CM: party hard!

Welcome to Minister Caudecus's Manor. Please, be on your best behavior... ^.^

I'm just beginning the long grind toward a gift required for the legendary weapon I plan to be getting, Quip. This weapon suits me very well, because of it's fun, quirky, comical animations and sounds, but that's quite a ways away from where I'm at yet. Above is a video guide I found on Youtube for the explorable mode, which takes about 30-90 minutes depending on path taken and group compilation. I'm writing this guide in the hope that some of you would like to join me on these dungeon runs. Please come equipped with something other than full magic-find gear, Rare (at a minimum) armor and trinkets. If you prefer to play a glass cannon build, though not at all my build preference, it's perfectly acceptable when played correctly. I use a mixture of Knight's and Explorer's (for both toughness and a bit of extra magic find) at the moment, while I try to earn enough coin to finish the knight's set.

Story Mode:

Minister Caudecus's estate is the setting for a party, when you first encounter it. They're celebrating the continued peace between humans and charr, and some of the things you'll experience continue on with this theme. From the Noble armors and runes, the Gift of Entertainment, to even the festival in Beetletun right outside the front door, it's clear that this is how the upper class is supposed to party in the realm of GW2.

*spoiler alert!!*

The party, however, is short lived, as the queen, the charr ambassador, and a few other guests are kidnapped by a crazed technology-stealing asura and separatists who want the treaty to end. You task in story mode, is to get them back.

Explorable Mode:

Peace continues between the races, obviously, but the Minister has been taken away under "protection"... so that the queen can keep an eye on him ;). While away, bandits and slavers have taken it upon themselves to occupy the otherwise unoccupied mansion. Three tasks lay ahead: recovering the stolen technology, rescuing the seraph who would otherwise be protecting the grounds, and rescuing servants and the butler from a slaver centaur. All three paths focus on fighting off bandits, and in all three you'll face the inevitable mixture of daggers, rifles, and explosives. Don't worry, though, there are plenty of tight corners and walls to hide behind, forcing them out of their vantage points & balling them up for AoE strikes, but be warned there's a large number of silver (veteran) mobs that may take awhile due to high health pools. Blindness greatly increases survivability, so I've opted for a special thief's dual-pistol set aptly dubbed "blind tanking" by some, and potions of Bandit Slaying, though not necessary, really do help a lot.

I won't be going through the different walkthroughs myself, as the Youtube video above does it much better and quicker than I could, and in roughly 30 minutes, it's very well worth the time to watch. I've learned a total of one glitch so far that could be considered an exploit or speedclear method, but given that it does seem to be an unintended glitch I won't normally share it, especially given the news on the forums that some time in the future they are planning to re-work the rewards system in the same way they removed tokens from dropping in the intermediate chests, which encouraged players to stop after the first chest or two. I will, however, come back to edit this post if I happen across some new important information to either make a path much safer, or much faster, legitimately. I will say this though: path 2 takes the most time out of the three, so the other two are better to focus on repeating.

If you're interested in joining me for this dungeon, I would love to have you along for the adventure! Whisper me any time on Shaz Bott, and (assuming I'm not afk) you know I'll probably still be working on either my Noble rune set or that epic Gift...