Guild Wars 2

I saw that it was on sale today for 580 gems, and I was thinking about maybe getting it, but is there really enough in your home instance for it to be worth it?

Do you use it a lot? I feel like the only thing that is there are the nodes (if you bought them). Everything else, like the bank, guild bank, etc aren’t there, so I’m trying to figure out if it’s really worth it.

At the lower price, is it worth buying?

Read these.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Home-Instance-Services-Regulation
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/asura/Asuran-Home-Instance-unfairness
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Home-Portal-Stone
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Home-Portal-Stone-Question
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/home-portal-stone-explained

When they first introduced it, not a lot of players liked it. IIRC the return function only works if you don’t leave the home instance. So yes it does get you to your race’s city. But if you leave the instance and waypoint to where your services are, you will have to make your way back to where you were “manually”.

It’s like using the PvP icon to get to LA quickly. As long as you don’t leave the PvP area pressing the PvP icon will return you to where you were but once you exit to LA, there is no return trip.

I visit my home instance once a day for gathering/upgrading quartz crystals.

I WANT to like the portal stone, I really do. Because I love account upgrades.

But at the moment, all it does is save me 2-3 silver a day for waypointing (one way!) and no, that’s really not worth it at all.

Oh, thank you for all the links!

Yeah, I really WANT to like it because I love the idea of home instances, but I’m not sure if I’d ever really use it…

Surely you might consider they are on sale about 1 month after initial release for a reason? Yes?

I will go out on a limb and speculate the internal metrics reveal weak sales. It’s either that or they are gonna remove them due to a good idea with poor mechanics or they are about to introduce a better method players will desire.

To get to my home instance for free from anywhere, I go to WvW > Portal to Lions Arch > Waypoint to Lions Arch Portals (Free) > Take Portal To any Home City > Waypoint to Closest Waypoint to Home Instance > Go Into Home Instance…

Takes me less than 30 seconds…

I just use my royal terrace pass and waypoint to the human zone for free. It takes a couple of extra seconds, but it’s much better than being teleported to the sylvari home instance with its repair NPC; its poor, lonely repair NPC…

I love it, without that convenience there would definitely be some days I would not bother to go back to the home instance despite all the nodes I now have there. Plus I think as time moves forward there will be more and more reasons to return both via in game rewards and the gem store. As it stands already I have sprockets, candy corn, quartz crystals and the basic wood, metal and food packs. When I get to it there is also a channeling skill point and that random loot chest that can be added to my home instance.

Can’t beat the royal terrace pass, the time saved with that thing not needing to go through old LA when it had the worst loading times of any map…. Well from the looks of things the portal stone sounds redundant for us lucky owners of the Royal pass (I didn’t think that pass would be any good but I looted it last year and fell in love with it enough to buy it. The airship in comparison is rubbish, aside from having a mini game npc, the fact the guild bank is not located near the crafting stations is utterly stupid)

I bought a home portal stone the day it was released. I have the ore, wood, and new plant nodes from the gem shop as well as the quartz crystal, candy corn, and sprocket nodes and the krait obilesk shard (place of power). I find the home portal stone convenient to get there. I’m able to complete my daily gathering just from all that stuff.

I’m hoping they eventually release a bank and trading post thingy we can buy for our home instance. If they ever do it will make the stone so much more useful. Best get 1 now while it’s on sale just in case.

Rogue.7856:

To get to my home instance for free from anywhere, I go to WvW > Portal to Lions Arch > Waypoint to Lions Arch Portals (Free) > Take Portal To any Home City > Waypoint to Closest Waypoint to Home Instance > Go Into Home Instance…

Takes me less than 30 seconds…

There is no way 5 loading screens, takes just 30 seconds, including the little bit of running to portals.
no way at all.

I always log my characters out at their racial capitals, so every morning when I log in I just run over to the home instance to mine the sprocket/candy corn/crystal nodes.

That is the only time in the entire day I will visit the home instance.

If I want to hit a vendor or bank while roaming in PvE I’ll just head to the home borderland, where there are crafting station (banks), laurel merchant, trading post, and if the garrison is fully upgraded a mystic forge as well; when I’m done I just open up the WvW window and hit the leave button to drop back exactly where I left.

Portal stone not only has no value to me, it has negative value because my gems would have been better spent elsewhere.

I have no need for it, but that’s because I have a mule parked in DR whose sole purpose is to harvest my HI nodes every day.

Taygus.4571:

Rogue.7856:

To get to my home instance for free from anywhere, I go to WvW > Portal to Lions Arch > Waypoint to Lions Arch Portals (Free) > Take Portal To any Home City > Waypoint to Closest Waypoint to Home Instance > Go Into Home Instance…

Takes me less than 30 seconds…

There is no way 5 loading screens, takes just 30 seconds, including the little bit of running to portals.
no way at all.

If you’re running high-end SSD you can cut down on map load time. You’ll also want a good wireless card (or ethernet cable) and router. All of these can and will reduce map load times, in addition to have a strong computer.

Of course, less map loads will always be less load time than more map loads (as long as we’re comparing setups of equal quality).