I ran Normal Darkshade Caverns II for the first time with my Warden Healer.

Now, I'm CP 690 and have run the dungeon before on other characters. I know the mechanics and I know the best strategy on the Engine Guardian. So I sigh, knowing that this dungeon is a grind at the best of times, culminating in a true test for my healer - the Engine Guardian's poison phase, which I've never done.

We deal with the Fallen Foreman, and I'm already seeing that group DPS is nothing spectacular. Its not low, but its not great either. On the plus side, everyone at least seems to know what they're doing and we have an actual tank so at least my healer won't be taking aggro. Hallelujah!

We hit the kwama boss and its chaos. Someone types to kill the scribs and the DPS try. But then the cave-in starts. You know, the Boss starts pounding the ground, the ceiling starts falling down, my group's health starts chunking down and I start healing. And healing. And the Boss is still pounding the ground. And the DPS are just standing there, doing nothing. One of them dies from running out of my heals. I rez them, keep healing, and the Boss is still doing the cave-in. One of them finally says "Does it ever end?"

I hastily type (while healing) that they need to break the boss' damage shield for him to stop. The DPS start attacking, break the shield, and the cave-in mercifully ends. Now that we know the mechanic, we kill the scribs and eventually bring down the kwama.

After this, we find out that one of our DPS has never done the dungeon before. Good to know! We quickly go through the mechanics of the next bosses so we're all prepared. I find out that the other DPS has never completed the dungeon. Nothing like a little more pressure on my healer to get that poison phase right!

Me and one of the DPS were commiserating about Grobull before we started. Grobull is a grind in the best of groups, but we just didn't have the burst damage for him. In the end, I resorted to going full DPS with a few heals on the netch spawns and just spamming cliff racers at Grobull whenever he dropped.

We make it to the Engine Guardian and I warn everyone to stay close to me when the boss turns green, I'm going to spam heals. We start, and after following him for a bit, the first poison phase happens. I start my healing springs, and me and the closest DPS are fine. The tank and the DPS who weren't close to me? Not so much and I can't go back and get them. They die and we wipe to reset the dungeon.

The second time...Wardens were made for Darkshade Caverns II heal checks. Everyone knew what to expect and stayed close in the healing circles. During the fire and lightning phases, I used Lotus Flower and kept the group healed with light attacks to conserve resources for the poison phase, which turned out to be not as bad as I'd feared. All I had to do was manage my resources well enough to cast healing springs every couple seconds. We beat the Engine Guardian for a nice finish to a sometimes rocky dungeon.

As happy as I am to have completed the Engine Guardian's heal check to my satisfaction, I was beyond thrilled with my groupmates. We didn't have the best DPS by any means, but we all pulled together to grind our way through. Everyone learned and adapted very quickly. We had a lot of fun - there's something special about knowing you are helping someone learn mechanics and complete a dungeon for the first time. It would be easy to get frustrated with the grindy mechanics or low group DPS, but everyone stuck it out and in the end, we triumphed together.

Darkshade Caverns II was one of the highlights of my random dungeon event and it wasn't because my healer succeeded. It was awesome because my group pulled together, made it work, and together we triumphed.

Palidon wrote: »

I ran random undaunted dungeons that I have run at least 50 times in the past only to get mystery boxes containing JUNK, JUNK and More JUNK. So much fun.

Junk from event, but did have fun from clusterflock groups. some was so fast, others was a challenge till ppl learned their skills.

Got the Horse on the last run on a character I had not ran during the entire event until then. Somehow dont feel happy or satisfied at all. Will be much more hesitant to do these sort of events in the future.

I have 70 or 75 crown store tristat potions and I am tired of redbull.

the million story event right?

you want to hear about my 10 fungal grotto stories or my 20 banished cell stories?

I got vet COS for random(I know you can do normals but those just get so boring after a while)...on a character that's supposed to be a tank but whom I haven't used for like years and she doesn't even have Warhorn or anything

Made it with just 2-3 wipes. DK tanking is ridiculously easy.

I've also led a group of total newbies through vet Spindle II as a healer, one of them being a cp 30 tank who actually meant to queue for random normal This reminded me of the good old 1.5 times when only the bravest of the bravest dared to enter vet Spindleclutch, and even they usually wiped on Praxin for a bit. They were willing to try and learn though and we made it eventually

Queued as DPS on a handful of characters (only 14 total runs for the event).

Queue times were avg 8-10m, but this morning's was like 1m.

Got through the dungeons with no problems, no group drama, etc.

Got loot each time, including 2 costumes, and some minor things that didn't bother me (except the one lockpick).



...overall, it was fine. No group finder issues, got some semi-useful loot, and I'm poor enough that the 1k Plunders were nice, too.

/shrug

(PC, NA, no ESO+ so no DLC dungeons)