So many missions it will melt your brain...
The initial stage begins with recruiting Henchmen to the team, these can be exchanged at outposts for better henchmen, you can mix them about with human players or build a team of four (this increases as you rise up the levels) with totally human players. These henchmen stand side by side with yourself and a hero, who in this case was Koss (he enjoys close-up combat) and then we headed to the island of Shekbah, a land that’s protected by its champions, The Order of the SunSpears.
There are dozens of objectives that run alongside the primary missions that can be picked up as you travel around the various towns and outside environments. It’s simply a matter of looking out for any NPC that has an exclamation mark over their head and approaching them to unlock the text that will issue you with plenty of fighting, delivery and collection quests and puzzle based objectives. One of the first missions we embarked on involved obtaining a Drake Kabob, a bowl of skalefin soup and a plate of Pahnai salad. All of these things can be exchanged for other goods from merchants at three different outposts. So what seems to be a simple fetch quest actually sees you hunting for 6 items in total so you can exchange them for the required items, i.e. we had to obtain flesh from a Drake in order to get the Drake Kobob. In return for the objective we received 1,500 experience points and 450 gold. Tasty!
Click for larger imageThis example gives you an idea of some of the puzzles that may appear to be non-sensical when you first set off, but obtaining these rarer items allows you to trade with other NPCS and humans and concoct all sorts of spells or to make weapons.
There are dozens of quests and missions in Guild Wars Nightfall, and although a number of the fighting missions will see you having to battle your way across the lush Plains of Jarin or the dangerous Cliffs of Dohjok and having to take out the multitude of freakish beasts on the way, there is a good degree of variety in the tasks that you are set and no one mission ever feels the same. For example, in a mission called Quarry Quandary you’ll need to protect the miners at Champions Dawn - a stone and gem’s quarry that has mineral rich cliffs surrounding it – but you’ll be up against the corsairs who are attacking the area. It’s your job to get down to the quarry and dispose of these enemies to receive your reward.This quest is fairly typical in the game, protecting or escorting an NPC is soemthing that you'll see a lot of, but there is also fighting quests, fetch quests, delivery missions and even a fusion of them all. There’s a lot of backtracking in the quests and most involve reaching a certain point to carry out the objective and then having to get back to the point where the mission was received in order to receive your reward. Thankfully, this is made easy due to the excellent map system.
Click for larger imageThe map sits in the bottom right hand corner of the screen where you can see a limited amount of the area surrounding you. This can be expanded in the menu to give you a view over the whole land, and once an outpost has been visited, you can warp there at any time saving you valuable hours in having to trek across the creature filled plains. There’s also a mission map that shows you the point (by way of a green blob) that you need to get to for the current quest. It’s likely you’ll have a number of quests in your quest log throughout the game, but it’s never likely that you’ll be confused about what you need to do next or where you need to go. If you don’t fancy embarking on the current selected quest you can switch quests in the quest log and the mission map will automatically update with the new position where you need to go. There’s also the option to draw on the map, so you can mark out positions where you might have seen something of interest. Despite having 10 active quests on the go, the map system helps to make them easy and logical to follow without getting your knickers in a twist (God, these knickers are itchy).