The Strength of Snow

From GuildWiki

Contents 1 Overview 2 Walkthrough 2.1 Short version 2.2 Long version 2.2.1 General advice 2.2.2 Your skills and profession 2.2.3 Grentches 2.2.4 Order of encounters 3 NPCs 3.1 Allies 3.1.1 Bosses 3.2 Foes 3.2.1 Bosses 4 Notes

[edit] Overview

Summary

1. Speak to the Rift Warden when you are ready to defend the secret lair of the snowmen.
2. Join Freezie's forces to defend the secret lair of the snowmen.

Obtained from

Rift Warden in Lion's Arch or Kamadan during Wintersday

Requirements

Have an Eye of the North product key linked to your account

Straight to the Heart is not active in your quest log

Reward

• 1,000 XP
• 5 Candy Cane Shards

Dungeon rewards

A Wintersday Chest spawns after defeating Grentchus Magnus containing:

• Fruitcake
• Snowman Summoner
• Spiked Eggnog
• Wintergreen Candy Cane
• One random item:
  • Eggnog
  • Fruitcake
  • Miniature Polar Bear (extremely rare)
  • Peppermint Candy Cane
  • Rainbow Candy Cane
  • Spiked Eggnog
  • Wintergreen Candy Cane
  • Yuletide Tonic (rare)

Dialogue

"Grenth's forces have located the snowmen's secret base and are staging an attack. If they are successful, there will be no snowmen to defend the just and the innocent. The grentches will be unopposed in their capers! Dwayna beseeches you to defend the snowmen and save Wintersday... for the children.

For the children!"

Accept: "For the children!"

Reject: "For eggnog!"

Intermediate Dialogue (Rift Warden)

"Are you ready to defend the Secret Lair of the Snowman? You will be separated from your party for the duration of this task. You must protect the snowmen at all costs. Are you ready?"

Accept: "I am ready."

Reject: "I need more time to prepare."

Reward Dialogue

"The Grentches have been routed and Wintersday is saved! Please take these gifts to spread joy and happiness around the world this Wintersday."

[edit] Walkthrough

[edit] Short version

As you walk through the dungeon, you will come across small groups of Grentches and Snowmen fighting each other. You will also occasionally have to face one or two Grentches on your own. After you meet up with Freezie and his allies in the last room of the dungeon, five waves of Grentches will attack.

• Wave #1 consists of two groups of 3 grentches.
• Waves #2, 3 & 4 consist of two groups of 4 grentches.
• Wave #5 consists of Grentchus Magnus and 5 other grentches.

Any snowmen that die will revive after 30 seconds. When Grentchus Magnus and his accompanying grentches have been wiped out, the Wintersday Chest will spawn.

For an easy time, you can simply stand at the closed doors at the end (behind Freezie) and wait out the battle. The resurrecting Snowmen will eventually kill off all the Grentches, although this approach can take more than 10 minutes.

[edit] Long version

This part includes very detailed information for running the quest quickly to get the most chances at getting a Miniature Polar Bear from the end chest.

[edit] General advice

• Run past everything until you reach Freezie and friends. The only enemies that must be defeated are Grentchus Magnus and the 5 grentches that accompany him.
• Most of the grentches you encounter will be fighting snowmen. Very rarely, one of them will attack you after the snowman it is fighting dies, but if you keep running it will ignore you and switch to another snowman.
• Some grentches will appear by themselves. Do your best to dodge their snowballs and use "Mmmm. Snowcone!" when you need it.
  • If you're not good at dodging, you can use Hidden Rock before encountering a grentch, then throw a Snowball to aggro them. This will daze the grentch, doubling the time it takes to activate all its skills.
  • You can take 10 hits from the standard Snowball skill before you die. The grentches typically only follow you long enough to throw 5 snowballs, and you can regenerate naturally in between, so dodging isn't all that important anyway.
  • While it only takes about 10 seconds to kill a grentch (4 Snowballs @ 1s activation + 0.75s aftercast, additional time if you get knocked down or the grentch dodges or heals itself), killing all four solo grentches that you encounter will add almost a minute to your run time.
• If you aren't worried about collecting Candy Cane Shards, you can save even more time by not accepting the quest reward after completing a run. Simply abandon the quest before speaking to the Rift Warden, and he will offer it from the beginning. Otherwise, you will have to rezone after accepting the reward before the Rift Warden will offer it again.

[edit] Your skills and profession

Your choice of profession doesn't make a whole lot of difference, as the profession-specific skills aren't especially powerful. The best choice is probably ranger, and the worst is necromancer.

Skill	Stats	Quest-specific notes
Snowball	1	Your main attack skill, dealing 50 damage, you'll be spamming this most of the time.
Mega Snowball	4 1	Causes knockdown and deals 75 damage. Try to target foes with mostly-full health for maximum effect.
Snow Down the Shirt	¾ 20	Touch hex, 20s duration, interrupts whenever foe takes damage. Would be more useful if it weren't a touch skill.
Hidden Rock	2 10	Your next snowball causes knockdown and inflicts Dazed, making all of the target's skills take twice as long to activate. Use this whenever you can, especially when you have a lull between waves.
Avalanche	¾ 30	Inflicts Crippled on target and nearby foes. Useful against Sneaky Grentches (see next section), and makes it harder for all grentches to dodge.
Ice Fort	1 60	Makes you immune to damage and conditions for 10s, as long as you don't move outside the fort. Save this for when all the snowmen are dead and you're the only target for the grentches.
"Mmmm. Snowcone!"	60	Heals you for 300, but disables your skills for 10s. Use this only when necessary, i.e. when all the snowmen are dead, Ice Fort is recharging, and there are too many grentches for you to dodge.
"Let's Get 'Em!"	30	Grants 5s of 10% faster movement and 1 adrenaline per ally. Useful for quickly charging a Mega Snowball.
Flurry of Ice	¾	Hits target+adjacent foes (up to 5) for 50 damage. Has a quicker activation time than Snowball for the same base damage, but does not give any adrenaline. Spam this instead of Snowball if you aren't worried about throwing Mega Snowballs.
Ice Breaker	1 45	Grants +5 health regen to an ally and knocks down any foe that attacks that ally. Useful for keeping yourself alive when all the snowmen are dead.
Holiday Blues	50%     1 45	Nearby foes take 50 damage and have -15 health degeneration for 30 seconds. Usually not worth the 50% sacrifice, though. You can try putting up one around Freezie and his snowmen.
Blinding Snow	¼ 10	Interrupts and causes blindness. Experienced interrupters may find this skill useful, although the condition is mostly useless as only a few types of grentch use standard attacks (Snowball is a spell and thus isn't affected by blindness).
Icicles	2 25	Hits target+adjacent foes for 75 damage and snares them for 5s. Slower grentches are less likely to dodge, but the recharge is a bit too long to make this really useful.
Side Step	25	Heals you for 250 with a random shadow step. If you're having trouble surviving as any other profession, this will probably help.
Jack Frost	3 20	Summons a Jack Frost "spirit" that throws Snowballs. Somewhat useful, although you'll have to be careful not to overlap with the Industrious Snowman's spirit.
Steady Aim	5	All allies' next snowball moves twice as fast, making it harder for the grentches to dodge. Somewhat useful as it can be spammed every 5 seconds.
Avatar of Dwayna	1 10	For 30s, your snowball skills heal you for 30, disabled for 60s. Like the assassin's skill, this can help keep you alive in a pinch.

[edit] Grentches

Every normal grentch uses Snowball and one other skill, listed below.

Type	Second skill	Quest-specific notes
Speedy Grentch	"Let's Get 'Em!"	Not very dangerous.
Hasty Grentch	Flurry of Ice	Potentially dangerous to bunched-up snowmen.
Frozen Grentch	Ice Breaker	Priority target, very dangerous as the snowmen usually like to all attack the same target, which means they'll all get knocked down.
Grentch	Yellow Snow	Somewhat dangerous due to the Disease it causes.
Flashy Grentch	Blinding Snow	Somewhat dangerous due to interrupt, but also because the Blindness it causes will nullify the snowmen's normal attacks.
Icy Grentch	Icicles	Potentially dangerous to bunched-up snowmen, and the only ones you'll probably want to kill if you encounter them solo.
Shifty Grentch	Avatar of Grenth	Somewhat dangerous as it adds 15 life stealing to their Snowball skills.
Sneaky Grentch	Snow Down the Shirt	Fairly dangerous as this can shut down the target if the grentches focus on it.
Dodgy Grentch Tricky Grentch	Hidden Rock	Somewhat dangerous because of Daze.

[edit] Order of encounters

(numbers are ordered as Grentches vs. Snowmen)

1. Initial chamber: 4 vs. 4 - you'll hardly even get in range of this group.
2. Second chamber: 3 vs. 4 - run right through, snowmen should win this one so nothing will follow you.
3. Long passage: Solo grentch.
4. Across bridge: 2 vs. 2 - the grentches will usually kill at least one snowman before the snowmen start to fight back, so these grentches might chase you a bit.
5. Through door and around corner: Solo grentch.
6. At end of passage: 2 grentches off to the side. Be careful not to aggro them while dodging the previous grentch's snowballs.
7. Big chamber: 4 vs. 5 - easy snowman victory.
8. In front of exit door: Solo grentch, with another solo grentch around the corner. You'll probably take quite a few hits from these two, so save your Snowcone.
9. Final battle. Four waves of two groups, followed by final wave of Grentchus Magnus and friends. There are four spawning points: at then end of the passage to the north, on the hill to the south, against the wall to the northwest, and down the passage to the west. The spawns are not random, but always contain the following grentches:
   • Wave 1: North and west (identical): Flashy, Frozen, and Icy.
   • Wave 2:
     • South group: Dodgy, Frozen, Grentch, and Tricky
     • North group: Dodgy, Frozen, Grentch, and Sneaky
   • Wave 3:
     • Northwest group: Dodgy, Hasty, Speedy, and Tricky
     • South group: Dodgy, Flashy, Grentch, and Shifty
   • Wave 4:
     • North group: 4x Sneaky
     • South group: Flashy, Icy, Shifty, and Speedy
   • Wave 5: West: Grentchus Magnus, Flashy, Icy, Shifty, Speedy, Tricky

   Stay to the east of the snowmen, near the closed doors, so that you don't draw the initial aggro from the grentches. Try to target grentches that the snowmen are not targeting, to avoid wasting a Mega Snowball or Hidden Rock because your target died before it hit. If you do get attacked, run away and the grentch should re-target to a snowman. The worst-case scenario is all snowmen dead, your Ice Fort interrupted, and you've used your Snowcone - if this should happen to you, zig and zag like a kitty on catnip and pray that you can dodge enough snowballs to stay alive until some snowmen resurrect.

[edit] NPCs

[edit] Allies

• 15 Mischievous Snowman
• 15 Roguish Snowman
• 15 Bustling Snowman
• 15 Glimmering Snowman
• 15 Chilled Snowman
• 15 Industrious Snowman
• 15 Impeccable Snowman
• 15 Blessed Snowman

[edit] Bosses

• 19 Freezie

[edit] Foes

• 15 Sneaky Grentch
• 15 Tricky Grentch
• 15 Speedy Grentch
• 15 Hasty Grentch
• 15 Frozen Grentch
• 15 Grentch
• 15 Flashy Grentch
• 15 Icy Grentch
• 15 Dodgy Grentch
• 15 Shifty Grentch

[edit] Bosses

• 19 Grentchus Magnus

[edit] Notes

• During this quest, you will be under the effects of Yuletide, which sets your max health to 500, your max energy to 40, and replaces your skills with the snow fighting skills detailed above.
• The equivalent Grenth supporter quest is Straight to the Heart.
• Deaths in this quest do not count against the survivor title, although at only 1,000 XP every 7 minutes, it's not worth farming.
• Any snowmen that survive the fights against grentches before the final battle will run back through the dungeon and disappear at the dungeon entrance.
• If you die at the end but the snowmen manage to kill Grentchus Magnus, the quest will update as having completed.
• Since Ice Fort is an enchantment, using a weapon of Enchanting +20% will give 2 extra seconds of protection.
• When you finish the quest, pick up the Candy Cane Shards first; once you open the chest, you will only have 15 seconds before being teleported out, and the Shards will not appear in an Unclaimed Items box.

Bug! Rarely, one or more of the Grentches at the northern spawn point will actually spawn behind the wall of ice. If this happens, that group of Grentches will not move to attack the snowmen. This will not affect the quest, as only Grentchus Magnus and his group must be defeated to finish the quest.

Bug! Any Grentches that follow you to the last room will be hostile to the Grentches that spawn as part of the final battle.