Another Tuesday, another rampage across the lands of the Istani. The basic business of teamwork seems to be coming together well for us now; practice having taught all three of us who should be doing what and when, and we're now into lands that allow a higher number of party members, which in turn, is allowing us to bring more Heroes and Henchmen along for the ride.
Although all the Heroes get unlocked for each of us, as we progress along the over-arching story of Nightfall, the business of equipping them, and keeping their skills up to date and useful can be quite involved and intricate, and of course, expensive, so we've divided them up between us, taking on responsibility for one or two of them each, rather than duplicate the equipment and builds. Being the Support Person, I took on Dunkoro, a native Wise Man Tactician type, who is more importantly, a proper healer - a Monk. This is a huge relief for me, as although not too shoddy a healer in it's own right, the Paragon is really a secondary healer support class, and where I seem to be shining, is in the AoE Chants - quite powerful short-term buffs for all Allies in earshot.
Having a dedicated primary healer by my side taking care of the actual spike-healing (large direct health boosts on people taking big sudden damage) lets me relax a bit and concentrate on keeping the buffs going, which in turn, helps us all. Also, being an AI, he seems to be a lot faster at targeting and applying the first aid. Silly really, but his rudementary programming is most likely using exactly the same 'rules' I would, to determine who needs help, but he doesn't have my difficulties mashing the right hotkeys to target and heal!
Indeed, so useful were the AI healers we had with us, that I'm now finding that I can relax a bit, and think about helping with the assault, and more specifically, I can have a go adding Empathy and Backfire to my skill bar, and swap out some of the things that Dunkoro can comfortably do for me, such as Hex Removal, and Health Regenerations. Empathy is a Hex (debuff spell) that damages the enemy any time they attack, and Backfire is the same, but for spellcasting. Both these are the bread and butter of offensive Mesmer work, and should help cut through the ranks quite quickly.
Also, being part Paragon, I get Adrenaline when I score hits with my spears. Warriors are the only other class to do this, and it works a bit like Rage in WoW. At present, I have no equipped skills that use this extra pool of generated power, which means I'm wasting potential free 'energy' of a sort, so a Chant or Spear skill that can turn this into useful output would be helpful! More tweaking to do, but the beauty of Guild Wars is that a total 'Respec' can be done for free, and any time you're in a town or outpost, instantly, making for a huge degree of flexibility within the one character. The only thing that's ever set in stone, is your Primary Profession - Mesmer, in my case. I'm enjoying Paragon immensely though, so probably won't be swapping that any time soon.
Our band of adventurers have joined the Sunspears as part of the ongoing story, and this organisation seem to be a kind of cross between the Knights Templar and the Jedi Council, only with a suitably African theme, and as part of our duties, and when not following the Primary Quest Story Line, we wander the lands, murdering monsters, and lending a hand to any troubled citizen who has the foresight to pop a green exclamation mark above their head when they see us (or more likely hear us) coming. I'm constantly surprised how many of these quests there are in Nightfall, compared to the Prophecies offering, which seems spartan by comparison, and more surprised still by the diversity of tasks being offered.
Certainly there's the fair share of 'Bring me ten Gloopy Lizard Bile Ducts. The lizards are over there' type of quests, but in Guild Wars, this role is largely covered by the 'Collectors', worrying individuals who stand about in dangerous warzones, with a big sack of weapons and armour, waiting for people to bring them the above monster parts - a straight exchange. The actual quests often show more inspiration.
Last night saw us help a man find his lost wedding ring, stolen by harpies. We provided armed security for a delicate mining operation in a quarry. We helped 'control' the population of the above harpies -mostly by going on a bit of a rampage in their breeding grounds - the mothers were not happy, but then I've never met a good-humoured harpy in any game! We helped a chef put together a banquet, made mostly out of various types of monster gunk - rather him than me. All while pushing forward into new and unknown lands, on our way to deal with the next step of the Primary Quest, which at the moment seems to be focussed on containing a sudden outbreak of undead. Grrr...pesky undead! One life is never enough, is it? Ohhhhhh noooooo.
Two of these side quests stood out though. The first was an old man who was having trouble deciding on who should get the inheritance of a recently deceased man. He was there with the two sons and one daughter in question, and presumably, no written will. Luckily for him, at that moment we came crashing through the hedge, tangled up in a morass of Skale - a kind of aquatic angry lizardman thing. Three of the Sunspear's finest, here to resolve the dispute! One scripted funeral and three sub-subquests later, we'd learned a bit about each of the candidates, one a noble solider, one a selfless healer, and the other a greedy brat, and had to pick one. I went with the greedy brat, since money is important. Can't fight a war against Darkness without adequate funding, i think, but I suspect I'm well on my way down the Dark Path by now.
Things got a bit confused at that point - there was an awful lot of text to read for a subquest! - and I ended up clicking something I shouldn't have, suddenly whisking us all off to some ruins, where we had to fight our way to the Inheritance, while keeping our chosen candidate alive. Unfortunately, our Dervish still hadn't chosen a candidate, so we had to do the ensuing dungeon crawl twice. Was fun though - a veritable horde of undead, and the odd huge falling hammer trap to keep things interesting.
The Quest of the Night for me though, was the farmer having difficulties with Flamingoes. A large paddy field area around a statue, covered in said birds, and an irritated farmer who needs them removed. Of course the usual Plan A was immediately scuppered, as the birds were green dots, not red, meaning the Obvious and Final Solution to the Flamingo Question was denied us, and instead, we had to shoo them by getting behind them and running at them. At this point, they'd flap a lot and zoom forward a few metres. The next ten minutes was quite surreal, as the three of us all went dashing off about this field, generally aggravating the pink birds, causing all manner of flapping and honking and largely making gleeful fools of ourselves. Just as well the place was instanced, but a novel kind of fun quest all the same. Just remember to clear out all the nearby red-dots before you start - we didn't!
Added bonus was the discovery of a usable 'Buried Treasure' shovel nearby, which can be used once per character, ever, and dumps out a very powerful magic item. I ended up with a pretty impressive shield, which goes off the Command Paragon attribute. One for the bank box, for later in life, I think, although what with the healing Heroes picking up the slack, I might ended up moving into that area soon anyway.
Another good session all in all. We didn't manage to complete any Primary Quests, but got a lot done, including the discovery of two more outposts, and we all finished at level 12, already!