GALRATH OWNED: the pleasures of a terrible PUG

I'm a necro, level 16.

I had just reached Lion's Arch and with many failed attempts finally managed to get a group together that would go from LA > Ascalon Settlement > Beetletun > Bergen Hot Springs > Temple of Ages. I merely wanted to get the non-mission waypoints before moving on, but a few in the group wanted to try Galrath and I like the quest so I said okay.

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My third time doing the Galrath quest was with a level 20 monk, all level 20's, I was only healer. It was a cakewalk, I was 75% afk the whole time and nobody died once. It was done in about 20 minutes, I barely noticed it happening, said ty to the group and left.
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Our group consisted of 2 level 20 warriors. A level 17 warrior. Myself at level 16 (necro), a level 15 warrior. A level 14 warrior, a level 15 ele and a level 13 monk. It would be a challenge, but I love challenges.

One of our lvl 20 warriors dropped before the first portal, we went on. As we got into the swamp, the lvl 17 warrior ran off to who knew where and died... we continued on, I glad to be rid of him since he constantly insisted on going the wrong way despite being told the direction. (he was among the highest levels and therefore among "the most experienced" -my explanation not his, he offered none-) The 6 of us fought our way through the swamp and finally reached his location. We ressed him and fought on to the edge of the swamp. We made our way past the horrid minotaurs (where the lvl 15 warrior refused to listen to the path plan and ran through the mob of about 12). We all died but one or two and the party was split, divided by about 10 aloes and 6 minotaurs... AND... those who were dead discovered that the lvl 17 warrior who had ran off was afk. If we all died, our previous hour or so of struggling with a low level team were wasted. I was one of the ones alive and we managed to res 5 (all but 2) and tried repeatedly to lure minotaurs to the far side of the swamp to kill the afk. 2 of the warriors kept killing the minotaurs. Finally I got 2 minotaurs to the afk, killed him and ran in. We still had a party separated by a total of almost 20 baddies though, things were grim.

We managed to pick them off piecemeal, from either side until finally we could all rush the minotaurs in the center at the same time, but by this point our healer had dropped. We were down to the following.

16 necro
20 warrior
15 warrior
14 warrior
15 elementalist

A few said they wanted to leave, but we persisted. We died on the hill in an unorganized and sloppy attempt to run past the avarati disciples and get galrath. One however, made it in, our second 20 warrior. He pulled the bandits out and managed to kill the four that remained after the aloes had their way, then he went one on one with galrath. We watched for about 20 minutes, it was neck and neck the entire way. 2 level 20 warriors toe to toe. In the end, both were nearly dead and our man fell. We ressed at the shrine, ran back to the Wizard's Tower and came up with a crazy but ingenius plan. I stayed at the bottom and the rest rushed. Yes it's crazy, but how is it ingenius? They ran at the edge. So each time they died, I ressed them from the bottom of the cliff, they gained a few feet and died again. We all had a 60 dp so it didn't matter. Inch by Inch, 3 of our 5 members managed to reach the top of the hill. They jumped on Galrath and it was over in moments!

We won!

We beat Galrath!

This is the best victory I've had in the game, after having ascended 3 times, killed the final boss once, killed glint once and after having beaten Galrath about 4 times. This was one of the most exalted moments I've had with this game, because we overcame the most tremendous odds. A 4000 xp quest for which you get laughed at when calling out LFG. A quest for which most parties that are experienced won't take anyone under level 18... often called the hardest quest in the game.... and we beat it with a disorganized and rude team of 5 with an average level of 16.

This was the worst PUG I've ever had, and it led to the greatest victory I've had!

Lucky

My terrible PUGs are just... terrible.
And I still haven't bothered with that Galrath quest

Sounds like a fun time though...

LOLz That level 20 that went toe to toe with galrath was me :P, he couldn't kill me cos I had healing hends healing breaze bonetti's and essence bond, and I couldn't kill him cos the only attack skills I had were E.strike, P.blow, berzerkers stance and power attack.

But yeah, was a funny mission and i'm glad I was there to experiance it.

The castle looks so nice and pretty.. Don't you wish there was some way to walk /fly in and explore it?

It looks like there's a path to it some how on the map, but then of course, when you look at it.. there's about a 1000 ft. drop to the sea. :\

This quest is pretty easy. I did it with two level 20s and even people as low as level 13. Though, I think we managed to retain atleast a party of 7 all game.

I have a cool little story about this quest,our party did really well up untill we got to the aprentices and hordes down below galrath himself,all except a warrior and a mesmer survived,our mesmer pulled most of the crowd of enemies down to the far eastern edge while our warrior ran to the top and fought neck to neck with Galrath just like in the OP's story,except somehow our warrior prevailed and took Galrath down,I told him in his moment of victory that I would tell his story to all,he is an awsome warrior,too bad I cant remember his name

If you suicide your way towards him, you can't exactly say that you 'owned' Galrath. Simply by suicide-lunging at the mobs blocking the way to Galrath you can take out one at a time, respawn, repeat. There's no skill involved (in fact, continuing after 60% DP is conceding to the fact that you have bitterly failed), anyone with a pulse can gank a target before dropping to the floor. You just took a slight shortcut by cliff-resurrecting, but the idea is the same - brute forcing your way through the quest instead of trying to improve on your skills and team composition.

Bah, killjoys.
Anyone who says Galrath is easy, feel free to try it with henchmen instead of the good teammates you've obviously been riding the coattails of.

Anyway, I had a similar experience with a horrible PUG doing Riverside, which turned into the most hilarious mission I've ever played. We had 2 guys who both wanted to lead although neither knew the way, an insane rushing low-level axe-warrior who spent most of the mission dead, me (a clueless lvl 18 or so warrior-mesmer), and a good monk and a good elementalist. None of us had done the mission before or had a clue what it was about.
The mission turned out a bizarre cross between benny hill and monty python, but three of us (me, the low-level rusher, and, I think, the monk) actually completed the mission.

level 20 elemetalist monk and 5 henchmen
stephan, thom, orion, (archer) and alisia

I was surprised how easy it was
took a little pulling at the base of the hill
then ran up and killed galrath in about 20 seconds

edit to clarify I started from temple of ages so slighly higher level hencies
and a much easier run to galrath then from betletun

I'd say that that quest is the hardest 500 points in the game. But the challenge is fabulous and it's lots of fun.

And, know what, Sluggy? You're right about 'bad' groups being lots of fun. Because the mix is bad, or people get dropped, or whatever, that makes it more challenging and a lot more fun...........if you can avoid slamming your face into the keyboard in frustration. But it certainly adds an element of fun to the game and forces you to really apply skill! Congrats!

Yeah, that's probably right. I always forget how much easier solo PvE is for monks.*

* No, that's not a flame or request to nerf monks. It's just my firmly held conviction that not having to rely on the m4d l33t ski11z of Alesia The Tank makes soloing so much easier for monks.

I respectfully disagree.

When the DP gets to a point that teamwork and team composition and skilled use is no longer a viable option. It is a damn long quest, to go back and recruit and swap out skills is such a hassle to then have to fight all the respawned baddies.

And not at Galrath's where the opposition is really fierce. They were down teammates, they were down Energy and hIt points... but they found another way to win. That's pretty skillful and clever in my book.

Kudos! And I enjoyed the story!

I never got around to doing this quest, but it sounds like a good memorable experience. My favourite quest to date is Blood and Smoke, a challanging and rewarding quest as I also captured Flame Trap from there.

You know Galrath must be cool, he has his own sword skill named after him. Galrath Slash FTW!

500 points? you talking about xp? Because that quest is 4,000 xp for me... Or does the xp offered get scaled for the lvl of the character when they take the quest? Or are you talking about something completely different?

I can understand you want to get the quest over with, you want the experience and clear the quest from your log, you already died enough, people threaten to leave, etc. Not everyone wants to keep challenges around for later either. But the quest becomes a hollow victory then - just a vessel to give you experience, you were challenged, failed to meet the challenge and brute-forced your way to the end. That's a practical and probably sensible approach to it, but like typing iddqd in Doom, it removes the glory inherent in the quest, and thereby the bragging rights. People finish Galrath every day, many of them are up to the challenge of defeating the Verata packs, not many of them bother to even mention it on the forums, so when someone who failed to do so comes up and proclaims "GALRATH OWNED" on here, that seems a little awkward.

Defeating the Verata packs is a great exercise in focus-firing, target prioritizing and calling, in essence the keystones of teamwork. Avoiding the Verata packs is quite easy: if you have henchmen along, you can simply sacrifice them and run straight to Galrath; the level 10 bandits are a joke, and as long as you have a means to interrupt Galrath's healing signet, you shouldn't have any problem taking him out. But if you avoid the Verata packs you pass up on a good challenge, and you won't learn a thing, and you turn a great quest into yet another 'collect the reward' project. Since there's no real pressure to finish Villainy of Galrath (the reward is flat experience and a dinky sword, no skills or anything you wouldn't want to miss out on, so you could always leave it for later), that's hardly a cause for celebration.

Did it with henchman out of ToA around lv 20 (if not lv20).

Its somewhat easy when you get there, you simply have the remenber the disciples and the bandits dont like each other, you can have one group wipe out the other, just lure Galrath to the Verata disciples and after they kill you they will be more that happy to deal with Galrath itself.

I found Galrath quest fairly easy.

I did it with henchies and never died.


Sorena Mascar

I've posted it before but... Last time I effectively soloed Galrath WITHOUT henchies. Alesia tanked as usual, and died in the first fight against the Verata, then all the other henchies rapidly bought it, and I ran off. Sole survivor without a res signet.

I started by training the mobs which were hovering around the bottom of the hill to the hill giants in the east. They easily killed the giants, but didn't return. Then I ran back to the valley to the north, and triggered the army of trolls and the army of forest minotaur (which we had snuck past), and trained the whole lot (I guess there were about 10 each) back with me to the Verata. I then let them duke it out, lending the trolls & minotaurs a hand whenever I could, e.g. by putting backfire on the verata bosses. The trolls and minotaur were defeated, but not before they'd killed off most the verata and both the verata bosses. All I had to do then was wait for the army of bone horrors to die, and take out the scattered survivors.

I could then proceed to kill Galrath, which was easy as I had disruptive blow and could stop him from healing.

I still consider it the second hardest quest I've played in the game, second only to Altheas Ashes before it was nerfed (plus I was only lvl 12 or so then).


NOTE TO KAMATSU AND ANIEWIEL: The villainy of galrath originally had a 500 exp reward, but that was raised to 4000 to more accurately reflect the difficulty.

I solo'd Galrath yesterday with my AFK brother back at the portal. He tried catching me up but he died in the woods at the shadows which i kindly left alive.

I wasn't sure how it would go because i have never solo'd it before but had heard warriors bragging about their adventures there.
Galrath was a swine i tell you. Ten minutes to kill him! OMG!

To those who replied "yes yes, Galrath is easy" etc. I just want to draw attention to the following comments I had made.

It was not exactly beating Galrath that was so fantastic about this quest. It was beating our own differences and inabilities to work together. This quest proved to me beyond a doubt (though I already knew this) that teamwork and skill are the essence of this game.

And I'm super pleased that our warrior (Freeman ****) also posts here

The quest was 500xp for about 3 weeks, until someone realized that a bunch of lvl 16 players will get owned, hard if they do anything sloppy.

Let me assure youthat 90% of the players at that time, myself included, were freaking sloppy.

The 1000000000 minotars along the way got our DP way high, and then the random giants stomped our weakend asses pretty bad. My Monk could solo all the minotars, and giants now... not because he's bad ass or anything, but because I'm a ton better at avoiding taking damage, and killing things.

Why would it be wasted? You all would pop up at the rez shrine, most of the baddies would be cleared away and you just run to the hill...

wow.. that was lucky, i finish this quest on my first try with the first group that i got in hot springs. It was.. lvl 17 w/e (me), 16 monk, 20 w/m and 5 other people that i didn't remember. Anyway, we made into the hill and half of our group died and most of the people got.. like 35% DP but we keep on going and killed Galrath.

point is, killing Galrath easy, reaching him at that tower harder than you can imagine, unless you got a good group.

I did it with henchies... Was pretty easy...

Parts of it sucked but henchies never leave the group so I would say I had the better end of the deal.

If you sneak by the groups, you can get to the tower without fighting much at all.

I for one would like to thank DrSLUGFly for sharing his story, it's posts like this (entertaining and educational) that make the forums a fun place to snoop around in.
So thanks and please keep the stories coming everyone.

Five of us set up for griffon run's did Galrath. It was easy and way more funny than tricky. It left me knowing what squirrels and birds must feel like when drunk rednecks with AK's go hunting dinner in the woods. Like... "Oh yeah? Well lookit' this!" *BAM* "That's nice, but check this here out!" *BAMBAMBAM*

To the OP, that was a great story. Good job, espcially with no primary healer for half of it.

I had picked up on that too, It annoys me when people mis-interperet a clear post. I found your post a very enjoyable read thank you.

People blowing thier own trumpets is common and boring.

***Possible Spoilers***

What a coincidence! I was just about to post how me and my brother finished the Galrath quest in about half an hour. I was a W/Mo, and he was a R/E. We ran from temple of ages to kessex peak. We were fighting our way to galrath when we unsuccessfully pulled a lot of forest minos.

I decided to make a run for it just to see Galrath, and so did he. We had a lot of minos chasing us, but when we went up the hill towards the hill giant, they stopped aggroing us. We then walked past the verdatas, and started hitting Galrath. Luckily he had distracting shot, and after interrupting healing signet, we were able to take Galrath down

It would have been wasted because the afk guy wouldnt have died, and hence the team would not have rezed near the shrine.

Nice story. Reminds me of when I did Galrath. Most of the group dropped at the minotaurs and trolls because they thought it was futile to go on at 60DP. Three of us persevered and beat Galrath. It was quite comical at times.

When I did Galrath - I set out from bergen hot springs (or however its spelled) with a group consisting of me, a warrior henchmen, and a group of other people (I can't remeber specifics, it was ages ago). We managed to get to the second portal thingy quite easily, but from there we couldn't get any further. All the players on my team quit - but i was determined to do the quest. After several failed attempts, I managed to evade all enemies between the second portal and TOA - with just me and my warrior henchman. From TOA I picked up a few more henchmen, went out - and completed it surprisingly quickly.

What i was surprised with was the fact that it was possible to evade all those enemies.

I've soloed this quest. Sprint to Galrath, use glad's defense and shield stance, gank his weak henchies, and then kill him.

Galraths was a fun one. Good story.

Me and my guild mate did this mission. Just the two of us no henchies. Him lvl 19 Mo/N me lvl 20 W/E. I just went all strength and tactics, he went protection and healing.

We did it. The toughest part was the Verdati(?.. Verata thanks Izzy) things all around the hill that Galrath was on. I drew them back in small groups at a time to where the hill giants were. My guildmate hid around the hill so they couldn't attack him. And I stood out and fought them using shield stance and Shields Up to soften the dmg from them. Once we got enough of those Verata guys off the hill Galrath himself was pretty easy. Took a while but he never did much dmg to us. I think getting to him was a lot harder than fighting him.

Galrath himself was a rather big disappointment in comparison to the actual mission. However, it was extremely fun fighting the Verata the "proper" (ie: pull one mob at a time) way. It was challenging, and it was fun.

I remember the one other time I went, I was spamming the Verata with bowskills and the W/Mo and Ele/N took care of Galrath. The rest of us killed the mobs, and all of a sudden, Galrath was already dead. I didn't even get to poke him!

Not fun having most of my PUG run haplessly through the poison bogs though, and right into a Necrid Group. =P