And so, after an awful lot of dawdling, detours, side-trips, expositions, reversals of fortune and sundry other sub-plots, we've finally made it to the Desolation. This is a distinct new region of the worldmap of Nightfall, and possibly one of my favourite to date. We're now in the wilderness, having left civilised lands behind, and the new areas are not really like (or inspired by) anywhere historical at all, instead being a rocky tortured landscape of sands, ruins and sulfurous deserts, all presided over by the large dark 'Nightfallen' tendrils, which seem to have sprouted from the earth pretty much everywhere now, mostly as a result of our incompetent meddling in arcane affairs, and international politics. Heigh ho!
Of course the first obstacle upon leaving the Gate of Desolation northward, hot on the trail of the crazed evil warlord woman, was a desert of very yellow sulphur sand, which tends to kill people that walk on it, stone dead. Presumably crazed evil warlord wimin don't count as people, but we needed to find another solution to continue the mayhem, and the ensuing mission, provided just that.
The Necromancer, who has done all this before, had been pushing quite hard to get to this bit, making all sorts of hints, giggling lots and so on, but I must admit to being taken back somewhat with the turn of events next, and the mission was certainly different, in a game where most of the missions are quite varied anyway. After a bit of minor fighting, including a number of desert-bound undead mummy boss types, and the 'subduing' of a desert sandworm queen thing, we were rewarded with the ability to commune with, summon and control, sandworms of our own!
'Hello,' I thought, 'I've seen this movie!' Whoever controls the Morale Bonus, controls the Universe! Mind you, unlike the sandworms of Dune, one doesn't ride, gracefully, on the backs of these 'Junundu', which is a shame, but probably quite difficult to do in terms of gameplay, character animations and the like. No, these worms actually eat you when summoned from the various 'Worm Spoor' useable objects scattered around the maps. You then essentially become the worm, (much like the Rollerbeetle racing mini-event, some time back), gaining a different worm-specific skillbar for the duration, and then when reaching solid rock, (or you hit the 'Eject' skill), the worm, er... vomits you back out and disappears back into the sand, which is probably what you get for traveling economy class, rather than the executive business-class tickets the more affluent Fremen Messiah tends to splash out on. I still have no idea where my luggage ended up.
The mission itself was fairly easy as they go, consisting of simply using the Junundu to get to the other side of the map, which was just as well really, considering what a sudden and wrenching shock the new skillbar actually is. I'd spend the last fifteen missions, and associated exploration, and far too many weeks, just about getting the hang of being a Mesmer, and suddenly, I'm a worm! The worms are powerful, but not invulnerable by any stretch of the imagination. They have around 3000hp, compared to my usual 400 or so, but seem to take far more damage in combat than I normally do, suggesting very low Armour Class, and it's very easy to think 'I'm a huge gigantic worm! CHARGE!', end up overextending, and getting killed. The worms do have some effects that self-heal, but these are usually combination attacks, or in the case of the Wail, the big self-heal, can only be used when no enemies are in earshot. This does double as a resurrect though, and with eight of you burrowing along, a total wipe is quite difficult, despite the enemies coming in quite large clumps.
Not difficult, all in all, but sufficiently different to cause some troubles. Once you get the hang of the various worm skills - what should be used when, and the like - things become a bit more fluid, and we even managed the bonus, which in this case, involves rescuing baby sandworm-things from groups of Margonites poking them with pointy sticks. Grr....pick on eight someones fifteen times your size!
To be honest, I was quite glad to be back out the other side. The worms are indeed, very cool, but I seem to have trouble getting my head round this sudden new skillset, and much prefer my carefully tweaked and long-practiced Domination Mesmer skillbar. The worms all seem so...arbitrary, in a game where a highly specialised and refined eight-skill set, is core to one's tactics and capabilities in a fight. Guild Wars would be no fun if everyone had the same skillbar the whole time. Still, this whole worm thing is an interlude, and not a replacement, so I'm not that cross about it all.
Those who do 'click' with worm-isim (wormishness? wormaphasy? wormorphasis?) will enjoy the next outpost, Remains of Sahlahja, which is another of those entirely optional 'Challenge Missions', the rewards of which seem mostly to be a high score table, and cosmetic armour style upgrades for your Heroes. In this one, you go in alone, become a worm again, and have to rid some tombs of an infestation of grave beetles, all the while trying to avoid the wrath of disturbed spirits. I gave it a go, scoring a pitiful 24 points, compared to a listed best of 800 or so. It wasn't until I came out that my friend pointed out the genius of the thing - stationary, round 'pellet-like' beetles you have to eat for points, angry ghosts that chase you around the maze as you do, and which must be avoided... Too subtle for me, but very clever!
The rest of the session saw us reach as far as the Bone Palace, where we're now attempting a hamfisted practical application of the often espoused theory that 'The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend', and helping an ancient, defeated, and until we came along, safely buried and inert, evil lich-lord type of creature regain power, an army, a base of operations and assorted sundries, in the somewhat vague hope that he won't just stab us in the back, and have to be destroyed by us, STILL leaving us alone against the evil warlord woman and her army. Politics!
To get away from it all, we left the beaten quest track and spent a good couple of hours just exploring the new lands of Desolation; The Ruptured Heart, The Shattered Ravines, Poisoned Outcrops, and eventually parking at the Lair of the Forgotten outpost, where we met some old friends - The Forgotten - the humanoid snake-thing guardians of the Ascension, in the Crystal Desert of Prophecies. Apparently, to the very north of this region, is a pathway that takes us to the far southern edge of the Tyrian desert, from where it's possible to walk right up to the Anmoon Oasis. I love it when a world comes together, and next time, we'll need to find a way through!