More Guild Wars mayhem, and a surprisingly enjoyable session that saw me complete missions 20, 21 and 22 of the basic Prophecies campaign; The Ice Caves of Sorrow, The Iron Mines of Moladune and Thunderhead Keep, mostly without frustration or incident, making a much longer night of it that I normally spend in there, and now I'm on the Ring of Fire Islands, and have only three more missions to complete, to finish the Big Story, as far as the original game goes at least.

The session was mostly spent 'duoing' with my previously mentioned friend, the one with all the Hero Super-Henchmen in tow, and as before, these helped tremendously. The Ice Cave mission turned out to be a kind of 'sneak-em-up' populated not only with the usual wandering mob-trash to barge through, but also a race of Evil Floating Winged Mega-Magicians which, at that point of the plot, it's generally agreed you should avoid, rather confront, if you hope to make it through. Took a couple of goes, but turned out to be one of the few missions I managed to tick the Bonus quest off for, and it's a testament to the sheer potency of the Heros, vs the regular henchmen, that we even managed to take out a few groups of the deliberately over-power flying wizard thingies on the way. Some minor puzzle elements, involving explosives and locked gates, and we were out.

After a suitably stirring cut-scene exposition, The Iron Mines mission also turned out to be a quite straight forward gauntlet type of thing. First you have to dodge the wizards again, to get to an NPC who gives you the power to resist their decimating health drain attack. Then it's payback time, and a change to steam-roll back over them, and onto the final objective, which was basically a hit on their leader, who thought he was safely hidden away deep in their fortress, showing a typical James-Bond Villain short-sightedness and lack of contingency, I rather thought!

The third mission of the night, Thunderhead Keep was a quite cinematic and heroic liberation of a besieged dwarf town, which was the easy bit, although the necessity of keeping a key plot NPC alive throughout made like a bit more awkward. I HATE escort missions - the AI involved is rarely up to the task, and there's nothing worse than failing at a task because of events completely outside your control - i.e. The Stoopid Dumb Stoopid NPC casually strolling off into the next cluster of mobs before you can get any power/mana/nanoenergy back, forcing you to either let him die, or dying yourself in a futile attempt to protect him. Hate it nearly as much as Timed Objectives!

We were still fairly alert at this point though, and managed to get him to where he needed to go, only to find that the job wasn't done yet, and we now have to protect him for the next 20 mins or so, as wave upon wave of new monsters try to get at him. The mission rapidly turned into a Defend the Flag kind of thing, but forewarned is forearmed, and I'd previously reconfigured my Ranger self to become Master of Traps, and spent much of that phase dashing about and laying fire, spike and dust traps along all the approaches, between waves, and plinking at the bigger bosses with skill-interrupting gas arrows during them. Couple with my Full-on Fire-specced Elementalist friend's devastating air-strikes, and the overall power of the Heroes, we held out for the required number of assaults, and won. Huzzah!

22 down, 3 to go, and now we've been whisked off to the Fire Place. I'm enjoying it, but am quite glad there's only three to go - I'm not sure how many more cutscene-based 'Startling Revelations That The Monsters We Thought Were In Charge, Are Actually Being Ruled By Even Worse Monsters' I can take.

Still, the game certainly doesn't end there, by the look of it. There's displayable titles to be had too. So far, the only one I have is Tyrian Explorer, awarded for uncovering 60% of the Prophecies world-map. On the whole, completing one mission dumps you in the lobby of the next, so it's quite possible to complete the story, while having seen very little of the overland explorable areas, and there's still a lot of land I need to go back on myself to 'fill in'.

Others I'm working toward include one for capturing 90 Elite Skills form boss monsters, (There's only 15 Ranger and 15 Necromancer Elite Skills in the basic game, so I'm going to have to change to each of the sub-professions to get all 90; R/W, R/Mo, R/Me, R/E), one for unlocking (Looting and then identifying for the first time) 100 Rare Items. There's even one for spending 16 hours real-time, drunk, although whether that's your character, or you, is less clear. Perhaps the most obscure one available, is gained by reaching level 20 (The game's max level), without leaving the Pre-Searing Ascalon 'Tutorial' areas. The method described to do this seems ridiculously convoluted, and last time I was there, I got to level 7 before running out of quests, getting bored and moving out into the 'real' game, and I dread to think what kind of player has that kind of time on their hands. Full walk-though for the Ultra-Masochist here:

GuildWiki: Defender of Ascalon

And the other titles to be had, for those with lives, jobs, families, etc are listed here:

GuildWiki: Title

My friend, who isn't that much of a masochist, but only just, has a character that's trying for the Survivor title, which is a somewhat unique achievement for the very determined and skilled, and is essentially a kind of Permadeath play mode. To gain it, you must reach level 20, without dying ever. This can just be grinded out in few choice safe spots, by my friend has made it to the Northern Shiverpeaks already, and although I'm dubious about chances of success given the rather chaotic nature of basic gameplay in there, I can't help but be impressed so far. Imagine trying to hit the level cap in your current game, without dying ever. Hard work, but possible, and it's nice to see a game recognise that kind of achievement. Of course, Pick-Up Groups are right out, and I must admit to having to resist the impish urge to train a cluster of snow minotaurs on them when we stepped out of the outpost briefly.

Then again, I'm not the sort of person that kicks over sandcastles 'because I can' either, but more importantly, I still need their help on their other character, with their Heroes, to complete the last three missions. But life for me in Guild Wars when those are done? Titles, Alts and Expansions still lay ahead of me...