Guild Wars 2

I’ve been reading up on things and I’m confused about something.

I have been able to play sporadically over the last 3 or so months but only for 5 minutes at a time. So now I can play again properly …. what’s a home instance?

I see there should be some crystals there. Where do I find my home instance and what are the crystals used for?

Each of your characters has a home instance inside his/her racial city. The section will be marked as xxxx(Home).

The crystal node was a reward from a past Living Story release. Right now you can earn a Candy Corn node and/or a Krait Obelisk.

Welcome return. =)

The home instance is in your races capital. If you have done the Personal Story you should have visited it several times.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Home_instance

The crystals are there if you have completed the meta-event for the Bazaar release back in July.

Welcome back here are the locations of the home instances:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Home_instance

But if you didn’t do the Sanctum events you won’t have the crystal node. However I think the current living story event will reward a place of power “skill point” node you can use once a day.

Thanks all for the information.
By missing out on the crystal node then will that be a detriment ?

The things mined from the node are not bound so you can buy them at the TP if you want/need them.
Currently they are only used to craft stuff with Celestial Stat (“small” bonus to all stats).

The item in question is called Quartz.

Ema.4953:

Thanks all for the information.
By missing out on the crystal node then will that be a detriment ?

I have a crystal node in my home instance and I never use it. I probably could make a bit of cash mining a bit of quartz every day, but it’s not a big deal either way. Not usually even worth the loading time to get into my home instance. The same is true with candy corn unless you want to grind/get huge amounts of it to get one of the halloween weapon skins.

You can still get the achievements if you play now, to get a krait shard in your home instance that will give you a skill point a day and allow you to charge 25 quartz crystals into a rare material that’s account bound, and used only for crafting celestial gear.

Most people don’t care about celestial gear at all.

Thanks
Celestial gear huh? I should look at that too I guess. So is Zerker gear still the only real option?

Depends on what you want to do.
If you are planning to do WvW I would say stay as far away from Berserker as possible, and go with Soldier or something like that instead.

Ema.4953:

Thanks
Celestial gear huh? I should look at that too I guess. So is Zerker gear still the only real option?

The only real option is the one that suits your style of play. If that is zerker..so be it. If it is not, then there are plenty of combos and options that exist. The fun is in experimenting and finding what is best for you in dungeons or solo or pvp

These new nodes are they actually used for something? As in what do they make if not Ascended items?

Dante.1508:

These new nodes are they actually used for something? As in what do they make if not Ascended items?

Yes in theroy but none of the nodes so far are “game changing” and you should be able to play without them.

Dante.1508:

These new nodes are they actually used for something? As in what do they make if not Ascended items?

One node gives you candy corn, one node gives you quartz and one node gives you a daily skill point and allows you to charge a quartz crystal once per day.

None of them are necessary…particularly since both candy corn and quartz can be bought off the trading post and the charged quartz crystal is account bound.

And you can easy charge the quartz crystals you buy in the open world.