Guild Wars 2

Is there a trick to entering this place because it honestly seems like surviving the entrance is random and it infuriates me.

Make sure you’re using your half damage from falls. It makes it a lot easier. It’s a specialization that all professions have access to.

There’s a rock jutting out on the right side of the slide-in that you can aim for to stop your drop. You’ll take damage, and depending on your level and gear you may survive it.

If you make it to that point, you can heal up and hop back into the slide, through the maw, and down into a pond. Aim for the center. Good luck.

Theres rocks on the left too. I usually slide down that way now…altho i have had success with a suicidal jump down the centre and ending up in the water.

This is the reality of sharkmaw sometimes
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P7vte1epVpE

I took the fall damage trait, and carefully dropped myself to the first rock on the left. Then you can proceed from there.

I used to think that Sharkmaw was simply a matter of aiming for the waterfalls while you slide down, but either I was wrong, or this got bugged at some point. Now doing that is a guaranteed suicide.

It use to be a easy drop, now it is a two or three stage drop. More interesting is all.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

Is there a trick to entering this place because it honestly seems like surviving the entrance is random and it infuriates me.

No trick; just basic GW2 jumping principles and common sense. It’s always been a challenge, and I’m hearing it’s been made even harder in the patch. But I’ve done it twice since then, first time both times. I went in yesterday on a level 40+ Ranger. As others have said:

1) Spec your damage reduction trait (if you’ve bought it; yesterday I hadn’t, and couldn’t).

2) You can try to do it in one shot, which may be possible but will be hard, or you can try to do it in stages (which is what I did). Look for rocks and ledges below you that you can use as stopping points, and hope you’ll still be alive after you’ve hit them. I aimed at rocks on the right, and survived (just); then I went for some to the left, and missed – but survived anyway.

3) Steer/move when you jump. The game physics are not those of the real world. Look down when you jump, and to try to move to miss obstacles you look likely to hit. And remember that you can strafe (Q/E).

4) Other than that, use the community. Pick a peak time when other people are also likely to be in there. Then hope that some kind soul will rezz you if you should be unlucky enough as to die.

5) Keep trying. It’s eminently doable.

About 4: If you die you loose the rifle, so no Karka-hunting for you. But you could always find a nice Mesmer who does the slide for you. ^^

Sparr.2501:

There’s a rock jutting out on the right side of the slide-in that you can aim for to stop your drop. You’ll take damage, and depending on your level and gear you may survive it.

If you make it to that point, you can heal up and hop back into the slide, through the maw, and down into a pond. Aim for the center. Good luck.

No amount of gear or levels will reduce falling damage.

Anet changed this, because the entrance was once just a drop from the top. Now it will probably kill new people and they will be annoyed as hell with it. Way to go i guess.

You can still slide down the center and live. It’s just a bit trickier. You don’t need fall damage traits.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

About 4: If you die you loose the rifle, so no Karka-hunting for you. But you could always find a nice Mesmer who does the slide for you. ^^

Indeed. Good point. I wasn’t thinking in context of the achievement, just the JP.

You also lose the gun if you change maps (so if, say, you accept a prompt to leave a low-population copy of LA, as I did).

And also (weird one!) you can lose it if you’re transformed and go swimming.
(Monday evening, a friend of mine somehow got stuck with the April 1st “airplane arms” transformation. He lost his gun half a dozen times before we figured out what was happening and got him to swap to another character. We never did work out for sure how he’d become transformed in the first place – he thought he’d clicked on a fun box, but wasn’t certain – or, having been transformed, how to get him out of it, either. For all I know, that character is still stuck with its arms out. He could keep the gun on land; but we could swim with it, and he couldn’t.)

Just by the way, a while before LA was destroyed Sharkmaw used to be this difficult to enter

however, sometime before LA was attacked, they fixed this problem. I guess it’s back again.

So it may be a bug?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

So it may be a bug?

I’ve no idea. Sometimes I don’t trust my memory so I might be wrong.

But this is how I think Sharkmaw was originally constructed and eventually fixed. Maybe they wanted to make it difficult to enter again? It’s hard to say if it’s a bug or not.

The least they could do would be to teleport you back to the top of the puzzle when you die.
It used to do this.

Now they expect us to re-arrange our traits just to do a jumping puzzle? What next? Require an entirely different armor set?

Honestly this beginning part is easy if you simply stand at the top of the waterfall, and center yourself on the waterfall, and just jump out into it. No traits needed, just a simple centered jump into the slide and you’ll be fine. Hope it helps.

Some how that doesn’t always work Megastorm. I always thought that’s how its done, but nowadays that gets me killed.

Not a bug, you just need to use the little rock ledges now instead of just sliding down (which always seemed to succeed randomly for me).

Neural.1824:

The least they could do would be to teleport you back to the top of the puzzle when you die.
It used to do this.

Now they expect us to re-arrange our traits just to do a jumping puzzle? What next? Require an entirely different armor set?

You don’t need to rearrange your traits. As I said in my post above, I managed it yesterday, on a level 40 without the reduction trait, at the first attempt (and despite missing one of my jumps and falling quite a bit further than I’d meant it to). It just helps give you a little more leeway in case you get things a little more wrong than perhaps you’d wish.

I have to say – the puzzle feels much the same to me as the first time I did it. But then, until this last week, I hadn’t done it for quite a while.

It was bugged like this once before and they fixed it. Now the bug is back and the slide is much more deadly. You’ll even die sometimes without hitting anything at all.

Half damage from falling enter on left side. Two rocks will help your fall one about a third of the way, the other two-thirds down. From there its splash city.

aspirine.6852:

Anet changed this, because the entrance was once just a drop from the top. Now it will probably kill new people and they will be annoyed as hell with it. Way to go i guess.

Actually this is the original version of the entrance. It keeps returning every time Anet does any bigger changes to LA, and then gets patched to an easier version. This time it will get patched as well, i’m sure, just give it some time.

Neural.1824:

The least they could do would be to teleport you back to the top of the puzzle when you die.
It used to do this.

Now they expect us to re-arrange our traits just to do a jumping puzzle? What next? Require an entirely different armor set?

No, just one trait if you’re having trouble with the slide. Rearrange, maybe, if you’re not using the same trait line. But I don’t think clicking a few buttons to get through something is that vile. It makes it more interesting IMO to have to decide how you want to proceed through something.

Gosh, sometimes I even have to switch utilities for certain content. What an abomination!

I swear this was not as difficult to get into before the patch. I’ve jumped down there at least 5-6 times pre-patch for different alts doing LA map completion and I had not died a single time. I was doing the Karka hunting on my Guardian soon after the patch and died 6 times in a row just trying to clear the bloody entrance.

It was the first time I ever rage-quit. Not my proudest moment, but holy crap! They did something that affected this and I am not pleased. Even after jumping onto that rock on the side, I still got whacked for 95% of my health on the way down. I did eventually finish the Karka hunting, so there’s that, but easily 30 minutes wasted just running to the maw…

That seems just ridiculous.

I got my mesmer parked down there, if you seem me online and I am not busy I would be happy to drop a portal for anyone.

Instead of sliding your way down you can just jump to the bottom, after 3 failures by sliding I got it in the 1st try by jumping.

You can use the tiny rock about 2/3 of the way down (left side) but that not always seems to stop you. You need to hit it spot on.

Another way that works (and tried it 2 days ago) was to go bit to left , above that rock, but instead of sliding towards it, pop swifness and jump as far in front as u can. You will fall in water w/o taking damage. Works every time.

PS: rezzers wont help if you do karka achiev as upon death you loose weapon

MorganLeFay.5816:

Another way that works (and tried it 2 days ago) was to go bit to left , above that rock, but instead of sliding towards it, pop swifness and jump as far in front as u can. You will fall in water w/o taking damage. Works every time.

Yes, that is the spot.
I didn’t need to use swiftness, but yeah, works every time.

By the way…what a dump JP.

Once upon a time that drop was designed so you would take 0 fall damage if you landed on the “correct” ledges halfway down. The fall damage there got broken/fixed sometime around the destruction of LA or the first feature pack, so you needed the trait to use that method. Now they seem to have messed with the ledges again. It’s best to just aim to jump right down in one fall now.

rhapsody.3615:

No, just one trait if you’re having trouble with the slide. Rearrange, maybe, if you’re not using the same trait line. But I don’t think clicking a few buttons to get through something is that vile. It makes it more interesting IMO to have to decide how you want to proceed through something.

Kind of reminds me of another game. “Guild Wars”, I think it was called. Although that was way worse in that regard. Sometimes you’d end up running around for a couple of hours just trying to pick up exactly the right Elite skill to get you through a tricky section. Which was fine – just different.

(Then you’d try to use it to advance your story, fail dismally three times in a row, and hit the browser to find out what else you could try. Rinse, repeat. Eventually you’d succeed. And, oh, the sense of achievement.)

Keep in mind that this JP entrance has “changed” multiple times whenever a major LA revamp has happened. It appears to be some issue with some mechanism in the map changes (even tho this area does not visibly change) turning on and off (or drastically changing) the drop damage taken in the area.

Prior to the NEW LA, you could drop and hit just about anything (other than not hitting the water at the bottom) and take minimal or NO damage at all.

When the “Broken LA” first opened again after LS1 ended, this issue also existed and it was complained about and eventually one of the game updates stealth fixed it back to the no/low damage version.

Note that I seem to recall that it always coincides with the hill going up to the blind hole (right after the jump over the boxes and before the circular rock jumping around to the slide start / Vista) appearing to be more difficult to go up. There seems to be some invisible steps or rough ground that you can’t just run straight up but have to jump around a bit to advance. I recall running into that when the NEW LA recently opened and thinking, “Hmmm…..the last time I had problems here the slide down to the Chompy’s pool killed me….”. Sure enough the higher damage going down that slide is back.

Other than a blurb about using the rocks on the side as a possible solution when it was killing everyone, I don’t recall the Devs ever stating one way or another which version was “right”, but since they changed it back with a stealth fix, I always felt it was suppose to NOT be overly dangerous (the low/no damage version).

It will be interesting to see if they stealth fix it again or a Dev bothers to comment on this.

oh heres the REAL way to get down, i’m not sure how well i can explain this but i’ll try

to the left side of the drop, the first rock is to the left, do not go on the rock, slide on the right side ( nearly clipping the rock ) and hold down A as SOON as you pass that rock, after you pass the MIDDLE of the drop, hold down D ( it has to be EXACTLY right after you pass em, nearly right when your on em ) if you do it right, you will survive, if you die, keep trying, i promise this is the way, i did it many times

Here’s what I do every time, even when the entrance is evil and makes you take damage:

Equip the fall damage trait (or a set of armor with the snowfall runes, if you have that). Start on the far right side, hugging the wall, and then slide down. You’ll hit the big stalagmite about halfway down, and hitting (with the trait on) will leave you with about 10% of your health. Stay still and let yourself fully heal before jumping off of the stalagmite, to the left side, and then direct yourself so you land in the water.

BTW, the Dev (in the previous thread on this issue) described the solution as standing on the 2nd jagged rock “tooth” from the left and sliding straight down to the rock halfway down (you will take some pretty good damage). Hold there until you heal up and then slide toward the center (away from the rocks further down on the left) and into the pool. That’s how I finally got down recently.

MiniEquine.6014:

I swear this was not as difficult to get into before the patch. I’ve jumped down there at least 5-6 times pre-patch for different alts doing LA map completion and I had not died a single time. I was doing the Karka hunting on my Guardian soon after the patch and died 6 times in a row just trying to clear the bloody entrance.

It was the first time I ever rage-quit. Not my proudest moment, but holy crap! They did something that affected this and I am not pleased. Even after jumping onto that rock on the side, I still got whacked for 95% of my health on the way down. I did eventually finish the Karka hunting, so there’s that, but easily 30 minutes wasted just running to the maw…

That seems just ridiculous.

……6 times made you rage quit?

There are far worse jumping puzzles in terms of clearing the start (Skipping Stones for example).

Do people honestly feel like they should be able to get through jumping puzzles on their first try or heck even single digit tries? I’ve done JPs that have taken me dozens upon dozens of attempts, and I don’t find that ridiculous in the slightest.

Just drop to the first rock then jump down into the water. I died once to the slide and I’ve been jumping since, aim for the middle of the pool. I’ve had to do it multiple times because of princess, lost the stupid gun 3 times in there, 2 accidental death shrouds, and 1 dc.

Draknar.5748:

……6 times made you rage quit?

There are far worse jumping puzzles in terms of clearing the start (Skipping Stones for example).

Do people honestly feel like they should be able to get through jumping puzzles on their first try or heck even single digit tries? I’ve done JPs that have taken me dozens upon dozens of attempts, and I don’t find that ridiculous in the slightest.

The difference here is three-fold:

1. You used to be able to enter by simply sliding in. So long as you entered from the right spot, you slid through without incident. Now regardless of where you start, there appears to be some sort of speedbump right near the end of the slide that means instant-death.

2. Failure at other JPs is rarely fatal and rarer still requires you to do a significant run to get back to your entry point. Usually a missed jump allows you to restart at some point in the middle.

3. You also now have to go back and get that kitten rifle, which can happen even if you survive the fall. Taking a dip will remove it.

I’m surprised. I know I made it in on the first day of the karka hunt by my old trick of jumping far forward between the two waterfalls aiming for the left side of the gap between them. Though I did hit one rock on the way down, my fall damage trait saved me (I always have that on for most of my alts). I figured I’d just mis-steered, not that they’d added a rock.

I didn’t have to retrieve my rifle after swimming, either. I was on my Thief; I’ve heard that Engineers have been a bit bugged there, and I have heartfelt sympathy for anyone that only has an Engineer and is thus barred from Princess.

Is the waypoint in range of a mesmer portal? I ask a bit academically as I’m getting set for extended travel so I can’t promise to be super helpful to people for a while, but once I’m back if people still need aid I can certainly park a mesmer down there to provide portals. If the WP is too far I bet I could place a portal at the top, jump down, and place the exit, assuming I don’t splat myself in some embarrassing fashion.

Sariel V.7024:

Draknar.5748:

……6 times made you rage quit?

There are far worse jumping puzzles in terms of clearing the start (Skipping Stones for example).

Do people honestly feel like they should be able to get through jumping puzzles on their first try or heck even single digit tries? I’ve done JPs that have taken me dozens upon dozens of attempts, and I don’t find that ridiculous in the slightest.

The difference here is three-fold:

1. You used to be able to enter by simply sliding in. So long as you entered from the right spot, you slid through without incident. Now regardless of where you start, there appears to be some sort of speedbump right near the end of the slide that means instant-death.

2. Failure at other JPs is rarely fatal and rarer still requires you to do a significant run to get back to your entry point. Usually a missed jump allows you to restart at some point in the middle.

3. You also now have to go back and get that kitten rifle, which can happen even if you survive the fall. Taking a dip will remove it.

^ This exactly. This is more than just failing a JP a couple of times. It’s failing the entrance to a JP multiple times that I never had any trouble with, and having to grab that rifle every time I died, and running up that hill every time. I normally very much enjoy jumping puzzles, even if I die a good bit. Finding the way to the end is fun and exciting. Not even being able to do the jumping puzzle is something else entirely.

It wouldn’t have been so frustrating if the waypoint were closer and I didn’t have to grab the rifle, but all those factors combined did not help my sanity.

every class has a trait for fall damage reduction. Maybe I am not seeing it, but is it similiar name, or at least what it called on the engi. I don’t think i seen this on my engi or thief, but then again, i been known to miss things right in front of me.

I look down before I jump so I can steer on the way down the middle. This was after I died several times attempting to slide down along the edges.

I don’t know what you people are talking about. I just line myself up on the second tooth from left and jump straight into the mouth. It’s a clear line to water, no damage.

Neural.1824:

The least they could do would be to teleport you back to the top of the puzzle when you die.
It used to do this.

Now they expect us to re-arrange our traits just to do a jumping puzzle? What next? Require an entirely different armor set?

That one never teleported you back to the top. The final choice between 3 did teleport you back to that choice if you chose the wrong one.

I feel pretty certain the patch broke the fix they did ages ago to reduce the likelyhood of dying getting into it. The biggest thing you can do is trait into the reduced damage from falls until it gets fixed again.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I don’t know what you people are talking about. I just line myself up on the second tooth from left and jump straight into the mouth. It’s a clear line to water, no damage.

I tried that. Succeeded the first time; did “exactly the same” a second time and died.

The problem is that there are rocks on the way down that you CAN hit that will kill you if you should, and the difference between hitting or missing is a matter of a mere few degrees at most.

So – if you’ve managed to perfect the technique, great. But what’s needed, when you’re doing this for the karka achievement is a reliable, safe route down that can be accurately described to someone else in text, and that they’ll be able to repeat successfully first time. And “straight into the mouth”, unfortunately, isn’t quite specific enough. (Nor, to be truthful, am I entirely sure which – in this post or the other describing the dev’s solution – is supposed to be the “second tooth from left”. At far left there’s one “tooth” directly above another. Is the upper one the “second” one in question? Or the one to its right immediate? Because, depending on how I choose to look at things, the description fits both.)

Doghouse.1562:

But what’s needed, when you’re doing this for the karka achievement is a reliable, safe route down that can be accurately described to someone else over chat or voice. And “straight into the mouth”, unfortunately, isn’t quite specific enough.

Currently i am using the falling reduction trait and the middle spike. There’s a clear way to it, so you won’t hit anything else, and it is both far enough that you can jump from it to the water with no further accidents, and yet close enough that landing on it won’t kill you.

Still, i’d rather see the jp returned to its previous configuration.

I’m already happy that other ppl make video’s on how they do the JP’s, because otherwise i wouldn’t even bother with those. Some are nearly impossible to find (behind some hidden underwater entrance you only see when it’s right in your face,literally) , some are very confusing to do (several pathways) and some are very frustrating cause they’re bugged (waiting for fixes).

Some JP’s are well designed and a lot of fun to do, but having you die constantly at an entrance like this one puts more ppl into a fit of frustration then anything else.

Take a look at the latest LA jp. Players asking for money to help you teleport to each chest….really…. I started that particular one and gave up on it as soon as i was trying to jump from cable to cable on rooftops, once that crap starts count me out.

JP’s should be challenging and FUN to do, but i won’t spend more then an hour trying to figure out where the JP is, let alone trying countless times figuring out the right way and angle to jump (and dying just as many)

So a BIG thanks to those that went before and made the video walkthroughs. Saves me a heap of time and frustration.

A route down that, so far at least, hasn’t ever killed me, with the fall reduction trait specced at least, is as follows. (And I’m trying to be as unambiguous as possible – but I know from experience that that’s always a lot harder to do than you think…):

- Spec for reduced damage
- Between two of the upper “teeth” on the right-hand side is a gap, with another “tooth” sticking out between but somewhat below the other two. That lower tooth is where I start from (depending on how you count, it’s either the third or fourth “tooth” from right). Edge forward onto it from above.
- Using the right mouse button, look a bit downwards, and line your direction up so that the edge of the rock wall immediately below you is running straight across the screen. As a reference point, there’s a stalactite hanging from the ceiling on the right, further down. The bottom of that should be directly in line with your head.
- Using the W key, edge slowly forwards. You should initially drop a few inches onto the rock face. Check that the reference stalactite is still in line with your head, then tap the W key and await developments. You should start falling, bounce a few times, and end up at a stalagmite part way down.
- Depending upon precisely where you were standing, how you were facing, and what you hit on the way down, you may have quite a bit of health left or just a sliver – but you should still be alive. Heal fully up before progressing.
- Using the right mouse button, change your view until you’re looking across the rock face to the left. Use the W key to move forward and start falling again. (Depending on precisely where you ended up after the first drop, you may need to just tap the space bar as well, to turn the move into a short jump to get past the stalagmite).
- Similarly, depending on exactly where you previously landed and so on, you may land on further ledges of stalagmites below. If so, just make a further short jump in the same direction each time, to carry on down.
- At some point, you should clear any final obstacles and drop to the pool at the bottom. You can try to steer at this point, if you like, but it doesn’t seem to be neccesary; whilst it’s looked several times to me as though I was in danger of hitting the ground beside the pool, in practice, that never actually happened.

(I tried the above about a dozen times whilst trying to describe precisely what I was doing. And I tried it on Charr, Norn and Asuran characters, in case character size or the Charr posture made a difference. It seems to work on all.)