If not because of the new version of Guild Wars, I would not be here. Since I have to exit program to get the new build, may as well write something here.

The beta started early and since I am free, I am already playing. :-D

Decided to start from scratch so Soul Edge of Realms was created.

Soul Edge of Realms is an Elementalist/Monk, went through the tutorial with ease, completing both bonus quest and main quest. Noted that the person to speak to is Cheswick, just bring Oink to him to get the 1000 exp reward.

Instead of being sent to Lion's Arch, was sent to Ascalon City instead, ooh, new stuff for me.

Soul Edge of Relams is exploring the areas around Ascalon City, haven't done any mission but have found her way from Ascalon City to Fort Ranik (via Old Ascalon, then Regent River Basin).

Seems like Fort Ranik is the staging area of another coop mission, so Soul Edge of Realms returned to Old Ascalon and will be exploring The Breach, maybe will do the coop mission at The Great Northern Wall later.

Right, that's for now, back to gaming! :-D

SoulEdge - 04 Dec 2004

As I am writing about the things I found out as I went through the event, there will be spoilers (which may or may not be true), consider yourself warned.

After getting the new build of the game, I logged back on and found Sirian and KoP online, also I have been promoted to officer of the RB guild, woot. Not sure what to do as an officer, so kindly inform me when I can help out the admin work. smile

Right, geography.

Ascalon City is where one is sent after doing the tutorial, two exits (mist walls) that I have found lead to The Great Northern Wall, which is the staging area for the first coop mission; and to Old Ascalon, which is an explorable area.

Ascalon City has skill trainer Captain Arne, crafters, weaponsmith and outfitters, didn't find any skill charm crafter though.

Old Ascalon has two NPCs of worth, Jarrel the Tamer and Melka Blanston. Jarrel, judging from his dialogue, will take unwanted Ranger's pet, a way for player to change pet perhaps? Melka Blanston will tell you that she is worried about her hubby stationed on Great Northern Wall, and later I found out the whereabout of her hubby.

From Old Ascalon, I found two mist walls that lead to The Breach, an one that leads to Regent River Basin, all of them explorable areas. Haven't explored The Breach much, kept on being s

tered, but did find my way to Fort Ranik from Regent River Basin. Fort Ranik is the staging area of the second coop mission.

After Soul Edge of Realms and her warrior henchman being slaughtered by the Charrs in The Breach repeatedly, they decided to do the first mission. So they picked up a monk henchman at The Great Northern Wall and entered the mission. The mission was quite straight forward, and the challenege is about right, had to observe the movement of the enemies at crowded areas and timed it right to pull off a small bit to avoid being swarmed. Divide and conquer, need to be careful with the henchmen of course, pulling technique makes a different.

I usually use the "called target" (ctrl + click) for small group, so the warrior henchman will engage before the enemies get near to me. For large group that could be divided and drawn away, I would "body pull" (c + space), armed with a fire wand Soul Edge of Realms would run to firing distance, fire off a shot, and retreat to killing zone, this way the warrior henchman won't charge forward and activate everyone.

I completed the main quest in my first run, lost the henchmen in the final mad dash back to the wall. I found out about the bonus quest, which is to recover four pieces of armour for Kilnn Testibrie, I only had one piece when I activated the count down for the final mad dash, so I didn't get to complete the bonus quest in the first run.

I did the mission again, knowing where and when the final count down would occur, I made sure I did not activate that. Explored the map and from various wrekages (just like chests, show up using "alt"), I recovered the cuisse, greaves, crest and pauldron pieces and returned them to Kilnn Testibrie and got myself the 1000 exp reward.

I then use the map to quit the first mission and travelled straight to the second mission staging area, Fort Ranik. Again I did the quest with the warrior and monk henchmen, still managable, more devide and conquer needed, but all was good.

Unfortunately I didn't finish the main quest, I believe I was very close though. A bad pull activated too many enemies, the warrior henchman refused to follow me when I retreated, and the monk foolishly stayed by the warrior, so both henchmen got killed and the enemies "camped" their corpses. angry

Two warrior type enemies camped the corpses, while three others (two warrior, one healer type) was nearby. Careful positioning let me resurrect the monk henchman (Soul Edge of Realms is ele/monk) and thankfully she followed me when I legged it, she tried to get back to the warrior henchman though, but I found that as long as I run sufficient far away, she would follow. The monk henchman would try to get back to the warrior henchman to revive him, but as long as I stay far enough, she would just be running half way between me and the warrior henchman corpse, not near enough to activate the enemies, which was good enough for me.

Attempted a few times to resurrect the warrior henchman, monk helping to take the heat off but the warrior henchman was simply too stubborn to retreat. After a few tries, and still ended up with both henchmen dead, I gave up, the death penalty on them would have been huge by then anyway.

There were eight enemies left in that mission that I could find, five were camped near the henchmen corpses, while three other were on the wall. I decided to take on those on the wall alone, hoping by killing the named boss I could complete the main quest. The named boss was with two body guards, a ranger type and a mesmer type.

I failed and got killed, the mesmer negative life regen thingy got me while I was retreating, meh. sad

Wish there was more control on the henchmen, I believe things would be different if I could get the warrior henchman to retreat with me, but oh well...

Anyway, the mission was definately doable with henchmen, just need to be careful. I did complete the bonus quest, which was to rescue the son of Armin Saberlin (yes, Armin! ;-D), named Deeter Saberlin. But Armin and his army refused to help me when I ran all the way back to them after I lost both my henchmen though, cowards! angry

There was also that added quest from Siegemaster Lormar to collect three pieces (release lever, restraining bolt and arming crank) that rewarded us with the use of the catapults. smile Which I found in catapult wrekages and did the fedex work. I think I had missed something though, because I noticed an engineer prior to reaching the Wall, but I was too late to get to him, some enemies killed him.

Noticing the Siegemaster (using "alt") and that nothing ever fell out from the catapult wrekages (before talking to the Siegemaster) stopped me from clicking on the remianing catapult wrekages. Glad I made that connection, for I had four catapult wrekages left and needed to collect three parts from them. Wonder would I have gotten the added quest if I clicked on all catapult wrekages (wasting them) before I talked to the Siegemaster? Hmm...

Oh, and somewhere along the second mission, I found Gurn Blanston, hubby of Melka at Old Ascalon, he asked me to deliver a message to his wife, which I haven't because I quited after I was killed in the second mission.

So, another run through the second mission is in order, and will try to save the engineer and see what we get. Hopefully, this time I will be doing the mission with RBers. ;)

SoulEdge - 10 Dec 2004

I was indeed very close to finishing the second mission in my first run with the henchmen. I found that out on my second attempt, with random players since no RBers were on.

Luckily those players were sensible, especially after I left the one who charged into a big crowd to stay dead for a long while. I was the only one with ressurection skill (elementalist/monk), the remaining two players heeded my warning and slowly we picked off the enemies in small groups and worked our way to the catapult. Only after we had assembled the catapult did I ressurect the dead player. No point for me to ressurect him earlier anyway when there were enemies around his corpse, but admittedly I could have ressurected him sightly earlier but ignoring his constant pleas had made him listened to the team plan, so all was good.

After that we all worked as a team and completed the mission. smile

Sirian was online then, he was working through the first mission solo, true solo with no henchman. I was sure he would complete the mission, but I did get a bit anxious when he was nearing the final dash, for I remember my henchmen went down and bought me some time. Would have been a real shame if he was overwhelmed in that final part, being so close to finishing the mission. But of course he finished the mission without problem, we teamed up and try the GvG.

Both of us were level 7, Sirian a monk/warrior, and I elementalist/monk, after getting the level 15 henchmen, we entered our very first GvG battle...

... only to find ourselves in a building and completely at a lost as to what to do. I noticed a flag so I picked it up, then I noticed a gate so I headed there, before I reached the door I saw blue dots on the minimap, and I realised the enemies were at the other side of the gate. I quickily typed "they are here". And as soon as I finished that, the gate was opened, the enemies rushed in, and within seconds I was killed.

It was that fast.

I found myself ressurected so I rushed back to the battle, this time I managed to cast a spell or two before being two/three hit killed. Meh. crying

The game has pitched us against a group of level 20. One of the opponent remarked that clvl 7 are probably too low for GvG, we couldn't have agreed more, we thought we would be fighting some team of similar level. I guess the GvG aspect is not too polished yet.

So there, we had sacrificed ourselves to be the one responsible for the first defeat in GvG, now you all won't have to bear the shame of being the first. tongue

Sirian made a post on the forum about this GvG experience, we then went back to PvE and did the second mission. Since it was my third time through the mission, I let Sirian lead. We didn't hire any henchman and completed the mission without any real problem, felt rather good since many were complaining the missions were too difficult.

After completing the second mission, we were sent to Frontier Gate, Warmaster Riga informed us that we have to go to Surmia to catch up with the prince. The explorable area off Frontier Gate was The Shift, I went out there and found a large group of enemies, so I skirted behind them and followed another road, which eventually led me to Pockmark Flats.

But Pockmark Flats was not the place to be, I was supposed to go to Ruins of Surmia. Woot, l33t navigation skill! ;-D

Thankfully Alan has logged on and he has done the third mission, and Sirian was available again. On Team Speak we worked out the rough direction to head towards from Frontier Gate, somehow Alan didn't have that city on his map. So Sirian and I went out to The Shift and I soon got myself killed by a group of three/four melee enemies. Meh. sad

Sirian though, was truely sturdy. He fought on and to be honest I was amazed, I know he is a skillful player, but I couldn't help but think that warrior and monk combination is probably too powerful.

Anyway since Sirian didn't have the resurrection skill equiped, and didn't really need my help, he went on ahead mowing the opposition down and soon found the exit to Ruins of Surmia, the staging area for the third mission. Alan joined the group and we did the third mission together.

First part of the third mission was just to follow the silly prince around and make sure he didn't get himself killed. He sure seemed like he's trying his best though. On the second part, we were to find a way to lower the bridge for the prince, we did find the lever, but Alan suggested that we clear the area ahead so we would have an easier time when the silly prince rejoin the team. We did just that and we actually killed a massive army by pulling small group away slowly, which led to funny dialogue when the prince rejoined us.

"This is an army we cannot defeat..." he said.

Army? What army? ;-D

We did spent quite some time finding the Temple of Flame though, for the bonus quest. I belatedly realised (after I died), that the Fire Storm around me was from neither Sirian nor Alan. It was from the enemies.

Doh! ;-D

Somewhere during that mission Sirian showed us his prowess again. Both Alan and I were dead, and it was Sirian who saved the day.

Some day, it will be my turn... (dream on Soul, dream on... ;-D)

Well, the rest of the mission went well, mainly because we have practically killed everything. So the game had to generate some new monsters when it finally came to the cutscene. We were sent to Nolani Academy of the Arcane Arts after completing the mission. Nolani Academy was the staging area for the fourth mission.

I logged off for my dinner after that, which was two hours later than I usually have it. (My name is Soul Edge, I am a Guild Wars addict...) ;-D

I logged back on briefly after dinner and washed up. But I was rather tired I called it a day.