Guild Wars: Journal of Tanak Pharae

[ShadowMarth]

I'm going to tell you a bit about my adventures so far. I'll cover the first section of the game, really the tutorial areas. Note: Some pictures are of my extra character, created exclusively for getting screenshots of the early game past my chance to do so with Tanak.

I start as Tanak Pharae, a Ranger, with some regular leather armor and a pretty good bow, customized to my character giving it a 20% damage bonus. You can pick a primary and secondary profession. Both are fully accessible in the game, but you have to wear the armor of your primary. You start with only one profession though.

My really cool character, Tanak Pharae


As it started, I just took a couple minutes to look at the beautiful scenery. A vast green plain interrupted by rivers and ancient looking structures, forming the prodominant human city: Ascalon. After a breif but of gawking and the greenery, I decided to run down to the very refreshing looking river. When I got there, I saw some very weak enemies; River Skale.

The Beautiful city of Ascalon


I decided to do some leveling before I got into the game, so I fought these weak enemies for about 5-10 minutes while I familiarized myself with the combat system. In short, the interface is quite similar to World of Warcraft, with the exception of only being able to hotkey 8 skills per mission. (For some people this is a gripe, but I think it makes people use more strategy.) I slowly but effectively leveled up to level two while fighting, and felt quite proud of it.

Taking Care of Business


Now one level stronger and ready to get my quest on, I go back into the main city to find one. Quest starting npc's are easy to identify, thanks to a bright green exlamation point over their heads. My first quest had to do with my class. Your profession trainer sends you on a brief and extremely easy mission to kill, kill, kill, just to get you familiar with combat, questing, and your new character.

The Elementalist Trainer with a quest for the taking


My quest gave me a great little bit of experience points, and gave me access to my first few hunter skills. After a bit more training and minor quests, like clearing out a farmer's field of pests and finding a girl's lost flute, I decided to search out a secondary profession. When you look for a secondary profession, they give you an easy way to decide. Each of the profession trainers will give you two beginning missions: One where they "loan" you some abilities of their respective class, and one that will finalize your choice. After some running around investigating options, I decided on Necromancy. It lets you drain power from enemies, utilize corpses to summon undead, and all kinds of other cool stuff.

The Necromancy Trainer offering training


This concludes my first issue. This is by far not the extent of my experience, but it does take time to write. Expect my next one tomorrow, including my attempts at andvancing my necromancy skills, taming an animal, and the first major turning point of the story, the invasion of the Charr. But for now...

Long Live Ascalon!


Edit: Pic problem fixed. I plan to finish part two today. I am open to questions, and if you want a pic of anything, just ask.

wow dude thats pretty freakin cool

and the name is one letter off from fire emblem's pherae...

[ShadowMarth]

Hehe, you're the only one to notice that. Didn't want to copy it... completely.

[ShadowMarth]

Episode 2: The Continuing Journey
After completing a few main quests and progressing the story, I decided to continue in my quest to procure a second profession, I sought out the necromancy trainer. The quest she gave me was this: I was to follow her into the catacombs and seek out a nightmare that her former student had summoned... right before it ate him. After some breif fights which we quickly finished, she told me to go the rest by myself, and to take out some very powerful traps using the skill that summons undead minions from corpses, Animate Bone Horror. The first couple of times I was quickly killed trying to figure out how to make my horrors trigger it, but the third I figured out how, and I made my horrors sacrifice themselves for my cause! Knowing the final fight was at hand, I quickly summoned as many horrors as I could before they keeled over from degredation. I finally ran into the final chamber, seeing a very large black beast. I sent a couple horrors after them. While he was attacked by them, I activated life syphon on the beast, slowly giving me his health. With that activated, I began my volley of arrows, quickly finishing the nightmare! A successful mission complete, I returned to Necromancer Munne to finalize it and recieve experiene and new spells.

That finished, and one level higher for the experience, I decided to search out the next ranger trainer so that I could begin training my first pet. I went to the monk trainer, and asked him where to find the ranger trainer. Once I found him, he told me to travel far south east to find the next ranger trainer. It took a long time to find her, and I fought my way down, killing countless skales, and some grawls as well... fierce little guys. Once I got there, I approached the trainer. She gave me a quest to train them, and two new skills, one to tame a pet, and one to heal and revive it. She told me to seek out a certain type of pet for my first one... a Melandru's Stalker. Looks like a cougar. I quickly succeeded, and returned to seal the deal. While there, I learned about collectors. They ask for a certain amount of an item, and if you bring it to them, you get some sort of armor/weapon upgrade. Very useful.

My new pet and me


Now much stronger and with a few more skills, a pet, and a whole new profession, I decided to seek out more grawls. They, being the toughest enemies I had yet to find, offered great experience. I used them to level up for quite a while, before finally getting bored. I got two copies of the game at the same time. One for me, and one for my friend's birthday, who uses the name Nura Yor (I helped him with it). We decided to go ahead with the main story. Since most of the main quests lead to being recruited to stop the charr from breaking through the critical North Wall. We decided to do this quest together since we had been helping each other on the harder quests. We found the leader of the army and signed up, but he said there was a test first... We were quickly transported outside of an arena, in front of a gate. We had been placed in a PVP competition, with just a few minutes left til the gates opening placing noob against noob in order to progress in the storyline. Me and Nura luckily ended up on the same team, the Reds. We had a couple minutes to manage our hotkeys and strategize with our allies before the gate opened, and those of us that were smart enough to do so prospered. Then, as the clock hit zero, the gates opened, spilling our teams into the arena from opposite sides! I took just a moment to survey the surroundings. There was a main area, with a simple green flat area, but on the left there was water with a small island not far from the main landmass. I drew my bow, commanded my Stalker to attack, realizing the fight had already started without me! The warriors quickly ran to the front, taking on theirs.

Nura Yor
[I will put a pic of him on here next time he can log on with me]

Nura went with them, being a lv 4-5 Warrior/Monk (in the game's abbrevieation, that's W/Mo6). I noticed many of the rangers and different types of mages running to the island in order to discourage their physical warriors from coming after them, but I didn't want to waste the time. I saw Nura getting quickly weakened by a combination of a lower level warrior/necromancer and an elementalist standing back. Luckily he put his monk skills to use, and was revived; at least for the moment. I dispatched the elementalist with a bit of necromancy and a strong volley of arrows. Our team was gaining a hold in the middle, and thinking Nura was safe for the moment, I told my pet to persue one of their stronger warriors, currently attempting to cross over to the island, but taking heavy ranged fire from the other two rangers on our team. I began exploiting the fresh new corpses and summoning bone horrors, and while they were rising, I took a look at the score. Red 8, Blue 7. It was at that exact moment that Nura, under fire, was killed. That evened the score. I hit myself in the head, and sent my horrors after them! After using my buddy's corpse to summon another of course... My horrors were quickly falling, either by blade or just the health degredation they suffer, and I could't keep up the summoning, so I just began my volley again. Our stance on the island was nearly compromised, but with our score rising thanks to our strong warriors and supporting rangers, I turned toward one of their surviving warriors. My pet went down, and I got pissed. Hitting my Troll Unguent ability, a survival skill that dramatically increases my healing rate, I launched arrow after arrow at him. He then killed the mage he was fighting, and turned for me... Hitting F2 to switch to my close range weapons, a sword and sheild, I activated Life Syphon. This sustained me for a while, but without my horrors, pet, or enough range to effectively shoot him any more, the damage was just too much. When my survival skill stopped working, I was overtaken. I fell to the warrior, but it was too late for their team. We were already three points ahead, and the game was almost over. Our position and warriors and strategy eventually finished them, and our team was transported back to the waiting area, ready to continue the story, about to hit the most important chage of the game!

That concludes today's episode, and I'm sorry to leave you hanging, but here's a bit to sustain you...

[martop]

I got this game aswell Im not that far as you but im keepin progress :D

[ShadowMarth]

Cool, what's your name? We can meet up for some quests... once you get through the battle I just described.

[Frisky_Biscuits]

im Ice Nikkah, lvl 20 W/E if you wanna meet up on the weekend, ill add you to my friends list. I could help you get passed quests if you want. it takes awhile to get where i am at.

[Frisky_Biscuits]

oh yea, can i make a journal maybe 2? it sounds like u are having alot of fun with it. like there could be a journal for each class of character. in different sections of course, not on yours

[ShadowMarth]

Er... Lv 20? Did you start with a PVP character? Cool, I'll add you to my list.

[Frisky_Biscuits]

no lol, i didnt. i started out with lvl 1, i dont think u can start at lvl 20 anymore. in fact you can't. i worked my way up to lvl 20. took me 3 weekends.