Vanquishing all campaigns

Hello all,

Not sure if this has been covered as the search funtion has been temporarily disabled so..

I'm just about to start vanquishing (after months of putting it off) and thought i'd ask for some helpful tips here about the various areas.

I have both sabway and discord builds available with any tweaks necessary so skills won't be an issue it's more like the following: wandering/patolling mobs that are hard to locate, any specific routes that would save the monotonous slogfest, specific build to area, and general helpful tips and words of wisdom the community might like to share.

Apologies in advance if this thread has been posted in the wrong forum.

I just want to wish you luck. I will also check back here for any tips. I have not even started to vanquish yet. I had like 70% vanquished outside of sunspear hall (whatever area that is) and my game locked up on me for some reason. Havn't bothered to try again yet. Although, soon, very soon!

I always check wiki now before Vanquishing.

They have tips there, and post anomalies. One example: In Turai's Procession, I gave up killing the Tormented Lands in the middle section because they kept respawning.

Well, guess what. Turns out you have to kill 10, then kill the Earthen Abomination that spawns in order to Vanquish.

So yeah, always check wiki before you start, it will also tell what mobs you'll be facing, skills, bosses and elites, etc.

Start with Sacnoth Valley.

Once you did that, you can do anything.

Well first off, welcome to the vanquishing road! It's a long one.

With regards to specific builds and such, what is your primary profession? It's important to find a build for you that will both work in many areas in HM and also synergize with your team. (sabway is built around team synergy and discord requires reliable set up to work)

As for specific areas, I've only finished vanquishing Tyria (prophecies) and while I've done a fair bit of the other campaigns I'll stick to what I know best.

In prophecies you'll be working with party sizes of less than 8 for the majority of the time, additionally the henchman help in these areas is less than stellar so it's best to have your heroes outfitted perfectly for their role and research what you'll be facing in each area as there is little cushion of backup if your builds have trouble with specific foes.

A few areas of note that caused me many headaches;
The Eastern Frontier (Ascalon): Unless you caravan vanquish you'll be working with a party of 4 here and while the majority of the area is nothing suprising the mass of Grawl just north of the wall quickly become a nightmare. The Grawl mobs have lots of interlacing patrols so if you take too long killing one mob you'll soon be facing more. But what really makes these guys a royal pain your arse is their healing abilities; the monks pack extremely potent heals that can and will bring many teams to a halt, in my experience stock Sabway simply can't overpower this. My advice is to bring a means of causing daze for them and Discordway is likely the better option here (make sure to micro discord to spike out the healers first)

Snake Dance, Dreadnaught's Drift, Lornar's Pass (shiverpeaks): These three areas pretty much force you to do a caravan vanquish (it's much more difficult to do lornar's from beacons than coming north with a party of 8). Additionally there are many foes in these areas that are very good counters to both Sabway and Discordway. Blessed Griffons deal tons of holy damage (essentially nullifying any minions you might have) as well as using spellbreaker (completely shutting down the other means of damage from sabway and discordway). Grawl in Lornar's and Summit Gnashers also cause trouble for discord and sab due to their corpse-denial and minion stealing abilities. And while those are the worst offenders at least 80% of the foes in these areas also pack some kind of knockdown (many use AoE kd as well) bringing anti-kd measures will save you many headaches. Recommended strategy for these areas are a non-necro based team build, as you will need to bring party wide Knock Down countermeasures, non-spell based enchant removal and still pack suitable damage and defense. Really these areas are better to bring a friend (or two). As for actual team builds a "phys-way" build is a good choice.

Majest's Rest (Maguuma Jungle/Kryta): The home of Rotscale, simply put there's no truly easy way to kill him in HM, again this area is recommended to bring a friend or two.


Hope I helped a little bit.

Look up a 3 rit hero build too, they work good. I vanquished Crystal Overlook without a wipe with them. Good for non-minion areas.

As for Eastern Frontier, me with 3 Discord necros CUT through that place. Grawls didn't have a chance. Bring a KD of some sort though, I had a warrior using Brawling Headbutt with Stonefist insignia. Works wonders.

Have vanquished all areas (including eotn) without discord, so it is possible without it Nothing against it, of course, we just didn't need it.

Research the monsters in the area before going in. See what you're facing, and bring what can best counter it. Things move stupid fast in HM, so stuff that punishes them for attacking at fast speeds is nice (SS/Insid Parasite/Empathy, etc etc). Scattering support skills amongst your heroes is also nice.

Don't take too much defense, of you'll be standing around for ages. Two monks (hero + hench) are plenty for most areas, as you can always toss a hex removal onto another hero if you really need to.

All of the other tips already listed here are great, too. Mainly, just have fun with it.

I agree always check Wiki first for any tips and it will also give you an idea of how many foes you will need to vanquish and amnount of time it may take. You don't want to start VQ anything and get amost done and realize you need to leave or do somethign else. Some areas may take awhile if you do not tweak a build or have trouble with your pulls. My strategy is always to circle the edge first and work my way towards the middle and it has helped me in almost every area.

Good luck and have fun with your vanquishing! Here's a few tips I picked up along the way:

1. Combine vanquishing with any other titles you may be going after - get the bounties form shrines, take a skill cap for the most out of the way boss, and scrap the edges for cartography.

2. Work the area from the outside in.

3. All of Istan can be vanquished with an 8-person team. (Even the Plains of Jarin can be done with an 8-person party if you do the Venta Cementary mission using the same henchmen that are available in Kamadan. (But it's stupid easy with just 4)

4. Caravan! Some of the toughest areas are are the 4-man areas in Prophecies. (Stupid Grawl Ulodytes!) I did several Ascalon areas by starting out of Yak's Bend with a party of 6. It takes time to get around, but it speeds up the process of actually vanquishing once you get there. (Mercantile Summoning stones could come in very handy for this kind of trek.

5. "Can't Touch This" is a nice skill to have around when dealing with Sand Giants in the Crystal Desert area.

6. Preparation is the key to success, know what you're getting into. Got a hard hitting Ele boss in there? Interrupts come in handy. Got a Rit. boss with Spirit Rift? Be sure to spread your party out to prevent a nasty spike.

7. I used Verata's Aura when doing Kessex peak, just for the lols.

It depends what class you are using, but KD is always good, especially in some areas in Ascalon that you can't really caravan vanquish (unless I could have actually caravaned all of it, i just ended up doing alot of it with 4 ppl)

I'm going to be honest here and admit to having used Ursan for the beginning of my vanquish experience. The KD and damage from it was great, but I don't know how effective it is since they changed it, but it made vanquishing such a breeze (even though it wasnt too difficult to begin with) that I stopped using it, simply because it got very mundane and monotonous to hit 1-2-3. As if getting leg vanq isn't monotonous by nature.

It depends if you simply want to finish the title as quickly as possible, or not feel like slamming your head against your desk as you do it. I tried one road, wasn't satisfied and took the other. If you do want to ursan it up if its still effective or some other "lowly" way, don't let others judge your method of doing it. It's a title for gods sakes, YOUR title and not a morality test. Do the title how you want to do it. But maybe I got a little off topic from what the OP was asking...

well, after you vanquish the area, explore it for cartographer title, its crazy easy with no foes around :P

Or explore as you go, even quicker.

Basicly spec for the area, dont take an MM in a no-corpse zone, brin interupts if there is a hard hitting ele boss, etc, etc.

Caravan vanquishing is also great for certain areas.

Another thing that can be a great help, is a friend, this means you can get alot more offense/defence/healing than henchmen and overall makes vanquishing much easier.

there is a patrol in frozen forest (jade bows) that's a nightmare to find it took me over a hour.

Nothing new, or ground breaking, but plan ahead! Some of the nastiest areas are ones where you think your typical, everyday build will work fine. They won't. I just did Lornar's Pass the other day with my standard discord build and it would have gone so much smoother had I planned ahead. I was not prepared for the mob with 80* foes and 17* monks.

If you have or can afford, bring self cons and/or party wide dp removal. You may not always need them, but they come in real handy when you're caravan vq'ing.

Speaking of caravan vq'ing - do that as much as possible. It seems to make it easier (totally mental, nothing physical unless you happen to have a good morale boost).

The most successful thing you can do, as stated by many others, read wiki before even starting! It makes a huge difference. You'll also notice certain starting points that may be beneficial due to party size. Wiki even has it's own vanquishing page that will tell you the approximate size of areas. And, unless you want to make your life more difficult, will tell you which quests to abandon/pick up to make the areas smaller.

I still have several areas to go in Tyria and Elona (and I'll repeat the Kurz/Lux areas as well) so look me up if you want. It's always better to have real ppl in party than henchies.


*that's exaggeration, but it didn't seem like it when I was actually doing the vq.

These are all fine suggestions, but I have one that is a bit strange, will sound off topic, but is very, very helpful.


Bring something else to entertain yourself.


Maybe it means you have a book. Perhaps you should keep guild wars in windowed mode and watch a movie on the other side of the screen. Perhaps you'll spend time in conversation with others, or just put on your favorite music.

The point is, vanquishing can get long and very tedious. In order to avoid burnout, it really helps if you can keep yourself entertained throughout the process. A lot of areas are just easy enough to not require much micromanagement, but you still need to pay attention and not overaggro or make mistakes. As a result, having something to keep yourself occupied like music or a movie helps keep away the mental fatigue, while you can still pay attention enough to manage your party.

That aside, good luck!

QFT lol, do I know you??!

After vanquishing all four campaigns - I saved Sacnoth for dead last. r6 adventurer depending upon me either a) vanq'ing/mapping sacnoth, or b) completing slaver's in HM (I'm a ranger). Yes, I almost considered doing all of Slavers again in HM instead of vanq'ing Sacnoth. For whatever reason I could not h/h sacnoth...the charr balanced parties with multiple rezzers were a beeotch. Then went with a guildie, got into the siege devourer in Grothmar which you can zone with. Lesson learned: start with hard areas first and then when you need an easy one to ease the pain of vanq'ing (and mapping which you are hopefully doing at the same time), do an easy vanq to get you motivated again.

GL

A lot of great tips have already been given, I'll just mention what I usually did.


- Check wiki to see which enemies you'll encounter and how you can best counter them.

- Minions are great. They will prevent so much damage from being dealt to your party that it would be stupid not to bring an MM in areas where one is viable. (exploitable corpses available)

- Passive defense is good. Stuff like aegis, ward against melee, defensive anthem, ... are very useful skills to throw on some heroes to help those silly hench monks with keeping the party up.

- Protective spirit. Bring it. Always.

- Controlling h/h. Good control/positioning can be very beneficial. When facing heavy aoe (fire imps and the likes), spread the h/h out. When you flag your party with an MM somewhere and then pull a group towards them, the group will generally aggro the minions first (the minions will run towards the group). This'll give you a headstart free of damage where you can take out the biggest treats already.


Good luck with vanquishing.

Majest's Rest home of the evil rotscale. i was able to h/h this solo. XD took me a hour almost 2 hours to get it thou.>> evil dragon. my derv will get leg. vqers once i get lonar's,eastern and perdition done. >>

Eastern Frontier is definitely a pain. I failed it with Sabway the first time I tried it, but then switched to Discord and pretty much blew through it. I switched out pain inverter for technobabble, and it made the Ulodytes a lot easier.

Another tip: if you happen to encounter a really tough group that is constantly wiping you, it would be wise to leave them alone for a while and vanq around them to remove DP before taking them on again. Sometimes that extra 5% or so DP makes a huge difference.

All of Cantha is pretty easy to Vanquish. Elona is a little tougher (but still not that tough). It's really prophecies and GWEN you need to dread. Sparkfly Swamp, Arbor Bay, and Sacnoth Valley are pains in GWEN...and Majesty's Rest in Tyria.

Another tip...keep a couple Powerstones of Courage in your inventory just in case . They've saved many a vanquish attempt for me.

I did Tyria first because I felt it was the toughest. Then Elona then Cantha. Always check the wiki before vanquishing to know your foes, bring consumables (a must) and bring as many real people as you can because even in the tougher areas, a group full of heros/hench will fail.

Lonar pass.... arghhh. its the hardest in my opinion. #@$%@#

Patient is a good thing to have when vanquishing, I often leave when I can't find the last remaining "patrol", those creatures that travel around. Usually get myself wipe out because I like to mob the mob, when I should have pull the them apart. But mobbing is so much fun. so bring a long bow when you are Vanquishing. It will come in handy.

Well I started with prophecies too, it has over 50 areas so I wanted to start with the biggest chunk. After that I did Nightfall and finally Factions.
Like others have already mentionned, team synergy builds make things a lot easier, although I never used sabway or discordway, they're too slow.

Good preparation is needed and it's interesting to bring all kinds of stuff like cons, clovers etc. You might encounter a few ele and rit bosses that are hard to beat, cons will save the day.
When you start an area and you have trouble fighting the first mobs, don't waste your time and work on your builds to counter the area. Some spells you should consider to bring with the team: Aegis, Protective Spirit, Watch Yourself.

By going in a circular way on maps (from outer to inner circles), you avoid missing patrols.
Avoid pugging, unless you have no other choice, they just slow you down in the bigger sheme (waiting for players etc). You can h/h almost everything.

Thanks to you all for the wise words, and the well wishers

I've got to say i'm not really looking forward to vqing, but if i try to combine cart/skill capping then it seems i might get more out of it.

So it's a case of beers, snacks, stereo and spare time

Jade Brotherhood.
Mesmers with hex removal and Unnatural.
Hybrid ritualists.
Earth eles.
Warriors that don't fail at their job.
All in tight corridors - not being able to spread out, the camera goes mental AND your spirits will fail at finding a target.
It trashes all the current gimmicks.


Eastern Frontier felt like a cakewalk in comparison.

Deldrimor Bowl

Take echo -> ebon sniper support and you'll have no problems. The healers might get very annoying, especially with discord.

If I remember correctly the areas with jade brotherhood often offer nice opportunities to cornerblock them. If you're playing a melee that'll prove very helpfull at times aswel.

I wish I would have read this before I ran into Rotscale last night. I rarely check wiki for vanquishing as I run a discord build that hasn't encountered any problems. Until Rotscale, he's tough. Be sure to prepare for him.

Other then that, I carry my summoning stones and summon ruby just in case I need that little extra.

I also did Rotscale H/H. I also (stupidly) did not check wiki beforehand. I also (stupidly) did my standard Discord heroes. Needless to say, it wasn't pretty. Finally got him, but it took quite a while. And cost me a lot of precious clovers.

One thing I would suggest is doing the skill hunter and cartography (using textmod) as well as vanquishing at the same time. It saved me so much time and the skill hunter pays for itself in the way of drops/gold/mats. Doing all three of those or even just vanquish+ skill hunter will yield 8 titles and all 3 is 12 titles.

My advice would be make sure you have alot of lockpicks with you aswell, it can help towards your chest title aswell while you VQ.

Hint for Sacnoth: Get a Siege Devourer in Dalada Uplands and do not lose it. Get out of it before you die and do not get too far into enemy mobs, so that you can re-enter it after you respawned.

Besides that, only the Ruins of Surmia area (Eastern Frontier) is a bit tricky, as there are pairs of Grawl Ulodyte healers. I suggest having a higher Vanguard track and having a daze ranger and using the Ebon Vanguard Sin to kill off the healers.

As upier mentioned it, I did the Canthan Jade Brotherhood areas with Ranger Heroes:
Throw Dirt, lots of evasive stances and Splinter-Barrage do the job.

One Thing I forgot to mention ALWAYS bring a DP remover or consumable. Lets face it Shit happens and it is better to be prepared than have your time wasted because you forgot to bring something to remove DP.

Know your enemies before hand. This'll help so much as you vanquish any of the campaigns. Check wiki, know the geography of the map (it'll help), bring heroes that'll counter against your foes skills, and take your time. I found that if you rush your more likely to make a mistake and this could cause frustration and eventually, you re doing the entire area the next day.

This is what I would recommend 100%. Every area I go to vanquish I study the amount of foes, what type of foes, and their skillsets. I generally run an ER ele with some mixed heroes for specific areas but if I know discord is going to be best, I'll switch to AP nuke. The whole point is to be prepared, and if you can...get a partner to vanq w/you, it'll really help speed up runs, as will essences.

Run discord, Work on your cartography titles as you vanquish as well or you will regret it.

Good luck. You'll need it. By the time I finished VQing Elona I was about to uninstall GW lol.

Cracked Armor + Epidemic.

I vanquished Elona almost entirely with H + H, not using Sabway or Discordway, and made sure that I had a skill for cracked armor, and the Mesmer skill Epidemic. This speeds most battles right along. Watch out for mobs with plague sending or plague touch, who will reverse this on you.

A domination mesmer is a great party member to bring along.

Typically, I had an N/Rit Jagged Bones MM with the rit skill sundering weapon; a prot monk/mes with either Restore Condition, PnH, or ZB and either Inspired/Revealed Hex or Power Drain (for the extra interrupt); and a mixed Earth/whatever ele, carrying wards. Wards are good to have. If you don't bring the ele, bring the mez.

In low-corpse areas, where the MM won't really work, then SS or another ele.

Do your homework on the area--know what you'll face. Be patient and pull your groups.

Daze is seriously your friend.

Punishment Hexes work very well - Pain Inverter, Empathy, Spiteful Spirit.

A Blind spam Ele works wonders against most physical mobs, as they'll hardly have backup condition removal.

For Charr areas (such as in Prophecies or EoTN), Assassin's Promise with Assassin Support + Sniper Support + "YMLD!" + "Finish Him!" really gets the job done.

Majesty's Rest is actually a very small area, only about 60-70 foes and rotscale. I vanquished it by stealing the 2-man rotscale farm team from PVX and outfitting 2 heroes to run it. I left with a full team, made the run to Rotscale, flagged back other 5 henchmen/hero, then micro the 2 monk heroes to go kill the whole island in about 90 seconds!


Otherwise, Cantha is the easiest continent to vanquish, Elona has a couple tough spots in the Desolation, but nothing too bad (well, maybe a little), and Tyria has 4-5 very challenging areas.

Maximize your time, Cartographer, Skill Hunter, Drunkard, Treasure Hunter/Wisdom, Lucky/Unlucky titles can all be worked while you vanq.

Save consumables for tough areas, but bring DP removal on every run. You don't need armor/essence in most areas (but they always help if you got it like that) but it really sucks to drop to 60DP after vanqing 80% of an area.

On a side note, I noticed my Livia would always have little DP compared to the rest of the team. The reason: Death Pact Signet. These deaths don't add DP, so she saved my team from getting ejected more than once!

Take it slow and have fun.

I'm not so sure about that anymore, what with the We Shall Return partywide rez...

Just to update..

I have Vq 25/33 areas in Cantha and have had little to no problems running discord heros. An old pal has joined me Vqing and so 6 discord heros are making short work of nearly everything. Although i've fittted Gwen out with discord for Ele heavy areas and disrupting those spikes have been a help.

Here's what i carry to cover eventualiities, Summoning stones (a perk really) clovers, powerstones, rez scrolls, various sweets with buffs.

I'm going to try Vqing my way to nicholas tonight and hopefully collect enough feathered scalps en route to him.

I'm running a Mo/A with the usual, spamming PI (chuckling when i see fire/earth ele's die in a split second) and when needed aegis. Didn't actually think i'd enjoy it this much but I am!