Althea's Ashes - Game Creators Hypocrits?

The mission seems to have changed with the latest update, though.

The first time I did it, there were a dozen mobs of 8-12 charr each in the big "square" by the pyramid with the ashes - every fight was 8-12 charr up close and personal in one big clump, and they were mixed squads with both melee and casters. We could just about take one of those massive groups, but if another group was triggered during the fight, we'd wipe.
The fight on the pyramid wasn't that tough, but getting there was insanely hard.

I recently re-did the mission, and now the mobs are proper charr-squads, 4-6 charr per each, most squads consisting of only one type of charr, and spaced out so one can pick off the squads one by one. The final boss-fight don't seem to have changed, though.

Just helped a friend two nights ago - 3 char per mob, until you got to the alter. Alter had 3 healers and 5-6 others....no matter what we tried we couldn't pull the three at the top of the stairs down.....until one of us was dead or until nearly dead....that was the only hard part.

With 10 in Fire, 7 in beast mastery my wolf handles himself fairly well and my Firestorm, immolate, Fireball tends to clear the way pretty well. Throw in my Ranger secondary abilities with ignite arrow and I just have a big ole pyroparty.

Well one could run in, get the ashes and run the hell out.

That is what I did with henchies, got killed but I already had the ashes so ...

That's how my group did it. After we got tired of dying, one of us volunteered to make a run for it and click on the alter. The rest of us held the Charr back as best we could. We all died again, but we finished the quest.

I solo'd the ashes quest with my then w/r17 last week. No special gear either except for a max damage sword. Pull a few, mop them up, take a short breather to heal. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If you did find the mission hard at level 10 or whatever, just hang on to that urn and come back to it later. I had the smug look of self-atisfaction as "Bigs McLargeHuge" marched through the Charr hordes on his way to completing that damn quest.

I take people through it with my lvl 20 ranger cause it SUCKED when I did it.

I did this solo, no henchies at lvl 17 too, with my Ranger / Warrior, with a 26 max dmg bow, i agree with Nechronius, keep away from it for a while then come back, really easy, also solo it, i got quite a lot of loot from it.

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well i did it on level 11, im necro/warrior, and did it with one friend, warrior/necro, also level 11. We used 2 henchmen, monk and mage, but they died already so we did it with just the two of us.
We had a perfect strategy.

I distracted the enemy's, all of them at the center, by walking trough all of them using sprint, so they come after me.
There my friend the warrior necro comes in. He runs into the empty temple(or how you call it), and does his thing.
He grabs the shizzle he needs.
Then we automatically both have the quest update to return to the quest giver.

Use map travel and your done, easy as that , we dutch people are smart. O yeah, don't forget to use skype, to communicate fast with each other.

ciao,

Wiccy

I just did the quest with my level 12 N/Me and three henchmen, and I didn't find it too hard. I cleared out the area "underneath" the alter with relative ease, took out any shamans on the tower and then just killed anything that was left. I was hoping for more of a challenge, but I guess that comes a bit later.

hmmm i'v made that mission with 2 other guy, we died a bit, but we still made it with strategy and patience ^^

Early on it was hard....easily 5 Charr per cluster with at least 25-30 clusters....and that didn't include the 10-12 on the alter.....so there was NO soloing that quest.
They've definitely changed with an update as mentioned above in my earlier post....it's now 3 Char per cluster with plenty of room to operate between so you don't agro more than 1 at a time and the Alter had 3 Healers + 5 or so mixed Archer/sword Char....not too hard now at all.

It was pretty easy to me. Level 15 or a bit lower if I remember correctly I think. My whole party died (Except me). I was a ranger/mesmer (I use no mesmer skills). But i basically did the whole thing myself. Killed a group. Healed using Troll Unguent. Again and again and again. Almost died but I didnt. It is extremely easy if you dont rush them and use your character correctly.

You can also make your life so much simpler if you leave from Nolani Academy, after doing Ruins of Surmia. It starts you already in the Diessa Flatlands, so quests like Althea's Ashes, Fires in the North and Garfaaz Bloodfang are only a short hop.

-Eirion

For some of those quests it is easier to exit from the Academy, but for the Ashes by far would be easiest coming from Grendich Courthouse as it's a short...very short trip to the zone where the altar is.

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Oh, I'll agree with that, definitely. Grendich is in fact even closer than the Academy. I simply chose the Academy because you can be moved there automatically by doing missions, whereas you actually have to find Grendich. Basically, anyone who wanted to do Ashes could just get to Piken and then go back to doing missions until they finish Ruins of Surmia, after which they'd be at Nolani and in prime position to move on any of those quests.

But yeah, if you already have Grendich on your map, use it.

-Eirion

I killed Bloodfang before I got to the ghost ...

I do pity the people the people that find the ghost and map back to the duke and then find out they have to go over the same path again.

Grendich Courthouse is a heaven to players that know its existence before doing the ashes quest.

you gotta be kidding me, i almost beat that one by myself with the strikers dying on the second group of char... i eventually gave up when i was almost htere, but still... im only lvl 12

anyone, i would suggest just keep trying... get a more balanced group and keep your tanks (who don't rush into battle like the strikers) to take hits since they can heal, and keep your mages/healer behind both your tanks and the strikers...

Alright... here's my situation:

I did this quest without having it in my Quest Log.
Did it with two friends and a healer-henchie. One of my friends and the healer died near the altar so while my friend was sacrificing himself fighting off the Charrs, I rushed in and grabbed the ashes. (Then we both died )

Because I didn't have the urn, her ashes were pretty useless for me. But now that I have that quest, and got the urn, is there a way to get the reward without re-doing the quest?

I'm probably not adding something that has not already been said but I learned early on that a full out assault on the enemy did not always work. Take for instance the quest Crossing the North Wall pre-Searing. Any lv 1 character can get through there by sneaking. Just bring along someone to obviously open the gate and help incase sneaking fails against some of the NPC. My first time through I was lv 8 Elementalist and feeling pretty good that I could kick some butt. Brought another elementalist along cause she opened the gate for me and she was lv 3 I think. Don't remember exactly but we got through very well till those damn Charr on the hillside attacked us.

So anyway we came back to life and I knew I could not beat them. I tried and they killed us in very little time at all. So we sneaked past them, timing it when they were huddled in a group near the ruins and made it out no problem.

I have yet to do the Ashes of Althea quest but want to cause 2000exp is needed. I may try and sneek around as luring does not always work. It has before for me but sometimes I found myself surrounded all the same.

My elementalist has secondary in Monk so what I like to do when playing with groups of fellow players is to hang back. Select one of the enemies thats in the middle of the group and then call down a firestorm on it. Hang back still as that helps them all and heal as I can, tossing fireballs as well if there is nothing else to do. Tends to work well until the Charr attack me after breaking through them. The lesson is do not complain your healer is not doing their job, try harder to prevent anyone from harming your healer heh. I have ended up dying in battle, being the only one with resurrect spells equiped.

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A friend & I did this yesterday. He had L11 W/Mo, I had L11 E/Mo. We took fighter & healer henchies. Divide & conquer was how we took out all the groups around the pyramid, fighting as few as possible. We cleaned out the whole area.

Pyramid was tough, though. Didn't scout out exactly what everything was up top (overconfidence?). The two warriors went up the stairs to fight; I targeted the shaman from the bottom (where the healer was, too). Killed that shaman - unfortunately, we didn't realize there was another one up there. Warriors ended up dying, Charr came down the stairs, took out the healer. I ran, hoping to draw a Charr warrior or two away, but they turned and ran back up the stairs. Damn, now what?

I healed up, went and rezzed the healer (whose corpse was at the bottom of the stairs), then tried to get the shaman. Got pounded, fled again. Finally, I decided, I'm taking out the shaman no matter what, if I die, we all get rezzed right at the shrine by the pyramid. So went back fully committed, aura of restoration, then used my glyph of lesser energy to cast firestorm, used phoenix, spammed flare, used occasional lightning javelin, healer died, but I saw that shaman go down before I got hacked to pieces. (I also had orison of healing, may have used it a couple times, not sure, but killing the shaman was more important than staying alive.)

We all got rezzed, there were still several Charr up there, but no shaman. It was a piece of cake taking the rest out. Even though I died before finishing the mission, it was quite satisfying to complete it, after having lost two warriors and the healer along the way.

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Honestly......
I finished this mission with 3 henchmen .....