Guild Wars 2

Honorary Crew Member
Prevent skritt and White Mantle looters from getting away with any supplies stolen from the SS Pinkeens.

Execute the Executioner
Rescue villagers set by the White Mantle to burn at the stake near Saidra’s Haven.

These 2 achievements were just designed poorly. Honorary Crew Member has 2 parts, 1st against White Mantle(triggered when players defend Saidra’s Haven from the White Mantle attack and 2nd against Skritt (triggered when White Mantle takes over Saidra’s Haven aka players don’t defend), hence Honorary Crew Member is related to the achievement Execute the Executioner in that players have to let the event fail, which has been a bad design since HoT legendaries came out. How this got past them i don’t know, it was bad then, its even worse now since alot more people are affected by it.

Over the past 4 days since the patch was released i have spent a dozens of hours doing events across Lake Doric and have yet to do finish either of this achievements and get my Star(completing all achivements in Story Journal for this episode). Every Saidra’s Haven meta event i have seen which is probably around 15 by now, has always successfully defended it which stops me from getting the achievement, 2 of those 15 tries a good number of people have asked the map to please let Saidra’s Haven event to fail, but always 1 person will troll the map and tag up while others (who don’t read map chat) will follow and defend the event ignoring the pleas of people in map chat. All this does is make map chat toxic and does not go with spirit of GW2.

Since i have never seen the defense of Saidra’s Haven fail personally, though i have heard some lucky people where there map cooperated(i wish i was there), it makes sense that i have never seen the skritt part of Honorary Crew Member. As far as the white mantle part, i have had a couple of decent tries on it(2 for today alone), with 35-50 people in squad, still fail the event due to the unfair spawns, multiple elite supply runners at the same time(seen 2 elite 2 vets spawn at the same time)which take insane amount of dmg and cc to bring down, and the occassional champion elite runner which has so much hp that even when we break his break bar 3 or 4 times over, his HP is still at about 80% by the time he escapes even with dozens of people focusing him.

Moonlighting
Stop the bandit spirits from making off with any lumber from the lumber camp.

I know multiple posts here and in reddit have adressed the 2 problems i mentioned above, even Moonlighting took me a few days as that event bugged way too many times as well(and don’t even spawn everytime i have waited for it with a full squad), i got lucky that it spawned one time where not even enough people were on it but the achievement was completed(probably a bug but i will take it nonetheless). In the end i just want to bring this problem up for more people to see as its been 4 days since patch and these achievements have yet to be fixed. As a completionist, I am done doing this events until a fix has been done(wasted hours of my free time), it definitely left a sour taste for me on this patch.

Not to mention a certain number of achievements does not let the player know which mission they are done on(not specified, hence players have to guess and redo missions).

For achievements like these, you do not want to zerg it. You want no more than 3 people scaling the event, which is the default scale and makes these achievements trivial. If you want to coordinate a zerg, your best chance would be to have people tag it and leave, one by one.

Unless you can manage to get everyone to cooperate, you’ll basically need a dead map to successfully do Honorary Crew Member. Moonlighting is out of the way, making it far easier to solo while no one is looking.

ArenaNet already knows, so alternatively, simply wait for the nerfs.

How do you even get ‘Execute the Executioner’?

I’ve tried this 3 times now and each time I never see the ‘Executioner’ but only ‘Torch Runners’ (which I’ve killed). What gives – someone please clear this up!

Healix.5819:

For achievements like these, you do not want to zerg it. You want no more than 3 people scaling the event, which is the default scale and makes these achievements trivial. If you want to coordinate a zerg, your best chance would be to have people tag it and leave, one by one.

Unless you can manage to get everyone to cooperate, you’ll basically need a dead map to successfully do Honorary Crew Member. Moonlighting is out of the way, making it far easier to solo while no one is looking.

ArenaNet already knows, so alternatively, simply wait for the nerfs.

i have tried this numerous times with only about 3-5 people who randomly approached the event while doing their dailies/map completion and have never gotten the achievement. I understand that the event scales with the number of people, but even with 5 people i could never finish this. There are too many runners, too little dps, and crowd control.

I agree with the OP that the idea of using a full man squad to approach this is the right way of thinking, but if even a full squad of people wanting to get this achievement done fail not just once but a couple of times fails, then something is wrong with the event itself.

I also heard that anet has adressed that this is a problem, the problem lies in how long before it gets fixed, seeing as the caudecus fight got nerfed pretty quickly. I personally finished the story on day 1 by myself and although it was a bit of a challenge, it only took me 1 try to finish it just because i understood the mechanics(even when i don’t raid).

Day Trooper.3605:

How do you even get ‘Execute the Executioner’?

I’ve tried this 3 times now and each time I never see the ‘Executioner’ but only ‘Torch Runners’ (which I’ve killed). What gives – someone please clear this up!

The Saidra’s Haven event where the White Mantle attacks Saidra’s Haven has to fail. When it fails, the next phase starts, then you try to liberate the town and you will get it.

LucyFurr.6589:

Day Trooper.3605:

How do you even get ‘Execute the Executioner’?

I’ve tried this 3 times now and each time I never see the ‘Executioner’ but only ‘Torch Runners’ (which I’ve killed). What gives – someone please clear this up!

The Saidra’s Haven event where the White Mantle attacks Saidra’s Haven has to fail. When it fails, the next phase starts, then you try to liberate the town and you will get it.

I don’t think this is right as I’ve heard people say they got it right after the ‘Torch Runners’ event ends, which happens before you liberate the town.

LucyFurr.6589:

i have tried this numerous times with only about 3-5 people who randomly approached the event while doing their dailies/map completion and have never gotten the achievement. I understand that the event scales with the number of people, but even with 5 people i could never finish this. There are too many runners, too little dps, and crowd control.

For Honorary Crew Member, the event area is huge. Anyone within the border of Saidra’s Haven is going to cause it to scale. When it’s actually at the default scale (1-3 players), only 2 runners will spawn and they can be killed within 10 seconds as a zerker. If you want to actually get this done without waiting for a nerf, you’ll basically need a closing a map.

Moonlighting is the same, but it’s out of way where randoms aren’t likely to scale it. When it’s at the default scale, only 2 runners spawn and they nicely go to the same spot, making this one much easier to do.

I happened to get lucky yesterday and get the skritt half completed of honorary crew member, and also completed execute the executioner. I found a multi-map squad that was trying to find one map willing to fail. Once we got about 40-50 people in one map, we scaled the event so hard with no one participating in killing, that it did eventually fail. The event for execute the executioner happened shortly after the failure, I believe it was a bit south and east of the town itself. I managed to tag one of the torchbearers and got credit, but the event was over in literally 30 seconds.. maybe even less. A lot of the zerg said they didn’t get credit. After that the zerg went to the ship to await the skritt event, I think we had 60 people there and were able to kill everything without any supply getting stolen. We waited another 15 minutes and tried the event with the white mantle (Saidra was retaken in that time) and we failed. Yes, a zerg of 60 people failed because some of the runners were dropping portals right on top of the supply. It seems like others have said to be impossible without a very small group.

Do be honest, Saidra defend event will start failing within a week or two once people get all of the rewards.

While the map and events themselves are fine, the scaling of everything is absurd. You have tanky white mantle who then very often can be veterans or higher with what appears to be nobody else around. I also fought level 82 ghosts outside Nolan well after the event finished. Shouldn’t they have downscaled after enough time?

Ayrilana.1396:

Shouldn’t they have downscaled after enough time?

Only if you kill them. Basic enemies are scaled on spawn and do not dynamically adjust.

I posted this in the Official Feedback forum:

Aerinndis.2730:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Map looks great, but events are just OK. Biggest problem is AGAIN they have set achievements that need to fail events. Time and time again, this creates toxic players as 1 group wants to finish and another group will purposely sabotage the events to make them fail with nasty comments and threats. We have seen this simply does not work and causes issues, yet the devs continue to do this. Very disappointing.

I think this is bringing out toxic players because of how the events are interconnected with some of the achievements and hearts.

Player A needs to fill his heart or get a daily done. Player B has the daily but would like to get an achievement or hidden achievement connected with the failure of the event in the area. A conflict is set up because of the different priorities which depend on an event failing or succeeding and what a particular player is trying to accomplish. It also leads to trolls taking advantage of that conflict especially if they know people are needing an event to fail so they can work on legitimate achieves. It gets more toxic as people get upset at the lack of cooperation to get these achieves.

I agree it is very frustrating. Last night I just left the map after it was obvious some were just not going to let anyone get the hidden achieve in Saidra’s Haven or let the skritt event spawn either.

Maybe the hidden event Execute the Executioner could be moved elsewhere and not dependent on the failure to defend the town. Possibly it could be tied to some of the small White Mantle camps in the area and move around among those either randomly or during a certain period at all of them to give players a chance at the achieve. There are plenty of NPCs roaming about that could be taken captive and need to be freed for that. That would leave only the Honorary Crew achieve tied to the failure to defend and that could be separated out from the defend fail/success as well by spawning either skritt or White Mantle randomly independent of whether the town is defended or not.

I do think they need to separate these events out a bit and remove them from being part of failed events. Even if player interest wanes on defense of the town you will always have players who need to open up the heart which resets daily to get access to the vendor and the trolls who aim to thwart folks from gaining achieves for grins and giggles. I just cannot see any win-win with the situation/achieves the way it is currently set up.

I have only seen the Torch Runners event once in all the times I have been on the map and it was up and disappeared so quickly I could not even find what direction to go. Also getting Moonlighting and Honorary Crew Member achieves should not be dependent on an empty map with few people. I am hopeful these three achieves get adjusted so folk can get them in a more reasonable manner.

Healix.5819:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shouldn’t they have downscaled after enough time?

Only if you kill them. Basic enemies are scaled on spawn and do not dynamically adjust.

It’s odd those since I’ve done events in TD where they were about level 82 but were no different than a level 80.

Sylanna.1947:

I happened to get lucky yesterday and get the skritt half completed of honorary crew member, and also completed execute the executioner. I found a multi-map squad that was trying to find one map willing to fail. Once we got about 40-50 people in one map, we scaled the event so hard with no one participating in killing, that it did eventually fail. The event for execute the executioner happened shortly after the failure, I believe it was a bit south and east of the town itself. I managed to tag one of the torchbearers and got credit, but the event was over in literally 30 seconds.. maybe even less. A lot of the zerg said they didn’t get credit. After that the zerg went to the ship to await the skritt event, I think we had 60 people there and were able to kill everything without any supply getting stolen. We waited another 15 minutes and tried the event with the white mantle (Saidra was retaken in that time) and we failed. Yes, a zerg of 60 people failed because some of the runners were dropping portals right on top of the supply. It seems like others have said to be impossible without a very small group.

This must be bugged too then, as I’ve hit the torch bearers each time I’ve tried it and still haven’t received credit qq.

I got the hidden achieve from the torch runner event before the patch just by sheer luck. I managed to get on a map that was working on getting this event to spawn. One guy kept attacking the dolyak and was close to killing it and folk were yelling at him to stop and telling him why. Finally someone put a target on him which got his attention – I suspect he wasn’t looking at chat and was focusing on downing the dolyak not realizing he was about to ruin an entire map’s attempt to get this achieve. Once he moved away from the dolyak and it got to Saidra’s Haven the torch bearer event spawned to the southeast of town. The event itself did not end immediately so folk got a chance to get a hit in on the torch bearers and we got the hidden achieve.

I have not tried to get Honorary Crew Member or Moonlighting yet but am thankful that the patch hopefully fixed the issues and that the event doesn’t scale so much that it is impossible to complete.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Last evening, an update note shared information about this quest line:

• Fixed issue with the Honorary Crew Member achievement that requires players to complete both the White Mantle and skritt versions of the SS Pinkeens event. Players now only need to complete one version of the event to obtain the achievement.

I believe that addresses one of the main concerns—having to do both sides of the event—and it appears that forum members have shared some strategy ideas, as well. If there are additional concerns, please post to let us know, but from my perspective, it appears that the changes coupled with the play-through advice should address most of them. Thanks.

With the quaggan escort, the “north” route stops right on the area where you transition between underwater and land weapons. I have failed that event before because I could not kill everything in time due to constantly switching between land and underwater weapons or I go in limbo where I can access neither.

The scaling was also changed. The carries are limited to veterans, they barely scale, and can no longer spawn as mesmers.

I thought, it’s easier with just 2 or 3 players around. That’s the result >.<
Waiting for a better chance.

Maria Murtor.7253:

I thought, it’s easier with just 2 or 3 players around. That’s the result >.<

It was easier with 3 or less, now you can just casually zerg it.

Your screenshot isn’t scaled for 3 or less, it’s scaled for roughly 10 to 20 people. The event’s range is huge, so anyone within the area of Saidra’s Haven will scale it.

The scaling radius is still causing problems with this event.

I just saw an Honorary Crew Member attempt fail within the first minute because the few players present when the event started were outnumbered two or three to one by the veteran supply runners, with no hope of stopping them all.

By the time enough people had gathered in response to the map chat call, it was already too late.

We had a large group last night and we were certain we got every carrier but no one got the achieve. There were a goodly number of folk waiting for the event to pop so it was not an issue at the beginning of not enough to corral the carriers.

Just tried there me and a couple of others trying against 4 or 5 level 81 super veterans, failed straight away. They are not normal vets. They need to shrink the radius.

Today my patience and tenacity was rewarded. The Event started very soft. Only 2 or 3 carriers spawned at the start and there were exactly as many players around. Each one could focus one, so we had everything under control from the very beginning. After 2 minutes more people joined, but the hardest part was allready done – easy peasy. Torment is very super effective here, as I expected. Bring a Revenant for maximum damage. All I had to do was waiting for the right scaling of the Event and keep an eye of the carriers. But no one really came far with that amount of condition damage around. But I agree: The Enemys Defiant Bar still needs a down scaling.

Maria Murtor.7253:

I thought, it’s easier with just 2 or 3 players around. That’s the result >.<
Waiting for a better chance.

Event last night had double that when it spawned because the quaggan event had spawned a bit before and the group that comes past the ship were up in the town near the last bit of that escort but it also scaled up the ship one to be impossible. This is still a conflict as folk also want the the achieve from the quaggan event so they start it even if the ship event is going on.

I am close to juskitten this and the moonlighting achieve as that one does not seem to spawn very often and groups of us have stood around for long periods of time waiting on it.

It is hard to tell when it is night or day other than looking over towards Divinity’s Reach to see if there is a small corner of blue sky. I noticed the shadows on the ground don’t really change enough to indicate you are entering any day or night cycle. The only way to tell is when the ghosts do spawn further up on the map. I see a lot of people always asking in map chat if it is day or night yet and few seem to know.

**Edit: Finally got both achieves because one person was organizing well before each event started. Here is what I learned:

First know when the day/night cycle is by using https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Day_and_night#Day.E2.80.93night_cycle
or put in /wiki et in chat to get event timer. Look at Verdant brink which tells you when the day and night begins and starts. (day and night same on all maps)

Moonlighting – spawns roughly every 15 minutes which gives two or three chances during the night cycle. Have most people concentrate on the ghost thieves so they don’t get out of the area and have two people run around and investigate the bushes as that makes the confidence bar go up for the workers and the event ends much, much quicker. We did that for two events and ended the second one very quickly once we realized you also need to check the bushes.

Honorary Crew Member:
Spawns during daytime so one person started letting folk know to congregate at the boat right at dawn and he got 3 people to tag up form groups. (I think we had roughly 7-8 in each group and more came in just before the event started) One group took the bow and northwest area, one the stern and southern area and last group took the hill and upper part of the boat. If folk stay around their areas this is surprisingly easy to do and you can catch everyone.

Both do much better as organized events for sure.