Guild Wars 2

I mostly care about doing Vinewrath, does it happen at certain times of the day?

You have several phases of the map.

1) First you have the regular Conquest phase. You have to capture and keep the keeps, as you upgrade them. That adds to the progress of the phase. Once it’s done, you proceed on to:
2) Boss Battle phase – every keep has a boss lurking under it; you fight it and you kill it, preferrably. When you’re done or the time is out, you proceed on to:
3) Vinewraith phase. You have a couple of minutes to pick a lane and organize yourselves. Then you fight the Vinewraith, with its own phases. Afterwards, you proceed on to:
4) Labyrinth and waiting – it’s open for adventurers. If you were successful in the second phase, you’ll have a Nightmare key you can use on the chest at the center for 3 rares and more. Meanwhile, the map cooldown timer is ticking.

After the map cooldown is done ticking, the whole map restarts at 1).

In short: if you stick around on a map, eventually you’ll get to the Vinewrath

The only phase you have to complete to get to the Vinewraith is the Conquest phase. Even if all 4 boss battles fail the Vinewraith will still appear.

The hardest part IMO is actually getting the Conquest phase going. There’s a sort of tipping point around 3/4 forts held or the start of the second level defence events (which happen when 4/4 are held) where people will finally see it as an “active” map and stop afking in the camp or looking for a better map to switch to and actually start helping. After that everything moves fairly fast (although the whole cycle takes about an hour).

Fortunately just one person can capture a fort and with a bit of luck defend it too. 2 or 3 people can easily defend a fort.

If you have a commander tag I definitely recommend turning it on. Even just 1 commander at 1 fort seems to be taken as a sign that it’s an active map that’s worth contributing to and makes things go faster.