the little things

So for whatever reason I decided to do Nolani Academy in Hard Mode earlier.  The only thing that really makes it difficult in HM is that you're still limited to a party size of four.  I went in pretty much all guns blazing, using a fairly balanced team consisting of myself as a ranger, and then a warrior hero and two monk heroes, one running healing and the other protection.

Everything went fine up until I went to go start the bonus.  Out of nowhere about five extra devourers ran in and steamrolled my party.  I made a timely retreat and resurrected most of the team but I couldn't fully recover.

So I tried again.  This time I got the bonus active with no problem.  Carried the book to the bonus area, started the long and arduous process of pulling and killing everything there.  Somehow yet again I managed to get some random devourers aggroed that I hadn't even known were there (probably due to the ledges in the area).  This time I got more than just myself out of there, the spirits took care of the devourers (lol enemies being hostile to each other) and I went back to killing spirits.  Turned the book in, got the bonus.

Steamrolled everything between the wall and Nolani and met up with Rurik.  Took him back to the wall, babysat him all the way to Stormcaller.  Killed the cutscene and went to go pull some Charr out of the mass below Horn Hill.  All of a sudden I'm swarmed with Charr (I'm guessing patrols + heroes running around) and I wipe.

I go back in with a slight team change, swapping my protection monk for a fire elementalist, and changing my warrior hero's build to have Wild Blow in it so I can get a hit in on the stupid Whiptail Devourers.  Made it back to the Charr at the end of the mission, wiped there again.

At this point I didn't really know what else to do, so I checked GuildWiki.  It suggested abandoning Rurik after taking him through the wall by going down the set of stairs he doesn't go down.  This lets you take advantage of the fact that NPCs that aren't on your radar don't take damage.  Seemed like it would work, but I had my doubts since Rurik's death ends the mission.

Went back in, steamrolled to the wall, and said "fuck you" to Rurik.  Kept him off my radar, walked a short distance and found myself in the end area of the mission.  Killed a group of Charr, went up the steps, and killed Bonfaaz Burntfur.  End of mission.

How on earth did I get Legendary Cartographer and not know about that shortcut?