The Eternal Grove (mission)

Mission Objectives
Protect the Forever Trees by keeping the Tree Singers alive. You have x of 12 Tree Singers remaining.
 * ADDED Defeat the Afflicted forces. You have 12 groups remaining.

General
The first thing you will notice with this mission is the additional health display on the top left corner of your screen, which shows the health status of the three Forever Trees. The trees are located at the points 1, 2 and 3 on the map. There are four Tree Singers each grouped around each tree - each singer makes for one fourth of the trees hitpoints. When the singers are damaged, the health bar will degrade and if one of them dies it will not regenerate back up to 100%. When all four singers of one tree are dead, so is the tree. Note that this does not a failure of this mission! Success only requires one Tree Singer to survive.

The mission takes place in a very small area. Usually you will rarely venture very far from the hill with the trees, which is also the starting area. There are two gates leading up to the hill. With a well coordinated and balanced team it is possible to block both gates so that no attacker can enter and be a threat to the Tree Singers. Unfortunately, you will also have to leave the area to dispatch long range attackers. You should only do so when necessary, so that you can benefit from both the Aura of the Juggernauts (which boosts your energy regeneration) as well as the Aura of the Grove (which boosts your movement speed) as much as possible. If you are doing the mission with henchmen, you will of course have to run back and forth between the gates. In this case it will often be of advantage to attack approaching enemies as soon as they come into view and not wait for them to close in on you in a pincer move.

Note that you have no Healer henchman available in this mission. Both Mhenlo and Danika will always be there as mission NPCs, though. Unfortunately you will have no control over them whatsoever.

First part
The Luxons will attack from all sides, coming down the paths from the north, west and south. Mostly they will attack from one or two sides simultaneously. Dispatch the smaller groups quickly and be prepared to move out as soon as the arrival of a Siege Turtle is announced. Kill the turtle and it's guards fast and move back to the centre area to await the next wave. The turtles will be on small hills, marked with an X on the map.

After you have defeated several waves, including six Siege Turtles (two per tree), the attacks will cease. A cutscene will explain the further mission.

Second part
This part in general is the same as before, with the difference that the opponents are quite more difficult. The hand full of Luxons you have to your aid now will not make up for this. The best approach for holding off the Afflicted would probably be to block both gates with one or two tanks and have the rest of the party use ranged attacks and skills, so that not too many will be hit by the Afflicted Soul Explosions, with which every Afflicted dies. The Afflicted do not have any siege weapons, so it is safe to wait for them inside the Grove. The last attacking group will have two bosses with it.