Guild Wars 2

EDIT: This compendium was completed before the changes to sylvari cultural armours happened at the start of November. I’ll try to update it in light of all the changes, and changes in the future, but please stick with me as it’s become quite complicated. Thank you!

I wanted to start a threat dedicated to the Sylvari cultural armour glow. I love the cultural armours and have owned a fair few, but trawling through the forums I’ve never been able to find a list of exactly what does/doesn’t glow. So, I’m going to start a list in this OP that everyone can check on if they want to know if the armour they’re about to buy glows or not. I don’t have evidence for every single tier of armour, so if you know any I’ve listed are wrong, please post (ideally with a screenshot). Anyway, without further waiting here’s the list:

Bold = glow, underlined = no glow

Heavy Male: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3
Heavy Female: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3

Medium Male: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3
Medium Female: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3

Light Male: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3
Light Female: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3

So, I hope this helps and please do post if you have any other info. We’re also trying to piece together exactly which bits of Twilight Arbour dungeon armour glow on a Sylvari but we need more information on this, if you know anything please do post. So far we have:

Heavy Male
Heavy Female

Medium Male
Medium Female

Light Male
Light Female

Note: with the light TAs it looks like they will always glow white regardless of your glow or your dyes.

Heavy T1 Male glows on the gem-shaped particles of the armor. (http://i.imgur.com/65P5W50.jpg) It’s not a great screenshot but it shows where it glows at least. :P The glowing part of the armor can be dyed, I dyed it in a very light blue so it shows up white. I assume it works best when using light colors.

Medium T1 Male/Female glows but only for the chestpiece, I believe. The female version glows on the tiny berry/round shaped things attached to her armor and the patterned part of the arms. I’m not sure if the tips of the leaves on the skirt glow, too. I’ll have to check that, I still have the T1 chestpiece somewhere in my bank!

The male medium T1 seems to glow on the middle part of the armor, a bit lower than the chest. The upper part of the sleeves seems to glow too. Again, bad quality, it’s not my character so I don’t have many screens where it’s nighttime. :P But the white parts show where it glows a bit: (http://i.imgur.com/31CgeWa.jpg) It’s not a strong glow, when he had his amor dyed black it barely showed up.

Medium T2 female sadly doesn’t truly glow but seems to retain some kind of brightness in dark environments, as it doesn’t get as dark as other armors. It doesn’t pulse-glow, but it feels like it has some kind of permanent subtle glow when it’s dark. I wear a combination of T1, TA and T2 on my thief and when I’m in dark environments the T2 pieces stay way more vibrant in color. Something similar happens to the TA light armor, it always seems brighter than the rest.

That’s it for the armors I know! I’ll try to come up with better screens later.

Thank you for the response Renske. I’ll update the OP right away with the info you’ve given me. I think some of the armour on the character you posted in the second screenshot was tier 2 medium, but I’m not sure. I’ll leave tier 1 medium as it is for now until we get some more evidence together.

It’s interesting what you say about TA light and some T2 staying brighter in darker areas. Two characters that I play often, one T2 female heavy and one T2 male medium, both don’t glow but the T2 male medium seems to be much brighter in dark areas than the T2 female heavy. That could of course be our graphics being strange!

… I’m really jealous of the male T1 now. It looks so much better than the female version, and it glows? Bloody blighted gendered armors. :/

Female T2 heavy glows- the stomach and some dots down the back

Male TA light glows – some color choices will make it more apparent than others.

I don’t have screenshots on hand at the moment, but I can add that all Tiers of Heavy Female cultural armour do glow. T1 glows along all the edges of the leaves very distinctly, (Its a gorgeous glow/armour), on all pieces. Tier 2 has the least glow. The “ribbing” on the stomach and the legs glow, and some dots on the back. No other pieces glow, and the glow is faint where it does. As you’ve already noted, T3 does glow in a variety of places.

Thank you for all your responses, I’ve updated the OP accordingly.

On the male T2 medium, it turns out I’ve been living a lie. I was convinced my ranger had worn it since he reached level 80 months ago. I’ve found out, thanks to your helpful responses, that I actually went for T1. So, you’ve also helped me to discover I was deceiving myself. Thank you!

I have female T2 heavy and have never spotted any glowing, but I can imagine that I could have easily missed a subtle glow on the back and stomach with her current dyes. I might leave that as a ‘no glow’ simply because it’s so subtle that it’s easily missed – and it might mislead people if I say that it glows.

Thank you Golgathoth for letting me know that some TA glows for sylvari. Does anyone else have more details on this? If we have more posts I’ll add that as a seperate little chart showing which glow/don’t glow.

Thank you again for your responses and please do keep replying, and if possible posting pictures of your lovely glowing sylvaris.

Male TA Plate Armor does not glow.

Actually, the Heavy Male T2 armor does glow! Well, only in the chest and legs as far as I know, I’ve never worn the boots/shoulders/helmet and I know the heavy T2 gloves don’t glow.
I can’t tell if it’s a white glow or if the glow is based on your Sylvari’s skin color.
Also, I’m wearing the T1 boots which covers up a lot of the T2 pants glow, but the glow extends all the way down to your feet and you can still kind of see it in the picture. So here’s a front and back!

Heads up, without the shoulderguard the T2 Heavy chest bares his shoulders

EDIT: Oh, lemme put in a non-glow shot for comparison ~~

Male Medium Tier 1 glows as well. Look at the belly and lower back area, as well as arms during the night.

gryphonwing.2531:

Actually, the Heavy Male T2 armor does glow! Well, only in the chest and legs as far as I know, I’ve never worn the boots/shoulders/helmet and I know the heavy T2 gloves don’t glow.
I can’t tell if it’s a white glow or if the glow is based on your Sylvari’s skin color.
Also, I’m wearing the T1 boots which covers up a lot of the T2 pants glow, but the glow extends all the way down to your feet and you can still kind of see it in the picture. So here’s a front and back!

Heads up, without the shoulderguard the T2 Heavy chest bares his shoulders

EDIT: Oh, lemme put in a non-glow shot for comparison ~~

Yeah but compare that to females :< The glow is the same color nomatter what your colors are.

Male Light Twilight Arbor glows on the spots on the armor, especially the skirt. The default is white, but I believe some dyes may change this slightly.

Thank you again for all the responses. Please do keep the information coming.

If we get more information on TA armours I’ll update the OP with a list of them. As of right now we know that Male Light glows, but Male Heavy doesn’t. As far as I know Female Heavy doesn’t glow either, but that is just based on a brief glance at someone in it this week. If anybody reading this has more evidence, and hopefully some screenshots as well, please do share them here!

Thank you Red Jay and gryphonwing for the updates, I have both of those armours, and although they do glow ever so slightly it’s really very minor when compared with the fantastic glows of, for instance, Female Tier 2 Light. I didn’t want anybody to read this thread and get the idea that they glowed, buy them and then be disappointed. So, with that in mind I’ll leave them as no glow. Thank you for the info though!

Medium Female T1 glows for sure though…

• Chest piece (arms)
• Leggins (small “bulbs” or calabashs at the belt)

I can confirm that Medium Female T1 armor does glow.

Any word on the Twilight Arbor sets? I’m pondering to get the light chestpiece for my elementalist, in particular.

Male Medium tier 3 doesn’t glow. It’s just bright and stays the same whether its dark or not.

Chad, I can confirm that Twilight Arbor light chestpiece does glow. The glow comes and goes along with your sylvari’s natural skin glow. I believe it always glows white (spots on arms).

Male T2 does glow. You look fabulous <3

T2 glow with screen

Edit: Light armor

Female light TA armor glows (or allows sylvari’s own glow be seen trough). Chest has glowing spots on arms&back. Skit’s front panels glow.

Thank you for all the new responses – the more we get the more accurate we can be!

Argodis.2514:

I can confirm that Medium Female T1 armor does glow.

I can’t really see any glow in those pictures, maybe if you have a picture which better shows it I can then change it? Thank you for input though!

robbo.8235:

Male Medium tier 3 doesn’t glow. It’s just bright and stays the same whether its dark or not.

I always thought it did glow, and was told repeatedly that it did, but some further research shows that you are right, it really doesn’t glow. What a disappointment that that’s another off the list. Thank you for the info though!

Defora.3694:

Female light TA armor glows (or allows sylvari’s own glow be seen trough). Chest has glowing spots on arms&back. Skit’s front panels glow.

Thank you gemnscout for this info as well. As its fairly subtle, but especially as it always seems to be white rather than linked to your own glow colour, I won’t add this to the list at the moment. It’s looking like we might need a special category for special case glows now.

Wiz.1543:

T2 glow with screen
Edit: Light armor

Thank you for the screenshot and congratulations on the bifrost. I’ve been told by quite a few that male T2 light doesn’t glow, and bifrost does cause the character to glow when wielded – so I won’t change that for now before I get some more info.

Thank you everyone for the information, its great that everybody’s still interested to see this list.

stjf.7180:

Thank you for all the new responses – the more we get the more accurate we can be!

T2 glow with screen
Edit: Light armor

Thank you for the screenshot and congratulations on the bifrost. I’ve been told by quite a few that male T2 light doesn’t glow, and bifrost does cause the character to glow when wielded – so I won’t change that for now before I get some more info.

Thank you everyone for the information, its great that everybody’s still interested to see this list.

TY for the congrats on the bifrost <3 most awesome ele weapon imho.

Here is a screen with t2 armor without any weapon.

You can see some glow but you can debate if thats skin of part of the armor.

stjf.7180:

I can’t really see any glow in those pictures, maybe if you have a picture which better shows it I can then change it? Thank you for input though!

Better?

Wiz.1543:

stjf.7180:

Thank you for all the new responses – the more we get the more accurate we can be!

T2 glow with screen
Edit: Light armor

Thank you for the screenshot and congratulations on the bifrost. I’ve been told by quite a few that male T2 light doesn’t glow, and bifrost does cause the character to glow when wielded – so I won’t change that for now before I get some more info.

Thank you everyone for the information, its great that everybody’s still interested to see this list.

TY for the congrats on the bifrost <3 most awesome ele weapon imho.

Here is a screen with t2 armor without any weapon.

You can see some glow but you can debate if thats skin of part of the armor.

Thank you for that screenshot, it definitely does look as if there’s some sort of glow on t2 light and it does look linked to your personal glow. I’ll update that, thank you.

wizzard.1295:

stjf.7180:

I can’t really see any glow in those pictures, maybe if you have a picture which better shows it I can then change it? Thank you for input though!

Better?

Thank you for the screenshots, they’re much clearer. I can see that the arms and bulbs at your waist have some sort of glow, but it doesn’t seem linked to your personal glow. There’s definitely something faint there but I don’t think its enough to add to the list – if someone buys it expecting a glow they’d probably be disappointed.

stjf.7180:

wizzard.1295:

stjf.7180:

I can’t really see any glow in those pictures, maybe if you have a picture which better shows it I can then change it? Thank you for input though!

Better?

Thank you for the screenshots, they’re much clearer. I can see that the arms and bulbs at your waist have some sort of glow, but it doesn’t seem linked to your personal glow. There’s definitely something faint there but I don’t think its enough to add to the list – if someone buys it expecting a glow they’d probably be disappointed.

But it does glow. Why should it only be listed if the glow is influenced by your personal glow colour? The glow of the female medium T1 might only be white but it is VERY visible. It can also be slightly altered based on the dyes you are using. This especially works well for the bulbs (just compare the pics already posted). The arms not so much.

My medium T3 armour doesn’t seem to glow :-/

Toli Rosca.9041:

My medium T3 armour doesn’t seem to glow :-/

Sorry about that, we had info on that a few posts back and I thought I had editted it to say that it doesn’t glow. I always thought it did, its a real shame that it doesn’t – its put me off buying it. Sorry the info wasn’t correct, I’ll update it now. I hope you like your T3 all the same, its a great armour.

tanf.8917:

makes no sense.. they need to make them all glowable sigh.. :<
Don’t let this topic die so maybe in the future we will get some sort of fix…

I really think they should all glow, its our special trait as sylvari – we glow! – and yet our cultural armours hardly feature it at all. I hope we get more glows as well at some point.

They should really match your body glow with all armor glow.
Oh and why is female t1 light marked that it glows when it actually doesn’t?

Toli Rosca.9041:

My medium T3 armour doesn’t seem to glow :-/

Umm my Medium T3 pieces glow (female character). Chest stripes, shoulder stripe, helm stripes and pants have glow. Gloves don’t seem to have. Not sure on boots, if the stripes glow.

I also believe heavy T2 has chest glow on both male and female.

Anyone else have medium T2 and notice a massive visual difference post-patch? I’ll get some screenshots up but the highlight colours on my armour are considerably deeper now and there seems to be some glow where there previously wasn’t as well – although the glow on the chest piece is glowing my skin colour, not my glow colour.

Laurelinde.4395:

Anyone else have medium T2 and notice a massive visual difference post-patch? I’ll get some screenshots up but the highlight colours on my armour are considerably deeper now and there seems to be some glow where there previously wasn’t as well – although the glow on the chest piece is glowing my skin colour, not my glow colour.

Yep there are big changes in the Sylvari cultural armors.

I really low the glow now! Thanx!

However with the patch, how dyes react to the cultural gear completely changed. Was this intended?
Here is before and after pic with the exact same dyes on the same slots (Noticeable on boots & chest). A bit sad, since the main color, Deep glacial sky dye which I just bought under a week ago to perfect my look now looks like something I never wanted. Feels like I lost so much money for nothing ;__; (120g for that one dye alone. Not to mention some other glacial dyes I bought…)

PS. Left is before, right is after

How can I choose the glow color? Before the patch (which actually messed my all effort…thanks for that) I had a Black skinned sylvari with Midnight Sky Hair, Streamlet glow and Midnight Sky, Midnight Ice and Blue Sky dyes to go well with my Fractal Capacitor, Frostfang and Corrupted weapons. After the patch, despite the dyes pattern change, the glow is WHITE. Please tell me how can i change it… it looks plain bad on my toon

eMKay.4028:

How can I choose the glow color? Before the patch (which actually messed my all effort…thanks for that) I had a Black skinned sylvari with Midnight Sky Hair, Streamlet glow and Midnight Sky, Midnight Ice and Blue Sky dyes to go well with my Fractal Capacitor, Frostfang and Corrupted weapons. After the patch, despite the dyes pattern change, the glow is WHITE. Please tell me how can i change it… it looks plain bad on my toon

you have to dye the part of the armor usually the main pannle the color that matches your i will post screens to show you

But what is the point of having to dye the main pannel of the armor in order to match the character glow? Couldn’t the armor glow just match the glow of the character (not the skin)? Now the glow is affected by the skin or the main color WHICH MAKES ME to change my color into that, and I hate it. This is painful

I mean really, who would choose the different main color to make it glow against the one he or she choose at the character creation/makeover??? Why cannot it just glow in the same way as sylvari character glow? Or simply make a different panel just for the glow? Now contrary to what you have stated there are LESS options (provided you want to look good) as you have to dye your main panel into the same dye as your character glow in order for it to look ok. No more different shades, no more ying-yang types of coloring, on more fun. Not event mentioning the HUGE dissapearance of detail. Why Kristen? In your other post you stated, I quote: “Some folks may have picked the hair style because they loved it as is. To change it for one may change it negatively for another” – source https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/races/sylvari/New-Hair-Cool-but-Disappointed. Now you did just that? I mean what the kitten?!
This change really made me hate my toon, and really I feel devastated. So devastated that I lost all incentive to play for a while… really…

eMKay.4028:

But what is the point of having to dye the main pannel of the armor in order to match the character glow? Couldn’t the armor glow just match the glow of the character (not the skin)? Now the glow is affected by the skin or the main color WHICH MAKES ME to change my color into that, and I hate it. This is painful

My thoughts exactly. Why are we dying the actual armor color instead of a seperate dye channel for glow, or make it tied to the Sylvari glow in general similar to the way Nightmare armor worked.

Katreyn.4218:

eMKay.4028:

But what is the point of having to dye the main pannel of the armor in order to match the character glow? Couldn’t the armor glow just match the glow of the character (not the skin)? Now the glow is affected by the skin or the main color WHICH MAKES ME to change my color into that, and I hate it. This is painful

My thoughts exactly. Why are we dying the actual armor color instead of a seperate dye channel for glow, or make it tied to the Sylvari glow in general similar to the way Nightmare armor worked.

They made it dye the same way the nightmare armor glows here my syvari has nightmares pants and t3 chest they glow the same no with the same dye pannles filed in here is a before and after pic

Marquie Thomas.1873:

Katreyn.4218:

eMKay.4028:

But what is the point of having to dye the main pannel of the armor in order to match the character glow? Couldn’t the armor glow just match the glow of the character (not the skin)? Now the glow is affected by the skin or the main color WHICH MAKES ME to change my color into that, and I hate it. This is painful

My thoughts exactly. Why are we dying the actual armor color instead of a seperate dye channel for glow, or make it tied to the Sylvari glow in general similar to the way Nightmare armor worked.

They made it dye the same way the nightmare armor glows here my syvari has nightmares pants and t3 chest they glow the same no with the same dye pannles filed in here is a before and after pic

Ah wasnt entirely sure how Nightmare armor dyed exactly. I thought it went off the skin tone, may have confused it with something else. Sorry for the false information.

Katreyn.4218:

Marquie Thomas.1873:

Katreyn.4218:

eMKay.4028:

But what is the point of having to dye the main pannel of the armor in order to match the character glow? Couldn’t the armor glow just match the glow of the character (not the skin)? Now the glow is affected by the skin or the main color WHICH MAKES ME to change my color into that, and I hate it. This is painful

My thoughts exactly. Why are we dying the actual armor color instead of a seperate dye channel for glow, or make it tied to the Sylvari glow in general similar to the way Nightmare armor worked.

They made it dye the same way the nightmare armor glows here my syvari has nightmares pants and t3 chest they glow the same no with the same dye pannles filed in here is a before and after pic

Ah wasnt entirely sure how Nightmare armor dyed exactly. I thought it went off the skin tone, may have confused it with something else. Sorry for the false information.

NO the nightmare armor will glow white unless you dye the glow the pannle the way you want it to here are two more pic of it

I hope eventually the armors just pull the glow color from the character’s data automatically, but it sounds like this is at least a step in the right direction, and at least Kristen is working on it.

Thanks for the efforts, Kristen! These are some of the best armors in the game.

Is there any way to turn off the glow ?

So this means matching armor glow with body glow is not possible? T2 medium only glows white now and can’t be affected with dyes…

I appreciate all of Kristen Perry hard work and her work in giving the player what they want even going as far as to bend over backwards for them she mite be the only dev that actually at least tried to give us what we want. Personally for me i hated trying to mix match syvari armor until now

Only piece I have that glows now is the male T3 light body armor. My glow is white. It’s working out pretty well. The way dye affected it before was a little odd, anyway.

Kristen Perry.5260:

This currently affects Medium Tier 2 (legs will be re-addressed for better glow and dye alignment, sorry about that, it got past me) and Tier 3, Light Tier 1 (female only), and Light Tier 3. The other weights and tiers will be assessed for a similar pass to give glow or upgrade glow results when possible.

Female heavy tier 2 seems to have been tinkered with as well, though not to glow. My dye channels were reset after the patch: unless I’m imagining things, the leggings and boots now have a third dye channel, whereas before they only had two. Certainly a welcome change.

I can empathize with those who are upset about the changes to sylvari armor, since I’m fairly obsessive about my armor/dye setups. It’s unfortunate that this change was made without communicating a warning to players who were already vested in the affected pieces.

I’m especially surprised that the change was made when there are still actual bugs on other armor skin textures that need to be fixed. This includes the heavy female sylvari t1 cultural armor, which I’ve been asking to be fixed for about a year now. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it, especially when there are broken armor sets that could have been fixed instead.

Kirsten, I really respect that you listened to the community’s desire of more glowing armour on sylvari and you worked and tried to give us what we wanted, but your statements about our larger selection of glow colour and glowing area are plainly wrong… at least when it comes to light armour T3 chest ( I won’t be talking about T3 light pants, because I don’t use them, and other armour types because I don’t own them)

Well when I noticed my sylvari light chest was changed and was glowing brightly my first thoughts were shiny, this is cool…they didn’t last long. As soon as I opened the dye panel I was expecting a little panel to dye the glow (a feature that would fix a lot of the old and current problems with the armour glow) but there was no such thing. I went and looked into the normal armour dye panel looking for something that would allow me to change its colour but there were the same 3 dye areas that always have been. I tried to mess around and used some dyes to see if anything changed but the glow always stayed white and here is were things start going wrong.

You said that you reworked the dye channel and made available to us a larger choice and control over the glow, and the areas that glow were now available for selection. Well I don’t have such thing because I can’t control the glow at all, I don’t select it’s position, I don’t choose it’s intensity, I can’t select it’s colour even, it is always white looking glow (sure it blends well with bright colours but with the rest is just a plain white or greyish colour) that stays with the same intensity and always on the belly and back portion of the torso.

Really disappointed at this that made my sylvari cultural armour unappealing and since my sylvari is a red colour one with a intense red glow I will make some of you words mine and say that for armour I “…won’t have to guess what color…” I “…need to find to make the red feel red…” because It will always be a white glow.

I know you will be listening to us and you will try to do your best to find a solution for this new issues, so I will stay here waiting with my finger’s crossed and with my sylvari wearing is alternative set.

Regards

I wasn’t able to play with the glow yesterday as I had just logged on shortly, but I noticed that my bright green eyes turned … black. Only on certain angles I can see the green. I’ll try to update this with a screenshot tonight – I wondered if that may have anything to do with this?