Guild Wars 2

No matter how hard I try, it seems impossible to complete a key run in less than 22 minutes.

Which really makes no sense, since the first time I did it in 22 minutes (attached pic) I didn’t use any upgrades (food or armor/waepons), just using what you get free with a new toon, including Hero’s Band.

As I have golem banker sent to all new characters, I tried to reduce the time by upgrading the following with every new toon:

ARMOR:
[Worn Chain Coat] +4 power
[Duelist’s Chain Gauntlets of Balthazar] +2 con dmg, +10 power (rune of balt)
[Worn Chain Legs] +3 power
[Worn Chain Greaves] +2 power

WEAPONS:
[Mighty Sword of Force] 5 power, sigil of forge (1% dmg)
[Mighty Warhorn of Justice] sigil of justice (+3% dmg to bandits)

FOOD/UTIL:
[Rough Sharpening Stones] +1% of toughness as power
[Grilled Mushrooms] +20 con dmg

I have tried 3 times, and every single time it’s EXACTLY 22 minutes, no more, no less, even when the pre-starting event (defend the garrison) is already complete, doors open, running straight through to the boss, the total time doesn’t change, weird huh?

If anybody can explain this phenomenon or try to beat my record time, please post a pic here.

(guide : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKf2AGldSns)
(cliffnotes: human, warrior, common family*, sword/warhorn, hospital)
*EDIT

Axe & Warhorn for travelling, axe & axe for combat, 17 minutes!

choose common family
youre welcome

sorry yes typed it wrong, the middle one I do usually pick, same as in the vid (common family), but still 22 min.. can’t seem to break this barrier..

it’s odd really, with all the enhancements I kill mobs 1 third quicker, but the completion time doesn’t change.. I feel like I’m missing something.

I guess the one thing you could do, is instead of using the “exit instance” button after each quest, instead just teleport directly to the next waypoint where you need to be, reducing loading/waiting times, which still counts some time to /age

(this data is all of course, based on a single player mission, not playing with friends).

Vashoom.8512:

I guess the one thing you could do, is instead of using the “exit instance” button after each quest, instead just teleport directly to the next waypoint where you need to be, reducing loading/waiting times, which still counts some time to /age

for anybody doing key runs who actually cares about this info, by teleporting directly to the next waypoint after completing each instanced mission, I reduced a total of 2 minutes from the run!
(and yes, I’m using a solid state hdd)

now the lowest is 20 minutes! Is this a world record? I wonder…

you know you could do it with a friend and speed it up

I haven’t done it in a while, but my average time was around 18 minutes. After selling off everything (TP), I’d usually end at around 20-24 minutes. I would start the tutorial with a full set of level 1 gear, axe + warhorn. This was back in like December though.

Although you do more damage with axe than sword, I can’t see how it would be faster as you are sacrificing savage leap which is a great boost to movement speed, but maybe the kill speed makes up for that, hard to tell.

And as always.. pics or it didn’t happen
(though pics won’t show if a friend helped u either I guess.. bah >.< )

I actually did a single run a few hours after I posted that to see what my time would be, but never bothered to post it.

I never found leaping + swiftness to make that much of a difference. I don’t think I ever switched from the starter sword though, so that probably didn’t help. I mainly remember getting bored of the sword one day and trying the axe, which killed everything much faster.

What about GS? You have the spin2win and rush for travelling. I haven’t done any speedrun for months but it took around 17-20 mins back then if I remember correctly. If possible, mail a friend the lv 1 gs and tell him to mail you back, so you can start off with gs.

Here’s something I’ve found useful for saving time when starting a new human character.

You can actually skip the first defense event, and sometimes the second. Just go straight to the boss spawn area. Walk past the garrison from the right side without going onto the bridge. If there’s a person already doing the boss you can join in and get out as soon as it finishes, otherwise you need to go to back to the garrison door from the side of the boss area and do the 2nd defense event.

Anyways, hope that helps.

Oddly enough, that very shortcut was shown—in passing—by one of the devs in a Twitch live stream not too long ago. I’d found out about it quite a while ago via a YTube vid, but I sorta thought it would be something the devs wouldn’t want you to do (i.e. an oversight).

Never bothered to key farm. I have better ways to waste 20-30 minutes especially if all I get a the end is a key that has a greater chance of dropping junk than anything. To each their own though.

I did this with a group of 5 and we got 4 keys in 1 hour, so I would say we were around 15 minutes. But since keys are not very useful we are not doing this anymore.

There is part of me thinking that at some point they will nerf this because it’s an aberrant play style.

@ Behellagh

The devs posted a while back that key farming like this was acceptable, which is why people aren’t concerned about posting publicly here on the forums.

If the forum search tool worked, I’d look up the post for you.

But it is such an extreme behavior for so little gain. When chests dropped nothing exciting there wasn’t a lot of interest but since they’ve added a slight chance to acquire a skin, it’s crazy.

And it doesn’t mean they won’t change their minds if the metrics tell them so.

I think part of the reason it hasn’t been nerfed is that the devs are fully aware that the RNG for the chests is so abysmally bad that they aren’t worried about key farming.