I wonder about.....

being run from place to place anymore.

Made it to the Amnoon Oasis with my heros & henchies and began the Prophets Path and subsequently ran into hydras and meteorites. Died quickly and often.

Asked my guild mates what I might use for skills to counter my foe's attacks and they told me that they would run me through the towns and stuff necessary to complete the task.
I agreed (I was tired) and they then proceeded to do just that with every good intention. They really are great people.

Problem is, I had to miss cut scenes (I love cut scenes but 4 out of 5 wanted to skip) and the thrill of vanquishing (not running from or through) my enemies on my own.

Maybe being run is the only way for me to complete at least one campaign at this point (I'm still a knucklehead) but I still want to know how to counter hydras and meteorites? ETA - Griffins too.

I'm a level 20 necro/monk but I usually only build with necro skills.

There are lots of things you can do, and the hydras are far from the worst thing roaming around the Crystal Desert.

The easiest thing is to make sure at least one of your heroes has interrupt skills. If Meteor is interrupted, it can't hurt you.

Bring monks with protection skills that can limit the amount of damage you take. Be sure you have enough healing in your party. (Two monks for a party of 6-8 is about right.)

Anti-knockdown skills are good. They won't prevent the damage, but they will keep you on your feet so you can kite away when the hydras rush in to toast you.

Keep your team spread out so one Meteor can't knock you ALL down.

Ensure that you have the right runes and insignia on your armor and that your armor is at a high enough level for the desert. Perhaps you're simply under armored or under health.

Be sure not to over aggro. A group of two or three hydras shouldn't be all that hard to handle. Watch their patrol routes for a while. Use a longbow when necessary to pull a few of them off to an area where you can deal with them without getting blindsided by another group.

You really do want to learn how to handle the foes in the Crystal Desert, because there are far worse ahead of you when you get to the Southern Shiverpeaks and beyond.

You can always map to the mission outposts and redo the missions. All outposts (if I remember correctly) have NPC that can give you introductory information and the cut scene, so you catch up on the story.

You can do all missions and move around the desert without being run - at least, that's how I normally do it. I'm not sure what I tend to do, as hydras aren't that much of a threat once you're at max level and properly equipped.

Some hints:

- Ranger hero with Broad Head Arrow can prevent casting on at least 1 Hydra. Mesmer with Tease and Cry of Frustration will shut down all hydras for about 7-8 seconds, this should be enough for your team to drop at least 1 if you have enough damage. In fact, when you have a problem with casters, there are several types of Mesmer builds that can help (look for interrupts and for double-cast-time skills).

- Minions. Hydras like to target them. Especially minions that are NOT Flesh Golem.

- If the above doesn't help, flag heroes individually. You can assign keys with flag everyone, and flag Hero 1,2,3 commands (I use 9,0,-,= for that). Spread them out a bit to avoid AoE, and flag the rest of the party a bit behind them.

- hop to Eye of the North (if you have access to it), and proceed along until you get Pain Inverter. Watching Hydras blow up is an amusing way to exact revenge.

- bring enough damage in general. The common mistake is to go overly defensive after you don't succeed at first. Problem is, your defense eventually runs our of energy, while dead hydras become harmless permanently. Review your builds, and make sure both you and your heroes do one thing, and do it well.

- or just use Easy Mode. Look up Sabway or Discordway on pvxwiki. Those are 3 necro builds for heroes, but when I play necro, I tend to play the hex necro role personally. Both builds will roll most of PvE, in particular, nothing in the desert is match for them.

Finally, it's a lot easier to go through all campaigns in parallel, then do them one-by-one, as this gives you much easier access to skills and heroes you need.

Bring Save Yourselves.

If your a new player explain to people you wont be skipping as you are new to the game, if people cant deal with that then just dont play with them.
Most are understanding enough tho

Armor and builds are heroes on most likely the problem.

Small chance your armor is max (60 for casters), and the armor in desert is 51 I believe, you'd be surprised how small armor numbers equates to damage taken.

Hydras are annoying with H/H as they bunch up, best advice is to bring a run skill, flag henchmen before the hydras, and use the run skill to aggro them, as long as you are moving, meteor will miss you

Bring the two monk henchmen, Cynn, and whatever other two you like, mesmer will be good for hydras

The problem is most likely your armor. When I tried to run through the desert on my ele with only 40AL I got killed on like 3 hits by the hydras (I wanted to skipp the Amnoon Oasis armor and by max armor when I was able to, as it's soon after the dessert), however, by the 51AL armor, or whatever it is, from AO, and a lot of your problems will be solved.

As hydras deal elemental damage, bring appropriate henchmen, such as rangers (as someone stated, rupt meteor and dshot fireball), an additional monk might be good to.

If you havn't already, spend some time gaining skills for your heroes, so they have at least a well working build (especially your monk hero, if you have one). The far easiest way, that doesn't cost so much money is to roll a PvP ranger(trapper), ele(nuker) or rit(spirit spammer) and do the Zaishen elite. Use the balthazar faction (bf) to unlock skills for your heroes. It'll take some days, but you'll have the builds fast enough. Remember that it's a cap of 6k bf per day.

As for the cinematics, you can watch them on youtube (I think most cinematics are there anyways). Replay the mission to see the cinematic, or just watch it the first time, people are tolerant with other people that play the campaign for the first time (most are anyways).

Thanks for all of your responses. My armor is at 60 now.

Workin' on gettin' Pain Inverter currently and doing homework on interupts.
Isn't Save Yourselves for warriors only?

Spreading heroes is something I haven't tried yet.

I have one PvP necro and don't use her much so I don't know anything about Zaishen and Balthazar faction but will check into that at some point as well.

Cinematics on YouTube??? Very cool. Thanks again.

Save Yourselves is Warrior-only, yes, and since it doesn't effect you, it won't stop you from dying. Also it's an adrenal skill, so it'll take you a long time to build up the adrenaline needed to use it. So don't worry about it.

If you can get a Mesmer or Ranger hero set up as a decent interrupter, it will make your life so, so much easier in the Crystal Desert. I hate that place, and doing the missions there forced me to learn to interrupt with my Mesmer.

Definitely look into doing the Zaishen Challenge as it's a good way to get quick Balthazar faction, which you can use to unlock skills.