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Ok, I thought I'd put together a post for a walkthrough on each of the instances as we finally start to get them on "farm" status. Yes, I'm sure somebody has done this on the official forums somewhere, but I can’t access them from work and maybe this will get our forums more traffic
. At the time of this writing, we have Forges and 16th Hall on farm status. I’ve already done the Forges one, so here is the one for the 16th Hall.
First, there are a lot more trash mobs in this instance then in the forges, but there isn’t a timer so feel free to take your time. However, please note that you don’t need to kill everything! If you see a room that is a dead end (typically a fire and mobs around it), you don’t need to clear it if you don’t want too. If you want to kill for deeds, go ahead, but I’ll describe the most efficient process.
*****Hard Mode*****
Hard Mode for the 16th Hall only involves the final boss fight. Basically, there are a lot of gredbyg running around that only have 180 or so health during the boss fight. To complete hard mode, you have to kill the boss without having killed any of these little guys. This means absolutely NO AoEs on the final boss, it’s probably best just to take any AoEs you have off your hot bars just so you’re not tempted. The teal radiance piece for this instance is the shoulders. However, it should be noted that these are the non-set teal radiance piece and may or may not be better then some other shoulders you have, but you’re going to need that radiance for the watcher, so here you go.
At the beginning you’ll be fighting “shunned orcs”. Nothing too special here, just remember to mezz archers and clobber berserkers and curse-shouters (healers). Kill through them. You’ll go down a ramp and then across a bridge. Once across the bridge you’ll go left, but you may notice a hall and room to your right at this point, just skip it. Then you’ll go down some stairs into a large room with a lot of orcs.
Now, if you’re helping a burg on their class legendary quest, you’ll need to clear this entire room and the room to the right before doing so.
****Burglar Class Guy Info: After clearing the rooms, the burglar summons the dude. He comes out with 2 trolls. Best bet is to mezz a troll, tank on the big guy, off-tank drag the other troll away and burn the trolls. If I remember correctly, the big guy buffs the trolls, so keep them apart. Other then that, it wasn’t too hard.****
If not, you only need to pull one group. If you are at the bottom of the stairs facing the room, the group you need to pull is to your left up against the wall. Be careful here because there is a roamer and if you pull at the wrong time, the roamer can essentially “link” two groups of mobs together and you’ll have a veritable plethora of mobs beating on you. Once this group is down, simply watch the roamer. When he is away you can just hug that wall and proceed to the left. There is a group at the entrance to the next hall (plus a roamer in that hall), but nothing too exciting, just keep hugging left and you can make it to the hall and kill the mobs there.
The next room is where the first boss is, and you have a lot of clearing to do. You’ll most likely want to fight in the hall in before the room so you can LoS the archer mobs. There are roaming mobs on both the far left and far right sides of the room, so just be careful on the pulls.
The boss has two healing adds with him. They will try to heal the main boss, so your best bet is to simply burn down the healers with focused dps and then deal with the boss. Have the tank start the fight and have the group start burning those healers. For the main boss, the tank needs to intermittently kite. Basically, every 5-10 seconds or so the boss will double-over and start coughing. When you hear him start coughing, start moving. When he coughs, he puts an acid pool on the floor and if you don’t move it will smack you pretty hard. So when he coughs, just move away a bit, let him put down his phlegm (yes I know...lovely...) and then come to you. Other then that, it’s a pretty easy fight, just burn the healers, and then slowly burn the boss.
Get your uber loot and move on. In the next area we have full blown Globsnaga Orcs. Throughout this area you will notice some mobs that are sitting on the ground (somebody help me on the name). You can avoid these if you want, but essentially, if you get too close to them, they will explode and out jumps three crawlers ala Aliens...yummy. In this area you’ll also notice some low level mobs called “Crazed Globsnaga”. Make sure to kill these guys quickly. Essentially, they are running towards a group member, and if they get there, they explode and everyone in an aoe gets a very nasty disease and I do mean nasty. If you don’t have a LM or disease pot, you’re most likely going to die...
Once you cross the bridge, you’ll want to head left. There are mobs to the right of the end of the bridge, but you shouldn’t have to fight them. Then after clearing some more mobs, you’ll head down a set of stairs into a nice big room of full of fungus-infected orcs.
Some people have mentioned that you don’t have to clear this room, but we’ve been unable to be successful this way. Essentially as we start trying to sneak across, a crazed globsnaga starts running at us and aggros the group we’re trying to bypass, so kill away (just watch for the crazed guys)...
In the next hall, there are rooms to the right and left. In each room is a switch you have to pull to open up the next boss’s room. There are a lot of mobs in these rooms and a lot of “Aliens” guys, so you’ll want to range pull the mobs out into the hall to kill them. If you rush in, and pop the crawlers along with the regular guys, you’re talking like 18 more mobs, so don’t do that. Once the regular guys are dead, go ahead and run around the room to pop all the crawlers, I hear Champs love it, and then activate the switch. Rinse and repeat in the other room.
The next boss room has a number of “spores” all over the floor. Essentially while fighting this guy, if you let him get near one of those things, they will pop and do aoe damage to the group, and no, it doesn’t feel good. The best thing to do is have your tank run in and aggro and then pull him towards the door where you entered. With the tanks back to the wall in the south-eastish corner fo the room, as long as the tank holds aggro, you shouldn’t have any exploding mushroom problems. You’ll also need to have your champ on him clobbering at all times, think Rift Everseer. He does a lot of special attacks/heals. We’re not sure how this is scripted, but a few times during the fight a group of crazed globsnagas will appear. One each from the east, north, and west sides of the room. These guys need to go down fast. The best strat we’ve come up with is having the hunter at the far end of the platform in the middle of the room. This way the hunter has a good view of these guys when they spawn and can pop them pretty quick. I (captain) also tend to jump off the boss and hit the one coming from the west as that’s usually fairly close to the boss and I can see him pretty easily. Again, if these guys get to their targets, they give out a nasty aoe disease, if you don’t have a LM you have to pot it. Once the big guy is dead get your loot and move on.
The next area is populated by Gredbyg. There are both the little 180 life guys (yes, you can kill these) and some 16k Elites. When you head out of the bosses room, there are two paths. The fast is just to go straight and jump down two short cliffs. If you are careful, and hug the opposite walls, you can avoid the 16k elites. On the second drop off, make sure to jump out away from the wall as there is an elite bug at the base, but he won’t aggro if you are far enough away.
The next area basically has Gredbyg Queens with the little 180 health guys ( a lot of them). You have to kill all the queens (6) to get the final boss’s area to open. When fighting the queens they’ll call in all the little guys in the area, just make sure you aoe them because while they only have 180 health, they still hit pretty hard. The queens will also do a knockback/silence every once in awhile, so watch the cliff edges. Once you go through the now open door, you’ll need to drop down one more cliff, but don’t go in the room yet.
Final Boss, The Lost One. Make sure you prep outside the room. Once you go inside, the door will close. For this fight, I’ll give you a general run down and then give you some tips that help. This rundown is primarily for hard mode, in which you cannot kill any of the little gredbyg until after you have the boss down. The key to this fight is kite, kite, kite. Nobody in the group can fall in love with staying in one spot.
First, the boss, essentially the tank will run in and aggro the boss, get a couple hits in, then start kiting. The boss will summon three adds that hit really, really hard. If you don’t kite them, they will kill you (and you’ll feel like it was a one-shot). Fortunately, these guys are reeeeally slow, so its not hard to kite them, but if you wait until you seem them summoned to start kiting, it is too late. After a short kiting session the three guys will die (you’ll get xp, so you’ll know when it happens). At this point, the tank turns around and tanks the big guy for a little bit to get aggro (2-3 hits/taunts max) then starts kiting again before the 3 adds spawn again. Additionally, everyone in the group should note where the three guys died, because they leave a disease cloud that is just as bad as the crazed globsnaga disease if not worse. Sometimes I don’t even bother waiting for the LM, I just pot it anyway just to be safe.
Now for the little bugs. These guys hit hard, can snare you if you let them, and are aggroed by healing around them. Oh, and did I mention you can’t kill them? Basically your healers have to kite these bugs. It’s best to let the captain try to hold aggro on them if possible as they can heal on the move. However, be aware that their aggro is tightly tied to proximity heals, and I often loose some to the minstrel and LM as they spot heal. Eventually, no matter how much I spam heals, they eventually go after the minstrel and the minstrel will kite them (lay of the hammerhand is nice, then the LM can just transfer power for “heals”) while I continue healing like mad.
Now, to complicate all this kiting, there are mushrooms that pop in three different spots in the room and emanate an acid cloud that does a little damage and also snares you. It is essential that these go down and go down fast. We typically have our hunter on primary mushroom duty and then just auto-attack on the boss (so as not to pull aggro).
Any melee dps can just kind of trail the boss and hit him as best they can while the tank is kiting, but if they take aggro, you have to be prepared to start kiting the boss as well. Do your best to keep the corruptions off the boss. The fight takes awhile, but isn’t too hard once you’ve practiced and got the strat down.
There are also 2 bad DoTs that we’re not sure where they come from (we assume it’s the boss), but they come up every once in a while. Neither is strong enough to instantly kill you, but you need to get them off ASAP. One is a fear bleed and the other is a wound bleed. Make sure you have fear pots in case the captain is using muster courage to heal him/herself.
Now for some tips.
1. The three adds typically run after the tank or healers, but not always, so everyone in the group needs to be aware of where they are, even the hunter, and be prepared to move if they are coming at you.
2. The LM will want to put tar down as often as possible to help those kiting. The problem is everyone knowing where the tar is. To solve this problem, when we first enter the captain puts his banner in the middle of the room and then whenever the LM throws tar, he does so at the banner. This way everyone knows to try to kite near the banner so the tar gets the mobs
3. Additionally, the LM can root the baby bugs, but be very careful with this. If the bugs are rooted they will smack anybody that comes near them, regardless of aggro. So, if you do this, make sure you call it out ahead of time, and make sure everyone stays well away from them while they are rooted.
4. Our champ usually breaks off the boss to help kill mushrooms. This has the double benefit of getting him to stop getting aggro on the boss and helps get the mushroom down faster. However, remember that the mushroom cloud also does damage and DON’T do this if the three adds are on you.
5. For Captains, make sure you have your muster courage heal traited for this. Our primary heal also takes morale to perform, and we can’t keep the bugs off the minstrel if they have to heal us because we’re healing. However, if you are using muster this way, make sure everybody in the group, including you, has fear pots to take care of the bleed described above.
6. If you kill a bug, you have to reset the entire instance to get hard mode back, simply resetting the boss does not let you start over for hard mode.
7. Make sure to get the hard mode quest from the 21st hall. Its worth 2k destiny and I got 19k item xp the first time, and 13k the second. Not bad!
8. (Credit to Halka) Anyone that can put a single-target (or non-damaging aoe) slow on the Lost One needs to do so. This includes: dust in the eyes, caltrops, hamstring, strength quick-shot (pulls a lot of aggro, but it's necessary), burning embers, as well as the tar already mentioned. The hunter should be slowing the boss when not shooting the mushrooms, just be ready to go beneath notice when the boss comes over to punish!
An experienced group, on hard mode and skipping as many mobs as possible can probably down this in a little over an hour.