The catacombs is the first ‘dungeon crawler’ I experienced in Guild Wars. There were about eight quests in it, and the areas were obviously given more thought from a visual point of view. During the game, you have the pick a second profession, and I ran around with the necromancer trainer before she dropped me off at a small side passage where I had to reanimate corpses and send them into deadly traps before killing a nightmare at the bottom of the passage.



For a reward, I got a grim cesta that I’m still using at level 8. Leveling is very slow in this game, as the max level is 20.

What this area lacked was two things 1) A boss, and 2) a story.

I ran around and killed everything I could find. The quest map – as opposed to the travel map – shows the area you’re in, any NPCs of interest, and places a bright green star where the next quest object is. Very useful for navigating a twisting lair of evil.

The only climax was finding the corpse of the moa bird in a large shrine area covered with candles and symbols on the wall. When I stepped in, a few shadowy things spawned and attacked me. That was it though. No interesting treasure, no powerful creature to beat, and no clue as to who killed the bird or why they needed it when there are tons of other critters running around they could have sacrificed.

I logged off for the night, and the next day start doing the rest of the ‘secondary profession’ quests for the XP they bring before picking my secondary.

While in town, I decide to interact with another human being. This is harder than you’d think as chat is constantly being spammed with WTS/WTB notices. I also encountered some interesting graphical errors. The white boxes below are other players.



I eventually begin a conversation with an actual human being (who writes in correct English and everything!) and learn that the ‘50g for GM’ requests aren’t people asking for a Game Master, but a Gate Monkey. There’s a gate to the north of here you need another player to open for you, and people will pay you 50g to open it for them. She offers to do so for me – for free – and I accept, it turns out I have a quest there. I had written it off, actually, but figured if someone wanted to party with me, I wouldn’t say no.

After opening the gate, we find ourselves again in a dangerous area full of Charr (have no idea what these are, other than ugly and evil). We finish the quest, and then go Charr hunting, which means her attacking them and Maya using spells to heal and protect her.

Yes, I am becoming a support character. It’s not that bad.

When we finish with the last group, she doesn’t suggest we slip into the nearby pond, but she does explain a large number of things about the game that were not in the manual and of which I was clueless about. She also tells me to pick elementalist as my secondary profession.

I do so, and start The Path of Glory.

Yes, this is the experience I was hoping for. The Charr break through the wall and attack the heartland. The area is destroyed, the NPCs I’ve interacted with die, and I’m teleported two years later into the ruined husk of the city I started out in. Unholy magics have overtaken the area. Neat!

But that means Devona is dead! My poor, virginal monk will be devastated when she finds out.

I open up a storage bin, grab a henchman (She’s a monk and her title is ‘healer henchman.’ Do you have to rub it in guys?), and run off to meet the ambassador from Krynn or Kreia or something. At his camp, I find the Elementalist that taught me my powers. Good to know someone survived. Then again, she was far south near Wizard’s Folly when the Charr attacked, so that makes sense.

She tells Maya that she can teach the monk no more, which is odd as Maya knows all of four elementalist spells. The Ambassador and I have a chat, at which point Maya comments that he doesn’t look like he’s from around here. I like that they include actual conversations in the game, but I’d like to think my PC is smart enough to grasp that an ambassador from a foreign kingdom *isn’t* from around here.

I check the ruins of the village where Devona once patrolled, and only find a monk who wants to teach me spells. My henchman proves useful as the monsters constantly run by Maya to attack her. She then flees like the cloth-wearing coward she is, and she’s very quick. As the monsters try to chase them down, Maya damages them with her spells.



While I’ve complained about the game, I’m enjoying myself. I don’t know if I should continue on with Maya or try one of the other campaigns. I’m interested in playing an assassin, or possibly a dervish. Then again, I read that the other campaigns had spoilers for Prophesies, and I don’t want that.

Right now, I am soloing all the content without problem, but I worry that later on I'll need to join groups, and I hate the idea of being someone's healbot.