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[BuddhaWrath]

*To be updated since Feb 26 Patch

I saw the empty forums for guides and thought to be nice and give back to the community!

Ascalonian Catacombs [AC] is a great dungeon to learn from so I wanted to write up a guide to help anyone wanting to learn this medium difficulty, medium length dungeon.

For a shortcut to Path Guides, CTRL+F and type: PATH 1, PATH 2, or PATH 3

Here it goes, strap in!

Story Mode

After cutscene, the first door will open to a room of crypts with mobs in them. Open one at a time so you don't get overwhelmed with mobs. When you open the correct crypt, [Champion] Gate Guardian Napa will appear. Easy fight. He'll get his hammer ready, when it glows prepare to dodge his charge attack, otherwise you will get knocked down.

There are a couple trash mobs will be waiting for you after the door opens. I advise focusing Monks and ranged mobs first as they are the most annoying. Have someone dodge the traps and pull the chain to deactivate them. The next room is narrow and has some traps that might kill you if you choose to fight in there. I advise pulling them back to give you the space advantage. After they are killed you head forward to the next gate. You will see by the steps a square pressure plate. If you head back you will see mobs at the top of the stairs. After you take them out, be careful as the next big room is filled with traps on the ground. Have your party ready to fight another champion while one person maneuvers across the room to pull the chain to deactivate traps. The [Champion] Ascalonion Captain that spawns is a straight tank and spank affair. She has a knockdown to watch out for that's all. After you defeat the champion, grab a boulder and run it over to the pressure plate by the
door.

Next room is filled with traps. The gargoyle heads will spit fire at you when you're close, take out any within reach with ranged weapons. Anything you can't destroy, just dodge through the traps and disable them by pulling the chain in the room.

Keep the party moving forward and you'll run into a graveling borrow. Take that out first and take care of the gravelings afterwards. Take out all the trash mobs along the path until you find Eir  fighting it out with another [Champion] Ascalonion Captain. After the kill, you'll see a cutscene.

When you're ready to fight the next champ, you can head towards the stairs and start pulling his mobs down to take care of. The [Champion] Ascalonian Lieutenant has a knockdown to watch out for. A chest will spawn after you kill him.

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For the next part, there are 3 mini-boss fights you can do in any order. Here's the order I always use: west, east, north.

Head to west bridge where you will find a couple mobs along the way. If you see any glowing globs on the ground, they will spawn ghosts if you go near them. Take any out along the way so they don't bother you during your boss fight. When you're ready just head up to where [Champion] Master Ranger Nente is for a cutscene.

Any melee can walk up the plank to the pillar he stands on while everyone else can simply range him until he goes into his 2nd stage. When he gets to 3/4 health he will teleport towards the out ledge where you're ranged hitters are. He has a melee knockdown and a pet summon to watch out for. Try your best to dodge his attacks at this stage because they can hurt. When he gets to 1/2 health he'll teleport back to the middle pillar, just repeat until he's dead. Don't forget the chest on the side and then waypoint back to the middle.

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Run towards the east side of the map, clearing any trash mobs along the way, until you reach the next boss - [Champion] The Lovers: Ralena and Vassar.

This upcoming boss fight is probably one of the most difficult encounters in story mode dungeons. The reason is because there are special rules to this fight. The closer they are to one another, the more powerful they are. You can tell they are powering up by little hearts that pop up around them. They will hit HARD in this formation, so you need to keep them separated to normalize their damage. You can use the boulders on the ground to knock them away from each other, but sometimes it gets buggy and doesn't work too well. It really helps if you have party members with some sort of pull or knockback skill. Just work with your group to push/pull them in opposite directions. If you're fighting Ralena, watch out for her projectiles and AOE, just keep moving while dealing damage and you'll be fine. If you're fighting Vassar, it should be easier to tank and spank him while dodging/killing his clones. Do your best to keep them apart if they run back together. Be sure to concentrate on killing at least one so that the other one is powerless. Don't forget the chest when you finish.

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Head back through the hallway and up the path to the north towards [Champion] Kasha Blackblood. When you get to her room just jump down towards her so she doesn't burn you after the cutscene.

This is a really easy boss fight as she'll just stand in the middle of the room while casting AOE everywhere. She'll summon minions and heal up, but I advise to just stack on her and burst her down for a quick kill. Don't forget the loot when you're done.

Head back to the middle of the dungeon to do your final boss fight with [Legendary] King Adelbern.  He's real easy to burst down. Just watch out for his pull + AOE combo. If you get pulled just break stun and dodge away. If he is targeting you, he might toss a weapon at you for an insta-down. I recommend dodging, reflecting, or move behind a wall or pillar to avoid it. Sometimes he'll do a very big AOE that you need to get out of asap, otherwise this will be a nice and easy fight.

Good job on completing storymode and unlocking your path to explorable modes!

It just took me 2 hours to write this ( ), so stay tuned, AC explore mode guides to come.

[BuddhaWrath]

Explore Mode: The Howling King [PATH 1]

Every explore mode path in AC starts off with the same sequence. Here's what is going to happen:

When you load into the dungeon and walk towards the quest marker, the door will open after a short cutscene. Jump on the coffins to the right and run over to where a Graveling Breeder will spawn. Nothing special here, take him out to open the next door to meet up with some Priory scholars. You can wait until they walk to the next quest marker, or you can leave one member to start the quest and meet up after.

Next, you're going to run down the stairs to be greeted by a burrow. You can skip or burst it down quickly and move on. The next room has some fire and spike traps, just stick to the left side and jump on the rubble or wait until the red circle disappears before moving forward. When you get past the traps, there will be a set of stairs to the right, don't go there. Jump to the ledge just straight ahead where you can range the 2 fire traps towards the right side. After those are clear, you're whole party should be together now. Jump down to start clearing some spiders, try not to kill more than you have to before range targeting the next 2 fire traps on the walls by the pathway.

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When you have cleared all the traps in the room, and killed enough spider hatchlings, get ready to fight the boss - [Legendary] Queen Spider. The only thing you really need to watch out for in this fight is her poison AOE that will drop you if you are squishy or stand in it for too long. Having some condition removal skills on slot here can be helpful. The way I also do it without problems is having some HP regen on-hit food and continually hit the Boss to keep my HP up, even while in the poison AOE. Sometimes she'll swat you with a strong hit, just back off and heal and repeat for a quick kill.

Make sure to loot her for a bag then get your stuff together before heading down the next corridor where a pack of Gravelings will be on patrol protected by traps. Pull them towards the big room and away from the traps. You want to set up a kill order of Breeder -> Scavenger -> Howler. You used to be able to stand on top of the ledge on the left and kite them to death. But the January patch fixed it so your only able to hit the mob if they can hit you or your party in return. You can still have your squishies stand on the ledge and range them while everyone else is on the ground. Watch out for when the scavengers have a charge animation, it means they are about to leap at you with their knockdown that seems to last 10 minutes or until you die basically. You can use Break Stuns to get up and dodge away but careful to time it after you're fully down or else it will keep you down and you just wasted a skill.


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Loot to Howler and move on to the next part through the tunnel with traps. It's nice if you can have one person run through and pull the chain to the immediate left of the tunnel exit. All but one of the traps will be deactivated for the rest of the party to move on easily. Burst down the fire traps on the walls straight ahead. I recommend using this spot to fight the next boss, [Legendary] Lieutenant Kholer.

If you head down the small steps to the left and the bonus event Troll boss shows up, you can kite him and Kholer towards each other for an easy kill. Otherwise, to fight the skippable boss Kholer, I recommend one person to walk up the big stairs to kite him down and around the corner by where the traps where. His minions will be distracted by the NPC and will go back upstairs after the NPC dies. Meanwhile you should be 5v1 on Kholer now.

Many groups tend to skip this boss because if even one person doesn't know how to fight him, it  makes for a really horrible dungeon experience. Once someone gets pulled and drops, it starts to domino effect until everyone is dead or the party resets. So here's how to fight him...

He is a thief, with two moves to watch out for. The first is his "heartseaker" leap attack that hurts if you are in range. It's safe to use one dodge roll on that move. The second move and the killer is his multi-target "scorpion wire" pull. You can see this move coming from a mile away yet people still get hit by it because they don't recognize the charge animation. I've had endless excuses of why people get pulled -- too many people hitting or in the way, distracting hit animations, too many spells going off -- you can see through ALL of that if you just focus and pay attention to his player model, the charge animation is visible through all of these excuses. It looks like a small sun around his weapon. Count 1 second after you see it, and dodge. Voila! Otherwise, if you get pulled, he will do his "dagger storm" whirlwind attack that will insta-down you. Use a Break Stun skill and quickly dodge away to avoid this. Keep dodging those 2 moves and at the worst case scenario jump into the water below to lose heavy aggro / heal up and run back to finish the fight. Loot his body for a bag and run up the stairs to take take of his minions, remember, ranged damage dealers first then melee last. After killing the boss you'll be rewarded with a chest and waypoint in the center of the dungeon.


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So up to here is where every AC explore is identical. Since we're in Path 1, you're going to head down the stairs towards the quest marker. Careful. there are a bunch of flame traps. Wait until the closest one to you is blown out and start running down the stairs and dodge forward near the end of the steps to clear it without hassle. Use swiftness or blink skills to move forward faster if you're not feeling comfortable. When everyone is in the next room the next event will begin -- Protect Hodgins.

Here's the deal. Keep the NPC alive while your party bursts down burrows. I made a small diagram explaining where the burrows will spawn. They appear in two set orders, one I numbered, the other I lettered. Here's how I do it: One tanky player stands by 1 while killing gravelings as they come out and melee kiting the silver that comes out. Everyone else starts A, then continue to destroy burrows B and C. Then everyone finishes burrow 1, 2 and 3. If need be have one person standby to aggro any mobs away from the NPC.




It should be a nice and quick event, however please allow me to offer insight on why most PUGS fail this part. Firstly, the person guarding Hodgins takes it too literal and stands exactly beside him to "protect" him. The way you protect the NPC is by staying away from him so that the mobs don't attack him while they are swiping at you. Secondly, the rest of the party doesn't not move around the map as one unit while bursting down ONLY the borrows. The mobs are not important, just kill all the burrows and everything will despawn. Thirdly, burrow #2 spawns scavengers and players don't dodge it's knockdown charge attack. As of February, there is still a bug where sometimes you dodge the scavenger knockdown only to realize you've rolled through the wall and are now on the other side of the door unable to help your teammates finish the event. So just be careful while dodging near the door.

A chest and waypoint spawns after you finish the event. One person needs to run through the door that Hodgins opens and up the winding stairs to navigate up wooden planks to find the first of the scepter pieces inside the coffin. Everyone else should WP to the middle and prep for the next run.


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From the middle, run towards the west room and head north up path on the left. Stick to the left side of the next room so not to spawn slimes that will only slow your progress. When everyone is in the room the NPC will open the giant door for a room filled with gravelings. You do not need to fight any of them, just run through and grab the scepter pieces. If you have any stability, stun breakers, or any other CC tools, use them here to make it easier to navigate the room while dodging gravelings. Pardon my crappy drawing while show you a quick diagram of their locations:




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After you've retrieved all of the scepter pieces and speak to Hodgins, another chest and Waypoint will spawn for your convenience. For the next part, gather up your party and get ready to run to the room of the final boss. I decided to make another diagram of the path I take to get in the clear:



After your party arrives at the final safety spot, wait for the trash mobs to despawn then go back down to start clearing the Breeders that get in your way of the boss battle. I've numbered the Breeders in the above diagram to take out. Kill 1, then 2, then pull 3, and pull 4. You don't need to pull and kill 4 if your party pulls the boss up the hill. However, if you're running a PUG, you can't control the actions of newer players so it's always better to be safe than sorry. Let's get ready to fight the final boss - [Legendary] Howling King.


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The Howling King has three moves to watch out for, and usually but not always in this order:

1) He starts to fuss his body around and starts screaming while spawning minions. Clear any possible scavengers and silvers before returning focus on the boss.

2) He burrows and travels to a location where he will pop his hands up for a second before bursting out with a circular AOE knockback attack. Dodge or run away from him when you see his hands come up.

3) He tilts his head back while a shout animation appears at his mouth, readying his most deadly attack -- The scream of death! Dodge behind him since it will hit you even from the side, or stand behind a pillar to avoid his scream. If you someone goes down, reviving them right away to keep the fight going smoothly.

A nice and easy way to kill the boss is to make sure that only one person is facing him at a time, and to spread out in a manner that you can easily tell which direction he will scream next. Also it's easier to rez your teammates when only one person is downed then when everyone gets eaten alive by the scream of death. Keep bursting him down between his moves and you'll be finished in no time!

Good job again, you've completed AC PATH 1!

[BuddhaWrath]

Explore Mode: Ghost Eater [PATH 2]

So you killed the [Legendary] Spider Queen, and [Legendary] Lieutenant Kholer as noted in the Path 1 guide.

Since we're in Path 2, go east from Kholer then south towards the quest marker. Once everyone arrives, the next event will start. The idea here is to have teammates pull on the chains to unleash traps while someone runs around the trap area baiting gravelings to their death.

The quick way I do it is 4 pull side chains + 1 tank mobs. Some PUGS like to do 1 member on each side, 1 member on center chain, 2 members tank and mouse. Either way you choose, make sure you know where your chain trap coordinates with on the ground so not to waste any pulls to kill gravelings. If you're tanking, the way I do it easily even while on a glass cannon build is to aggro the mobs and move in a circular motion to account for trap cooldowns. Dodge when you see any scavengers charge up for leap knockdowns. If you get downed, spam your attack on a regular graveling to come back to life, your teammates should continue to pull traps when you're downed so that you have a higher chance to rally. You win this event by killing the Breeder and enough gravelings, make sure to use the traps as the main form of damage.

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Once all the objectives are complete, the mobs will de-spawn and you'll be free to grab the chest by the newly unlocked waypoint. From here you can run up the hill and up the stairs to your left. The mobs in here have a charge knockdown move that will most likely result in a death, dodge when you see it. Head up the stairs to your right and pull the chain on the immediate right at the end of the staircase, it will open the gate on the left. Have your party run through the gate and go far enough to de-aggro any chasing mobs.

When everyone gets there, Detha will have a quick chat then the event will start. The objective is to defend her from ghosts while she repairs 3 cannons. Once she starts working on cannon #1 ghosts will appear for attack. As always, I recommend taking out mobs in order of ranged AOE > ranged > melee. The way I complete this part easily is to make sure that everyone focuses their damage on a target to quickly eliminate them one by one. We target necros > monks > ele > mesmer > ranger > warrior. If there is a low HP mob from the aftermath of our AOE damage then just finish that mob off before focusing the next threat.

For cannon #3, you don't have to kill all of the ghosts to move on. Most parties will just kite and dance around for this part until Detha completes her repairs. Once she's done that, everything will de-spawn and you'll be rewarded with a chest. When everyone is ready, speak to Detha to spawn the final boss.

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[Legendary] The Ghost Eater is a simple straight forward boss fight. He will summon minions to attack you, but I don't recommending placing any focus on them as they usually die from the crossfire damage you're dealing to the boss. The only real thing to watch out for here is when he borrows, be sure to dodge when he is about to pop up. Otherwise keep DPSing him down while managing his minions and the fight will be over shortly.

Good job on finishing Path 2!

[BuddhaWrath]

Explore Mode: Colossus Rumblus [PATH 3]

So you killed the [Legendary] Spider Queen, and [Legendary] Lieutenant Kholer as noted in the Path 1 guide.

Since we're in Path 3, go east from Kholer and continue east through the short corridor where a couple of ghosts will pop up, simply run past them and position your team to the far end of the Lover's Crypt to lose aggro. When you're all there and the NPC arrives, the event will start.

NPC Tzark will set up some essence collectors that must be protected while burrows continue to spawn all over the room. The 15 burrows appear in the same order every time. Lucky for you, I made a video and then transferred their locations onto a map for your convenience and viewing pleasure.



Take the burrows out quickly and move on to the next burrow location. If everyone is sticks together, stays focused and continue bursting them down ASAP while ignoring the trash mobs, the event will go nice and smoothly. If at any time, you see the quest bar depleting, immediately check the essence collectors for mobs and have 1 person go hit them and run back to the action. No need to fully kill the mob just aggro and move on.

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When the essence reaches 100%, all the mobs will despawn and you will be rewarded a chest and waypoint. You might notice you're a ghost now, that doesn't change of your skills or anything, just cosmetic.

Now get ready to run past all the trash spiderlings towards NPC Grast. Head north up the stairs, keep to the left to run up more stairs, and continue running up more stairs. When a party member approaches him, the next event will start -- destroy the graveling burrows.

This event is straightforward: destroy the burrows one by one, while avoiding graveling packs that guard them. Have your entire party focus and burst down the burrow and move on to the next one. You can have a teammate aggro and run away to clear for easy hits on the burrow, but I find it's faster if everyone just focuses on the burrow. Keep moving around while attacking and be mindful of the scavengers when they charge their leap attack for the knockdown that will result in your quick death. Be sure to use up your dodges. When you clear the last burrow, all the mobs will de-spawn and a chest and waypoint will appear for the taking.

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Run towards the WP if someone is still in combat, or just WP when it's open. The next part involves running to the same safe spot from Path 1. From the WP, jump down to the pathway that was busted open. Run through the tunnels and make your way to safety. When you're party is all there and ready, start clearing the same mobs from the map I made you for Path 1.

Get ready to fight the final boss [Legendary] Colossus Rumblus. This is a very similar fight as the Howling King, with a couple of changes in his attacks.

1) He will let out a long roar that will cause the ceiling to crumble and drop rocks on you. Watch out for the red circles on the ground and simply move out of the AOE before it hits you. During this attack, your party should be dealing as much damage as possible to the boss since it's a long and predictable skill animation.

2) He still burrows. Simple dodge away before he pops up or you will be damaged and knocked away.

3) He still has the scream of death. When he starts to shout, just prepare to dodge behind him or behind a pillar to avoid an insta-down or death.

Spread apart so you can tell which direction he is facing and better limit his predictability. The fight will be over quickly if you continue to put your whole teams DPS on him during those key moments.

Good job on finishing Path 3! You've now completed all the paths and are on your way to being a pro AC dungeon runner

[Rill Soji]

Hurray for first guide! Yup this is a brand new section to the forum so it's blank atm.

[BuddhaWrath]

Alright, I'm finally done my write-up for Ascalonion Catacombs. I hope you guys enjoy the guide!

[Drake Erif]

Very well done guide! You clearly put a lot of time into this. I'm sure this is going to save a lot of people some frustration

Thanks for taking time to make this guide, cheers!

[BuddhaWrath]

You're all welcome

I just hope it gets enough reads, especially since there are details in there that you don't find in youtube vids or other guides -- strictly from someone who has run AC 100's of times.

[Bonny]

Marry me?

Just kidding!  Thanks for doing this.

[Heylo]

This is pretty great. I love your guide to running in path 1. I haven't read through any of the other paths yet, but I might link to this on Haven's forum for those trying to learn more about AC. It used to be one of our regular runs, but I haven't done it in a week+.

[BuddhaWrath]

Thanks! No worries, feel free to share it, I'm flattered.

[CoolCoolCool]

You sir, are my hero.

Many thanks form an AC knewb.

[Varus]

Quite the epic guide dude, thanks for posting!!

[Professor Tekks]

Great guide, thanks for taking the time to put this together!