Guild Wars 2

So some people are probably looking at the quartermaster NPC and the big list of upgrades and are probably going “pfffft…nah.”

Allow me to take you on a lil’ breakdown so you know EXACTLY what you’re getting, and hopefully work your map a little better.

Note: for everything else I’ll leave comments out, and just simply explain the mechanics. I’ll let people reply with their own tips/explanations. I’m sure some people have a real chip on their shoulder regarding people taking camp supply, they can explain it better. Also i’m leaving the prices out, as that can be figured out easily and makes this article shorter. Whatever the prices are for a tower (including supply) it’s double for a keep. Fairly simple.

Real quick, there’s 2 main types of upgrades:

#Structure upgrades require the workers to gradually get supply, and build. It’s a time consuming process. But it gradually drains supply instead of taking the entire chunk out at once. You can start a structure upgrade any time, and if supply runs out, the upgrade is put on hold.

#Personnel upgrades remove the supply cost immediately (you either have enough for it, or you don’t).

CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMPS:

base max supply=100
total max supply after upgrades=250

(note, all camp upgrades are “personnel,” meaning the supply is immediately spent, and “reinforcements” will arrive shortly.")

“Increase supply delivery:”

Yaks deliver 35 supply to towers, 70 to keeps/castle. With this upgrade, that goes to 70/140! If a yak arrives before upgrade is complete, it will get the un-upgraded amount. Yaks have about as much HP as a veteran level 80 NPC. A dead yak will respawn 5 minutes later.

“Hire Caravan guard:” Hires a scout/guard, both lvl 80, to protect the yak. This helps significantly with the NPC “ambushes” that were put in wvw lately. Some yaks get ambushed twice at once and will die without player/NPC escort, spawn mechanics are sort of random for that.

Tier two:

“Hire additional guards:” effectively doubled the number of “veteran” guards in the camp, with some of them patrolling around the edge.

“Strengthen guards: " All guards (including the extra patrol) are raised to a veteran 82, taking much longer to kill and hitting harder. This also applies to caravan guards (yak guards).

Extra yak mechanics: dead yaks will respawn at the camp 5 minutes later. This includes if there was a yak already in the camp when it gets “flipped.” It doesn’t matter who owns it, it will still take 5 minutes to respawn.

Yaks delivering to a keep/castle with an enemy tower blocking it will still continue to deliver along it’s path if it survives. If the yak isn’t the same color as the site it delivers to, it receives no supply.

Getting “credit” for killing an enemy yak, when you have under 10 supply, gives you a chance at +5 more supply “stolen” from the yak. The chance factor need confirming, though.

Yaks are the only way for anything to recieve supply. No yaks, no supply. Players can manually repair/rebuild things, but players CANNOT perform upgrades with supply themselves. Only NPC workers, taking from the supply depot, will continue an upgrade.

TOWERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRS!

Base max supply=100
(each upgrade increase max supply by 25 (tier 1), 50 (tier 2), and 75(tier 3)
Max upgraded suppply=700

(quick note: towers get 1 oil, 1 gate, 1 cannon, 1 mortar. Keeps get much more, because there’s more of…well…everything!)

Personnel:

Tier 1:

“Hire outfitter” : hires a basic merchant for salvage kits, harvesting, and generally selling your loot. The cheapest upgrade in the game.

“Hire a second worker” doubles the speed of structural upgrades when completed. Will also use twice as much supply for structural upgrades. Workers can be given swiftness/timewarp, but their travel distance is just a few feet.

Tier 2:

“Hire Siegemaster” Siege merchant NPC arrives at the supply depot.

“Hire additional guards:” More guards on the gates and walls. Zealot, Wizard, Cabalist are included in this.

Tier 3:

“Hire Patrol:” Hires a guard patrol for the tower. About 4 veteran npc’s of various types. One patrol.

“Raise guard level:” Raises the level of all guards (including the patrol) from 80 to 82, taking longer to kill and hurting more.

Strrrrrrructures!

“Build pot of oil:” 1 pot, over the door. Kills rams/Golems at point-blank range quickly.

“Reinforce Walls:” Increases the resistance of the walls significantly. A treb doing over 9k damage to a normal wall will do just over 6k, exact numbers requested plz. Note, this does not increase the actual HP of the walls, just reduce the damage taken. Thus repairs will still fix the same amount of HP. Also, when completed, all walls/doors will repair to 100%, no matter what condition they were in.

Tier 2

“Build Cannon:” Adds one cannon to the front of the tower, near the gate.

“Reinforce Doors:” Same as reinforcing walls, increases the resistance for the doors. A basic ram hitting for 8k will do just over 5k on reinforced doors. Will also repair doors once completed. This is the only door upgrade available.

Tier 3

“Build mortar:” 1 mortar, usually at the highest point of the tower, near the Lord. Mortars are static turrets that can be turned, and fire like a trebuchet. They have about the same range as a treb, as well. They do EXTREME damage to siege (27k which is a LOT), knock down players with small damage, and also have a fire shot for AoE condition damage. Again, mortars will appear instantly when complete, do not need to be built. They have a minimum arc, so they are defenseless up close.

“Fortify Tower:” Upgrades the walls a second time, making their resistance even higher. A treb doing 9k damage normally will do barely over 5k damage (need confirmation) on fortified walls. Again, this doesn’t affect the HP of the walls itself, and will not reinforce the doors a 2nd time.

KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPS:

Base max supply=500
(each upgrade increase max supply by 50 (tier 1), 100 (tier 2), and 150 (tier 3)
Max 1700 total.

Tier 1:

“Hire a second worker” will double the speed structure upgrades are built. Workers can be given swiftness/timewarp to speed up the process. Workers must go back and forth to supply depots and back to a “wall” to work on the upgrade.

“Hire merchants” merchants with your basic supplies (salvage kits, harvesting stuff, a place to sell things). Typically available on the inner section of most keeps.

Tier 2:

“Hire services” adds a banker and repair agent.

“Hire additional guards” for the gates and walls. Note: This will add different types of guards, such as zealots, wizards, and cabalists.

Tier 3:

“hire patrol” more guards to patrol the keep in a group of 4-5. Self explanatory, yes?

“raise guard level” buffs ALL guards from level 80 to 82. Making them take much more time to kill without a massive zerg, and will generally hurt more as well.

Structural errrpgrades!

*Keeps already come with pots of oil on each gate, however they need to be built by hand.

Tier 1:

“Reinforce walls:” increases the resistance of the walls significantly. A treb doing over 9k damage to a normal wall will do just over 6k, exact numbers requested plz. Note, this does not increase the actual HP of the walls, just reduce the damage taken. Thus repairs will still fix the same amount of HP. Also, when completed, all walls/doors will repair to 100%, no matter what condition they were in.

“Build Cannons:” Multiple cannons. Exactly how many on which gate/along the walls varies with each keep. “Main” gates on the inner walls typically get an extra cannon. When completed, the cannons appear instantly, and do not need to be built.

Tier 2:

“Build mortars:” mortars are static turrets that can be turned, and fire like a trebuchet. They have about the same range as a treb, as well. They do EXTREME damage to siege (27k which is a LOT), knock down players with small damage, and also have a fire shot for AoE condition damage. Again, mortars will appear instantly when complete, do not need to be built. They have a minimum arc, so they are defenseless up close.

“Reinforce doors” Same as reinforcing walls, increases the resistance for the doors. A basic ram hitting for 8k will do just over 5k on reinforced doors. Will also repair doors once completed. This is the only door upgrade available.

Tier 3:

“Build waypoint”: adds a waypoint only your server can use, if keep is not under attack. If the keep becomes “contested” then the “defend your keep” event begins and after it’s done you can use it again. If your keep is STILL getting attacked after the defense event is done (3 minutes each time) there is a brief moment until the next “event” starts where the waypoint is not contested. This is around five seconds.

To “contest” a keep, the doors or walls need to be taking damage. Hitting “turrets” or guards will not contest a keep. As of this patch, 30 seconds after this happens, it becomes contested.

“Fortify Keep:” Upgrades the walls a second time, making their resistance even higher. A treb doing 9k damage normally will do barely over 5k damage (need confirmation) on fortified walls. Again, this doesn’t affect the HP of the walls itself, and will not reinforce the doors a 2nd time.

Extra wuvvie facts, as of Mid-May 2013:

*Guard note: Guards respawn in the area of 90-120 seconds. Would like someone to clarify that, though.

*ALL guards are veterans. Camp supervisors are veteran. Tower/Keep lords are champions, and the Stonemist lord is Legendary (boo-yah).

*ALL “turret” upgrades (oil, cannons, mortars) will respawn within a few minutes (about 5?) if destroyed. They will re-appear as a build site, and need to be rebuilt by players. Each site is approximately 50 supply to rebuild. These sites cannot be repaired, once built.

*All “turret” upgrades are considered a form of siege, and thus very vulnerable to mortar upgrades, and ballistas with bonuses to siege.

*Catapults/trebs will no longer damage/knockdown people on the opposite side of the gate. Arrow carts still work, however.

*Siege weapons can no longer be stopped by skills/traits that stop/reflect projectiles around you. Things that protect an individual player still work. This includes cannons, mortars, and oil.

*Superior siege will do 50-100% more damage to it’s target (depending on what kind of siege it is), and has much more HP.

• If you choose to, you can go straight down the line from top to bottom on a particular line of upgrade as it shows on the menu. You just have to have tier 1 to get tier 2, tier 2 for tier 3.

*Whenever a site flips, you see the “flame” buff “righteous indignation” on the main NPC for that site. It hits like a truck, and is unkillable for 5 minutes. This was put in place to make zergs re-flipping sites within seconds impossible.

*Supply regenerates only in camps, and about 10 every 30 seconds (confirmation on that would be great)

*The higher the tier of upgrade, the longer it will take to finish, both personnel and structural.

*Supply cost for tiers work in multiples of two. 2nd tier is double what tier 1 was, and, 3rd is 4x what tier 1 was.

*You can start upgrades immediately, however it currently takes two minutes to wait to claim a site (3 minutes left on “the buff” for the lord/supervisor)

*An uninterrupted oil pot upgrade, with 2 workers, takes about a minute.

*An uninterrupted waypoint upgrade, with 2 workers, takes about 90 minutes.

*the +5 supply upgrade (guild buff) does not apply to workers (but man wouldn’t that be nice).

*Reviving the “lord” or “supervisor” will require a team to kill it again, thus re-starting the capture timer when the circle reappears.

*Some towers/keeps will upgrade much faster than others, based on their location, the # of camps feeding it the distance from the camps to it, and how easy or hard those camps are to defend. Best example is Pangloss mine, vs. Speldan mill on EB.

*Respawn time on NPC camps “dredge, hylek, ogre” is 10 minutes after it’s flipped. Temple of thunder for quaggans is about 15, after taken. 10’ish minutes for Quaggan camps.

*If an upgrade is in progress and the server resets, it will continue the upgrade where it left off in a form of a “ghost” mode…still continuing as normal but without the progress event “protect the workers” in the top right corner. You can verify the upgrade is still going with the quartermaster.

*I could really use someone who’s better at making this a more eye-pleasing format >.>

*I suck at this game.

Discuss!

Thank you for this much needed information.....!

Looks good. The supply in camp regenerates 10 supply every 25secs. Also not sure about the repair of walls/doors is right, it always takes far more supply to repair a wall/door to full from when its T1 to T3(not sure the numbers myself offhand, but i would have thought this means it has a larger hp as well as defense)

the Str guard upgrade on camps does affect the escort i posted a pic to prove it and i think anet said the wall upgrades increase defnese aswell as hp il try to find the post

Tnx i’ve updated and will keep editing stuff

You got four likes from me (each post); this should be a must read before setting foot in WvW.

Wall hp def goes up same with doors you try repairing a t0 wall and door to a t3 wall/door and youll see it takes more supply to repair so unless the wall/door repair efficency go down their hp def goes up

Anyone got any rough estimate how much more HP it gets?

Still looking for a rough idea how much more HP upgraded walls/gates get. Will add more updates as info comes at me.

*added the upgrades during server resets.

Got other interesting facts/game mechanics? Throw ’em in here!

also add that after server reset you might have to press f on the workers to get them working again alot of people forget to do that so the upgrade never progresses and i think fortify has double the hp as a reinf wall since it takes roughly double supply to repair but im not sure

Nice write up. Also 15 char.

Madthunder.6581:

also add that after server reset you might have to press f on the workers to get them working again alot of people forget to do that so the upgrade never progresses and i think fortify has double the hp as a reinf wall since it takes roughly double supply to repair but im not sure

Yeah i think we’d all really love some stats from anet on this plzplpzplz <3

Nice writeup, very thorough. I was working on a similar post but more lecture-y/anal. On that note, here are some tidbits you might find interesting. I welcome/request that anyone interested please verify these numbers; corroboration helps strengthen any conclusions we might reach. Most of these observations are from Wildcreek tower in Eternal Battlegrounds, which is fed by Rogue’s Quarry.

Tower workers seem to upgrade at somewhat different speeds.
Wildcreek workers consume 10 supply every 30 seconds, while Klovan workers are lazier and take 37 seconds, I believe.

A yak takes approximately 2 minutes to get from Rogues to WildCreek.
*He then takes 48 seconds to return to Rogues, for a round trip of 2 minutes, 48 seconds.

A yak takes approximately 5 minutes, 10 seconds to get from Rogues to Wildcreek to Stonemist.
*He then calls the Enterprise and beams back to Rogues instantly. Total trip time is 5 minutes, 10 seconds.

Travel times are reduced by 25% if the yaks are given permaswiftness
This makes a yak’s trip from Rogues to Wildcreek 1 minute 30 seconds and a yak from Rogues to Stonemist 3 minutes 50 seconds.

As I mentioned above, I observed the Rogue-to-Wildcreek/Stonemist yak the most, but I also got some data on the yak that travels from Golanta to Klovan to Stonemist:

A yak traveling from Golanta to Klovan takes:
1 minute 55 seconds to arrive; or 1 minute 28 seconds with permaswiftness. A yak that travels from Golanta to Stonemist takes 4 minutes, 30 seconds to arrive; or 3 minutes 25 seconds with permaswiftness.

Using the data above, I drew some conclusions that I wanted to discuss. I am using the Rogue/Wildcreek/Stonemist route as a model, but I think other towers will suggest the same conclusions:

First, I want to point something out: by owning Stonemist, you are reducing the rate of supply income of the towers that are on the yak’s path. It takes Wildcreek nearly twice as long to get supplies when Stonemist is on the route, because once the Rogues’ yak reaches Wildcreek, he continues on to Stonemist taking an extra 2 minutes, 22 seconds (remember the total trip time from Rogue’s to Wildcreek to Stonemist is 5 minutes, 10seconds). If he dies along the way, it’s a 5 minute wait for a new yak to spawn; disaster.

Another thing I think people don’t realize is that ordering a structural upgrade puts the structure in a vulnerable state. The worker(s) that build the upgrade are constantly drawing supply from the depot. For example, say an unupgraded, nonswift yak delivers 35 supplies to Wildcreek and continues on to Stonemist. The Wildcreek worker there will burn through those supplies in 2 minutes (4 of the 30second consumptions). Then he will pick his nose and wait until the yak brings more, which will take 5 minutes, 10 seconds.

In this scenario, it is impossible to build up any supply in the depot of Wildcreek until that worker is done with the upgrade—he goes through it faster than the yak can deliver. Let’s say the upgrade is to fortify the walls — that costs 200 supply. Assuming the tower starts with zero supplies, the yak will need to make 6 trips to deliver enough for the upgrade to complete. And that’s assuming no players remove supply from the depot before the worker can get it.

6 trips = (6 × 5min, 10seconds) = over half an hour before the upgrade finishes. What if the enemy comes after 15 minutes? There will be no supplies in the depot, but 100 supplies tied up in the wall upgrade. I think we’ve all been in a situation where 100 supplies in the depot would’ve saved a tower. Also note that in this scenario, a second worker doesn’t make the upgrade go faster; the time it takes is dependent on the yak. I mean, I guess when the yak brings that final delivery, having a second worker will make it end a little bit sooner than a single worker, but you get the point.

I’ve seen instances when we’d just taken a tower, with zero supplies in the depot, and someone immediately orders the reinforce walls upgrade. I’m sure they felt they were helping, but when the enemy came back 10 minutes later, all the supply that had accrued was tied up uselessly in the upgrade. Of course, there are many variables: was there supply in the tower’s depot before the upgrade was started? Are the yaks being permaswifted? Has the enemy been docile, making it a good time to start an upgrade? Do we own Stonemist? Context/situation is the key.

Anyway, sorry this is so long. I welcome anyone to double check my math, it’s possible I made an error somewhere. I’m tired as heck right now. I hope this post was clear; I know it was pretty dry. The ultimate goal of this post is to hopefully encourage people to think about when it is appropriate to upgrade.

@RunForItMarty, are you sure stacking swiftness on a yak increases the delivery time by 25% and not 33%?

Yep, I’m sure. I thought the same thing at first, but observing the yaks, and working out a practice problem bear out the 25% reduction in travel time.

The wording is very specific: swiftness increases movement speed by 33%. This results in a 25% reduction in travel time.

Let’s say you are running 10 miles/hour. You need to get to the store before it closes, and it’s 5 miles away. How long does it take to get there?

(10miles/1hour = 5miles/xhours) = (10x = 5) = (x = 0.5hours)
So it takes you a half hour to get there. 0.5 hours travel time.

But the store is closing and you need to get there fast, so you instead run 33% faster.
(10miles/hour x 1.33 = 13.33miles/hour). So you are now running 13.33miles/hour. How long does it take you to travel 5 miles now?

(13.33miles/hour = 5miles/xhours) = (13.33x = 5) = (x = 0.38 hours)
Now it takes 0.38 hours of travel time instead of 0.5 hours.

Finally, 0.38/0.5 = ~75%, ergo by running faster, you take 25% less travel time. There is some rounding involved but you get the idea.

As I mentioned, observing the yaks supports this, and I think it makes sense. My initial reaction was to be a little disappointed that it only got the supplies to a tower 25% faster, but when you think of it in terms of real life consequences, the yak can get to its destination sometimes over a minute sooner, which can make all the difference during critical times.