Lost Vale Impressions & Info

Like i reported before our guild Thirst runs two groups into Lost Vale (called Gaen Vale by the elves) now. The instance is currently the hardest available PvE dungeon (not talking about king fights), its designed for six players (rank 40) and on a five day lockout. You reach the instance with a boat from Avelorn (its a landmark at the west coast). We cleared Lost Vale and killed every boss in there on our first serious journey with enough wards. As far as i know on our server we're the second guild that cleared the Vale and we were the first after the Chosen fix. We used two Black Orc tanks with 5/5 and 4/5 wards. Overall i have to say the instance is the most fun one in WAR so far. The zone design is very atmospheric and some boss fights are a lot of fun, despite some bugs in there still.

Since its the hardest instance IMO Mythic should have a close look at the loot tables again tho, after the introduction of the new city dungeon drops and the new influence rewards the risk/work vs. reward in Lost Vale is a tad off balance if you ask me. Some items are really good, but others you don't even bother to roll on as the shard is more useful. I don't know how it is for other classes, but the Black Orc Darkpromise set is a joke (stat & set bonus wise) compared to Sentinel and how hard it is to get the set from Lost Vale. So if you take the long lockout into account and the work it takes to get that stuff, Mythic really needs to rework the stats/bonuses... and as its a PvE set, shouldn't it be more focused on tanking when it comes to the set bonuses?

Before you enter Lost Vale, make sure you pick up the Blood of the Vale quest from inside the Eternal Citadel in the Inevitable City. Every group member needs to be on this quest as it will allow you to bypass the traps/barriers to advance into the other wings. One more good idea is to tell people to clean up their quest inventory as you'll need to collect some stuff inside the instance. Advancing the quest through the dungeon will grant you special items to bypass the barriers in the other wings (wing 2 has nasty Sprite traps and wing 3 a wind-swirl barrier) and also grant you some jewelry after killing the last boss in each wing: The Whitefire Stone, Root of the Worldbearer and Eye of N'kari - the three pieces are a jewelry set btw.

The instance has three wings again:
All bosses have a chance to drop the Darkpromise belt (BoE) or gloves.



Wing 1 (left): Thornvale Wilds
Ahzranok (Lizard)
Malghor Greathorn (Bestigor)
Horgulul (Chaos Breed Demon)
Dralel the Whitefire Matron (Giant Spider, Wing boss drops Darkpromise Boots)




Important to know: The quest to advance further in wing 1 is sometimes bugged and the quest description is not very intuitive. It does not matter if the quest triggered as complete before, but after you killed Horgulul, your group needs to use 10x Menhir Shards (you collect through the wing) at the large column where you fight her. Who uses the shards is not relevant, after using ten shards the quest giver will spawn and even if you completed the quest by a bug before all need to talk to her to gain the Torch of Lileath. You need the torch to fight the wing boss properly.



Wing 2 (right): Blackwillow Forest
Chul Earthkeeper (Yhetee)
Larg the Devourer (Gorger)
Butcher Gutbeater (Ogre with Gnoblar pet)
Gorak the Ancient (Dragon Ogre)
Sarthain the Worldbearer (Giant Treeman, Wing Boss drops Darkpromise Shoulders)






Wing 3 (middle): Palace Gardens & Alarielle's Palace
Zaar the Painseeker (Chaos Breed Flayer)
The Darkpromise Beast (giant plant from the starter area)
Sechar, the Darkpromise Chieftain (Chaos Humanoid, drops Darkpromise Helmet)
N'Kari, Keeper of Secrets (Daemonette of Slaanesh, Wing Boss drops Darkpromise Chest)

Important to know: You need to talk to Alarielle the Everqueen after you killed N'Kari. She will despawn after a short amount of time, so make sure people talk to her after the fight is over. Some people say if you missed her you can go back into the instance after a softreset and still finish the quest. But its easier to be aware of her short despawn timer and tell people to talk to her.

Two things i seriously have to complain about to Mythic: The long walks of shame after a wipe on a boss, especially the wing end bosses. You fight the boss for 5min and have to run 10min to get back there? WTF?!? This is really annoying and takes away a lot of the fun. It's an outdoor instance, why not let people use their mounts in there? Or create some kind of secret passage or teleporting device you can activate once you reach the last boss. To run around for such long times just sucks. Fortunately we did not wipe that much as we one- or two-shot most bosses, but to run back to N'Kari in wing 3 takes freakin' forever. If you then get the standard/banner bug where your banner turns into a Firewyrm and your char becomes bugged so you can't take out any banners anymore, the walk starts to get very annoying.

The other things is the dungeon lockouts. With the long lockout timer you're screwed when one group member gets sick, does not show by whatever reason, his internet goes down, etc. In addition if someone disconnects while you kill a boss, your whole group is screwed as that person will be locked out. The dungeon lockout IDs need to be fixed in a way that you can exchange party members to go on. Just give a "new person" the instance ID of the group leader, but only if that person does not have a lockout timer yet for that instance to prevent abuse. The only problem you can have then is that someone is "stealing" your instance, but who would PUG eg. Lost Vale? All the other instances you finish in one evening anyway. The problem would be less annoying then being locked out for 5 days and not being able to go on because you can't substitute people.

I also did wonder why there are no Tome unlocks in dungeons like Lost Vale? It's really cool to explore these places, why not be able to discover some lore unlocks for them? Overall Lost Vale is by far the coolest dungeon, if only Mythic fixes the long walks and dungeon lockout problems.