Thread: Believe It or Not - Twisted Heart in Evendim SOLO

EDIT: This thread and challenge are now obsolete as Evendim has been revamped and this whole quest/instance has been made to be solo. So disregard this post, except for posterity, as this was an interesting challenge (an all out DPS race while not getting stunned) that many (most) classes did not have the tools to complete.


This certainly may have been done in the past, and if so I apologize, but I was able to SOLO the Twisted Heart Instance in Evendim last night and thought I'd share my strategy.

This is only a level 35 quest, so for many 65 classes it is not tough on survivability or DPS. What's tough about this quest is keeping the NPC alive. Longbough (an Ent) walks along with you, and you encounter a few waves of adds on your way to the bottom of a cavern. At this point, 3 Roots spawn that are connected to a Tree (huorn) that you've already seen way back up the path near the entrance. When the roots are alive, the Tree is invincible. So you have to kill the Roots, then take the Tree down by 1/3, after which the Roots respawn, so you have to run way back down the path and take them out again. You have to do this at 2/3 morale and 2/3 morale for the Tree. Also, after killing the first set of Roots, a Wood-Troll named Heart-Rot spawns, and he is essentially invincible until the Tree is dead as he has a HoT (Heal over Time) of +1500 morale every 2 secs that only goes away once the Tree is dead.

The challenge for a solo attempt here is keeping Longbough alive. You need to kill the roots, then go take the Tree down by 1/3, after which immediately the roots spawn and attack Longbough (who chooses to stay below). In the amount of time it takes to run down to "save" Longbough, he's usually dead or close to dead.

I found a way to do it-- see spoiler below--- but I was wondering if other classes have solo'd this in a different way. I could see some classes with run buffs (hunters, capts?) being able to get back down the path before Longbough dies. For a capt, you can probably immediately start healing and save him, but champs (me) don't have that option obviously. Can other classes without a speed buff get down there quick enough to get in range and throw Longbough some heals? Are there other ways to do this, like placing a bleed on the Tree just before 1/3 morale is gone and getting part of half the way down before the roots start beating on Longbough? Other ways I'm not aware of?

Anyways, here was my solution below, which actually is pretty easy to execute but dependent on one factor....


SPOILER WARNING****** SPOILER WARNING ******* SPOILER WARNING *******










SPOILER WARNING****** SPOILER WARNING ******* SPOILER WARNING *******











SPOILER WARNING****** SPOILER WARNING ******* SPOILER WARNING *******


Longbough WILL aggro on Heart-Rot and WILL leave the area with the Roots. It's that simple, actually. I wasn't sure if Longbough was frozen in place at the Roots or not.

So basically you clear waves of mobs to get to Roots. Kill Roots first time. Heart-Rot appears. You build up some good aggro on him, then drag him to Longbough who will start attacking him. Then you drag Heart-Rot with Longbough in tow up to the Tree, take it down 1/3, go back and kill re-spawned roots, and rinse and repeat! There is no AOE so as long as you keep all aggro, Longbough is safe.

Hope this helps! Obviously, there is nothing of note in there for a level 65 as far as loot goes, but it was fun and interesting to figure out anyways!

Thanks,
Radian

Wow. First Midnight Raid and now this? Turning into quite the solo artist there Radian.

Congrats!

LOL Thanks, Magrom!

A kinmate & I tried this with a four-man Fellowship & just couldn't keep Longbough alive long enough to kill all the roots. Knowing he will aggro Heart-Rot, maybe this is worth re-doing (we must've re-run it 7 or 8 times that night). Between this & Tomb of Elendil, I was about to ready to drop a fuel-air explosive on the entire Evendim zone. Kudos to you on the solo.

Originally Posted by Dr.Mindbender

A kinmate & I tried this with a four-man Fellowship & just couldn't keep Longbough alive long enough to kill all the roots. Knowing he will aggro Heart-Rot, maybe this is worth re-doing (we must've re-run it 7 or 8 times that night). Between this & Tomb of Elendil, I was about to ready to drop a fuel-air explosive on the entire Evendim zone. Kudos to you on the solo.

Yeah, for an NPC with 7K morale and a tough, wood skin, he's a bit squishy! LOL Yes, I'd say this method is probably a very good method for groups or solo in this instance - as long as there is someone who can take Heart-Rot's damage, have them aggro him and build up lots of aggro. Then go down to Longbough, and he'll stay with Heart-Rot for the rest of the time. Then just drag both of them around from Tree to Roots to Tree to Roots. I did find that every once in a while Heart-Rot turns to someone lower on the aggro list and whacks them with a stun (or knockback) so maybe a heal or two on Longbough would help. Just make sure that every time you approach the newly spawned roots or the Tree that a player (and not Longbough) gets all the aggro and keeps it.

Good luck!

LOL on the Fuel-air explosive! Too funny!

And thanks for the congrats - I appreciate it.

@Krakuss - Went in there one more time on a hunch, and guess what? turns out that the path that the Tree and it's Roots are on is actually... a circle! LOL Been in there so much and never noticed that the other way around the circular path is VERY short compared to the way you come down in the beginning. That makes it much easier to run back to Longbough from the Tree, fyi. So after you take down the tree by 1/3, and the roots respawn, head CLOCKWISE from the Tree to get back to Longbough and you'll be there in about 1/3 the time!

Originally Posted by Rhino-Man

@Krakuss - Went in there one more time on a hunch, and guess what? turns out that the path that the Tree and it's Roots are on is actually... a circle! LOL Been in there so much and never noticed that the other way around the circular path is VERY short compared to the way you come down in the beginning. That makes it much easier to run back to Longbough from the Tree, fyi. So after you take down the tree by 1/3, and the roots respawn, head CLOCKWISE from the Tree to get back to Longbough and you'll be there in about 1/3 the time!

As many times as we ran that, not one of noticed it was a circle - bizaare. Thanks for mentioning.

Yep. Thanks for the info. I also soloed.

Hmmm...nice way to complicate the instance, but I just followed the directions that Longbough gave me in the game and finished solo with no problem. LOL

Here's a walkthrough of how I completed the three attacks to the tree by following Longbough's instructions. :-)

FIRST ATTACK: After destroying the roots the first time, Longbough says he'll stay there and take care of the roots while you run up and take care of the tree. In fact, he's good on his word. He stays down below the whole time, unless you fail your part of the bargain and leave the upper area to come back down to him. The Heart Rot spawns wherever you are, so don't hang out and enjoy the scenery. If you're not near Longbough, he's safe from it. If you run up the ramp as SOON as the roots are destroyed, it spawns on the path at the TOP of the ramp and follows you to the tree. If you take the time to read Longbough's instructions, it spawns about HALFWAY up the ramp and follows you. Unless you read slowly (it's a lot of text....after all, he is an Ent), in which case just take my word that this is what Longbough wordily tells you to do. So, once you've gotten to the tree with the Heart Rot on your tail (without Longbough), hit the tree a few times and the roots grow back. Time to get ready to make the second attack.

SECOND ATTACK: Without the Heart Rot attacking him, Longbough can handle the roots on his own with no problem. You can try to fight the Heart Rot but the tree heals it and you'll take a lot of damage. So just run for it. DO NOT RUN DOWN THE RAMP TO LONGBOUGH. As you discovered, the path is a circle. Stay on that circle and make your way back around to the tree. Conveniently enough, the time it takes you get back around the circle is the same amount of time it takes Longbough to destroy the roots, so when you complete the circle you can attack the tree again. (Methinks this was precisely the intention of the designers, although granted it's really easy not to understand the intention.) When you finish hitting the tree, run around the circle again.

THIRD ATTACK: When you get back around the circle again, Longbough has killed the roots and you can make your final attack. When you've killed the tree, the Heart Rot is still attacking you. NOW it's time to run DOWN the ramp back to Longbough so that he can help you finish it off with no problem. And....you're done, quite easily. All because you were able to follow the directions of a rambling Ent. :-)

Evendim was revamped, before the revamp and the time the op made the thread, heartrot was hard and a group quest. It is meant to be soloed now and relatively easy.

Originally Posted by Idiotvillage

Evendim was revamped, before the revamp and the time the op made the thread, heartrot was hard and a group quest. It is meant to be soloed now and relatively easy.

This. Yeah, I should probably just delete this thread altogether, because it's now been changed to a solo quest. Before the Evendim revamp, it was a fun DPS race challenge at level 65 to kill heart rot while his self-healing HoT was active. Soloing the whole instance, following the prescribed steps, and completing the quest was easy at level 65 even then, but downing a self-healing Heart-Rot was not.

Either things have been seriously nerfed since this post, or I am extremely lucky.

I walked into this Instance knowing absolutely nothing of it's history, difficulty, or otherwise. I followed along with Longbough and fought the 4 elites at a time that come racing up. I kept a decent stock of healing pots with me and just whacked away at each one. Apparently, Longbough will heal you and himself as he fights along. That made things pretty smooth.

Repeat this about four times or so, and finally you get to the bottom, where Heart Rot is. I killed off the roots as instructed by Longbough, and then suddenly things got weird. I truly thought I was in a glitched out game because Heart Rot just would NOT die. Finally I realized that Longbough was telling me that something (out of the viewing area that I was fighting in) was helping to keep Heart Rot alive. Since Longbough was regularly healing himself, I decided he was fine fighting off Heart Rot while I ran up (take a right, not a left because it's shorter) to Twisted Heart (who looks like one of the Elite Trees in the Old Forest). I fought Twisted Heart and dropped it down to about 1,400 HP and then it went into "invalid target" mode. Said it was gathering up powers or something. So I sat there trying to figure out what was wrong, and again - thought the game was glitching. But I noticed Longbough's HP was drastically dropping, so I run down to him.

TADA! There were thee roots beating on him. I killed them all. Ran back up, took more whacks on Twisted Heart (2/3), and once again it went invalid target on me. Went back down (jumped from second leg and got "broken leg" for a bit but kept on fighting off roots. Killed them all, and ran back up a third time to Twisted Heart. Took a few swings and it fell over dead. By the time I jumped back down to the bottom, Heart Rot was dead and Longbough was patiently waiting for me to finish the quest and travel back.

That was it. In case you're wondering - lvl 37 Guardian and soloed it myself. So like I said... I either lucked out, or the instance is incredibly nerfed now from what it used to be.

Originally Posted by LuthienElensar

Either things have been seriously nerfed since this post, or I am extremely lucky.

I walked into this Instance knowing absolutely nothing of it's history, difficulty, or otherwise. I followed along with Longbough and fought the 4 elites at a time that come racing up. I kept a decent stock of healing pots with me and just whacked away at each one. Apparently, Longbough will heal you and himself as he fights along. That made things pretty smooth.

Repeat this about four times or so, and finally you get to the bottom, where Heart Rot is. I killed off the roots as instructed by Longbough, and then suddenly things got weird. I truly thought I was in a glitched out game because Heart Rot just would NOT die. Finally I realized that Longbough was telling me that something (out of the viewing area that I was fighting in) was helping to keep Heart Rot alive. Since Longbough was regularly healing himself, I decided he was fine fighting off Heart Rot while I ran up (take a right, not a left because it's shorter) to Twisted Heart (who looks like one of the Elite Trees in the Old Forest). I fought Twisted Heart and dropped it down to about 1,400 HP and then it went into "invalid target" mode. Said it was gathering up powers or something. So I sat there trying to figure out what was wrong, and again - thought the game was glitching. But I noticed Longbough's HP was drastically dropping, so I run down to him.

TADA! There were thee roots beating on him. I killed them all. Ran back up, took more whacks on Twisted Heart (2/3), and once again it went invalid target on me. Went back down (jumped from second leg and got "broken leg" for a bit but kept on fighting off roots. Killed them all, and ran back up a third time to Twisted Heart. Took a few swings and it fell over dead. By the time I jumped back down to the bottom, Heart Rot was dead and Longbough was patiently waiting for me to finish the quest and travel back.

That was it. In case you're wondering - lvl 37 Guardian and soloed it myself. So like I said... I either lucked out, or the instance is incredibly nerfed now from what it used to be.

Yup, it was a victim of soloification - in other words, it used to be a 6 person fellowship quest and now it is a solo quest. Nonetheless, glad you figured out the mechanics on your own before Longbough could die!