Progress blocking bug: The Sacrifice

Me and 2 guildies are going through the story together. This has stopped the progress of all three of us. FYI, we have tried swapping instance owners but no luck.

You get to the top of the mountain, fight the herald then confront Balth who has Vlast chained. After a brief period of time, 1 of two things happen

1) Balth simply vanishes and we are all dead except instance owner who's in a downed state as is Rytlock. After reviving, the instance is unable to progress at all.

2) Balth chains us all, tells us he's going to finish us, does his animation then similiar situation to above. Only instead of non-instance owners being dead, they are also downed.

In either case, balth vanishes and after we get up off the ground, nothing happens. We're unable to progress the story.

WHAT THE HELL... this is silly ANET. Like the above poster my girlfriend and I are also stuck at this point which in turns stops us from entering the next map this needs to be fixed ASAP. or shut it down so people can enter the next map over. Very frustrating. Shoitaan pretty much said what happens if you need me to tell you do so.

Same here. Even tried dying completely in the nearby fires, but "retry from checkpoint" basically takes you back to the very start of the segment.

Same thing happened to my wife and me. :-1:

My guildie and i are having the same issue. We did it earlier today with 3 ppl total and it didnt work. Tried with just 2 of us and still nothing. Right now i just helped my guidlie beat herald then went to guild hall so she'd be the lone player in it. Apparently it worked, she said she got the cutscene. So hopefully if there is more to the story, she won't have a problem. The other problem we had, was everytime we clicked retry from checkpoint it would kick us out.

Stll this is why story is so aggravating. It's more made for solo then multilplayer but yet multiplayer is what anet wants us to do. To play with the community but then they make soo many bugs in story when you do.....

I mentioned this in another thread relating to this quest but the exact same thing is happening to me and my wife. I know the first time we done this instance there was a cut scene with the dragon saving you but we no longer get this, plus when everyone other than the instance owner gets killed Rytlock is instead stuck in the down animation with full health and cannot be rez'd.

This is stopping the story from progressing as it expects you to rez Rytlock and then have a discussion with him. Me and my wife have tried the instance 3-4 times now swapping characters and switching who starts the story and it fails every single time.

Best thing you can do right now for it, til they do a proper fix. When you do this story with someone. Is have the non-instance owner go to their guild hall AFTER you defeat the herald. That will allow the instant owner to get the cutscene and complete that story. Then once that player is done you switch instance owner and have the other person leave to their guild hall after herald is defeated. That is how me and my one guildie got around this bug. She started story and i went to guild hall and she completed it. Then we repeated with me opening story and she went to guild hall after herald so i could complete it.

So give it a shot with your wife. Let her start the story, then you two race to the herald, beat them, then you go to guild hall and wait for her to finish. Then once she's done, then you start it, race to herald and after they die, then yoru wife goes to guild hall, til your finished. Then you both can do next part together.

Might have to try doing this solo or via the method Odin the exiled suggested. As an additional note in case it matters:

After the instance bugs, I'm pretty sure Vlast is not there on the mountain top either.

Yep, the way Odin the exiled.5764 described works. Little shitty that you have to do it so often, but on the other hand, you can try to get the achievements more often or simply run past all enemies except the herald. And after a few rounds, she gets easier and easier ;)

The issue here is that balthazar's FATALITY move is blockable. Guardian virtues you will give you aegis on a regular basis, so use your Virtue of Courage before the fight is done and you'll progress.

From what I've noticed, the "bug" is that the "Retry from a Checkpoint" message appears faster than the cutscene. Ignore it. I repeat: Do not click "Retry from a Checkpoint." After the cutscene, ignore it again. One of the companion NPCs will resurrect party members. This should allow the story to progress.

There's another problem going on here (that may or may not be what other people experience).

Don't use your Springer to reach the plateau. If you do, there's a very good chance that Balthazar will simply ignore you - there's a green star over his head, and you're supposed to "confront" him - but nothing happens. The problem is that there's clearly some sort of trigger location on or near the steps leading up onto the plateau, that the code needs you to pass through, to progress the story. In the end I had to go down the steps and then back up - at which point, things moved on. But I was within an inch of quitting and restarting when I realised what might be happening.

And then, yes, I had a very tempting "Retry from Checkpoint" message sitting on the screen for ages. If I hadn't seen tethyr's warning post (above) I would have clicked. Instead, I waited, and Kas ran over and revived me.

@Shoitaan.7405 said:Me and 2 guildies are going through the story together. This has stopped the progress of all three of us. FYI, we have tried swapping instance owners but no luck.

You get to the top of the mountain, fight the herald then confront Balth who has Vlast chained. After a brief period of time, 1 of two things happen

1) Balth simply vanishes and we are all dead except instance owner who's in a downed state as is Rytlock. After reviving, the instance is unable to progress at all.

2) Balth chains us all, tells us he's going to finish us, does his animation then similiar situation to above. Only instead of non-instance owners being dead, they are also downed.

In either case, balth vanishes and after we get up off the ground, nothing happens. We're unable to progress the story.

Today is October 5th. My wife and I have tried to do this quest THREE times with the same result. As mentioned ABOVE the same thing is still happening.Please ANET we have all spent MONEY for this expansion. Please give us our monies worth of this great game:-(

I ran into this with a friend today as well. It's such a long mission (especially if you 100% all of the optional objectives like we did) to have it bug out this way. I wish I'd seen Odin's post while I was still ingame! I was dodging like a madman when ol' Balth dropped the nuke on us, I got downed, and we couldn't fix it by actually dying in the fire pillars.

@arkenstone.7853 said:

@Shoitaan.7405 said:Me and 2 guildies are going through the story together. This has stopped the progress of all three of us. FYI, we have tried swapping instance owners but no luck.

You get to the top of the mountain, fight the herald then confront Balth who has Vlast chained. After a brief period of time, 1 of two things happen

1) Balth simply vanishes and we are all dead except instance owner who's in a downed state as is Rytlock. After reviving, the instance is unable to progress at all.

2) Balth chains us all, tells us he's going to finish us, does his animation then similiar situation to above. Only instead of non-instance owners being dead, they are also downed.

In either case, balth vanishes and after we get up off the ground, nothing happens. We're unable to progress the story.

Basically us 3 guildies just soloed the mission and grouped up again after the instance. Not how you want an MMO to go but it's faster than waiting for hot fixes :/

My boyfriend and I have just been through all this still. on October 7th...

I was just in a group the experienced this same issue.

Still broken. Spent about an hour because we had to do the first part twice (instance zone switch kicked out a party member so we had to leave and do the begining twice). All to have everything glitch at the end...

Can confirm this. Same happened yesterday doing this instance with a party of three.Balthasar just went puff, we all got resurrected, only Rytlock in a downed state without a possibility revive.Rytlock may be the problem here, if youre supposed to talk to him and he stays in that state, progress is blocked.

Happened again to myself and a guildie today. Rytlock is stuck in a downed state and the story will not progress.

What class/traits/gear are the people having this issue using?

A friend told me about the soulbeast trait breaking that instance. There was a patch that said it fixed an issue but no details. However I can think of 3 other things that functions similarly to the soulbeast trait.

Happened to myself and two of my guildies. exactly as described in this thread. We had a ranger (not a soulbeast), a reaper and a chronomancer.

@Neural.1824 said:Same here. Even tried dying completely in the nearby fires, but "retry from checkpoint" basically takes you back to the very start of the segment.

doing this takes you outside of the story instance and you get kicked

did you try this with another character which did not do any of the PoF stories yet ?that helped me with an other bug where I got no item (retrying with the first character did not work even so the bug was fixed)

@curzon.6394 said:Happened to myself and two of my guildies. exactly as described in this thread. We had a ranger (not a soulbeast), a reaper and a chronomancer.

Heh necro has a trait like that too, I just forgot about it. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unholy_Sanctuary

Depending on how they implemented the fix they might not have covered all the different 'negate fatal damage' mechanic.