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Exile Fractal (Cantha)

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In this fractal, players will help a prisoner escape captivity within the confines of Kaineng City.

Objectives

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Break the Special Prisoner out of gaol.

-> Release one of the other prisoners.

Flee the Prison

(1) Escape to the Safehouse. (Local Protector)

-> Confront the Gang-leader.

(2) Hide in the Monestry. (Wise Sage)

-> Convince the Head Monk of your devotion.

(3) Venture to the Estate. (Trusted Advisor)

-> Clear the Squatters from the grounds.

Delay the Emergency Recovery Squad.

Walkthrough

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In this fractal, players will be partly merged as they are in the the Battlegrounds fractal; all players will be wearing a disguise which will give them a new armour, but will not change their race. The armour includes a hood which comes down to just above the eyeline. Several other characters in the fractal will wear the same armour, giving you a visual cue as to who is friendly and who is not.

- Break the Special Prisoner out of gaol

Players will begin the fractal down the corridor of a set of prison cells. Guards will be lining the walls, all netural to the players. As players approach, the guards will turn either friendly or hostile and either join or attack the party respectively. Players will need to make their way to the end of this corridor, where a cell stands alone in the center of the room with several cells around it, some used and some not.

Players will need to damage the door to the cell whilst holding off the guards that spawn. This will not take very long, and any skills may be used to damage the door.

Once they open the doors, 5 veteran allies wearing the disguise players have will run into the room and turn friendly, along with the Special Prisoner. For the rest of the fractal, the Special Prisoner will remain with the players. Any damage she takes will be redirected to any allies within a small radius (a white circle focussed on her). This damage is divided evenly between all allies in the area. She and her guards will follow a random player who has a ranged weapon equipped, ignoring those who weild melee weapons. If enemies get too close to her, she will use a skill which emits a blue pulse in a small area around her, healing allies and damaging foes for the same amount.

-> Free the Other Prisoners

Around the outer cells, players will find two of the three prisoners listed in the objectives above. Players must choose which prisoner to break out, as once one prisoner is saved players wil be ushered out of the room. The direction players leave and the subsequent locations present in the rest of the fractal depend on the choice players make. Thus, each section below explains what happens as players choose that ally to save. Note, the final boss is the same for all players, and thus is described seperately below this section.

The label in between the ( ) brackets denotes which ally needs to be saved to follow the path.

Flee the Prison

(1) Escape to the Safehouse (Loyal Protector)

For this section, players will be joined by a champion warrior, the Loyal Protector. The will be motioned to the west exit of the cell.

In this initial section, players will need to fight off small groups of guards until they reach solid ground. From here players will encounter groups of Broken Gang Members, usually comprised of either melee (Thieves and Warriors) or ranged attackers (Rangers and Necromancers). All these foes are male. Be careful when approaching these groups, as they will often spawn more foes upon engaging them. Players should also be prepared to be attacked from above by the Am Fah, who will ambush players from areas of dark shadow. It is also worth nothing that there is very little diference between the different classes in terms of their appearances; the ranged attackers will all wear the same armour with different masks, and the melee attackers will be the same except for differing pauldrons.

After a few groups, players will find themselves in front of a particularly darkened bridge, with the Loyal Protector noting there is a safehouse just on the other side. Once players step onto the bridge, the boss fight will begin.

-> Defeat the Gang-Leader

This boss fight can be quite tricky, as players will have a large group of enemies in a small area to deal with. Upon the boss spawning, the guards following will run to the back of the bridge, cutting off any reinforcements from the back, but also stopping players moving off the bridge.

The boss himself is mainly a matter of damage; he will jump between enemies and attempt to spike them down. Beyond this, he has only two special skills he will use during the fight; he will spin and throw knives, causing any allies hit to be immobilised and suffer heavy bleeding damage, and he will call for re-enforcements to attack on his behalf. These reenforcements will spawn into the area, attack three times and leave, thus do not concentrate on damaging them.

Use of skills that immobilise and cripple will help here. The boss is only a veteran, so once he is down players will be able to move on.

Players will still engage groups of Broken Gang-Members as they progres towards the safehouse, however they will be smaller groups and will never spawn more enemies when enagaged.

Once players reach the Safehouse the Prisoners guards will leave to scout the path ahead, and the players will be attacked starting the final boss fight of the fractal. the Loyal protector will leap into battle with the Overzealous Seeker, giving you time to fight the underlings, and starting the boss fight.

(2) Hide in the Monestary (Wise Sage)

For this section, players will be joined by a champion elementalist, the Wise Sage. They will be motioned to the east exit of the prison.

In this initial section, players will need to fight off sporadic guards as work their way across to the nearest tower, and up one level, eventually reaching "ground"; the criss-cross of rooves that makes up the city's middle sections. The first thing players will notice heading through the corridors are large amounts of varied looking neutral NPCs with the same name; Desperate Citizens. As players move through the section, some of the NPC's will turn hostile, whilst others will wander away and despawn once they are out of the player's eyeline.

In this section the foes players fight will mainly use improvised and environmental weapons with the occassional NPC being armed, however these NPC's won't use more then the skill assigned to the auto attack a player would have access to. For example, a Citizen with a sword may use either the Sword of Wrath chain skill from the Guardian or the Slice chain from the Thief, but only one, and have no other special skills. The challenge in this area comes from the sheer number of these NPCs, who will flock to players as they pass.

Once these Citizens are brought to 10% health, they will turn friendly and limp away, despawning like the other Citizens. It is important to note that players who choose this path will still get loot; these NPC's will drop loot bags at the player's feet much like what occurs in WvW.

Once players reach the Monestary in the depths of the city, they will be ushered in, and the boss fight for this section will begin. The guards will stay in the outer sections of the Monestary.

-> Convince the Head Monk of your devotion.

This fight is different to many of the encounters players will be familiar with. Players will be unable to damage the boss directly, but thier actions will remove stacks of Righteous Anger.

Players will be confronted by three types of neutral NPC's. The first, Defending Monks, will simply attack the players. Each one defeated will remove 5 stacks of Righteous Anger. Silent Monks will wander through the arena, only attacking players when they are themselves attacked. Once 10% of their health is removed, they will return to being netural. Each Silent Monk to make it out of the area will remove 10 stacks of Righteous Anger. The last type, Weary Pilgrims, will wander into the arena and collapse. Players will need to not only revive them, but heal them to full health. Each one saved this way will remove 7 stacks of Righteous Anger.

These stacks will also drop over time. Stacks will be added for three actions; whenever the players kill a Silent Monk, 20 stacks will be added. Whenever a player is downed, 14 stacks will be added. Finally, whenever the Prisoner uses the skill that causes her to create a burst outwards 5 stacks will be added. It is important to note that this skill will only harm hostile NPC's, and heal both the Neutral ones and Allied ones.

Once all the stacks of Righteous Anger have been removed, a guard will run into the room and proclaim the Monestary is being attacked. The Head Monk will stealth all the players and the Prisoner, and the Overzealous Seeker will walk into the area with his normal group. In this area, instead of coming from a life or death struggle with the Protector, the Seeker will burst through the doors to the room at the back of the area. (during the middle of the final boss fight.)

(3) Venture to the Estate. (Trusted Advisor)

For this section, players will be joined by a champion Mesmer. The will be motioned towards the north exit of the prison.

In this initial section, players will need to navigate up a staircase around one of the towers, wading through several guards. Once players work their way up to the surface, they'll be met with an afternoon day in the upper reaches of the city.

Through this area players will find roving patrols of Imperial Guards. These guards will check various places for any intruders, attacking random NPC's if they attack the Guards. The key to this area is taking outt he groups out of the line of sight of other groups. The easiest way to complete this is for a one player to pull the group into the shadows which come from the buildings, but players may also utilise the various environmental fixtures to create sounds, drawing the closest group towards them. This tatic can be used to draw a group away from discovering the players.

If the players are discovered, they will draw any group within a small radius, quickly overwhelming them. The enemies in this section have little health, but will damage players for higher damage then they are used to from normal foes within the game. Like most of this fractal, the key is not to run headlong into the fray; players who take their time will easily complete the section. Once players reach the gates of the oppulent building near the edge of the city-scape, they will be rushed in and the next section will begin.

-> Clear the Squatters from the grounds.

Once inside, players will be confronted with a new enemy; Violent Squatters. These enemies will pile large numbers of conditions on the players, but comparitively deal less damage. Players will need to wade through them to the central building on the grounds.

This boss fight is different to the others in the fractal. Once players venture into the main hall, the Squatter Mastermind will come down the stairs to the back of the complex, and begin to taunt the players. The key to this boss fight is movement; the boss will be under a debuff which will trigger any time that players are not in line of sight of any of the enemies within the building. This debuff will cause her to become vulnerable for a time, and players will deal much more damage then they would normally during this time. Once the debuff wears off, she will attack the nearest player with a huge spike of damage, capable of downing a player in one hit.

Besides this pattern, she will attack with ranged spells, mostly area of effect skills. Whilst these will effect a large area, they will only cause light damage to players. Instead, they will add various conditions depending on the color of the smoke produced; red for bleeding, green for poison, blue for chill and yellow for burning.

The best way to ensure both the debuff triggers and to isolate the groups that will come to her aide is to utilise the various environmental devices. All of these are along the walls, and will move players to the rooms adjacent to the main hall. This will cause the spawns to have to run through complicated paths to reach the players. If players are careful enough, they can avoid the spawns entirely.

Once the boss is defeated, the Advisor will rush into the room, opening a hidden trap and ushering players into the basement. The initial group of the final boss will drop in from above, and the boss will also drop in once the first phase of the fight is over.

Delay the Emergency Recovery Squad.

This boss fight is split into two sections. This first section will pit the players against 5 Zealous Special Police who have the same classes as the players in the fractal. They will use one weapon per class however, and only use the skills those weapons would normally afford players. This fight is made tough by three things; the Zealous Special Police will all look the same except for being male or female (which has no bearing on their skills at all.) they are all of veteran level attributes, and finally, players will not be able to kill these Police all together.

As players get these foes down to 10% health, they will turn friendly and begin to very slowly regenerate health. Players will need to get all the foes down to 10% health at such time they will all retreat from the feild. The boss will then finish off the ally he is dealing with and jump into the fray.

-> Defeat the Overzealous Seeker

This champion level boss forms the last fight of the fractal. He will be dual-weilding a sceptor and a sword, using both of these interchangably. In general, he will focus on one target at range, and another that moves close to him. His normal attacks are nothing very sepcial, resulting in generally high-damaging attacks which cause small stacks of random conditions depending on the weapon players are hit with. Getting struck with the sceptor will result in either Blind, Confusion or Chill and getting struck with the sword will result in either Bleeding, Vulnerability or Poison.

The true difficulty of the fight comes in two areas. Firstly, he will attack the Prisoner quite often, causing anyone near her to get the resulting damage, and secondly, the area in which players are effected by the mechanic is increased. In general, he will only attack the Prisoner at range, only really attacking her in melee when she comes too close. This changes however when players get the boss down to either 75%, 50% or 25% health. Once they do, the boss will leap towards the Prisoner and begin attacking her with both weapons, triggering her redirection ability very frequently. To stop the boss, players must lay as many boons on the Prisoner as they can; every stack of a boon placed on her will cause her to remove that boon and gain a stack of Directed Rage. When these stacks expire, she will attack the boss with a skill similiar to the one she uses when surrounded during the fractal, but horizontal. This will knock the boss back, cause him to become Stunned for 5 seconds, and deal large amounts of damage to him. After this he will resume his normal pattern of attack until he reaches another health break.

Once the boss is defeated the guards will return and usher the Prisoner away. This will stabilise the fractal.

Achievements

All Roads Lead to Safety - Complete each of the three paths in the fractal.