« Ackadia's Guide to Guild Wars… Capturing Elite Skills »

Guild Wars Bosses, their Elite spells, their unique items and where to capture them

Introduction

Caveat notes
First off, bear in mind NCSoft can and will make changes from time to time to improve the balance of the game. Generally this means amending the cost and/or effects of the skills, but it can extend to changing the actual bosses too, though this is very rare.

Secondly, my notes relate to those I've captured on my travels and/or heard about elsewhere… - in Prophecies this wasn't so much of an issue but in Factions a number tend to be found on quests. Come Nightfall you have the added fun of Heroes. A number of quests can only be found if you have a particular Hero in your group. For primary missions you are always told this, but for side missions, well…

Finally, on greens, few bosses in the original campaign - Prophecies - have unique items, but almost all (proper) bosses in the other campaigns have a green drop item. This is only for explorable areas though. Bosses in missions and quests don't drop them. Naturally the weapons and focus items tend to reflect their elite. Also, to me, it seems greens drop much more readily in the Nightfall campaign . You can spend hours and hours trying to get a particular item to fall in Factions, but get a few to drop in a single run in Nightfall… Works for me, I guess!


Comment
To be honest, apart from a few choice ones, I'm really not impressed with most of the Elites, many of which appear to have an equivalent or better available as standard, or they have a sting in the tail that, in my opinion, makes them worthless - especially given you can only use one Elite, and not even one from your prime and one from your secondary profession…


Anyway, falling foul to my obsessive compulsions, I have to collect at them all. Helps with writing this guide anyway and I'm sure the location maps will be popular when I put them all together.

Given each profession has around 25 Elite spells - 235 (now 290) between the 10 classes - this might take a while! Just wish I'd collected them them when I was exploring first time around. Ho hum! What I will do, depending on time and my moods, is Elite maps for the six, er eight, ummm ten professions. That said, (random loads aside), within campaigns, areas generally have a boss from each class, so for group and party skill capturing, a zone based map might me better. Or both. Both is good. We shall see!

I'll have to sort it soon though, all those (huge .bmp) screengrabs are really starting to chew up my hard drive. I'll put maps to all the bosses I found over the next month or so, starting with Elona and working back to Ascalon.


Heroic Skill Hunters:

Captured my 180^th Elite - 'Air of Enchantment' (Monk) - on 27^th June, 2006

Captured my 235^th Elite - 'Angelic Bond' (Dervish) - on 14^th November, 2006

Captured my 290^th Elite - ' "The Power is Yours" ' (Paragon) - on 27^th November, 2006

'Toxic Chill' (Necromancer) was my first towards the Master title as the 'Lightbringer Signet' I earned (not captured) earlier can count towards your Elite total.

Notes

I thought the following would be appropriate here:

Question

I am also trying to collect most of the Elites Skills. My biggest hangup, by far, is obtaining new skill points so that I can buy a Capture Signet. Are there any special shortcuts to this because all I ever do is wander around killing things trying to obtain 15K experience to afford my next new skill point.
Thanks
M.

Reply

Hi,

Gaining skill points is actually quite easy - just keep your party as small as possible and concentrate of level 24 mobs. One of the best places I've found is Sorrows Furnace, repeatedly doing the (Prophecies) Orozar quest in the Shiverpeaks...

This area has several benefits:

• Easy to get the hang of.
  
  
• Lots of salvage. Greatly overlooked as a money earner - most of the weapons and armour frequently give steel / fur / leather squares. I've had up to a dozen steel from a single high salvage item - easy 2k just there!
  
  
• Frequent blue rune drops, regular gold rune drops
  
  
• A large number of bosses too (several of the drops are worth over 40k)
  
  
• I can do it with just 3 hero's, but it's easier with the addition of Lina for extra healing and protection.
  I take Olias as a Minion Master, Tahlkora as a healer/condition remover and Master of Whispers as a Spitefull Spirit curser.
  
  

I do play the game a lot but as a guide I gain about 1 level a day on average, though really some days I gain several. I capped my last Elite in November and have earned over 100 skill points since (85 or so left after buying extra core spells etc)

One point to bear in mind, any Elites (or regular skills) you unlock are available for all your heroes. I can equip Koss (at level 3) with any build I want. Took me months to get 'Hundred Blades' playing Prophecies, now I have it for a starter Hero! Essentially, the more skills you capture the more powerful your Heroes become - up to the point were, I find, they are frequently far better than many players you encounter!

Oh yes, one I'll be using to for a Survivor title… The Kournan Pendants can be exchanged for scrolls of experience (Hero's / Slayer's Insight) in the Sunspear command - there's 10 minutes of double experience points right there. Most classes have at least one build that will let you solo certain bosses or area, usually farming for greens, but going for experience works too. Solo vs level 24 mobs is 168xp per kill. 336xp a time with the scroll. Like that you gain a level every 45 mobs and in places it's possible to round them up and kill them en mass. Vastly increases your gold and salvage drops too as everything that drops is yours!