Guild Wars 2 Diary #18 : Snowden Drifts & Gendarren Fields

If you’re anything like me, you went to fight off Kellach’s attack and found yourself in a heap on the floor – time and time again. Last week I gave a brief summary of the areas now open to you, but I thought this week it was worth taking a deeper look at the areas outside of Queensdale and Kessex Hills. Perhaps once we’re done exploring, we can try again to defend our Queen. Perhaps this time will be less humiliating. With that in mind, it’s time to head east, to the snowy mountains in Snowden Drifts.

Snowden Drifts

The first new area I suggest you head towards is the Snowden Drifts. Located to the east, it’s an area entirely unlike those that you’ve explored in Queensdale and the Kessex Hills. Gone are the open country sides and thick, boggy forests, replaced by a deadly, icy tundra. It’s very easy to get lost in this area, thanks in part to the constant snow effect, so be sure to have your map with constant reach, or find yourself going off course. It’s also worth getting to know some of the key points of the area, not least of all the villages. Remember to use your waypoints if possible, as always when entering a new area, make finding and activating these your top priority.

Win a Free Copy of Guild Wars 2

Getting to the Snowden Drifts will probably require you to run through a few areas that have higher level enemies in, and they’ll probably be in groups as well. If you want an easy trip, you’ll want to just run straight through. You’re aiming for the Isenfall Lake, one of the first areas of Snowden Drifts and a great place to begin your exploration of the area.

Isenfall Lake is home to a pretty easy event, and it repeats quite often as well. If you want to gain experience quickly and without a ton of exploration, this is one of the locations to do it. Poisonous Urchins have taken over an underwater village and it’s your job to clear them out. There are nine in total, they don’t move at all but can shoot pretty far. My advice is to be quite clever in your approach. All of the urchins shooting at once will kill you immediately, but attacking the ones around the edge and fighting your way inwards will significantly reduce the damage taken. For doing this event, I gained around 1000 experience (I needed 14,000 to level up) and it took only a few minutes. There’s also a renown heart quest on the east side of the lake, although it takes longer and the experience reward isn’t as high.

Before exploring further afield, head northwest from Isenfall Lake and find Durgars Homestead. It’s a point of interest on the map, and there’s a skill point in it for you if you speak with the gentleman outside the door. He’ll ask you a riddle, apparently based around the character type you chose at the beginning of the game, and for answering correctly you’ll get a new skill point. The riddle was fairly easy, just be sure to read the question and the answers slowly if you struggle.

Gendarren Fields

Although I touched briefly on this location last week, I thought it’d be worth just adding a few extra tips and hints here, before we head on back to the castle and try to reflect Kellach’s attack again. There’s a few important things to note here. Firstly, this area is much more akin with what we’ve experienced in Guild Wars 2 so far, especially when compared with the Snowden Drifts. There are trees, lots of shrubs and greenery and that sort of thing, from which Bandits will appear or through which you must protect certain people or objects.

It’s in the level design that things are slightly different in Gendarren fields. Things are much more compact, and you’ll need constant access to your map if you want to traverse this area without confusion. For a start, there seems to be more levels to this area, so you’ll find yourself following narrow paths to new areas rather than exploring large fields. This means that, although you know the general location of something, it might not be as easy to get to it as it seems.

The second thing to note is that enemies travel together quite tightly and will attack you as a group if they get a chance. This wouldn’t usually be a problem – you’ll be in the second half of the twenties by now and the enemies you’ll face will be firmly in the first half – but your level will be scaled down.

Rowdy Patron is not kidding around

There are plenty of events and renown heart quests in the Gendarren Fields and each are worth doing. The key is to be cautious. Don’t bite off more than you can chew in case it chews back. Be ready with your health boosts and don’t be scared to run/dodge when necessary. It’s not even a case of levelling up, because obviously the scale can make it difficult, so be sure to use the best equipment available to you and get it fixed if necessary.

Kellach’s Attack – Attempt 2

It’s time: you should be at least level 28 at this point and the difference between Kellach’s Attack attempt 1 and attempt 2 will be like chalk and cheese. Remember that you can skip cutscenes if you’d sat through them before and if you charge forward at the beginning of the battle, you’re just going to end up in the Queen’s pool and you’ll need to come back on yourself to get out.

This time, they go down

Manoeuvring the bridge/pool aside, this is a stupidly easy mission. Combined with the small army of allies at your disposal, the difference a few levels makes is staggering. Enemies will fall in just a few hits, and even the harder Kellach himself will be little threat to your newly awesome self. That levelling up was more than worth it, and it just goes to show that exploring can pay off.

Unfortunately, the battle has something of a bittersweet ending. Kellach hoped to protect the land from the Risen and worse, but he had gone about it the wrong way.

Conclusion

With the most immediate threat destroyed, there’s a peace of sorts in Divinity’s Reach. It’ll be short-lived though. There are dragons on the horizon, and they’re going to be the biggest challenge yet. Our next stop: Lion’s Arch, so check your equipment and get ready for a trip south. Along the way you should polish up whatever renown heart quests you’ve yet to do and stop for events along the way.