Harclave Blues...

[Gaedan]

So, I'm level 24 now.  And I'm thinking that's the problem, and I totally understand.  I'm still a Crusader.  I know it, I can feel it.  Everytime I call down divine damage, everytime I see glowing white shields... yuck. Anyway, I decided to get Splitpaw and check it out.  My first impression of it, what an awesome expansion.  I spent a night crawling down through to the Den, got more Adept 1 books than I can count, got some decent armor drops, and great experience.  Hell, I even got a Master 1 book! Then I hit Harclaves. I have, for a better word, been owned in Harclave.  Through dilligence and slow work, I can clear the gnolls, light the torches, and get the buff.  The first time I had no idea what to expect, so after I found that I *could* beat a group of orange heroics with the buff, I had also found that a LOT of undead spawn, and I got mobbed.  Second time, I stayed up top, killed the first group, made my way to the big room with the usurpers and just... got mobbed.  All of a sudden I had three groups on me, and nothing was going to save me. Third time, I avoid the top-level group and make my way over to the shrooms.  I build the bridge, climb over, and got owned by the two groups on the first ledge.  One group at a time, I could have killed, but that didn't seem to be an option... Am I using this buff right?  Combat arts don't seem to be as big as melee damage with the buff, my [Removed for Content] sword was doing 100+ in autoattack, and my power was always full, but I just could not keep myself warded long enough at all to stay alive in any of those cases.  That and I kept getting stunned/interrupted... ouch. Any advice for a young SK?  Should I level more and wait until I become a 'real' SK? <div></div>

[Uggli]

I have no problem at level 45/46 with my SK.   Could pull 2 sometimes 3 groups if they were lower con in there and be fine.  My little brother is playing an SK in his low 30's and gets his butt wooped also.  So I'm not sure what the differance is.    As for getting past the shrooms, you CAN pull one group over to you, and kill it, and then cross to kill the other group.  Just tag one group with a DD and they will run around through a blocked wall and go right to you.   Be sure to kill healers / enchanter first.   Yes your melee damage tends to do more than your combat arts on average.    You just have to do smart pulling.   You haven't even got to the hard part yet.  heh.  The side tunnles are loads of fun with add after add if your careless or know they just can't kill you. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <div></div>

[Vitriol]

<P>I die in Harclave more than I win lol.  Either I fall off the planks or I get too many groups.  If you have a slew of adds, your hp is going to drop but its almost impossible to put a dent in your power, so AE your little heart out.  The other thing to check for is whether you have all your buffs up before you pull.  I notice that all of my maintained buffs will start dropping, even though they shouldn't be.</P> <P>There are a few tricky spots in Harclave, you just have to be careful.  The first spot is right when you get the buff.  The group of mobs at the bottom of the ark can't be pulled up to you, they disengage.  So you just have to drop down in a spot where you will only agro maybe one other group.  Another tricky spot is after you cross the second plank and head into the tunnel.  That spot is the worst for adds, be sure to pull each group back to the plank area with the two shroom groups.  Save your HT for when you get too many adds and burn one down quick.</P>

[Harbringer Doom]

I love Harclave, I've done it too many times to count.  The trick to getting Harclave down pat and then forming a greater understanding of your limitations, is to go slow, and only pull one mob at a time all the way through.  Trust me, this IS possible.  After you've owned the place a few times like this, then you begin to get a better sense of how much more you can handle.  This is the strategy.  Kill the first guy you come to at the bottom of the first room.  Obviously.  Then make the bridge using the one plank available to you.  This is now your safe haven.  If things get bad from here to the ark, you can always run back to this first room, and 99% of the time you break the encounter.  SOMETIMES, a mob might find its way over to you, but it is rare. Now, you clear your way, being careful to pull ONE MOB AT A TIME, back towards the first braiser you light.  This is sometimes tricky, because there are a few solo roamers that roam in pairs.  Get both of them on you and your probably done.  I usually clear the two gnolls by the first two braisers quick, then wait on the plank for the two roamers to come along.  When they pass, I nail the second roamer and take him out.  Then I move down into the lower room, killing and medding, one at a time. Eventually, after clearing out all the solos, you will come to the ark.  Now, build a set of bax stairs up to the ark.  I am [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot], so I try to keep my box stairs RIGHT in the middle, and well build.  I learned that this also helps we figure out where to drop down after killing the first heroic mob.  So, build your stairs in the exact middle, maybe a hair to the left or right. Now, complete the braisers, and get the buff.  Kill the first mob.  This may be a little close at times, but it ultimately should be no problem.  Now you are alone on the ark shelf.  This is your new safe zone.  If you get any mobs on you here on out, you can run up your well built staircase very easily and 99% of the time, lose all aggro.  Sometimes, again, a mob may find his way up to you. Now, to start killing down below, you need to note where the roaming mobs are.  Before you drop down, you want the roaming mobs to have just passed by.  Note that you have a tougher guy to your left and right ad you drop down.  If you built your staircase correctly, you should be able to drop down right in the exact middle of these two tough guys, and only aggro the group of four standing around your staircase.  Note;  You will aggro these four as soon as you pass over or around the ark, and are still on the shelf.  They will not be able to reach you, so they may run around a bit.  Anyway, you should be able to drop straight down, and only aggro this one group. Once you are done with that one group, make sure the roamers aren't coming, and if not,  turn to the left or right and dispatch that one guy.  Then dispatch the other one.  Now its a good time to kill the roamers.  And then make your way through the rest of the room ONE MOB AT A TIME.  If you ever find yourself losing the battle, or are even unsure if you're going to make it, run to the staircase, and up to the ark, med up and begin again.  Using this method you should be able to clear to the mushrooms. Now, it is possible to take on the mushroom groups one at a time.  I find it necessary.  Put your first plant at an angle from the side you're on, extending out towards the left wall off the mushroom area.  Make it so when you run across the bridge, you will go right into the middle of the mushroom group almost up against the wall.  Now get the second plank.  When you walk out onto the first, to place the second, the mushrooms may aggro, but since they can't reach you, they will try and run around.  You can either place this second plank, then run into the room you just cleared and they will most likely find their way there, or you can carefully cross and fight them right up against the wall on the other side.  The other group will not aggro if you are standing in the right spot, up against the left wall.  (Note:  You do know you can change the angle of the plank using the scroll wheel on your mouse, right?  I imagine some people don't have a scroll wheel, and are confused as hell as to how place the planks at the angle they want). After killing the two groups of mushrooms, make your way slowly towards the Mushroom King, pulling one group at a time.  IF you ever aggro too much, remember, you can run across your new bridge to lose aggro.  Some things may find a way to follow you to that room, so remember you can always run up your staircase to the ark again.  The mushrooms have a mean stun, so don't wait too long to run if you think you are in trouble.  I find the spider groups are the hardest, so be careful, and make sure to do them alone. When you enter the Mushroon Kings room, you will have a bunch of groups of mobs stationed in the area.  I like to pull the group up on the MK's dais first, dispatching them in the hallway you came in.  Careful here, because the upper tunnel area of the zone will be to your right when you apprach the mushroom king, and things roam down from there fairly often.  Big things.  Scary things.  Things you should only take on one at a time. After killing the mob standing around the MK, I circle the king in a clockwise fashion, up against the wall, killing a single group at a time as I encounter them.  When I've carefully cleared out all the groups of shrooms in the MK room, I kill the MK.  Now you can either skip the upper tunnel area, with the hard roaming mobs, or you can carefully pull them one at a time down to the MK room.  Some of these mobs are harsh, and wander in the walls, so be very careful here.  Remember, you can always run, as discussed above. After I clear the upper tunnels, I enter the final room, and kill the mobs, again, one at a time.  There are some roamers in this room, but you can usually keep an eye on them, and pull to the very back of the room where you came in to avoid any adds.  Just be advised that if you did not clear the upper tunnels, pulling to the back of the room could get you some upper tunnel adds. After clearing this room, carefully, one mob at a time (even the hellhogs on the shelf to the right) you will see the final mob on the shelf to the left in the back room.  Circle around him while clearing the mobs in that room.  It shouldn't be a problem avoiding his aggro. Kill him and you're done. I love Harclave, even though there is so much talk about how horrible it is.  Its pretty good xp (although it was better at lower levels), its still pretty good loot, and it give me an escape from the demands of grouping, and guildmates (Sorry, I'm in the middle of Harclave) when I need it. Good luck. <div></div>

[Gaedan]

That's one hell of a write up, thank you.  I'll have to give it another try.  I think my main issue is being able to get the single pulls, but it's good to note that you can run back to the ark for safty.  I think the big thing is that I have no lifetaps yet, so I still only have the Crusader ward to keep my butt alive in those groups.  <div></div>

[Gaa]

<DIV>Harclave is quite boring, but lets face it, the experience is great if you can get in there and clear the place as fast as possible.  First of all, I have mastered the place to the point I can get to the arc buff within 5 minutes of zoning in.  Getting that buff asap is key to making the most out of your exp/time ratio. As you might have already noticed the gnolls have a very small aggro radius.  I kill the first two gnolls which are unavoidable then I light all the other torches carefully without aggroing any of the other roamers.  Getting the boxes without aggro is a biit tricky and takes some time to master, but you always have fd to throw off some aggro in the process need be.  Once you master gettin to the arc without having to clear all the roamers you will save alot of time.  Ok now once you get up top and activate the buff you should immediately jump down to avoid aggro on the ghosts that spawn.  Now you are ready to rock and roll.  Kill all the roamers that you avoided on your way into get the buff, as you will see, you can kill them in 1/10th of the time it would have taken doing this without the buff and you never have to worry about death.  Be sure to get them all as they will despawn and be replaced with the skeletons once you kill the ghosts, don't wanna lost out on any of that experience now do we? Once you are clear head back to the ghosts.  Now this is where its kinda tricky.  If you kill the ghosts up top you have all the roaming skellies to deal with and if you arent in a good spot things can go south in a hurry as you are well aware of.  I figured out the best spot to kill the ghosts and leave yourself in the perfect position to pull all the roamers group by group without having to worry about any adds.  Pull the ghosts down directly across from where the arc is into that short tunnel that leads back into the main room.  Not the tunnel you came in but the other one where there is a small ledge.  This spot is safe from all roamers.  Now kill the ghosts here and immediately the skellies spawn.  You will have immediate aggro on one group that pops right where you are, kill these then you can continue to tag each of the roaming groups from your position.  This works very well and I have yet to run into adds this way. Also once this room is clear and all the roamers are dead, head back down the original tunnel you came in through.  Tag the first group and pull them up into tunnel a ways to keep from getting the other roamers adding. From here on out its a piece of cake!!  I always play on the Difficult mode, its the best exp from what I can tell.  Very difficult just takes to long to kill things and causes for slow exp gain.  Good luck!~</DIV>

[EnraptureE]

<P>I've done this trial about 20 times now too (I don't go all the time, it would drive me bonkers) & it can still mess up & end up in pain.  There's 3 tricky parts of the whole thing, all having to do with roaming mobs.  The first is when you jump across the first plank to the first brazier.  Kill that gnoll, then sneak yer way to to the tunnel heading to the ark & watch for gnolls, if none, kill the 2nd brazier gnoll, med up & wait.  I've found the roaming gnolls in the ark area (about 5 of them) all do their own thing & its sporadic.  You might get 1 coming up, or 3 in a row.  The worst part of this, is sometimes, 1 will poof through the wall & suddenly appear up top near where you put the 2 planks together to get to the shrooms, but not often. </P> <P>I'll observe the pathing & if it looks like 1 is gonna come high, wait for it, if not, pull 1 all the way to the first brazier area & kill it, watching for others roaming.  If one starts to come, burn the gnoll down, HT, whatever you can, then jump across & med up & recycle.  I find it usually takes me half an hour to get to the ark from zone in, cause I kill every single gnoll enroute to it.  Once the 5 roamers are dead, its just med, pull, kill, light, move on to the next.  I do the difficult version, so not sure if some mobs are different, or there are lesser roamers.</P> <P>Suck up Harclaves soul & kill the hard spawn group.  I've had lvl 45 red mobs here, when I was 39 or 40 & that was fun, albeit scary.  As other poster said, jump down in the middle, kill the 4, then the solo's, then pull the groups.  I've yet to have the roamer group come back up, by the time I've done all the groups in that room.  Now for the part I wanted to tell, I go down the tunnel you go up & stop before the bottom.  You should see the roamer group, getting close to coming up to you.  You can pull them & kill them.  I believe theres another group the roams in that area too, pull that & kill them.  I do all of this in that tunnel, its not as bad as it sounds, I just do all 4 of me AE's over n over with HO's when able, through in a lifetap, if its needed.  Then pull the stationary group at the bottom & yer set again, pull, kill, move on & repeat.</P> <P>Plank across to the shrooms & do the 2 groups (its possible to get 2 at once, so careful when going across) preferably 1 at a time, though I have done 2 at once.  Move down the tunnel & like the others have said, the tunnel heading up to the right is the pain.  I tend to wait back some & pull the shrooms stationary & the 3 roamer encounters that come down when I can.  If its clear, pull the shrooms by the king, back to the safe spot, just before the branching off of where the roamers come from.  If its clear again, I pull the King to the same spot.  I can pull him with tainted by jumping / casting in the area, on the right side of the tunnel, not inside his area, but close to the roamer tunnel.</P> <P>After this, its all a matter of pulling to you, in safe areas, the roamers in the tunnels.  There's like 15 of them & it can take time to find em all, but doable.  Trick is to not run full on in em.  You might clear 4 tunnels think yer safe & then bam, run into 3 groups at once, I speak from experience >< & you'll die.  Eventually, once I've run around the tunnels a couple times, appear like I've killed the total roamers, then I start on the undead leading to the gnoll guy & its pretty easy.  Single roamers, mostly & you can kill them with the groups if by accident.</P> <DIV>I also one time did the down below mobs, cause thought there was something special down there.  I did every other single mob, minus those.  I put 2 planks together, till they were almost touching the single column rising from the bottom (its practically straight out from the tunnel you zone in from, on yer right, if the first plank is on yer left & has a spirallying ledge near the bottom, ) & walk off & fall down to the ledge, with ward on.  You'll take a fair bit of fall dmg, but live.  Slowly move down the spiral, till you agro the mobs at the bottom (I killed em on the spiral lol), then kill whatever else, jump on the gear lifts to get out.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There really isn't that many down there, even though it seemed like there would be.  I was actually disappointed, as I thought there would be like another 20 groups, not 4.</DIV>

[Kinni]

Remember that nothing in there repops.  If you start getting in trouble, run away.  They'll reset, and now you'll have fewer mobs (the ones you were able to kill the first time around will be gone) to deal with the next time.  If you kill the ghosts and you get in trouble when the undead pop, just jump back up on the ledge, and 9 out of 10 times, the mobs will run away and reset. <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As a note, it's possible to only kill 2 gnolls before you get the buff.  The one at the bottom of the first tunnel, and the one by the first torch.  You can light all the rest of the torches and get all the boxes without agroing anything, if you're careful.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Kinnien on <span class=date_text>09-01-2005</span> <span class=time_text>10:59 AM</span>

[SonnyA]

After getting the Harclave buff. If you're using a twohander, you might as well not use offensive combat arts. You'll do more damage with your swings than with the CAs. So don't waste precious swing time on "casting time". <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>At level 49 I hit for 300-400 per swing with my EBBC. In comparison, my Dreadful Wrath only did a measly 280. Only the AE arts were worth using, because the damage ratio goes up a lot when you hit 6 mobs with it.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you have trouble staying alive, then don't pull multiple groups. Clear an area and pull mobs to there, instead of running into the groups.</DIV>

[SaraBH]

one of the tricks to single pulling is using none agro spells. There are 2 i know of that never pull agro from other groups. Are str debuff/buff, and are caress line. I can pull single encounters everytime even with the mobs on top of one another.

[Uggli]

As far as I can tell the mobs in Harclave do not social aggro, so the "skill" needed for solo pulling encounters ranks just above being able to tie your shoe.    They need to add more social aggro mobs in my opinion.  Make things more interesting. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <div></div>

[Gigglet]

<P>All you have to do is go slow in the begining. Test the waters out and watch for adds.  If you get to many hop over the board and try to run them off. There is some odd pathing sometimes with the gnolls where some will appear right out the wall and walk the edge after the first jump.  All I do is keep that in mind and take them as I can handle them.  After I get the uber buff I just take on groups as I can get them and poof done.  It's really all about taking the time to go slow till you know your way around.  Then it will be old hate before you know it.</P> <P><img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P>