Ranking up in Norn and Asura

{uZa}Lonesome Eagle · Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 9:03 am Post subject: Ranking up in Norn and Asura

Taking advantage of the "Ranking" system in Eye of the North

As you know, there are four "races" that you have to help in Eye of the North in the course of completing the game. They are:

Vanguard
Norn
Asura
Dwarven

You can gain "reputation" or "rank" with each of these races. As you go through the game, you will get some PvE only skills which are related to these races and are increasingly effective as you gain in ranking with the associated race.

The two most popular of these skills are

1. Ursan Blessing - This is a NORN skill which replaces your skill bar with "bear skills" and gives you +10..20 armor and +100..200 health (depending on your Norn ranking). This skill set is very strong melee, and is all the rage in the elite areas like FoW, UW, DoA etc. They go with 6 Ursan and 2 monks and complete these hard areas in record time. They will insist that you have maximum Norn ranking, which I will talk about in a second.

2. Pain Inverter - This is an Asura skill which for 6..10 seconds returns 80..140% of damage done by by the next attack an enemy back to the enemy. This is instant death to bad guys who use skills which deal damage to multiple foes at once (like any AoE skill). An elementalist lays Meteor Shower on your group, and he gets back up to 140% of the damage he did to EACH person in your group. This is a very handy skill to have in harder areas or when you want to do hard mode.

There are some good Dwarven skills as well, mostly geared toward melee characters like Warriors and Dervishes. The Vanguard skills are not as impressive.

Anyway, the point is you want to "level up" your ranking in at least NORN, and optionally Asura, so you can go have some profitable fun in the elite areas of the game. So how do you do this?

1) Be sure you get an empty "heroes handbook" from one of these guys:

* Eye of the North Outpost
o Gedrel of Ascalon - Ebon Vanguard
* Gunnar's Hold
o Kodan - Deldrimor Dwarves
o Tyr the Skaald - Norn
* Rata Sum
o Lexx - Asura

2) Go through the game normally, doing all the missions and important quests. Be sure to do the "A Hunter's Pride" quest you get from Hogni Truthseeker in the south end of Drakkar Lake. This quest will give you the "Ursan Blessing" skill. Also be sure to do "The Cipher of Kormir" obtained in Tarnished Haven to get "Pain Inverter". Do the quest "A Path To Revelation", but DO NOT ACCEPT THE REWARD FOR IT. You are going to want to abandon this quest and get it again over and over as it is part of a "run" I will describe in a minute to get huge amounts of Norn points.

3) After you have completed the game with a character, turn in the Heroes Handbook to Tyr Skaald in Gunnar's Hold to get 20,000 Norn experience points. This combined with what you will earn in the normal course of events should have you to around level 5 in Norn ranking. Now get another EMPTY handbook from the same guy. You will need it later.

4) Now you are going to go to Olafsted, and get in a group doing a "norn farming" run in HARD MODE. You can take take any build, as long as you have at least Ursan Blessing and a Rez. TAKE A MELEE WEAPON AND SHIELD. These groups consist of 6 Ursans and 2 Healers Boon Monks, and the run takes about 40 minutes to earn about 2,500 more norn points. It's not a hard run, just get a group and follow the leader and you will see how it works in no time. You are pretty much only going to use the Ursan skill bar the entire time. At least one person MUST have that quest "A Path to Revelations" I mentioned before. It doesn't have to be you, but if you do have it you will be very popular and will be able to get in a group quickly.

5) Do this run a dozen times or so, and you will achieve the max Norn rank (10). Now you are all set with the Ursan Blessing side of things.

6) Now let's optionally rank up some in Asura and maybe Dwarven, to increase the power of those skills. You go that by doing the missions in the empty Heroes Handbook again (and again). Once you fill up the book, you just turn it in to the appropriate guy above for the race you want to level up in, get another empty book and do it again...

There are 16 Missions in the book. Fortunately, it comes with 5 of them already "done", so you don't have to do them again. Just the other 11.

The missions are:

01. The Beginning of the End (already filled in)
02. The Missing Vanguard (already filled in)
03. Against the Charr
04. Warband of Brothers
05. Assault on the Stronghold
06. Northern Allies (already filled in)
07. Curse of the Nornbear
08. A Gate Too Far
09. Blood Washes Blood
10. The Knowledgeable Asura (already filled in)
11. Oola's Laboratory (The Elusive Golemancer)
12. Finding the Bloodstone
13. Genius Operated Living Enchanted Manifestation
14. Against the Destroyers (already filled in)
15. Destruction's Depths
16. A Time for Heroes

All you have to do is go to the "Hall of Monuments" and talk to the pool (choose "I need Guidance" from the choices) to reset these missions so you can do them repeatedly.

All of these missions can be done with Heroes and Henchies in normal mode, but here is the rub.. Once you achieve rank 8 with any of the races, you must get a HARD MODE Heroes Handbook and do the missions in hard mode to get the 9th and 10th levels. If you want. I find that having 10 in Norn (which you do in those runs) and 8 in the others is plenty.

If we can get a few of us ranked up in at least Norn (Ursan), we can get together and try one or two of the elite areas where you get all the good loot! I think it would be fun. MI, can you pass this along to Shadow?

Eagle

Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 11:13 am Post subject:

Thanks for the post Eagle!!!

Hero's Handbook

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hero%27s_Handbook
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 10:09 pm Post subject:

Ranger is Ursan blessing ready, and bears the quest. (lol, had to say it Laughing

)

Dervish is Ursan Blessing ready, but bears no quest.

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 10:20 pm Post subject:

I am rank 7 so far...it would be fun to try some of the runs once I am rank 10.

Smile

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Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 12:47 pm Post subject:

Bout R7 here, just need to run Destruction's Depths once I'm back from vacation and I'll have it.

Don't have to be Rank 10 to do these, however, it really dose help Very Happy

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"Sidekick"