Death in Vizunah Square (You have died 1 time.)

Perhaps there are people who prefer to play through the storyline as intended. It sounds absurd and radical, I know, but some of us live on the edge.

I've been able to reproduce this, I entered with my former surviver and after a few tries (with /death-ing regularly to check I was still at 1 death) made it to the last cutscene and after purposefully not skipping it and arriving at Dragon's Throat sure enough, Im at 2 deaths now!

This time it wasn't the MM as he had just 2 or 3 minions this time which started bashing Koss. I suggest anyone to try Vizunah Square and see if not skipping the cutscene counts as a death, it did with me 2 out of 2 times.

i have seen a number of people lose out on survivor when they were real close to earning it due to scripted death scene in vizunah.

yes, the first one or two of these were caused by rampaging minions however, once we noticed that happening, we stopped using MM's for the mission entirely.

personally, i dont much care for the survivor title and have never bothered pursuing it myself. i enjoy a good aggro too much so, please dont accuse me of whining. i'm just posting my observation of this under circumstances that remove rampaging minions from the picture and match the criteria for the scripted death to not count.

out of curiosity, what would aNet do for players who were hit by this if a bug is identified?

To the original poster of this thread:

First off, take note of my survivor attempts:

Factions Necromancer 1: Died after Anet disconnected. I logged back in and had a death. (No ranking.)

Factions Ranger 1: Died en route to solo Galrath. I admit I was a little too confident. (Survivor 1.)

Factions Necromancer 2: Died at the very last part of Aborstone. (Survivor 1, at least 330k XP.)

Factions Monk 1: Currently Rank 2 survivor, no plans on using him to further the title at this time.

Prophs Warrior 1: Survivor rank 1, never died but deleted due to no interest in using him further.

Factions Assassin 1: Got survivor, even after doing deadly Kyrta Sunspear quest. Accidental. Deleted and replaced with someone I purposely killed at level 1.

So as you can see, this takes practice.

Now...note that this fully applies if you created a factions character: There is no excuse for you being level 19 upon entering the Viz Square Mission. In fact, you should've been doing a victory lap of sorts around the marketplace if you had gotten to the mainland without dying because after you beat the second mission in Factions, it's outstandingly easy to get Survivor.

Now, if your goal is to get survivor and only the first rank of survivor, take the following into consideration: Beat the game you're trying to get the title in. You can't expect many surprises or you'll end up dying, so you should know the game (Factions, Prophs, NF) well before attempting this challenge.

Next up, regardless of the game you start in, you have to make sure you know how to use the profession you're attempting survivor in. A monk might seem like a brilliant choice, but if you don't know how to use the class skills, you'll end up being torn apart. Remember: even a frontline warrior can become a survivor and beyond!

And as for the safest way to get Survivor Rank 1? Do all of the quests in the area. Experience is your friend. Tread carefully and do every quest you can. This is especially important if your character has started out in Prophs, because every additional level will give you an impressive edge.

Also, don't bother getting heroes until you're level 20 and have max armor unless you're absolutely confident in how to deal with the Sunspears in Kryta/Cantha quests.

Now, the next time you try for survivor, don't only get a great weapon and armor, get to level 20 when you reach the mainland. It's easy once you arrive at the marketplace.

Also, skip every cinematic. It doesn't matter whether it's a quick clip of Master Togo taking a crap or Menhlo out smoking a cig or an entire army of minions joyfully harrassing everyone in sight. Just skip it. This helps you avoid any conflict and keeps you on edge.

So happy hunting and good luck!

I second that idea. It has served me well, though I have only one indomitable survivor at the moment rather than 3 legendary. :P

True. What were you doing in a PUG anyway? Survivors in PUGs give us a bad name ie "leaver".

If you want to take a Canthan character to legendary survivor (and I can see why this is attractive as the early quest rewards give the highest XP), leave after you reach the mainland and go through Prophecies (it's safer) or Nightfall (it's faster- xp rewards for quests after consulate docks are 2500 or more).

Vizunah Square? No matter what assurances you think you have, avoid.

Thx for replying Vamis and Government

I was pugging simply because I like pugging. I've been pugging and forming pug teams for as long as I play gw (over 2 years ) and I can smell a bad team 20 kilometers away

I made it through the cantha starter island pugging all the way for 3 or 4 times now without dying once and only once had a close call in the very last mission at the end. Having something like 400+hp and +-11 communing at level 13 or so realy helps

I would've made it to tier 1 easilly if I hadn't died, just like I though I could. I already had hero's but they weren't maximized yet yet still proved very effective. I love maxing limited stuff, it's why I love low level arenas, why I love pre searing and possibly why I love pugging when at low level. At level 20 everything's standard in a way.


Government Flu, I will keep your advice in mind

I hadn't expected anyone replying anymore but since you 2 did I'll tell what happened next. I pugged vizunah square 2 more times after I ahd died. The 2nd time we made it through again and while still at level 19 after the final cutscene I had 2 death. The exact same thing happened again except for the fact that we had far fewer minions and none were attacking me.
The 3rd and final time I levelled to 20 during the mission and saw through teh final cutscene once more. This time I hadn't died, still had 2 deaths.

I deceded to reroll her, only to die again at level 13. I could've pressed the allmighty ''x'' but for some reason I didn't. Vizunah seems to have killed my motivation for making a surviver alltogether. Atleast it has for now. I realy don't want to go through the starter island again seeing as this is pure grind. I never found the starter island particularly hard, just somewhat exiting.

I will try again at some point, possibly with a mesmer and most likely not a canthan mesmer :P

Thx for the replies'and feedback i've been given in this thread, it's helped clear up many loose ends for me
I realy hope this bug gets fixed soon. For now I'll spend my time in hardmode and farming the charr salvage kits

Bumped again?

Um I dont get the part about locked out. I have 3 canthan born survivors and im locked out of nothing. Please explain.

As far as I know, Vizunah Square dead at the end cutscene, is a false dead; So, don't count as real dead. It's like when you die in the sulfuric thing. Also, minions DON'T kill anything in a cutscene.

Are you sure you don't died one time before that cutscene?

I don't know if this will help anybody, but it might help narrow down what or where you're looking.

Last weekend I got Legendary Survivor on my Warrior. I avoided Vizunah Square like the plague, until I achieved level 3 of the title. Due to the many people that have posted here, saying how it caused them the title loss.

I finally said that I will give this a go. I was also watching like a hawk on my "/deaths" many times thoughout the mission. Sure as heck. 1 death.

Now, this didn't happen at the end cutscene where everybody is saying. It was just after the mid cutscene. We had two MM in the party, but I don't know if that is a cause, or coincidence.

I guess I was lucky to avoid it, but I can at least confirm it. DreamCatcher, it sucks, but reroll it's worth it! I did once after losing my first attempt less than 5000 exp away (from level 1, that is). Man was I mad.

Why not just avoid the mission if you are going for the survival title...

I've been trying to get the third rank of Survivor, and have rerolled 14 times. However, those 14 times I have not died from a Vizunah Square mission.

What I do is solo this mission so that I'll be able to keep survivor. Otherwise, if I get a player in the other mission I ask them if they can skip the cutscene. When the final cutscene appears, I hit the skip button, and then exit out of the application and try to relog in giving me a slim chance if that other player goes through the cutscene that my character might've logged out.

If Togo or Mentos dies, the mission fails but doesn't add to your deaths... at least when that happened to me..

If my factions character tries to change secondary profession in Nightfalls she gets told, that she needs to either ascend or get closer to the stars. So you have to finish Nahpui Quarters before you can change profession in the other campaigns.

Read this with much interest, I read in one of the update notes a whiel back that the death caused by the cutscene at the end of this mission was meant to have been fixed,

I have one legendary survivor and due to it being a ritualist I wanted to get decent elites. Without doing Viz Square this is practically impossible, as to proceed through the game its necessarry to do the missions, otherwise areas are locked from entry.

I achieved Survivor before entering Viz and I also went to Elona and got the heroes, including Olias and Zenami, this was back n march before the updates to their quests, I then leveld all the heroes i had, equipped them with the optimum equipment, and went through elona up to Ruins of morah and Tyria up to Droks, then i went back to Viz square and went through it with mm and skipped the last scene with no deaths, getting legendary i needed to then do cantha up to rizu palace, elona i did ruins of morah and captured all the ritualist elites i could,

Its necessary to do these missions to get quick xp, its necessary to do them alone or with a trusted companion, however something needs to be done about deaths in cutscense from any source, maybe if the minions do cause them in this final one then they should also be killed in the scene to prevent an accidental death

You should NEVER EVER play with other people if you're going for survivor. Not because of yourself, but because of them. Survivors HURT the team! Because of the selfish need to stay alive, you can't sacrifice for the team when needed, you can't risk faster mission completion when needed because you need to be very careful, and most of the times i see survivors they stay far back and contribute much less than those who dont go for survivors. Take into account that PUGs in general don't contribute much (unlike Heroes and Henchies) and there you go.

Too bad about your survivor char, I know how you feel... Today I lost my survivor at 1.13 million exp due to getting dc'ed from the game and when I logged back on I had died... I was so close to legendary survivor and had most missions mastered in Cantha and Elona. It sucks when it's not your fault. But yeah, good luck if you're trying again.

yeah, i took a couple survivor attempts through there (with my own hero mm's) without it counting. i'm guessing that either people are using alt-f4 instead of the more reliable f12 enter to bail and not checking their deaths or more likely there's some odd nuance that's making that mission count a death (even if you don't see someone die in the cutscene, after the cutscene the damage they take takes affect).

and a few pointers on survivor: if you're going for the max title, don't rush it. you're going to find yourself at the second title wondering what to do to make the next 800k xp. capturing elites gets expensive really quickly (especially when you're only 1 death away from deleting and rerolling). with the exception of the cap sig quest, i can't get into questing...but i did almost all of them along the way...i think my survivor was 20 by the time i got to maguma.

if you have a lot of skills unlocked on different professions (and know how to use the ai quirks to your advantage), use heroes and hench. some people consider it bad form to run a survivor in a pug (with the chance of bailing on the group). the ai in the game is generally smarter than the average pug-member anyway.

lastly, play the profession you know. i tried a couple of monks first before i just decided that i should make a ranger. things were way easier from that point on.

you said earlier you did missions in prophecies? a canthan and elona born char that ascends in prophecies can change seconds right then and there... I have a survivor sin, before I did vizunah square I had tier 2 survivor... you can change seconds after proph ascension, plus proph ascension gets you an extra 10,000 exp

all my chars are survivor (except really old ones) survivor is pretty easy with henchies and with heroes its even easier. if you fear cinematics deaths, dont play with real people then you can leave whenever you want and wont piss anyone off...

I don't think that's true, at least not in my case. My assassin got to the mainland on Elona before finishing the Closer to the Stars mission. He set up the command post and went as far as the mission where you have to kill the drought, yet I couldn't change my secondary profession until I went back to Factions.

Oh, and by the way Dream. If you plan on using a mesmer for a survivor project, be extra careful because mesmers are weak in the beginning of the game. Especially their self heal which has a long recharge time and cast time compared to other classes.

You're kinda right about survivers not being as much use to a party as a nonsurviver. Thats 1 of the reasons I took made a rit, It's almost my job to stay in the backlines.
Only my last death was during a mission (sanctum cay), my other deaths were from the vizunah bug or becasue of eh...noob mistakes (hey I'm only human :P )

My best profession is ranger, thats why I have so many of them! Don't know if I want another one but it's a logical choice. If I decide on making a mesmer I'd be happy at tier 1.

No offence but this error happened to me when Hard Mode was impelmented in an update. I sent a huge error report on my survivor with full screenshots of the mission completion text and the death total, then I also tested on another character and the exact same thing happened, then I had done it an extra time. I sent this error report twice, all I got was your ridiculous automated reply. There is obviously NOTHING to examine Shiro actually kills the character, not the minions but Shiro doing this stupid magic thing that makes every drop on the ground.

Well, let's beat this horse some more!

It's definately true for those of you who "assume" it is impossible to lose survivor titles in the Viz Square mission. Ten minutes ago, I completed the mission with no problems and got my first death right after the cutscene. Perhaps it's my fault that I don't spend hours a day looking up ways to die when going for the survivor title but I had absolutely no clue that there was a glitch at all. You shouldn't NEED to look it up.

There were 2 MMs in the group and as soon as the cutscene ended, I heard my character die. Sure enough, 1 death. Stupid...

It's ashame that people who feel very confident on getting through NF/Factions without a single death waste hours upon hours of gameplay to die in an ignorant un-fixed glitch. It's far past retarded. If NG has the ability to manipulate the game, they should have the ability to manipulate THEIR ERRORS and fix what went wrong just like any other corporation. How about being able to remove a garbage death caused by programming error?

People cry and say Survivors leave, etc. etc. etc. Well, Viz Square happened to be the first mission I pug'd due to the time restriction for masters and sure enough, this idiotic unfixed bug since Factions release screwed yet ANOTHER player. IMO: There is a difference from a Noob player raging the game before death and an experienced player who knows what the word "kite" means. Survivor = EZ. Just not when you're BS'd out of it.

So you're absolutely positive that at the very end of the cutscene you heard your character die, 5 seconds later you got mapped to the next mission outpost?
Could it be that anti-cutscenedeath protection (dunno what else to call it lol) is lifted too early, causing the minions to get a hit in (I assume your character can still loose health during a cutscene but can't get less then 1 health)becore the cutscene is over and *POOF* so much for surviver?

This is quite similar to what happened to me. I pugged it, I pugged the factions starter island 3 or 4 times and only once broke a sweat and almost died...but the point is that I didn't.
I made it through in PUG's...yes it's doable and with half a brain and a bit of knowledge how to equip low level toons it's not even that hard yet I got this bonus death at level 19 after this cutscene was over.

After this I tried once more only to die carelessly at level 13...my motivation to try again was gone. I realy did my best yet all my efford was sweeped from the table as if it was nothing. Getting to surviver rank 1 is a big deal to a lot of people..not everyone here has the stramina or time to create 5 legendary survivers within 1 weekend.

QFT

Some possible solutions to this:

Global reduction of every characters death count by 1

Change the survivor title to allow for bugs and lag which are not a players fault.

Deaths allowed prior to reaching LVL 1 - Zero
Deaths allowed prior to reaching Lvl 2 - 1 Death
Deaths allowed prior to reaching Lvl 3 - 2 deaths

Title stops if you fail to reach the level criteria

The point of surviving is to stay alive. The title shouldn't be for attempted survival.

To quote Sideshow Bob - "Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?"

To quote me - Are you really "Blessed by Fate" if you have enough gold and are prepared to stand around in a circle long enough?

Why do people even bother to try and do Survivor and do this mission? You had to do research to work on Survivor so why bother to put yourself in harms way? Personally I say you get what you play for, if it's been a bug for a VERY LONG TIME then you should have known better.....

I've gone Survivor quite a few times, and anytime someone asks for tips on how I did it, all I tell them is quests, skill caps, and avoid pugs. With enough time playing certain difficult missions on other characters, you usually know when a tricky spot is coming and you can preprot yourself with your heroes or simply run away early before trouble starts. It's extremely boring playing through the games with just heroes and henchmen, but if you really want the title, you'll put in the work. And by doing it this way, you can avoid the scripted deaths from cut scenes that may still be/unknowingly broken. I'm not saying this is the only or the best way to go for it, but in my opinion it's the safest.

I always do Viz Square with my survivors, even though I know about the risk at the cutscene. The 90ish eliteskills available for quick capture (fixed boss spawn points!), not to mention the quests with stupid amounts of XP as reward, are just too good to pass on.

Viz Square's cutscene killed off a monk survivor of mine at one point (~650k xp). I tested some more with her at that point and did some more Viz Square runs. The deaths happened at the point of "Shiro kills the teams".

So, what you need to do:
- play the stupid mission normally. Preferably, have interrupt Jin, MM Olias, prot Tahlkora in the team plus some henchs such as Devona (for the "charge" rush (want to do master here straight away)), Jamei, Cynn (AoE), Eve (BR support). If you think you're better off with random humans, it's your own problem.
- If you're lucky, you'll be blessed with a full hench local team. No issues then, just skip the last cutscene immediately.
- if you're unlucky and teamed up with some humans on the other side, hit *f12+enter* immediately when the cutscene starts. Not before that. But just when it starts. When you log back in, you'll be in Viz Square outpost, but it will be marked as finished. And Dragon's Gullett is on your map. Maptravel over there, pick up the quest, and go on.

I've done this with 4 characters now, and it's foolproof. Still a high risk operation though, so I'd do it early in the life of the survivor.