Underdark Heroics And Skirmish Guide

I know the current Underdark Heroics and Skirmishes are no rocket science, but there a few hints and tricks that can make life easier while dealing with them. This won’t be discussing Demogorgon, but here is an excellent posting and video that may assist you.

Here are my quick bullets:

  • Demonic Closure can fail due to lag. This is mostly an issue in Icewind Pass, but other adventure areas are affected as well. The game engine or server still is unable to handle a lot players in an instance, especially if they are grouped together. This also affects the timer of the Closure encounter, which moves slower than intended. This causes the encounter to fail at times and it might be wise to sit this one out. Even if monsters are getting insta-killed and the Harper is up most of the time, it can fail. For the same reason it’s generally a bad idea to try to complete Heroics during a dragon run in WoD.
  • Demonic Slaughter is the most popular one. Slaughter is the quickest completion of the three and you’ll most likely get lots of group members for a gold completion and the bonus demon if you advertise the encounter. This is especially true for Dread Ring where the HE spawns near the entrance. People specifically lfg for Slaughter in that zone and other encounters are mostly ignored.
  • Demonic Closure and Escape are not about killing. As I’ve said in my blog about replayability and boss fights, the devs moved slightly away from DPS as solution for everything and introduced true mechanics that need skill. The HE that mostly fails due to players not getting the memo is Escape, but Closure can also be tricky. Pay attention to where the zerg is. People tend to dash to the next available mob and forget that someone needs to aggro and manage other mobs in order to draw them away from the portal or harper. Try to cover the opposite side, either stall mobs until the zerg arrives or redirect and deliver them. Never walk through the blue circle because aggro’d mobs will follow you and walk right into the portal. In both variants there’s also one Enraged Barlgura going for the portal or harper that cannot be aggro’d and has to be killed asap. In bronze versions its simply the one appearing, in all others the one that doesn’t scale in difficulty.
  • Everyone has to close portals in Prophecy of Madness. There seem to generally be two approaches of how to deal with the portal variant of PoM. Either everyone picks a different portal, solo kills what comes out of it and repeat or you group mobs somewhere on the map and kill them together. The better strategy depends on group composition and overall item level, but no matter whether you are soloing or grouping mobs, as soon as you are without aggro you should be heading to the next portal and close it. The one exception is a premade with defined roles, where high DPS are killing and low DPS are delivering.
  • The prisoner-variant of Throne of the Dwarven Gods is bugged. You can’t seem to reach gold in the first phase there. Live with it or leave.

    [su_quote cite=”Sharpedge” url=”https://nwo-uncensored.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=&p=4369#p4370″]It is possible to get gold in the free the prisoner’s version of TotDG….but it is nigh on impossible even with a premade group. The mind flayer in the middle points towards the door you are supposed to break open each time and a line flows from his finger to the door, you have to break the doors open in the order he points to them in order to achieve gold and you have to hit the correct door every single time when he points to them. It is horribly difficult, but doable.[/su_quote]

  • TotDG: Be smart about the golems. Again not about killing. Control and focus the golems to kill them asap.
  • TotDG Range Positioning:

    [su_quote cite=”kamaliicious” url=”https://www.nwo-uncensored.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=&p=4369#p4374″]In the Throne of the Dwarven Gods map, CWs, SWs, and HR’s can cover pretty close to the entire floor if they stand in the middle and use ranged powers. That’s useful if you get the Phase 2 where the objective is to defeat mindflayer reinforcements. Standing in the middle lets them maximize their time doing damage as they don’t have to run around, and they can often start engaging the next group while the melee characters are still looking for it (engaging can also point the melee characters to where the next group has appeared).[/su_quote]

You have other hints and tips? Let us know by commenting here or on our message board!

j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

One thought on “Underdark Heroics And Skirmish Guide

  • January 7, 2016 at 6:18 pm
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    ONLY CLOSE PURPLE!!! If you only close the biggest purple tears, we have a much higher chance of getting gold… Maybe just one blue, but no more than that, the rest purple.

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