Epic small problem, there's a way to make it easier?

[Nephilia]

Hi all
Me and my friend want to run this quest on epic to catch the seal that only drop there (I want the grim brac and he want the elemental but... this is not the point anyway XD)!
I tried to run this quest once and it was a real pain.... long, difficult and with a lot of guys who didn't knew what to do...!

I was wondering if someone here in the forum have ran this and can provide us some tips and some help to how turn it in a easier challenge

Ty a lot all, in advance

[Sarisa]

For the initial wave of trash, run around and gather everything, take it to the narrow part of the valley right before you meet up with Brawnpits the first time. Do not steal the Giant's collectible. Set up Web, Dancing Ball, Symbol of Death, then when most everything is CC'ed, Circle of Death and Wail. Melee's can mop up any trash that remains, and the wildlife is easy to stun.

Talk to Brawn, follow him to his camp, and talk to him again. Do the 'Skip two hours...' option. Now, you'll want to go gather up all the trash on the way to the water altar and second shrine. Do the same thing with CC, Circle, then Wail, and mop up what lives. For spiders, Flesh to Stone, Greater Shout, and Symbol of Stunning all work, along with melee stuns. Click the altar, then get the water and head back to Brawn.

For the Earth elemental part, hit them with an Energy Drain to greatly lower their HP, then just keep them danced and beat them down. If you have Shintao monks, they should be able to hit them with a Tomb of Jade, or if they're lucky, Jade Strike. That greatly helps in killing them off. There are exactly enough Earth Elementals in the valley north of Brawn's camp to satisfy his request.

If you need a Shrine here, head up the hill and drop off to the north, right before where the first firewood is. There will be an Earth Ele you have to take out, then the shrine will be free. DDoor back to the beginning and run back to Brawn.

Return to Brawn, trigger the Fire Elemental part. These are highly damaging trash, so you want to get them danced as soon as possible. Note that they will usually launch a fireball before they are targettable. The first one is right at the top of the hill past the Earth Elementals, and the rest are off to the right past them, then left along that ridge. They also should be Energy Drained to speed up the beatdown, and Tomb of Jade/Jade Strike makes them easy to kill.

Note: Experienced groups can now "sequence skip" and head to the Air Altar at this point. This lets you skip a bunch of trash fights on the run to the Air Altar. When you get to the platform before the Air Altar, set up CC on the Air Altar's island, and take out the trash WITHOUT killing the Ele. If you kill the Ele, you will need to restart the quest. Now, you will need to leave someone at the altar to handle talking to it in the proper sequence. If you trigger quest objectives in the wrong order, you may bug the instance and have to restart. Only do this if everyone is very experienced with the quest, and knows the precise order in which to not screw it up.

Return to Brawn, and set up a dancing ball. Talk to him and take out the two Fire Ele's that spawn. If you played it safe and didn't sequence skip, now you have to head to the Air Altar. Be sure everyone remains together as many of the platforms have spawns, most include at least one caster. If you jump to another platform and jump back, you may cause the trash to respawn. Make your way to the altar, set up CC from the island before, and take out the trash WITHOUT killing the Air Ele. When the Ele becomes friendly, talk to him, and float down to Brawnpits (to the southwest).

Now you have to rescue Brawn from some tieflings. Be sure to watch out for the caster. Once you're done, talk to Brawnpits, let him spawn the chest, then take out the next wave of trash BEFORE looting the chest and Shrining. Buff up Brawn, then lead him slowly back to the caravan. For the second big group of trash, be very careful of the two casters who live to duck behind trees, and the Fire Ele who spawns about halfway through the fight. When you get to the giants, loot their chest, and lead Brawn back toward the entrance. When you get to the very bottom of the valley, right before the final hill before the caravan, take out both groups of trash, then tell Brawn to stay there. Go back to one of the remaining shrines.

For the final fight, you have his four dogs, the Hyena (Plains I think) is the most dangerous. Dance him before he can dance you, and take it out FAST. Just kite the other dogs around until the Hyena is taken care of. Either a Bard (Fascinate) or a caster (Insta-kill) should be on the lookout for Tieflings coming over the kill. Be sure to run Brawn up close to the fire wall, especially if you will be CC'ing with Fascinate. After about a minute of fighting, a Fire Ele will spawn in the middle of the fight area, by the group of rocks. Take it out immediately after taking out the Hyena. Take out the other two orange named dogs in any order, any trash that is loose, then the red named dog. Run Brawn to the entrance to finish the quest and stop the respawns. Take out any unfascinated trash.

Be careful of the final chest, it's EXTREMELY close to the wagon and it's easy to accidentally click the wagon. This is being addressed in update 11.

With practice, an average group can get the completion time to about 30-35 minutes. The fastest I've been in was 16 minutes, and it was with a highly experience and very powerful group. This quest is definitely one that got easier to deal with since the u9 spell/epic change, as insta-kill works very well on the tieflings.

Good luck on your loot, the seals seem to be fairly rare. I've been trying to get the Mask of Comedy seal for about 4 months now, seen it drop 3 times but lost the roll the two times it was put up.

[Nephilia]

I really don't have enough words to say u thanks Those suggestions are really worthy and helpful
Ty a lot sarisa... I've tried to give u a +1 but the system said I've done too much before XD

[FlimsyFirewood]

If you kill the spirit at the altar (by accident? malice?) you can reset that encounter by everyone jumping off the pillar then jumping back on it. The spirit will come back, and so will the tieflings. But you don't need to restart the quest when that happens.

The out of sequence bug will be addressed in a future patch.

[swaix1982]

@Sarisa u made it look like so easy!
thanks

[Talon_Moonshadow]

My biggest problem has been keeping him alive during the end fight. The rest of the quest wasn't so bad IMO. (although it can be a long one)

The casters are tough. And some groups handle things with no problem and other groups get wiped easily from what I have seen.

You need defenses against spells and fire IMO.

CC helps, but casters are hard to CC efectively. Killing them first helps of course.

Most players have builds that a very vulnerable to spell damage. You have to find a way to overcome that.


And in the end fight, you have to be able to kill things quickly, so BrawnPits does not die. (or real good at healing him)

[rest]

I hate that stupid quest. Thanks for the walk through, Sarisa. +1 If the seal for the elemental essence ring does only drop there that makes me a sad panda since I probably won't ever run that godforsaken quest.

[wootvenu]

sarisa u rock!

[Thorzian]

this is one of the only epic's I manage to solo. its long sure but not all that difficult.

[Thrudh]

Can you get seals from all the chests or just the last one?

Also, this quest is where Grim's necklace and Brawn's Spirits seals drop, correct?

[Thrudh]

this is one of the only epic's I manage to solo. its long sure but not all that difficult.

Mind telling us what strategies you use to solo? Otherwise your post is worthless.

[Thorzian]

Mind telling us what strategies you use to solo? Otherwise your post is worthless.

circle of death, invis, bladebarrier, heal the giant. not too much strategy needed. kill the casters you can't circumvent quickly.

my post was more one of disbelief that you would find it difficult then one meant to be of use to you.

oh, wait, dont forget divine punishment and wear a torc. have lots of dr. im not really a fan of telling people hoe to build their toons and play them.

[Saaluta]

If you kill the spirit at the altar (by accident? malice?) you can reset that encounter by everyone jumping off the pillar then jumping back on it. The spirit will come back, and so will the tieflings. But you don't need to restart the quest when that happens.

The out of sequence bug will be addressed in a future patch.

Thank you Flimsy for the tip, +1 to you and +1 to Sarisa for the walkthrough

Saal

(will have to +1 Sarisa later because I evidently gave out too much in the past 24 hours)

[Thorzian]

uh huh. perhaps i should write a walkthrough of haverdasher for you too.
1. talk to guy
2. kill scorpions
3. talk to guy again

e-small problem really isnt that much more difficult. its just longer

[Sarisa]

Brawn has massive HP, and good healing amp. Buffing him up also greatly reduced the damage he takes. I've only been in a party once where he died, and this was pre-u9 where the quest was much harder. There used to be far more trash tiefling spawns at the end, and a bard was pretty much essential. This bard had about 220 hp, 0% fort, and his perform was in the low 40's, so he had trouble locking the casters down.

Update 7 also made the end fight and saving Brawn from the fire ele/tiefling ambushes much easier, as is in the release notes.

I suggest running through on elite once or twice to learn where all the tricks and spawns are, then you can only spawn one group of trash at a time on the run back.

U9's spell changes made a huge difference in this quest. Even though the trash mobs saves went up, the lower HP and ability to insta-kill the casters made those encounters far more manageable. It's still the most difficult of the House P chain, but it's definitely doable in a PUG with people who have reasonable epic experience.

My regular guild group runs this with 1 WF PM (somtimes in form, sometimes out), my Cleric, two monks, and a Virt bard. We sometimes also have another WF PM, another monk, or a 12ftr/6brb/2rog khopesh melee (with Stunning Blow and Improved Trip) with us as well. Everyone being able to CC or instakill their own trash helps a great deal.

[Zenako]

Brawn has massive HP, and good healing amp. Buffing him up also greatly reduced the damage he takes. I've only been in a party once where he died, and this was pre-u9 where the quest was much harder. There used to be far more trash tiefling spawns at the end, and a bard was pretty much essential. This bard had about 220 hp, 0% fort, and his perform was in the low 40's, so he had trouble locking the casters down.

Dang it, did that bard leave their Perform Item at home.... Anyone seriously doing reliable Epic level Fascinates should have made sure to have a good bit better than that.

[Shade]

Ran this quest over 20 times on epic.. Starting to get really good at it.

Last run I figured out a new trick:
Earth/Fire elementals have a 6 int.
Touch of idiocy + roll a 6.. = helpless mobs, helpless mobs die fast!

Earth elems also have low dex ~12ish, so waves of exhuast + str sapping weapon also works.

[Kmnh]

There are a lot of cute tricks to make this quest easier...

You can kill the spiders on the way to the fire ellies before the earth ellies spawn.

You can kill earth ellies one at a time.

The only fire ellie you have to kill is the first one - send someone with evasion and a serious reflex save to pick up the firewood and have him jump down to brawnpit's camp.

You can have the wizard/bard run ahead of the party and set up disco balls/webs/mind fogs/symbols of death all over the place before the end fight. You don't need to kill tieflings, kill the 4 dogs and bring brawnpits to the exit.

[Zenako]

Using various smart approaches, many quests can be done a LOT easier than simple brute force would dictate. Using the right Stat Damagers (while not as OP as they used to be) can still be very effective against many mobs. A good Crippling Strike Rogue with a pair of w/e weapons can bring almost any mob to helpless in short order. As Shade pointed out, the mental stats of many mobs are severely lacking and ready for attack with the right spells or effects. Yes you can dps your way thru almost every quest in the game, but doing so ends up using but a small fraction of the potential of most characters.

[Grosbeak07]

e-small problem really isnt that much more difficult. its just longer

I am not as uber as you.

So either share what strategies you use or just let of us who aren't as good as you share some ideas on how to beat it.