When can I start capturing Elites?

My wife and I have returned to the game after a week away are now level 20 and making our way through the Prophecies campaign. We just arrived at the Henge of Denravi, having stopped briefly in Kaineng City and Kamadan to pick up Heroes and armor.

It's my understanding that I can capture elite skills from the corpses of bosses using a Signet of Capture, but I have no idea how these opportunitiies arise or what to look for. I believe from the wiki that I can capture Word of Healing from the Fissure of Woe, but I have no idea where that is or how to get to it or what (if any) prerequisites there are.

Have I been missing opportunities to capture elites along the way, or are they still mostly to come? Can I go directly to the Fissure of Woe now to attempt to capture Word of Healing or do I need to wait for some further progress before I can go after it?

Thanks,

You will first come across the opportunity to capture Elites in Prophecies when you reach the Crystal Desert:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_...ure_locatio n

You can start capping elite skills whenever. As long as you have a signet of capture on you anyway. Also, if you are looking to capture word of healing, I would NOT suggest going to the fissure of woe to look for it. The fow is one of the harder areas of the game and it'd be a lot easier to just cap in another place. Since you have factions, I would suggest that you cap word of healing from Zinfaun Lifeforce in xaquang skyway.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ziinfaun_Lifeforce

The link above also contains a map that shows you the easiest path to him.

The only pre-requisites are:
- You are the primary profession, or have obtained the respective secondary profession of the skill you wish to capture.
- You have a Signet of Capture. (Can be bought from some skill trainers)
- You can get to the boss' location and kill it.


From what information you have provided, there are some requirements to reach the skill in the fashion you noted.

To get to the Fissure of Woe, you must first be Ascended/Weh No Su/(or completed the quest Hunted!)
Because you are working on the Prophecies campaign, it would probably be easier to simply focus on becoming Ascended as opposed to the other two (which require you to move shift gears to the other campaigns).

Unfortunately, even if you are able to make it into the Fissure of Woe, there's no telling if you could make it to the boss or not. It's simple enough, but it is designed as "end-game material" and could prove potentially more difficult than your previous encounters in the PvE realm without heroes/proper equipment.

Personally, I'd find it easier hunting for Word of Healing elsewhere; i.e. the Crystal Desert, where you are headed next. With the Prophecies campaign, on the Tyrian continent, the earliest you can begin capturing elite skills (campaign/story wise) is there.
There are even three bosses there you can capture your Word of Healing from!

you can cap elites any time...but there are no bosses in prophecies that have them until the desert as was pointed out. However, since you have the other 2 chapters you can jump over to them to cap elites.
Here is the link for the all the elites for all the chapters: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Elite_skill

Signet of capture is a skill available at skilltrainers in area's with bosses that have elite skills. After you kill a boss (foes with a coloured aura and a special name) you use the signet and a window will pop up with the skills you can capture from that boss. His elite skill will have a golden rim around it.

Unfortunally bosses with elite skills are encountered fairly late in prophecy's (the first ones will be in the crystal dessert). In factions, nightfall and eotn they can be caputred almost directly from the port-town (though some skills are a bit of a walk or further in the campagin). So you haven't missed opportunity's to capture yet.

Word of Healing can be captured in the fissure, but thats a hard area and requeres a reasonable amount of gameplay.

Although your getting pretty close to the dessert, I think it's easiest captured in factions, but I will provide walkthroughs for both locations:

1: prophecy's: follow the primairy questline too and through the missions riverside providence and sanctum Cay. Use the wiki to cross the dessert to the mission "Thirsty River" Make sure you have the signet of capture active in your skillbar. The boss with this skill (blue aura) will be encountered in the final room with two other bosses. so make sure you kill him first to make sure you have time to capture his skill (of you kill him last the mission will be done and you won't hve the time to capture it).

2: Factions: follow the first primairy quest too Vizunah Square mission, and complet it. Then take the next primairy quest too Nahpui Quarter mission and complet that one. Then the right portals are open and use this map to find the factions boss with the skill word of healing: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Ziinfaun_Lifeforce_map.jpg

If you need to cap WOH in Fissure of Woe, just PM me and if I am free, I will be happy to accompany you so you can cap it (if you are Ascended as others have pointed out: ie you are able to change your secondary profession)

IGN Venganza Espirito

This is a generous offer and should be accepted if you want to try FoW after ascension, but would be completely redundant just for the purpose of capturing Word of Healing. As has been pointed out, you run across the WoH bosses three times while doing the Ascension missions in Prophecies, and the Canthan boss is readily and quickly accessible right after "ascending" (becoming Weh No Su) in Factions.
Can't take the "Hunted!" shortcut since that only gives ascension benefits to Nightfall characters.

You recognise a boss by it's profession specific aura, look at the wiki page: http://www.guildwiki.org/Boss

Once you've found your boss kill it and use SoC near the corpse. A window will pop up allowing you to chose which of the bosses skill you wish to capture. You can capture normal skills as well, though you usually only use SoC in order to capture elites as normal skills are easier to obtain.

All been said but I just wondered if they removed the character from Lions arch that hands over the first cap signet and explains how they work.
Its a shame if they did.

As I remember there is an ai person on a small hill in LA he sends you out with this new invention of his to cap a skill.
Taking that mission lets you learn all there is to know about cap signets.

short answer (for prophecies): bosses start carrying elite skills in crystal desert and further

@gremlin: npc is called Magi Malaquire and the quest is: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Malaquire%27s_Test

Ahh. Since it appears we're not too far off we'll just keep working our way to the Crystal Desert. We just got home and are about to play and I remember we were at Sanctum Cay. It was pointed out that this is close, so we'll stay the course. My wife wants to capture Hundred Blades so I hope that's also in the desert, or otherwise soon.

Thanks!

For me one of the delights of this game is finding an elite then making a build around it to see how it works.
I cannot help thinking knowing too much about what others consider a great elite/build makes you miss out on a lot of the fun.

IIRC the only place to cap Hundred Blades in Tyria is much later into the Prophecies campaign during the very last mission, Hells Precipice. Although it is one of the more useful warrior Elites.

The only place to capture Hundred Blades in Prophecies is from a boss in the final mission of the campaign (not naming boss as it is a spoiler to the story)

You can capture it much sooner if you go through Factions, as it can be captured in the 5th-to-last mission by killing the Warrior's Construct (note, if you want to capture this skill, I suggest killing the warrior boss first, as he is in a group of 3 other bosses and once all 4 are dead, the mission ends)

I agree with that sentiment, gremlin, it's one of the reasons we haven't joined a guild or built any cookie cutter builds. Every time we join a guild we get offered handouts which we don't really like to accept (or refuse), and a lot more advice than we really want. And I hate it when guildmates take us on speed runs through dungeons. We love exploring dungeons and figuring them out on our own. Figuring out the Scepter quest we just completed was a lot of fun. My ideal guild in any game would be made up of other players who have never played before and we all explore and learn together. Rarely achieved except at launch (we did EQ2 and DAoC that way, both were huge fun).

When we join an existing game like GW we do some research and get answers to questions that give us a good balance that allows us to explore and figure out things we want, while still having some tangible goals worth working for. We usually start off in an existing game getting hard-to-obtain mounts, that allows us to learn a lot about the game without worrying about gearing up or builds. Like in WoW (which we played for the first time last year) we started by getting Wintersaber cats, and in AoC which we did before this we got our Tiger mounts. Both were neat achievements that paid off in tangible rewards and exposed us to a lot of the gameplay mechanics. It's a completely different experience entering a mature gameworld like GW or WoW (I mean, of course, the game lol) than playing a new game at launch. Frankly, both are fun for us and a nice change of pace. We'll be trying out SWTOR at launch but I would say that GW2 is what we're most looking forward to right now.

In this game we came in, looked at the model, and asked questions here and learned that it was all about efficient and synergistic use of a limited palette of skills. So we identified the elites we wanted to acquire and these are the first two we've identified. We have no idea how any of these skills will work together with others, so we still have lots of fun learning ahead of us.

I finally got to the Dunes of Despair and did the mission there a couple of times. If I'm understanding this correctly, the boss who drops the elite I want doesn't always spawn, there are 5 or 6 different bosses who spawn randomly. We did the mission twice and he didn't spawn so I read the wiki and saw the spawn list. Since it's random I suppose I might as well move on to the Elona and Thirsty River missions since the bosses there also rotate randomly and one in each mission drops WoH.

Let me know if I'm missing anything. Thanks.

It might have been mentioned in your other thread, but now might be a good time to remind you of some shortcuts available for acquiring skills. Because, in my opinion, it would suck for your wife to have to wait until the end of Prophecies or halfway through Factions to get a good Elite.

Now that you've spent some time unlocking runes/insignias/weapon upgrades, your wife could unlock Hundred Blades with Balthazar Faction; she would then use an Elite Warrior Skill Tome to learn it.

Your 2 easiest choices for earning the faction are:

1. Play with your wife and heroes with your existing characters against only NPCs and do some battles a few times over 2 days
2. Use your existing characters or create some PvP-only characters and dive into a somewhat random format with and against other players and do your best amid the chaos

Or...you could buy 3 Flames of Balthazar from other players or with Zaishen Coins.But if you're not loaded with money and haven't been doing Zaishen Quests, this may not be an option.

Option 1
Map to Great Temple of Balthazar (boat icon should take you there). Go out the portal to Isle of the Nameless and talk to the Master of Paths to your direct right. Pick "Tell me my choices" and then "Training Arenas." (And/or he may prompt you to take the quest "The Team Trials" -- do that if so.) He'll warn you that you're going to be teleported, and you and your party (your wife and 2 heroes) will be moved to a PvP map. You fight the NPCs (a monk, an ele, a warrior, and a ranger), scoring Balthazar Faction for kills and wins. You'll do 4 battles and then will be dumped back out (or you'll be moved to the Zaishen Challenge outpost if you were doing "The Team Trials"). You can either continue on with Zaishen Challenge (only henchmen are available to fill out your team) or map back to Temple of Balthazar and do it again. There is a daily cap of 2,000 Balthazar Faction that can be earned across Training Arenas/Zaishen Challenge. (You can check your current faction in the first tab of your "H" panel). If you choose to progress with Zaishen Challenge, you will eventually be moved to Zaishen Elite, where you can earn up to a 6k/day.

Your goal is a total of 3,000 Balthazar Faction, so depending on which way you go, this could take you a day or two.

Option 2
You will have to make PvP-only characters to access this option right now (your PvE characters will get here later in Factions).
Monking might prove a little challenging with this, so you might go with a damaging elementalist build, or even be a Smite monk. PvP characters have access to all the skills and equipment upgrades you have unlocked and can change them on the fly.
While in the Great Temple of Balthazar, talk to either the Kurzick Recruiter or Luxon Diplomat NPC and choose to help at The Jade Quarry. You could choose Fort Aspenwood, but that format is so wildly different depending on whether you go Luxon or Kurzick that it makes this more complicated than it has to be right now. JQ has the same format and goals for both sides, you just work from different ends of the map.
You'll get to an outpost where you cannot party up. It's a random format and you and your wife will likely get on separate teams, so just hit the "Enter Battle" button and wait. When you get in there, just kill stuff (this is why I recommended against healing -- it'd be a challenge at first to keep up with who you're supposed to be healing and where). You don't have to know what you're doing, you don't have to be good. You will die -- repeatedly (don't worry, you self-rez). People will probably rage at you or laugh at you. Welcome to PvP!

When you're done, you should have some Balthazar Faction and also a few thousand Imperial Faction counted in your "H" panel. Find the [Imperial Faction] NPC in the JQ outpost and tell him you want to convert Imperial Faction to Balthazar Faction. Imperial:Balthazar converts 3:1, so you'll need 9k Imperial to get 3k Balthazar. You may have to play a few times, but there's no daily cap like there is in the Training Arenas/Zaishen Challenge/Zaishen Elite.

You might even choose to do a little Training Arena and a little JQ, get it all knocked out in one evening.

Now What?
When your wife has 3,000 Balthazar Faction, she heads over to the Priest of Balthazar (he can be found in the JQ outpost, the Great Temple of Balthazar, etc.). Go to skills, go to the Warrior icon, and scroll down to Hundred Blades. Unlock the skill.

After that, you can buy an Elite Warrior skill tome from players in Kamadan (don't pay more than 3k). Your wife uses the tome, she picks Hundred Blades, and boom, she has it at her disposal before even touching the end of Prophecies or middle of Factions.

(You, meanwhile, can pick to unlock 1 Elite or 3 regular skills that you would either like to learn from tomes or that you want your heroes to be able to use. Or you can just hoard the faction and save it up for a Zai$hen Key.)

~

This may sound like a lot of effort, and it's up to you whether you want to dive into this form of skill acquisition at this point. But the option is there for you, if your wife happens to get itchy for her skill. It might be a great time to learn about this feature.

Oh, and if you decide to go this way, let me know. I can probably hook you up with an E. Warrior Tome for a good deal.

tell you what,if you ever find a guild like you mention give me a shout! two of us have just started playing the first game and we know nothing (probably too new for players of your experience!). we want to play the game with no advantages from others,no looking at wikis to get the easy way out. if you get through a mission like this you have to rely on each other and its a real achievement.
we're waiting for another friend to get the games,then he and his son will be joining our fresh off the farm party,look for the mainly fighters who dont use acronyms in chat because we dont understand them! cheers

Heh, leonn56, I wish. I think the only way that kind of guild gets formed is when a big group of friends decides to start one. If you see me (Winter Omen) or my wife (Summer Wrath) in game, send a tell!

Star_Jewel, thank you! I got my Word of Healing last night and now we're going to work on Summer's Hundred Blades. Those tips ill help tremendously. We will probably go with Option 1. Where do those tomes come from?

Winter Omen & Summer Wrath

Out in the PvE field, skill tomes are acquired in Hard Mode, either from locked chests or as drops from foes of the corresponding profession (Elite Tomes are dropped only by bosses).
Another way to earn them is by trading in Zaishen Coins to the appropriate NPCs. But for most tomes, that's usually not the economically sound choice -- at the going value of Zaishen coins, you can usually sell your coins to, and buy most tomes from, players at a much better rate.

I'll add you to my friends list and keep an eye out for you. I have more warrior tomes than I really need right now and would love to help out.

Ah, well thanks much, that would have been very helpful, but no problem, we we did the Balthazar Arena trials and Summer was able to unlock Hundred Blades. We found a seller of a Warrior tome and she bought it. She did try pinging you but you were offline.

So mission accomplished and we've resumed our Prophecies campaign. Finished the 3rd ascension quest, so that's up next.

Thanks, again!

That's even better. I was more than happy to be a safety net in case you struggled to find a seller or a reasonable price, but I'm glad to see you were able to get it all accomplished so quickly and easily. That is, after all, the point of the Balthazar Faction + Skill Tome route.

It's awesome how wonderfully you two are taking to the nuances of the game.

Yay! Regnor Vex is back!
I'll admit I was also tempted to tell you "use this build", "do this mission/quest/thing this way", etc., but the teacher in me (and honestly, common sense) tells us that student-centered learning is most effective. So experiment as much as you like; worst that happens is you die 10,000 times before figuring something out xD.
My next thing is a small comment on WoH. I don't like it. My reason is that if you look at the functionality of it, it basically tempts you to let your healytarget's health get low (<50%) before you use it, or the bonus effect wont happen. Without that bonus effect, it's really no more powerful than many other non-elite heal skills. That being said, it's a decent elite to start with in terms of pure healing, but I believe (hope!) this is what you mean when you're talking about how much you have to analyze skill combos.
As for elites, that's usually why I suggest getting at least one char through all campaigns as quickly as possible. That way, you have access to as many skills as possible. I realize, however, that that is probably not your play style.
I'd at least advise getting to Kamadan (forget if you've mentioned you have already), as you can get there some really nice "PvE-Only" skills that are quite frankly very nice for both warrior and monk; the warrior one does damage to all foes around you, and the monk one heals all party members for X amount each time a target takes damage (a great panic button for your monk!).
Keep us updated! I'm interested to see how someone who ISN'T force-fed cookie-cutter builds finds different bits of the game.
...And I'm done rambling.

I am also looking for a guild that is on Prophecies and plans to play through the balance of the game. I have Ascended but have been away for quite some time. I'd like to re-experience Prophecies before I move on to newer campaigns.

My main is a 20 Ele/Monk. You can PM me here or in game as Miss Truss.

For what it's worth:

I formed a one-man guild soon after I started playing, just to keep the guild recruiters from constantly hassling me while I tried to understand the GW guild system and the options available to me. A few of my friends from another MMO game also started playing GW soon after and had similar feelings about being pressured by recruiters, so I offered to bring them into my guild with the understanding that they could leave without recriminations any time they found something that suited their needs and desires for what a guild should be and do. Oddly enough, most of them ended up staying, content with a guild of mature players that had no requirements, pressure, planned activities, or ongoing drama issues.

A few months later we ended up joining an alliance largely, but not exclusively, composed of other refugees from this same previous MMO. It's a nice group of friendly, relaxed players. We have many people who play as couples or families, some who are groups of RL college friends, etc. Sometimes some of us group up for something, and help is usually to be found if someone needs it, but most of the time we're all off doing our own things while enjoying each other's company in chat.

Those of you posting in this thread about the need for a guild seem like mature people who would fit in well. I and my officers don't normally recruit, but if you people want to form a subgroup for your own newbie adventures without the expense of setting up your own guild and hall, I'd be glad to have you on our usual terms: stay as long as you like and leave freely whenever you like for whatever reason.

I can't promise that there won't be any unsolicited offers of help, advice, or gear (we ARE friendly, after all), but nobody will get their undies in a wad over a refusal. Many alliance members were part of a player-created group that existed to help new players get their bearings in the other MMO I mentioned, and they were trained to be careful not to offer more help than someone wants. They are very concious that players often want to learn and experience a game for themselves, and that they shouldn't become a crutch instead of a safety net. They will easily understand what your group is about.

If this interests you, feel free to send me a PM here.