Spirit Woods

3 years ago, last modified 2 years ago

Requires: Glider Basics Mastery
Advised: Mesmer with the Adrenal Mushroom Mastery

While traversing the Spirit Woods only requires basic gliding, the encounter, as a whole, benefits from , condition cleanses, and mobility skills. Firebrands with "Stand Your Ground!", Revenants with Inspiring Reinforcement, and other classes with shared are good choices here to avoid knockdowns. Additionally, Mesmers with Portal Entre, Scourges with Sand Swell, and Thieves with Shadow Portal can help the group quickly move between objectives.

Spirit Woods is broken up into three main phases: the Spectral Rifts, the Spirit Race, and the Cemetery.

Spectral Rifts

Known as: orbs

When the initial set of mobs after Vale Guardian has been defeated, Spectral Rifts will begin to spawn. These are red circles with slowly falling orbs, and players must capture these circles before the orbs hit the ground.

Letting a rift explode will generally lead to a squad wipe. Additional mobs will spawn during the event, applying large amounts of and CC to the squad. is useful here, as are pulls to more easily cleave down mobs.

Portals and other mobility skills can help make this phase trivial. One or two Mesmers with Portal Entre, Mimic, Blink, and the Adrenal Mushroom Mastery can be delegated to move the group between orbs while constantly resetting their cooldowns with the Adrenal Mushrooms dotted around the area.

Scourge portals and Thief portals can also be useful if saved for rift spawns on far sides of the arena.

Some squads will adopt a split strategy, dividing the squad into two groups. Each group will focus only on capturing circles at the top or bottom of the arena, respectively, minimizing the amount of running any one player has to do.

Spirit Race

Once all the Spectral Rifts are cleared, and a second set of mobs further along are taken out, a gate will open; once a player glides off the balcony here, the group will enter the Spirit Race.

Here, the squad must clear the path ahead of them quickly enough to avoid the wall of spirits that is slowly creeping towards them. Spectral Rifts (with the same “circle capture” mechanic as in the previous stage) will spawn along the route.

Similar to the Spectral Rifts phase, , , , and any teleport skills will help DPS players move to each Ethereal Barrier quickly.

A commonly used strategy in Spirit Run is for all DPS players to run straight to the walls while support players capture the circles, with an exception of the rift following the glide over the spirit river.

Here, all players will usually capture the first rift while waiting for a Mesmer to place Portal Entre, porting them directly to the final wall and defeating it before the final two rifts can explode.

You will often see players quickly /gg after the final Ethereal Barrier is cleared, in order to skip a small group of mobs and progress to the next section more quickly.

Cemetery

After breaking the final Ethereal Barrier, the squad will enter a Cemetery with five buttons hidden around the area.

All five buttons must be stood on simultaneously by players in order to open the gate and clear the encounter.

Button 1 is up the left staircase, at the end of the jumping puzzle.

Button 2 is up the left staircase, over half of the jumping puzzle, and in the chapel.

Button 3 is on the ground near the left staircase. To avoid dying to mobs, the player on this button should have self sustain, stealth, or just wait on the wall over the button and drop down when the other buttons are pressed.