With the return of the Mad King, Lion's Arch's statue is shattered and a deep hole lies in its wake, tempting adventurers to chance the mad king's realm. There are also a tonne of different events for players to take part in such as scavenger hunts and pumpkin carving.
Act 3 - Ascent to Madness - Mini guide
Once you have a full group of 5 people, enter the instance together. Inside you will be presented with a small caged room, and a gateway. Wait until everybody has loaded in and successfully joined your instance before you open the cage. Once you are all together, open the door and enter the king's realm. Make sure to get the way-point at the start!
Stage 1
The King will begin with a familiar routine from guild wars 1. He will ask players to follow his commands. Make sure you do so, failure will result in almost instant death. Be wary of the doorways to the side, mobs may also begin spawning here! Make sure you begin taking them out as although they are trash mobs, they are all level 80!
The King himself will also join the fray after he finishes his extravagent speech. This is when the real fight begins.
Make sure that you first destroy all the trash mobs, then focus on the king himself.
The king has several attacks:
- Shield; He will throw his shield and bounce it off as many players as are close enough to do so.
- Scarecrows; He will spawn several scarecrows which will in turn spawn crows that do immense amount of damage, plus cast fear which is incredibly dangerous as it can push you off the ledge. Take out these FIRST.
- Pumpkins; He will spawn several pumpkins on the floor which will explode causing area of effect damage.
- Slice; He will fire out about 4-5 boomerang like projectiles that will fan out from his position.
- Teleport; He will teleport to the nearest player and unleash a flurry of close range attacks.
For this stage, just keep watching out for the red circles and dodging, while prioritising the scarecrows. You should be fine.
Stage 2
Once you have done enough damage, the king will retreat into the sky. At this point you have to locate him; He will have moved to one of the lower levels in the dungeon.
Look around and study your environment carefully, it should be fairly easy to locate the nearest rocks which will form a platform underneath the area you are on. Look for the chains that connect the chunks of rock and follow them down to the next large platform, making sure to destroy the mobs on the way.
Once you defeat all the mobs, the king will once again enter the fray. Continue fighting him as above, his tactics will remain the same. Take extra care to avoid the scarecrows and stay out of the red circles. Placing down several heals to counter the effects of the circles will help.
Stage 3
After you have dealt enough damage, the king will once again teleport away. Follow him back to his new location, there will be more trash mobs. Be sure to kill them before you engage the king. It should be pretty straight forwards, finish him off and when he is done, claim your rewards.
Make sure to check out the chest on the bottom floor of the dungeon!
This chest can contain exotic Halloween weaponry, recipes and rewards. It can be found by going down the chain once again, and making a leap of faith onto the jagged rocks, then across onto the platform below. This was made much easier by a speed running buff. I personally received a Halloween rune recipe, while I saw people linking into the chat various pieces of armour and weaponry gained from the chest.
