Guild Wars 2

Greeting class, my name is Professor Butterlegs, Ph.D (Doctor of Practical Hopping), and today I am going to guide you through the Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle.

I. Before you get started

• I recommend using action camera for this jump puzzle, it makes life much easier.
• The cold damage will do the same percentage regardless of health or armor, you will die on the 56th tick. So don’t worry about having to use a tankier class or anything like that.
• Your traits are disabled.
• Knowing the route can be very helpful. Either watch a video on the jump puzzle first to get a feel for it or try to find someone who is doing well on it and follow what they do.

II. Choosing a path
The jump puzzle is possible from all 3 paths, so you should take whichever you are best at and stick with it, so the more you do it the better you will get. That said, I personally giving the middle path (snowmen) a shot as it seems to be the fastest(about tied with gingerbread men) and I feel it has the least amount of difficult jumps.

III. The Snowflakes
As long as you have fundamental jump understanding this part should not be too difficult. There are not any especially tricky jumps. When you jump onto a snowflake and are moving in the direction of the next one also move either side based on the angle of the snowflake. Jumps are easiest if you are jumping from the highest point of one snowflake to the lowest point of another (don’t do this if it will make your jump longer).

The candy cane bars in the snowflake section can be slightly tricky because of how thin they are and how small the hops are (Super short hops with a unforgiving landing zone are a bane of mine). To counteract this, on the left and right paths (gingerbread men and Quaggan respectively) you can jump at an angle to gives yourself a more forgiving landing zone. On the middle path these candy canes are very short so this isn’t really possible, however if you jump from the snowflake straight to the second candy cane it is a much more comfortable jump distance.

There are a few shortcuts on each path. I’m not that familiar with the left and right paths, but for the center path a couple of notable skip-able platforms are: the first candy cane pole, the second to last snowflake, and the 4th round peppermint.

On the gift section:

When the second last gift in the middle lane explode early, you can still jump as if it was there because there’s a little invisible platform under it so you can still jump on it.

(tip provided by Qelris)

IV. The Gifts
This is where I see a lot of people having trouble, and it is definitely a spot I had trouble with early on. First of all, do not jump to the blue rectangular gifts that sometimes spawn. While the easy jump to them looks inviting, it will cause more of the white box gifts to be popping when you get to them, making it harder. You can still make it up while the blue boxes are there however. Just make a long jump over the blue gifts to the first white gift on the complete columns to the left or right.

Once you get to the checkpoint, wait for the gifts to start resetting and jump when the white gift in the middle column that is closest to you spawns jump to it. This is pretty much a max ranged jump, so you really need to jump at the very edge of the checkpoint platform. It may take you a few times to get the hang of it, but don’t get discouraged. After you have landed on that first gift, spam jump your way straight ahead. Sometimes the third box will explode early so you will have to make one diagonal jump, but usually you can go all the way up the middle.

Try to make shorter hops on this section (don’t hold space or forward) so you can go faster.

Something to note about the gifts is the popping chain will trigger as soon as someone makes the jump, so if someone jumps early and you aren’t quite ready, wait for another reset.

V. The home stretch
Congratulations, once you pass the gifts you have made it to the final, and arguably easiest part of the jump puzzle. There is a small noob trap on the initial large platform after the gifts, a snowman that will blow wind that can knock you off. It does a short burst then pauses (don’t get tricked) before blowing a long gust. You can evade through the wind so do so each time you are passing it, even if it isn’t currently blowing.

Once you are on the ramp it is pretty simple, avoid the red circles and use the platforms off the sides to avoid the rolling snowballs. You run faster than the snowballs, so don’t be afraid to turn around if it doesn’t look like you will make it to the safe platform in time. You can also evade through the snowballs, but the timing on this is very iffy and I don’t recommend it.

Try to keep as close to the center of the ramp as possible, as it is easy to slide off. (If you are doing this drunk make sure you can walk a straight line across your room first :P). Then there are just a few easy jumps on gifts to get into the portal to the chest.

VI. Minding your mindset
Let me start this section with a little story. I started playing gw2 around the beginning of last October. And let me tell you, I was preeety terrible at jump puzzles and would avoid all but the easiest ones. Despite this, when the Halloween event rolled around I thought that I would give the clocktower a shot. I played it for about 15 minutes, couldn’t even get to the first chest, and promptly gave up. One night, about a week later, I decided I was going to assert my dominance over that stupid jumping puzzle. Somewhere in the 3-4 hour range later, I achieved this goal. And those hours helped build my jumping skills so I could go back out into the open world and complete some of those jump puzzles I had previously felt were too daunting.

By going through this ordeal I came to understand a few things which I want to impart onto you.
1. First of all, you’ll never achieve something if you give up. If I hadn’t gone back to it, I would have been in the “grumble grumble stupid impossible jump puzzle, wtf anet grumble grumble” mindset. This won’t get you very many places in life.
2. Take it one jump at a time. The less focus you put on these jumps the more likely it is that you will fail. Don’t think about the way you fell last time around, don’t think about the “hard” jump that is coming up, don’t think about your health ticking away, don’t even think about bacon(I know, impossible goal right?). Pretend that the jump ahead of you is the only thing that matters, and once you make it, the next jump is the new center of your universe, and so on.
3. Be encouraged by your successes, don’t be discouraged by your failures. There are a million things that can cause you to miss a jump, no matter how good you are (let me fill you in on a secret, nobody is perfect). But there is only one thing that can cause you to get further along in the puzzle, even if that is only one more platform before you die: you improved. And if you got better once, you can do it again. A harder to notice but equally important improvement is when you die less at parts of the puzzle you have already reached and passed, You are getting more comfortable with them and you will get eventually get more comfortable with this next jump that seems impossible right now. Take note of these small but important achievements, allow them to fuel you. If you just let the times you fail get to you, you will go on tilt, and then you will fail more, and you will tilt harder. Each time you fall, take note of what caused it, learn from it, and then move on (see #2).

VII. Known bugs

• Sometimes the first snowball will bug and turn invisible, always check to see if it is coming down the hill or not before stepping onto the ramp. You will know when it passes because two red warning circles will appear as it gets close, you can continue once they fade.
• Sometimes if you are standing on a gift when it explodes you will not fall but instead float in midair. Don’t move. Once the gifts respawn you can continue on your merry way.

VIII. Bonus goodies

• At the back of the chest platform there is a little mini jump puzzle to get onto a platform above (just for lols).
• You can get to the top of the snowball ramp, I may have missed 10 or so chests trying to achieve this, but science demands sacrifice!

I would do a dissertation on growing old and having neither the reflexes nor speed anymore to do jumping puzzles. However, I would probably end it by telling other players to get off my kitten lawn while forgetting what I was talking about in the first place!

edit: grammar (go figure)

Also to add to the OP, I do hope this guide helps others, I just prefer my games to be sans jumping.

Sometimes one of the higher gifts will explode early so you will have to make one diagonal jump,

When the second last gift in the middle lane explode early, you can still jump as if it was there because there’s a little invisible platform under it so you can still jump on it. I’m not sure how big it is, but I know for a fact I’ve been jumping it even if the gift is missing.

I believe you can also max distance jump to the ice.

Qelris.6901:

Sometimes one of the higher gifts will explode early so you will have to make one diagonal jump,

When the second last gift in the middle lane explode early, you can still jump as if it was there because there’s a little invisible platform under it so you can still jump on it. I’m not sure how big it is, but I know for a fact I’ve been jumping it even if the gift is missing.

I believe you can also max distance jump to the ice.

yea, forgot to add that, sometimes the one below that blows too

Tommyknocker.6089:

I would do a dissertation on growing old and having neither the reflexes nor speed anymore to do jumping puzzles. However, I would probably end it by telling other players to get off my kitten lawn while forgetting what I was talking about in the first place!.

Literally lmao.

Sadly I could easily collaborate on your aging dissertation, it seems nowdays that there’s no senior handicap in gaming so we’re prone to accidental dodges and trying to find that kitten tiny mouse cursor somewhere on the screen.

Dear Professor Butterlegs,

You have 55 seconds (56 ticks @ -288 health/tick) to complete the first leg of the journey or you’re dead

Looking at last years jumping puzzle videos from Dulfy’s site, how many jumps and how long she took to complete them:

Puzzle Path | | #of Jumps : #Time to complete

Gingerbread| | 51 (path seems easier, less repositioning): 51 seconds
Quaggan __ | | 53 (two new riskier jumps to save 2 hops): 58 seconds
Snowman | | 51 (more straight, but more positioning): 55 seconds

This assumes Dulfy’s skill is average between all paths (I think they’re spread across multiple years.. so it might not be true.. but it basically breaks down to about a jump a second..)

If she performed exactly the same this year, she would fail 2 of the 3 paths. (!)

All paths are not equal..
probably the best chance of getting the puzzle is to go gingerbread.

Judging from the amount of people running the paths last night I think a lot of people have come to the same conclusion, while I’ve been stubbornly running on quaggan.. I run it relatively alone with a sea of red all over the gingerbread path…

I’ve love to see any videos of you completing each path this year!
Any chance you put your skills on-line for all to admire ….

I’ll give the action camera a shot, but I find the mouse rotation makes or breaks some of the jumps..

Thank you for the tips OP !

smiling.9028:

Tommyknocker.6089:

I would do a dissertation on growing old and having neither the reflexes nor speed anymore to do jumping puzzles. However, I would probably end it by telling other players to get off my kitten lawn while forgetting what I was talking about in the first place!.

Literally lmao.

Sadly I could easily collaborate on your aging dissertation, it seems nowdays that there’s no senior handicap in gaming so we’re prone to accidental dodges and trying to find that kitten tiny mouse cursor somewhere on the screen.

I’ve seen a couple posts like this, people saying how they are physically unable to complete the jumping puzzle because of disabilities. I can empathize with you, but realistically there isn’t really anything that can be done. You just have to live with the fact that, just like in real life, there are some things you are going to be unable to do because of your handicap.

If you really, really just need that shoulder skin, you could always get a friend, family member, or coworker to do it for you. Hey, I even bet that edgy teen from down the block wouldn’t mind getting a few bucks to play a video game.

As for the accidental dodges, I suspect you have the double-tap forward to dodge option on. So you should turn that off while doing things like this, or even take it off entirely. And I definitely agree with you about the mouse cursor , it can get lost really easily if there is a fair bit of visual noise going on.

Ironwill.5389:

Dear Professor Butterlegs,

You have 55 seconds (56 ticks @ -288 health/tick) to complete the first leg of the journey or you’re dead

Looking at last years jumping puzzle videos from Dulfy’s site, how many jumps and how long she took to complete them:

Puzzle Path | | #of Jumps : #Time to complete

Gingerbread| | 51 (path seems easier, less repositioning): 51 seconds
Quaggan __ | | 53 (two new riskier jumps to save 2 hops): 58 seconds
Snowman | | 51 (more straight, but more positioning): 55 seconds

This assumes Dulfy’s skill is average between all paths (I think they’re spread across multiple years.. so it might not be true.. but it basically breaks down to about a jump a second..)

If she performed exactly the same this year, she would fail 2 of the 3 paths. (!)

All paths are not equal..
probably the best chance of getting the puzzle is to go gingerbread.

Judging from the amount of people running the paths last night I think a lot of people have come to the same conclusion, while I’ve been stubbornly running on quaggan.. I run it relatively alone with a sea of red all over the gingerbread path…

I’ve love to see any videos of you completing each path this year!
Any chance you put your skills on-line for all to admire ….

I’ll give the action camera a shot, but I find the mouse rotation makes or breaks some of the jumps..

I usually find myself with about 10 ticks left when I get to the checkpoint platform.

As for Dulfy, I’ve used her videos a couple times when I get stuck on a jp. To be completely honest though, I wouldn’t say she is an excellent jumper. But thankfully you don’t need to be for most(if not all) jump puzzles.

I do have windows 10 and the xbox game dvr that comes with it, but I haven’t tried recording gw2. It can make some games really framey while its running. I guess I could try if people really wanted me to, but I’m sure there are plenty already out there (including the Dulfy one which you cited)

Thanks for this! This guide and some helpful tips from a friend helped me finally beat this JP not once but all three times I needed. I am horrible at JPs that are timed so this really helped a bunch! Merry Wintersday to you!

Baconomics.8674:

I usually find myself with about 10 ticks left when I get to the checkpoint platform.

As for Dulfy, I’ve used her videos a couple times when I get stuck on a jp. To be completely honest though, I wouldn’t say she is an excellent jumper. But thankfully you don’t need to be for most(if not all) jump puzzles.

I do have windows 10 and the xbox game dvr that comes with it, but I haven’t tried recording gw2. It can make some games really framey while its running. I guess I could try if people really wanted me to, but I’m sure there are plenty already out there (including the Dulfy one which you cited)

I’m going to assume that’s the snowman path…( can you confirm that you’re just running the snowman path)

I did the gingerbread path and cleared the first stage on the third attempt at the puzzle (the present jumping part was proving to be a bit of a frustration.. I actually caught my run speed dropping when I jumped so wasn’t up to full run speed when I made the max range jump.. wondering if a tick of frostbite put me into combat briefly which dropped the jump speed down… might explain why some people fail while others succeed )

I actually had lag rubberband me under a snowball at the last leg of puzzle.. (from the last candy cane before the puzzle exit to bounce back under a snowball .. so much troll)

given the easy success on the gingerbread path versus the failure of the quaggan path I can say that quaggan is definitely a slower path.

I generally could get to the checkpoint using the gingerbread path with 1k -2K health left, the gingerbread path has a series of straight paths whereas the quaggan path is a mouse turn left/right for every jump.

I’ll try snowman tonight, but if you are truly getting there with 2.8k health left that implies that you’re taking 1.1 seconds/jump on average…or 45 seconds on the puzzle (I have to say I think that’s an exaggeration… if you are please share what race/size you’re running with… I’ve often suspected that there’s a difference in jump speeds between character size/models and I’m running a max size Norn)

Action camera is a no go (apparently without heart of thorns you don’t get action camera).

Baconomics.8674:

I’ve seen a couple posts like this, people saying how they are physically unable to complete the jumping puzzle because of disabilities. I can empathize with you, but realistically there isn’t really anything that can be done. You just have to live with the fact that, just like in real life, there are some things you are going to be unable to do because of your handicap.

If you really, really just need that shoulder skin, you could always get a friend, family member, or coworker to do it for you. Hey, I even bet that edgy teen from down the block wouldn’t mind getting a few bucks to play a video game.

As for the accidental dodges, I suspect you have the double-tap forward to dodge option on. So you should turn that off while doing things like this, or even take it off entirely. And I definitely agree with you about the mouse cursor , it can get lost really easily if there is a fair bit of visual noise going on.

Actually I have a wife that is not into computers, at all, and nobody i repeat NOBODY touches my computer anymore. I used to let others check their e-mail and do a bit of browsing while I was out, but after having to re-install my OS about 5 times I learned my lesson. Most of my family gratefully live nowhere near me, they may all be dead now too for all I know as we were never close (I worked for a living, they did not) .

The “grungy kid” down the block can’t even manage to stay on his skateboard most days but just loves to rattle the rotten thing over my sidewalk at 3 in the morning!

And actually I have learned to live with it, every jumping puzzle that is not on a timer I have paid mesmers to port me to. The timed ones I don’t even bother with, and if that means never getting a skin then so be it. Although I find it sad that I will never get that skin, I have about 5 full collections of BL skins to choose from when needed.

Maybe someday ANet will release a few more awesome looking skins similar to the mad memories back piece, till then I just buy skins I like. Thanks for the reply though.

Can the OP post this in Super Marios 8 forums?

This used to be a MMO, now it’s just another platform game with basic mechanic of ‘jump’ with timers.

Too bad I dislike both timers and jump puzzles- lucky for me lots of other games have neither of these and are a darn sight more enjoyable.

Being an older player with worn out arthritic hands jumping puzzles are very difficult or just impossible which means some parts of the game are a non starter for me, I also do not like that sort of game play and was unaware that GW2 included such things, I find it boring and just a waste of time, so I just give up and go and do something else, much more of this content and I probably will not even bother to log in, life is to short.

Ironwill.5389:

I’m going to assume that’s the snowman path…( can you confirm that you’re just running the snowman path)

I did the gingerbread path and cleared the first stage on the third attempt at the puzzle (the present jumping part was proving to be a bit of a frustration.. I actually caught my run speed dropping when I jumped so wasn’t up to full run speed when I made the max range jump.. wondering if a tick of frostbite put me into combat briefly which dropped the jump speed down… might explain why some people fail while others succeed )

I actually had lag rubberband me under a snowball at the last leg of puzzle.. (from the last candy cane before the puzzle exit to bounce back under a snowball .. so much troll)

given the easy success on the gingerbread path versus the failure of the quaggan path I can say that quaggan is definitely a slower path.
I generally could get to the checkpoint using the gingerbread path with 1k -2K health left, the gingerbread path has a series of straight paths whereas the quaggan path is a mouse turn left/right for every jump.

I’ll try snowman tonight, but if you are truly getting there with 2.8k health left that implies that you’re taking 1.1 seconds/jump on average…or 45 seconds on the puzzle (I have to say I think that’s an exaggeration… if you are please share what race/size you’re running with… I’ve often suspected that there’s a difference in jump speeds between character size/models and I’m running a max size Norn)

Action camera is a no go (apparently without heart of thorns you don’t get action camera).

I’ve pretty much exclusively been running snowman. I did a couple runs on each of the other two paths early on but I just felt like they were slower. I’ll try to do a few runs on the other paths and let you know concretely how I feel they compare.

If I get a run where I am not waiting for snowflakes to spawn very much I will end at about 10 ticks left. If I am waiting for all the snowflakes at the end then it is closer to 6 ticks, but in all my runs I’ve never died from ticks when I had to wait, so I feel that scenario is kind of a non-issue.

I’ve been using a max sized norn thief. What you’re probably feeling is the hitbox vs. character size. Tiny asurans have a much larger hitbox than you can see so it makes them look like they jump further. I kinda like jumping with a norn because I don’t have to guess where my hitbox is (I think it’s only slightly smaller than max size), but with larger characters the camera angles in confined jump spaces can be a pain.

Action camera is default unbound, you need to go to control options and then scroll down close to the bottom; it’s in the camera section. I was f2p up until a few weeks ago and I was able to use action camera.

Baconomics.8674:

I’ve pretty much exclusively been running snowman. I did a couple runs on each of the other two paths early on but I just felt like they were slower. I’ll try to do a few runs on the other paths and let you know concretely how I feel they compare.

Here are my personal findings on each route:

Quaggan
No wait: 10 ticks left
Average wait: 6-7 ticks left
(Average wait being the second set of candy cane poles and sometimes a snowflake or two before or after the candy canes)
Maximum wait: Did not encounter

Snowman
No wait: 14 ticks left
Average wait: 10 ticks left
Maximum wait: 6-7 ticks left

Gingerbread
No wait: 14 ticks left
Average wait: 9-10 ticks left
Maximum wait: 6-7 ticks left

So from the above data it would seem like Quaggan is at a disadvantage. But, mechanically speaking, I’d say it is the easiest to complete.

Gingerbread has a few longer jumps and a few jumps which are more vertically challenging.

Snowmen on the other hand, has 2 jumps to very small snowflakes (one of which is very a short jump, which are much more difficult imo), and because the candy cane poles on this route are very short you can’t do the angling jump technique that works on the other paths. On paper this means that you would have to make two very short(difficult) jumps to short landing zones. But since you can jump over the first candy cane straight to the second it makes the jump distance very comfortable.

So really it seems to all come down to style of jumping that is easiest for you.

OP edited:

• Small edits to sections II, III, and IV
• Section VI changed to section VII
• Section VII changed to section VIII
• Added new section VI

This is a really important section that I forgot to add initially and kinda put off for a while once I remembered. My apologies, hope it helps.

Funnily enough, I noticed that if I kind of zoned out (I don,t know how to properly explain) and fixed an empty point without truly looking, only focusing on my character with my peripheral visions (or something like that) it made it easier… Why? no idea, how? no idea either… but that’s my trick and it worked for halloween, wintersday, and many others.

Unfortunately, it’s a non-starter, for me, as with my fps/lag, I already struggle with normal jumping puzzles/getting to vistas.

I, literally, can’t tell where I’m going to end up, most of the time, lol.

So, I’m not even going to put myself through it.

But, thank you anyway, professor.

Baconomics.8674:

1. First of all, you’ll never achieve something if you give up. If I hadn’t gone back to it, I would have been in the “grumble grumble stupid impossible jump puzzle, wtf anet grumble grumble” mindset. This won’t get you very many places in life.

While this is true, if people are actually concerned about getting places “in life”, it would probably be best if they spent less time playing time-consuming parts of games; not more.

Then they could take that time they saved and do something with it, IRL.

This is a very nice and helpful post.

Thanks to Baconomics for the OP, which is very helpful to me — this is my fourth year trying and I still haven’t succeeded and this post encouraged me to try again. (I’m finally getting consistently past the first set of quaggan candy toothpicks, which is twice as far as my previous ‘best’.)

Thanks also to Ironwill’s data on Dulfy’s videos; it’s interesting to see how long it takes her compared to how fast the frostbite ticks.

PS to anyone from ANet staff: despite never getting close to the end, I’m glad challenges like this are in the game and that such challenges gate a small number of rewards. I like seeing the occasional recognition of skill, in addition to the game rewarding persistence, luck, and having friends who can help.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I like seeing the occasional recognition of skill

In my case, I’m pretty sure it would be a “recognition” of me forking out $3K for a top of the range laptop and/or switching to an EU server.

Pretty sure it’s not just lack of skill stopping people (who are trying – I’m not, personally) doing this and that is the problem.

In a regular, offline, platform game (from which this stuff, clearly, takes its inspiration) neither of those things would be an issue.

So, it really would just be a recognition of skill and/or perseverance.

One thing that is not mentioned enough is that you should zoom out to max (or close to max).

This has the visual effect of slowing everything down and thus making it easier with less hectic visual noise to deal with.

I notice that it will automatically zoom in a bit sometimes when entering the puzzle and occasionally when being ported back to the start.