Talk:Ascalonian Catacombs (explorable)

A good place to start

I found this the other day [1]] Might be a good thing to verify clean up, reword make it someone's own and get it on the wiki. Anzenketh 04:27, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah thats my guide, I have added it to the page. Renegade --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.31.235.228 (talk).

Jump Puzzle at the end

....doesn't appear to have a chest or anything else anywhere near the end of it. Or has someone found a trick yet that gets them beyond that pillar room with the ghost planks? --ilr 04:41, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Tears Confusion

The article states you get 60 [tears] first time each day per path. Does this mean that I could simply do path 2 (which I'm most comfortable with) once every day and get 60 tears every time? --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.104.0.179 (talk).

Yes, first time you do a path you get 60 tokens, you get 20 after that for repeating the path. Could be worded slightly differently?--Relyk 20:49, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Player Triggered Events

Defeat the ghosts
Anyone noticed the mysterious torch under the stairs(by first graveling mound, before spider that spawns ghosts when interacted/exstinguished. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 99.182.80.109 (talk).

Guide Ruined

Just reading through this guide, it has been ruined over the last 2 months by noobs who have cleared Kholer a couple of times. Bad grammer, factual mistakes, smiley faces?? I suggest a revert back to the 17th september when I uploaded what is still an extremely accurate guide. Renegade --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.31.235.228 (talk).

Seconded, especially the part about Kohler since it is covered about 2 inches above it. 76.115.56.232 10:10, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Order of Completion

The order of objective completion may be important. Just ran the first path with guildmates and the first burrow did not immediately spawn, so we ran past it. It did eventually spawn as some of us used the waypoint and ran down past it. We completed all objectives up until the second scepter piece. Hodgens would not initiate his dialog, even after we went back to destroy the burrow. 66.68.178.52 05:03, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Cave Troll Spawn Locations

Can somebody make a labelled map to show all the possible places where the cave troll can spawn? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 218.186.18.236 (talk) at 20:05, 6 December 2012‎ (UTC).

Colossus is bugged. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.131.217.254 (talk) at 18:38, 29 January 2013 (UTC).

General note

Due to the update of 28th Jan 2013 it is no long possible to kill enemies from safe spots within this dungeon. This applies to standing on the ledge to kill spiders (killing gargoyle heads is still possible), standing on the rubble to kill the graveling mob and standing on the stairs to range The Howling King. Qiff 08:59, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Colossus Rumblus

There is a spot on near the stairs where you can stand without getting hit by the debris. It is a hill of rubble. From the ledge of it down to the floor will not have red circle indicators. If you attack from the ledge the boss will reset before dying. However, you can fight on the ground with your backs to the wall and tank the boss till he dies. 108.192.149.28 15:11, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Why would you do this when Grast has a very effective shield for you? Fresh Berry Smoothie 17:27, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Because he fails to open the shield every other time... --93.216.228.213 13:36, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Must be a bug. I personally have not experienced this in the 5-6 times I've done it since patch. Regardless, I don't think it would be a good idea to put on the front page of the wiki (Even if it is broken) Fresh Berry Smoothie 13:55, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Well that's astounding that you never encountered Grast failing to cast his protection spell, considering it's 100% reproducible and in my ~40 attempts at defeating this boss it has failed about 66% of the time. 174.35.247.117 23:12, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

33% success rate 5-6 times in a row isn't astounding. If I had done it 40 times without him ever failing then I'd see what you're saying. Because of what I read here I've been trying to do it more often and I actually did get this problem today and he did bug. Couldn't find the spot the first poster (I'm assuming you?) and we had three non-80s in the group, so we had to quit. Definitely not fun to do, but I just can't seem to think we deserve to mention it anymore than as a "bug" in the wiki. We could perhaps use one of those "bug" lines that are shown at the bottom in the colossus rumblus section. We tried various methods and tried to see what it was that was causing him to not put the shield up 100% of the time. He did put it up maybe twice, but we're not sure why. Many times when he was supposed to cast he was in the middle of an attack or knocked down from the boss's launch. However it seemed that a couple times he had no reason to fail at putting up the shield. Another thing we noticed was that the more people we had in melee range the less often the boss would do the cave-in. Ultimately we got him to about 25% health 3 times in a row using interrupts and skirting his melee range. Would've been nice to have found that spot the original poster mentioned. Fresh Berry Smoothie 23:22, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Was doing Colossus Rumblus just today. Tried to kill him . . . not even sure how many times. Probably at least 10. Warmaster Grast would eventually screw up the shield bubble every time, often the first time it came up, but if he managed it the first time typically he'd fail the second time. One failure is enough to trigger "rocks fall everyone dies", at least when you're doing it the "proper" way. We tried interrupt spam to prevent him from using the rockfall attack, which worked for a while, but there just wasn't enough interrupts. On top of all that, often Grast dies halfway through, at which point you're completely screwed. We finally managed to kill the boss when one person discovered the safespot - he actually killed off the boss by himself, while the other four of us were dead, since only the shockwave attack could hit him and it doesn't do enough DPS to kill you alone. Probably counts as an exploit, since the boss seems to think he can melee you but actually can't, but it felt impossible to kill him any other way. Gets on my nerves, since I like doing things in a non-exploity fashion. --Son of Urza 01:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

We had to try him again without Grast. Your worry that this is an exploit is somewhat true. As far as the boss's attacks go everything still hits you except for the ceiling rocks in the safe spot. For the most part though the boss can still hit you. Considering that he cannot be done with grast failing to put his shield up, the mechanics are unknown to us or possibly broken. We also did it in the safe spot and killed Rumblus under a minute. We didn't know it could be killed that fast, but it was a breath of fresh air after spending close to an hour trying to do him the "intended" way. If we can determine that this isn't an exploit but an LoS method or something then we should include the "safe spot" on the wiki so others can complete this dungeon when Grast sucks balls and fails to do his job or decides to eat the floor. Fresh Berry Smoothie 13:10, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Kholer Adds

Is it always: The first pair of adds will be a monk and a warrior; At 75% it's mesmer and warrior; At 50% it's a mesmer and necromancer; At 25% it's a ranger and mesmer. Semi-Selfnote for myself Fresh Berry Smoothie 22:51, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Kholer Adds seem to always have a monk come out first. Pretty sure there is a set pattern. I seriously should pay attention and memorize it. Then I'll update the wiki Fresh Berry Smoothie 13:11, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

100 -- Monk/Ele 75% -- W/mes 50% -- Warr/Necro 25% -- Mesmer/Ranger

I will eventually figure this out. Omg. Fresh Berry Smoothie 19:51, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Okay, confirmed that's how it is Fresh Berry Smoothie 14:55, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Difficulty increase

After the february update the explorable paths of the dungeon have been increased in difficulty. The gravelings spawned by graveling breeders cause 3 stacks of bleeding with their normal attacks, howlers now cause confusion and (I think it's the scavengers) others now burrow and knock you down (like the dredge can). This is all no problem for a fully geared lvl 80 team, but low levels will have a very hard time here. I did p3 with 2 lvl 80's (incl me) and 3 lvl 50's, we all knew the dungeon (and knew the changes) and failed on various occasions. Gathering ecto-undeath distillate is extremely hard if you don't have a staff ele with the frost bow. If burrows are up too long, breeders will spawn, spawning those small 3 stacks bleeding thing (which is a little too strong imo) and while you're trying to get rid of the small ones and to kill the next burrow, while also healing through the bleeding, some scavenger comes up and knocks you through the sky. I also encountered the same problem as the players above with Grast failing to put up his shield in time. My advice to anyone is to just do the dungeon with lvl 80 players. We could agrue that the dungeon has lost it's original purpose (doable for lvl 35's), but my personal opinion is that no explorable dungeon is intended for players lower than lvl 80 (many are still doable though). Qiff 12:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I strongly disagree -- When we first did AC as a guild back in September or October we spent hours doing this dungeon. No one knew the mechanics, what could be skipped, what creatures did what abilities, etc. So we spent a long time figuring it out. Months later we knew the mechanics and often chalked up the increased speed of completing the dungeon to our level 80s. However that was not true, as we learned by talking new members and ourselves at lower levels. It was simply a matter of learning the mechanics that had caused us significant trouble. And that is a part of this wiki's job -- To explain the mechanics of the various encounters in this dungeon. We at first blazed through the new dungeons on our 80s and some of us were concerned that the new dungeon changes would make it too difficult for new players to complete it. However, we then took 2 new players (never in a dungeon) levels 32 and 34, one player who had been in AC prior to the patch once or twice level 42, and two players that have played the game since launch levels 31 and 38, simply wreck the dungeon in about 40 minutes. That is obviously not the time we would expect te clear it on our 80s, but it is very much doable. We didn't even take into account the time spent explaining all the fights, all the tells of the bosses, etc. This new dungeon isn't "harder" than the old one, it's simply "different". It's evidenced even by our relatively new player saying "whoa, that spider queen fight was intense! but also faster!". They upped the risk/reward for paying attention and knowing what to do when. Considering ANet had always wanted to reward players for being smart and paying attention this is in line with their philosophy. Also they have already hinted that over the coming months they will be making similar changes to the rest of the dungeons. So if AC is undoable by lower levels now (in your opinion, not mine) then CM wil be as well when the make the changes. Also most of the differences have been documented into the main page already -- Including the burrowing, confusion stacks, etc. Fresh Berry Smoothie 13:05, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I would like to mention, Qiff said "everyone knew the dungeon and it's changes". it wasn't a lack of experiance, I've only done a path of the dungeon once since it's been updated, so it's very possible I'm wrong, but it seems that at least being level 80 with higher level gear, you might be able to take the occasional hit, and when it's multiples of 3 stacks of bleed, you want all the help you can get.173.88.250.197 06:37, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I would like to mention that I was aware of that when I wrote my post. Even with our low level group we had blind fields and great condition removal for the party to negate those stacks of bleed (Which didn't get over 15 for us because we were killing things pretty fast). I think Qiff may have know about the general mechanics but was not prepared/organized as a party to handle the other new mechanics such as the bleed. My post wasn't to make Qiff "wrong" as much as I was just trying to balance what many others besides Qiff have been saying. So Qiff, I know you weren't one of those people, and I do apologize for using you as a scapegoat xP. But it is very possible that newcomers who read this wiki will still be unprepared for the dungeon. My story was just to point out that it can be done by lower than 80s, and that too, with ease. But I didn't mention that two of us had extensive experience with other dungeons and were very flexible in learning the new mechanics (We had picked up all the changes to the breeder types right after the Spider Queen). So we knew when we needed what and we as a group switched our utils and weapons around based on what was to come. We did all three paths on those lowbies, and the hardest part was what Qiff mentioned with the burrows. I'm not disagreeing with Qiff that this is the hardest part in all three paths. Because I agree with him. But it was the ONLY place we failed on all 3 paths since the new patch -- So to us to have one area where these lowbies failed was okay for us (especially since we did end up beating it with the same group set up on the third try -- It required good communication, which is not available in PuGs so that could be one thing). The burrow part an Path 1 is harder than any other aspect of the dungeon in my opinion. So I hope with this clarification there are no hard feelings ^_^ Fresh Berry Smoothie 13:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Howling King Path 1 (post February patch)

I was about to update the wiki with this bit of information, but wanted someone to confirm first. I just ran Path 1 of this and on the final fight against the howling king we found that he was able to be interupted, even with full defiant stacks. It made the fight incredibly trivial and made killing him and kiting the adds super easy. It may or may not be a bug, but we didn't have to worry about his attacks because we could knock him down. I was using Warrior rifle skill 5, and I know a few others were able to use knockdowns on him as well. --Souldonkey 06:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Updated the wiki to reflect my findings. I've run the path 8 more times and can confirm that multiple knock down and knock back skills were able to interrupt the Howling King during his cast, making the fight considerably easier. --Souldonkey 19:57, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Cave Troll Stomp

I've not actually seen it really discussed anywhere, but it is actually possible to jump over the champion cave troll's ground stomp, as long as you aren't in the red ring when it goes off. You jump right after the initial wave hits you, before the tremor lines hit you, completely dodges the attack. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.163.32.81 (talk) at 07:23, 23 March 2013 (UTC).

2 Secrets

1. During Path 1, after finishing the event in the Archives of the Resting and getting the waypoint to appear, you can do a jumping puzzle in the southmost room that opens. At the end, you will see 7 turkeys in a small room with demonic red lighting. Are there any other places in the game where you can see the turkey models?

2. After completing Path 1 or 3, take the staircase (at the back of the boss room) all the way to the top and walk through some plants covering a hidden entrance in the wall. There is another short JP with ghostly walkways.

--175.142.90.10 04:11, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

--- this should probably be written in a trivia section in the article, or as notes --2.203.0.253 02:48, 14 January 2018 (UTC)