First and foremost, English is not my first language, so bear with me here :P
Introduction:
This guide is intended to provide players new to HoT or players struggling with the content of Verdant Brink with basic knowledge about the Meta-Chain. I don’t claim to know everything about the map nor do I believe that my strategies are the best. They are ,however, effective for what they are intended for. I may not update this guide and have no intention to do similar guides for the other maps. If you have critique or if my guide helped you, feel free to reply. :-)
Verdant Brink
Table of Content:
- Masteries
- Verdant Brink Meta-Event
- During the Day
- During the Night
- The Bosses of Verdant Brink
- My thoughts on Verdant Brink
Masteries
Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns has introduced a new way for character progression. Masteries are certain skills you will unlock during your time in the jungle, providing you with new abilities and skills as well as helpful services.
In Order to increase your Masteries you will need experience. Lots of experience. While there are many ways to increase your experience gain the easiest way to earn experience in HoT is to stick to the map’s meta chain and do the various events.
It WILL be a grind for the most part but events (as well as skill challenges and mini-games) will provide you with the much needed experience.
While you can freely decide which Masteries you want to level I heavily recommend to level these first:
Glider Track
- Glider Basics (You are forced to level this one)
- Updraft Use
Itzel Lore Track
Nuhoch Lore Track
- Nuhoch Hunting (You need this one for the next)
- Nuhoch Wallows
These four (five with Nuhoch Hunting) will make traversing the maps much, much easier to the point you can actually enjoy it! You will still need a total of 3.556.000 experience points but once you have these, you are good to go.
Verdant Brink Meta-Event
Verdant Brink is the first map of HoT. As you finish your story mission you can already see the extent of Mordremoth’ ambush. It is time to rally what is left of the Pact and prepare for the inevitable Mordrem assault!
The Verdant Brink Meta-Event revolves around the day-night cycle. Many things you can do during the day are unavailable during the night as Mordrem activities increase by a lot. Travelling around the map might be confusing at first but the ingame map is actually pretty accurate. Some parts of the map like the bosses and certain challenges are found in the canopy or the roots but the main action happens on the ground level. Masteries allow you to use shortcuts and reduce total travel time but are not needed to do the events (But lack of certain Masteries can make some events painful to complete!).
Like the Cursed Shore, Verdant Brink is full of dangerous wildlife and terrifying foes. While you can traverse the map solo and avoid fights a lack of defensive gear (I look at you zerker boys) or poor skill usage can lead to quick defeat. The new enemy types use a combination of unavoidable or very fast attacks, skills with durations that exceed dodge invulnerability or the new defiance bar which needs to be broken via crowd control before you can do anything about the mob. As such, it is generally advisable to travel in groups or at least with a second player. As I said, you don’t need to but it makes things much easier.
Verdant Brink offers a total of seven Waypoints but only two of them can be accessed at any time. All others are blocked by the corresponding outpost’s event chain. Try to follow the Pale Reavers’ or Jaka Itzel Event Chain first as they are both nearby from where you start from (But you can start anywhere you want).
During the Day
In general, every outpost tries to salvage what is salvageable during the day. Helping any outpost provides you with access to the corresponding waypoint, merchants or Minigames. Your success during the day has impact on what happens during the night like the aforementioned access to the waypoint or the general power of the camp. More importantly however, is the effect on the Map Reward which naturally increases the more you helped out during the day. :-)
Events, again, scale with the number of players and because of this may become a nuisance to complete. As a general rule 3-10 players are more than enough to complete events in Verdant Brink so don’t lose hope if there just a few players around! You will quickly get a hang for each outpost’s event chain and they are in my opinion actually pretty fun.
If they don’t bug out <.<.
During the Night
Verdant Brink changes drastically during the night. As soon as the timer starts ticking Mordrem will spawn around the map to attack Outposts and smaller Pact rally points. You can either protect established Pact rally points or reclaim lost ones. There are four Rally points per Outpost and the Number of Mordrem scales with the number of defenders.
Additionally, you can collect Pact supplies to improve Rally points around the map to the maximum level of five. Pact suppliers will spawn randomly around the map and head for the nearest rally point. Defend them as they will instantly level up a rally point and provide you with sweet experience. You may also find wrecked copters which again can be salvaged for supply crates.
After the third Mordrem Assault or with roughly 20 minutes remaining you will enter the final part of the Verdant Brink Meta-chain:
The Bosses
The Bosses of Verdant Brink
Note: To reach almost all of the bosses you will need to have the Glider Basics mastery of the Glider Track unlocked. I will address any other necessary mastery at the corresponding boss, however.
The Wyvern Patriarch – Pale Reavers’ Outpost Boss
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Updraft Use mastery of the Glider Track is necessary to reach this boss outside of using a friendly Mesmer’s portal. Even then I highly advise to have this mastery as the fight heavily revolves around using the updrafts around the battlefield.
- Set-up: Melee weapon + ranged weapon, stability, stun-breaker, reflection
The Wyvern Patriarch is a giant Wyvern of legendary status. Unlike the other bosses in the Verdant Brink he does not have a defiance bar so CC is wasted on him. The fight consists of two distinct phases which I will call the burn phase and the shield phase. The Patriarch will always enter the shield phase after losing one quarter of his health.
Burn Phase:
During this phase you fight the Wyvern on the foothold he rests upon. As you fight him, he will spit fire in a cone in front of him and create highly damaging burning terrain, reducing your ability to successfully melee him this way. He may also spit small globs of fire further away but you can reflect those if you have the means to do so. The Patriarch’s most devastating move is his flapping: In a roughly 200° cone in front of him he will knock back everyone not under the effect of stability, potentially knocking you into a fire or off the foothold. Additionally, he may attack with both his claws and his head in melee range.
Shield Phase:
Once the Patriarch becomes untargetable he will launch one final swooping attack on the foothold before activating his shield. However, you can jump down as soon as he becomes untargetable to begin with phase two. During this phase your goal is to collect Wyvern eggs from around the lower parts of the foothold and to use the updrafts to commit bombing runs on the Patriarch with said eggs (You need to target the Patriarch in order to use Skill #1).
Meanwhile, multiple lesser airborne wyvern will attack you while you try to destroy the shield. You can avoid them entirely as long as you move fast enough. They don’t have much health though, so a small group of players should be enough to deal with them if you need them dead.
Cotoni & Huetzi – Jaka Itzel Outpost Bosses
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Bouncing Mushrooms mastery of the Itzel Lore Track is necessary in order to deal with the bosses healing ability. It is possible to defeat them without it, however.
- Set-up: Two Melee Weapons, stun-breaker, condition removal, crowd control
The Zintl Hylek Cotoni and Huetzi are both Hylek of Champion status. Huetzi is a Nuhoch Hylek and will mainly use melee attacks. Cotoni is a Itzel Hylek and will mainly use ranged attacks.
These two act and fight like their weaker counterparts in the jungle below. Huetzi will use his giant weapon to smash players in front of him as well as bounce to knock you around. Cotoni may evade ranged attacks and uses stealth to frequently change position as well as leaving poison fields.
Once they reach approximately 1/3 of their health they will jump high into the air to a hard to reach healing spring. You can use the jumping mushrooms around the battlefield to chase after them. At the top, you will notice that their defiance bars has unlocked and to prevent further healing you have to interrupt them with lots of cc. Either way, they will eventually return to the battlefield below.
The Wyvern Matriarch – Pact Encampment Outpost Boss
- Set-up: Two melee weapons/Melee weapon + ranged weapon, crowd control, stun-breaker
The Wyvern Matriarch is another legendary Wyvern. Like the Patriarch she will spit fire in a cone in front of her, spit smaller globs further away and slash and bite at you in melee range. Additionally, she will cower just before charging across the platform, knocking you out of the way and potentially into fire.
Once every minute the Matriarch’s defiance bar will unlock as she will try to lift off. Successfully preventing her lift off allows you to continue your attack. Should she lift off, she will launch two swooping attacks on the battlefield which can one-hit down you if you are unlucky or lack defense. While airborne the Matriarch is completely immune to harm and even conditions cannot hurt her.
During the fight multiple lesser wyvern will spawn around the battlefield which can be used to rally downed players. Near the end, a second Matriarch will infrequently swoop down on you but will not enter direct combat with your group. Try to avoid it as often as possible and focus on the main Matriarch.
Axemaster Gwyllion – Noble Crash Site Outpost Boss
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Nuhoch Stealth Detection mastery of the Nuhoch Lore track is necessary to deal with this boss efficiently.
- Set-up: Two Melee Weapons/Melee weapon + ranged weapon, stun-breaker, blocks, crowd control
Axemaster Gwyllion is a Mordrem of Champion status. He uses deadly melee and stealth based attacks. The latter is especially notable as you cannot see him unless you have unlocked the Nuhoch Stealth Detection mastery. While stealthed, Axemaster Gwyllion will mark random players for death, putting a countdown on them noticeable via a target symbol above the affected player’s head as well as smoke emerging from said player. If Gwyllion is not revealed before the timer ticks to zero all affected players not under the effect of invulnerability will enter downed mode.
The Mordrem Tetrad – Ordnance Corp Outpost Boss
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Bouncing Mushrooms Mastery of the Itzel Lore Track is necessary to reach the boss.
- Set-up: Two Melee Weapons, stun-breaker, crowd control, blocks
The Mordrem Tetrad are Mordrem of Champion status. You will have to fight Hammermaster Morthwyl, Blademaster Cadogg and Stavemaster Anwir simultaneously. The battlefield consists of a circle surrounded by pillars.
As their titles suggest they use different movesets: Morthwyl is the most sluggish of them but deals the most dmg, Cadogg is the fastest and is hard to avoid while Anwir will cast spells like expanding rings of fire or use ranged attacks.
After you have dealt with them, Spellmaster Macsen, a Legendary Mordrem, will join the fray while reducing the battlefield to the area surrounded by the pillars as strong currents will push you off the battlefield should you pass them.
While fighting Macsen he will continuesly attack in melee range before rampaging off the battlefield and jumping back to the middle. Jump over the shockwave or dodge through it to avoid it. He will knock down any player in his way and can knock you off the battlefield as well. In order to stop his rampage you need to break his defiance bar.
My thoughts on Verdant Brink
At first I really disliked the map as I thought it was way to chaotic (This was before I explored Tangled Depths which take the cake of absurd map design). After playing it for a while it is actually really fun, especially after you have unlocked some of the mentioned masteries.
However, it is a terrible first map for an Addon considering that you get no Introduction or tutorial for all the new stuff happening around you. The map is heavily gated behind Masteries (just look at the bosses) and just feels terrible to play if you don’t have access to them. Combine this with frequent crashes over the weekend aswell as events bugging out and you create a volatile environment.
As a second or maybe third map, with access to masteries in mind, Verdant Bring would be perfect.
The Problems with this map become especially clear once you reach Auric Basin which feels so much better to travel around in and even Dragons Stand, the final Map, feels better than Verdant Brink.
It is, however, a really interesting concept considering the whole day/night cycle and the overarching story is really cool once you compare it to older maps like Cursed Shore or Fireheart Rise.
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