With Fellowship Early Access releasing, you will want to learn more about Ascensions and Curses before you get too far into the game. This guide will get you up to speed with Ascensions and Curses in Fellowship, so you know what to expect when they are active in your Dungeons.
What are Ascensions and Curses?
Basically these are modifiers to dungeons that increase difficulty, similar to something like affixes in World of Warcraft. There is a slight difference between the two though. Starting with Ascensions, these kick in at a specific dungeon level and exist on all keys above that level, serving only to increase the base difficulty of a dungeon.
When it comes to Curses, these are still added at set levels, with the first slot appearing in Adept league and the second kicking in when you enter Champion League. The main difference is that these effects are not static, and instead are chosen at random from a pool of 10 possible options, where the chosen options rotate intermittently allowing for different experiences from week to week even if you’re doing dungeons of a similar level. These curses also have both a negative and positive aspect to them, otherwise known as a Kiss/Curse effect, giving players some benefit for taking on the added difficulty.
Ascensions
Asha’s Dilemma (Contender 4+)
his Ascension kicks in starting at Contender 5 and simply adds a timer to the dungeon, which must be met to obtain the maximum level gear available as well as progress to the next difficulty.
Vayr’s Legacy (Contender 7+)
Starting with the first capstone dungeon in Cithrel’s Fall and continuing through Adept league and beyond, this Ascension causes certain mobs to gain additional abilities. There’s no exact rule in terms of how these new abilities are applied, but we’ve added notes to the spells that this Ascension adds in all of our Dungeon guides, so check them out if you’re interested in seeing what they are.
Curses
Binding Ice
This occasionally debuffs a random player, causing them to explode in a circle around them after 5s, dealing damage and rooting all enemies and players hit. Make sure you avoid your allies if you get targeted, and if possible do your best to cleave any nearby mobs.
Blood Shards
Enemies explode on death, dealing 2% of their max health in damage to all players while also granting them 1% Expertise for 30s, stacking up to 15 times. Be careful when killing healthier mobs as this can hit quite hard coming from mobs with a lot of health, otherwise do your best to stagger mob kills and chain pull to maintain the Expertise buff for as long as possible.
Carnage
10% of all damage taken by any player gets divided between the entire group as a Magic DoT, which can be dispelled or removed by healing a player above 90% health. To counteract this it also causes players to heal for 10% of damage done divided between the entire group, increasing by an additional 5% per boss defeated. Beware that when this Curse is active that any moments of high tank damage become moments of high group damage, though you are able to counteract high incoming group damage by using damage cooldowns to increase the “Kiss” healing benefit.
Challenge
Non-boss enemies have 10% increased damage and health, while players gain 10% Spirit. This is fairly straightforward, just be careful of dangerous trash mobs as they’ll now be even scarier.
Empowered Minions
Some mobs in the dungeon are empowered, gaining increased health and power but granting players 20% haste and move speed for 40s on death. You’ll want to watch out for which mobs get buffed by this ability in any given dungeon, as sometimes this isn’t impactful but sometimes it empowers an already dangerous mob, turning into something you want to avoid entirely.
Malevolent Spirits
After defeating enemies you’ll eventually spawn a Malevolent Spirit, reducing damage taken of other nearby enemies by 50% and increasing their haste by 20% until killed. Make sure you swap to this mob whenever it spawns, and generally try to cleave all mobs in a pack down evenly to reduce the value of the Spirit’s buff when it does spawn.
Meteor Rain
Intermittently 4 Meteors rain down from the sky, detonating in a staggered fashion and shooting out projectiles in 4 directions that stun and deal damage to players hit, with each detonation also granting 2 Spirit Ability Charge to all players. When the Meteors appear try to find a safe spot to stand, where often positioning between the projectiles of a meteor is a good spot to start. Also make sure to use your Spirit Ability more so you don’t waste the “Kiss” effect!
Shadow Lord’s Trial
Mobs no longer give kill score, instead dropping Shadow Orbs that must be collected, with an Emissary of the Shadow Lord spawning after you’ve obtained 30 orbs and granting you 50% mob count upon defeat. Beware that these mobs deal increasing group damage, so the longer you fight them the scarier they’ll become, meaning you’ll want to try and save healing cooldowns or group defensives for when their damage stacks are high. Make sure you aren’t missing any orbs, as this affix does not actually change the kill score required and you should be able to follow your normal route as long as you don’t miss any orbs. Also if needed you’re able to strategically spawn these Shadow Lords by waiting to pick up orbs when you’re close to 30, in case you’re currently fighting a dangerous mob or want to wait for cooldowns.
Stone Skin
Non-boss enemies have 30% increased health, however on death they explode, dealing 15% of their max health as physical damage over 6s to other enemies around them. This makes it extremely beneficial to both chain pull and pull low health mobs onto bosses, particularly if you’re able to do so with high max health elite mobs.
Ultimatum
The counterpart to Challenge, instead increasing boss health and damage by 10%, while reducing player cooldowns by 10%. Again this is straightforward, just be wary of dungeons that already have difficult boss encounters.
