Title Hunters | Legendary Vanquisher

'To vanquish' is defined as the act of conquering by force. Aptly put, as that's exactly the goal when players take on the endeavor of becoming a Legendary Vanquisher.

The meta title is the result of three tracked ones and is earned by successfully clearing out all explorable areas in Tyria, Elona, and Cantha in hard-mode. Although it sounds simple enough, there's a lot of planning and stocking ahead of time, not much unlike what an actual quest of this caliber would be like.

The process is long and tedius and at times unforgiving. Doing research ahead of time, planning your hero builds, and bringing the right equipment is key. Smart use of consets, summons, food buffs, and shrines will all help expedite the process.

The plus side is that Vanquishing goes hand in hand most times with other achievements: specifically exploration and rep farming. Because you have to be sure to cover an entire area to kill every foe that exists, coupling your search with scraping and keeping an eye on your map can help further along your Cartographer progress. Furthermore, many hard-mode areas are great for rep farming, especially in Eye of the North and Elona. Often, the successful completion of a vanquish will offer a considerable about of rep depending on the region.

The rewards from vanquishing also happen to be some of the best in the game; they often make up for the toil and money spent in preparation. At the end of each clear, you're offered experience, gold, and rep on top of whatever drops you managed to obtain on the go. That helps makes vanquishing one of the less tire-some and boring grinds in the game.

This issue we chat with two proud Vanquishers, Racthoth Demini and Anti Welfare, to find out what the experience was like.

Racthoh Demini

Q: When did you decide you wanted to seriously attain the title?
Before it was even put into the game. The announcement of a Hard Mode immediately had me intrigued to give it a shot.

Q: How long did it take you to get the title from the start to finish?
--Was it an over time thing or did you have a specific time-frame and plan to get it done?
I did it over time in conjunction with Legendary Guardian. All and all it took about 3 months to complete, working at it everyday.

Q: From start to finish, how did your experience or play style change? Did you learn any interesting tricks that helped you along the way?
I changed the build I was using a lot as this was a time before PvE skills, consumables, and a better working knowledge of what Hard Mode actually did in regards to raising enemy strength. There was a lot of frustration initially, because enemies were actually kiting and using a movement speed buff in PvE that was practically unheard of. The general approach to things varied greatly depending on human and AI group composition. With a mostly AI group I'd find myself calling a target for the heroes and henchmen to attack while I attacked something in melee so they'd stay put and actually heal or attack. I'd actually chain skills with the henchmen instead of mindlessly stacking skills together. Essentially I had to disregard everything I used to do with the AI, because it just wouldn't work all that well; you can only do so much with half the bar and those flags. Human players certainly made things easier, at least then you'd all be cursing the AI!

Q: Did you do it on your own mostly or did you group with other players to get further along?
There were only a few occasions where the entire group was actual players. Majority of the time it was at most 2-3 other people while the rest were heroes, generally my heroes so I had the fun of constantly retooling bars for the next zone.

Q: Of the three continents, which did you find the easiest or hardest? Which was the most enjoyable for you?
Tyria I'd say was the hardest just because of the patrols and having to adjust to a party size smaller than eight so frequently. Also, because you only had Alesia for all of those four and six man zones, it was always a struggle to decide whether an extra monk was needed or if enough passive defense would do the trick. Most enjoyable would have to be Cantha, but I can't really think of an exact reason! I just know I didn't like Elona that much because using the Wurms was rather dull and the power creep that came with Nightfall was brutal in some areas.

Q: Do you have any horror stories to share, like a bad wipe or an ill-timed disconnect?
Lornar's Pass. Our group from Camp Rankor was too tired to continue onwards after vanquishing Snake's Dance and Dreadnought's Drift so we agreed to just continue the next day. So, we had a group of six, with practically no AoE, and no enchantment removal, no PvE skills, no consumables. There is one group in particular there that spawned with three Dolyak Riders. It was the last group we had left to kill after hours of clearing and all of us had hit 60 DP. I'd say it took us another 30 minutes of ever so slowly breaking that group down one by one until we had the clear. I was the only melee in the group so I got to run in and try so hard to hold everything on me while we tried to kill something. At the time I was using a Superior rune in my helmet so I had taken that off for extra health. I died so many times on that one group, and every time I did we'd practically be crying on vent, flagging heroes to distract the enemies while one person with a hard res ran away. Moral of the story: vanquish those three zones in one sitting, give yourself plenty of time.

Q: Did you ever find yourself getting bored / frustrated? How did you alleviate that?
Tyria zones were a headache sometimes. You had zones that only took a few dozen kills, then others with thousands. I made sure to alternate the three maps, filling up the three at roughly the same pace so I never had to deal with too many dull zones in a row.

Q: What sort of game-plan did you usually set yourself up with before each vanquish?
I'd think back to when I did the campaigns and think "was there anything here that gave me trouble the first time around?". I found myself using skills I'd never used before in a PvE setting like "Shield's Up!" and Protector's Defense, trying to plug in as much passive defense as I could into whatever slots were available. Extra hex removal for zones like Joko's Domain or anywhere that had a lot of physical hate.

Q: How did it feel when you finally got all 3 Vanquishing titles done and maxed out? Sigh of relief?
It was more of a "well, now I'm bored again" kind of feeling. The sighs of relief generally came from the huge zones being done and just being thankful that I never disconnected when being so close to a completion. Even the second time around on my Paragon, the feeling was about the same, perhaps moreso since he was more fun to play.

Anti Welfare

Q: What sort of advice would you give to aspiring Legendary Vanquishers?
Know your build's weakness and adjust appropriately if you suspect you'll face your counter. The skill split, consumables, and PvE skills have certainly made things a lot easier, but in the off chance you find something that stops you, just make the necessary adjustment.

Q: When did you decide you wanted to seriously attain the title?
A: i guess obtaining the title for me all started once i made the decision to get GWAMM. i had already vq'd a handful of areas in Tyria with guildies by the time i had made that decision.

Q: How long did it take you to get the title from the start to finish?
--Was it an over time thing or did you have a specific time-frame and plan to get it done?
A: i really didn't have any sort of time frame set for myself to obtain the title. from start to finish it only took a few months. tyria probably took me the longest simply because i didn't grind at it, whereas i was able to knock out cantha in 3 days. i really didn't consider that 3 days to be a grind, was pretty casual gameplay for me.

Q: From start to finish, how did your experience or play style change? Did you learn any interesting tricks that helped you along the way?
A: my playing style didn't change a whole lot. it gave me some opportunities to try a few different things as far as strategy and skills that i normally wouldn't have looked at. for the most part i used 4 different bars throughout everything with minor changes here and there. can't say that i learned any tricks per se, but i did learn to plan ahead a bit. i tried to make use of my time and cover some of the skill hunter and carto stuff along the way.

Q: Did you do it on your own mostly or did you group with other players to get you futher?
A: probably 60% of the title i did on my own with h/h. my brother who also plays went along for some as well as a few guildies here and there. vq really isn't something most people look forward to doing so a lot of it is spent alone.

Q: Of the three continents, which did you find the easiest or hardest? Which was the most enjoyable for you?
A: i can't really single out any continent as being hard or easy. each has their own areas that prove more difficult than others. parts of the city in cantha can be tricky as well as areas like joko's domain in elona. i found cantha to be the most enjoyable overall though. once you get outside of the city, the scenery is pretty cool if you take the time to look at it.

Q: Do you have any horror stories to share, like a bad wipe or ill-timed disconnect?
A: i can think of more than a few horror stories while doing vq. i actually ended up vqing snake dance twice with a couple guildies. we got down to the end and had missed a group someplace. the three of us decide to split up and go searching to save time. after 2 hours of looking and not finding anything the only option we could come up with was that the group missed were giants and had passed into another area. i had noticed this happening in another part of the sourthern shiverpeaks as well. usually if you stand there for a minute or two they'll pass back into the area and not be a problem. another time was vqing in elona i got a really bad lag spike and dropped from the server. after i reconnected i was able to continue with my vq without having to start over, but my path of red dots was gone. i knew about where i was when it happened, but it resulted in another hour looking for a missed group by the time i was done.

Q: Did you ever find yourself getting bored / frustrated? How did you alleviate that?
A: i never really got bored or frustrated while doing vq. most of it was done alone so i got to set my own pace and go as i please. to be honest i really enjoy doing vq. i've helped friends with areas and even done some for hire while whomever afk's.

Q: What sort of game-plan did you usually set yourself up with before each vanquish?
A: the only game plan i really used was to make a big circle around an area and then cut back through the middle. i found this to be the easiest way to help prevent missing a group. granted there are some areas that strategy doesn't work, but for the most part it's a pretty solid plan.

Q: How did it feel when you finally got all 3 Vanquishing titles done and maxed out? Sigh of relief?
A: once i finally obtained legendary, it was a pretty good sense of accomplishment. ranger is my primary toon so it's not like i'm dealing out massive dps or aoe like some of the other classes are able to do.

Q: What sort of advice would you give to aspiring Legendary Vanquishers?
A: the only advice i really have to offer (and it's been said a million times before) is try to double up on other titles at the same time. carto and skill hunter become much more easy while doing vq. other than that, try not to think of it as a grind. go at your own pace and have fun with it. after all it is just a game.