First Solo Dungeon

Hi All

Been playing GW for years but there is 2 things I have never actually done in the game, one is PvP and the other is dungeons.

The main reason for not doing dungeons is I am a solo player and as such didnt think they were possible, but I got a bit bored tonight and decided to do one..

The one in question was Catacombs of Kathandrax, not sure on a scale level how hard this dungeon is, but it was hard enough for me.. I was a 100 blades warrior, I took Jora, Koss and Gwen, then both healer henchies, interupt henchie and earth henchie i think.

First 2 levels were pretty easy to be honest, no deaths at this point that I can recall, the last level was ok until i got to the bridge with the 2 wurms, the flame spirits, messed up my flagging and party wiped erm twice, lol.

Finally got past that point. then to the boss. Put protective spirt on myself flagged H/H apart for AOE avoidance and me the two warriors attacked the boss, 3rd party wipe, being unprepared as I was didnt realise there was going to be 2 huge fiery balls of death, lol.

When it comes to these things, why is it when you flag heroes to a certain point they still like to get in the way, took several deaths until i found a good spreadout placement.

By this point i was sitting at 60% DP and didnt think there was anyway i was going to do this when i noticed this particular Dungeon boss doesnt health regen, at that point I knew i had completed my first dungeon. I had fun, I could have picked better heroes / henchie, better setup for myself and a little research beforehand, but where is the fun in that, lol. Looking forward to my next dungeon and hopefully a better reward as this dungeon reward sucked.

This was in Normal Mode, out of curiosity, how amny dungeons are doable using H/Hteams?

Cheers

Druid

Unless the area in question does not have henchmen (FoW, UW, DoA, Deep, Urgoz) everything is completable with H/H in HM with no cons. It really isn't that hard anymore with the massive skill buffs Anet puts out every 3-6 months or so. There is one exception however, that being the quest 'Battle for Lion's Arch'. There is no requirement to complete it H/H or in HM so it's only for bragging rights.

PS: Melee heroes are a massive waste.

PPS: Catacombs of Kathadrax is one of the harder dungeons.

On the dungeon difficulty scale, Kathandrax is probably somewhere in the middle, maybe toward the harder side rather than the easier side.

For easy (easier) introductions to dungeons there are those like Bogroot Growths, Cathedral of Flames, Darkrime Delves or Heart of the Shiverpeaks. Of course, difficulty is relative (your profession, your team setup, your knowledge of the dungeon/enemies etc), but I think most would agree that on the hard (harder) part of the scale are dungeons like Frostmaw's Burrows and Vloxen Excavations.

To be fair, in Normal Mode some dungeons are much easier than in Hard Mode (Vloxen Excavations, for instance, spawns much tougher enemies with countless hard resses in Hard Mode). In Hard Mode all are doable h/h, but the harder dungeons are pretty difficult. The difference between Bogroot NM and Vloxen HM is considerable.

In any case, the dungeons in eotn offer a lot of variety and heaps of fun! The first time doing them should be something you enjoy, and I think you will .

All of them and all of them are doable in HM.


The fire elementals in EotN are nasty, particularly when you have henchmen that love to ball up. This dungeon isn't one of the easy, but shouldn't be any trouble in NM. Easier ones would be Bogroot Growths, Cathedral of Flames or Bloodstone Caves. The hardest ones are Shards of Orr (particularly for a physical) and Slaver's Exile.

First problem - the AI is terrible at managing melee physicals. You do not ever want to take Warrior heroes or henchmen. Gwen is however, a good choice if you give her Panic or Psychic Instability.
Your second problem is that you're running a build that is only suited for use with Mark of Pain. You do not have Mark of Pain in your setup - either run something like Dragon Slash or Earthshaker or bring Mark of Pain on a Nec hero.
Since you have not posted any builds, I cannot give critique, but make sure you have Save Yourselves.


One of the reasons why I say never bring any melee heroes is that they'll break aggro very quickly and give you problems. Not sure if that was your problem, but you and your heroes would be balled nicely for the boss to nuke when you're attacking him.
And as you learned, preparation is important. Read one of the wikis next time (or just type "/wiki [whatever you need to know about]" into the chatbox in-game) and make sure to aggro hard looking enemies properly.


Guild Wars is a game where skill selection is key. In PvE you're faced with challenges to overcome and must tailor a build that you think will help you deal with those challenges best. Not researching an area beforehand only increases the amount of time it takes since you need to discover first hand the nature of the challenge. This is your choice, but if you want to get things done then I'd advise against it and I'm not too convinced it improves the experience of the challenge.


You seem overall, fairly sensible. You mentioned flagging your heroes and henchmen apart and microed Prot Spirit on yourself (a near must have skill for these challenges).
With a little bit more finesse and better hero builds you should be for most of the dungeons, even in HM.

yes, I rarely play with others so have done all of the dungeons (minus slavers) with heroes and henchmen in normal mode, and a few with h/h in hardmode as well (those being ooze, snowman, bogroot, oola, cathedral ...)

I would suggest you check out the wikis for some ideas of what to expect in the dungeons (they will tell you how many levels, what foes to expect etc).....http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dungeon

I'm currently in the process of doing every dungeon in hm and it seems most of them are h/h-able in hm. I think all of them are, maybe except for slaver's.
I know that Kathandrax even on hm can be easy if you flag your heroes and henches separately, the toughest part is actually getting there through the burning forest.
Fromstaw's pretty easy though it's pretty badly designed- AN thought that throwing shitload of mobs without any sense whatsoever was a good idea.
But just prot yourself, step up to be the first to take the damage and after that it should be ok.
Cathedral of flames is very easy, I found killing the rit wraiths and monks first is the best way to go.
Secret lair of snowmen, oola's lab and bloodstone caves are banal.


Basically, don't take melee anything (except for you), melee mobs are easy to shut down (SY!) so focus more on caster hate, read up before going into dungeon and prepare your builds accordingly. Remember that heroes suck at many things but they have "good" reflexes, which makes h/h mesmers amazing at interrupting anything that is interruptible.

Also, I'd like to take this moment and thank ANet for forgetting such basic stuff like "spread out", "stick together", "keep close to me" and "keep your distance" for h/h.
Not even gonna mention problems with monks protting and wasting energy when there is only one angry level 5 pet nibbling you.

Slaver's Exile is doable in HM with H/H and I have done it myself (that's Forgewight, Selvetarm, Thommis, Rand and Duncan all in HM). Indeed, looking around the forums will show you that it can be done (and may provide insights into good builds).

This I think is largely true. But it's been a while since I did the dungeon and I tend to run a very disruption/defense heavy setup..

Frostmaw's is one of those dungeons that's much more scary and impressive to look at than it actually is. I kind of like the dungeon, if only because it's got a nice atmosphere to it. The mobs themselves aren't too bad and aren't that "massive". You just need to be careful when taking aggro. The hardest part for me are the Chromatic Drake mobs if I haven't aggroed properly.


CoF is a nice intro dungeon I think. It gives you a good sense of what a dungeon is like, has nicely rounded mobs to face and has a suitably impressive boss battle at the end. It also helps that it's next to an outpost and isn't all that hard. There's a decent bit of anti-physical stuff IIRC though.


Good luck and have fun.

I've done all of the dungeons on HM and without help from others, although my first run through (for some) I did use alliance help. However I have a little bit of a specific setup that seems to get me around a ton of places on HM.

I'm a mesmer and I bring panic and good interrupts. That is usually enough control over any power-hitting enemies. Much like the Djinns or Roaring Ethers. Then I use 'spirtway' heroes to drop targets fairly quickly.

Usually the only time I have troubles is situations where certain things have to be guarded, thus requiring your team to split up. Or if it's UW, FoW & DoA.

Picking melee heroes is almost always a horrible choice since they have really bad AI compared to caster heroes. With a discord or spiritway setup and a BU every dungeon can be done with H/H. Speedclears are ofc a more efficient way to do them but discord, spiritway, or sabway will get the job done. Brining pcons and DP removal always help as well though.

catacomb of kathandrax is sorta easy really, and your able to hero/hench every single eotn dungeon the only thing that makes them hard is being unprepared

you are able to solo almost every eotn dungeon with a specific char too if youd rather solo instead of H&H

I practically never h/h, but I decided to give Forgewight HM a go, on my nec.

I think I failed on the third mob of Summit; quite an underwhelming result for having played so long.

...I blame Xeno's bad player and hero bars, though, so dw.

These would be the same bars that I ran when I did it? The same bars that allowed me to completely stomp the summit mobs?
Yeah, whatever.


You shouldn't need cons if you use spirits. Really, you just don't need them.

A couple tips, might be repeating a few of the previous points, but oh well:
Do: Read the wiki before you go do a dungeon.
Don't: Go straight pvx wiki before you go and directly copy a few builds. Customizing your team like bringing holy damage and a couple copies of smite condition to roll Shards of orr or bringing frozen soil for vloxen can make the difference between winning and losing.

Don't: go overboard on defense. Yes you need some defense, but for too long I'd bring a team laden with interrupts and healers and could never spike down an annoying monk or kill stuff fast enough to prevent nasty enemies like chromatic drakes from nuking my whole party.

Do: Learn to pull and use walls/corners to block enemies (wall on your right) to keep them away from your hench/hero team

I can vouch for the fact that all dungeons, including slavers HM can be run H/H without cons and have done so as a necro and derv. for slavers, try banishing strike and splinter weapon for a dwarf annihilating bomb

Darkrhime Delves is the best for any aspiring solo dungeoneer, just bring a good balance and you'll be fine.

I've done all of the dungeons on normal mode with h/h. I think slaver's was considerably harder, but none of the others were too bad.

I too have completed all the dungeons with Heroes and Henchmen.. except one

I reached Legendary Master of the North fortunately, but I gave up completely on Slaver's Exile in both normal and hard mode, because it wasn't fun!

The rest of the dungeons were quite possible (and you CAN get the 1000 mastery points without doing Slaver's Exile at all but I strongly suggest reading through the party suggestions in the wiki before trying each one.

I suspect you will have trouble with only 3 other dungeons. One is Shards of Orr, which has a tonne of conditions and undead so come prepared, one is Regarr's Menagerie which has a lot of pop ups which require careful experienced pulls (without knowing where the pop-ups are you usually end up with 3-4 mobs causing a party wipe) and the final one is the elite dungeon, Slaver's Exile.

Kathandrax is probably up there with the previous three I mentioned as one of the most difficult dungeons in the game for H/H without abusing cookie cutter ai exploiting builds.

I expect you will be able to complete every dungeon on your own with the exception of maybe Shards of Orr and Slaver's Exile. All of them are doable, just those two will probably cause you the most difficulty (especially Slavers).

You should have no problem doing all of the two level dungeons and most of the three level dungeons without other players.

Agreed, I H/Hed every Dungeon in HM apart from these three where I enlisted a friend so we could use 6 heroes. Rragar's was still kinda tough but we rolled the other two.

Master all 10 professions, master enemy skills and weaknesses ---> develop team solution, apply and win.

Nothing needs consumables if you got all the time in the world. But if your RL time is important, use cons if it speeds it up. Afterall, no one gives a shit whether you use cons or not, and no one gives a shit which over-powered build you used, if you are playing alone, no one gives a shit about anything anyway.