Ginger Pet

So Me jane is no longer a citizen of Ascalon. Ginger Pet has taken her place. Still no Doors name. You won't be surprised to hear that she has reddish hair.
She's a necro. A necro is a char with dark powers. Poisonous green skills to suck your enemy's blood. No pet, but a necro has the power to transform the corpses she, or anyone else made into an army of monsters. The downside of this is that you're very busy keeping them alive, otherwise they collapse with a big blurb.
Ginger Pet does a lot better than poor Me Jane and reaches even the end goal, the much desired status of level 20. The Guildwars world turns out to be a lot bigger than expected. After the unhospitable Ascalon comes a winter's landscape. True, the snow is always there but so is the sun. After that a tropical rain forest an a desert.
By the time I make it to the desert I've found someone to chat with on a regular basis, Pret Aporter. He's not French, as his name would suggest, and he chats the way you would expect, considering his name. Monty Python like nonsense. I love it.
In the desert something called Ascension turns out to be a hurdle you just have to take. First there are three difficult missions to be done and after that your doppleganger awaits you. One of these missions, Thirsty River, turns out to be a big obstacle, for Pret too. We are waiting together for a new chance to do it, after some total wipes. A warrior has joined us, but apart from the 'hi' after joining no further warrior messages appear in the chatbox.
Pret: he's the lonely silent type, a true warrior
Pret: let's all hide behind him when the things get going and the things get rough!
I am recruiting, but I hate it so I ask Pret to take over.
Ginger: I don't like to be on top
Ginger: of the list
Which leads Pret to make some remark about his pants. Too tight all of a sudden?
Yeah, it's like you've suspected all along, there's a lot of flirting going on in online games. Even though you can never be sure that this sexy fighter is of the gender he of she claims to be. There's a lot of boys and men around with a female char. My nephew, for one, has a blonde babe, even called something with 'blonde' in it, just because girls are invited to join groups a lot more than boys. And it's materially profitable too, because he gets presents all the time.
Anyway, Pret and me are kidding around for some time, because Pret is not the quick inviter either, I gather. When we finally head out, we fail grandissisimo again. Pret is a master at dying, or so he claims.
When I finally make it, it's not with him. It must have been with some pple who know what they are doing at this one, because when you don't, you're doomed to fail. It requires a lot of patience, because the mobs respawn every two minutes. So if you don't wait for the right time to attack, you're facing a real bunch of them.
I have already done one of the other ascension missions. That one also has a timer. Mobs keep coming up while a NPC called the Guardian is doing a ritual, and he's taking hs time for that. In the meantime you get bombed as well. So you have to split up, some guarding the guardian, others going out a bit farther to kill mobs and possibly kill the big bomber worms, while a monk is doing his best to keep everybody's health up during the bombing. Every mission has bonus parts too, but I can't imagine how anyone ever manages to do the bonus of this one. It's hard enough as it is.
The third one, Elona Reach, I don't do myself and I never will, with any of my chars. Some missions you just hate and this is one. Some players earn their living by doing missions for other pple. So you hire them and you go along, but all you have to do is chill out at the starting point, until your human hench finshes his rounds. Some players are not comfortable just sitting there, so they want to get along after all, but those hired players hate that. It's just slowing them down.
In theory you could get to level 20 without ever doing any mission yourself. Apart from the last part of Ascension, of course. Nobody but you can fight your doppleganger. This doppleganger has the same skills as you so you have to outsmart him/her by taking just the right skills with you.
It's Gingers time for the final part of Ascension. She's had one try which did not last very long - in my view - and Pret comments that at least it had taken some time. I had been chatting with him all along, assuming he was somewhere very different from where I was and only then I notice he's been standing next to me all that time.
Pret announces he's going to consult the internet, see how it's to be done. With success, apparently, for when I hear from him again he's made it to the next part, Dragon's Lair. I follow his example and find out a necro should take skills with her which drain away health from yourself. My dopple will be using them and wear herself out, but of course I will not. Even so, it takes me some time before I find myself at the Dragons Lair too. A weird, icy cave, full of just ascended pple. Tingling sounds all around.
Finally I do that one too. You have to get throug a number of regions, each with his own kind of mobs and special effects. One of those is that you find yourself lying on the ground every time the earth shakes, unable to do anything for some time. It ends with a huge dragon, that gets very pissed by the idea you're there to steal her eggs. Slaying the dragon is the bonus, but it will take a long time before I can enjoy the fine sight of her lying on the ground with her legs up in the air.
So, Ginger Pet is doing better than Me Jane, but I'm still not very happy about her overall performance. Soloing isn't easy with her. My nephew offers to give me some training. According to him I should be able to slay at least six minotaurs on my own. I am not. He has a strong monk - at least that's what he says and I'm not pro enough yet to know if his monk really is any good. Well, the training did not help much. What I learned from it was that I don't like being watched while I'm trying to do something that's supposed to be easy. Too bad I did not remember that lesson long enough.
I don't delete Ginger, but I try a monk. Tried to call her Joan of Arc, or something like that, but that name was already in use in multiple variations. I don't remember what she was called instead. Something with sister. But it turns out I do not like monking at all. It's a heavy responsibility; team members tend to get cross when they think you're not doing your job well enough. So I delete Sister what's her name and create an elementalist instead. This kind of char uses fire bolts, or icy ones, or earthly means to knock the mobs down. I call her Three and Some, because I reckon I've had about three chars up till now.
(to be continued; see earlier posts for the parts before)

Me Jane

My nephew was right. Guildwars is great! A lot more beautiful than any fantasy world the adventure games had to offerr. With an exception maybe, but just maybe, for Myst. But the Myst world is not fluid. You get from one screen to another. There's no total view. In Guildwars you can go anywhere. explore as much as you like.
What character should I make? There's a choice between a warrior, an elementalist, a mesmer, a monk, a ranger and a necromancer. I go for a ranger. Mostly because of the pet, frankly. I call her Me jane. That's right, Tarzan. So the Doors are not an option yet.
For the time being Me Jane leads a lonely life, because I'm not ready to join any group yet. The clumsiness I foresaw is undeniably there. To become a real, acknowledged as such ranger, I have to do a test for a ranger master. Kill about five worms, coming up out of the ground at irregular intervals, within a given amount of time. It takes me ages to accomplish this (really very simple) test. First to find this master, then to do the test. I don’t know yet that to target an enemy you can just use the tab key. Don’t have to click on it. So I move around like in a frenzy, and fail the test time after time. But eventually I do make it, with a little (well, a little!) help from my daughter. Lucky for me most quests don't have a time limit.
For a long time I choose to remain in the world my ranger was born into. My nephew is surprised to learn that at level 10 I'm still in pre-searing Ascalon . Level 6 or 7 is sufficient for the real job, it seems. When I finally cross the border I realize what pre-searing comes to. The real ascalon, the big world, is a nightmare. It's the same world, but a few years later. Hordes of Charr have invaded the country, completely destroying everything on their path. In what once was my lovely green birth ground now endless red deserts and grim rock formations stretch out as far as the eye can see. Spooky darkness reigns here, apart from the occasional smouldering fire. The sun is nowhere to be seen, hidden by a thick blanket of undoubtedly poisonous clouds of smoke. And it's very dangerous here. Just as well I'm level 10, or I would not have dared to take one step out of town. Lucky for me again there's some more help available than just my pet. There are henches for rent. NPC's - non playing chars - with the same classes as normal players. They don't cost anything, but they share in your loot. And you get less XP (experience) with them around.
Me Jane does not mind, because she's still roaming about on her own. Clumsiness has diminished a bit now, but not enough yet to join a real group. So she's happily leveling, untill she discovers, to her great dismay, the phenomenon of missions. You can't do missions on your own, or with henches. You really need a group for those, if only because otherwise you'd have no clue about where you should be heading. Finding your way with quests is no problem, because of the little arrow the game designers provide on your mini map. No such arrows with missions, though. Of course there will always be players who know where to go, because they did that mission before or checked the internet. Alas for me, all my Guildwars ànd WoW life I'm doomed to remain a very bad pathfinder, so I really need other pple's skills for this.
Apart from the problem of directions missions are just too hard to do with henches. And you need those missions to get to new areas. Or you could walk there, but that would be very hazardous (although there are players who earn their living by running for pple). One more thing, missions provide a lot more XP than quests do.
So Me Jane certainly has a problem. To be frank, she already had a problem, because she's wiped rather easily. Rangers wear leather and that may look cool, but it does not offer much protection, And Me Jane's bow does not exactly impress me wih the amount of damage it does. So Me Jane has to go.

(to be continued)