Guild Wars: Guardian of Tyria

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you Tyria’s latest Guardian?

I completed my 25th and final Prophecies mission in Hard Mode over the weekend to earn my second Guardian title for my Mesmer.

Overall, it wasn’t especially difficult to earn it playing with Heroes and Henchmen. The toughest missions were Dunes of Despair and Aurora Glade and aside from those, the missions were mostly tedious rather than challenging.

Scenes from my campaign

I’ve played through the Prophecies campaign eight times now and I still don’t understand why the bonus for The Dragon’s Lair (and by extension, the Guardian of Tyria title) requires the party to slay Glint. Why are we given incentives to kill the creature who has just helped us out?

Guardian of Tyria: defender of the oppressed, righter of wrongs, vanquisher of evil … and also ungrateful backstabbing jackass.

The funny thing is she continues to help you after you do this.

Glint: first creature of Tyria, prophetess … and also a bit thick.

I found Bloodstone Fen a little exasperating. Despite completing it with other characters, I still get lost in the mission area.

The mission itself isn’t difficult but there’s one part that may cause trouble if you’re playing with Heroes/Henchmen. The bonus requires awakening four Druids who will in turn summon the Elder Druid. Awakening the Druids is easy enough (though you will naturally get lost once or twice). The tricky part is the druids amble along a path watched by Jungle Guardians. The Jungle Guardians are hostile towards you (presumably because you’ve been making snarky comments about the jungle every time you lose your way) and will hurl rocks in your direction. The catch is if you kill them, you lose the bonus. The tricky part is ensuring your Heroes and henchmen don’t kill the Jungle Guardians. You can set the Combat Mode of Heroes to have them avoid combat when they’re in the vicinity of the Jungle Guardians but you can’t do the same for the henchmen. The best approach for the latter is to flag them away from the Jungle Guardians. Be warned that minions cannot be commanded in that way.

This is the third title I’ve maxed out for my Mesmer after Protector of Cantha and Guardian of Cantha. This leaves three more titles — Protector of Elona, Guardian of Elona and Protector of Tyria — to earn the Legendary Guardian title. But I’m going to put that on the To-Do-in-Guild Wars list for 2008. Time to take another break from the game.