Advice for "Don't Fear the Reapers" noob

To be fair, in Pits you can have situations where you use MKI and two patrols from opposing sides come in, if you stand in the wrong spot and don't know Pits at all.

I've never had any real trouble with this quest, though I died a few times before I figured out the Bonepits back in 2009.

I picked up on a good way to go about it and managed to get good enough at it to never fail. I have a RL friend though, who had a totally different image in his mind about how it needed to be done, and that happened to be a very failure-prone way that he couldn't manage to pull off more than 1 in 4 tries. He had convinced himself that he knew the way to do it, but that it was just very very difficult. I saw him do it his way last year when I was over at his place, and showed him how I did it, which was an eye-opener.

This isn't meant to be a bragging story or whatever, I just want to show that if your head is in the wrong place for this quest, and you're fixated on doing things a certain way, it'll appear to be very hard, while it really doesn't have to be.

As most people have said, use your spammable knock-down to your advantage. Also keep in mind that you can use it from outside aggro range, which allows you to keep groups of ~3 down with ease allowing you to save your influence for stickier situations.
I personally must admit I've never used the slow since the knock-down handled everything for me. When running towards melee mobs, hit C, KD, Tab, KD. This will usually result in safe passage.
The hardest parts in my opinion are the spawning pools followed by the bone pits. The sheer quantity of Dryders can seem rather daunting so sometimes you'll have to run back and forth while spamming your KD and cycling through to the next mob.
With the bone pits, the hardest part is the bridge, very easy to get stuck underneath or on top so make sure that all monsters are clear of the bridge; Even if it means running back out towards the plains.
Once you've finished those two areas you're pretty much home clear unless you lag out and get stuck in-between a few Aatxes or something..

Meh!

First go at it, I did the bone pits first, got to the bone pit reaper and died from degen. Second time got through to the reapers at the bone pits, plans, pools and on my freakin' way to the mountains I got lost and stepped on some stupid traps and died of bleeding. Doh! And I shouldn't have even been down there when I stepped on the traps. What a dork.

that's what happens when you get lost in the UW, lol.

I do have a map up on a second screen, and this was a totally avoidable mistake. I had used mad king's influence to passify all the enemies while I figured out which way to go and that was when I stepped on the traps.

ah well, off to do it again.

I like the way you put this. Made me smile. Wise words. It can be the way with many things, not just this quest

Aww bless you. Hehe. I gave myself a start once or twice when changing screen to check my map then wondered if something had crept up on me! Luckily it didn't happen.

I'm going to try and capture a few skellies tonight, which will be interesting: haven't got around to doing UW with my heroes yet, so I hope they behave themselves!

This is exactly what happened to me. Died in bone pits first time. Second time got lost and stepped on something around the behemoths (on the behemoths?)

Never been to the UW; so, was a completely new experience to me.

Was pretty simple once I knew where to go.

meh not worth the trouble again, you need to play with keyboard to get through the bonepits and it's just not working for me. One wrong tab and the degen will probably kill you :/

@aspi
Mashing one/two buttons like hell (easier to mash tab-3, but mashing tab and clicking 3 also works) equals to playing with keyboard?
Come on.

That's why I said for me I cant use my left hand for stuff like that, just wont work.

So add some right side keyboard assignments for those skills/targets? I think setting your keyboard up to be adequate, comfortable backup would improve your overall GW experience, not just for "DFTR."

(Of course, then you'd have to mouse with your left -- maybe you wouldn't like that, either...)

Maybe I'm a bit late with advice... but whatever. One of the biggest risks of dying is to get degeneration on you, as there's no way to heal.

That's why you need to use sugar shock (3) on enemies with degen as soon as you see them. Take a look at the list of monsters in the uw during DFTR quest: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_U...the_Reapers%29

The coldfire nights are also dangerous due to their slow and ranged attacks, so use 3 on them asap too. They usually move about in groups of three, so it should be no problem to kd all of them in a second or two.

Okay, I did it on the 6th try.

For the uber nervous Nellies out there like me who found this quest to be nerve-wracking and sweaty palm inducing this is what you do:

Put your left four fingers on the number keys 1-4. Know 2, 3 and 4 by heart. Forget 1, which is the speed boost, you'll have a celerity going, you won't need it.

On the way to the bone pits first, use sticky ground to bring the aatxe to a crawling halt. They won't hit you, they're moving too slow. Use influence when you need it, stop if you have to to let it recharge.

Because you have that essence of celerity up, spam the holy living crap out of Mad King's Influence in the bone pits. That's the ONLY spell I used there. If you have to, stand in one place and spam it again. With a Celerity, Influence will recharge right before everyone turns hostile again. The key is just to trust the spell and trust the recharge. Take baby steps and spam... let it recharge... spam... let it recharge... spam. You can stand in one place all day and just spam Influence as long as you have that Celerity up. THAT is the key to us UW dorks getting through this mission.

If you get uncomfortable, STOP and just spam Influence.

If you have one or two enemies in your way, use the knockdown skill. Even I can tab through a few enemies especially if I'm stopped right out of aggro range where I can get my fingers on the proper keys.

For the mountains reaper, don't wield any weapons, just go empty handed and run. The behemoths will almost entirely ignore you. If you have a weapon, they will fire at you. (In fact, you don't need a weapon for this quest anyway.)

Pools is easy. Use knockdown on the loan dryder and Influence on the mobs.. and for the most part, you can slip by them.

Vale... again... just use influence stop if you need to and let it recharge. I backtracked to a safe area a few times and just watched how the mobs moved.

Most important, there are a ton of places you can stop to catch your breath if you need it.

Once you realize that the celerity will recharge your influence, you'll relax. I think I'll take my necro through just to become more familiar with it.

----------

Don't tab, doesn't work for me either. I get all nervous and my hands get on the wrong keys.

Just spam Mad King's Influence. Have that celerity up. I have two right fingers down on the mouse buttons which make you run, and one left finger on the 4 key. I watched my compass the entire time, never even looking at my character and every once in awhile glancing down to see how far influence needs to go to recharge.

My issue was trusting that spell and trusting it to recharge before enemies turned hostile again and not charging forward.

I used about a celerity and a half, so it took me about 45ish minutes to do Reapers.

I really found bone pits to be the most difficult of them all. However, this really isn't saying that much. Just take your time, KD the mobs that spiral up to the bridge, MKI, and KD your way up. Do the same function going down and you're good to go.

What times are people managing to pull with the repeatable Halloween solo Underworld?
Im watching one player while waiting for the finale and theyre literally only having about 26 seconds between taking the quest from the Mad Kings Steward before getting back and turning it in. Is there a recommended way to do that solo?

I remember having a rough time with this last year. I pop some rock candy to speed things up a little.

I also start on the bone pits because it's the hardest, if you don't incapacitate the necro foes, the degen will kill you since you don't have any heal skills. You can kd the small groups and run past them before they get anything too severe on you. Don't stand around too long or you'll get caught by the patrols. Save the Influence skill for the bridge and the part where you have to take the U-turn to get past the few groups that you'll have to run through their bubble. And the same as you go back through.

Use the kd on groups of 1-3. Watch the groups of dryders in the Spawning Pools (you can avoid most of them but there's a couple spots that can get real bad if the Influence skill is recharging).

Um, the only other thing that I think can get you is if you get caught by the Coldfire Nights in the Ice Wastes but there aren't that many groups and they're far enough apart that the Influence skill shouldn't be long on the recharge.

This guide has a good region map so you know where you are and the wiki page for the quest has a good path to follow.

And rubber-banding but that's gonna mess you up no matter what. It's a good quest to get a feel for where things are in the UW since it costs only a tonic to get there instead of wasting 1k for each go.

Repeatable? The repeatable one is "Every Bit Helps" where you go down into the Underworld for real (not forced-solo in candy form) and use mobstoppers to capture Skeletons of Dhuum. If that's what you're referring to, it's become a pretty common practice to take and abandon the quest over and over to build up a supply of mobstoppers. You can get more than 3 skeletons in one trip that way. Many players grabbed tons of them last year and casually captured skeletons over the last 12 months. So if they have a supply of them, they could turn the quest in and get it again over and over in a very short time with a built up supply of captured skeletons.

Ahh thankyou, that makes more sense to me. The player I saw must have had a whopping supply of precaptured skellys and been hopping district to district to take the quest and hand them in as most of the chat was filld with them getting skill points. Guess its a bit late to do this year but if its still the same quest in 2012 I might give it a go myself.

Yes...this is correct. Right by the area where you have the bridge/underpass criss-crossing each other is the most likely spot to still get squashed even with MKI on 'constantly' with cons.