Some brief tips and general notes:- You need to complete each trial properly in order to proceed to the next trial up until trial 9.
- Grab the
golden quest every time you do a trial, failure to do so results in no reward.
- You need to be 145+, have 1000 merit, and have the Master of Balance Title (
Title Questline) in order to start trials.
- The more people you have along, the easier it gets. There are boss drops, but well, how you split it is up to you. Everyone gets the quest and quest completion, that's what most people look for anyways.
- Work together, it's important. This instance is NOT meant to be soloed.
- If you die, don't worry, you do not lose XP in the 9 Trials. However, you do need to re-enter the instance and it does cost you merit points.
- Grab the
Blessings of the Gods [Teleporter NPC] every time you do each trial. It helps A LOT. Also, grab it inside each trial not outside in the base. What is it? Well, as per description, it doubles all skill damage. However, calculations showed that it actually quadruples your skill damage. I would say the 10,000 coins is worth it.
- Trials can be done
twice a week and they reset every Wednesday.
- Every stage has a boss. It's a common goal, so I won't be stating it in each trial as a "goal". That should be self-explanatory. These bosses have a lot of HP. They also AOE, and carry AOE debuffs [stun/HP reduction/sleep/nukes/etc] with them. Do have a charm, if not, some pots, or a BB, otherwise, you may just die.
- I have been informed that between stages 4-9 (trial #4-9) there is a chest called
"Faction Chest" containing R8 recast materials. They are tradeable with the exception of a few openable packs that apparently disappear upon leaving the faction base. (Still figuring out how that makes sense since the forges are outside, probably something I have still yet to figure out)
- Each trial has an NPC that allows you to START and RESET. Make sure you have ONE person (probably faction leader/organizer) control this. You don't want people resetting the dungeon thinking it needs to be or by accident, nor do you want people starting it when your members are not in place yet.
Rewards: 15 Perfect Elements and 5 Damascene Ores per trial + chest rewards
Explanation of each trial:Trial #1 [Trial of Balance]
Goal:- Balance each element by evening out the number of the mobs.
Overview:Simple procedure. Add up the total number of mobs in each of the 5 elemental rooms, then divide by 5. The result number is the number that you require in each room. Now, be careful, the mobs DON'T die, they simply "reappear" in another element room. Below is a list of which elemental room mobs go to after being killed:
Earth moves to MetalMetal moves to WaterWater moves to WoodWood moves to FireFire moves to EarthSide Note: Earth mobs have bramble when you hit them, make sure you don't suicide APS them.
Try to find if there is any room that has the correct number of mobs, if you do, leave it, and go "down" one element to clear instead. Why? If you have say 20 in Fire, and you need 20 in each room, there's no point to kill anything in fire. Start from Earth. By killing the mobs there, you shift the mobs to the next element, then there is no need to clear any mobs that are already "balanced". I would recommend having an equally divided number of squads [if possible] in each room, starting one at a time. After elements are balanced, the boss spawns in the central room you start in right in the center. Kill it, grab your reward. The boss does have some aoes, I believe it is physical, but with BB you should be fine.
Trial #2 [Trial of Defense]
Update V56: Trial 2 mob spawn time has been reduced by 2x. Total mob clear time is now around 25 minutes.Goal:- Make sure that no more than 10 supermobs leak past the last room [at the very back]
- Kill 1 regular mob for "afk-check" completion
Overview:There are 4 rooms total. If you look at the quest, it says 0/0 for two types of materials 4 times. Something like this
0/0
0/0
0/0
0/0
You want that to be 200/200. Why? As the quest says, supermobs will spawn, they are immune to damage. That means, you can't hurt it. How can you defeat this? Well, summon IDOLS. These IDOLS are actually just NPC mobs designed to kill those damage immune mobs.
How can you get them? There are 3 quests at every NPC within each room. The first two quests give the two mats required to summon the idol. The third quest is an exchange/hand-in quest, allowing the idol to be summoned. The other alternative to these mats would be to kill the mobs that spawn every few minutes [there is a timer for this]. These mobs are aggro [the ones that are initially there are not and drop nothing] and they will attack you so be careful. Set up any zhen if you want/can, and these mobs will drop random mats of the 4 rooms [so it may not be the one you need].
Side note: Make sure you kill at least one mob to complete the quest.
Side note#2: Killing the mobs drop mats required for any of the 4 rooms. Since you will be in one room, there will be useless mats. Assign one person to collect these mats [in each room] and deliver it to the other rooms. I feel this is required to add because only by doing that did we (I think) manage to get the 4 idols up for each room. (I believe that one of or both of the last two rooms did not have 4 idols up by the time the first wave of supermobs spawned).
Each room can have a maximum of 4 idols, (50 per 2 different mats). Once you get all these idols set up, you are basically done. Just wait for the supermobs to spawn and enjoy the show. Note that the supermobs can't be hurt by players, just watch the NPC do it. There are multiple waves though, not just 1.
After you beat each of those waves, the boss appears. He is in the farthest room from the starting point. Kill him and claim the reward at the teleporter. Once again, don't forget to grab the golden quest.
EDIT @ Feb 4 2012 Just putting in a small update. For this trial, if you do not have the number of participants, you can always dig dig dig before starting the trial since the chests are already there. If you fail the trial the first time through, the materials used to summon the idols stay with you so you can probably do it after a second or third try (depending on the number of people you have). Another strategy is to first dig before you start the trial. This way you can have all the idols for the dig quest, and just do the ones from the mobs.
Trial #3 [Trial of Towers]
Update V56: Trial 3 mob spawn time has been reduced by 2x. Total mob clear time is now around 30 minutes.Goal:- Keep at least 9/18 guards alive.
Overview:First things first. Grab 1 Celespirit to complete your non-afk quest.
This one is relatively easy. You just need good DDs + good number of people doing it, otherwise you'll probably fail pretty quickly. Once you start the trial, it's basically a defend the tower/npcs. There are 3 towers, each one with a designated name [like "Hell"]. Mobs spawn from 3 directions, marked by miniature like pillars, and they rush blindly towards the tower. There are big body-bag mobs, they explode, dealing aoe damage. There are also small arbiter of flame mobs [Nirvana boss] which I believe come from killing the Leaders that spawn during the assault. Killing each leader results in attack buff for the one who killed them. The last type of mob is a fiery golem kind of mob.
I would suggest having 1-2 BoA at each spawning zone, as well as 1-2 DB from wizards if you can manage it. Have the clerics set up BB of course, and have the non-zhenners watch for any mob leaks [that get past the aoe]. Make sure they do not reach the tower. APS is particularly effective vs the leaders, as killing them grants an attack buff for them. Have a few people go around looting the Celespirits because you can use them to summon helpful defense NPCs.
The
celespirits are used for your quest, as well as summoning NPC mobs.
Below is a breakdown:
10 for a bunch of General Summer wannabe fans (melee)30 for some ghostly green/grey stone golem mob50 for a sick tree (a big blue tree that seems to sit there staring at mobs).
I would recommend to have the golem mob (30) for killing the exploding mobs since they are ranged. The wannabes die fairly quickly to the explosions, but are good for the non-explosive mobs.
Side Note: Towers do not seem to be a requirement. We had one tower killed and we still finished the quest with no seeming detrimental effects. Also, tabbing can select the "ball" or "eye" (referring to rebirth) at the spawn point, allowing archers to keep up a constant BoA.
A mini-boss spawns somewhere around the tower near the end of the assault. Killing the mini-boss will halt the mobs, and you've successfully cleared one part. There are 3 towers, you need to defend each. Upon defending each of the 3 towers, and killing each of the 3 bosses, the main boss will spawn in the altar-like platform in the middle. Careful, if you are hitting in the water you may suffer damage reduction (because its like swamps, you may be "underwater").
Kill, claim your reward.
Trial #4 [Trial of Duty]
Goal:- Protect the NPC in the middle from dying.
Overview:Now, this one is also pretty straight-forward. A NPC sits in the middle, keep it alive.
Four towers will be present upon starting the trial, (based on experience) one is elemental immune (I don't remember, there may or may not be), one is physical immune and the other two are normal. Recommending to have the parties that do not have constant zhenning AOE in the 4 sides killing mobs. Have the zhenners (seekers/wizards/archers mainly) DDing in the middle. The towers do aoe, but very minimal damage, but have alot of HP. They can be debuffed.
Grab the required loot [thorns] first to complete the quest. This (you need 2) loot can be acquired from the mobs that spawn in the 4 sides of the map. They disappear upon you grabbing two. Make sure you take a few minutes to grab it whether you are the one DDing those mobs or DDing in the middle.
Caution: Killing a tower will spawn a mini-boss mob, so be careful and ready for a fight when the tower dies.
Side Note: Mobs seem to stop spawning from the side a tower is destroyed. At the same time, mobs spawning from the other towers get harder, and may also be physical or elemental immune.
After you have killed all 4 towers and each 4 mini-bosses that spawn, the main boss will spawn. Kill it and get your reward.
Trial #5 [Trial of Elements]
Goal:- Close each "eye" from each element and summon the boss.
- Maintain over 0 elemental strength (having 0 will fail the trial).
Overview:Kill the single mob required for quest completion.
In this, you will see that there are 5 different rooms for each element. Head in there, and pick a random one. However, I feel that there is a set order for this trial. If you take a look at the quest, it does say you need to close the "eye" of each element. To close the eye, you need to kill a "tower" that lies within each room. Start with Metal. Why? Killing 1 tower will "close" one eye and at the same time "open" one eye. That means, there can only be at most 4 "Eyes" closed, with 1 open.
The boss comes from the Earth room, so we need to start with Metal.
The mobs inside each room drop items. Have one person per squad in each room pick up the Pads of <Element> and exchange it with Mr No. Problem. You would be advised to get at least 100 element strength because this will help provide you with some buffs.
After killing the tower, the "eye" in the next element will close. Proceed to the next room and repeat this process. Once you get to fire, hopefully you will be lucky and the boss will spawn after you kill the tower in the fire element room.
This is the order we used, it worked both times:
- Metal, water, wood, fire, then earthIf you are unlucky, and the boss does not spawn, you must kill the earth room tower, then go back to metal, and repeat again.
The boss mob can basically be ignored in each room, it's not required you kill them to finish the trial.
Side Note: If by chance you do not get the boss the first time through in the earth element room, you need to repeat the process. You will notice that the mobs/boss and the tower is immune to damage, though. The only way around this is to lure the boss. He will periodically (every minute that is) spawn mobs. Inside those mobs, there is one called Unceased Soil (or similar if I got it wrong). Killing that does a huge amount of damage to the tower. After killing enough of those mobs, the tower will die.
Side Note#2: The element strength decreases overtime. So just make sure to watch that and not let it hit 0 (preferably not under 100).
Once the boss spawns, kill him.
Side Note#3: The boss spawns minions when you attack him. They cast tons of nasty aoes. From what I know, killing one of those minions will kill the rest of them. Make sure to not stand up on platform either or else he may reset if everyone under the platform gets killed.