Heart of the Shiverpeaks questions

Although I've read past threads on beating Cyndr, the final boss of Heart of the Shiverpeaks, my ele/necro is still getting killed. I know that Touch Rangers are recommended against him; instead of using the powder kegs to strip away his armor, you can supposedly stand behind the entrance and kill him with poisoned arrows, life stealing, etc.

Yesterday Cyndr came up near the entrance, so my character was able to use vampiric spells and poison for a while, but Cyndr still heals too quickly. When I try to use vampiric spells other times, by the time my character gets within range to cast his spells Cyndr has one-shot killed him. My question is: if I get my character more experienced, will the range of his spells increase?

I've tried using the powder kegs, but even though I increase my character's running speed, Cyndr nails him with the Pyroclastic spell half the time before he gets close enough. I've also dual-classed the heroes Pyre, Ogden, and Livia to be able to steal health and poison Cyndr, but they're getting killed also.

I guess I'll have to complete the other games such as Prophecies first -- I'm partway through all of them, but that's spread out over six characters. In other words, my ele/necro has some of the heroes but not all of them. I've never tried a PUG, so I'm trying to complete EotN without one.

No, you can't increase the range of your spells. The only thing that differs in attack range is bows (Short,Recurve,Long etc.)

What level is your character? Eye of the North is designed for Level 20 and although you can go there from level 20 and get a buff your attributes won't be very good.

Do you have the max level armour from either Boreal Station/Kaineng etc?

Which henchmen are you taking? These, in combination with your heroes should be able to keep a team alive, depending on what skills you have on your heroes.

I've always found that using the Kegs to allow Cynder to take damage to be the easiest route. You should spread out your heroes and henchmen so they are all separate but in range to deal damage, that way they can't all be killed together.

Hope that goes some way to helping.

I find this one hard to do alone, I can dodge Cyndrs blasts,but not micro heroes at the same time. I cant keep heroes alive. By far the least painful method for me is to go with at least 2 other real ppl and all grab a keg before entering thge room. Don't you have any guildies who will go with you?

Thanks for the replies. My character is level 20, but as you know that doesn't mean that much compared to overall experience. I've been playing the character for six months in Prophecies and EotN, so I'm still a noob overall. (I have eight characters spread over the four games, though only six of those have been around for 5-6 months.) Against Cyndr, I tried taking the prot monk Lina, the interrupt archer Zho, the Canthan mesmer, and one or two elementalists or necros. I only figured out this week that I can dual-class my heroes, so I made a couple into necros as secondary, with Ogden as rit secondary.

This week I went around buying or capturing a number of recommended spells such as the vampiric ones. I used my Factions rit to obtain the Signet of Spirits, but she's not that far along in EotN; I have only two characters who have played through EotN to the point of the Heart of the Shiverpeaks mission. My ele/necro has 60 armor from Kaineng City. I've tried sending my henchmen to the farther corners of the room, but Cyndr seems to nail anyone who isn't right at the edge of the room. I will check Pyre's bow, though. The main reason I assigned him this particular bow is that it's poisoned, but maybe I can get him a longer-range bow.

I didn't join a guild and found when I tried to get a PUG at Eye of the North that I didn't know enough about the commands.

Yup, I hated Mr Wurm with a passion. Took me two days to take him down but there is a simple way.
You already have Pyre Fierceshot by this stage so make him as necro secondary. Give him a health regen skill.
Equip him with apply poison and barbed signet (max both attribute). You go monk secondary with Protective bond or have one or to of your hero monks have it.

Fight your way to Mr Wurm bond Pyre with Protective Bond and send him at to face the worm. Micro manage Apply poison (stops his regen) and hit him with barbed signet. Yeah it takes about 2 mins for him to go down but I don't mind that at all.

This can be completed even at 60% dp. Although I would recommend you take dp removeal with you.

My build of Pyre has apply poison and a couple of vampiric spells. I haven't maxed anyone's attributes as far as I know, so I'll have to look into that.
Thanks.

The easiest:
Get two ranger heroes, make them necro secondary, equip them with +energy and +expertise runes/insignias/weaps (wand and focus for blood magic), get vampiric touch + vampiric bite and some other blood magic skills on both of them and spam them on Cyndr all the time. Worked for me even in HM.

Use Ritualists, spam spirits, and give them that skill that changes their spirit attacks to lifesteal.

I almost gave up on this guy the first time I encountered him. My party wiped out 4 times in a row, death penalty was at 60%, his shield was at 2/3rd and he his HP was full. I almost gave up, but decided to make one last run. My party charged towards him, and I died a few feet away from him, but the explosion still took down his shield to 1/3rd.

We respawned, and I looked back at Cynn. For some reason, his HP was at 20%, and there was a single spirit of Bloodsong attacking him. For some reason, Cynn didn't attack the Bloodsong spirit.

I'm not sure whether the Bloodsong did that much damage, but Cynn's shield was up the whole time, my team lived for less than 10 seconds, and at the very most only the Mesmer and Necro henchman could have damaged him. I rushed in with my party before he could regen it, dropped another explosive charge to bring his shield down, and then 5 of my party members get wiped in a single hit. The spirit continues attacking, and I inflict Crippled condition on Cynn and he dies.

The second time I did this mission, I was helping a friend. I took both Ritualists with me again and gave them that skill to change their attacks into lifesteal. Cynn died to my spirits before me and my friend could even bring down his shield with the explosives.

Just a question... you crippled the worm that doesnt move(?) 0.o or do you mean caused Bleeding/poision/disease which would degen him to death (Alternatively (Deep wound would take his HP down to 1 and a single attack woudl kill him in that situation).

The skill you mean is Spiritleach Aura in the Restoration line. This works just as well as all the other Vampiric damage skills.

Is 60 AR max for ele? I think it is. Make sure you have the right runes/insignias and modded weapons to give yourself the best chance at survival.

Same goes for your heroes. An example of how this comes in handy: I've been running Livia as a minion bomber recently and she kept getting herself killed. I look at her setup and realized she was using two bloodstained insignias and a weapon+off-hand set that were sub-par. I switched out one of the bloodstained to a survivor or stalwart (don't remember atm), gave her Kerrsh's Staff, and adjusted a few other things and she's up almost 100hp, has higher armor, and only lost 2e. She's much more durable now.

I hate this wurm with a "bloodlust" so i brought my triple necros all with blood skills. No deaths what so ever. I had a chance to use one single keg on him, ran to grab another and as i turned to head back he was killed by my blood nec heros. They sucked him dry so fast it was ridiculous and a relief. Two days ago a friend tried to do it but failed several times until i told him to use blood necs and got the same results i did

Works like a charm... gl

Thanks for the replies, everybody. I can see there are a few things I'll have to try.

If you are using touch rangers, why does Pyre have a bow (he should have a melee weapon)? Don't worry about poisoning him. With life steal skills he will go down in seconds. If you want to use the rit, that is fine but you want to micro Spiritleech Aura yourself because they don't seem to want to cast it. The best thing you can do as a player is to switch to a monk secondary, so you can cast protective spirit and protective spells on your team. You can also take a few seconds to flag your casters to spread them out.

Does anyone know if Cyndr was buffed in recent years? I've read a thread on him written in 2007-2008 but he seems tougher to kill than he originally was, if I'm reading the thread correctly. Thanks also to Voodoo Rage.

all you need is group of touchers and 2 healers and protection and your golden maybe takes 20 seconds to kill her

I think i managed with (only H/H btw) one Rt Spirit Spam hero, 3 healers and me using Pain Inverter and prolly some Necro armor ingnoring skills.
Did not use the explosives. Had entire party stand near the entrance.
Dont remember much what other H/H i used, except one melee Hero, wich prolly got killed a few times.

Honestly, the fastest way to do this one is with 2-3 friends. If you all drop a keg on him at the same time he's really easy to kill. So try to get some guildies or alliance members to help you out. Short of that, try taking some life stealing spirits to augment the damage, and give your heros degen hexes which high duration to counteract his healing. If you still need a hand, feel free to contact me in game and we can work it out, (or PM me for a play time that works for you if you can't find me). Good hunting.

Sorry, I meant Deep Wound.

FYI, since no one else mentioned this -- whenever you cap a new elite on any of your characters, that elite also becomes available to ALL the heroes on your account, regardless of which character they run with. So you can setup Xandra as an SoS Channeling Rit, and bring her along to get access to the Rit skills while doing the wurm.

If you don't have her as a hero yet, it's more than worth getting into the Norn Fighting Tournament to get her.

I think the main problem is that there are few people wanting to do the quest now. Back then, you could get into groups for it easily and with multiple people dodging Cyndr's attack, it isn't really that hard.

Quite a few peeps still doing the quest. Just need to get lucky with PUGs...
At that, Cyndr goes down in quite literally 2-3 seconds if you bring ANY two buddies+youself to drop kegs on him and pound on him...

Oh and biggest rule of being in a PUG- DON'T shove people into how you do or how you think things should be done correctly. The only thing you need to instruct them how to do (if they're not already doing it) is the Keg dropping (the important parts).

I've tried this mish so many times by myself, with non-toucher classes, and failed many times.
Really, you should try making friends.
Or talking to people.

melee can stop it from using its siege as long as no viable targets are within range it just bites melee
ootv gb and a w/e with frigid ar, sav slash to rupt, sev art+gash can kill it kinda easy

Beaten him twice and been beaten several more times.

The times I beat him he spawned close to the entrance so maybe that is the secret of doing it with AI help.

Never tried it in hard mode though with pain inverter and a decent human party it shouldn't be a problem.

Last night I finally beat the Aurora Glade mission from Prophecies, so at least I'm making some progress. (I wasn't focusing enough on the runners, so they were getting through to the last shrine, until yesterday.)

After that, I went back to try the Heart of the Shiverpeaks mission again but quit for the night when the undead mobs were tougher than usual. My question: does the game scale in difficulty, or was I just having an off night? I don't usually have so much trouble getting through the several levels before Cyndr. (I guess I'll have to recheck my group also; maybe some of my henchmen and heroes weren't strong enough.)

You can avoid most of the undead mobs. When you first zone into the dungeon make a hard right (Northwest direction on the map). There a tunnel where you will fight a few mobs of spiders. After that you will have to fight a few undead. In the next big room with the bunches of chained clerics, you can just run right by them; just be sure your heroes don't walk into the cold jet on the far side of the room. After that the entire dungeon is really easy, just fighting skelks and few ruby djinn on the last level.

Just wanted to say that I've killed Cyndr with two different characters now, and it's almost become routine. I used Pyre, Ogden, and Livia (along with my ele/necro) to kill the worm with vampiric spells (including spirits) by bypassing the wurm's armor, and didn't have to use any gunpowder. I guess it's cheesy to hide near the wall while draining him, but it worked. Pain Inverter didn't seem to do jack against the wurm, though I've read it helps with later bosses. Thanks again to everyone for the advice.