and thought I’d give it a shot, and Claw Island is retaken!! Vets are still 61, but seems they’ve been nerfed and the npcs seem to have been buffed w better healing. Still a challenge, but not friggen impossible!! Thank you guys so much for your prompt support!!!! Been playing rpg for 20 yrs and GW2 is one of the best! Keep it up!!

I’m doing it right now. Having no success at all. Armor pretty much a mess. I’ve done it on several other characters in the past. It’s NOT fixed, that I can tell.

is there any success story of a LV60 ele running solo through this mission … or any one who can share some experience on solo this one ??

One of the many wonderful features of this clearly well-tested, expertly-crafted mission (not quite ekeing out the turbo mobs or the “Unknown dealt 6,000 damage with Explode”) is that the pathing on some of the vets that jump around is broken to the point where they’ll reset if you’re at their spawn point. This means they’re almost constantly regenning no matter where you are and without creative use of leashing it’s a phenomenal slog.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I’ve reduced the veteran levels so they’re L59. I suspect they were up-levelled back when veteran were a lot weaker than they are now. I don’t have an ETA for when this change will reach Live, though, sorry!

The issue is not with the mob levels, it’s that (among many, many other things) there are two mobs at the end (the Risen Acolytes) which infinitely spawn regular mobs. The courtyard fast runs out of allied NPCs (who all die fast) to draw aggro and so you’re essentially stuck at being swamped by ~40 to 50 mobs.

It’d be appreciated if this were at least put in the dev tracker so I don’t have to run around the forums just to know if this is even working as intended or not.

Update: I ran through it again with a guild mate. Huge difference over my solo attempt. Until Jeffrey Vaughn’s fix sees the light of day, just get someone to go with you. Focus on the veterans first. Use Gorr’s (vaccumatic …) gun for fun.

When It’s Ready.

Sorin.4310:

When It’s Ready.

The last time I tried this, what I would do is try to kite the Acolyte since it was clearly the source of the problem… however kiting isn’t really possible since the mobs have some kind of bizarre turbo speed mode (is this intentional?), and the Acolyte itself has a fairly strong leash meaning you can’t pull it very far out of the Courtyard.

Yea I noticed it was the vet Acolytes that was causing the problem. But any time I tried to aggro it, my screenshot was the result.

Having failed this morning upon unlocking this and trying for about 30 minutes through the first try only to fail I took a break for a few hours then checked my bank where I took armor repair items and revive orbs – doing that I managed to successfully complete the personal story mission.

I did notice the second time that if I rushed one of the veterans immediately and wiped that out it made the other 3 (?) a piece of cake with my Guardian as neither of them caused aggro to bring their packs in.

Wow I thought I lost my touch.

I passed this easily with my previous characters.

Now I can’t even clear the courtyard with the hundreds of Risen spawning and respawning and my NPCs dying all the time.

I had the same issue as everyone else, diving one of the veterans if you can kill it quick enough helped me big time but I did use one armor repair pretty quickly and no revive orbs the second time.

Ran into this today leveling my engineer.

Best i can tell the difficulty is that the acolyte summons 4-5 thralls that seem to have permanent quickness or something. Managed to finish it once i got myself over to the broken wall, so i had plenty of space to retreat to, and using elixir infused bombs.

I would attack the acolyte, using grenades or elixir gun, get the thrall wave after me, switch to bombs and sit there dropping fire, concussion and smoke whenever they were ready (the occational big ol’ bomb from the toolbelt).

I do wonder if the fight bugged after a bit tho, as the mobs seemed to no longer reset and heal at some point.

ALL the Risen are level 61… not just the vets and they re-spawn faster than you can kill them.

The ones that explode takeout the npcs pretty much on their own.

You literally end up soloing 15-20 level 61 mobs in addition to at least 2-3 vets, constantly spawning more.

So I’ve figured out a way to do this and I finally pushed past it just an hour or so ago.

You absolutely must be at range, for me (as a Mes) my trusty greatsword wasn’t cutting it, I had to switch to a staff. Basically, the moment the last emplacement is captured, rush to the courtyard and start kiting the first Vet Risen Acolyte to hell. Keep moving, dodge the mob melee kicks, etc. It’ll take some doing but he’ll eventually go down.

Once the first is out, the second is a little easier, and presto, you’re done.

I doubt this is feasible for melee unless you just spam the sword/GS auto or something. Basically you wanna stay at range (so go rifle for warriors, but don’t use your adrenaline since it’ll lock you into the channel).

Speed seems to be the key here, you really need to rush as fast as possible before the amount of mobs becomes too overwhelming.

I did it few days ago on my guardian and it was hard, but not impossible, alone and died just few times. Thing is that most of the mobs will de-aggro when you retreat trough the gates which I used to pull vets one by one to the gate area and kill them there without too much problems.
Use ranged to pull vet to the inside of the gate and then whatever you like to kill them … rinse and repeat

I tried it a few times on my Thief now and even with the overpowered Shortbow it seems impossible. Even cheap tactics like running away regenerating didn’t quite work as it takes so awefully long I always make a slight mistake then die.

This is a mayor issue in my oppinion as no one should have to resort to exploits(leaving the area to reset the fight) but at the moment it seems to be the only viable option.

I hope they fix this mission soon as this is not a challenge, it’s simply bad design. I wonder how a mayor plot mission can end up like this …

Melanor.8137:

Even cheap tactics like running away regenerating didn’t quite work as it takes so awefully long I always make a slight mistake then die.

This is a mayor issue in my oppinion as no one should have to resort to exploits(leaving the area to reset the fight) but at the moment it seems to be the only viable option.

When pull goes bad one can run away (“resetting”) or just die (thus same effect) as spawn is 5s running from gate…

Granted it was hard, required some thinking, but in last few days I did it on my ranger (and she had items on her that where way lower than hers actual level) and guardian without too much trouble, and guess what … it was fun fighting hard content which required some thinking and planning, not just zerging around. All I can say is … give us more content like that — hard mode content with mobs few (~5) levels above us and better/smarter AI’s will be nice to have.

Also timing NPC resurrections when mobs are distant enough will help to distract enough of them to pull one chunk away, just concentrate on vets spawning adds first.

I had so many problems trying to do this on my level 59 guardian. Thought it was a level issue and pushed to 65 and tried again. Same prob in the courtyard. Mobs kept swarming around and stomping my skinny little kitten into the ground. I found a really simple solution to this after about 20 deaths. So simple it will make you want to puke…

Edit: I’m new to GW2 and I’m not sure if the spoiler above will apply with all story choices, as it might depend on what npc’s you have chosen to accompany you.

nekitten234:

Melanor.8137:

Even cheap tactics like running away regenerating didn’t quite work as it takes so awefully long I always make a slight mistake then die.

This is a mayor issue in my oppinion as no one should have to resort to exploits(leaving the area to reset the fight) but at the moment it seems to be the only viable option.

Show Spoiler

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Cheap, exploits!? From when pulling mobs in more manageable chunks aside was called that? Or you just want to go in guns blazing and no-one should touch you?

When pull goes bad one can run away (“resetting”) or just die (thus same effect) as spawn is 5s running from gate…

Granted it was hard, required some thinking, but in last few days I did it on my ranger (and she had items on her that where way lower than hers actual level) and guardian without too much trouble, and guess what … it was fun fighting hard content which required some thinking and planning, not just zerging around. All I can say is … give us more content like that — hard mode content with mobs few (~5) levels above us and better/smarter AI’s will be nice to have.

Also timing NPC resurrections when mobs are distant enough will help to distract enough of them to pull one chunk away, just concentrate on vets spawning adds first.

First of all, I have no doubt it’s doable with a Guardian or Ranger, two of the most powerful solo professions. Second, there’s no pull strategy that can overcome the fact that you often get a dozen +2 mobs on you at once even if you pull carefully. These Risen run faster than you by a lot and once they catch up, there’s no getting away for every profession. Third, “resetting” does pretty much nothing. When you die and respawn, the courtyard gets even more full of undead as the Veterans continue spawning more mobs even if you’re not there. The quest is broken and a dev even said so. I’m all for difficult quests and I’m glad you had so much fun with it, but this is not the correct kind of difficulty.

Just adding my 2 cents which are inline with nearly all the other posters. I’m stuck at Retribution’s clearing of the courtyard, have tried being creative with pulls and kiting, etc.

I play the game mostly solo for the relaxation, and I’m really in it for the quest lines. I’m demotivated towards the game at the moment, and would appreciate a fix.

There are still lvl 61 veteran mobs, though I appreciate J.Vaugh’s comment above, and the NPCs seem more of a liability than a help.

Can we get a prioritized fix on this?

Yep, I have the exact same problem. I’ve broken every piece of gear I got trying to revive friendly’s and it’s impossible. Just about wasted 2 hours time on this storyline quest and still can’t beat it cause how broken the courtyard battle is.

EDIT: finally finished the event after using some exploitative tactics. I graveyard zerged the Risen Acolytes to put a plug on the seemingly endless lvl61 Thralls. After 4 zergs I was finally able to down the two Acolytes and begin reviving all the dead.

the overall experience has left me pretty salty and I’d like compensation for all the silver i just threw away cause of an unpolished event mechanic

I must chime in my concern about this quest too. I haven’t tried it in a few days in hope that my bug report was taken under consideration, but I tried the quest today again. Needless to say, when I ran into a group of 4 veterans huddled together (captains and brutes) clustered together on the third checkpoint (northern rampart) I ran into the first trouble. The second trouble and the reason for leaving the quest with disgust is after dying for the 10th time in the central courtyard. Tried everything in the book to get a veteran acolyte down, however, got steamrolled by everything in the courtyard. And not only were there one veteran acolyte, but two that kept aggroed my as soon as they saw me. Please, take this issue seriously and take a good look at the retribution quest. It’s clearly broken.

oh good, glad I wasn’t insane. My Ranger destroyed the retaking first time she ran it and I was a little dissappointed in how simple it was. Then my mesmer who has more clones to distract then you can shake a branch at completely got rocked.

I had to come back and complete it with guildies at my back. The Respawn is the insane part. You kill three and another seven take there place.

On a bright side more allies will rush the square, groups of three at a time. Sadly they die immediately upon making contact with the horde.

Oh man, I thought it was just me that was having a hard time with this. I finally decided to get back to my story on my 75 ele and all I had left was about 6 Acolytes. Acolytes that summon hordes of one-shotting exploding minions.
After an hour, I gave up. I can’t zerg them down if they regen health and one-shot any ally I spend 15 seconds reviving.

Isn’t this a quest that all Personal Stories need to complete? If so, then there are a whole lot more of us stuck at this point.

Tried it again yesterday.
Once you get to clean the courtyard, I started shooting at one Vet Acolyte.
As a ranger I had backup from my pet. I kept him healthy at all times.
I kept running and dodging all the time. But I succeeded in slaying them all.
Once they were dead, the whole courtyard was suddenly empty. Then the cut scene started to play. So I guess I’m just lucky.

Add me to the list of people who are frustrated by this and can’t progress bc of it.

and me…luckly I just googled after nothing happening for 20 minutes but facing hordes of risen undead. Alright, then I have to wait until this issue is gonna be fixed – the trebuchet right of Trahearne has a too long range to be usefull in this fight.

SO FRUSTRATED. I tried this for an HOUR and wasted an armor repair canister + edibles on my 59 thief. I get swarmed way too badly to do much damage to the vets, who can usually kill me in one hit. The npcs are all kinds of useless. Respawning all the way back at the boat is a killer run (all enemy hp regenned by the time I’m back, as if this whole thing weren’t demoralizing enough) with a trickle of allies that seem to do nothing but die and run away from the mobs that are mowing me down. I’ve never yelled in frustration at the game itself (just my poor jumping puzzle skills) but today I did. Never wanted to kill things more. Please fix this. I really don’t remember it being this hard on my ele.