Guild Wars 2

I recommend not using artwork as your reference, unless you literally want your character to look like that specific image. Art is stylised and can hide racial features, so study photographs of actual elderly Arab men. The more, the better.

Also, if you’re really stuck, don’t be afraid to select faces, skintones, and slider positions your gut tells you are going to look wrong. Giving your brain fresh perspectives on what the character creator is capable of can be inspiring, even if you don’t manage to stumble across the look you’re after while experimenting.

Nevermind, I’m going to get disqualified anyway. The instructions mentioned that the background colour should be black or transparent, but that transparent was preferable, so I gave all of my files transparent backgrounds. It’s only now that I noticed they wanted the masks to have black backgrounds. I guess transparent only referred to the emblem itself. I’m such a kittening idiot.

Yeah, I decided to go ahead and resubmit it. The DIY format is much smaller so it got through fine this time.

I nearly added a readme to the zip explaining that my original submission was too large and to please ignore it if it did get through anyway, but I decided not to include it in case that somehow hurt my chances. I’m too paranoid for my own good. :/

I have this problem too. My .zip file containing the .psd is 44.8MB, but I was told it exceeded the maximum size. (It would be nice if I had some way of finding out what the maximum size is!)

I assume this means it didn’t get uploaded, but I’m not sure if I should try again, since the rules say that identical submissions will be disqualified and I don’t want to ruin my chances in case it got through the first time. I don’t really know how to get the .zip smaller anyway.

Khisanth.2948:

Wasn’t suggesting redoing all of them. Just the buggy ones. One of my characters that have this bug finished the PS over a year ago, maybe 2 years.

Ah, I see. Fair enough, then. The way you worded it originally implied that you needed to redo everything, which made me despair at first because I hadn’t fixed mine yet and I really didn’t want to have to do the entire season all over on three characters. :p

This makes more sense, since now it seems we’re using the same fix: play through all unfinished or buggy episodes, from both PS and S2, in chronological order.

I experienced this bug as well. In my case, I did all the episodes in order, but I found that characters who hadn’t finished their main personal story — the one that ends with “Victory or Death”, where you kill Zhaitan — all got this bug for “The Dragon’s Reach, Part 2”. Those who had completed their personal stories prior to Season 2 didn’t get the bug.

I was able to fix it by completing “Victory or Death”, then redoing the buggy episode. Redoing the entire season, as Khisanth suggests, was unnecessary.

Heh, thank you. I understand this is unlikely to be prioritised, but I’d at least like to get it out there.

Or, see if any other players have discovered a work-around. I feel like there might be a way to avoid this, but I haven’t figured it out yet — if indeed there is a work-around.

GscGunner.2419:

As far as i know people are abusing Custom Arena’s to farm PvP experience to gain levels, i assume this is also the case for reward tracks. If what i am saying is correct I don’t expect nor do in my opinion want a fix for this.

The fact that there is a cap at all in custom arenas seems to be already intended to curb farming, so I don’t really see the point in deliberately making the cap arbitrarily smaller on random days. I think it’s a bug, and I think it should be fixed — if they want to further curb farming, then they should make the cap permanently smaller, or the rewards less lucrative.

Thing is, though, people will always farm. Though I think the rewards could use some tweaking to be less lucrative (it’s currently faster to unlock dungeon skins through PvP than it is by doing dungeons, for example), I think the current set-up minimises damage to PvPers as much as possible: all the farmers go to clearly-marked, farming-dedicated servers where they won’t make a mess of real matches; PvPers never have to go inside a farming server unless they choose to; and the daily cap is large enough that farmers won’t be drawn in huge numbers to solo arena.

In fact, one downside of this bug is that a farmer might end up doing a solo arena match just to get that last sliver they’re missing before their final reward of the day.

I’m not entirely sure this is even a bug, but I’m having trouble understanding how or why this would be intentional, so here we go:

In custom arenas, progress in PvP reward tracks is capped at two tiers per day. Most of the time I do indeed find myself earning precisely two tiers per day, but occasionally, it will hit the cap just short of two tiers, often a mere sliver away from the final reward of that tier. (Every time this has happened, I’ve begun my day at exactly the beginning of a tier, so this isn’t a case of me being mistaken as to where it should be capping.)

I asked around ingame, and a few folks mentioned they had experienced this, but weren’t sure if it was a bug — though they couldn’t really explain why they thought it wasn’t a bug. I’ll admit, I get the feeling this is somehow my own fault, since it’s always capping juuuust before reaching the true cap, but I haven’t a clue as to what’s causing it to happen.

Any thoughts?

Heh, I’d been considering making one of these threads myself. There’s just something about those little annoyances that make them more irritating than big issues… like the difference between a big dog leaping at you and a thousand ants crawling over your skin: both suck, but at least you can push the dog off and tell it not to do that again.

My personal list:

• Swiftness from Temporal Curtain won’t stack with any other source of swiftness.
• Can’t search unlocked dyes by name.
• It’s impossible to see which minipets belong to which set without checking the wiki.
• The new minipet achievements don’t use the collections UI, which links to every required item in the collection.
• The new achievement organisation is messy. Dungeon achievements, for example, are still under “Tyria”.
• Tagging the bomb-the-mine-entrance event in Dry Top is frustrating if lots of other folks are attempting it and/or you’re lagging; credit is only given for helping destroy the cave-in, not for attempting to carry a bomb.
• Some armours turn into skimpy and/or ultra-femme versions when worn by female humans, norn or sylvari, with no option for males or female asura/charr to wear them (or something of a similar design), and no option for female humans/norn/sylvari to wear the “default” masculine version.
• Party chat disappears from your chat log when you leave the party.
• Guild chat disappears from your chat log when you switch characters, even if those characters are representing the same guild.
• Emotes performed by NPCs cannot be filtered out by deselecting “NPCs” in the chat filter.

At 1:31 you can see art assets produced by famous African artists not in the employ of ArenaNet. Nice cinematic, but it’s just a clever fake.

Yeah, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me… the rates are intended to result in more useable drops for a given character, but somehow won’t result in less silk if you’re playing a heavy or medium class? I don’t know enough about maths to know what sort of algorithms could feasibly produce a result like that, but it still smells fishy.

Hey, maybe if we’re lucky they’ll make up for it by adjusting the amount of silk required to craft spools of silk weaving thread down to 50 instead of 100.

I’m torn between “when will SAB return?”, “will we ever get new races?” and “when are you going to add a search option for dyes?”

There has been a post asking about this already; unfortunately it hasn’t seen a dev response yet.

My suspicion is that the old achievements will be retired and no longer obtainable. I think it’s very likely that the new mini collection achievements are going to be part of the new collection achievements category, and judging by this screenshot, the new achievements will track each item in the collection by id — this probably won’t be compatible with the old minipet achievements, since those only track your collection by total number.

I have my fingers crossed they’ve found a way to merge the old and new achievements, but I doubt it will happen. Complete your old achievements now, while you still can.

Here’s the dev saying it will affect level 80s: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-No-Profession-Loot/page/6#post4343796

And here’s a longer post where he goes into a little more detail about the drops: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-No-Profession-Loot/page/5#post4343055

I’m also very interested to hear the answer to this question. I’d been planning on completing my minipet collection achievements eventually, but had been putting it off because I had other things I wanted to spend my gold on first and I assumed I’d have plenty of time to get minis later. I certainly won’t be able to finish them before patch day now that prices have shot up, so I’ll be very disappointed if I lose the opportunity to get the achievements because they’ve have been moved to the history tab instead of being grandfathered into the new achievements.

I’d also really like to see these recipes return.

I’m holding out hope that they’ll turn out to be drops from Boss Blitz enemies or Gauntlet prizes or whatever and they just haven’t been discovered yet, though even that would kind of suck, since knowing my luck the RNG won’t bless me with the ones I’m missing. :p A vendor selling these would be awesome.

Khisanth.2948:

That isn’t really the point.
The point is that a multiplier works with both high and low base rates but adding a flat rate will be incredible for some things and completely useless for others.

Oh, whoops. ^^;

Yeah, that’s a good point.

Khisanth.2948:

That doesn’t work very well.
+0.03% is awesome on something with a base rate of 0.001%
x300% not so much

On the other hand +0.03% on something with a base rate of 10% is hardly worth caring about but x300% would be great.

Oh, I was just using hypothetical numbers to explain my point, I have no idea if 0.0001% or 0.03% or whatever are the correct stat for base drop rates!

tigirius.9014:

Just because you don’t experience it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I happen to know that there are accounts out there that still to this day haven’t received a single rare outside of the 1 permitted daily that happens with certain bosses yet they participate weekly in the same events as everyone else does in their groups and guilds. That says something right there about their system.

I honestly don’t see how this can’t be explained by ordinary randomness.

I’m not saying there definitely isn’t an issue with drop rates, but you’re going to need to conjure up better evidence than that to prove it.

MotherKitten.6795:

FWIW this guy did work on RNG algorithms for industry and he said they don’t really want something approximating real randomness because they don’t like long stretches of unlikely events. He said what industry is in the market for is an algorithm with few long stretches of repeating results but overall is close to random and that’s what he had to program to please the customer.

Heh, so what you’re saying is that playfuldreamer’s idea for a “random pattern” RNG is already what we’ve got?

Guhracie.3419:

When I use a shield, it shows up stowed on the back of my character, so I don’t understand what you’re asking for.

I believe they’re asking for shield skins to be useable as back skins, so that: (a) classes which don’t use shields can look like they’re wearing one; and (b) classes that do use shields can look like they still have one on their back even when their real shield is in their left hand.

The Mad King costume has been available for two years in a row now, so it seems logical that it will continue to be available every Halloween. I don’t know for sure what will happen to the costume, however, and afaik ANet haven’t commented on what they plan on doing with it.

An alternative option for you is, pending stable gem exchange rates, you could sell your gems for gold right now, then spend the rest of the year earning back the gold to buy gems in time for Halloween.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Alex.3907:

This makes me wonder if the way MF is worded is having an effect on the way people think about drop rates. If MF was described as an addition (e.g. +0.03%) rather than a multiplication (e.g. x300%) to drop rates, would it make people feel better? I’m not sure it would, but I don’t know, maybe it could help.

It wouldnt. People see “+300% MF” and read it as “+300% loot dropped” and get kittened off when it’s not true.

That’s exactly my point — wording it as “300%” gives people unrealistic expectations, because 300 is a big number, so they feel like it must have a big effect. What I’m wondering is if using a smaller-looking number would encourage more realistic expectations.

serapheles.5409:

My own anecdote for this topic is I’ve definitely noticed better drops as I rose my magic find, most noticeably around 100% MF. Most noticeably, I feel like I get more drops, and that I get a better ratio of whites to blues or greens than before (from mobs). I’m not certain how it has affected my rares or exotics, but I feel that it has somewhat increased the frequency I get rares. I don’t really notice a difference when using a MF booster or MF food, but I do feel like Birthday Boosters further help those points.

Something occurred to me as I was reading this post.

You feel like your drops have improved as your MF rose, and that bday boosters help a lot more than regular boosters or food. While it’s true that drop rates will, overall, improve with higher MF, it isn’t necessarily going to be a noticeable difference. I suspect that most of what you’re observing is confirmation bias: you expect more drops due to high MF, so you pay more attention to the good drops you’re getting. (Not saying this is definitely the case or that it explains everything 100%, just that it’s a likely factor.)

What occurred to me is that this might explain why the OP feels like 130% MF is more effective than 300% MF: at 130% MF, they expect to see slightly better drops, but they’re not expecting miracles, so they feel satisfied with the ordinary loot they’re getting. At MAXED-OUT 300% MF, on the other hand, they feel like they should be getting the best loot possible, so they’ll end up getting frustrated when their loot continues to be ordinary.

This makes me wonder if the way MF is worded is having an effect on the way people think about drop rates. If MF was described as an addition (e.g. +0.03%) rather than a multiplication (e.g. x300%) to drop rates, would it make people feel better? I’m not sure it would, but I don’t know, maybe it could help.

Antonio Cappello.1806:

I also believe that with things like confirmation bias, this would just shift the problem elsewhere. A “bad luck” streak of three or four poor rolls can bias someone’s opinion enough to make them forget, for example, their previous string of rares a week ago.

That’s a good point. There was someone earlier in this thread who literally suggested there was a conspiracy to give some players more luck than others. I’d imagine that when this person examines their drop rates, they are going to be interpreting them in context of the supposed conspiracy, which will make them see a pattern that supports the conspiracy, which will give them a stronger incentive to interpret future drops in that context, and so on. I doubt that creating a “random pattern” RNG will stop people from doing this. It’s just such a strong part of our nature to be awful at probability.

I think I see what you’re saying, playfuldreamer — that the RNG should be deliberately designed to not be truly random (or close to truly random), but weighted in such a way as to trick the brain into seeing a “random pattern”?

It’s a nice idea. I don’t know enough about designing RNGs to be able to say if such a thing is feasible, but my first thought is that a system like that could be exploitable. At least true randomness can’t be exploited, even if it does lead to a handful of people who end up really really rich or really really poor.

Hmm, that’s strange. I was able to unlock the skin by salvaging a Bloodsaw Mask. The rogue set can be obtained as rare drops, but the mask doesn’t seem to be on the TP, unfortunately. The only other option I can think of is to visit all the karma vendors in the game who sell that skin — there’s a link to a list of them in Spiral’s post — but if that doesn’t work either, then I suspect you’re just going to have to wait until the bug is fixed.

Antonio Cappello.1806:

playfuldreamer.1920:

Noticeable streaks are a sign of bad RNG.

That’s not entirely correct. Noticeable streaks at the statistical level are a sign that there’s some trend that isn’t random. Noticeable streaks on smaller scales happen all the time and are a natural result of RNG. If you flip a coin ten times and get ten heads, that doesn’t mean the process isn’t random or that it’s biased.

Yeah. This is why I suggested testing the drops at the end of my previous post — if there really is an issue with the RNG, then it should show itself after collecting a few thousand drops. But getting irritated because you haven’t had an exotic drop in a few weeks, or never seen a precursor? That sounds like normal RNG to me.

Our brains are just really bad at grokking randomness; we tend to see patterns where there are none. To expand on Antonio’s coin example: which of the following two sequences is more likely after flipping a coin ten times? THTHTHHTTH or HHHHHHHHHH? You probably chose the first sequence. You’re wrong. They’re actually equally likely.

There’s an item called Bloodsaw Leather Mask that can be crafted by leatherworkers. Salvaging it will unlock the rogue mask skin.

Backstraps are a statless back item that comes packaged with back skins. Since you can’t wear a back skin unless you have a back item to apply it to, the backstrap is provided so that you can wear your skin immediately even if you don’t have a proper back item yet.

This is honestly just how RNG works: sometimes you get a lucky streak, sometimes you get a really unlucky one. Magic find, as Hannelore said, is only going to help a little bit when it comes to really rare things like precursors, because 300% is only going to take you from 0.0001% to 0.0004%. That sort of difference isn’t going to make a noticeable change in your ultra-rare drops at all.

Ok I Did It’s friend was just super lucky to get two precursors within such a short time. Was it a one in a billion chance that would happen? Of course it was. But that doesn’t mean it could never happen! Look at it this way: thousands if not millions of drops are getting generated every day. If a precursor has a one in a billion chance of dropping, then you’d expect one to drop somewhere in the world once every couple of days. So one random player is guaranteed to get a precursor drop every few days — there’s just no guarantee who.

If you still believe MF is bugged at higher levels, run an experiment: one person with 300% MF and one person with 130% MF go out and kill the same set of mobs a few thousand (yes, a few thousand, MINIMUM) times, and both write down everything that drops. If the numbers don’t look right, send your findings to ANet in a bug report.

A few months back, I wrote a guide for naming your pets using pseudo-scientific terms inspired by real-world taxonomy. I don’t know if it’s worthy of being added to the front page of this thread — it’s just a silly RP thing rather than a gameplay guide — but since it got buried in the forum rather quickly, I thought I’d add a link to it here, in case any RP-minded rangers who missed it the first time around would find it interesting.

Tyrian Taxonomy: An Asuran Guide to Pet Names

Not a misheard phrase, but hopefully in the spirit of the thread: ever since I learned that Scarlet’s voice actress is the same lady who voices Twilight Sparkle, I can’t help but think of an evil version of Twilight Sparkle whenever Scarlet speaks:

“Meet my new friends. Aren’t they terrifying?”
“Die, die, die. Die, die, die, die, die.”
“Your friends are all dead! You can thank me later.”

Kal Spiro.9745:

Alex.3907:

Lol, are you really suggesting that it’s my own fault for failing to predict that exotic recipes would get removed? I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable for anyone to have failed to see that coming. I expected new recipes, not the resetting of existing ones!

Obviously not, I didn’t expect that either. It was your fault for not expecting them to raise the max crafting level, and what the consequences of that would be. Removing the discovered exotics is a gift, not a punishment, and it’s not their fault that some people see it differently, nor what those people did or went through to fill their lists.

What makes you think I didn’t expect them to raise the max crafting level? I made the decision to risk discovering exotics based on the information that the crafting level would go up and nothing else. I’m annoyed because the true situation turned out to be quite different, and I would have made a different decision had I had that extra information.

Lol, are you really suggesting that it’s my own fault for failing to predict that exotic recipes would get removed? I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable for anyone to have failed to see that coming. I expected new recipes, not the resetting of existing ones!

Sitkaz.5463:

Delvoire.8930:

You guys have nearly killed this thread….

GW2 Forums is most likely the last place for a discussion such as that.

So back to School Outfits.

I really hope they are not bringing them into the game.

Well, to be fair, a discussion about the sexualization of kids in school uniforms is actually kinda relevant in a discussion about whether sexy school uniforms should appear on the gem store.

I agree though that I’ve never seen a discussion about issues as important/controversial as this go very well on these forums.

I have something of a talent for kicking up kittenstorms. :P I’ll be quiet… for now.

Edit: Thank you for making it easier for me to be quiet by deleting my posts, moderator! For a moment there, I almost thought that using a real-world example to support my argument instead of relying solely on rhetoric was a good idea. Silly me! Keep up the good work.

The trouble with the “you’ll have to rediscover them all again anyway” argument is that it fails to acknowledge the gold spent on discovering them the first time around: if we had known in advance that those recipes would get removed, many of us would have waited until this update to spend that gold on discovery, and there would be no problem.

Also: people who enjoy different activities than you do are not stupid or whiny or mentally ill or in any way inferior to you. Why is this a difficult concept to comprehend?

As Zaphod mentioned, the Pavillion will close tomorrow, and sprockets will continue to be useful as components in crafting recipes.

However, the Pavillion will be returning at some point in the future, and presumably the vendors and their stock will return with it. So don’t worry if you miss out on the recipes or weapons — you’ll likely have another chance to buy them later!

fungihoujo.8476:

But with the way they’re doing it- ultimately, not letting us redo discoveries would hurt way more people than it’d help.

I agree that resetting exotic discoveries is great for the majority who never cared about collecting recipes! However, there were other potential options which wouldn’t have screwed over completionists quite as much — retroactively awarding xp, for example, or allowing us to get xp by crafting recipes already in our list (once, of course).

But that assumes they have the resources to devote to compensating the completionist minority. Perhaps we weren’t worth it. Fair enough. In that case, they could have at least warned us in plenty of time that there was a possibility our exotic recipes would be removed. A couple of months of knowing not to waste money on temporary recipes would have been really helpful.

@Sykper.6583: Many of us did in fact make a significant net loss. I’m not sure about exotic weapons, since thankfully I hadn’t gotten round to discovering those yet, but I can tell you that it’s not uncommon for superior sigils to sell for as low as 3s, even though crafting them requires a T6 basic mat, a lodestone, and an ecto. If the lodestone in question is Charged, the net loss can be as high as 99%!

So no, our only investment was not time. It was gold.

fungihoujo.8476:

Except it is the same- your main concern is collecting, you have to do it again. Everyone else’s is gearing, and everyone else has to do it again. This ‘doing the same task all over again’ is something we’ve been doing all throughout mmo history- at least in this case, it benefits you because you get discovery xp all over again. I’d gladly give up my exotics if it meant getting progress towards my ascendeds when I pick them up again- but, it doesn’t work like that for us.

You make a pretty good point here, but there is a factor you’re not considering: gearers have had many months of warning that ascended weapons were coming, and magic find gearers, who didn’t get much warning, have been gifted the ability to transmute their MF gear to any other stat set for free. Meanwhile, crafting completionists have had no warning that their recipes would be removed, and no compensation for that removal.

So although we have all had our hard-earned setups disrupted by this update, crafting completionists have been hit the hardest. It’s not unreasonable for us to be upset that we aren’t getting the kind of warning/compensation that gearers are getting.

Duke Darkwood.4237:

Does this ALSO count for the Apothecary recipes which we received for free on our list – no item, but no discovery necessary? (I can’t remember if the same was done for GIver, or if items were involved in the learning.)

I’m pretty sure we’ll still be keeping those. ANet is only removing recipes that can be discovered for xp — so if it shows up for free on your list, it can’t be discovered for xp, and there’s no need for them to remove it.

Nike.2631:

I admit I’m now tempted to roll an Asuran Ranger who simply numbers their test subjects. Specimen 1, Specimen 2, Specimen 3… in the order I find them…

That’s similar to what I had originally planned for my pets! But sadly, numbers aren’t allowed, and I couldn’t think of a letter code system that didn’t look silly. I suppose roman numerals could work, though.

Edit, July 2016: See above.

Bears
Family: Ursus (real-life name of the common bear genus)
Species:

• Arctodus: Arctodus (real-life name of the extinct short-faced bear genus)
• Black Bear: Ascalonus (fake Latin for “Ascalonian”; in real life, black bears are named “Americanus”, but since America doesn’t exist in Tyria, I chose the next best thing)
• Brown Bear: Arctos (real-life species name of the brown bear) *
• Murellow: Morbidus (Latin for sickly, diseased)
• Polar Bear: Maritimus (real-life species name of the polar bear) *

Birds
Family: Aves (real-life name of the bird class)
Species:

• Eagle: Haliaeetus (real-life name of the eagle genus)
• Hawk: Accipitrina (real-life name of the hawk family)
• Owl: Strigida (real-life name of the owl family)
• Raven: Corax (real-life species name of the common raven)
• White Raven: Leucorax (derived from the ancient Greek words for “white” and “raven”)

Boars
Family: Sus (real-life name of the pig genus)
Species:

• Boar: Scrofa (real-life species name of the wild boar) *
• Pig: Domesticus (real-life species name of the domesticated pig) *
• Siamoth: Tapirus (real-life name of the tapir genus, which is what the GW2 siamoth is based on and was originally named for)
• Warthog: Phacochoerus (real-life name of the warthog genus)

Cats
Family: Felida (real-life name of the cat family)
Species:

• Lynx: Lynx (real-life species name of the common lynx)
• Jaguar: Onca (real-life species name of the jaguar)
• Jungle Stalker: Chaus (real-life species name of the jungle cat)
• Snow Leopard: Uncia (real-life species name of the snow leopard)

Devourers
Family: Scorpius (Latin for “scorpion”)
Species:

• Carrion Devourer: Carnivorus (derived from the Latin words for “flesh” and “devour”)
• Lashtail Devourer: Aculeus (Latin for “stinger”)
• Whiptail Devourer: Uropygi (real-life name of the whip scorpion order — incidentally, these are not true scorpions; but then, neither are devourers)

Dogs
Family: Canis (real-life name of the dog genus)
Species:

• Alpine Wolf: Alpinus (Latin for “alpine”)
• Fern Hound: Pteridophytus (real-life name for ferns)
• Hyena: Hyaenida (real-life name of the hyena family)
• Krytan Drakehound: Familiaris (real-life species name of the domesticated dog) *
• Wolf: Lupus (real-life species name of the grey wolf) *

Drakes
Family: Draconis (derived from the Latin word “draco”, which means “dragon” and is the same word from which “drake” is derived)
Species:

• Ice Drake: Arcticus (Latin for “of the arctic”)
• Marsh Drake: Crocodylus (real-life name of the crocodile genus)
• River Drake: Potamus (ancient Greek for “river”)
• Salamander: Salamandra (real-life species name of the fire salamander)
• Reef Drake: Tropicalis (Latin for “tropical”)

Fish
Note: this family does not exist in the game; the armor fish and shark each belong to their own unique families, but as they are both pretty unequivocally fish, it seemed easier to lump them together.
Family: Ichthys (ancient Greek for “fish”)
Species:

• Armor Fish: Placoderm (real-life name of the extinct class of plated fish)
• Shark: Lamnida (real-life name of the white shark family)

Jellyfish
Family: Medusozoa (real-life name of the jellyfish subphylum)
Species:

• Blue Jellyfish: Caeruleus (Latin for “blue”)
• Rainbow Jellyfish: Irideus (Latin for “rainbow-coloured”)
• Red Jellyfish: Rubeus (Latin for “red”)

Moas
Family: Dinornis (real-life name of the extinct giant moa genus)
Species:

• Black Moa: Piceus (Latin for “pitch-black”)
• Blue Moa: Caeruleus (Latin for “blue”)
• Pink Moa: Roseus (Latin for “pink”; sadly, the real-life species name for flamingos, “phoenicopterus”, was far too long to fit)
• Red Moa: Rubeus (Latin for “red”)
• White Moa: Albus (Latin for “white”)

Spiders
Family: Aranea (real-life name of the spider order)
Species:

• Black Widow: Latrodectus (real-life name of the black widow genus)
• Cave Spider: Troglodytes (ancient Greek for “cave-dweller”)
• Forest Spider: Sylvestris (Latin for “of the forest”)
• Jungle Spider: Phoneutria (real-life name of the Brazilian wandering spider genus — a spider that roams the jungle floor and actively attacks its prey using a deadly neurotoxin instead of waiting in its web like a slightly less terrifying spider would)

Edit, July 2016: since the recent update has (finally!) fixed the issue of pet names resetting when you equip a new pet, I’ve decided to update this list; both to include the new pets added with Heart of Thorns, and to fix the many, many errors. (So many errors.)

I won’t be updating the contents of this thread, however. To be honest, I’ll be surprised if anyone still reads it. Instead, I’ve posted the new version on my userspace on the official wiki, which I’m linking here on the off-chance anyone stumbles across this post:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Idris/Asuran_Pet_Names

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Greetings, Bookahs!

Being an asura, my ranger doesn’t have time for sentimental frivolities such as naming her pets; indeed, to her, they aren’t really “pets” so much as “test subjects”. However, it simply wouldn’t do for an asuran biologist to go around referring to her animals by their colloquial bookah names! What’s needed is a logical system of scientific classifications, and that’s exactly what we’re about to share with you.

And yes, I do have way too much time on my hands.

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Notes:
I’ve classified each pet in the same manner as the game does: that is, by family and then by species, so each name has the structure “[family] [species]”. These names are loosely based on real-life taxonomy; most families and species have been labelled after their closest real-life counterparts, or given an appropriate Latin or ancient Greek name where there is no real-life equivalent.

I’ve put a star * next to any animals whose full names are identical to the real thing (for example, I’ve named the wolf Canis Lupus, which is the real-life scientific classification for wolves).

Finally, I’ve researched these as thoroughly as I could, but my knowledge of both taxonomy and Latin/Greek is sketchy at best, so if I’ve made any mistakes, let me know!

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As far as I’m aware, it’s not possible to get a useable skin item back once you’ve applied it to a piece of gear. That said, it is possible to transmute it using a transmutation stone. This is straightforward enough if you want to use the skin on the same character, but a little more complicated if you want to give it to another character on your account. Here’s how that’s done:

1. Obtain a backpack SET (not a cover!) from the gemstore or the tp.
2. Use the set and it will drop a cover and a white back piece. You can get rid of the cover if you wish.
3. Transmute the skin onto the back piece. Since it is of white rarity, the resultant item will be account bound.

FYI: this white-rarity trick can be used with any soulbound gear, not just back items. Blue rarity also transmutes into account bound.

Updated OP with a link to Devik.9852’s Box o’ Fun video guide thread.

Kaz and Handin: thanks for the clarification on how the Box works. I’ve updated the OP accordingly.

ShunsuiKouKyoraku.9106:

Might want to add this as the 100% chance to win. Since regen from other sources is being stated as strategies, this one blows the others out of the water ( and may get nerfed )

If you have one of those Boxs of Fun from the Achievement point system rewards. Use it just before you start the Belcher Bluff with him. Make sure its set to only Change Appearance, ( doesn’t matter much but easier ). Then when you start the Belcher with him, just click the box to transform and watch your health instantly be refilled each time. Just make sure you re transform. Laugh as he dies slowly.
Win.

Good find, I’ll add it to the cheats section.

SingTheDeadSong.8957:

Your going to lose, but I see people on here stating that it’s taking them hours, and that sounds crazy to me.

It is pretty crazy, but that’s not necessarily the fault of those playing — it’s the fact that beating him relies so heavily on RNG that even perfect use of an excellent strategy can result in a long string of losses. It works both ways, though — my first character took hours and hours to beat Adnul, but my second character roflstomped him on the first try.

Grav.4790:

Can’t beat him. He always knows what i will use. Start with drink he will bluff, start with bluff he will belch. He will keep avoiding healing until i have to waste my belch. Then he will heal. Also ridiculous how he can drink like 20 times and i only 4 and he can have his skill 100% uptime. Doubt it it will be fixed. Bet the idea was to force players to buy health regen from shop.

Rejuvenation boosters can’t be bought from the gemstore.

It is possible to catch his heals. Just remember that you’re relying on RNG, so frustrating streaks will happen. And he won’t keep Critique up 100% anymore; that’s been nerfed, so now there’s always a gap of at least one skill between his uses.

I’ve noticed a few people reporting success with the following strategy by Quetz.4389 (original post), so I’m copying it here for reference.

Quetz.4389:

I tried a few different strategies and here’s what worked for me, this was pre any patch so it should still work.

- Pick Boast as your signature move
- Always bluff… if he interrupts it with a belch, belch back and drink water in that order.
- This should keep your own health from dropping as fast as his, with luck you’ll interrupt a heal or two and you’ll go into the next phase with a big advantage.
- Eventually he hits a threshold where he’ll start spamming his signature move.
- Use belch, drink water, drink in that priority unless you can get a bluff in.
- Once you get close to 3,000 or so health use boast.
- Try to time your abilities so you use belch at below 20% health to do a large amount of damage.

If he gets too many belches, or your losing health much faster than him just surrender and try again. It will take some luck but it’s possible and this strategy is simple enough that you can spam games until you get lucky.