Guild Wars 2

Halloween items 2013:

1. Mini: 20 thousand candy corn
2. Bag: 15 thousand candy corn
3. Recipes 1: 10 thousand candy corn, 10 thousand rare Halloween materials, 10g in elonian wine, and t6 dust.
4. Recipes 2: 10 thousand candy corn, 10 thousand rare Halloween materials, 10g in elonian wine, and t6 dust.
5. Recipes 3: 10 thousand candy corn, 10 thousand rare Halloween materials, 10g in elonian wine, and t6 dust.
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Let’s assume the following

- Let’s say you spend every single evening throughout the whole Halloween event playing Halloween content only, three hours per evening for 27 days straight.
- Let’s say you manage to get one thousand candy corn per evening (which includes opening any trick-or-treat bag you get).
- Let’s say you manage to get 100 rare materials Halloween materials per evening (which includes opening any trick-or-treat bag you get).

By the end, you would end up with 27 thousand candy corn, 2700 rare Halloween materials (and other drops – which I’ll include in my calculations).

You can now get the following

At the end of Halloween, spending every evening playing Halloween content, you can either buy:

- a mini and a bag. You need to sell all non-essential drops to make this happen; or
- one of the three recipes. You need to sell all non-essential drops to make this happen.

If you decide to go with the recipe, you’ll need another two thousand candy corn, 120 lodestones, 270 orichalcum ingots, 40 globs of ecto and a legendary gift to get the final weapon skin [which, incidentally, dropped like rain last year without there being any crafting involved].

Trick or treat!

“We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

Your opinion

Whether you agree or disagree, please leave your opinion here on what you think of the above. My hope is that next year, we will see the spirit of Halloween restored in its former glory. Note that “Join the champion train in Frostgorge Sound” or “Play the TP” instead of playing Halloween content – in order to get Halloween items – defeats, in my view, the very purpose and spirit of Halloween.

The problem isn’t that there was grindy stuff, the problem is that there was only grindy stuff.

Other than the stuff that cost many thousands of candy corn, what else could we use it for?

1. Food (yay onnomberry ghosts)
2. Transformation potions
3. Random recipes that have nothing to to with the event (twisted watchwork portal)

I though running around in the labyrinth was fun, but there were no drops so players left.

Simply put: most of the Halloween rewards require far too much materials to obtain this year. The materials drop far less frequently as well, which just compounds the issue.

I took one look at what it would take to get just the bag and immediately gave up on it. The Halloween content is fun in limited doses, but to get that much candy corn would require you to grind the dungeon until your eye bleed (which I suppose is in the spirit of the season, in a sick and twisted way…)

There are two which are pretty easy to get, though: the candy corn elemental from completing the achievements and the mask from Mad King Says. So it’s not like I felt like I walked away with nothing this year. But there were other rewards that I might have tried for, but given how much materials they took I just laughed and said “I’m not even going to bother.” As a result, I ended up playing the Halloween content a lot less than I potentially would have.

Maximus Delion.8719:

I took one look at what it would take to get just the bag and immediately gave up on it.

Yep. I’ve been spending my candy corn on trick or treat bags instead, hoping to get an endless tonic or something else fun. If not, oh well.