Hall of Monuments: Honor

[Confused? Start here.]

I'm going to touch on the HoM synergy topic a bit in this post, but it's mainly about the Honor monument itself.

Honor is both the monument for which you need no tapestry and the one with the most number of points available: a total of 18 points, mainly accruing from how many different statues you install. You get 3 points as a freebie for "accounts linked" (which means just for owning a GW1 account via which you plan to claim rewards in GW2), and 3 more points for a PvP statue (more on that below), 2 points for your first statue of any sort, and 3 more for getting a total of five statues. You may already have five statues, and you'll probably find it fairly easy to get to that point if you don't. That means chances are the absolute minimum you will have is 8 points (or, if you PvP, 11). The rest come at one point each for every five statues up to 40, with a total of 52 potential statues (Eternal Commander and Eternal Codex Disciple are mutually exclusive).

Most of the Honor statues correspond to a title, although you don't always need to max the title out to get the statue. The rest of the statues are for conquering specific areas in the game.

If you made your goals on the other monuments, you should have between 14 and 22 points from those, which means you will need between 8 and 16 points here.

You can get 8 points by putting in a total of 5 PvE-related statues (3 automatically, 2 for that first statue, and 3 more for getting to 5 statues). Alternately, 5 mixed PvP and PvE statues will get you 11 points total, as the first PvP statue is worth 3 points. For each additional 5 statues, you get one more point. That should let you figure out how many statues you need here. If you still need that high end of 16 points, you absolutely will have to get a PvP statue plus a total of 30 statues, so my advice is that you revisit the other monuments and see if you can pick up a couple more points from those.

PvP Statues

Let's tackle that PvP statue first, with its juicy 3 points. Not everyone PvPs, but even if you have never so much as stepped foot into Random Arenas, it's still possible to get the Eternal Zaishen Supporter statue. (Note: there's currently a vocal minority of players who are trying to get ANet to change this so that statue does not count as a PvP statue for the HoM. I don't personally think ANet will do this, since the primary source of Zaishen keys is PvP even if you can get them without personally PvPing, but I thought people might want to include the possibility in their planning.)

To get the Zaishen statue, you'll need rank 3 in the account-wide Zaishen title, gotten by opening the Zaishen chest in the Battle Isles 200 times. That means you'll need 200 Zaishen keys. The keys can be gotten in four ways: exchanging Balthazar faction for them at 5000 faction per key, exchanging gold Zaishen coins for them 1:1, exchanging Tournament Reward Points for them, and buying them from other players.

The Tournament points are currently only available via GvG tournaments, so are the one thing primarily-PvE players are unlikely to get. Balthazar faction actually can be gotten by nominal PvE players who participate in certain holiday games, and a limited amount are also awarded via doing the Training Arena on the Battle Isles. Zcoins can be earned for doing PvE missions and bounties, although the 1 gold coin:1 key ratio is not the fastest method of getting them. The last choice, buying them, is the probably the easiest way to go if you either can't or don't want to invest a fair amount of time in PvP. The price on these is fairly steady, usually around 5k a key, so you'd need 1000k to buy from 0 to 200... not exactly a small amount, but you can do it in small chunks, and the chest can give you some pretty good items.

The other titles that count for a PvP statue are also all account-wide titles and mainly displayable at rank 3 in their appropriate title track: Eternal Hero (Heroes' Ascent, requires rank 6), Eternal Gladiator (Random and the former Team Arena), Eternal Codex Disciple or Eternal Commander (Codex area or Hero Battles respectively), and Eternal Champion (GvG). Inexplicably, the Gamer title (also displayable at rank 3) does not count as a PvP statue despite points being awarded for competing with other players. (There's also a vocal minority asking them to change this; I wouldn't count on it, but it's slightly more likely than the other change, IMO.) Neither do the Kurzick and/or Luxon titles (displayable at rank 4), possibly because you can earn them without PvP being involved.

The non-Zaishen statues are somewhat harder to earn from scratch and are likely to take a fair amount of time. Random Arenas is easy to get into as you don't have to worry about finding someone willing to team up with you. Heroes' Ascent and Codex may have some people willing to take new players into their groups, so it's not impossible for a new player to break into, but you may have some trouble until you get some PvP rank. You also will, I'm sorry to say, encounter some of the less pleasant PvP players in any of these places, so if that's what's been keeping you from PvPing, you probably want to skip those.

You might have better luck with GvG. Due to the age of the game, a lot of the long-time GvGers have moved on to doing other things, which means two things: some guilds are now explicitly looking to recruit (or even guest) more GvG players, and there are fewer practiced players participating, which tends to make it a bit easier to accumulate points. If your guild is big enough to participate but never has before now, this may not be a bad time to try to get a few people to agree to try it out so you can all work towards getting that title for your Hall of Monuments. You won't earn points immediately, but assuming you can win matches at all, you will probably find it possible to get to rank 3. You only need 4 human players to participate in GvG, and only two of them need to actually be in your guild; the other two can be guests. The rest of the party can be filled with henchmen (or more guests).

PvE statues

For PvE statues, there are both account-based and character-based possibilities. This seems like a good time to remind you that you do not have to get all the character-based ones from the same character. If you finished one campaign on one character and a second campaign on another, get them both up to the Hall of Monuments and get both statues in. Since you don't need to worry about tapestries for the Honor monument, it's just a matter of running the very short quest to get to the Eye of the North.

For each campaign you've finished, you will be able to install a minimum of one statue. The Eternal Hero of Tyria, Cantha, or Elona statues are given for completing the campaign at all. You can also put in Eternal Protector of Tyria, Cantha, or Elona by finishing all missions with their bonus (Prophecies) or the Master's Reward (Factions and Nightfall). If you didn't get the bonus or Master's on a mission or two here and there, it's worthwhile to go back and try them again. Since you only need 5 statues to bring you to 8 points (or 11 if one is a PvP statue) it can be a fairly quick way to get them.

By doing the campaigns in hard mode, you can also earn the Guardian statues by completing all missions with the bonus or Master's award. There's one statue for each campaign, for a total of at least three more. That would bring you up to 9 statues. If you did all the missions in both modes on a single character, however, you also will have earned Legendary Guardian, for a 10th statue.

If you're doing any playing in hard mode, you may also have been doing some vanquishing. If you vanquish every area in a campaign, that's worth another statue—3 total, or 4 if you do it all on the same character and get the Legendary Vanquisher title. If you were opening locked boxes with lockpicks while doing so (or if you've spent some time up in Eye of the North and done the same), you've probably earned some Lucky and Unlucky points. To get those two statues into the monument only requires rank 2 in each, and if you've been playing a while in hard mode or EotN, you may already have that. The titles are account-based, so every character who has used lockpicks will have contributed, and any character can install the statues in the Hall.

Lucky and Unlucky points can also be earned at the Rings of Fortune or Nine Rings games during Canthan New Year. Nine Rings is generally somewhat faster than using lockpicks, but you need a bunch of money all at once to maximize your point earnings during the festival, and you have to leave yourself logged in and on the rings for quite a long time.

While we're on the topic of locked chests, they (along with any chest with a key worth at least 600g) are also good for points in the account-based Treasure Hunter title, and also in the account-based Wisdom title if you found and identified items of a gold rarity. Unfortunately, those statues can only be put in the monument if you reach the highest rank in them, which can take quite a while.

Those are the last of the account-wide statues. To sum up: All PvP statues (including Zaishen rank), Gamer, Kurzick and/or Luxon, Lucky, Unlucky, Treasure-Hunter, and Wisdom can have progress made towards them by any character on your account and their respective statues can therefore be installed by any character (without a tapestry, even). I didn't spend much time on Gamer or Kurzick/Luxon statues, though, so let me say a few more words about those.

Gamer rank 3 is gotten via various holiday contests. During Halloween (that's now!) you can earn points in the Costume Brawl. You can do this with any level character with any equipment; hit points and energy are set to the same levels for everyone, your skill bar is based only on what primary profession the character is, and the game will even drop you a useful weapon to pick up when you first enter. (One caveat: I'm not positive you get max armor automatically, so you may want to read that as "you can do this with any character with max armor" to be on the safe side.) During Wintersday/Wintersday in July, you can earn points by playing Dwayna vs Grenth, which also has set skill bars (one skill based on which "team" you're on, one based on your primary profession, and the rest the same for everyone). Lastly, during Canthan New Year, you can earn points, albeit a bit more slowly, through Roller Beetle, Dragon Nest, or the Dragon Arena.

Kurzick and/or Luxon rank 4 can be earned via PvE, PvP, or both. PvPers in a Luxon- or Kurzick-allied guild can get teams together for Alliance Battles. You can earn points for the opposite side either by guesting in another guild or by joining the non-guilded or non-allied players in the competitive missions (Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood). PvE players can earn their points in five ways: doing quests and missions in Echovald and/or the Jade Sea, taking Zaishen missions or bounties for those areas (which give bonus faction), filling the Shiro's Return storybook in either regular or hard mode and turning it in, or vanquishing Echovald or Jade Sea areas. You'll note that's only four; the fifth way is this: take bounties whenever you go into a zone in one of those areas, provided the side you're attempting to earn faction for is currently controlling that area. If you're not allied with the appropriate side and/or currently have more faction for the other side (though I advise spending that first), you can still bribe the priest to give you the bounty.

That leaves the remaining character-based titles and related statues. I've covered the campaign-finishing ones and vanquishing, but there's a fair number of other possible choices.

A relatively easy (if perhaps a bit expensive) set of statues to work towards is are the four possible Skill Hunter statues. If you can capture every elite skill in the game on one character, you can get Legendary Skill Hunter as well as the three individual campaign Skill Hunter statues. If you break it up across characters, you can still earn one or more of the individual statues. This will cost you 1k per Signet of Capture, but since you can do it over time, the cost may not really be all that noticeable.

While you're running through those various zones you need to go through anyhow, you may want to spend some time exploring for the cartographer titles. To get these requires more than just minimal exploring; you'll have to get right up to the edges of each zone and "scrape" along them to be sure to squeeze out every possible bit. There's one cartographer title for each campaign, plus a fourth title if you get them all on one character. Each campaign has a bit of leeway in getting the title, but you will need to fully explore both zones and mission areas as well as outposts to get them. To get the Canthan cartographer title, you may also have to go into one or both of the competitive missions, but I advise exploring everywhere outside them first, especially if you're going to be vanquishing anyhow. (More on that in the synergy post.)

To max the rank titles from Nightfall and Eye of the North requires you to do at least some play in hard mode. It's also a good idea to get a relevant storybook before playing through Nightfall or Eye of the North, as those can boost one of the titles considerably. You can get both normal mode and hard mode storybooks. Before rank 8 (or 5 for Lightbringer) in normal mode, make sure you take shrine bounties whenever you are traveling through an area of Nightfall or EotN. After rank 8 (or LB 5), only points earned in hard mode and certain bonus points (such as from completing a Zaishen mission) can be gained, but you can get points both for vanquishing areas and by taking bounties in hard mode as well as via hard mode storybooks. There are a total of six statues available here: Eternal Spearmarshal (Sunspear), Eternal Lightbringer, Eternal Bookah (Asura), Eternal Delver (Deldrimor), Eternal Slayer (Norn), and Eternal Ebon Vanguard Agent.

If you're working on those Eye of the North titles, you are probably also earning a certain amount of progress towards Legendary Master of the North. This is a compound title; you get points for finishing the primary quests in both modes, vanquishing and exploring every zone, completing the dungeons in both modes, and exploring the zones as you would for cartographer. By campaign standards, that's a mix of Cartographer, Vanquisher, Protector, and Guardian, so this isn't a quick or easy undertaking, and there's only a small amount of leeway in the title. Slaver's Exile is probably by far the hardest dungeon, although it may not actually be that much harder in hard mode, but you could theoretically get away with skipping it in both modes (there's a 31 point leeway, and each dungeon is worth 30 points, 10 in normal mode and 20 in hard mode).

Drunkard, Sweet Tooth, and Party Animal are titles you can get by consuming alcohol, sweets (including some consumables that can help you in PvE), and festive items. These can be gotten most easily during holidays or from Gifts of the Traveler from Nicholas weekly, but players also routinely sell them. Drunkard is by far the hardest of the three to get as it requires you to spend 167 hours sufficiently drunk. The other two can be gotten with "spammable" (quickly usable) items, so may require less time investment.

Legendary Survivor and Legendary Defender of Ascalon are both fairly tough to come by, since one requires you to not die for a very, very long time, and the other requires you to die on purpose to the same mobs over and over again. Their respective wiki pages can be helpful in figuring out how to get them, but if you weren't already planning on it, you may want to skip it, as you don't absolutely need them, even to max out the monument.

Non-title-related Statues

That covers the title-based statues, but there's a few more you can earn by completing certain areas. Aside from the three campaigns' "Eternal Hero" statues, there's an Eternal Conquerer statue (each) for the Underworld, the Fissure of Woe, Sorrow's Furnace, the Domain of Anguish, the Deep, and Urgoz's Warren.

All of these places have requirements to get into them; see the various pages or their accompanying outpost page for more details. In brief, the FoW and the Underworld require an ascended character and either the favor of the gods or a passage scroll. The Deep and Urgoz's Warren require a passage scroll (unless you're in the alliance controlling Cavalon or House zu Heltzer, or have friends that are). Access to the DoA requires you to finish Nightfall. Sorrow's Furnace is the easiest; you simply have to be able to get to the Southern Shiverpeaks in Prophecies.

You cannot take henchmen into most of these areas, so be aware of that. ANet is planning on making it possible to bring up to 7 heroes (instead of 3) with every human player, so it may be possible to do some of them alone or with a single other player, but you should know that, with the possible exception of the FoW and SF, these are extremely difficult areas (and even the former two require a fair amount of time invested). If you can figure out how to do them, great; one more statue here is one less of another type you have to get. But you do not need these statues to max out the Honor monument, let alone to hit 30 points, so do not worry about it if they prove too tough for you.

That having been said, I recommend starting with either the Fissure of Woe or Sorrow's Furnace.

The Fissure of Woe is not so much difficult as time-consuming. To get this statue you have to complete all the quests in a single run. I highly recommend at least skimming a walkthrough so you can avoid getting kicked out when you're already halfway through, but the quick advice is: clear every area possible, preferably before you even take any associated quest, and don't allow quest-related NPCs to die. Otherwise, as long as you're careful and have a decent team setup (anything that would be able to handle hard mode should work here), you shouldn't have too much trouble. But make sure you have a few spare hours if it's your first time, because it may take a while to figure out where you're going and what you need to do in which order. This is also the only place in the game you can get Obsidian drops, either to save up for Obsidian armor or to sell for cash to get other things. You will not get more than a few drops per run in a full team, but it's an extra reason to run the area.

Sorrow's Furnace is also a long quest chain, but it's broken up into pieces. As with the FoW, as long as you are careful and have a decent team, this should be doable by most people. Your main enemies in the area are Dredge (which you may have already faced in Cantha) and Stone Summit dwarves (which you have certainly faced if you can get to Sorrow's Furnace in the first place). They may be a bit higher level than you're used to, unless you've fought them in hard mode, in which case it will feel familiar. If you've got a way to handle those, the other enemies shouldn't pose much of a problem. Also, while you're here, you can finish up getting a Black Moa Chick mini (see the Devotion monument post).

Urgoz's Warren and the Deep require a 12-person party size and somewhat more coordination than you will likely find possible with only a couple human players. Or so I hear; because of the 12-person size, I've yet to do them. They also were designed by sadists. I'm serious about that part; I've read the walkthroughs. However, if you belong to a decent-sized PvE guild or have several friends who play the game, it might be worthwhile to try them, despite the difficulty. Not only are they each worth a statue in the HoM, but they can be a source of amber or jade (respectively) and some rare items that are difficult at best to find elsewhere.

The Underworld is also, I hear, pretty difficult. I never got around to trying it before they added vicious anti-farming measures and a new end boss, or I'd be able to tell you in more detail, but from what I've heard, even if you can handle the mobs with the aggro radius of doom, you may not be able to handle the doom of Dhuum. Just... read the wiki page and its discussion area for more on this. The Underworld is one of two areas where you can get Globs of Ectoplasm (ecto), the other being the Tomb of the Primeval Kings accessible in Prophecies. Obsidian armor requires a lot of ecto, or you can make a veritable buttload of money selling it to other players (or the rare materials vendor).

Lastly, there's the Domain of Anguish. Let me just give you a piece of advice: don't take a lot of enchantments. In fact, if you can take none, that's even better, because the enchantment-stripping @#!#@s up there can do 250 points of damage with one Shatter Enchantment. I have not yet gotten this statue, although I'm going to take another try at it after I get my ritualist through Nightfall. Apparently a dervish is one of the worst things to take there (thanks alot, ANet, for making one of the native professions be severely handicapped here!), which I found out through personal experience and then confirmed via various discussions on the wiki and elsewhere.

In any event, the DoA is definitely a challenging area. Some people have come up with gimmicky farming builds to make it much easier, but that's true of all of these areas, and if you want advice on those, you can consult PvX wiki. Otherwise, just give it a few tries and see how it works out for you. My advice is to take the quests even on your first try, because if it turns out that you can get to the boss of each area, it's worth the reward. In fact, in general, it's probably worth trying despite the difficulty because of the synergy with getting a few other things, as I'll be going over in the synergies post.