After a rocky last session, we launched back into
GuildWars: Nightfall this week with a certain dogged resignation, most of which turned out to be quite baseless. A variety of refinements based on last GW rant saw us push through the
Rihlon Refuge Mission in a much more successful manner, and surprised us with a Master's (Bonus) completion to boot, and things are on the move once more.
(As with most of my Nightfall posts, a somewhat belated spoiler warning!)
We now find ourselves on the run, once more - you know the drill - vast nefarious army, lead by a crazed evil general, who naturally, is in league with yer Forces O Darkness From Beyond, and the only thing standing between them and Doooooooom, is us lot. So we legged it, presumably to gain strength, powers, allies and/or self-realisation in preparation for some apocalyptic showdown at a later date, in a very Return Of The Jedi-esque manner. It's an old story, but a good one.
The ensuing mission,
Moddok Crevice, saw us carrying out a quite convoluted trek through underground caverns on our way to an entirely new kingdom we can wreck, ruin, interfere with and generally destabilize. My long years of adventuring have often taught me that the worst thing that can happen to your average pseudo-medieval feudal status quo, is to have it visited by Heroes, and I feel sorry for the place already. Still, destiny pushes us onward, but before we get to inadvertently destroy this latest one, we had to get out of the caves, which turned out to be quite tricky.
At the end of the mission, we were confronted by two of the Evil Overgeneral's Henchmen, a stonking huge demon thing, and a general with Monk abilities, which is all very well, but this happens in a sort of natural arena, reached through a rock archway, and lining the top of the walls are an unfair amount of enemy archers. Charging in to the bowl to do mighty battle with the bosses is a surefire way to become a pincushion, as we found out on the first go. Matters not helped by our Army of Friendly Undead getting all confused at the arrow attacks and spending much of the time running against the rock walls in an attempt to reach these archers. "Hey! Undead! We're dyin over here!" And die we did.
Clearly a bit of study of the situation was required, and second go at it, we won, mostly by cheating a bit. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out how we evened the odds, although there are a few ways to do it.
And then on to Vabbi, and another excellent example of GuildWars' consistently high quality of world design. Istan seemed quite Central African in inspiration, and Kourna had a feel of Morroco to it; Vabbi seems distinctly Persian in feel, and the geography of the new kingdom is all steep twisting river canyons, and golden minarets and domes, and inlaid turquoise, making for a great many of those moments where you suddenly stop playing for a moment and just stand and stare.
Then back to work, and after a number of connecting sub-missions, themselves quite interesting, and a good opportunity to get used to the new terrain and monsters, it was on to one of the most remarkable GuildWars experiences I've had to date, the
Tihark Orchard mission.
It's a solo mission, and unusually for GW, that actually means just you - no henchmen, no Heroes and no friends. We broke up and each went at it, and bizarrely enough, it's not the usual mob-whacking job, but a diplomatic reception, the bulk of which involves you running around, talking to NPCs, in an attempt to rally support form this new land's rulers. Talking? In GuildWars? The various little festival activities were quite ingenious, often using the basic gameplay mechanics of the game in unusual or unexpected ways - dancing, a drinking contest, a mime duel, (...you heard me...), acting in a play.
Of course there was some minor fighting; during, and at the end, when Things Go Bad, and this was touch and go, since my usual working skillbar sort of depends on there being a healing henchman or two in tow, so I didn't have my self-heal with me (
Ether Feast). One of the clever things about GWs design is that every class gets some kind of potent self-heal, although they all work in slightly different ways. I'm also quite weak vs melee-type enemies (Warrior, Ranger, Assassin, Paragon), since most of my usual job is taking enemy casters out of the equation.
Still, a lucky Elite Skill capture on the way to the mission helped tremendously;
Energy Surge. This one is definitely a keeper; Domination Magic, my current specialisation, and it drains the target's energy, and then uses it to cause a pretty hefty amount of AOE damage. ZAP! -8 Energy, 80pts Damage, and 80pts Damage to any other monsters stood too close - all for a modest 10 energy. Very satisfying, and almost Elemantalist-like in it's offensive power. Every class has energy, even Warriors, so a decent all-purpose attack spell, and in typical Mesmer fashion, a good step in many much more complicated combo attacks. (Mind Wrack, Spirit Shackles, Energy Surge, Energy Burn, for example.) I'm currently running around with Arcane Echo as well, use of which allows me to temporarily 'dupe' Energy Surge onto the Arcane Echo hotkey, allowing me to have two goes at the surge, each on it's own refresh timer. ZAP! ZAP! 160pts of damage to everything within about five feet of the target severely dents most clumps of enemies we meet, and if any survive, I just go back to my usual business of locking down and hurting spellcasters, while the rest of the party wades in. That much damage applied at once to multiple targets also seems to massively confuse enemy healers too - who to help first?
Energy Surge got me through the few bits of the mission which require combat, and I won. Huzzah! However, I missed the Master's reward, not through tactical shortcomings, or lack of raw power. No, I missed the bonus because...I don't know enough GuildWars Emotes!
Definitely a first, in my experience. The little festival subgame involving the Mime Duel had this NPC rapidly running through a chain of what turns out to be a really quite huge list of emote commands, without the accompanying chatbar feedback, i.e. 'You clap.', 'You wave.', etc. And you have to copy them in the right order. Given that the only emote I know is '/dance', I was doomed before I even began, and in order to actually tick all the boxes here, I'm going to have to go away to some quiet corner where no-one can see how ridiculous I look, and run through, and learn, them all!
Despite this rather unexpected failing, the mission in general was very well done, and a startling change of pace I really didn't expect. Well done there!
Damn you, Mimes, damn you to hell!