GW2: She’s Found the Altar to Balthazar

Path of Fire isn’t the first storyline I completed. We did Secrets of the Obscure to the end, and we’re up to date on Janthir Wilds. But it’s the first in a while, especially for content so old.

My goal this past week was to get as close to the end of the expansion as I could before I asked for Team Spode to step in and help. And I did, and you know what, it was pretty fun. I looked forward to logging in for a few minutes each night and progressing the story.

It goes slow; I can fight, but it’s more survivable, for me, if I switch to healing and let my mech handle the tanking and deeps. Every so often, I can swap back to deeps and do my part. In this way, I was able to take on most of the challenges.

But it’s an MMO, and when I play an MMO, I want to play with other people. I don’t know if I could have soloed the last two battles of the Path of Fire expansion — the War Beast and the fallen god, Balthazar — but I did know that I didn’t want to.

Lord Spode and Calrain, Team Spode leaders, logged in and we set off… to a lot of conversation. I sent my three NPC companions off to cover the routes Balthazar would not be taking, so that I could be sure to take on Balthazar without the help of them or their squads. Cowards. Oh but YES THEY DID take credit at the end, despite doing nothing.

Balthazar (in fairy rings and flower beds) sent his Forged hordes to soften up the undead army I commanded. They were already dead, so they didn’t need my help, but we did have to take out some shield-generating Assemblers as we tracked the War Beast’s path of destruction. We finally met it on top of a high, lightning-struck plateau, and we kept dying to attacks we couldn’t anticipate. Finally, Spode went Leroy Jenkins on the beast and destroyed it at the cost of his own life.

How heroic! That’s why he’s Spode.

Balthazar popped up, monologued a bit, and set on us. Huge dragon Krakatoa (or something) and baby dragon Aurene helped us with their Branded (Krakatooi) and super mega blasts (Aurene) as I whacked at him with the special sword I got, built for god whacking, but not intended to be used. There was an achievement for not using the sword. Every time I swapped back from healing, though, the damn thing would pop into my hand and I’d be swinging it like an idiot. So goodbye that achievement.

Eventually he died. Krackle-and-pop and Aurene got supercharged on fallen god energy (left out of the feast: ME, who actually killed him and got NOTHING, and how is that fair?). Krackeddotcom flew off to destroy Amnoon and set up Living World Season 4, while Aurene flew off to her destiny, which, spoiler alert, is to kill Krakodile and become an Elder Dragon, whom we meet again in End of Dragons. Where she presumably ends; I haven’t played it yet.

Epilogue: talk to a bunch of NPCs, ruin someone’s day/life, get attacked by Kackedlips.

I started the expansion intending to follow up the Skyscale quest with all the other mounts. The capstone mount of the expansion is the rare mount of the Sunspears, the Griffon. To get to this remote sanctuary, you have to find hidden clues, talk to random people, and then use your Springer, Jackal and Skimmer to follow the very dangerous path to the ruins of the Sunspear sanctuary.

Or, you know, just use a Skyscale and fly straight to it.

But! I am all about the authenticity, especially when I have a fallback position (Skyscale) in case being authentic doesn’t work out for me. So I skimmed. I jackaled. I did not spring, though. For some reason, the Springer mastery track is still locked for me, so in the end, I skyscaled anyway. Just at the end.

Finishing the Griffon mount is going to require doing a fair amount of collections, some legendary bounties (we’ll see if I can solo them), and buy items worth 250 gold. I’m still a little short after buying stuff for the Skyscale; I’ve only got like 45 gold left. So, this is going to cost me some cash.

I’ll get just to that point, and then we’ll see if I have fallen in love with it.

News on the Turtle mount: Calrain mentioned that it wasn’t as easy as I thought it might be. It ends with a Strike mission; these are two group raids. I don’t think we can even get one group together right now. So, putting that aside for now.

Anyway, Path of Fire done! Yay!

Video below is BOC doing E.T.I. live, where they talk about Balthazar a bit. The lyrics I’ve been sprinkling are what I hear. The clickbait lyric sites all have the same wrong lyrics, I mean like clearly wrong.