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Post by Xu Kaiwen on May 11, 2006 21:04:14 GMT -5
Disclaimer: I am NOT an expert. Call me a FoW hobbiest. This is the introdcution to a 3 part guide: 1.) GETTING TO THE SCALES a.) how to laugh in the face of Snarling Driftwood b.) how to get past (and keep away from) the Shadow Armies 2.) GETTING PAST THE SCALES a.) how to frustrate Doubters Dryders b.) how to get past (and keep away from) Ancient Scales 3.) SLAUGHTERING SPIDERS a.) how to massacre Armored Cave Spiders b.) the rewards Before I start into this guide, I want to give credit where it is due and throw in a warning. Shiverpeak Warrior of The Lost Haven took me on this run and showed me that it is not nearly as hard as I thought. He's the main reason I can do this run. Second, I perused Ubermancer's guide on gwonline.net and learned a good bit there. The warning: this is the only farm spot where I can not read a book and farm at the same time.  It takes constant focus as well as understanding the lay of the land and your enemies. There is a learning curve that cost me and most other folks a pocketful of platinum to overcome. BUILDS W/ME (go Long Jane!) SKILLS: 12 Tactics +1 Ascalon Helm +1 minor tactics rune (14) 11 Axe Mastery +2 Major (Superior if you want) axe rune (13) 2 strength +1 minor strength rune (3) 6 inspiration (6) (Some use a w/mo build. I don't like it because you need high strength for dolyak signet AND high tactics/heal prayers for self heal AND high weapon stats. Not enough attribute points to go around. Plus, Dolyak signet slows you more than Thanksgiving turkey.) EQUIPMENT: I use an Ascalon helm and full gladiator's armor. A 15% in a stance axe and the collector's stance shield. For the prophecies build, a zealous axe is preferable but not necessary. For the proph./factions build, zealous is a must. Sword is possible, but inferior because it lacks the area-of-effect skills (cyclone axe). SKILLS: Prophecies: sprint / miscellaneous spot / executioner's strike / penetrating chop / cyclone axe / cleave {elite} / healing signet / physical resistance Prophecies and Factions: sprint / executioner's strike / penetrating blow (factions) / penetrating chop / cyclone axe / triple chop {elite-factions} / healing signet / physical resistance You may be surprised at the number of offensive skills! But remember, you will be running like a rat from anything with bigger teeth than you. Think of yourself as a lone wolf. A lone wolf will be hard pressed when attacking a bull, but it can kill the ram and its sheep. |
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Post by Xu Kaiwen on May 15, 2006 2:08:42 GMT -5
Getting to the Scales: A.) avoiding the shadow armies B.) slaughtering snarling driftwood  These compass shots and their corresponding map locations will be referred to below. Notice that all the compasses are pointing South while the map is oriented to the North. Sorry. A.) Point 1: First and very important step, move to the East! Get away from Rastigan! Not because he is dangerous, but because if you aggro a shadow army when he is in your aggro circle, even if you run away, they will attack him, kill him, and you will be kicked out of the fow (1k down the drain!) Now, whenever you are ready (or when the shadows attack you  ) run south to... Point 2. There is a slight indentation in the wall that will allow you to avoid the aggro of a patrolling group coming from the south. If you avoid their aggro, fine, if not, don't worry, you will probably still survive. Run like the devil to... Point 3: The Butte. The Butte is your friend. To the north of it is a short lived safe spot. It is the grey blob on the map and the compass. Heal up. More shadow armies will come up from the south and split around the butte (in this case the arrows do not indicate your movement, but the movement of the shadow armies.) When there are no armies moving along the west side of the butte, move south along the west side of the butte and head south into the corridor to... Point 4: Here is where you start to fight... SNARLING DRIFTWOOD!! ;D B.) Killing Snarling Driftwood. Hah. If you notice the picture above, you will see some pretty pink zeroes above Jane's head. That's right, they can not kill you if you have physical resistance on. However, they might just scratch you. Laugh at them. Seriously, no advice necessary on killing driftwoods. But they are dangerous in one important case--if you don't pay attention to your compass and an Ancient Scale or a shadow army patrols into you while you are fighting them. Then it turns into a nightmare. Their combination of cripple and protectors strike (60 damage if you are moving) makes it both difficult and dangerous to run when the really dangerous guys show up. So the only danger with driftwoods is complacency. They are easy, but they can make your escape from deadly enemies more difficult. What do you do if you get caught between a scale and some driftwood? (heh) Wait until cripple expires while spamming heal signet. Then run for your life. But the best practice is: General Lesson One: Just as the butte is your friend, your compass is your lifeline. You MUST constantly watch the little red dots. Do not let little red dots sneak up on you. Run from the driftwood BEFORE the scale/shadow army aggroes you. 60 damage is no big deal. -10 health degen AND 60 damage AND cripple is a big deal. Point 4: There is a black line in the wall just to the left of the yellow 4. That line marks your safe line. Just to the southwest of Jane's aggro circle you will see some red dots. That is as far down the corridor as a shadow army will come--if you are standing at the safe line they will not aggro you. Try and fight the 3 driftwoods just past that point. And to make matters worse, there is always a group of Ancient Scales patrolling to the south of you. This is probably the trickiest part of the run. Fighting driftwood between patrolling shadow armies to the north and wandering scales to the south. Oh, and a Doubter's Dryder may just patrol into you in the middle of it. Good luck. |
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Post by Xu Kaiwen on May 15, 2006 7:23:27 GMT -5
GETTING PAST THE SCALES 1.) How to worry doubter's dryders 2.) Fear = Ancient Scale  Ok, I left you in a tight spot at the end of the last section. Let me ease that a bit. 1.) DOUBTER'S DRYDERS aren't a threat. They'll eat a spellcaster alive, but a warrior just needs to learn to deal with one thing: Wastrel's Worry or WW. It is infinitely spammable and every 3 seconds that you don't use a skill, you take 60+ damage. So use a skill every 3 seconds  . My battleplan: plink the dryder with a longbow (yes, you MUST have a longbow for general pulling use.) Step away to pull the dryder into a safe spot and switch back to axe. WW. hit sprint but don't move back much more, if at all. Dryder closes. WW. Close in and hit Physical R. WW. Triple Chop... you get the point. It's like dancing to the Dryder's tune. If you get in the beat, you take no damage. So what if you are fighting Driftwoods and a Dryder walks up? No worries. Just time your attacks on the Driftwoods until they are all dead, then kill the dryder. No prob. But always remember general principle number one--with this addition: if a dryder walks up, don't worry, just dance. So at point 1 (point 4 of the last post) you are fighting driftwoods, maybe a dryder. While following general principle one. Once you kill them the next task is to move from safe spot to safe spot through the Ancient Scales. Ancient Scales are, to my knowledge, the only monster that uses two elite skills: Grenth's Balance and Life Transfer. So if you hurt one, he'll just take your health and if you don't hurt him, he'll still take all your health. He's the man with the shotgun. If just one runs into you and you don't have a clear path to run away and heal up while under the -10 degen, you are dead. Plain and simple. My suggestion? Run past the scales and kill all the Driftwoods and Dryders that you can. But I can't give you a specific path that works every time for this part because the scale spawns are random. The basic idea is to run past one group of scales to a "safe spot"--a spot with no scales and preferably nothing else. But remember, a safe spot is only safe until a scale decides to wander into it. Be vigilant. The process: a.) Find a safe spot (like the point 1 where you killed the 3 driftwoods and the dryder). b.) See if you can pull any patrolling driftwoods and dryders into your safe spot for an easy kill. (At point one you can usually pull one or two more groups of driftwoods if you are patient.) c.) Once you've killed all the patrols, look for another safe spot between the scales. Then run to the next safe spot. Heal. You are back to (a). Repeat until you see the falls. I will provide an example of the two safe spots that I often use because there usually aren't any scales there. But sometimes you have to get creative. Point 1 to point 2 to point 3. At point three you will see Admiral Saidon. You are getting close to the falls. At point 4 you are at the falls and close to the Armored Cave Spiders, our proverbial sheep herd! Some hints on killing those three dryders that guard the entrance to the falls. Pull the point dryder. Another will follow, but if you step back a little bit, the second will fall back. Either way, fighting 3 dryders at once is no big deal, anyway. Kill 'em how you like. The key is to pull the spiders away from the falls because once you get close spiders will start dropping... |
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Post by Xu Kaiwen on May 15, 2006 8:52:54 GMT -5
SLAUGHTERING SPIDERS A.) How to massacre Armored Cave Spiders B.) the rewards  You've made it to the spider cave! Congratulations! Now, whether you have killed the three dryders guarding the cave or not, spiders have dropped. Something like 18 of them, maybe more. If you haven't killed the dryders, its ok, draw the spiders away from them. Draw them where? Now that's the right question and its got that same annoying answer: you got to dance around the scales again. Pay attention to where the scales are patrolling and notice where the don't go. Pull the spiders there. I drew a couple alternate routes on the map, but as always, you may have to get creative. A.) Killing the Spiders This is where physical resistance shines. If you let it expire against driftwoods, you'll probably be ok. It's just part of the dance when fighting dryders. But against spiders, if it expires and you don't notice, you may very well expire yourself. That being said, if you keep phys. up and spam heal signet, the spiders, whose entire offensive consists of called shot and poison, would never cause you to lose more than 50 health. The only tricky part about killing the spiders is their healing spring. They have the capability, with multiple healing springs, to completely negate your damage. To overcome healing spring you need to pull the spiders into a "healing ball." In other words, aggro them and slowly back away until they clump up tightly into one big red dot (I'd suggest pulling groups of 3-6 at the start.) Heal throughout. Then when they are tightly clumped, run up to the center of the clump and use cyclone axe. *IF* the cyclone axe hits *every* one of them, then they are in a tight enough clump and then you can continue the attack. You will probably have to wait out the existing healing springs, but once the springs end they are toast. This is because the springs are easily interruptable and if you spam cyclone axe they probably won't even try to cast it. *IF* you don't hit all of them (they usually come in groups of 3) then you have to back up and try to clump then tighter. Sometimes you have to maneauver around them to get in the right "cyclone" spot, feel free to do so. Ok, PROCEEDING INTO THE CAVE. This is the easy part. After the first three dryders, there will be a fourth one. He is the archetype for the rest of the cave. Three spiders will drop down in front of him and three will drop down behind him. You have two options: pull the dryder out, kill him first and then move forward and get the spiders to drop: or you can run in, sprint away (and out of the ww,) pulling the spiders but not the dryder, kill the spiders first and then the dryder. Either works. You can fight a dryder and spiders at the same time, but why add the bother? Keep up with the "dryder/two spider set" pattern and you'll get to the end of the cave. That's where the run ends for me. Feel free to go out and get yourself killed if you want.  B.) THE REWARDS I usually get 2-3k in normal drops (not counting shards). One of the pictures above is the spider legs--I usually get 1k (the entrance fee) just in spider legs. Once in a while you'll get a perfect gold drop (i.e. perfect +15% damage in enchant, 20/20 sundering, +20% longer enchant Shadow bow) and you will usually get 1-4 obsidian shards as well. You'll have to check the trader for the current value of obsidian shards. The fow is a great place to get Chaos Axes, too. Oh, and the chest drops are pretty nice, but the keys cost a whopping 1.6k--the gamble is up to you. Then there are the intangibles. It's just plain fun. Usually, farming is a boring clickfest. But because the fow has an element of danger and requires you to remain constantly alert, it is the funnest solo farm I have encountered. Of course, "element of danger" can equal "quickly dead and 1k poorer," but in all honesty, this run is very doable if you are wide awake and understand the punishment for complacency. If you've read this far, you are probably interested in the run. And the fact of the matter is, this thing is hard to do from a written guide. Having a human guide is much better. So feel free to whisper me when America has favor. If I'm not busy, I'll be happy to come along with you. We'll take turns paying the entrance fee. However, be prepared to answer a few simple quiz questions. I will not take you if you don't understand this guide. I wrote it for a reason, you know. P.S. if other people are also experienced with this run, and feel like offering their "guide" services in this thread, that's cool. And please, if any part of this guide is unclear, feel free to ask questions and I will clarify the point in question. |
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Post by Xu Kaiwen on May 16, 2006 19:38:11 GMT -5
huh huh. I learned something last night in the run with randy. If you are fighting a dryder and spiders at the same time, don't use sprint to avoid wastrel's worry. Just take the damage. Why? because you'll turn off physical resistance. And that makes one dead farmer.  Oy. And I learned something new today, as well. Those spiders will interrupt your healing signet if you are below about 100 health. Yeah, bad news. Especially if you pulled over 6 of 'em. Which Randy and I did. Heh. So I think I'll stick to the sand box and pull 3-6 spiders at a time, heh. I tried to pull the scales away from the spiders, but they just returned to their previous location.  Learned something else a couple days ago: sometimes the scale spawns don't leave you much/any room to pull. Well, you might just be buggered, but sometimes you can just run in and attack them. You'll be attacked by a lot of spiders and will have to attack the ones that are spread out (i.e. take them out one by one) but it is possible. But I do prefer it when the scales leave some room to play in. |
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Post by vlekje on May 17, 2006 22:16:57 GMT -5
Good lesson to learn. I wondered why you suddenly dropped dead
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It takes constant focus as well as understanding the lay of the land and your enemies. There is a learning curve that cost me and most other folks a pocketful of platinum to overcome.
) run south to...
. My battleplan: plink the dryder with a longbow (yes, you MUST have a longbow for general pulling use.) Step away to pull the dryder into a safe spot and switch back to axe. WW. hit sprint but don't move back much more, if at all. Dryder closes. WW. Close in and hit Physical R. WW. Triple Chop... you get the point. It's like dancing to the Dryder's tune. If you get in the beat, you take no damage. So what if you are fighting Driftwoods and a Dryder walks up? No worries. Just time your attacks on the Driftwoods until they are all dead, then kill the dryder. No prob. But always remember general principle number one--with this addition: if a dryder walks up, don't worry, just dance.
