Guild Wars 2

How long has it been between the Pact Fleet being brought down and destroyed by Mordremoth and your character making it to Dragon’s Stand with the best of the best of the Pact and killing the Mouth of Mordremoth?

Based on the HoT storyline it can’t have been too long since you are tracking Eir, Logan, Zojja and Traehearned and it seems like it doesn’t take too long for Mordremoth to finish his whatever he does with them in the pods. But if you take a step back and look at some of the events, these are things which would take time.

Securing the outposts in VB? That would take weeks to make them truly secure against Mordrem and Wyvern attacks due to having to gather up wounded, take the time to treat them, gather up lost supplies in the woods, and actually build up the camp’s defenses. The AB meta surrounds Tahrir and not so much the Pact. But it does feature a bunch of Priory members studying ruins, which is also something that doesn’t happen in a matter of just a few days. Likewise in TD, finding and exploring Rata Novus. Getting those systems running (Taimi is a beast!). Actually studying the Chak and discovering that not only can we use them against Mordremoth, but figuring out how to actually do this and then going and actually doing it. And then the final fight against Mordremoth. Even just in DS that would take a significant amount of foreplanning, and no matter how good these guys are if they were running through the rest of the HoT maps they weren’t exactly having picnics and had a bunch of time to nail down there strategy before getting to DS. Then of course there is the actual campaign heading to the mouth to slay it.

All of that would add up, suggesting that the Pact spent several months at least between crashing and actually getting up to fighting Mordremoth. But that timeline doesn’t really line up at all with what you would expect from the HoT story.

From my guess, all of Verdant Brink/Act 1 takes place in about a week, give or take a few days. The story starts with one night happening and directs you to each outpost (in order of Pale Reavers, Pact Camp, Jaka Itzel, Noble Ledges, Pact Ordnance) so I’d say each outpost = its own day and night, roughly, and I’d say the same for the story instances, resulting in 5 days (outposts) plus 3 days (story instances) for a total of 8.

The places aren’t truly secure, but rather “secure enough until we can get out of here” (which would be the choppers at night).

For the others, I’d argue roughly the same. A day or two per meta chain and story instance, all roughly being around a week to a week and a half each act/map, resulting in about 1-2 month campaign against Mordremoth during the course of Heart of Thorns.

Verdant brink events take place in a single day.

Pale Reaver rally starts immediately after the first story instance. Jaka Itzel has no food problems by the time the PC gets there.

The noble camp happens the morning after as well, as Faren was on the ship and was declared missing for “mere hours.” Ordnance corp is the one you could fudge the most, given how they are in the Prisoners of the Dragon instance, but at the same time they could’ve been captured (as the one spot is filled with supply crates, corpses, and a destroyed tower).

The overall story is a short, brutal one though. Since a number of open world events don’t actually match up with the storyline (for example, all of Auric basin basically), and a number of Tangled Depths camps aren’t even touched outside of the Nuhoch village, which was during a period when the PC was trying to get to Rata Novus as fast as they could (which they succeeded at, being literally the first people in, the OoW came in afterward, and that Asura was the one who setup the cannons in the Ley Line chamber).

I think Prisoners of the dragon gives a timeframe for how long Eir had been captured, but a few months seems like a rather long time for a Mordrem prison caravan to go from central Verdant Brink to Dragon’s stand. Because we know the one group escaped that Caravan near the start of Tangled Depths with help of Trahearne, Logan, and Zojja.

I generally take the attitude that the Pact Commander is not necessarily present at every open-world event. Our power level relative to the opposition is clearly lower in the open world compared to story instances, and I think there are some times in the open world where we’re essentially playing a random Pact soldier rather than the dragon-slaying Commander. On the other hand, the Pact Commander will need to rest sometime, and that will likely occur in places that are relatively safe.

When it comes to Verdant Brink, I think the Pale Reavers, Pact Camp, and Noble Ledges events all happen in the first full day after the crash. The Itzel instance feels like a first contact, so I suspect helping the Itzel in the open world comes afterwards. Finally, the Mordrem camp in the west seems fairly well-established, and Eir mentions that they’ve been there for “days”, so I suspect the Blighting Tree event chain doesn’t happen until afterwards. On the other hand, their relatively healthy condition indicates that they probably haven’t been starved for too long. The end of the final instance in VB shows the PC and team leaving for Auric Basin.

In the Auric Basin case, the PC is told to take the egg directly to Tarir. Again, meeting Ruka feels like a first contact event, while in the open world we see the Pact cooperating with the Exalted, so the attacks on Tarir probably don’t start until after the egg is delivered.

In the case of Tangled Depths, this is possibly the hardest map to navigate ArenaNet has ever done, particularly the first time you’re there, so I’ve banked in some time to account for travel. The meta event feels like it couldn’t have started until after the Rata Novus instance, and also feels like the preparations could take more than one day.

Dragon’s Stand feels like it all happens in the same day. The instances feel like they’d be back-to-back (Bitter Harvest ends with the PCs in hot pursuit of the tendril that dragged off Trahearne) and it may only be ArenaNet being merciful that leads to them being split into two instances. The Pact assault in the meta-event provides cover for the PC and company to do their thing.

With this in mind, here’s my proposed timeline:

Day 1: The Pact Fleet is shot down. The PC enters Verdant Brink close to nightfall.

Day 2: The Pale Reaver, Noble Ledges, and Pact Camp chains occur while the PC is performing their investigations.

Day 3: The PC meets with the Itzel and helps defend their village.

Day 4: The PC follows Rytlock and Braham’s trail, culminating in hitting the Mordrem prison camp. The Itzel village is attacked again during the night – the Itzel hide, but their food stocks are destroyed.

Day 5: The Itzel and Blighting Tree event chains occur – the destruction of the Blighting Tree likely stabilising the Pact’s position in Verdant Brink. The PC pushes into Auric Basin, recovers the egg, and delivers it to Tarir.

Day 6: The PC follows Taimi’s trail to the final Auric Basin instance, before moving on to Tangled Depths. Mordrem attacks begin on Tarir.

Day 7: The PC has their first encounter with the chak. The group splits up, one following the Mordrem caravan, the PC heading to Tehu Nuhoch.

Day 8: Taimi and the PC find Rata Novus.

Day 9: The PC returns to the northwestern Order of Whispers camp to pick up Rox’s trail. The Pact forces in Tangled Depths begin preparations for blasting into Dragon’s Stand.

Day 10: The PC follows Rox’s trail into Dragon’s Stand. The Pact Forces blow kitten into Dragon’s Stand.

Day 11: The PC and company rescue Logan and Zojja and push on to kill Mordremoth through Trahearne, while the Pact keeps Mordremoth distracted by the assault on the Mouth of Mordremoth.

You could probably shave off a few days if you were so inclined, or extend it out a bit by assuming that the Pact Commander spends more time hanging around helping with meta-events. However, I’d probably say it’s reasonable that it would have been no less than a week, no more than three.