Journeys with Jaye: The Conservatory
When the Erudites discovered the Vasty Deep, they set up a citadel to study the magic of the waters and the creatures that lived there. In their conservatory, they studied the plant life of the Vasty Deep, and that’s where a group of us went last night. The Erudites were long gone, and despite the fact that the place was stunningly gorgeous, you could tell they left under less than ideal circumstances.
We had a hard time getting into the zone initially, but I think that was just typical launch night server burping. Our first group gave up, but we lucked out later in the evening and got in.
Most of the mobs in the Conservatory are in the mid 80’s, but didn’t seem to be too bad. Pulls were straightforward and fairly add-free if you were heads up. Some of the tree mobs had knockbacks, which made Ebice, our main tank, rage a bit, but other than that, clearing was cake.
The zone layout is pretty clear, and in each new area it was the standard “kill trash to make the named targettable.” Sutek, our dirge, pointed out that whoever made the zone must have been a follower of D&D, because the mobs resembled classic mobs from the original game. There weren’t any real tricks with most of the nameds we fought. Riyadh took us by surprise, by suddenly spawning adds every 20% (I think it was 20) and becoming immune to damage, but after a few seconds of confusion we switch off to the adds and took them down. He also had some sort of AE that temporarily incapacitated our tank, but with two stellar healers and a little swashie roadbump off-tanking, we dealt with it ok.
The fun came with Delahnus the Dauntless. The first glimpse of Delahnus, on top of a watery pedastal, surrounded by blue waterfalls, was enough to make me pause - and rapid fire click my screenshot key. After we cleared the area, we cinched up our armor and got ready to pull.
Big mistake.
If you don’t blink, you have just enough time to see Delahnus take flight, and then an instant later, finish off your group with Wings of Destruction. We regrouped and charged up, learned that he has a tail swipe (ouch), he AEs, and every 10% he decides to stop fighting, fly up above, and yap at us about us not being worthy, or being foolish, or something mean. We treated him like Aiden, and focused on fighting him in front, and staying in front when he was about to land, and that seemed to do the trick. To our surprise, he gave up when we got him down to 50%, and let us take his loot.
After that, we backtracked to a side hall that we hadn’t cleared before, and got a huge laugh when we finished the trash and got the big red message that something was stirring in the water. Our templar, Orko, jumped and ran out of the water so fast - I’ve never seen someone in plate move like that!
One final note, the aqueous devourer is the key mob for the chest. (Yes, there are new tokens that you have to farm. Yay) He’s found in the water around the back of Delahnus’ pedestal, and can be pulled safely out of there without aggroing the dragon. Just want to say “your welcome” to my group, for insisting that we go back there and pull it. You know who you are.
