New to Vanquish

So I just unlocked HM in all campaigns and I now going to try and vanquish for titles. I will be using the triple necro build found here (http://www.pvxwiki.com/wiki/Build:Te...Necro_Vanquish). I was wondering what are some of the easier areas that I could start with just to see how it works.

Prophecies - Old Ascalon
Factions - Sunqua Vale
Nightfall - Plains of Jarin

While vanquishing with the 3-necro hero team is much easier than with other setups for most areas, you will run into problems off and on. That is why that thread has variations on the build. Always make sure that your character's build is great also.

i would recomend kourna no hard bosses 8 team party and small spread out mobs just watch the avatars and the ele bosses and if your melee bring stance removal

In tyria, when vanquishing ascalon/if you have enough time, i suggest you try caravan vanquishing. I will just say it involves starting from a town life Lions Arch that allows 6 ppl, and vanquishing all the way to ascalon w/o going into a town, which allows you to have 6 ppl in ascalon when normally you would have to do it w/ 4. Look it up on wiki if you're confused by me.

And fyi, make sure you have alot of time to do it, a lotta food, and a loooong soundtrack of upbeat songs to listen to.

I got burnt out by my 3rd continent, took little under a week for each one.

Easiest area? bukdek byway with the drunken master vanq, :P

But otherwise, Sabway isn't always the best, it's good to tailor your heroes to whatever area you're doing, granted it is great, isn't always the best

I might wait on the 4-man Prophecies areas until you get a feel for vanquishing.

If you're willing to start on any continent, Cantha is pretty easy all the way through.

Nightfall also is easy except for one or two spots in The Desolation area (Shelkeh the Hungry in Alkalai Pan, for example)

Prophecies is probably the hardest to finish. A couple of the 4-man areas are murder, even caravaning with a party of 6. Rotscale is a beast, and there are a few areas with known bugs that make it impossible to vanquish the area without a little luck.

Plains of Jarin is probably the easiest area to vanquish. All of Istan is easy, since there are no tough bosses, and all but Jarin can be accessed with an 8-person party.

Thanks for all the input. I will defiantly be using these tips.

Remember to always have some dp removing items like pumpkin cookies or candy canes, you might run into some harder groups and a full 60% dp'ed party will auto-resign.

Set up a hero mesmer or ranger dedicated to interruption, you'll need one in some areas. Healers can get pretty powerfull in HM.

Always look up the area on the wiki before starting a vanquish.

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vanquisher
Has a nice list with the number of kills needed for each area and what quests can decrease/increase that number.

It can get pretty boring. Download some movies and tv-shows, run GW on window mode and watch them while you vanq. I went through every episode of The wire, desperate housewives, weeds, arrested development and a few more while I got my title.

The New Aura of the Lich is WAY better than that Jagged bones build ever could be. Take Aura and Shambling Horror and you should have 7-10 minions the entire time in zones with corpses. As well depending on your play style and speed of clearing, i usually run putrid flesh instead of blood of the master. Esp with deathnova on the bar, you get free 100+aoe dmg and disease.

As well, I'm not too sure about that wiki n/rt healer. I run a hybrid dmg support on mine.
And in general, SS rapes pve. But reckless haste with HM already attacking 33% faster can be dangerous. Also, death pact on a hero IMO is sketch. I usually run one or two flesh, because enemies go for the one with the lowest health first, so death pact can wind up hurting you in the end.

If you want you can play around/test mine here's what I'm toying around with at the moment. Trying out Lingering in some more Healer heavy zones over SS, might try Soul Bind next too.
Masters - OAhjYchqITJTeTOODTHXTOjTciA
Olias - OANDUspPSyBHVKgoBJVVV1DBEA
Livia - OAhjYoHroSYMOCWC7B2BjBMiXMA

As well, starting with easy zones will spoil you. Just pick a zone and go for it. NF will probably be the easiest apart from a few areas with large spawns and Epic Damage Bosses. (cough SF boss cough) Factions is little bit harder due to exploding afflicted. Prophecies and EoTN are the toughest (if you call pve tough). HM Charr will probably own you the first time, if you aren't prepared. Dual Healer Charr mobs with Mesmer are probably the closest to a balanced enemy mob team build. As well for Charr/dungeons, I usually don't take triple necros. I usually wind up taking a Prot Monk, Mesmer, and a SS or a second mesmer. Shutting down Charr Casters can be easier than outhealing your heroes and henchies who are standing in Meteor Showers and Firestorms.

When you get to the Old Ascalon, I recommend you find 1-3 friends and vanquish down from yak's doing all the zones. You can skip flame temple and dragon's gullet and come back either from yak's or from grendich courthouse, as they aren't that hard. I did all of them from yak's back before the ursan nerf with consumables and it still took like 8 hours (largely becuase we took like 3 breaks from the mindnumbing boringness of ursan.) 6 people/heroes will be very very helpful in the zones with the grawl healers, and just clearing out enemies quickly in general.

But really most zones aren't that hard.
- Just pull smart and pull small.
- Always flag your heroes apart from each other enough so that they don't all stand in one meteor shower or savannah heat. As well, if you re-flag them they won't cast until they reached their new flag point. Important for flagging monks - easier to just unflag them and hope they run out of the aoe and reflag once its done.
- Powerstones of Courage can save a botched run if DP catches up to your heroes.
- Consumable sets and summoning stones are your friends.

Other than that, good luck.

Edit - Oh yea and when you clear Lornar's Pass - There will a group of stone summit with 3 monks, 2 mesmers and 8-9 physicals. Easily one of top five most pain in the ass groups in HM, especially if you don't know about it.

those are very basic and very nice, solid starter builds. I would personally suggest adjusting the minion bar to have healing or channeling instead of prot. start with an area that is small and consists of a relatively low number of enemies. I would also suggest and 8-man area as 4-man and 6-man area can be quite challenging depending on how experienced you may be. wiki has a great list of the avg number of mobs in every area of the game that can be useful in deciding what area you may wish to try vanquishing first.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Vanquishing

The first thing, and I repeat, FIRST THING, I suggest is:

Develop a tactic for getting the entire area.

Having a steady tactic for finding and dispensing all foes in an area will save you many hours of frustration and heightened chances at failing or disconnecting while searching =P. For this reason, I suggest doing Prophecies... not first. Cantha is rather easy in my opinion, and your 3 Necros will go most if not all the way with very few issues.

Other than that, shoyon's advice of having a distraction and food nearby wins the thread =). Vanquishing is fun if you're doing it for fun. If you're trying to cram a continent into 3 days, it won't be. Pace yourself and enjoy it, it'll be more fun.

Oh, and cartograph simultaneously. It might not be the *fastest* way to get the respective titles, but it feels efficient to me and it has agreeable symmetry.

Elona: I'd hold off on the Plains until you've got a decent team build going. I'd start off with The Cliffs of Dohjok. Leave from Beknur Harbor, as you'll get a party of 8. This area is easy, and will give you an idea of what the rest of Istan is like.

Basically, I'll echo FengShuiDove, and suggest that you work on optimizing your team for the entire area. It's much easier to take down a 4 man area, when you know what your team needs.

Don't forget to hug the walls of a vanquished area. That way you'll be making a considerable progress in your cartographer titles too.

I'll give ya an tip, too. The beginning is the hardest - taking the best route, deciding which enemies to kill and so on. As long as you don't go for the time, and try to do it slow and steady, you won't have problems.

Vanquishing also helps progress the following titles:

Via exploring:
Cartographer

Via killing things:
Elite Skill Hunter
Any EotN title
Sunspear and Faction titles

Via Lockpicks and chests:
Treasure Hunter
Wisdom
Lucky
Unlucky

And bring some alcohol for your Drunkard title

CTRL Key is your friend. Learn to love it. Learn to abuse it. Learn to basically do all of your walking and side-to-side camera panning with that key held down. Seriously - make sure you don't let any red dots sneak by you in your field of view or your compass. Otherwise, you'll spend 45 minutes looking for some isolated leftover mob at the end. It's something that everyone has encountered at one time or another. It's the part of vanquishing everyone hates. It's why there should probably be some leeway given for vanquish zone credit overall (ie. let us leave a few mobs out here or there and still get the credit).


In terms of useful skills, wards can be good depending on the area, and if you have access to EotN, do the quests to get Pain Inverter. If those high-damage bosses/mobs are going to take out some of your party in one hit (or all of your minions), make sure they get taken down with 'em.

Take some consumables just incase you run in to something you didint plan for so you get that extra push to overcome it. Its not that hard all in all, just concentrate and dont over aggro. Cantha would be the easyest place to start i think.

basically everything above are good suggestions, but to add:

load texmod if u don't already have it and get ur vanq/carto done simultaneously. I always start a vanq by going along the outside edges then working my way back in. I"ll leave mobs be if not on that path, otherwise if you start chasing them one leads to another, etc. and you end up doing a lot of backtracking. The only exception being roaming mobs that are represented by red dots moving rather quickly on ur mini-map..take them out because they will be the ones ur looking for in the end (long patrol mobs).

Always have ur "U" map up to see where u've been.

Load up on personal consumables (slice of pumpkin pies, candy apples, pumpkin cookies, golden eggs, b-day cupcakes) that increase attack and/or movement speed, raise attributes, remove dp, etc. whenever u get a chance to buy them. (Trick-or-treat bags are good for this) These will prove invaluable and u'll notice the difference when ur not under the influence of them. Besides, they are cheaper than cons sets and provide +1's on sweet title. A good set of heros and smart play (effective/efficient pulling, etc.)should not die often enough to be a dp issue in most cases. Undoubtedly, you will wipe once or twice in some areas, especially with Sabway (I've found hex-heavy, 4 and 6-man team areas to be especially bad to this team), unless you tweak per area as others have suggested.

Always have loads of lockpicks, buy them whenever u see them for <1.2k...always make sure u have an empty inventory before going out on the next vanq.

Customize ur heros weapons (and urs)...the extra 20% can make a difference.

Pull mobs around corners to you and flagged heros, if possible. Minions, if any, will attack first and create a packed mob, ready for the nuking/dazing/SS'ing/barraging or what have u.

Make sure to read wiki vanquishing page to see which quests will give u less monsters in that particular area before u go out.


Good luck, happy hunting..hth!

Good luck vanquishing. I've been late to it as well, and just finished Elona.

As Feng Shui said...have a method. My old guildies did the whole outside, and then worked into the middle. I prefer to do "sectors" based on the shape and geography of the area--clear one whole quarter of the map, then the next quarter, then the next...

Also, be prepared to be flexible with the builds...both your own and the heroes. Ahadashim, for instance, in Elona, has too few corpses and too many Djinn to make a Minion Master a reliable help. I swapped in a mesmer as a serious interrupter, and carried yet more interrupts on my ranger.

A couple of skills or conditions are nice to put on baddies: skills that cause cracked armor. I used "Sundering Weapon," a rit skill, either on my bar or a hero's, and then put "Epidemic" on Zhed's bar, to spread it around.

I realllllllllly like a prot monk in the group--most vanquishes, I ran 2 monks: one prot and one heal. Kept us from serious DP most of the time. Restore Condition, Reversal of Fortune, Prot Spirit are my favorites. Hex removal, if possible, on the healer's bar...

I also like Earth Eles. Herta the henchwoman was awesome throughout Elona: wards and some additional damage.

Have fun!

Careful pulling is a must, especially in areas like Joko's Domain.

Ask if anyone in your guild needs to vq whatever area you are doing. Two people with 6 necros can steamroll almost any area.


Always check wiki for what quests affect spawns in certain areas. Some quests might cause as many as 100 or more foes to spawn in certain areas while other quests might reduce the number significantly.

Ex: Tahnakai Temple will only have some where between 2-10 enemies give or take various other quests that might be active, if someone has the Meeting with the Emperor quest.