Elite Missions are high difficulty missions accessible only through the capital cities of the Kurzick and Luxon regions.
In general, the Elite Missions are very long (a full run can take 2.5 to 5 hours depending on proficiency), with large numbers of high-level foes as well as negative Environmental Effects. They offer the highest level loot in the game as well as powerful unique items at the very end of the missions.
There are two Elite Missions in Factions:
- The Deep: Accessed through Cavalon
- Urgoz's Warren: Accessed through House zu Heltzer
Both missions are composed of a mission town with a merchant and a Xunlai Agent. Once the party leader hits the Enter Mission button, the party is taken to the actual mission.
It has been confirmed that at least one elite mission is in production for Nightfall, however it has not yet been implemented.
Access to Elite Missions
Guild Wars Factions
There are three ways to gain access to an elite mission in Guild Wars Factions:
- To enter an Elite Mission outpost for the first time, a player that belongs to the alliance that owns House zu Heltzer or Cavalon can simply talk to the NPC in the exclusive area to be taken there.
- A player who does not belong to an alliance owning one of those towns can be ferried there by a player who does.
- If the player has been inside an Elite Mission once, then they can return to it, by joining others who are already there through their Guild Hall. This is how it works:
- Player A is inside the Elite Mission outpost. He uses the Guild Window to travel to his Guild's hall.
- All other party members must have been in the Elite Mission before (the town, not necessarily the mission itself).
- All those players meet player A in his Guild's hall. (Those who are not guild members must have at least guest status.)
- Player A forms the party.
- Player A opens his/her Guild Window and presses the Leave Guild Hall button that appears instead of the Guild Hall button.
- Everyone will be teleported to the Elite Mission town.
Note:If a character is in an Elite Mission or an Elite Mission outpost and logs out, they will be returned to the Elite Mission's outpost when they log back in.
Many guilds now leave Parked Characters in the Elite Mission that they can use to transport guild members and guests to the mission. A parked character is a character left in the Elite Mission town, one player logs in as this character, and then uses it to transport those who are going to do the mission to the Elite Mission town then logs out and leaves the character in that town.
Guild Wars Nightfall
Although announced as a feature in Guild Wars Nightfall, and even listed in the manual, the elite mission does not exist in game yet. The elite mission, together with the ability to gain the max tiers for sunspear and lightbringer titles in a straightforward way and some new content and features that we "really don’t have a clue about yet" will be presented in a form of a free major update in the next few months, around Christmas, as suggested by Gaile Gray (Link to source). The November 16th, 2006 and November 24rd, 2006 issues of The Scribe strongly imply that the elite mission is within the Realm of Torment.
On November 28th Anet announced that the Elite Mission is going to be located within the new Domain of Anguish sub-region, accessible through the Chantry of Secrets starting on December 1st.
The name of the Elite Mission is Gate of Anguish and it has 4 explorable areas.