I got to run my first dungeon on Friday. I heard through reading forums and general chat that Ascalonian Catacombs (AC) is harder compared to Caudecus’ Manor (CM), which is the second dungeon. Someone mentioned in chat it takes about 2h to run through AC and I think it took my guild group an hour and a half. All in all, there was a lot of dying, but we finished and we had a dance celebration.

I am becoming more frustrated the higher I level and do content appropriate for my level (the plus side of level scaling is when scaling down, attributes are “maxed” out and my crit chance is greater). Playing one of my alts is like a breath of fresh air and I’m afraid to sink in a lot of time into my alts because I’m afraid once they hit one of those ceilings, the fun will be sucked right out. However, I am playing alone most of the time and as I mentioned before, playing socially is much more enjoyable.

I think I have an unofficial leader role in this guild as I haven’t seen anyone else stepping up to organize guild runs. Then again, most if not all of the other officers have not really played WoW and/or raided. That said, I was pleasantly surprised to find that 5 of us could play Friday night. We did idle around a little bit, waiting for our 5th member to finish his AC run. I was surprised to see an ArenaNet employee, Snowcrash (Chris Whiteside, lead producer), hanging outside of AC pugging up a group of players to go into AC with him. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a game studio that clearly marks their employees so they deliberately stand out. I was even more surprised to not see/hear more people exclaiming and crowding him. He was perched on an overhang and often had some clear space around him, but one time he did have a few people dancing around him.

So, into AC (story mode) we go. The dungeon is new to 4 of us and normally I do a little bit of research on strategies, but didn’t. It just isn’t a Guild Wars thing to do unless you’re stuck. I enjoyed the little pressure-switch puzzle we ran into. I had my doubts about the so-called “boulder” we brought to put on top of it (it looks like a large rock), but it did its job. I was more amused when talking to Eir (I believe) right before the set of three bosses (Master Nente, Relena & Vassar, Kasha Blackblood) and she literally tells you how to defeat them. But one issue is, who would really pause to talk to an NPC? I did, of course, but I generally talk to NPCs the first time around anyway. No one else in the group seemed to read Eir’s advice on separating Relena & Vashar, but our fifth guildie who had previously run through told us so anyway. The boulders scattered around the room made it a little hard to actually execute, but multiple deaths later and we managed.

I don’t want to go into too much detail of the entire run as I don’t want to give up spoilers, but I’m still on the fence on whether or not I actually liked the dungeon. After running dungeon after dungeon in Eye of the North, I’m tired of the whole underground exploration deal. The frustration I dealt with EotN was also present in this dungeon with multiple deaths, difficult monsters, and generally just time consuming. The nice thing about EotN is you don’t get one-shot very often. I died once or twice and didn’t know what hit me.

I have run into this problem a few times in the dynamic events where there are many special effects appearing on my screen that the boss or enemy NPCs are hidden. The way GW2 is designed, they have a “tell” animation that lasts about a second before something devastating happens. Well, if you’re playing melee and the boss is hidden behind special effects, you’re kind of screwed. I like that the bosses are kept to a size relative to other models (e.g., the Ascalonian ghosts were the same height as the humans), but I have come to appreciate the “biggifying” of bosses not simply so they look more imposing, but so you can see it better on your screen – which way it’s facing, its tell animations when they occur, etc.

Another issue I’ve run into is regards to dodging. The double-tap is ingenious and great fun when running around, but cumbersome and clumsy when in battle. It also depends on how you play. I’m aware of the v-key as an alternate dodge key, but I haven’t figured that out well, either. When I’m kiting around a boss, tapping keys trying to move but my character doesn’t respond, that is another issue for frustration. I am aware of a lag (even after getting this wonderful fiber optic internet that was a hassle to install) between my computer and the server. Reviewers have lauded the dynamic hit-or-miss system, but even if you’re just kiting in a circle, a missile will still curve after you unless purposely dodge by double tapping or v+directional keys. AC turned into a button-mashing festival as I tried desperately to move out of red circles and one-shot attacks. I ended up switching to using my dual pistols because melee combat became so difficult and unfun. This is a common issue I’ve seen posted on forums.

In the end, our group of 2 thieves, 2 elementalists, and 1 ranger took down King Adelbern. Eir and Rytlock Brimstone still refused to come together. It was odd to not include the dungeon as part of the personal story quest, but I guess dungeons are entirely optional given how difficult this one is. I will have to compare when I run the next one (Caudecus’ Manor). The nice thing about the dungeon run is I couldn’t really tell if any one of us were dying more than the rest. With 5 different playstyles, I was reviving as well as being revived, running from waypoint back to boss, seeing others run from waypoint back to boss, and so on. I believe one of the elementalists died and we took down King Adelbern before he came back. I recorded the whole run and hope to edit the last several seconds of each boss to show our victories. Oh, and I can’t forget our victory dance. (We were all humans, irony of ironies.)