Neverwinter

***Special NOTE*** ----As of 5/3/16, this has finally been fixed with The Maze Engine Expansion. To all of you who struggled to complete this with the event broken, go grab your Achievement!



***Original Solution from 3/7/16*** ---- Currently the first wave of this instance is broken. There are 4 gates to break to release prisoners, but you only get credit for rescuing prisoners behind the first 3 gates you break, the 4th one does not give credit. This makes this achievement and attaining Gold VERY difficult and unfortunately right now, it is luck dependent once you learn a good strategy.


So the first wave is mainly where this achievement is made or lost right now until it is fixed. There are 4 gates leading to 4 cells, each cell has 10 prisoners. You earn points toward your medal ranks with each prisoner you save. Randomly, a cell will be chosen and prisoners inside will start being killed off which takes possible points away from your group. I have been told on the PC version, there is like an executioner mob that spawns on the stairs by the throne that will point to a cell (Pink beam will connect that mob to the prisoner cell) which is what shows you which prisoners are being killed and that is the door you must break first for most points. Unfortunately, this is broken and I have found no way to tell at a glance which cell to open at any given time. The following strategy will set up your group for a win, but luck plays a huge part in it still. This took us 1 practice run to make sure people saw spawns and exact places to be, and 2 more attempts until luck was in our favor.

1st wave: When you first enter, there will be 2 cells on the right and 2 on the left. The Hulk mobs that spawn are the key to this part. They will agro someone and charge them (look for a red beam on the ground targeting someone). Whoever has agro from this charge must "Aim" the Hulks at a cell door. When the Hulk charges, it will crash into the cell door and die, causing damage. 3 Hulk smashes will break a door, and 3 Hulks spawn at the start. You MUST use all 3 Hulk's to smash the same door to destroy it quickly. Since the prisoners killed in a cell are chosen at random it seems, just pick a set order of cells to open and stick to that until you earn Gold. There are 3 Hulks, one spawns in front of the back left cell door, a second spawns in front of the back right cell and the third one spawns sort of in between them, but all 3 spawn in a line between the rear 2 cell doors. The order we used was back right door first, then front right and then either of the left doors (will explain this step shortly). As soon as your group spawns into the room, run to the back right door. We set 2 designated people to grab Hulk agro while the others stayed at the door we were focused on and killed any mobs close by. Ideally you want ranged attackers to agro the hulks so you can do it from a distance, melee classes have to get closer to them to agro and there is a chance an Infiltrator or Mindflayer can stun you in the middle of the room costing you time to aim a hulk correctly. Just be mindful of this, but we had a rogue and wizard for our agro and succeeded, just be aware a stun while running to agro a Hulk can cause a miss which = failure right now. Once a Hulk dies, there is a set timer before it spawns again, so grabbing Hulk agro immediately when they spawn is key. The quicker you run them into a cell door, the quicker they will respawn for the second door. Once the first door was smashed and prisoners saved, we moved to the front right cell door (From entrance, looking straight back to the Throne). Follow same steps, 3 people standing at the door killing anything close while 2 designated Hulk grabbers snag agro on them when they spawn and aim them at the appropriate cell. Once both cells on the right were opened and prisoners rescued, you will only receive credit for 1 more cell. We quickly rushed to the left side and sent separate people to peek inside the cell quickly to count prisoners. For us, there were more prisoners left alive in the front left cell then the back left cell, so this is the one we focused on (6 in the back left cell, 8 were alive in the front left). Again keep 3 people at cell door fighting whats close and our 2 designated Hulk grabbers kept on their toes to grab agro the second they spawned. Normally if you can Silver 1 wave and Gold the other 2, you will get Gold for the final. On our success, we actually filled our Bronze bar but missed Silver by a tiny sliver of progress on the bar. We only got Bronze again on first wave so figured we failed. We burned through the other waves simply to finish quickly so we could retry, but to my surprise we ended with Gold even with a Bronze in the first part which I did not think was possible.

2nd Wave: If you have mainly ranged dps or lower dps, I suggest you all stand in the center of the room. A group will spawn on right or left side, by one of the cells. Once that group dies, another will spawn on the other side of the room by one of the cells and keeps doing this back and forth until timer runs out or all have been killed. Stay near center and pounce as quickly as you can on each group as it spawns. For us, we had higher dps and mostly melee (2 rogues, gwf, wizard and cleric). We split up the dps. I kept my GWF on the left side with a rogue and the wizard, cleric and other rogue stayed on the right. We split up the dps (This only works with higher dps) each killing the groups that spawned on our side to save running melee classes back and forth. This was a pretty easy Gold once we had our rhythm down. Once the final mob dies and you hit 100% killed, run towards the stairs with the throne before the movie scene to be as close to named as possible.

3rd Wave: The named spawns directly in front of the throne at the top of the stairs. Rush the named and engage him at the top of the stairs if possible. This will allow you to avoid some of the adds that spawn in the room during this fight. After wave 2's last mob dies, be sure to run as close to this spot as you can so you can pounce immediately onto the named as Wave 3 starts. This wave is straight forward, full on burn on the named. Even with medium dps, this wave seems easy to Gold but if the mob makes it down to the bottom of the stairs, the Hulk adds can stun and push and pull dps around slowing the death of the Boss.

Again right now this skirmish is broken, first wave only awards points for the first 3 gates smashed and prisoners released. Once entering the room, the first 3 Hulks are already up which means just grab agro and break any door quickly. There is no time to look through doors and at this point, no prisoners should be dead. The luck comes into play mostly on the second door you smash. If you pick a door with prisoners dying, you probably wont earn enough to Gold in the end. You MUST use all 3 Hulk's to smash the same gate or you fail. You MUST agro the Hulk's within the first 3 or 4 seconds of them spawning, or you will fail. You MUST break at least 2 cell doors without many prisoners being killed, or you fail. You CANNOT Gold the first wave right now until it is fixed, Silver is the best you can hope for. Just do your best on wave 1 and you MUST Gold the final 2 waves.


Once this is fixed, this achievement will be easy, but until then I hope this strategy can help those of you still stuck on this. I wasted run after run trying to figure out a way of telling which prisoners are dying and I found no good sign. Looking through the doors and counting I only suggest doing for your 3rd door you smash to maximize points earned. There simply isnt enough time on the second door to check both sides of the room.

Again please understand, this strategy is to give you all an understanding of the fight and the only way to Gold Medal this atm, but is no guarantee of a 1st attempt success. Knowing the strategy will allow quick and consistent runs, but in the end it comes down to luck and which cells have prisoners being killed. I learned it from people who got it after 3 or 4 attempts and we decided to take luck/chance out of the third door and actually look through and smash the door with the most prisoners (points) behind it.

Goodluck and I hope this helps