Another bumper session of thrills and spills yesterday with the start of the TNC Survivor Challenge, which basically does exactly what it says on the tin. After the usual early meetup and nattering session, a large proportion of the guild all went and rolled up brand new characters in the Nightfall Campaign, entering themselves into what promises to be a gruelling and lengthy elimination gameshow of sorts; our very own version of Survivor!
Wing Commander of the Zeitgeist that I am, I actually had to go and look up what that actually was on Wikipedia. Ho hum. Our little event is somewhat different and is the pursuit of the Legendary Survivor Title in Guild Wars, an accolade achieved by gaining various amounts of XP without dying - permadeath mode, in a way. All a bit hardcore for my own tastes, so our indomitable band of seven contestants is being led through the harrowing ordeal by my abundantly enthusiastic Number Two, whose silly idea it all was in the first place, but who does indeed, have a Legendary Survivor character to their name. They also have no blog, but really ought to start one, being at least as much of a jaded MMO-wandering hack as I am!
Possibly a bit of a harsh first day for this week's new face, a mid-level Dervish with some past previous familiarity with the game, but a long period of absence. Another wandering blogger like myself, and their recent return does seem a recurring tale that I see echoed a lot, both in TNC, and in general; an initial interest, perhaps during which many misassumptions are made concerning the basic nature of the game, often a legacy of playing more 'normal' MMOs, some solo work on one of the less well thought out campaigns, (Prophecies, typically, which isn't GW's prettiest side, although Factions can be a bugger solo too), then a long period of abandonment, eased by the lack of guilt having no subscription can bring. It'll always be there.
Then a revival of interest, a resurgence, another go. This is certainly my own experience over the years, having gotten thoroughly stuck in the Crystal Desert missions some years back and hanging the whole thing up for a long time as a result. I like to think the Tuesday Noob Club is a good place for folks like that; we're casual, but interested, relaxed, but active.
The little gang of new Lv1s all reappeared, and I waved them all off from the Guildhall, and from then was mostly following the hijniks via a series of amusingly disjointed non-sequiturs relayed on Guild Chat, which was probably the most lively I've ever seen it.
It seemed there were a number of logistical challenges to overcome before the endeavour could begin in earnest. Firstly, the single-player tutorial, which is largely optional, but a good way to grab a first early level or two. No casualties there, which was encouraging!
The first place players can even team up at all, was the Chabek Village Mission, which allows teams of up to three players, plus one Koss. As I understand it, the rules entail only using Heroes of Henchmen where no contestants are available, or a mission demands it, so our contestants there split into several teams. Seems they all got through that without incident too, although the whole mission is something of a tutorial really.
From there on to Kamadan, and a rather confusing twenty minutes or so. The Survivor Prime knows all the tricks you see, and one of these is to arrange for a 'ferry' to Consulate Docks, a part of the town that you normally can't get at without completing most of the Istan island - three more missions, plus a lot of overland questing. Once there, you have access to the first Max Armour shop; self-twinking, essentially. Suitably armoured up, you can then head back out to the lowbie maps, and your chances of survival are greatly increased.
Seemed a lot of mucking about there, and I'm not sure who or how many contestants took advantage of this help. I'm still undecided on whether that's technically cheating, but since I know The Survivornatior has a nasty habit of insisting people reroll and start again from scratch on death, I'll let it slide - need all the help they can get!
Once that was all sorted out, it was onward to the Plains of Jarin, the first proper zone for some serious XP work. Quite a variety of levels of monster out there, and it's usually the Preying Lances, to the west of Sunspear Great Hall that end my attempts at Survivor; sudden Level 8 mobs, when I'm only 3 or 4...game over! Of course it's easy to get survivor by just zoning in, killing the first three mobs, zoning out and resetting the map, and repeating ad infinitum, but the fastest way to get xp, is the quests, so I think they are going for that route. The Plains also only allow 4/4 teams, so my own confusion as to what was going on was doubled, with two instances on the go. Hopefully matters will be simplified as they push further through Istan, and reach the outposts that allow 8/8 teams, although that will bring new challenges; previously accustomed to a specific other three players in the team, how will our plucky contestants adapt to being part of a team of seven?
I think by the end of play, they'd all managed to hit L5, and not a single casualty among them! (My own personal best was L7, I think. Damned Skale!) So far so good, and my odds of anyone making it to rank one, 'Survivor' are now down to 35 to 1! Since I'm not actually out on this obsessive jaunt myself, I shall have to direct you to the comments below, where some of the contestants may even chip in themselves. (No pressure folks!)
As for me? Well, a handful of TNC aren't really Survivor material, through lack of skill, or just sheer laziness, so we amused ourselves with a great deal of world travel, and a rather hefty purchase of Signets of Capture.
I love the collection aspect of the Elite Skill Hunting, and even Nifty!-ed it previously. Our longer-serving Dervish (And my Number Three!) in particular has a shocking shortfall of Elite Skills to draw from, denying him a lot of the fun of the unique Buildcraft game that so marks GW out from so many other MMOs, so with myself, and our veteran Warrior and Monk, spend a relaxed and quite profitable few hours hitting the wiki, taking turns to pick targets, and charging out to murder monsters for the contents of their heads! We even dabbled a bit in Hard Mode, and toward the end, got extremely lost trying to track down one of Nightfall's occasionally refreshing Treasure spawns, for cash and gold items. Think we're all about six ticks closer to the various Skill Hunter titles, and I now have a number of interesting Comedy Mesmer Build ideas as a direct result. Something for everyone!
As the evening turned into morning, the night-owl TNCers then went of a bit of jaunt through Abbadon's Mouth; helping our Elementalist tick another Campaign box. Despite all the Event stuff we do a lot of, there's always someone that needs that next mission, and we're always there to help with that too.
Next week looks like another twin eventer, with Survivor Pt2, where the epic struggle for the fabulous prize one of my Minipets (All White Rarity, sorry!) will continue, or for the Unsurvivors (Or the Survivors that just want a change), a night spent trying to get on the daily high-score tables of the various Challenge Missions across Factions and Nightfall!
(Oh, quick reminder; we now have a
Gax Online Group set up; mostly because the in-game MotD isn't big enough for my verbose rambling. I forgot to set it to Private, so don't post anything that you wouldn't post here!)