Guild Wars 2

I hope you find this helpful/useful and please: share your own tips, too.

I’ve been running invasions almost around the clock. Some of these tips might seem basic and I don’t mean to seem as if I’m talking down to anyone. Just trying to help. If you already know something in this list, good for you!

• Be sure your bags are as empty as possible before jumping in, because you’re gonna have loot bursting at the seams. You don’t need gathering tools, extra weapons, minis, etc. If you’ve been looking for an excuse to buy or craft bigger bags, this is it.

• Don’t necessarily follow commanders. This creates zergs which make the invasion take longer to finish successfully. Look at the map and think for yourself: find other red circles to attack.

• Keep an eye on your map and UI for when you complete a red circle or vanquish a specific enemy (such as Aetherblade Captains). As soon as the event is over, get out of there! The faster you get away, the faster you get out of combat and can then check the map for where you want to go next. Don’t get tunnel vision and end up dead because everyone moved on but you. It doesn’t matter that there are still creatures around! The event is OVER if the red circle is gone from the map.

• There’s no need to fight Scarlet until the end. You’re just wasting time before then.

• Utilize food buffs that shorten condition duration or that regenerate health. Use “tech food” buffs (symbolized by the wrench icon) to give yourself increased toughness or vitality. These are sharpening stones, maintenance oils, and tuning crystals, found on the trading post.

• Stability and blocking or reflecting damage will also help tremendously.

• If a big boss is the objective (such as an Aetherblade Captain), try to focus on that boss and not spend time on minions around it. You want to burn that boss down as fast as possible so that event ends and you can move on to another.

• Aetherblade Strikers: use reflect/block/stun/interrupts/blindness on them. If you have strong melee, fight them in melee range. You most likely will not be able to outrange them. Cripple and/or chill them if you can.

• Aetherblade Thugs: Attack them at range and don’t let them close in. Their first attack upon engaging you is a thrown weapon, which you can dodge. If you get within range of their ridiculously overpowered attacks, use stability and/or damage mitigation as well as evades. Otherwise they’re going to knock you to the ground and beat you into the next Living Story.

• Aetherblade Grendadiers: Melee them if you can, otherwise have a speed boon up and be on the run so you’re ahead of their grenade tosses.

• Twisted Champions: These have 2 phases. In the first phase, they have 4 legs and use ranged attacks. In the second phase, 2 of their legs have been blown off in combat so now they walk on 2 legs and use physical/ melee attacks. For phase 1, melee is better because they will put up a shield that reflects ranged attacks. For phase, 2, ranged is better. Dodge their melee attacks if you can’t stay out of melee range (the tells for them are easily seen and take a long time to wind up so you have plenty of time).

• Destroy defeated twisted creatures by interacting with the orange gearwheels they leave behind. If you don’t, smaller twisted creatures will “eat” the remains of their fallen brethren and then form bigger/badder twisted. Only one player is needed to destroy these, so don’t waste time doubling up on them. After one wave of twisted is over, stomp as many of these as you can or the next wave will feast on them and be that much harder to beat (taking longer and making it less likely the overall event will succeed).

• The flying Twisted Menders heal the other creatures, so kill them quickly even though they don’t seem like big targets.

• The Twisted creatures will leave bombs that look like tiny helicopters and glow red. Get away from these as fast as possible.

• Be in a group. That way, if you accidentally disconnect or your game crashes, you can get back to the invasion. Because otherwise, you’ll end up in an overflow server where the event won’t be happening. You can right-click on your party member’s portraits and join them in the main world server. It’s also nice to have friends get your back and know you’re there for them.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. If I’m incorrect about something, let me know so I can correct it. If you have your own tips for making invasions go smoothly and successfully, please share them.

The minion bar lowers when killing minion mobs (watchwork and I think steam creatures, not 100% sure on that). When killing them, even if the event is over, stay and finish killing everything that spawned. Completing the event doesn’t directly count to lower the bar (but you’ll complete it by killing them anyway).

The second bar that shows up on waves 2 and 3 (aetherblade and molten) lowers on event completion, when an event is done, don’t stay around, run away even if there are still mobs around.

Scarlet will pick someone at random and keep spawning where that person during the whole event. When the event ends and you have to kill her, she will also spawn right on top of that person as well, so if you’re the lucky one, try to be near an uncontested waypoint when it happens.

There doesn’t seem to be any pattern as to why does she pick someone, I was on ebonhawke today crafting when the event started on fields of ruin, and I hadn’t even noticed it had started until Scarlet spawned and started wacking me around, I wasn’t near any event or zerg when it happened. She did it at least 8 more times during the event. I had to do other things so I parked the character next to the ebonhawke waypoint and sure enough, that’s where she spawned at the end of the event.

While they don’t directly contribute to event completion, I can think of a couple of tips that can be quite useful:

- I always bring two stacks of 25 salvage kits. I salvage blues on the go while walking to the next event or while I auto range attack a champion if surrounded by the zerg. I have one of those crafting bags into which the materials automatically go to, which keeps them neatly organized at the end of my inventory. At the end of every quick salvaging session, I deposit all the collectibles to keep the bag from filling up and overflowing.

- Aoe loot: I have this activated (It’s in Options) and press the key a couple of times at the end of a fight. Usually loots everything. To make sure, I press and hold control and look for the yellow “Loot bag” name. This usually garantees you missed nothing.

- To make sure you focus on the champion when he’s surrounded in a sea of trash mobs, holding control also helps. It shows the mob names and it’s easier to pick the champion directly.

- If you’re not going to follow the zerg/commander, it really helps if you find a party of like minded folks to handle an event by yourselves if you find an empty one. When I decide I’ll avoid the zerg, I often end up at events with no one and I think it’s a waste of time to wait until someone has the same idea as me. If I /map the waypoint, I risk the event getting zerged, upscaled, and therefore taking longer. Try to gather a party with your guild. It’s a lot of fun to beat events with a coordinated small party – very rewarding (and it contributes to event completion).

These have helped me so far. If I think of something else I’ll add.

locoman.1974:

The minion bar lowers when killing minion mobs (watchwork and I think steam creatures, not 100% sure on that). When killing them, even if the event is over, stay and finish killing everything that spawned. Completing the event doesn’t directly count to lower the bar (but you’ll complete it by killing them anyway).

I’m not actually sure about that. I’ve hung around to clean up minions after Twisted portal events have finished, but I did not observe any movement in the bar every time a minion was killed. It’s possible you saw the bar moving due to other players completing Twisted portals elsewhere.

It can’t hurt, I guess, but I think it’s better to simply move on to another portal once the event finishes.

The only other tip I’d offer is that players who want to complete the event announce in Map chat that they’re LFG for similar players. Your group then moves around the map and focuses purely on Twisted portals, since the farmers will be prioritising Aetherblade and Molten events. (Despite claims of farmers deliberately delaying Aetherblade events to farm the Champs, I haven’t actually seen this happen in practice. What usually happens instead is that everybody in a zerg shows up to a Commander icon at an Aetherblade event, and then everybody whacks the Captain to make sure they get kill credit, which ends up killing the Captain anyway.)

The Second/Third waves of Twisted minions are independent of the Aetherblade/Molten event bar, so if you happen to complete the Twisted bar first, you can go help the farmers clean up.