Guild Wars 2

StarsLife.7320:

At any rate, what server are you playing on?

I had to go check because I had completely forgotten! The server is Devona’s Rest, a North American server.

Okay, I’m aware this is going to be a shot in the dark, but you never know who has the answer, right?

Yesterday morning, having no particular plan for my adventuring, I (a Sylvari Elementalist, lvl 12 at the time) was at Sandycove Beach indulging one of my more casual pastimes: wailing on unsuspecting hermit crabs. Perhaps, unbeknownst to me, this struck onlookers as a cry for help, since surely a lvl 12 anything has better things to do than kill monsters that aren’t even hostile. Whatever the reason, I suddenly noticed I had received an invitation to join a party. I figured they were probably mistaken, but accepted the invite anyways because whatever they wanted to do was probably more interesting than crab hunting.

Well, no sooner did I click the green checkmark, but two level 80s hurried over to me and kneeled, of all things! There isn’t a word to express my feelings at that moment, although the closest is probably gobsmacked. I sat in the real world with my mouth hanging open as they asked me how they may be of service. I remembered I was having particular trouble with the story quest “Deep Tangled Roots” and so mentioned it. They told me to lead on.

Needless to say, the story was MUCH easier with a group of seasoned players backing me up. After that they had to disperse, but I was told I could message any time if I needed help.

Here’s the problem: I was forced to log out minutes after I thanked them, so I lost the chat history with their names. And what I remember isn’t much: Akatosh was one player (if I remember right), he mentioned ‘Grim’ as the person to message to join the guild (though I know ‘Grim’ wasn’t his full username, and I didn’t catch sight of it) and the guild was Order of (something), which is a problem obviously because a LOT of guilds have that name in some form. I recognize this is all due to my negligence in taking notes, and rest assured that I am considering keeping a notepad at my computer table for the rest of my GW2 life.

But if this sounds familiar to anyone, I’d appreciate help in finding these people again! Thanks!

Passiflora.2047:

2. “Deeply Tangled Roots”, lvl 8 quest on my Sylvari Necromancer (Shield of the Moon), the part where you have to defeat the nightmare courtiers and escape the gathering: this one was tough mostly due to the fact that it wasn’t clear that you had to kill all the courtiers to make Renvari killable. Also, it seemed a bit buggy. The first time I did it, I had killed everything that came at me but Renvari was still not taking any damage. The next time I tried it (at level 10, I was frustrated and came back later), when died I res’d outside the cave at the check point . . . the mobs followed me there this time! Renvari came out there too though and was vulnerable, so it worked fine. Caithe, one of my NPC helpers, was not completely useless; I suspect that is because I could stay alive long enough for her to actually do something.

I’ve been having trouble with this same story quest, for different reasons. I’m an Elementalist which, as Passiflora points out, is not NEARLY as durable as other light armor-wearing classes (coughNECROMANCERcough). I’ve levelled up to lvl 12 now, with up-to-date armor and weapons, and I even took the time to get utility skills unlocked and learned how to use them. But even with abilities such as Arcane Shield or Summon Storm, etc, the elementalist is not a profession that is designed to be mob-rushed. Add this to the fact that my party consists of Caithe (read: another light armor wearer) and Tiachren (who cares what he does, he’s useless) and we’ve really got nobody who can take the hits. Even a small group of enemies pulled from the larger group just attacks me, ignoring the NPCs. I get three enemy NPCs standing in circle around me so that no matter how often I rally, I’m knocked right back down again. It gets really old, really fast.

I understand there are hardcore gamers who relish the challenge. But I agree with others who have said they would rather have it too easy. And characters such as Caithe should be more powerful – it’s fine if we have our hands held a little bit in the beginning; it makes sense particularly for a sylvari that has just emerged in the world. The durability of ally NPCs can be scaled down in later combat, but for early missions where many people are still learning their character at level 8, the dramatic rise in difficulty really feels unfair.

tl;dr: I agree with the complaints so far.