Dunes of Despair bonus in HM with Heros/Hench
Last night I decided to give the Dunes of Despair mission a try in Hard Mode with guild members and heros/hench. First was tackling the mission. After a couple failed efforts with Rod trying to bond the ghost and my heros not able to get the job done, I re-tried the mission with Zav. That time around things worked fine, with my Ranger, Zav's war, and a hero Ele, a hero SS, and two hero Monks (one prot, one heal). Of course, as most of us know, while the mission itself is no walk in the park in HM, the bonus is the hard part. So, I decided to craft a team build to H/H the bonus, using the necro portaling trick (which I had never tried before last night). In short, you bring along a character with Necrotic Transversal and Rebirth to portal through the closed gates at the end of the mission while you leave the ghost "parked" away from his throne, so that he doesn't start the 10 min timer and the waves of attacks. This means that you need a little luck in being able to find an enemy with a body that is close enough to aggro, kill and then exploit while still being inside the walls of the square. While there is some luck involved, with a flatbow or longbow along you should be able to find an enemy to utilize (thankfully, I was able to get a scarab pop with little trouble). Once you kill the enemy (who must leave an exploitable body of course), your character with NecTrans portals over to the body. Then your characters kill themselves one by one using a vampric weapon (your remaining characters MUST have a vamp weapon or self sacrafice skills to portal through the walls). A Powerstone or 4 leaf clovers are helpful if you want to ditch your DP at this point, but are not completely necessary. Then, once through the walls, your team (which will be without the henchmen, since your henchmen can't be forced to self sacrafice) goes to wipe out the bosses that you need to take out for the bonus. Now, not sure if this happens every time, BUT after killing the boss on the right, my henchmen "magically" appeared on the other side of the wall with me. Not sure how they made the leap through the walls on their own, but I wasn't about to complain. I then took out the boss on the left (who happened to be the monk boss) and got the HM bonus. Here is a screen of the party over the body of the last monk boss (a second too late to capture the dual sword graphic):
In addition to having Little Thom and Lina along with me, here are the builds I used:
Skills.jpg)
Last night I decided to give the Dunes of Despair mission a try in Hard Mode with guild members and heros/hench. First was tackling the mission. After a couple failed efforts with Rod trying to bond the ghost and my heros not able to get the job done, I re-tried the mission with Zav. That time around things worked fine, with my Ranger, Zav's war, and a hero Ele, a hero SS, and two hero Monks (one prot, one heal). Of course, as most of us know, while the mission itself is no walk in the park in HM, the bonus is the hard part. So, I decided to craft a team build to H/H the bonus, using the necro portaling trick (which I had never tried before last night). In short, you bring along a character with Necrotic Transversal and Rebirth to portal through the closed gates at the end of the mission while you leave the ghost "parked" away from his throne, so that he doesn't start the 10 min timer and the waves of attacks. This means that you need a little luck in being able to find an enemy with a body that is close enough to aggro, kill and then exploit while still being inside the walls of the square. While there is some luck involved, with a flatbow or longbow along you should be able to find an enemy to utilize (thankfully, I was able to get a scarab pop with little trouble). Once you kill the enemy (who must leave an exploitable body of course), your character with NecTrans portals over to the body. Then your characters kill themselves one by one using a vampric weapon (your remaining characters MUST have a vamp weapon or self sacrafice skills to portal through the walls). A Powerstone or 4 leaf clovers are helpful if you want to ditch your DP at this point, but are not completely necessary. Then, once through the walls, your team (which will be without the henchmen, since your henchmen can't be forced to self sacrafice) goes to wipe out the bosses that you need to take out for the bonus. Now, not sure if this happens every time, BUT after killing the boss on the right, my henchmen "magically" appeared on the other side of the wall with me. Not sure how they made the leap through the walls on their own, but I wasn't about to complain. I then took out the boss on the left (who happened to be the monk boss) and got the HM bonus. Here is a screen of the party over the body of the last monk boss (a second too late to capture the dual sword graphic):
In addition to having Little Thom and Lina along with me, here are the builds I used:
- Copy and paste skill codes:
Ranger (me): OgMUYxLivMPbGZCtx3IceNIGXJA
Rit: OAOjAmiLJSVTOOHXfTlTZOdioRA
Monk: OwYS0YITID+DtOgROggE2DoR
Necro: OANEQnhH3os75hQvHsRnEGyE