Dunes of despair bonus

Hello. I've been trying to do the dunes of despair bonus for a long time now but i fail every time...can somebody help me or give me an advice? and don't mention the teleport technique. tried it loads of times but the scarab never appeared.

Maybe you've been very unlucky, but the scarab (almost) always will appear. Sometimes, you have to scrape the walls to convince it to pop, but one always seems to show up.

But if you're determined to do the bonus legit, I imagine you could do it by splitting the team so that 3-4 people run out and kill the bosses while 2-3 defend the hero.

With the 3-necro hero builds, I imagine that you can leave the healer and MM with Ghostly, while the rest of the team goes to kill stuff. Having another healer/prot combo along instead of the SS necro is probably a good idea, unless you're a monk

Of course, that is if you have access to heroes. If you're stuck with henchies... ouch.

I recently did Dunes m+b with H/H as an Assassin/Rit. It was a strange situation for me because my first attempt I completed the bonus criteria and made it back to the hero just in time for a party wipe with 0:03 left.... I was given credit for the bonus but not the mission. What I did was I left my MM hero and healer and took 2 heal hench, 1 ele hench, and SS hero to kill the bosses (the 'generals'). From what I could determine, my MM ran out of bodies/minions and just couldn't stay alive any longer. I don't know if there are enough bodies to fuel a MM hero here, so what might work better for you would be to post MM, healer, and nuker/SS instead of just 2. This of course will stress your general killing group, but if its all you can do its all you can do

I think the ideal situation for Dunes of despair would be to take 2 heroes and have another human take 2 heroes. One defends and the other attacks. Maybe 1+3 on offense and 1+1 on defense, if you can maintain the defense efficiently.

-Alastair

After the first wave, flag one healer hero next to the Ghostly Hero, everyone else heads out to kill the three bosses. As long as you have a decent damage output you should be back in time to save old Ghostly and complete the mission.

But getting back isn't really an issue. You can safely head out, kill them and get the bonus. Even if you fail the mission you'll still have credit for the bonus, you can then just repeat the mission and defend the Ghostly Hero.

If you don't have any heroes, then just take more damage and accept you'll probably have to do the bonus, then the mission. I suspect ghostly will just last long enough to get the bonus if you can kill quick.

The important thing is to be heading towards the bosses as soon as the first wave is over.

When I did it on my ranger I flagged monk and MM next to the Hero and ran quickly to kill the bosses and come back.

I recently did it on my ele and finally resorted to the teleporting technique to get the bonus [played my ele as an SS LOL]. A scarab popped up immediately when I hugged the cliff. I am not sure if that was sheer luck or its the case normally.

I played as R/N, managed to hit the enchanted swords with my longbow and then killed them and used necrotic traversal and kept pulling mobs in range so i could keep healed and we could all kill them.

If you can only kill the first group thats enough to give you the time you need to leave the Ghostly, go out, kill the other 2 generals and get back. Just dont forget that leaving the fort seems to spawn more foes

I had taken a vampiric weapon and equipped it on my heroes one after another, having disabled healing on Tahlkora. I was busy elsewhere in the house then so I was just checking on them every few minutes to see whether it was not time to rebirth the next one to my side.

Something else to let you know, Is that don't have to just wait for the Scarabs to pop. If you own a Longbow or even Drako's Flatbow would be even better but shoot the "Boss". It would be the 1st boss out of the 3 you got to kill anyway, You shoot him and make sure you kill him close enough to the edge so you can Rebirth others over.

I played hell before knew about useing the boss waiting for Scarabs. going in twice to do bonus then come back and do misson. But knowing about the Boss useing his corpse i still do it twice but not as many headaches for me.

Also another little tidbit for you, If you ever plan on doing the Cartographer Title at some point with your Char your useing. It seriously wouldn't hurt to explore that whole back side with just doing the Trans to Boss Trick. So your not fighting the clock for the Misson itself.

It's funny - I've done the [[necrotic traversal] trick many, many times - and I've almost NEVER had a scarab pop up. I've always had to rely on the first boss being in range for a nice flatbow pull 'n nuke.

I should also mention that, when Hero/henching, the old-style vampiric weapons method is not needed. Here's how it goes:
Kill the waves of Enchanted at the entrance to the fort Run to the ledge overlooking the bonus area - IGNORE THE ENEMY GHOST Pull and kill the enemy boss (or a scarab) Necrotic down to the corpse, stay near the fort so your heroes can kill at a distance The fun bit - pin the party back at the enemy ghost (friendly ghost stays on the ledge) When enemy ghost is dead, unpin the party Within seconds, the entire party arrives at your location - drawbridge is still closed! No idea how the party manages to get back to your location, but they do - you're now free to do the bonus and cartographise (heh) to your heart's content.

I just did the bonus normally by leaving a monk hero healing Ghostly and running with the rest of my H/H to kill the generals. The Ghostly's health didn't seem to get too low during the rest of the mission.

I was at Dunes of Despair yesterday with my Necromancer because he needed the bonus and he needed to do some cartography. I read Wiki tips and I equipped Necrotic Transversal on the Necromancer’s bar for the first time.

I did pretty much what Snograt listed except I didn’t pin the party back to the enemy ghost.

It took about five restarts for a scarab to finally pop up and I used Necrotic Transversal to get across. This was after trying to lure the boss close enough to kill him and checking the other gates to see if anything popped up. Finally my Necromancer made it across and as he was standing there by himself near the Monk boss and his two goons - I thought it might have been a better idea to have the heroes kill themselves so I could use Rebirth to get them across. Luckily, some more scarabs popped up and they were all able to get across pretty fast without attracting the attention of the boss.

If you take a hero that makes minions, don’t forget to disable animate skills.

I had read that Henchies automatically cross over, but they didn’t for me. Killing the Enemy Ghost might be the key. I’ll try that when I have my Ranger do this. Plus I’ll probably have the heroes die so I can get them across faster just in case there are no other scarabs near enough to the ledge for the heroes to use.

Wiki says the bonus area accounts for 0.5% for cartography but my Necromancer clocked a full percentage point back there. There’s a lot of territory beyond the fortress.

I know the OP didn’t want anyone to mention the teleport technique but it worked for me and I had never done it before. It did take a lot of restarts but eventually it got done.

Correction: Although he gained a full percentage point for cartography purposes, not all of it was from the bonus area. I had forgotten that he had scrapped the area around where the Slow Totem is located so the bonus area would, in fact, account for less than 1%.

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I needed the bonus and did it as a W/N. The only necro skill I took was Necrotic Traversal.

Ran passed all the Losaru and the siege worms to get to the fort, fought past all the Enchanted Hammers, Swords and Bows. Did not put the hero in the spot to start the clock. Parked my Henchies and the Ghostly Hero on the ledge nearest the first boss on the back side. The Hero helped DPS the mobs on the other side of the bridge.

Took three or four tries to get a usable corpse on the far side. Once across, I ran thru a few scarab spawns until my henchies were off the compass, then unpinned them. Sure enough, they jumped the chasm and we ran around killing and mapping away.

No vamp weapons necessary, no rezzing required.

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In NM, you can easily do it by simply capping the stand, killing the 4 waves of eles, then running to the 3 bosses and taking them out. I manage it every time with about a 20 second margin before the ghostly gets killed. The slow totem helps.