Guild Wars 2

The achievement reads as follows…

Dedicated Sprinter
Complete the Sanctum Sprint activity 1 time.
0/1 Sanctum Sprints Completed
Tier 1 of 3 Tiers

It does not say WIN the race to get an achi, it says PARTICIPATE. So why, when I lose (and I always lose coz it’s a stupid minigame) do I get NO chest and NO achievement?

You need to get all the checkpoints and go to the finish line. If you skip a checkpoint due to some clever jumping, or join late (and thus be placed halfway, past some of the checkpoints) you won’t get it.
(though it IS possible you need to be in the top 3. Might try to run slower next time to check it).

All checkpoints ticked, finish line crossed, no credit. If the point was to place in the top 3, the text should reflect this. If you just need to participate, as listed, each race should give you credit. It’s rather misleading.

it’s bugged I think… I couldnt get it either …you have to win(or top 3 I think)… which isnt worth the time

Top 3 from what I’ve seen, which is painful given the luck involved.

It’s all skill based, learn the tricks!

Gyler.8150:

It’s all skill based, learn the tricks!

There is skill to a certain extent.

However the aspect powers can be buggy, and the powerups complete luck – can get a handful of blinds in a row compared to getting aspect master, lightning or grounded, or even the time in which you get a certain powerup.

Also one mistake can cost you a podium position – unless you fall so far behind as to get the light travel and overtake the middle pack.

Generally when you get out in first place, it’s hard to lose unless you make a stupid mistake like falling off – considering grounded and fake power ups drop like candy at that point.

Therefore there is a certain amount of luck involved, which I don’t particularly like.

If you learn your stuff, you can consistently place. What you might consider unlucky is all completely avoidable. Well outside of lightning pull. But even then, if you learn to use THAT correctly, you can even avoid the buggy nature of it.

Some tips I can give:
1. Just out of the gate, sun dash to the first row of power-ups. get all 4. Should get an aspect master. Use it to dash ahead. You should be near another row of power-ups. get all of them, and you should get another aspect master. Use that to really put some distance between you and the pack
2. Dont waste the stabilty. Have it available. The lightning has a big warning sign before it strikes and theres enough stability that you should have one every time a player uses lightning strike.
3. When you are in first, you get a lot of fake power-ups. These things are gold. Dont randomly place them. You should be ahead of everyone else enough that you can stop and place them in choke points or places with low visibility such as around corners or past waterfalls. Second place will constantly hit them and keep you ahead even more
4. Always overshoot by half a circle when using standard lightning pull. It can sometimes drop you a bit short but if you overshoot you wont land in that gap you were trying to jump
5. Get every crystal you can so you can keep sun dashing. Orange ones give swiftness, so if one is convenient and close-by, swerve for it.
6. Learn the course and play to win!

After that, the hardest part will be not getting booted for idling while you wait for everyone else to finish.

^ All good tips.

The ones that make the most difference are points 1 and 3. If you are lucky enough to get 3 Aspect Masters right off the bat, the lead you take at the start can put you so far ahead of the pack that they’ll never catch up. Dropping all those fake power-ups also ensures that the 2nd and 3rd place guys will never catch you either.

Of course, now that the achievement progresses regardless of place, if you’re just after the AP, it doesn’t matter now.

3 is why when you’re in first place, you can’t really lose, which I find a bit silly.

1 is luck – you might not get aspect master immediately, or you might.

2 is a given – everyone should do this and it is easy enough to maintain.

Sun dash can often be unpredictable with a little lag – either porting you back to where you initiated the power, or randomly boosting you long distance when you didn’t pick up any power up (or a delayed response to it).

Lightning pull can sometimes not trigget on the plates unless you press the button several times, leading you to run off the edge rather than jump, among other weird things.

Wait – did they just fix the achievement to work regardless of position? So all that time today I spent quitting and restarting different races to get ahead was a waste of time? Kitten…

Gyler.8150:

It’s all skill based, learn the tricks!

“Because of a late start no rewards will be given – You are in 2nd place”
Oh and you get ‘dropped’ on to the map ten yards from the finish line.

No skill – It’s just broken, has been for months.

Daroon.1736:

Gyler.8150:

It’s all skill based, learn the tricks!

“Because of a late start no rewards will be given – You are in 2nd place”
Oh and you get ‘dropped’ on to the map ten yards from the finish line.

No skill – It’s just broken, has been for months.

lolz, yeah I find it really strange when I enter a race, and I start somewhere in the middle. Then of course you get nothing for completing the rest because you dont get the first few check point =.=

Watch and learn.

Taygus.4571:

Daroon.1736:

Gyler.8150:

It’s all skill based, learn the tricks!

“Because of a late start no rewards will be given – You are in 2nd place”
Oh and you get ‘dropped’ on to the map ten yards from the finish line.

No skill – It’s just broken, has been for months.

lolz, yeah I find it really strange when I enter a race, and I start somewhere in the middle. Then of course you get nothing for completing the rest because you dont get the first few check point =.=

You’re top 3 place still counts towards the speedy sprinter achievement though and with players popping into the race near the finish, the poor guys that have ran the whole race, can suddenly and inexplicably find themselves with a fourth or worse placing.

Make sure you don’t leave before the match is over. Sometimes you will finish with 3min to spare. Don’t just leave the instance. Finish those 3min.

more tips:
- use lightning pull on open ground to move faster. out of the gate, I will dash, lightning pull, grab all powerups (if one is aspect master, just keep dashing), dash, lightning pull, grab more powerups, run, lightning pull, dash, etc.
- grab crystals if they aren’t too far out of the way. dash consumes endurance (1/2 of full). crystals refill endurance. it only takes like 7 blue crystals to completely refill endurance (bigger crystals refill more). If you dash through crystals, you can just keep dashing constantly.

Mystic.5934:

more tips:
- use lightning pull on open ground to move faster. out of the gate, I will dash, lightning pull, grab all powerups (if one is aspect master, just keep dashing), dash, lightning pull, grab more powerups, run, lightning pull, dash, etc.
- grab crystals if they aren’t too far out of the way. dash consumes endurance (1/2 of full). crystals refill endurance. it only takes like 7 blue crystals to completely refill endurance (bigger crystals refill more). If you dash through crystals, you can just keep dashing constantly.

Additionally, with Aspect master activated —> Dash + Jump will get you over a LOT of obstacles quickly. Very useful in the beginning, at that first ramp/jump, a 2 + 1 combo will almost clear that entire upside down canoe obstacle course, or whatever those are.

I find this the least entertaining activity in the Festival by far. The spamming is incredibly annoying (and Stability only stops the first one) and the lag and bugs only add to the frustration.

What really makes it unpleasant is the sense of griefing in this activity. I understand its supposed to be a competition but this doesn’t feel like PvP content, it feels like PvE content because the main goal is to finish the race, not kill other players.

ArenaNet has tried very hard to remove griefing from PvE content in the world so I guess I just find it weird and unpleasant that they put in an activity that wallows in it.

Maybe ArenaNet thought it would be fun to do a variation of MarioKart but there is a huge difference with those kind of console games where you are playing in the same room with your friends, not against faceless strangers.

You can laugh and vow revenge when your buddy sitting next to you griefs you repeatedly in the race. When players named Lulz4fun and Urlame do it, the charm is drained. Heck, you don’t even see the players spamming you in this activity and making you fall off cliffs, it’s like you’re some lab rat getting zapped by unseen hands, which just adds to the distaste of this activity.

One might guess ArenaNet increased the rewards in the last patch because people were not doing Sanctum Sprint. I went back to try a couple of races and was reminded about all these reasons why I avoid it.

I find it doubtful that increasing the rewards will get more people to play this, removal of the bugs and lags would help but fundamentally I don’t think this kind of activity works in an MMO that prides itself on limiting player griefing. MarioKart is fun when played between friends all together in a room, that fun is lost in an MMO.

Tastes will vary, but, as a counterpoint, I really love Sanctum Sprint. I find the course itself exciting and challenging to run through quickly, and I’ve reached a point where I can usually pick out suspiciously-placed crystals. There are some potentially obnoxious places to drop a fake crystal that make it very difficult to get around, but between the Grounded skill and smart use of the Zephyrite skills, along with a good knowledge of the course, there are some surprising ways to apply skill to a race.

I have mixed feelings about the griefing element of it. While I usually don’t care for griefing as a play style, some potentially griefing things in Sanctum Sprint, I don’t mind so much, even on the receiving end. If someone ahead of me drops a clever fake crystal, I think, “Dang, well-played,” and a lot of my own mistakes could have been avoided if I used Grounded better. (Say, before running into a place I know fake crystals are popular, or before doing risky jumps.)

Maybe it takes a lot of practice to reach that point, but I don’t get as much of a sense of griefing from Sprint, and it’s easily my favorite daily activity.

(Griefing Disclaimer: I still drop some fake crystals where I know they’ll wreck someone, particularly someone right behind me, but not as much as I used to. Focusing on using Grounded correctly seems more interesting at this point.)

Edit: And while I hear about lag and bugs with Spring, I rarely have any problems with either. Or maybe I just have a good connection, and I’ve stopped seeing bugs as bugs rather than just normal behavior for Zephyrite skills.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

I find this the least entertaining activity in the Festival by far. The spamming is incredibly annoying (and Stability only stops the first one) and the lag and bugs only add to the frustration.

Gosh, really? You mean it’s not a good idea to give everybody behind first place easy access to pickups every ten seconds that are the equivalent of MK lightning bolts? No, that couldn’t be right… I mean, if players couldn’t have that, then they might actually have to get good at managing their endurance and using their dash skill. Or worse yet, the devs might have to actually spend time thinking about how to better design those skills.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

I find it doubtful that increasing the rewards will get more people to play this, removal of the bugs and lags would help but fundamentally I don’t think this kind of activity works in an MMO that prides itself on limiting player griefing. MarioKart is fun when played between friends all together in a room, that fun is lost in an MMO.

The MMO aspect is only very slightly to blame. It is much more the fault of the game’s design. You might run into and be “forced” to play with more griefers in an MMO setting, but much of why they’re able to grief so effectively is because of how easy it is to do here. If something is done like limiting offensive skills to “radar range”, it can put a pretty hard stop to a lot of the abuse, and anyone still feeling it can avoid it by being faster and breaking distance with them.

Increased rewards will definitely get more people to play, but only if they do it right.