Guild Wars 2

I searched the forums and used Google as best as I could but could not find any relevant information on this.

Situation: I have over a dozen level 80 characters. I make guild banners to buff them for harvesting to fulfill the need to harvest thousands and thousands of a particular resource for “xxxx” (fill in need here to level the guild hall).

Problem: No matter where I tried to place my guild buff banner, the banner is NOT available for all of my characters to receive the buff. IE., it doesn’t last long enough for me to swap characters and get the buff on all of them. I stack the guild harvesting (20%) with the guild Speed and Gathering banner (15%) to maximize my return while I cycle all these harvesters when I’m harvesting.

Problem2: This is basically forcing me to run without the banner buffs, or use alot of these costly banners (4x banner use to buff all my account characters to make one flax / elder wood run). Basically.. the game is eating my banners or giving the benefit to others while I do without.

I realize I could “group” with someone else and have them hold the map (or instance, since it seems they are all instanced now) open. However, this requires someone to stay around in that area for the roughly 15 minutes or so it requires me to swap all these characters in and out JUST to get a buff from a banner I took the effort to make. This doesn’t seem reasonable to me, but I could be mistaken.

I have tried leaving it in major cities, the guild hall, regular maps, etc.. but; again, getting in “that” instance is luck of the draw and the maps seem to cycle VERY quickly nowadays. (Possibly to address memory leaks?). I’d greatly appreciate any feedback or tips on how to accomplish this or even just confirmation that it can’t be done solo.

Thank you for any advice or response.

Eagle

You can donate 1g to me and I’ll gladly stand in a spot for 15mins.

Banners last for about 30 minutes or so. Never really timed them. Chances are you just ended up on a different map instance.

Banners remain for an hour, so you should cycle the toons first and harvest afterward — from your description, it sounds as if you grab buff, harvest, swap toons, repeat (I apologize if I misunderstood).

The “best” map to choose is your home borderland — except right after reset (and occasionally from Friday night to ~Sun night during prime time, depending on your world). Those maps are persistent, regardless of party membership and usually have decent loading times.

PS Your GH should work just fine except during g-mish — unless > 5-10 people are entering/leaving in a short period, it should persist, too. Still borderlands worked before guild halls existed and continue to work for this. Per Khisanth, this isn’t reliable. (I apologize: I must have missed a yellow dot during my testing — thought I was the only one entering/leaving GH.)

One possibility. Get a free to play account and then either use the way to have 2 accounts open at once (you’ll have to google it. I’ve forgotten what it’s called) or have the game set up on two computers. Set up the banner. Party up with the f2p account and have that char stand by the banner. Then log in on your main account and taxi over as needed.

I can use another account (I even already have a second “paid” account I could use, but would need another computer) and I can have someone else do it.

I do not get the buff and harvest. I am simply trying to get the buff on all my characters BEFORE I harvest. I can not do that, regardless of what I try.

That is the reason I am posting here. I do not think that is actually fair. I made the banner, I should be able to use it for all of my characters. But, at least so far, can not.

Thanks for the replies so far.

EE

Eagleeyes Mystified.7253:

I can use another account (I even already have a second “paid” account I could use, but would need another computer) and I can have someone else do it.

I do not get the buff and harvest. I am simply trying to get the buff on all my characters BEFORE I harvest. I can not do that, regardless of what I try.

That is the reason I am posting here. I do not think that is actually fair. I made the banner, I should be able to use it for all of my characters. But, at least so far, can not.

Thanks for the replies so far.

EE

It is fair. The problem is you arent making it back on the map. Frankly that’s not a problem for anet. That would involve screwing around with their instancing software. You have 3 alternatives in place to be used: use a dead map, such as lornar’s pass, have someone loiter as an anchor, use a second account.

Mind you, you DONT need a second computer to run a second account. Just some technical know-how and a program that lets you muck about in process threads.

Eagleeyes Mystified.7253:

I can use another account (I even already have a second “paid” account I could use, but would need another computer) and I can have someone else do it.

I do not get the buff and harvest. I am simply trying to get the buff on all my characters BEFORE I harvest. I can not do that, regardless of what I try.

That is the reason I am posting here. I do not think that is actually fair. I made the banner, I should be able to use it for all of my characters. But, at least so far, can not.

Thanks for the replies so far.

EE

There’s a way to open up more than one client on a single computer.

This thread is 10 months old but maybe you can use it. If not it might give you ideas on what to search for. Multi Client.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Banners remain for an hour, so you should cycle the toons first and harvest afterward — from your description, it sounds as if you grab buff, harvest, swap toons, repeat (I apologize if I misunderstood).

The “best” map to choose is your home borderland — except right after reset (and occasionally from Friday night to ~Sun night during prime time, depending on your world). Those maps are persistent, regardless of party membership and usually have decent loading times.

PS Your GH should work just fine except during g-mish — unless > 5-10 people are entering/leaving in a short period, it should persist, too. Still borderlands worked before guild halls existed and continue to work for this.

GH doesn’t seem to persist. Tried dropping a banner when we first got the GH. After leaving and re-entering it was gone.

Bruno.3812:

There’s a way to open up more than one client on a single computer.

This thread is 10 months old but maybe you can use it. If not it might give you ideas on what to search for. Multi Client.

None of those ideas I would advocate. The safest way is to have enough room on your drive for a second installation copy (or a second install on a dif drive like I do).

Steps:

• Make 2 install locations (I have one on my c: drive, the atypical spot, and one on my SSD) with separate shortcuts on your desktop
• Create a second user account for your computer, doesnt need to be anything more than basic account, but NEEDS a password
• Search for, and download the “process explorer” program (technet is where I found it), put it on your desktop or somewhere easy to find
• Open/run first GW2 client
• Run process explorer AS ADMINISTRATOR (wont work otherwise)
• At this point I am not liable or responsible for anyone kittening up their computer if they decide to go exploring rather than read the rest of the instructions word for word beyond this point.
• On the menubar, go to find->handle or dll substring (or ctrl+f)
• type in “guild” without quotes and search
• look for the entry line that says AN-Mutex-Window-Guild Wars 2 select it and close search window
• the Mutex thread should now be selected in the bottom part of the procexp window, right-click and select “close handle,” hit ok on the warning
• CLOSE PROCESS EXPLORER before you decide to explore, it wont end well
• shift-right-click the shortcut to your other gw2 installation and choose “run as another use”
• “log in” with the second user account you create in step 2
• repeat the last 8 steps for as many accounts as you want to run (each needs a separate computer user account as well)
• done

I strongly recommend setting both accounts to max performance before attempting anything. Increase settings after you see what an impact it can have to run both.

Post your banner in a WvW borderland. Make sure it has no queue. There is only ever one instance of these.

Khisanth.2948:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Banners remain for an hour, so you should cycle the toons first and harvest afterward — from your description, it sounds as if you grab buff, harvest, swap toons, repeat (I apologize if I misunderstood).

The “best” map to choose is your home borderland — except right after reset (and occasionally from Friday night to ~Sun night during prime time, depending on your world). Those maps are persistent, regardless of party membership and usually have decent loading times.

PS Your GH should work just fine except during g-mish — unless > 5-10 people are entering/leaving in a short period, it should persist, too. Still borderlands worked before guild halls existed and continue to work for this.

GH doesn’t seem to persist. Tried dropping a banner when we first got the GH. After leaving and re-entering it was gone.

Hmmn. Must have been someone skulking around the GH basement when I was experimenting (allowing the instance to persist). Ergo, at best: unreliable. I’ll cross it off the post above.

Thanks for checking it out.

Repeating the consensus:

• Pop your banner in a WvW Borderland (without a queue) (and careful of reset night)

Have you tried putting the banner up in your home instance?

Yea, world vs world is a good place to put it because it never goes out except for the weekly reset or I assume if the server crashes or something/needs to be updated. But the later can be said of any other map, so it’s the safest, and also a lot of people will appreciate the banner too.