GW2. Dungeon Guide The Ruined City of Arah. A complete guide on how to complete The Ruined City of Arah Dungeon. Explorable mode. All paths.

Contents hide

2 Explorable Mode

2.1 Path 1: Jotun

2.2 Path 2: Mursaat

2.3 Path 3: Forgotten

Getting There

Enter The Ruined City of Arah from the dungeon entrance at Arah Waypoint – [&BCADAAA=] in Cursed Shore or by talking to the Dungeon Transportation NPC south of Fort Marriner Waypoint – [&BDAEAAA=] in Lion’s Arch.

This is the final dungeon of the game, and while the story mode is locked to the player’s personal story, you do not need to do the story dungeon to unlock explorable. There are four paths in explorable.

Explorable Mode

Better rewards are offered in explorable mode, and each path gives an extra bit of liquid gold once per day, so doing more difficult or longer paths may be worth it if it pays more.

Also doing 8 different unique paths will complete the Dungeon Frequenter repeatable achievement to earn a which contains 150 Tales of Dungeon Delving and 5 Gold.

All explorable paths provide 20 Tales of Dungeon Delving after completion, but the first time each day you will get 80 Tales of Dungeon Delving as a bonus, for a total of 100 daily. This currency can be used to redeem other rewards like weapons and armor skins with exotic stats, runes, sigils, and other materials.

Complete map:

Path 1: Jotun

Length: Long
Difficulty: Hard
Reward: 1 Gold
NOTE: You must have at least four players to pass the Tar Elemental boss

Start by talking to Ogden Stonehealer and selecting Path 1
Go through the northern door to find the jotun runestone. After the cutscene continue on to fight the Ooze which has a triple jump attack that launches you every time. Run away from the ooze during its three jumps then focus on doing damage before it starts jumping again. After the ooze dies it will split into other oozes but it will drop an interactable object. Bring the ancient blood back to the jotun runestone.
Travel through the undead who you can optionally fight until you reach the next jotun runestone by some crystalline entities. These enemies are neutral until you decide to attack them, but they have absurd amounts of health. The only reasonable method to kill them is by standing in the light sources next to them. This gives you a buff that makes you take damage over time but also deal more damage exponentially for how long you stand in the light. Stand in the light for a while, healing up and then prepare a massive burst. Attack one of the entities when you are ready and then unleash your damage when they group up on you. Prefer to use attacks that heal you per damage dealt or for how many enemies you hit.
Make your way south, triggering the explosive detonator to clear the path of undead. You will enter an enclosed area.
Tar Elemental
- To make the boss spawn, you must have four players stand on each of the four spouts that are spraying out from the ground.
- Tar on the ground will slow and petrify players. Apply burning to the boss to turn the tar into burning tar which hurts but at least is not petrification
- When the boss returns back to the ground, have everyone get back on the spouts to reveal the boss again.
Travel through the open area of undead, staying far to the left to avoid gathering too many of them. Use reflects to counter the blinding eyes and kill them. Take out the two large undead abominations guarding the gate to open it, and proceed inside for the hardest boss.
Giganticus Lupicus
- Phase 1
  - Stand behind the boss to avoid kicks and to cleave any bug swarms that spawn
  - Dodge at the very frame when Lupicus gets his hand to his head when raising it. This animation spawns a grub on whoever was targeted. It can be hard to tell who was targeted so everyone should dodge. Kill the grub immediately if it spawns because if it reaches Lupicus he can eat it and gain permanent damage and armor which lasts the rest of the fight.
  - Get it to 75% to begin the next phase.
- Phase 2
  - At the start of this phase Lupicus will go invulnerable and spawn an unavoidable grub on one player. Kill it and prepare for his massive volley of poison bolts. These can be reflected at him for massive damage.
  - Lupicus turns into a shadow form, evading and traveling to its target, knocking down anyone at that location.
  - Dodge out of poison bolts and volleys.
  - There are many things to dodge, so conserving your resources or bringing extra blocks/evades is valuable
  - Get it to 50% to begin the next phase
- Phase 3
  - Lupicus once again goes invulnerable and in the next phase he will use some of the same attacks from phase 2 but with some extras in there.
  - Dodge twice when Lupicus points its finger at you to avoid being life drained.
  - Move out of the huge red circle around Lupicus when it floats in the air. This drains life.
  - It will create a bubble that locks players in and deals massive damage to them. Use stability, ports, or a stun break immediately after hitting the walls to get out.
  - Stay in melee range to prevent some of these attacks from happening.
After head through the doorway that opens and run through the large hallway of undead gorillas. You can optionally fight the king kong of the dead.
There are reflecting crystals on the floor in the rooms with the spiders and jotun runestones. Grab these as they will be important for the final boss.
Jotun Stargazer
- Reflects help this encounter because the projectile the boss shoots does immense damage. Make sure power classes reflect this to get the highest damage modifiers.
- Holding the reflecting crystal will reflect any projectiles aimed at you, but any class skills that reflect also work.
- Don’t stand in the fire.

Gameplay Complete Run:

Path 2: Mursaat

Length: Long
Difficulty: Hard
Reward: 1 Gold 5 Silver

Start by talking to Ogden Stonehealer and selecting Path 2
Enter the eastern area with spiders and then go through the north doorway. Make your way through the undead, focusing deadeyes first, until you reach Operative Belka.
Use reflects or stand in melee to avoid the large spark projectile she shoots. She won’t shoot it if no one is at range. However, she will port away, so watch to dodge the spark while moving over to her.
Cross through the undead spiders and abominations. You can use the asura golem suit to protect you, but it is much easier to just walk through without attacking.
Afterwards you’ll reach an open area with many undead deadeyes and sentinels. The sentinels will lock you in a ring for the deadeyes to snipe you. Avoid these if possible, but if necessary to fight them focus on the deadeyes quickly before the sentinels lock you in.
Make your way south, triggering the explosive detonator to clear the path of undead. You will find an abomination boss with some inquest around it. Be careful of the undead corpses which can explode on you. Kill the inquest who are very squishy. The rifles they drop can be used on the abomination when it enrages to pacify it. Otherwise you want to position and time your dodges to avoid the abomination’s slow attacks.
Travel through the enclosed area through more undead until you reach an open area of undead, staying far to the left to avoid gathering too many of them. Use reflects to counter the blinding eyes and kill them. Take out the two large undead abominations guarding the gate to open it, and proceed inside for the hardest boss.
Giganticus Lupicus
- Phase 1
  - Stand behind the boss to avoid kicks and to cleave any bug swarms that spawn
  - Dodge at the very frame when Lupicus gets his hand to his head when raising it. This animation spawns a grub on whoever was targeted. It can be hard to tell who was targeted so everyone should dodge. Kill the grub immediately if it spawns because if it reaches Lupicus he can eat it and gain permanent damage and armor which lasts the rest of the fight.
  - Get it to 75% to begin the next phase.
- Phase 2
  - At the start of this phase Lupicus will go invulnerable and spawn an unavoidable grub on one player. Kill it and prepare for his massive volley of poison bolts. These can be reflected at him for massive damage.
  - Lupicus turns into a shadow form, evading and traveling to its target, knocking down anyone at that location.
  - Dodge out of poison bolts and volleys.
  - There are many things to dodge, so conserving your resources or bringing extra blocks/evades is valuable
  - Get it to 50% to begin the next phase
- Phase 3
  - Lupicus once again goes invulnerable and in the next phase he will use some of the same attacks from phase 2 but with some extras in there.
  - Dodge twice when Lupicus points its finger at you to avoid being life drained.
  - Move out of the huge red circle around Lupicus when it floats in the air. This drains life.
  - It will create a bubble that locks players in and deals massive damage to them. Use stability, ports, or a stun break immediately after hitting the walls to get out.
  - Stay in melee range to prevent some of these attacks from happening.
Follow the path through the door that opens until you need to swim underwater. Proceed down, through, and above the ruins, avoiding the mines and sharks until you reach land.
There are two paths you can take through the mine field: One is to run through the mines trying to keep moving constantly while dodging the immobilization nets. The other option is to go through the opening in the right at the very beginning of the mine field and run along the cliffs to avoid the mines entirely.
Continue moving through the mines after the waypoint, being careful not to kill your allies by triggering a mine in front of them and avoiding enemy patrols until you reach the next boss.
Alphard Serpent of the Waves
- Conditions are not very effective on this boss as their durations are heavily reduced.
- Avoid the spin attack which sends out a hook to pull players in. If someone is hit by this attack it will spawn a bomb underneath the boss. Dodge either of these attacks.
- Clones will appear out of all corners of the room. Use the boxes to line of sight these clones to group them up, otherwise they shoot you from all angles.
- Periodically the boss will teleport to the center of the room and begin spinning furiously, sending out many bouncing projectiles that deal massive damage. Being hit by any of these can be detrimental to your survival so you want to stand behind one of the boxes during this attack and wait until it is over. After this mechanic, one of the boxes will disappear so there is limited amount of time before you cannot easily avoid this attack. Standing as far away as possible can be effective still if there are no boxes nearby.
Progress through the next area while avoiding the abominations that explode into risen grubs and the inquest who will fire a laser at one player, stunning them for a very long time. CC the inquest to prevent their stun ray or use stability. There are deadly combos of deadeyes, sentinels, and inquest so you may want to use line of sight to take them out before running through.
Operative Brie
- Only one player can enter Brie’s initial bubble at first. This player should have high burst and power damage because when they interact with the terminal nearby they will be allowed inside and their power damage will be exponentially multiplied for a short time.
- If they do not reach 50% of the boss health within their time limit, another person will need to interact with the terminal and begin attacking.
- While this is happening undead will rush the terminal. The rest of the party must protect the terminal or the fight resets.
- At 50% everyone can attack the boss without having to interact with the terminal.
- Avoid the beams the boss shoots in front of them and any of the sparks littered around the area.
- Kill the boss before the undead overwhelm and take out the terminal

Gameplay Complete Run:

Path 3: Forgotten

Length: Long
Difficulty: Hard
Reward: 50 Silver

Start by talking to Ogden Stonehealer and selecting Path 3
Run south towards the mass of undead. You can lure these back to the base camp for help in handling the horde of undead. There is a gate with 4 undead lying on the ground in front of it. Approaching it will raise the dead and you must defeat all four of them to open the gate.
Wraithlord’s Crusher/Hunter
- Stand next to the Crusher and side step or stand behind it when it does its massive smash attack which only hits in a cone in front of it.
- The Hunter will drop poison clouds and immobilize players, so bring condition cleanses otherwise you can be immobilized in the Crusher’s smash.
- The Crusher can revive other undead, so be careful not to kite it too far, and don’t bother focusing the Hunter first.
Travel through the valley full of undead, fighting them optionally, until you reach a group of undead spiders. These are right before the next boss and can complicate that encounter if you don’t kill the spiders or escape from them fast enough.
The Wraithlord’s Mage casts a life drain on a player which you can line of sight to prevent. There are some risen hands that throw rocks at you, but good positioning can avoid these. There are also marks which the boss places on the ground and they are only dangerous when the Mage raises its staff high up for a large animation which detonates all the marks on the ground.
Travel through the gate and under the water until you surface by some risen gorillas. These are optional to kill but can make the next puzzle easier to solve.
Light Puzzle
- An orb of light hangs from a chain. You must interact with this light and carry the electrical charge to the next hanging orb and interact with it near the gate ahead. Holding this charge deals significant damage to your character every second.
- Use mobility skills and healing to make it as far as you can before going down. Going down makes the charge disappear.
- You can throw the charge to another player to use their health bar to continue the charge. Make sure that players stay still when throwing because the animation can be slow and hard to land on moving targets.
- You must do this twice, with the second one having a much further length to carry it. Portals work well here.
Travel through the open area of undead, staying far to the left to avoid gathering too many of them. Use reflects to counter the blinding eyes and kill them. Take out the two large undead abominations guarding the gate to open it, and proceed inside for the hardest boss.
Giganticus Lupicus
- Phase 1
  - Stand behind the boss to avoid kicks and to cleave any bug swarms that spawn
  - Dodge at the very frame when Lupicus gets his hand to his head when raising it. This animation spawns a grub on whoever was targeted. It can be hard to tell who was targeted so everyone should dodge. Kill the grub immediately if it spawns because if it reaches Lupicus he can eat it and gain permanent damage and armor which lasts the rest of the fight.
  - Get it to 75% to begin the next phase.
- Phase 2
  - At the start of this phase Lupicus will go invulnerable and spawn an unavoidable grub on one player. Kill it and prepare for his massive volley of poison bolts. These can be reflected at him for massive damage.
  - Lupicus turns into a shadow form, evading and traveling to its target, knocking down anyone at that location.
  - Dodge out of poison bolts and volleys.
  - There are many things to dodge, so conserving your resources or bringing extra blocks/evades is valuable
  - Get it to 50% to begin the next phase
- Phase 3
  - Lupicus once again goes invulnerable and in the next phase he will use some of the same attacks from phase 2 but with some extras in there.
  - Dodge twice when Lupicus points its finger at you to avoid being life drained.
  - Move out of the huge red circle around Lupicus when it floats in the air. This drains life.
  - It will create a bubble that locks players in and deals massive damage to them. Use stability, ports, or a stun break immediately after hitting the walls to get out.
  - Stay in melee range to prevent some of these attacks from happening.
Continue through the door that opens and run through the optional undead and risen spiders until you reach a waypoint and an open area with a large platform in the center. There are Champion Risen Giants patrolling this area that are entirely optional to fight. You want to reach the opposite end of the area where you can climb up the cliffside to reach the middle platform.
Risen Wraith Event/Boss
- You must capture three locations around the platform by standing inside the rings. When the ring is blue, it contributes to the event’s success. When the ring is red it detracts from progressing the event.
- You want to have more players than enemies inside a ring to make it turn blue. Try to lure wraiths out of the rings before standing in them.
- A ring will only change color if more enemies are inside a ring, but if no one is inside a ring it will retain its color, allowing you to help other rings out.
- Bring healing, stealth, and mobility, since damage is not as important here. You can kill the small wraiths, but they will respawn.
- When the contribution bar reaches full, the Risen Wraithlord becomes vulnerable to attack
- The boss fight itself is low risk so just attack it

Gameplay Complete Run:

Path 4: Seer

Length: Extremely Long
Difficulty: Hard
Reward: 1 Gold

Start by talking to Ogden Stonehealer and selecting Path 4
Travel through the spiders to the east and enter the south doorway to face an undead gargoyle that spawns.
In this room you must kill some risen hounds of balthazar to loot their fiery orbs and bring them to the torches around the statue at the middle of the room. Lighting all of these will spawn the Risen Acolyte of Balthazar
When the Risen Balthazar Acolyte uses its whirling attack, run away from it, and if you are the primary focus of this attack try not to run toward your allies.
Continue through the maze of hazards and animated armor until you reach a large room with risen gorillas. To spawn the boss in here, you must pick up the poison buckets and pour them onto the tree stumps in each of the side rooms. This spawns the Risen Acolyte of Melandru.
You can stack on top of the boss for this fight, but the moving corrupted lights on the ground will complicate this because they will damage and knock you back, potentially into other lights on the ground. On top of this, trees will spawn which can immobilize you, and gorillas will spawn which can knock you down. Stick together and help each other out then regroup and attack the boss when cooldowns are up to survive the assault.
Progress through the hallway killing the undead abomination to open the door to an open area. Continue northeast to reach another god statue which spawns the Risen Acolyte of Lyssa.
Kill her clones but be careful because they explode for tons of confusion application. Cleanse the confusion or wait until it wears off to continue attacking.
Travel through the gate and under the water until you surface by some risen gorillas. These are optional to kill but can make the next puzzle easier to solve.
Light Puzzle
- An orb of light hangs from a chain. You must interact with this light and carry the electrical charge to the next hanging orb and interact with it near the gate ahead. Holding this charge deals significant damage to your character every second.
- Use mobility skills and healing to make it as far as you can before going down. Going down makes the charge disappear.
- You can throw the charge to another player to use their health bar to continue the charge. Make sure that players stay still when throwing because the animation can be slow and hard to land on moving targets.
- You must do this twice, with the second one having a much further length to carry it. Portals work well here.
Travel through the open area of undead, staying far to the left to avoid gathering too many of them. Use reflects to counter the blinding eyes and kill them. Take out the two large undead abominations guarding the gate to open it, and proceed inside for the hardest boss.
Giganticus Lupicus
- Phase 1
  - Stand behind the boss to avoid kicks and to cleave any bug swarms that spawn
  - Dodge at the very frame when Lupicus gets his hand to his head when raising it. This animation spawns a grub on whoever was targeted. It can be hard to tell who was targeted so everyone should dodge. Kill the grub immediately if it spawns because if it reaches Lupicus he can eat it and gain permanent damage and armor which lasts the rest of the fight.
  - Get it to 75% to begin the next phase.
- Phase 2
  - At the start of this phase Lupicus will go invulnerable and spawn an unavoidable grub on one player. Kill it and prepare for his massive volley of poison bolts. These can be reflected at him for massive damage.
  - Lupicus turns into a shadow form, evading and traveling to its target, knocking down anyone at that location.
  - Dodge out of poison bolts and volleys.
  - There are many things to dodge, so conserving your resources or bringing extra blocks/evades is valuable
  - Get it to 50% to begin the next phase
- Phase 3
  - Lupicus once again goes invulnerable and in the next phase he will use some of the same attacks from phase 2 but with some extras in there.
  - Dodge twice when Lupicus points its finger at you to avoid being life drained.
  - Move out of the huge red circle around Lupicus when it floats in the air. This drains life.
  - It will create a bubble that locks players in and deals massive damage to them. Use stability, ports, or a stun break immediately after hitting the walls to get out.
  - Stay in melee range to prevent some of these attacks from happening.
Continue through the door that opens to the east and destroy the three risen towers to open the gate to the next area where the Risen Acolyte of Grenth boss is.
- Split up to the 5 marks on the floor. A wraith will spawn at each in a specific order and players must attack it to progress the fight. After 10% of the wraith’s health is gone it will go to the next location, repeating a full rotation twice. If you do not engage the wraith within a few seconds of it spawning at the next mark, it will reset health and return to the first mark. One player can cover multiple marks by having instant ranged damgage and being prepared for it to arrive.
- After the wraith is dead, many more will spawn, but you can kill these whenever and regroup with your allies to do so. These wraiths will put a mark on a player and down them when the mark times out. You can kill the wraiths who have marks finishing sooner to prevent them from downing allies, or you can just revive your ally when they down.
- The boss dies when you have killed enough wraiths.
Continue through the dangerous hazards, optionally fighting any undead until you reach the next statue.
Risen Acolyte of Dwayna
- A random player will receive a debuff that eventually petrifies them for a long time. You can avoid becoming petrified by throwing one of the Dwayna’s Tears that spawn on the ground on yourself or another player that has been petrified. Stability can prevent petrification before it happens but not afterwards.
- When the boss gets to around 50% they will go invulnerable and invisible. To make them return you must lure five sparks around the room into the five slots around the statue. These sparks will follow the closest player generally, but things can get chaotic if players are not paying attention to which sparks are chasing them.
- Do as much damage as possible when the boss returns to optimize how much you progress the health bar before you must handle the sparks again, all while managing the petrification with Dwayna’s Tears.
Continue along the path until you reach the fork in the path. You can go into the well and swim with sharks or you can go straight and fight animated weapons until you reach four undead surrounding a bloodstone. Killing them will begin the final boss.
Bloodstone Shard
- Some of the previous mechanics of each boss will reappear during this fight, but many of them can easily be avoided if you aren’t at range.
- Just stack on the shard and damage it, only leaving to get a Dwayna’s Tear to remove petrify

Gameplay Complete Run:

Rewards

South of Fort Marriner Waypoint – [&BDAEAAA=] in Lion’s Arch, you can find the Dungeon Merchant that offers several rewards in exchange for your Tales of Dungeon Delving. You will need to complete the dungeon in story or explorable mode to unlock most of the rewards. Some will require you to complete explorable path a few times (between 1 to 7 times depending on the piece).

Additionally, completing the dungeon story mode will unlock a reward track for PvP and World vs World that you can use to gain currency and unlock skins while playing those game modes. However, unlocking a skin through the reward track won’t necessarily unlock it on the Dungeon Merchant.

Armor Sets

You can obtain three unique armor sets from The Ruined City of Arah. These are exotic pieces with three different stat variants (Berserker’s – Knight’s – Rabid). However, the main appeal of the Dungeon Armor Sets are the unique skins that you will unlock in your wardrobe.

Armor of the Lich (Light)
Accursed (Medium)
Grasping Dead (Heavy)

Each set will cost a total of 1380 Tales of Dungeon Delving.

If you want to preview the skins for your character, use these chat codes in-game:

	Light	Medium	Heavy
Helmet	[&Cn8CAAA=]	[&CoQCAAA=]	[&CnkCAAA=]
Shoulder	[&CnwCAAA=]	[&CoICAAA=]	[&CncCAAA=]
Coat	[&CnoCAAA=]	[&CoECAAA=]	[&CnYCAAA=]
Gloves	[&Cn4CAAA=]	[&CoUCAAA=]	[&CoYCAAA=]
Leggings	[&CnsCAAA=]	[&CoACAAA=]	[&CnUCAAA=]
Boots	[&Cn0CAAA=]	[&CoMCAAA=]	[&CngCAAA=]

Weapons

You can obtain 19 unique weapons from The Ruined City of Arah. These are exotic pieces with three different stat variants (Berserker’s – Knight’s – Rabid). However, the main appeal of the Dungeon Weapons are the unique skins that you will unlock in your wardrobe.

The Weapons of the Dragon’s Deep Set has a risen sea theme like undead and ocean shore. Each weapon has a different cost. All the weapons will cost a total of 6150 Tales of Dungeon Delving.

If you want to preview all the skins for your character, copy and paste these chat codes into in-game chat. They will appear in game with their names and tooltips, so just copy them all and pick the one you want to see.

[&Cl0RAAA=][&Cp0RAAA=][&CmARAAA=][&ClgRAAA=][&ClkRAAA=][&CqYRAAA=][&Cj4RAAA=][&ClIRAAA=][&CgoRAAA=][&CicRAAA=][&CnQRAAA=][&CnURAAA=][&Ck4RAAA=][&CosRAAA=][&Cg8RAAA=][&Co4RAAA=][&CkARAAA=][&CnwRAAA=][&CjYRAAA=]

Extras

Besides the other things that you can purchase, like rare equipment, sigils, recipes, and tonics, these are the three most important things to mention:

Dungeon Rune:
- 120 Tales of Dungeon Delving
Legendary Gift:
- 500 Tales of Dungeon Delving
Achievement Collection:
- Unlock all 37 skins in your wardrobe
- Rewards unique ascended accessory