Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

This is not a complaint post. I just want to have some tips from people who played the new areas more then I have. All suggestions are appreciated when ment well.

My life at the moment, and for a long time to come, simply does not include more then an hour of uninterrupted time in game, if even that. And I can never really plan it either.

Core Tyria is easy to know what to do and finish things as nothing takes very long or can be interrupted. But I do that enough as it is (I still like it) and have had that content for years already. I would prefer some new stuff to mix it up, hence me buying HoT.

HoT though is a different matter. The meta’s are way to long for me. I more often then not grab a bit in the middle and have to go before it ends again. And it seems reward wise (loot and xp) HoT is mostly about the meta-events, and the rest feels not so rewarding. But I might simply be overwhelmed a bit. Hence me asking you all, what activities and things can i do best in HoT that still gives a decent amount of loot and or xp (compared to the time played/work done, don’t expect it to be the best of the best obviously, just viable. But that does not demand a big uninterrupted time investment before a payoff. And is fun to do obviously, farming the same mob over and over isn’t it obviously ^^

I thought about doing some of the adventures. But somehow they seem to be almost always unavailable when I reach one. Is there a way to see which ones are active at a given moment without actually going there to check?

Also is there a timer somewhere that shows how long the time till meta completion still is (or rather day timer, as i only seem to see dusk and night counting down), so i can estimate how big the chance is I might see the end of it (and get the participation reward).

I’m in the same boat, glad you posted this.

There’s an HoT map timer over at Dulfy that comes in handy until you’ve memorized the map event rotations.

Other than that, just participate in whatever events you come across, slowly explore the maps, and do the HoT story. You’ll soon find that experience is not so much of a problem after all, and you’ll quickly be blocked by missing mastery points rather than experience to fill your mastery bars. The first story play-through will give you a good boost to those points, as will the mastery insights and strongboxes (5 per map across the first three maps) you come across while exploring the maps.

As for locked adventures, check the icon of each. If you are on the same map as the adventure and the adventure is closed, the icon will have a small padlock at the lower right side that’s gone once the adventure is active.

If you can get the timing right, doing the final event in the Auric Basin meta is pretty quick. And it give a decent amount of exp and loot. Hopefully that’s helpful!

zeldara.4127:

Hi all,

This is not a complaint post. I just want to have some tips from people who played the new areas more then I have. All suggestions are appreciated when ment well.

My life at the moment, and for a long time to come, simply does not include more then an hour of uninterrupted time in game, if even that. And I can never really plan it either.

Core Tyria is easy to know what to do and finish things as nothing takes very long or can be interrupted. But I do that enough as it is (I still like it) and have had that content for years already. I would prefer some new stuff to mix it up, hence me buying HoT.

HoT though is a different matter. The meta’s are way to long for me. I more often then not grab a bit in the middle and have to go before it ends again. And it seems reward wise (loot and xp) HoT is mostly about the meta-events, and the rest feels not so rewarding. But I might simply be overwhelmed a bit. Hence me asking you all, what activities and things can i do best in HoT that still gives a decent amount of loot and or xp (compared to the time played/work done, don’t expect it to be the best of the best obviously, just viable. But that does not demand a big uninterrupted time investment before a payoff. And is fun to do obviously, farming the same mob over and over isn’t it obviously ^^

I thought about doing some of the adventures. But somehow they seem to be almost always unavailable when I reach one. Is there a way to see which ones are active at a given moment without actually going there to check?

Also is there a timer somewhere that shows how long the time till meta completion still is (or rather day timer, as i only seem to see dusk and night counting down), so i can estimate how big the chance is I might see the end of it (and get the participation reward).

+1

HoT really missed something.

I completed the story + map complet of the base game playing off-hour mostly 1-2h a day with satisfaction and pleasure.
HoT … I have no fun being always seeking for events only to unlock Mastery to continue de story.

I suppose that depends on what kind of progression you’re looking for. Meta events for Verdant Brink and Auric Basin take apx 2 hours start to finish (it seems I haven’t timed it)
VB – Nightfall/prep is 50min~, the bosses is 20min
AB – Defend Tarir/prep/loot is 50min~, the boss is 20min. Loot time is 10min~
I don’t know about Tangled Depths or Dragon Stand though.

VB & AB can both be fully explored in about 2~3 hours, longer obviously the first time (I’ve done them both 5 times now). Assuming you have Updraft (Lean Gliding is helpful), Wallows, Exalted Acceptance and Bouncing Mushrooms. Just to note some completion parts are locked behind meta-event (Wyvern Patriarch VB) (Hero point & POI AB) or Story completion (per character, POI & Vista in AB).

Adventures are always locked during meta-events, many of them however are unlocked at all other times (or much sooner in the event chains) I believe after a recent patch.

Adventures & Hero points can be completed each day for XP/chest rewards.
First time explore (go alts!) is also quite a bit of bonus XP as well as hero points toward unlocking their specialization.

Just me personally I have not yet learned Tangled Depths… so it takes much longer to do explore, and if you have any core explore done you don’t need the hero points here to unlock your spec. In addition to the above you will need poison mastery to finish exploring here.

All that being said. If you don’t have much time, start with doing the first 1-2 map events you find. This should get your participation up high enough to earn meta event rewards as the map progresses. Then go into doing exploration/hero points/adventures for daily XP. If the meta-event comes up you can take part in more events to build up your participation and gain more map currency.

for 1 hour players (like me) it is near impossible to join in events and actually finish it all. more and more i see myself going back to skyrim or other games (we got planets yay 0/) because HoT did not bring as much fun to ME as it did with playing the core game and am pretty much waiting for next weeks update and see how and what they balanced the new areas/mobs/events etc etc. still havent finished verdant brink and only got 2 glider and one shroom mastery thats it because I just seem not be able to gather enough xp to even see a decent difference on my mastery xp bar

djsarcher.9263:

I’m in the same boat, glad you posted this.

I third this.

Also, it would be nice if there were timers in game, especially for TD. I now know to go look/figure out when the meta ends but the first couple of times I had 100+% participation and just wanted to collect the final chest, but had to wait for almost an hour because it is not obvious how the map timers work.

Thanks for the tips and info so far. Definitely learned some new things already. And I can’t believe I missed the little locks on the map on the adventures, facepalm…

As for what kind of progression I am after. Anything that makes me feel I achieved something. That can be in small things. Getting a new mastery, getting a new gear look, exploring a new part of the map, getting some nice loot, and some gold to save up for gems for fun things from the store. My progression is not in ascended and legendary or raiding or big goals like that. Don’t care for that as the gear isn’t needed for the stuff i can do in my limited uninterupted time anyway.
Having fun, and have something to show for the time i played, that’s my aim.

mcwurth.2081:

for 1 hour players (like me) it is near impossible to join in events and actually finish it all. more and more i see myself going back to skyrim or other games (we got planets yay 0/) because HoT did not bring as much fun to ME as it did with playing the core game and am pretty much waiting for next weeks update and see how and what they balanced the new areas/mobs/events etc etc. still havent finished verdant brink and only got 2 glider and one shroom mastery thats it because I just seem not be able to gather enough xp to even see a decent difference on my mastery xp bar

Same.
The base game can be played here and there without the feeling of missing something if you log-off. At least doing hearts for exp was also usefull for 100% map and no need to wait for players. Grinding events in HoT for mastery is boring and not helpfull for map progress.
I’m now at Story part 9 and so far I spent 3 hours doing events for the required mastery to be able to start this story. Without counting previous story/mastery gate.

There is nothing locked behind meta in VB, specifically though. At night you can get the patriach POI by yourself, and all the hero points are accessible through the day or night, with some clever gliding from Faren’s WP (requires leaning and updraft though).

AB though, is a piece of crap when it comes to this. You have to finish the story through the AB zone to get the POI and vista on each character, which is immensily frustrating to me. Then you have to do the meta event AND have the map at tier 4 (meaning you have to do both the meta AND the pre events) to access that HP under the city. Dumbest design in the history of MMOs imho.

Tangled is pretty easy, once you stop getting lost. It took me about 3-4 characters with map completion, but now i fly through it pretty quick (hint: get to Nurdoch wp, you can use wallows to get just about anywhere from there). No HPs vistas or pois locked. A few mastery points are mastery gated (key-line one), but they are not needed for map completion..

Dragon stand you have to finish the meta event. Then you have ~8-10 minutes to grab as much of the pois/HPs as you can before map closes. May take you a couple of times to map complete this one, as most of the HPs are gated and require meta event completion. Also need poison mastery for one…

mulzi.8273:

There is nothing locked behind meta in VB, specifically though. At night you can get the patriach POI by yourself, and all the hero points are accessible through the day or night, with some clever gliding from Faren’s WP (requires leaning and updraft though).

AB though, is a piece of crap when it comes to this. You have to finish the story through the AB zone to get the POI and vista on each character, which is immensily frustrating to me. Then you have to do the meta event AND have the map at tier 4 (meaning you have to do both the meta AND the pre events) to access that HP under the city. Dumbest design in the history of MMOs imho.

Tangled is pretty easy, once you stop getting lost. It took me about 3-4 characters with map completion, but now i fly through it pretty quick (hint: get to Nurdoch wp, you can use wallows to get just about anywhere from there). No HPs vistas or pois locked. A few mastery points are mastery gated (key-line one), but they are not needed for map completion..

Dragon stand you have to finish the meta event. Then you have ~8-10 minutes to grab as much of the pois/HPs as you can before map closes. May take you a couple of times to map complete this one, as most of the HPs are gated and require meta event completion. Also need poison mastery for one…

it is not about reaching HP, POIs or other things, it is about the very time consuming 2 hour (or longer) event(s)(chains) that REQUIRE people to stay online for a fairly long time to get a bit of decent progression on the mastery “XP” bars, when really I do not have time for that.
lately I returned doing other games again, because honestly those feel way more rewarding (and it are offline games) then HoT does. I even stopped logging in every and each day for the dailies. If it feels for a fairly large portoin of the player base that HoT is unrewarding (yeah yeah casual l2p blah blah join a guild etc etc) then there is SOMETHING wrong with it. No need to redesign, just think about casual players that sometimes also want to see porgressionn!