User:Lullysing/team:UWPUG

A basic underworld walkthru
... using Kaga's simple method

I find myself fielding a lot of questions about the way this team works, so i've taken upon myself to put down everything useful relating to this build so relatively inexperienced guilds can complete the underworld following these instructions.

This guide was written in an attempt to democratise the underworld and make it accessible for regular people who play guild wars. A typical target is a group of friends or a guild/alliance gang that would like to get underworld done more often ( for the challenge/ectos/zaishen/hall statue ) but feel like playing using a class they know and love, instead of playing with a restrictive teambuild.

This method is a little slower than typical pvx teambuilds, but works very well if everyone understand what needs to be done. i've included a lot of pictures from my SC collection so people have a better feel for how to position, what the terrain looks like ( for direction clues), etc. Experienced teams can cut time with permacons, second tanks soloing (mountain/spawning pool) and overall better team coordination.

To begin, make sure everyone in the team understands that doing and finishing the underworld takes time. With a new team being coached, this method for completing underworld can take anywhere between 2h to 3h30 depending on speed, deaths, near-wipes, afks and other factors. A good average is about 2h30-3h total including dhuum.


 * Since this is a team effort, I highly recommend that the team acquires 2-3 consets to make everything smoother and easier. A good team should only really need 2 ( for icy wastes-chaos plains and dhuum) but depending on circumstances, or if the team wants to speed things up a bit, more could also be used.
 * You will also need the members of your team to carry Resurection scrolls. Rez scrolls can be crafted in the city of Rata sum and i highly recommend that the team has at least 5-10 in total if you want to have a serious shot at defeating dhuum ( not all will be used, but it's better to err on the side of caution).
 * I also recommend that teammates have in their inventory some anti-dp items such as cookies, clovers, etc. These are useful mostly at dhuum for removing extreme DP. ( but do remember that "ghosted" teamates can also remove DP).
 * DON'T TAKE QUESTS UNLESS OKED BY TEAM LEADER. Most of the quests require the team to be in position or have special requirements. You will fail your team if you just click and accept everything whenever.

Builds
And now for the team itself. Really, it doesn't really matter what type of tank you use. Different types of tanks have different requirements, but ultimately there are two "basic" types of tanks Resistanks( Wartank, dervtank) and spelltanks (sintank,eletank). Monks should listen to their tank for the requirements his build may have. For example my usual UW wartanking build requires some anticondition and balthazar spirit to maintain adrenaline and energy against some of the enemies in the underworld (remember that a lot of enemies steal energy). Sintanks may want bonding for the aataxes and as yet another way to reduce damage. Make sure the tank has ANTIKNOCKDOWN in his build, since several enemies use KD.
 * Any/Any Tank

3 x *Any/Any Nukers/Ranged

The nukers are there to get the job done. Now, there are many different ways of doing this, but ultimately "classic builds" such as Visions of regret, Searing flames, Spiteful spirit, Splinter barragers and promise nukers are adaptable and work good without being overly complicated. Water magic is also very effective in the underworld. All nukers should bring Pain inverter since this is a key skill in defeating Dhuum and you want to have several people having it for you have backups for dhuum.


 * / SOS+EOE rit

The ritualist plays a key role in some of the hardest quests of the underworld, as well as providing the team with a second line of defense in case of trouble. The wall needs to be moved up as the tank progresses and boosted with Armor of unfeeling to remain in place in case of attacks. Basically you want your tank ahead with the ritwall being the second line that's a little further back, just outside monster aggro and blocking the way (bodyblocking corridors, stairs, passages, etc). In case of trouble or aggro break, the backline then can hide behind the ritwall and finish off the enemies ( or run, all depending). Splinter is for the Bounce spiker ( make sure to splinter before the spikes) and Edge is also there to provide additional crushing damage (Don't forget that if you get a barrager in the team, the ranger can then carry Edge).


 * / Bounce Spiker

I made this build for doing the underworld for a reason. The bounce spiker carries a self contained 100b spike amplified by Mark of Pain. The more enemies grouped together, the more ridiculously high this guy's damage becomes. So if the tank is still paying attention, group the enemies in groups of more than 3, for the love of everything sexy and sleazy ! ( this guy can also be replaced by a nuker-type, but the spike really helps in speeding up considerably some areas) ( see the build page for more details, including equipment : User:Lullysing/Build:W/N Bounce Spiker)


 * /Any UA Monk
 * / HB-UA copy Monk

These guys work together to keep the team in one piece. You lose a monk and your run is pretty much over for the most part. I've left most of the builds open since what's inside will change depending on the type of tank the team has managed to get, but i'll also touch base on a few simple tricks. Seed of life is a key skill that, if applied properly, can heal the whole team with a well timed application. Also, the second monk subs mesmer to use arcane copy, allowing him to have a copy of UA "active" on him while benefitting from healer's boon. Since balth spirit is often a tanking requirement for the two most common types of tanks ( wartank/sintank) i've put it in, but it could also be carried by the UA monk.

The Labyrinth
When spawning inside make sure everyone stays as far back as possible. Clear the labyrinth a way that your tank is confortable with ( I personally prefer starting "Clear the chamber" so there's a lot more enemies to group and spike together) and work your way to the shrine. Have your tank make a nice ball for the nukers and spiker to destroy and clear out the place. Make sure the team understands that they should only take Restoring Grenth's Monuments.

Icy Wastes
Make your way (using the left passage) to the gateway of the Icy Wastes, taking out the skels and aataxes in the little side pocket ( since they should be killed to make UWG easier later on). As you walk around the icy wastes, have your team tank try to ball several groups of smite crawlers together ( get multiple patrols and group them around a skel/colfires so they can all be spiked ). Eventually you will find your way to the Icy wastes shrine ( tip : keep going left and you won't miss) and clear the area of everything. Don't take the quest yet.

The quest, when taken, summons a Drydler Army that will land and try to kill both the reaper of the Icy Wastes and King Frost, your ally warning you of dhuum's return. They will all land between the reaper and the King's group of Ice elementals. Your job is to prevent the Drydler army from killing the king or the reaper, since you will all be booted off underworld if the dryd army wins.

Kaga + Sunspear standing in Dryd Landing zone (DLZ) explaining icy wastes quest. ( radar shows directions of dryd split)

The method for doing this involves a team split. A single monk ( usually HB guy) with the ritualist ( and optionally a nuker, can be done with rit and monk if they are both good) go and stand with the King while the main tank, other healer, nukers and bounce spiker stay towards the reaper side. Reaper team Nukers should stay on the reaper hill and prep to cast their spells at the maximum possible range.

When the dryd army lands, it will split in two directions. Make sure that the tank or the king's team doesn't get too close to the central spot where the dryd army lands to ensure the dryds WILL SPLIT ( having all dryds go one way will overwelm a side, and that's no good).

On the King side, The ritwall combined with the nuker, King frost and his water nukers will take care of business (have the healer also heal the ice elementals and the king) while the reaper team goes for maximal range attacks on the dryd hordes being tanked, being careful to never enter aggro range. The bounce spiker will have to try for some crude spiking and quick retreats, but there should be enough firepower on both sides of the battle to defeat the "split" drydler army.

Reaper team in position. 

I recommend to blow a conset just before starting the quest, Servants of Grenth. A good team can usually finish the quest and get to the chaos planes and finish the 4 riders on the same conset as the icy wastes one. If there's too many delays, your conset may expire before you finish clearing the chaos plains.

Chaos plains
Getting there

After the Servants of Grenth quest is complete, quickly cash the quest and warpback to the labyrinth, taking the central passage then a full right so you are headed in the direction of the chaos plains. Kill the skels right next to the mountain gate (saving you much trouble later when doing UWG) and clear the traps. And now, a word on the Obsidians ( aka the stone snakes).

As you will be running around the mountain, something important to remember is that you dont need to kill everything on your way. In fact, appart from the groups of Obsidians blocking the way thru gates that have to be taken out, you can mostly run away from them and save time. The only thing to really watch out for is the fact that the Obsidians are trappers, so it's important to go around them.

Go thru the gate and run up the hill, dodging the Obsidians until you get to the top of the hill and facing Charged Darknesses. Tank em, kill em, and once again have the whole team run thru the mountain path ( keeping a left) until you reach the chaos plains gate. Kill the two groups of Obsidians blocking the way thru the gate, clear the traps and prepare to run again. Going down the stairs, make your way on the left {) to the side area with the small land bridge, just running away from the enemies until you get close to the shrine.

Cleanup

Mediculously kill everything around the shrine of the chaos plains, taking out wailings, riders and skels. Some riders when killed will summon 3 groups of mindblades ( in groups of 3, then 6 and finally 9). Make sure to kill and clear all enemies on both sides of the shrine, leaving the drydlers last (reason : killing dryds liberates the reaper, but the reaper can be killed by the massive groups of mindblades. Save yourself the trouble, liberate the reaper as the last step). If you did this right, you should still have enough time on your conset to complete the dreaded 4 riders quest.

The Four horsemen

The reaper of the chaos plains offers the 4 Horseman quest, in which a group of 4 dream riders and their drydler allies will attack the reaper from two directions. You team simply needs to kill them before they finish off the reaper.

For the 4 horsemen (4h is the abrev.) quest, once again there will be a team split situation. The tank and a single healer take position on the left side ( They will perform a holding action on the incoming hordes) While the rest of the team takes position on the right side at the very small land bridge. The ritualist deploys the ritwall directly on the land bridge, bodyblocking anything from getting thru. Bounce spiker switches to shield and prepares to sectank his side.

The monk paired with the tank on the other side takes the quest while the rest of the party is on the other side, behind the ritwall.

Bridge side Right side team ( or bridge side) has to work together to defeat the 2 riders coming their way thru a combination of attacks, retreats, spirit bodyblocking and pure nuking power. The bounce spiker should try to work as a hybrid tank, starting a little behond the ritwalled bridge, attacking the drydlers, falling back to the line(using ebon when needed) and rushing outside again, taking advantage of the natural tendency of the drydlers to stop at a specific range to engage the ritwall ( to mop-spike them). Nukers should be also doing their best to lay down as much firepower as possible.

You will need to be quick since your teamates holding the other side will not hold forever, and you need to go and help them eventually kill the enemies assaulting from the other side. Kill the assault, go save your teamates, kill that side too and you're done.

Tank side You have to hold them. Try to manage the riders and the drydler's position so they are as far as possible from getting the monk in their aggro ( enemies will settle at max caster range ). Try to bodyblock if any break from the pack (ignoring you and going for the monk). Hold until the bridge team arrives.

Bone pits
From the shrine of the chaos wastes, go up to the bone gate ( going right bridgeway) and run past the enemies outside to engage the bone golems. Keep fighting your way in, killing everything on your way and clearing the whole place up. Chained souls will randomly pop out, but you can ignore them as they are mostly harmless. Since most of the enemies here use necromancy in one form or another, be extra careful of enemies nuking you from ledges, bridges, etc.

After you've cleared the placed up, get your team in position for the quest.
 * One Quest taker should stay at the top of the mountain ( a nuker does nicely ) and take the quest when everyone is ready, then run down the hill to help the team.
 * The ritualist deploys his ritwall to counter the side assault.
 * tank sets up near DLZ
 * team sets up in hostage zone.
 * Example of team in position. Red dots on radar are chained souls.

Tank will control the drydlers and their skel allies as they land, allowing the team to nuke them from maximal range. If any break from the tank, attack those in priority. When it looks like it's done, have the tank stay at the spot since there is a late group that shows up after it seems like there isn't any more coming.

Be sure not to let the ghosts die from attacks and let them walk uphill to the reaper on their own, occasionally helping with a chained spirit until the last one makes it, completing the quest.

FAIL ALERT Be careful not to ping skills on enemies while attacking them, since this could "motivate" the ghosts to attack them, leading to the previsible results of a dead ghost and a team failure.

Spawning pools
The spawning pools area is pretty straightforward, but there are still ways to fail there. Maintain your contentration, and remember that the aggro/radar has to be watched all the time.

From the Chaos plains reaper, take a left ( going tank side ) and keep running until you get to the far corner near the gate.There is a small mindblade pop when you get close to the door, and there are mindblade producing enemies right in front of the door so getting in can be tricky.

Depending on the type of tanking setup it is possible to run past, kill the drydlers guarding the gate and push forward, but what often happens is that groups will kill the wrong enemies, making them fight both mindblades and Drydlers at the gate, something which is dangerous. A safer way is to clear around the door ( and the mindblade pops) THEN go thru the gate and take on the drydlers, preventing possibilities of frustrating nearwipes.

After you go thru the door, keep following the left wall until you reach the shrine, clearing groups of Charged, Drydlers and skels on the way. BE EXTRA CAREFUL AROUND THE SHRINE since sometimes killing a group of drydlers will spawn the reaper, which then gets atomised by leftover drydlers in the middle of combat. If the reaper gets spawned accidentally, prepare to quickly take care of leftover enemies and for the healers to keep healing the reaper.

Once the reaper area is secure, Take the quest, Terrorweb Queen. The team can now turn back and clear the way to the central gateway where the queen lives. Kill her from maximal range and immediatly fall back to the reaper to warp back to the Chaos plains, for the next part of the mission.

Mountain
Warpback to the Chaos plains. This is the start of yet another running part. Be absolutly sure to avoid and go around the Obsidians since they are also trappers, which will then isolate the poor person who ran into the traps ( on top of the person being blind, on fire, crippled, bleeding, etc). Try to avoid this as much as possible, as it slows down the whole group.

Go back out the same way you went in, running past enemies and going up the stairs. From the stairs, keep going straight until you run into a trio of skels. Kill them, regroup, then prepare to run again, going all the way to the top of the mountain.

Fail alert Clear everything around the top. Be VERY careful with the drydlers. Kill the Obsidians before the dryds because it has happened in the past for groups to fail because dryds were killed, but the Obsidians surrounding the shrine killed the reaper before the team monk could realise and start healing him.

Have everyone setup on the hillside up top, with the tank slightly downhill and take the quest, Demon Assassin.

The slayer will run to the top of the mountain in an attempt to kill the reaper. Behind him are several groups of drydlers. Intercept each group and kill then as they try to go uphill. ( It is possible to kill the slayer and warp away quickly and still get the completion. This has also failed groups in the past. Safety is to kill the dryds, removing any chance of failures. At worst this is a 2-5 minute time penalty on the run, which is acceptable.)

Vale
It is very important for one person to take the escort quest only ( leave unwelcome guests for last ). Escort the ghosts ( None must die. If one ghost dies are you are kicked out!) to the forgotten vale where they will meet with the mayor. Be sure that your tank and the team are ahead of the hostages, taking care of skels, mindblades and other nasties poping up just slightly AHEAD of the ghost. STAY WITH THE GHOSTS. Be especially careful when you make it past the bridge since there are a lot of hidden groups of enemies that will only pop when someone walks around the area they are in. Finish clearing up until you reach the shrine and prepare to take the next quest Wrathful Spirits, which is also straightforward.

Groups of spirits will spawn, and 3 spirits from the group will go insane and attack everything around them. When those are killed, 3 more will go hostile until finally there is only a single "good" spirit in each group. Fail alert! This is a quest that you really do have to be careful, since if you lose all your "good" spirits or the mayor, you will be kicked off the instance. Clear it up, kill all the hostiles, don't forget the group on the top of the hill.

Unwelcome guests
And now for everyone's favoritest quest in the underworld, UNWELCOME GUESTS! Have your group stay in the vale at the bridge and send one person to take the quest over at the labyrinth. This person will need to take the quest and hide well away from the reaper and the aataxe patrols until the team can get to him.

Unwelcome guests works relatively simply. There will be groups of incinvible aataxes. They are controlled by the keepers (who is guarded by dryds and skels). The moment you kill a keeper, it's associated patrolers and bodyguards will disapear into thin air. Henceforth, doing a lot of damage on the keeper, and QUICKLY is something that you need to do.

The team at the vale bridge should move back towards the labyrinth, wait for the aataxe patrol to go on the other side and then rush the keeper for a quick kill. Clear up all the way to the labyrinth, reuniting with your quest taking friend. From there, Watch the patrol patterns until you can drag the aataxes away from the central corridor with your tank while the rest of the group sneaks in and goes to atomise the next keeper. Clear the leftover skels and start working on other groups, studying the patrol patterns and preparing your strike. Clearing certain groups also makes it easier to kill other groups too since you can usually get "behind" them ( as you did with the vale group)

Picture examples: - Pulling two groups of vengefuls away from main corridor so main team can go kill the slayers in the initial UW spawning area. - A semi-bad maneuver that worked out : team was following a little too close, and i was forced to aggro the vengefuls in the stairs. Luckily i was able to leave just enough space for the team go get thru and kill the keeper. - Drag the vengefuls away, let the team thru!

When you are done make sure to cash UWG to remove any DP the team may still have and prepare to warp to the icy wastes for the last part of the quest : Dhuum!

Dhuum
Warp to the Icy wastes and go up the path going uphill close to the reaper. You will make it ( litterally) to dhuum's Door, which will then be open and guarded by king Frost and his allies.

This is where your team breaks out the shopping list of items I mentionned at the very top : rez scrolls, cupcakes, cookies/clovers, a full conset. What I usually do is put on the ground a few rez scrolls and cupcakes to be picked up only if needed during the fight. You can go in and explore the room since the fight will not begin until everyone goes inside.

Everyone should understand the basics of the dhuum fight :

Dhuum will awaken and go on a rampage. The reapers will try to "rest" him down. Dhuum cannot be killed until he is fully "rested". Rezzes no longer work ( which is why you needed those rez scrolls scattered around the place for easy access).


 * Keep the reapers healed
 * Kill the skeleminions in priority
 * Stay away from Dhuum. He has a dp touch attack, strong physical attacks and his "drive by scything". keep moving,d rag him to the spirit wall, but don't stand next to him.
 * If you die, you come back as a ghost ( Talk to the mayor! ). Ghosts have a standard skillset that can deliver a strong nuke (250 dam), calm enemies ( NEVER USE THIS. kill them instead), remove DP from teamates, a single target heal and DHUUM's REST ( if Dhuum isn't "calm" yet, use this as much as possible on him. Then switch to nuking, as this ability is useless when dhuum is 100% calm).
 * Pain inverter is your friend : Dhuum uses a strong AOE attack called Dhuum's Judgement. PI DHUUM WHEN HE USES THIS. A gazillion damage barely describes how helpful this is to finish the fight.
 * Have your monks use cupcakes to have a little more hp, just in case. Monks are critical for the reaper healing they provide.
 * Blow your dhuum conset when last person enters.

When dhuum is 100% calm and at 25%hp, he is finally defeated. It's time for victory pictures with /goteam and getting the underworld chest open to collect the spoils of your hard work.

You have beaten the underworld. Congratulations!