Thoughts on a WAR Dungeon: Sacellum

Snaptail the Breeder

I had the opportunity to try a dungeon with the guild today in open beta!  We gathered up five people and went to the Inevitable City to complete a quest to find some guy named Grobbit… or Grabbit… or something with a ‘G’ that is in the Sacellum below the arena place in Inevitable City.  Our classes and levels ranged from mostly 11-13 with a 14 and a 21 – at one point we had six people – and consisted of 2 BO’s, a Marauder, Shaman, and 2 Zealots.  Quite the motly crew.  We made our way into the Sacellum, which was no easy task given the levels of the mobs surrounding the arena, and buffed up.

As we descended into the dungeon we discovered that all of the mobs were level 17+ and came in groups of 2-3 consisting of normals and champions.  Usually a champion was grouped with 2 ‘normal’ hounds.  We found these smaller bunches to be easy, all things considered, and did not run into any trouble until we got to the 2-pull of level 18’s(champs) that hit for 500-800dmg each and did AoE damage.  We wiped a few times as we learned to keep them far away from the healers and back those with low hp out of the fight.  After we killed these two horrificly difficult mobs a set of gates opened revealing …

A DRAGON! Rawr!  The first boss mob.  Around the room I saw several eggs and having been doing this type of thing for years it wasn’t any surprise that as we engaged the boss dragon the eggs began to pop.  The boss mob was ‘Hero’ class and the adds were normals but they were level 18.  Our tank, being level 21 with level 11-13 healers on him, was unable to peel the adds from the healers so that job fell to myself (lvl 13 BO) and the Marauder (lvl 13).   Normally this wouldn’t sound too difficult except that it got harder.  The dragon actually sent out waves silencing our healers (and tanks from taunting) and this lead to several wipes.  Our best attempt on the dragon was getting him to half hp before he slaughtered the lot of us.

Even though we were butchered, and rightfully so going against these mobs at our level, we had a blast.  We were all surprised to see that the first dungeon in the game (that we encountered) was deploying tactics against us that usually are reserved for fights in the end-game.  I relate this type of encounter and the overall difficulty to molten core; considering we’re mostly all noobs at level 13 it would be like asking the newbies in the Barrens to be capable of walking into MC and knowing what’s up with all the bosses and fights.  Admittedly those of us who were the pioneers of these raids back in the day had to figure that stuff out which made it 1000x more fun.

I’m glad the the encounters, starting at the first boss, were difficult and required tactic and thought.  It doesn’t take much thought on the designers part or the players part to do tank-n-spank and it’s certainly not fun.  Kudos Mythic!  Here’s hoping the rest of the dungeon(s) and encounters in the game are equally exhilerating.

  • Very cool to read this, just last night I’d found an entrance to Sacellum in Inevitable City but was too low level to enter.

    I’m hoping there’s at least a good handful of these to fill my PvE needs. =)

    How was the scenery /setting in the dungeon?

  • The scenery that we saw (keep in mind we only got to the first boss) was pretty much what you see in that screenshot. Stones walls, crypt-like feel, close quarters, and decorated with Chaos decor such as eyes on the walls looking around eerily.

  • nice write-up Keen. Man i can’t wait to level up and try me out some dungeons. and the way you describe the mechanics it’s going to be a great fun challenge doing them.

  • I am trying out Order and found a dungeon in Altdorf which sounds like the same thing but probably different theme. I didn’t catch the name of it. It was a sewer environment in the city loaded with vermin of all types. Same idea champions with regular mobs in groups of 3 with patrols. I could not venture too far being alone but the entry mobs were lvl 17 and i was 11 so i got hammered immediately and left 🙂 The only problem was the city was a ghost town so no one to group with.. which is a concern of mine.

    Oh and Keen i will join the guild at launch.. having a blast on order at them moment hehe

  • 1st was that dragon, 2nd was a chimera looking boss and our group of 5 20’s died to the hydra about 5 times. Needed a warband for it.

  • Very good news! I can’t wait to get into a dungeon, although I’m a Warrior Priest and only lvl 6 so not sure when I will get a quest for one.

    @Keen, did someone in one of the starter areas tell you to travel to the city and do the quest or did you just wander the city and find a quest giver?

    Cheers!

  • Nice to see and hear! Hoping the PvE has as much promise as the RvR for a great change of pace. Looks like good stuff so far. 😉

  • So was the whole dungeon instanced or was the boss instanced? Hopefully it’s not completely open, otherwise, a million people will swarm over the wyvern and tactics will go out the window in favor of the zerg. That’s the one thing I don’t like about the public quests. When the PQ end boss spawns, he gets swarmed so badly that any real need to heal is gone. People just go dps nuts…kinda like zerging Van in Alterac Valley – zerg in, get your whacks, die, repeat. =P

    MM

  • I gave up GOA here in Norway and simply got myself a pre-order US key from Ebay, seems like I will be joining the US-servers just to get rid of the useless staff of GOA!

    Any recommended guilds? 🙂

  • @ MM

    This entire dungeon is one instance.

    @ Chris

    I was about to ask the same question. Keen, can you plz stop focusing on what is exciting and new? I think that the vast majority of us come here to read your thoughts on Hello Kitty Island Adventure. I request that you make this blog less about you, and more about us. ty.

  • @Wickidd

    Nice troll. Post something thoughtful instead of attacking.

    From About K&G:

    “Keen and Graev bring you their latest PC/Console views, Online Adventures, and more from a unique and refreshing perspective.”

    I don’t care to do an analysis, but by far the majority of the posts to this blog in the past months have been hyping WAR, or being WAR apologists.

    Blogs are opinion – absolutely. But many, including this one, are trying to claim that they are borderline gaming journalists (ie getting press badges, etc). And the out-right WAR fanboy-ism is certainly opinion, but not journalistic integrity.

    That these guys get press badges indicates the sad state that the video game industry is in wrt conventions.

    Don`t be homers!

  • @Chris:

    yes, most of their posts are now about WAR, and before that they were mostly about AoC.

    “Keen and Graev bring you their latest PC/Console views, Online Adventures, and more from a unique and refreshing perspective.”

    If Keen and Graev are mostly playing WAR beta then that’s what they write about. you know…their latest…

  • At least while you’re playing WAR beta you stopped throwing crap at WoW ;). Some of those were reasonable ofc, I’m not blind fanboy or whatever but Blizzard as a Devil himself? Come on 😛 Don’t get me wrong, but I prefer the previous K&G blog about games in general not just WAR and WAR almost all the time (I’m also going to try this game, from what I’ve seen already it going to be good or even one of the best, but I’m not that super duper mega excited about it). But, well its your blog not mine.

    P.S. Great respect for you Graev for not being echo of Keen. Your small review of WAR sounded to me a lot more sceptical – which I find much better than just “oh how WAR is fantastic!” talk.

    Peace & cheers

  • @ Chris

    I am sorry for being a smart-ass. But lets get real. Telling a blogger what to blog about, or what not to blog about, is just bad form. Keen has just gotten back into school and has been spending his minimal amount of free time playing the WAR open beta. Cut a guy some slack.

  • “Blah blah blah write on your blog what I want to read, not what you want to write blah blah blah”.

    Answer: No. Feel free to check out ign, gamespot, gametrailers, or one of those other sites that cover everything on this side of the moon. On this blog you’ll read the games that we’re interested in, that we’re playing, and that we feel like talking about. Nothing else.

    I’m not playing anything else right now. If Graev wants to write about Spore or the other handful of console games he’s playing then he can.

  • It’s great to hear the PvE doesn’t keep you in kindergarten for the first 35 levels. My friends and I have a WoW night to keep in touch (they’re out of state now), and we’re only doing instances – but goddamn it’s boring until BRD. So many early dungeons are just the same tank n spank crap over and over again…

    I had a great time doing the chapter one Greenskin PQ the other day – there were only 4-5 of us to kill the boss, and my poor shaman must have died and “flee’d” back to the fight 3 times before we got him down.

  • @Keen Thanks for the detailed description of a dungeon run in WAR, I really wanted to test it out, but I made a personal rule of not going passed tier 1. I wanna leave most the game as a surprise 🙂 But, I LUV bosses, and pulls that require some brains, and skill to take down. Very happy to know dungeons are like that from the get go.
    P.S. How does a lv 21 tank have problems with heal aggro from lv 11-13 healers? No offense to your tank, just wanna know if it was a skill thing, or if the tank classes just aren’t going to be equiped for multi-mob aggro.