A Walkthrough for Loot and Glory

One of the easiest instances to farm for money and (occasionally) halfway decent gear is the Library at Tham Mirdain. Although this is a three-man instance, I have successfully completed it, including the challenge, with a captain (yellow), a champion (blue), a guardian (blue), and a warden (blue). It may be possible to do this with a very well equipped burglar too, perhaps. For this post, I will focus on a quick walkthrough using the warden, since that class takes – by far – the least amount of time and effort.

Typps, Watcher of the Wilds, prepares to take on the Library of Tham Mirdain all by his lonesome.

For a level 100 warden in blue line, hordes of enemies are no sweat. You can clear whole sections of this instance with little more than the usual AOE skills you would use in any multi-opponent situation. Enter the instance and grab all three of the overlords and their accompanying pale-folk. You can grab the next two groups (down the hall) as well if you like. I’ve even been successful taking all seven groups to the first boss, although it was a close call. Anyway, gather up as many groups as you feel comfortable handling at once and target one of the overlords. They will absorb your attacks, but the damage is distributed to their minions, who die quickly. Once you have their attention, start out with Exultation of Battle (using the Battle Preparation skill), then follow up with Brink of Victory and Surety of Death. The pale-folk will be obliterated within seconds of executing those three skills, so all that remains are the overlords. You can take them down using any combination of your usual AOE or even single-target skills. I recommend throwing in a Devastation somewhere since the overlords do cast heals, so the interrupt is useful.

Bring it on! Typps single-handedly challenges a small horde of enemies, including Commander Unudhu!

Once your group is down, plod along the pathway and take a right (make sure you don’t accidentally grab any of the birds along the way). You’ll encounter another pair of overlords and their pale-folk, so beat them down in the same manner. Rinse and repeat until you reach Commander Piztor. There’s nothing special about any of the boss fights in this instance aside from a few quirks. Piztor likes to stun you for a good 8-10 seconds and wail on you while you’re down. You can use your stun-escape skill when it’s off cooldown, but otherwise there’s not much you can do. As long as you use a few Perseverance skills now and then you’ll be just fine. You’ll probably want to throw in a few Dark Before the Dawns as well to keep your power up, and don’t forget to clear poisons when you see them, especially the one that slows your attack speed. Other than that, just whip out the Power Attack line and/or Brink of Victory line of gambits to wear Piztor down until he croaks. This is a great time to practice your less-frequently-used gambits as well since you’re not in any real danger from this yutz. Grab your first loot box and head back to the courtyard.

You’ll need to head in the opposite direction toward Commander Unudhu. You can deal with the overlords and pale-folk the same way you did on the first side until you reach the second boss. Unudhu is even less of a challenge than Piztor: the only thing to watch for is when he loses half of his morale. At that point he will stun you and heal himself for a considerable amount. He takes his sweet time doing it, though, so preventing him for recovering his morale is easy. Watch his morale level: as he approaches the halfway point (around 79,000 morale or so), build The Boot gambit and let it sit there at the ready. When he stuns you, trigger your stun-escape skill and kick him in the face to interrupt the heal. Once that’s done, you can polish him off with little effort, gaining you the second chest.

Take that! Typps lands an Unerring Strike against Commander Unudhu.

With both orc-flunkies out of your way, you can drop back into the courtyard to confront the main boss. A nice opener on him is Ambush, Critical Strike, Wages of Fear (by running through him to use the javelin from behind), and finished off with Unerring Strike or Warden's Triumph (which you would have built up using Battle Preparation before starting the Ambush). Chieftain Gursh, even with his flock of crebain, isn’t much of a threat so long as you monitor your morale and power throughout the fight and keep his birds in front of yourself as much as possible to maximize the use of your shield. His only truly irritating skill is Dirty Trick, which causes you to miss 25% of your attacks. When this debuff is present, concentrate your gambits on the Perseverance line to keep yourself healed along with the occasional Dark Before the Dawn for power. Another useful tactic is to hit with Defensive Strike then execute Restoration to keep it in memory for another use later (you can also do this with Dark Before the Dawn for some quick power). You’ll need to avoid using any AOE attacks, lest you slay a craban and fail the challenge. When the debuff isn’t present, the Power Attack line, Warden's Triumph, or Wall of Steel are good gambits to use for single-target attacks that induce bleeds or buff your ability to parry incoming attacks. Feel free to throw Dance of War or Shield Mastery out there as well, if you want. Shield Mastery is especially recommended since it increases your evade rating and each attack you evade heals you for 1% of your total morale. This makes quite a difference when there's 17 enemies all pounding away at you at once!

Who needs a Fellowship? Typps tangles with Chieftain Gursh mano-a-Uruk!

You’ll end up jockeying with Gursh for several minutes as his morale slowly dwindles. As long as you keep an eye on your own morale (your healing gambits still do damage, after all) and have Never Surrender! active in case of an emergency, you should do just fine. Once Gursh finally goes down, that’s your cue to go hog-wild with Exultation of Battle, Brink of Victory, and Surety of Death to annihilate those squawking birds. With mop-up operations complete, all that remains is to treat yourself to the goodies!

The challenge is only available at level 100, so any gear you collect will be level 100 purples and teals. Wardens tend to gather agility-based gear, but I’ve seen more than a few pieces of heavy or light armor drop as well. Any of the “Of Penetration” gear is especially welcome because it usually includes boosts to Vitality and Critical Rating among other things. Heritage runes have never been terribly common as loot for this instance, unfortunately, at least not for me. You’ll also usually collect between three and five sealed relics as well, which can be deconstructed at a Relic-master for one to three (normally) tier 5 relics.

Victory! And a victory so swift, the game is still tallying the kills. Now for the loot!

There you have it! If you have an up-and-coming warden who’s been dreading the long, dull slog to level 100, here is a great excuse to get crackin’.

Padhric

Master of Toons