Guild Wars 2

Let me start this off by saying that I hate every experience I’ve had with the new expansion so far. I did my story mission and traveled to Verdant Brink, and so far I’ve had very little fun compared to the rest of the game. I’m right on the verge of rage quitting and I’m just hoping that I’m doing something wrong.

The zone is devoid of players, and my path is blocked at every turn by group events and swarms of veterans. I can’t explore without dying to these, and I can’t do the events alone to clear them out. Every time I find something on the map I have no clue how to get to it, so I look it up and I need to unlock something else to get to it, but how the hell do I get experience to level my mastery to that point if I can’t get to anything to gain the experience in the first place.

This entire expansion feels like it was built backwards. I’ve been playing Guild Wars 1 and 2 for many years, and this feels nothing like either of the games. What happened?

HoT was made more challenging than the Tyria maps. I didn’t really care for the increase in open world challenge. I like exploring, too.

The only thing that worked for me was to park my characters in Verdant Brink and grind out masteries via the events (there were people in VB when I was doing this) until I could unlock the masteries I needed to get around – like mushroom jumping and the 1st three gliding skills.

I did have to wait around at several of the HCs for help, but I finally got them all done on the map. I also had to do a lot of taxiing into full maps since I always landed in a dead one when I logged on. This is likely something you’ll have to do, too.

On the upside, I believe they’ve said they’re going to do an update soon on the jungle maps. Hopefully, this will make using them a bit easier.

I just want the hero points so I can use my elite spec, then I’ll never set foot in there again.

But I can’t get to half of them.

Murderin.8269:

I just want the hero points so I can use my elite spec, then I’ll never set foot in there again.

But I can’t get to half of them.

I used Dulfy’s videos for all the Hero Challenges that I couldn’t find. She makes good vids showing how to get to each one. This helped me a lot. I, too, have had trouble finding HCs, POIs, and Vistas in the jungle, especially in Tangled Depths.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Murderin.8269:

I just want the hero points so I can use my elite spec, then I’ll never set foot in there again.

But I can’t get to half of them.

I used Dulfy’s videos for all the Hero Challenges that I couldn’t find. She makes good vids showing how to get to each one. This helped me a lot. I, too, have had trouble finding HCs, POIs, and Vistas in the jungle, especially in Tangled Depths.

And if you really just can’t stand the HoT maps, you can play WvW and level up your WvW ranks and get Proofs of Heroics which you can then turn into completed HoT hero challenges. It takes a while to do this, however, from what I recall from people discussing this.

What else would I miss out on if I never went to the HoT zones?

I’d stay in the HoT zones long enough to learn the gliding mastery. Just the first rank of it. You can glide in Core Tyria and that can aide in map exploration or getting from Point A to Point B.

Vb is ALWAYS very busy. If your particular map seems empty, then port to a new one. Check on lfg. People are always taxing people into the 4 hot maps for the metas.

Murderin.8269:

What else would I miss out on if I never went to the HoT zones?

If you don’t really care about finishing maps, gliding is the main thing (IMO) HoT has to offer. There are also the mini-games known as Adventures. That’s the only other thing I can think of that you’d really miss out on.

Personally, I only like about 3 or 4 of the Adventures. All the others I find so stupid hard that I don’t bother with them. But the main problem with Adventures is they seem to be locked out most of the time due to events constantly going on, so you might have trouble even playing them.

I was in a map before with 4 commander tags on the other side of the map. Not exactly helpful for me when I can’t get there.

I logged out at a waypoint in VB and logged back in to get instantly killed by a bunch of random stuff from an event. My patience isn’t what it used to be I guess.

What class are you?

Celtic Lady.3729:

Murderin.8269:

What else would I miss out on if I never went to the HoT zones?

If you don’t really care about finishing maps, gliding is the main thing (IMO) HoT has to offer. There are also the mini-games known as Adventures. That’s the only other thing I can think of that you’d really miss out on.

Personally, I only like about 3 or 4 of the Adventures. All the others I find so stupid hard that I don’t bother with them. But the main problem with Adventures is they seem to be locked out most of the time due to events constantly going on, so you might have trouble even playing them.

I think I might just put the game down for now. I wanted to get my elite spec unlocked so I could finish the rest of Tyria on my Revenant with a swiftness ability, but its not worth the hassle.

I’m sure there will be some kind of update in the future after people get tired of grinding hero points on every alt.

Murderin.8269:

I’m sure there will be some kind of update in the future after people get tired of grinding hero points on every alt.

Probly not. You can unlock an elite spec in about 15 minutes. There are tons of 10-point communes, most of them in VB (the first map.) I did it on all 9 professions.

It’s a shame you don’t want to learn the game well enough to play the new content. (I imagine you’ll take that as an attack because this is the internet, but it’s not meant as one.) There is a lot of fun to be had exploring the new stuff, and it’s really quite easy if you learn some basics.

Fluffball.8307:

Murderin.8269:

I’m sure there will be some kind of update in the future after people get tired of grinding hero points on every alt.

Probly not. You can unlock an elite spec in about 15 minutes. There are tons of 10-point communes, most of them in VB (the first map.) I did it on all 9 professions.

It’s a shame you don’t want to learn the game well enough to play the new content. (I imagine you’ll take that as an attack because this is the internet, but it’s not meant as one.) There is a lot of fun to be had exploring the new stuff, and it’s really quite easy if you learn some basics.

I don’t take offense at all. I don’t have the patience to deal with these buggy new zones. I gave it another try and missed out on 2 events “due to inactivity” after I spent 15 minutes escorting the kitten thing across half the zone. I managed to find a reachable hero point and it spawns a champion that one shots me.

Its just a list of things adding up. If I’m not having any fun its time to stop.

Can I suggest a friend, maybe one that knows the zones? Hell if you’re online and want to do some hero points to unlock your spec, I’ll get you there in mere minutes.

What bugs are you talking about? I can’t immediately think of any.

In addition to what fluffball said, don’t forget you can use stealth to sneak past enemies and reach those commune points without fighting. And make sure to level up your masteries. Advanced gliding, wallows, poison – everything becomes much easier.

Well Fluff just helped me get nearly 200 points in a few hours. Thanks again.

I still think there needs to be a better way to get the mastery skills you need BEFORE you get to the zone for the first time.

For the record I am black out drunk, and could not see the HCs he had already been to. If I was running through on my own character it would take ~20 minutes to fully unlock an elite spec.

Kudos to Fluff for helping you out. I’m glad you got some points and can enjoy your Revenant more.

Also including in that two hours was a chak gerent kill.

Murderin.8269:

What else would I miss out on if I never went to the HoT zones?

about 20,000 deaths.

wrathmagik.3518:

Murderin.8269:

What else would I miss out on if I never went to the HoT zones?

about 20,000 deaths.

He died like twice from careening off a cliff because I went the wrong direction.