A Night in Tehatamani
Tehatamani is a level 45+ zone with an ancient Egypt style theme. It’s one of the three or so areas that currently pass for high-end content in Vanguard. Some really cool stuff is going on there, but it too makes use of one of Vanguard’s most overused time sinks: the faction grind.
The associated quest line revolves around gaining rank with the Lucent Circle, a faction located at a harbor to the south. Ascending through the ranks takes little more than tedious faction grinding via repeatable kill quests. At every rank you get a quest that upgrades a necklace that is given to you at the very begining of the quest line, which is nice.
The real purpose behind doing the retarded faction grind is to acquire special coins that can be traded in for some pretty nifty rings, ear rings and cloaks. Once you have reached a certain rank with the Lucent Circle you gain the ability to trigger events inside the temple pyramids.
That’s when the fun starts.
The pyramids are populated with tough level 49-50 mobs that run away when low on health while regenerating quickly. Fighting your way to the main chamber isn’t a cakewalk. Once in the main chamber you can trigger an orb that despawns all mobs and teleports in a platoon of Lucent Circle troops. The problem is that the mobs in the main chamber all attack and try to destroy the orb once it was triggered. The only way to do it is to clear most of the mobs there, which is really hard because respawn is rapid.
Once the pyramid is occupied by Lucent Circle soldiers, the undead attack in several waves of two trash mobs and one boss mob. There isn’t enough time to kill one wave of mobs before the next wave starts, so you end up fighting a desperate retreating battle of attrition all the way back to the main chamber, using the Lucent Circle soldiers as cannon fodder. If you die, it’s game over because the quest is removed from the quest log when you respawn at the altar. To successfully complete the quest you have to kill the final boss mob in the last wave while making sure that all the Lucent Circle leaders survive. That means you have to kill just about fucking everything.
It’s insanely hard to beat the event. There almost no margin for error and the fact that the Lucent Circle soldiers become attackable once they go aggro on the mobs doesn’t help at all. If you happen to hit one of them by accident, they attack you and make it virtually impossible to successfully complete the event. Also, there are traps inside the pyramids, like collapsing floor segments, that make it hard to move around.
We tried to do it with two groups the other night (only one group will get the 7 coin reward) and it was still extremely difficult. It’s supposed to be single group content and you have to do these events dozens of times to get all the coins you need for the good shit. Considering that it takes the better part of a play session to complete one event, and the likelihood of failure is so high, it seems barely worth the effort. The difficulty needs to be toned down slightly, the Lucent Circle soldiers have to be made unattackable by players and the faction grind should be reduced to a bearable level. Other than that, it’s actually pretty fun.
Some screenshots:
