Guild Wars 2

Jugglemonkey.8741:

It’s always been that way; all instant cast abilities are usable while stunned, dazed or while dodging. The rifle turret toolbelt skill on engi and lightning flash on ele are other examples of instant cast abilities that work without being stunbreaks.

I’d never realised that. Thanks for the info!

Saw this in PvE. I have no idea what its status is in other environments, but would guess it’s the same.

I noticed today that on a low-level thief that, even when unable to use other skills (because, say, I’ve been knocked down by an attack, and everything is on cool-down), I’m still able to use “Steal”, and that the Shadowstep component still acts to move me around (which seems counter-intuitive). I’ve levelled a couple of thieves before, but never noticed it. Has it always been the case, or is this a bug?

There are a number of mini up-drafts that seem to spawn roughly together, over towards the left end of the waterfall as you face it, that together will take you high enough. I have the personal impression that they spawn in particular when the wyvern is defeated – although, clearly, that could just be randomness and limited samples. Either way, as onevstheworld hints, don’t rely on updrafts alone to finish the job – make sure that you have an artifact equipped, so that you can dash forward as soon as you get high enough. After that, it’s just down to patience. and keeping your eyes open.

(Edit: put another way, I don’t think there’s much you can do, other than what you are – but if you’ve been trying for an hour without success, that sounds somewhat odd. I can normally do it within 3-4 minutes.)

It took me four attempts just now to get the PS episode “Beneath the Waves” to admit that I’d found the captives, and pop the cinematic to progress to the step “Get the key to the captives’ cages”. I even had Carys standing right next to Tegwen’s cage – nothing.

Things that I noticed that were different between the attempt that worked, and the ones that didn’t:

In all of the failures, I died (pulled too many Krait), followed by Carys, and had to restart from a checkpoint.

In the failures, Eahult (caged Hylek) had a throw-away line when I got close; in the success, Larra (caged Asura) got a line as well.

Perversely, I had no trouble at all with the usual “bug” from the episode (being unable to find the cage unlocks).

Stuart.5940:

For people who need time conversions:
…
7am Australia (next day)

Useful post- thanks! Sorry to get picky, though, but… …correct time in Australia isn’t that simple. Australia has 5 standard time zones (plus others in its overseas dependencies). And, fortunately, it’s winter – because not all of the states and territories use DST, so things get even messier.

As far as I can make out, the main equivalent times for the test start (all on 1st September) are:

05:00 Australian Western Standard Time (AWST)
05:45 Australian Central Western Standard Time (ACWST)
06:30 Australian Central Standard Time (ACST)
07:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST)
07:30 Lord Howe Standard Time (LHST)

(And I get confused enough by BST…)

hugo.4705:

What is STRESS test?

Pushing the whole shebang to near-breaking point, basically.

When loads get exceptionally heavy, weird and wonderful things can sometimes happen. If you’re really lucky, the worst that happens is that things slow down a bit. You never are though. Arcane, baffling storage problems that no-one remotely anticipated suddenly pop out of the woodwork in droves. Mechanisms that normally work fine, suddenly hit practical limits that no-one even realised were there. Code things that have always happened in one order, suddenly start happening the other way around, and the code goes off down nightmare pathways it’s never been into before. And on, and on. If you’re a tester, it can be Christmas; if you’re a developer, it’s sometimes more like Halloween.

[Ex-professional tester here… 8-)]

Or – with PoF – are we going to have to find new ways of phrasing things on the forums, every time we want to precede “Amnoon” with a word that happens to end in a “d”? Like, ooo, just about any regular verb past tense, say?

Olkitten oon?
Respectekitten oon?
We all visitekitten oon…
Undervaluekitten oon?
Overpopulatekitten oon?
Restructurekitten oon?
Hackneyekitten oon?

Eloc Freidon.5692:

Very much like the situation the player base has had about your character knowing Mordremoth’s name back in LW2, who the heck is Livia?!

Unlike Mordremoth’s presence actually being mentioned in the game leading up to that moment of your character saying he’s awake, there is nothing about Livia. Absolutely no context for her at all at least not beyond a single line of dialogue hidden in the game not meant for players who are here to enjoy the story.

“You’re Livia?”

My character knows who the heck a Livia is? She was mentioned in the game before? This is the first time I’ve been absolutely confused about what was going on and the importance of a character.

The question isn’t about how Livia is alive.
The question is should I care who this person is.

Yes, it’s sloppy story-crafting. Sorry, but it’s not the first such aspect of the story lately that has felt like that. Someone needs to go on a writing course.

As others have explained, Livia is one of several NPCs you would have met if you’d played the original GW. Fine, she’s part of the Lore; you could, in theory, have read up on that, and in the process you’d have found out about her. But almost NO players are going to do that. So if you’re going to go for “OMG IT’S LIVIA!” as your big story reveal, good writing says you find an opportunity to remind even those players who HAD met her, that she existed and who she was. And that you do it in-story in this case, not as something that players may or may not trip over., depending on how they play the game.

Sure, the challenge is to do that without making it obvious foreshadowing – but you still have a duty to do it. Otherwise, it’s a bit like a who-dunnit writer getting to the penultimate page and revealing that “THE KILLER… …WAS… …that background guy who appeared in one sentence on page 10, and has never been mentioned or in any way hinted at since!” (Or, in this case, “that woman from a previous book in the series, that you may not even have read, who’s never even been hinted at in this one”.)

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

I created a thread about this very topic. Look it may not be the best option, but Blood can work in a pinch with power. Or just use the healer minion and minor minions, on a couple I spec’d more corruption and took swampland, worked fine for condi and that was with viper gear. Or as a last resort don’t use the ley-line organs then you’re minions will be fine except for flying area. Good luck.

I’m running around SL with no trouble on something along those lines (including minion elite). The essence effect is a nuisance if it procs at the wrong time, but mostly I haven’t found it much trouble so far. Basically, it just feels like it needs a slightly different cadence – plan to summon minions during fights rather than mostly ahead of them; stay in combat until the immediate area’s clear enough to give breathing space, so that the minions stay up while they’re needed; then let the essence proc, and if necessary take a few seconds to run down the clocks on the minion skills ahead of the next fight(s). Can’t really speak for how much damage I’m doing compared to other zones, but I’m taking out mobs OK, and my survivability still seems fine.

thewaterguy.4796:

OH that explains it, thanks!

It’s possible to wear down and defeat your self-doubt without talking to the illusions – there’s an achievement for it. I did it on a necro first time I hit the story, because, like you, it wasn’t obvious to me that I had to interact with them – I thought that they were just “colour”. But it was a long fight, and boring as heck.

mrstealth.6701:

I think one of the biggest failings in this episode was the crossover between raid and main stories. Anyone that didn’t play GW1 or know the raid stories isn’t going to have any clue what the Eye of Janthir is, and be missing some huge pieces of the Lazarus story.

This is an important, but subtly different, point – what story points current players learn (in that not everyone plays every part of the game – I don’t, and probably never will, raid, for example). “Story” should be STORY – not something you stumble over because you happen to do something else. And it shouldn’t (to pick an example out of the air) hark back at random to something fairly minor from another game 10 years ago (I’m looking at you, Livia) without being darn sure to hit you repeatedly with a great big clue-bat.

Thanks, guys. Both correct, I think! I’ve popped in and out of zones testing it, and it fits the “zone loaded” scenario. I never even considered that it might only apply to out-of-focus windows. More importantly, I can stop worrying that it’s trying to tell me something may have problems. Much appreciated.

My GW2 icon under Win 10 sometimes glows orange. Can anyone help me understand what’s going on, please?

Most days, for a short while, I run two copies of GW2 (two accounts; separate game copies on my drives) on my Win 10 machine. I have noticed of late that the background of one, and sometimes both, of the game icons on my Taskbar will sometimes turn orange. This is not the colour I see when the window has focus, and happens whether the window has focus or not.

I haven’t noticed other program icon showing the same behaviour, and I know that the icon backgrounds can now be actively modified by software, so I’m guessing that GW2 is trying to tell me something – but I have no idea what. It seems to happen in particular when I enter a new area – Heart of the Mists is particularly prone to it – so I’m guessing it’s got something to do with resources.

I first noticed it after installing CoreTemp v1.9, which is displaying my CPU temperature as a coloured bar within the taskbar icon – so it’s quite possible I’m only noticing the GW2 icons now because I’m paying more attention to my taskbar than I used to.

Any help in understanding what I’m seeing would be gratefully received.

theoneparttwo.9561:

Personal Story for human (unknown parents) reveals the white mantle still exist and provides basic lore.

Speaking with Shining Blade NPCs / Countess Anise also reveals some lore.

Not sure, but I think there may be interactable objects in Durmand Priory that concerns Mursaat and White Mantle.

And of course the season 3 storyline provides more than enough for a basic grounding if you pay attention

Not remotely enough. New players need to be spoon-fed enough background to bring them up to speed. Every time one of them hits a basic LW plot point that doesn’t make sense to them, from the point of GW2 as a commercial product that’s a fail, pure and simple.

Ider.1276:

All the introductions and expositions relevant to the main plot should be available in the game itself, not in an spin-off comic book or wiki.

Basically, this. The problem (and its solution) goes back more than a century. LW is, at heart, serialising a long story in short episodes. And every medium to date that has done the same – magazine, Saturday movie serial, TV (and doubtless others) – has arrived sooner or later at the same conclusion – the need to provide, within the experience itself, some form of regularly-updated summary of The Story So Far (“New readers start here:”; “In last week’s thrilling episode…”; “Previously on…” and so forth). Obliging paying customers to do the dog work themselves or go without is NOT a substitute.

One possible challenge, of course, is that ANet would really like new players to dig into their pockets and shell out real money for LW Season 2 (and, soon, Season 3). And I can see how that might make them reluctant to make it too easy for new players to trip over spoilers that might make them less inclined to fork out for that back material. But, frankly, it can’t be beyond the wit of man to find a sensible compromise – and if not doing so means that current LW is too incomprehensible, sooner or later those same players are going to start taking one look and deciding it’s not worth paying for more of the same anyway.

Yeah, “Lazurus” alone was likely a big enough WTF if you hadn’t played GW and met the Mursaat. Then the “aspects” bit – one short speech from Taimi. Snooze, and forever stay confused. And after all the trekking around and being such a big thing, Aurene seems to have ended up as nothing more than an opportunity to pop “Lazarus” up again before the big reveal, and has just dropped out of the picture to no obvious point. And, hey, for months the dragons were such a big deal, then one LW episode and they’re all a big “Meh”. (“ARRGH! Doom and destruction! We’re going to destroy the world! Oh, wait… …we didn’t. And, hey, look – the dragon problem’s gone away.” A literal deus ex machina.) And, yes, I haven’t the foggiest where the “eye-of-whatever” came from, either (and I’ve played the story on multiple characters and accounts). As for a couple of the friends I play with once a week, two of whom rarely step into game apart from then – my own understanding is crystal clear compared to theirs. They have absolutely NO idea what’s going on at all, and frankly I’m not surprised – they don’t stand a chance. It’s gotten WAY too convoluted, contrived, and woolly.

Don’t get me wrong – I think that the basic LW concept is great as a way to keep an ageing game fresh – far better than only giving people new bits of map to go to and do more of the same. But it needs a coherent story plotted way ahead, that doesn’t just drop major threads with no more than a whimper because they’re “done with” and it’s time to move on to the next one.

(It will be great if those threads all prove to be not so done with after all, and come together in something epic – but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve played enough RPGs in my time to recognise the feel when a GM has run out of steam and wants to move on, and right now the old parts of LW feel a bit like that.)

After I’d “killed” my “self doubt” (without interacting with the spirits, so getting “Fearless”), it was still running around attacking me (but I couldn’t fight back) – not sure if that’s normal or not. But when I then spoke to the examplar, and moved to the Oath scene – nothing. I’m standing there, can’t move, nothing I can interact with, and nothing I can do progresses the scene. I have a speech bubble mouse icon for Anise, but it doesn’t do anything.

allart.3746:

I’m a very very casual player. I’m not an active guild member, I’m not interested in obtaining legendary weapons and I don’t like grinding. I don’t like hard core, organised group PvE. I liked the original guild wars philosopy that you don’t have to grind in order to enjoy the game. But now to unlock elite specializations, which is a content I paid for when I bought this expansion, I’m forced to farm those kittenty hero points which means either I farm them in the original pre expansion maps, or I try to get the ones in the expansions maps which are too difficoult for me and require help from other players which I don’t have! Too much effort required to obtain something everyone should be able to access!

I doubtless play more hours than you, but otherwise all of that describes me as well. And I really don’t see the problem. What you’re saying, if I get your drift, is that ANet should have just given us everything straight out of the box, rather than giving us things to do. But filling out the elite specs is totally consistent with the base game – it’s part of HoT character progression, just as populating other specs is part of levelling in the base. And despite your “too difficult for me” comment, it’s not as though ANet have actually made it hard – you not only get 10 HP per challenge, but there’s absolutely no way that you need your elite spec to take part in HoT maps. A sensible base-game L80 spec and sub-optimal gear is fine (I’ve fully-unlocked the elite spec on 40 characters so far, of all professions, so I have plenty of familiarity with the experience, and what’s actually needed – and there’s no way I’m going to invest in top-of-the-line gear for all of those!). It normally takes me no more than 60-90 minutes to fill out the elite spec on a new L80, which I always do on principle, even if I don’t expect or plan to ever use it. That’s once I’ve navigated the pain that is the first two HoT story episodes, mind, to actually get into VB – but even there, it’s not actually all that hard, and I have it down to an art by now. As for HPs, knowing where the points are, and which ones are trivially easy to solo (and there are plenty of those!) helps, of course – as does having some of the HoT masteries – but, then, I learned that and gained those by actually playing through the HoT story content. And even the trickier of the early HoT HPs are regularly done by people doing exactly what you’re trying to do – if you keep an eye on chat, and learn where things are, it’s not exactly hard to just go join in and pick them up.

CptAurellian.9537:

However, mesmers pay for those capabilities by being uniquely bad at damage. The illusion mechanics are a severe restriction in almost all cases and your own attacks cannot compensate for that, so leveling or doing other stuff solo in PvE is a pain. At least it was when I leveled my mesmer and much later played her through the HoT story, but since the mechanics are still the same, there’s likely no difference.

So if you want to be good on your own, I’ll recommend the guardian. With a proper build, it packs quite a punch while survivability still is rather good compared to, say, an elementalist.

Weird. Maybe it’s my builds, or my play style, but I’ve levelled multiple mesmers, and I find it the other way around – even when they’re not in vogue or by no means meta, GS/shatter/power builds have always been a solid, and enjoyable, fall-back for levelling. Whereas my guardians can usually take the damage, but rarely dish it, and are just a grind.

(I’ve 43 characters over 2 accounts; I’m working towards filling the matrix of race/profession combinations. 4 left to go – I acquired a couple of extra mesmers along the line, for purely pragmatic reasons. Some were power-levelled to fill a need, and 4 aren’t 80 yet, but the majority I did the hard way, and I usually look to see what sorts of builds people are currently using, and give them as much of a try as the constraints of levelling allow. So I’m no expert on squeezing the last out of a profession – but I know what I find enjoyable, and at least it’s fair to say that, if I’m not enamoured of a profession, it’s not for want of trying 8-) )

Really difficult to say, tbh. Depends both on your play style and what you’re going to actually be doing. If I were going to be running around solo in PvE a lot, I’d probably pick Mesmer over Guardian simply because I’d enjoy it more myself. Guardian right now seems just plain hard work solo (I’ve been levelling one for the last few weeks, as it happens; mid 70s now, but I can’t say I’m enjoying it that much); on the other hand, when I get together with a group of 3 friends for fractals, a L80 Guardian I already have both keeps me busy and seems to make a big difference to the party (and for mob farming when you’re zerging with others, staff Guardian still seems hard to beat). In fractals, my Mesmers are rather more “squishy” – but I almost always enjoy playing them, whatever I’m doing; lots of opportunities to be creative. But then again, a friend who really likes Elementalist (which I’m so-so on) took a long time to get into the Mesmer at all, and still isn’t greatly enamoured of it. To each his own.

Bottom line, I doubt anyone can really tell you accurately which YOU’ll prefer. As Cyninja said, though – the HoT booster is really useful for taking unfamiliar professions for a test drive (about the only real use for it, in my opinion, in fact).

One thing I’d say, though: do a little prep. In particular, you’re unlikely to fully enjoy the Mesmer if you don’t understand the profession mechanism, and it’s not the most intuitive at first. But there are a number of videos out there that do a good job of explaining the profession (this one might be quite helpful, for example; watch the whole thing if it grabs you, by all means, but just the first 7 minutes or so will at least give you the basics of Mesmer illusions). Even if you then decide you don’t fancy the profession, at least you’ll be making the decision from a position of knowing what it’s about.

Takashiro.8701:

Topics like these appear every few weeks, so I’ll just quote myself here.

Takashiro.8701:

I hope not, tbh. While i’m not generally against new races, i think this would be an effort barely worth it. They would have to put an insane amount of ressources and effort into creating a race that the minority of people would play, which otherwise could’ve been used on new content that’d be beneficial to everyone.

I’d have to agree with your take. However much a new race may appeal to some, unless it comes as part of a whole new pile of zones and content, it’s a poor use of resources. I simply don’t see how putting in all that work, effectively just so that a modest percentage of players can briefly be happy that they’re running around looking slightly different (and others moan about what a lousy job it was and how the clipping’s all kittened-up), would add more than the tiniest blip to Anet’s income stream. (and, lest anyone forget, that’s the driving force in matters of this kind). Or why it would attract new players, or keep the attention of the more jaded among us for more than a few days. It would be the MMO equivalent of the expensive toy your grandparents bought you when you were a kid, that you sort-of played with for 20 minutes, then chucked in the toy-box and never touched again. No – far, far better to put the investment into content that a much bigger portion of the community will want to explore.

Another (long shot) possibility. There are a couple of points where, even though you feel like you’re in the open world, you’re in a special copy of the zone copy reserved for players doing particular portions of their story. But, confusingly, you may well be able to see the relative position of players you’re partied with, who’re in the normal version of the zone – I’m pretty sure I’ve experienced that at least once (Edit: or possibly not. Just tried it with a new character, and neither has a location dot for the other.) If that’s the case for one of you but not the other, you simply won’t be able to join up (or not in that zone, anyway) until you’re done.

One obvious place this happens is the very first zone your new character first emerges into (Queensdale, Caledon Forest and so on), for the steps of your first story episode. You’ll quite likely see other new player characters running around along side you, but what you won’t see there are higher-level ones. I think that you stay in that version of the zone until the end of your first episode, but I can’t swear to it. (edit: No, you don’t. The human storyline moves you into the normal zone before the final cut scene of your introductory story step, just before you level up; I assume the other races will be the same.) . And another case is when you first start the HoT story-line – the Silverwastes in “Prologue: Rally to Maguuma” isn’t unique to you, but it IS specific to characters running that portion of the story. In both cases part of the map is hatched out, but if you were new to the game you might not notice that (or give it any thought if you did). And it’s possible there are others that I’ve not noticed, or forgotten.

(The stinger on “Prologue”: If you want to go into Verdant Brink together to do the next step, “Torn from the Sky” , and only one of you is in the “Prologue” copy, DON’T use the story marker star in the copy once you’ve completed “Prologue”. WP back to Camp Resolve – which is actually outside the copy, so will trigger a “Do you want to…?” Message. Then get your team together, run across to the story marker again, and use THAT one.)

Sarah.8354:

Remove the adventure from collection. Is impossible complete specialization collection. Create collection dedicated to adventure e remove from other collection.

Hear, hear.

As someone else, more or less, said – I’m playing an MMO because that’s the type of game I want to play. And, that being the case, it can be as frustrating as… …kitten… to have things I’m likely to want to do as part of that MMO, like doing specialisation collections to get a profession-specific weapon, blocked by some arbitrary, skill-based mini-game that has nothing whatsoever to do with the game I bought, and that I happen to suck at.

I have no problem with the mini-games being there – like, e..g., SAB, I can do them or not as I feel (mostly “not”, as it turns out). Some of them were even fun, once or twice. I don’t even have problems if they give incidental rewards that I’ll probably never get. But frankly I begrudge their presence as part of the single route to things that feel like main content.

Sarpan.9074:

I’ve done this a couple of times. When she spawns, I just run and light the torches at the base of the trees in order. You don’t have to stay close to her at all. In fact, I get to the gate and sit waiting for the few minutes she takes to stroll along. If the torches are lit, she’ll make it. Take time before the event to find all of the torches so you’re not searching when she gets there or she’ll poof. Wait until she spawns though before lighting any because they do go out.

I wonder whether this hasn’t changed? I did it within the last two days, and was the (solo) guy with the torch. I mostly stayed maybe a body-length or two in front of her, spamming attack with it and clicking on every tree I could find as I went along, desperately looking for something to light. It’s possible that I was both plain lucky and downright unobservant, but I never saw graphics of anything I could light, nor noticed anything that I lit by accident. And I certainly didn’t notice the torch graphics from that Youtube video (although I was probably looking ahead pretty much all of the time, not backwards). The gate still opened, though.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

What about open world events, where sometimes damage can be outright unavoidable? Where dodging one attack only means you’ll land on another AoE?

I run almost entirely PvE stuff, solo, and quite often in gear on or close to the meta – which means lots of ‘zerker, usually with just a bit of Soldier’s thrown in on trinkets. It doesn’t give me any trouble. I don’t really recognise this description of open world events, though. There can be plenty of near-unavoidable overlap for less powerful attacks, sure, but not when it comes to the really big stuff.

Left hand on WSAD keys; right on mouse; double-tap to dodge (never “V”). You have keys to take you in the 4 cardinal directions relative to your facing, and can tweak your mouse to fine-tune your facing almost instantly. If you really can’t see somewhere safe to dodge to when the damage circles pop, most times you’re not paying enough attention; if you see it but can’t get there, you simply need more practice.

aerial.7021:

Why do you all call is zerk ? When it starts with a B… Berserker’s I remember it being really confusing when I first started as to what on earth people where walking about as it didn’t match anything on wiki.

Berserker – ‘zerker -> zerk (as I’m sure you know by now). And when it comes to frequent use, monosyllables normally win out over polysyllables.

But honestly? Frankly, the real answer to all such questions is always, “Because.”

“Because” that’s one of the things that people call it, and no-one cares what it starts with. If you don’t like the term, don’t use it. You think it should be something else, start calling it that instead. If your version is better, and you play and post enough, it may catch on. Otherwise, just get used to the idea that you’re merely one tiny part of a much bigger community, that every community that you may join has its own jargon, whether you as an individual happen to like it or not, and that – frankly – it’s mostly simply up to you to learn it.

ArchonWing.9480:

As a side note, do people really do open world without a speed boost? I could never do that myself.

Quite often. I have a lot of characters and a limited number of skill slots each. And remembering to get a buff every time simply doesn’t happen. And, tbh, mostly I barely notice.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

The final jump is too far without a speed boost.

The final jump most definitely does not require a speed boost – I did it multiple times without one before my first failure, then failed about 5 times in a row before succeeding again. It’s a tricky jump, but not impossible, and a speed buff simply makes it easier. It may require basic gliding as an alternative, however.

Taberis.8341:

Are the “character slot expansions” bought from the gem store applied automatically after purchase?

You don’t need to do anything. Any extra slots will be on your character screen when you next visit it. (That’s always been the way it’s worked – and I bought a few more myself either yesterday or the day before, as it happens, so I can confirm that nothing had changed.)

wackyratt.3517:

This happened to me and my bf when we wanted to play the story instance together. The only way we found to do it as a party when 1 person has already done it is:

1. Player who has just finished Rally to Maguuma prologue waypoints out of the instance. (logging out doesn’t work, it puts you back into the prologue instance)
2. Both players meet at the entrance to Verdant Brink from the normal Silverwastes, not the prologue instance. Then you can begin the chapter together as normal.

Thanks for that. My friends and I did something similar when one of us got bugged around that point once (I don’t remember the fine detail). I’ve been levelling a character for the last week or so with the intent of checking it out. I’ll give it a go as soon as she’s high-enough level to do the episode.

Edit: Yes, simply doing anything that gets you out of the special PS version of Silverwastes seems to be the answer. Just now I merely went to the Camp Resolve WP as shown on the main “Prelude to Maguuma” map; when the screen cleared again I was back in Silverwastes proper. I ran back to the story star and was able to pull in another, partied character who’d already completed the episode. Frustrating to have to do the run again, but pretty trivial.

I’m fairly sure that this is new. I’m playing through my PS on a new character (latest of many), and I’m repeatedly seeing NPCs who are supposed to be assisting me or taking part in the story just standing around during combat instead of fighting. They seem to join combat when personally attacked – but until then they might as well not be there. “Nothing to do with me, Squire…”

I first noticed it for sure with Trahearne during The Battle of Claw Island (although I’m fairly sure it had happened before that point). In the final courtyard defence, where I remember him as always being an active combatant, he simply stood there doing nothing throughout. I’ve just played Retribution, and at one point (as “we” were supposed to be recapturing the walls) I was in the middle of a group of 8 or 9 “accompanying” NPCs (including Fibbhar Ygosson), all just standing admiring the scenery while I fought a veteran on my own. It wasn’t until the mob used an AoE that my so-called “companions” actually deigned to get involved. And I’ve seen it a number of times between the two episodes, so I strongly suspect it’s a generic bug rather than a specific one.

Doam.8305:

It get worst you need a mastery the new one and the last thing I feel like doing when they introduce new content is doing old content some more to get exp to get the mastery to get into the new content.

You DON’T need the mastery to actually get into the zone. Just follow the story and do as you’re told. The mastery gives you access to the Koda’s Flame skills.

I’m really hoping there’s a simpler way to get my alts into the new zone than running through that first story. It was fun the first time (apart from Aurene bugging once during the penultimate part of the story), but I suspect that something that long is going to get very old, very quick.

iced cooly.5794:

You have to stand on the generator for some reason. Just stay stood on it and whack the oozes while aurene does whatever it does.

That was precisely how I managed to bug my first attempt; she followed me. And you mustn’t pull Aurene onto the top of a generator.

I found that working my way slowly towards it, killing the oozes behind me until I was within sight of it (at which point I halted), worked best; that way, Aurene was always attacking targets away from the generator until there were none left, at which point she consistently spotted and attacked it.

OK, this has come up twice for me with friends in the last week.

Is there any way to play through “Torn from the Sky” as a party, when some of the characters have completed it and others haven’t, so that the less-developed character gets story progression (and access to Verdant Brink) as normal?

The problem is that the story nominally starts in Silverwastes – but actually, the first time you do it (only), it starts in the special “Prelude to Maguuma” copy of the map. And you can’t, as far as I can see, replay the “Prelude to Maguuma” story. Result – we’re in different maps, and whoever triggers it, the other doesn’t get invited in.

Really p*ssed off by this. The description of this achievement – and in particular what it means by “unique” – is rubbish. In my book pieces of, e.g., light and medium chest armour are NOT the same thing. What the achievement actually means is, “unique ignoring armor weight”.

(I wouldn’t be so annoyed if I weren’t exactly one achievement point short of completion, and hadn’t just spent 30 minutes, plus gold I’d prefer to have used for other things, chasing down all of the tier 1 armours to get it – 90 unique pieces as any reasonable English-speaker would understand the word, but only 30 as far as the game is concerned.)

Shoockwave.3950:

Is not solved! The problem remains and has several staff reporting the error on facebook GW2!

For some people (including me), running a repair fixed the problem.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/28148006-Repairing-the-Game-Client

If it is, no-one’s saying.

mauried.5608:

Still kicking.
For ppl who get kicked, when you log back in , are you in the same place as when you got kicked?
I seem to be in random locations every time.

I’m mostly wherever I was when I previously logged in (which can be another zone entirely). Although once I was back at the DR portal in Ebonhawke, which is where I entered the zone the first time, but which I hadn’t been back to since. And, yes, I lose any progress I make between logging in and the DC. I can save progress by logging out – but doing that every couple of minutes isn’t really a viable way to play the game.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Devs are working on it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/fields-of-ruin-disconnect-issue/first#post6301041

Good luck.

Thanks for that – until you posted that, I genuinely thought I was on my own. Although before I gave up in frustration last night (shortly before the servers went down for the emergency first-aid) I saw the problem in at least one other zone as well, Bloodstone Fen, on a different character.

I’ve been seeing this. I also had what seemed to be the same problem on a character in Bloodstone Fen.

This started immediately after the patch last night, but before the server roll-back. Until I logged out to take the patch, my game was rock-solid.

I’m unable to play for more than a couple of minutes before I’m dropped back to the character select screen with a putative “lost connection with the server” error. When I log back in, my character is back where they were when I previously logged in*, and any progress I made in between is lost.

(E.g. I just logged a character who had been in Brisbane Wildlands before the patch that accompanied the server rollback. WP’d to Ebonhawk. Ran down to the Fallen Angels Hero Point in the SW of the city, where the fight was already in progress (got the Fallen Angels WP on the way). Joined in, and got the HP. Trained up another skill. DC’d. Logged back in; I’m back in Brisbane Wildlands, my skill is untrained, the HP in Fields of Ruin is still showing as uncompleted. and I don’t have the WP.)

The error code I’m actually seeing is the generic 7:11:3:191:10 – but, given the way my character’s being rolled back every time, it’s hard to see that a simple network drop is what’s actually happening.

Any help would be appreciated, as right now I’m effectively unable to play.

*The very first time this happened, that wasn’t strictly the case. I can’t remember with confidence where I’d been when I logged in that time – could have been elsewhere in Fields of Ruin, could have been Brisbane Wildlands – but I was in Ebonhawk when the very first DC happened, and when I logged my character back in, I found myself right by the portal from Divinity’s Reach. OK, that’s certainly how I first entered the zone, and not all that long previously either – but that’s definitely NOT where my character had been at the start of the session, nor had I been near it. Plus I’d done a few things around Ebonhawk that were still showing as complete (some POIs, the central Renown Heart and so on).

Same problem. And, yes, repairing seems to have solved it.

Wow. Getting this all the time since the latest patch. If I manage to stay in game longer than a couple of minutes, I’m doing well.

Regev.6971:

It’s awesome when you use all 9 maximum character slots per server to create a character of each profession, and assign a different craft to each of them (there are 9 total).

However, if you already assigned a second craft to one or more of your characters, it is impossible to unlearn! This is extremely annoying when you try to hover above each on the character selection slot when you need to craft something and log-in with a specific char.

Easy, if a little messy.

I have 3 characters: Able, Baker, Charlie. Each is my primary crafter for one craft. When I hover, I see the following:

Able: Cooking, Jewellery
Baker: Cooking
Charlie: Armorsmithing, Cooking

Who is my primary for what?

Edit: There may even be a “best” craft to pick in place of Cooking in the above, depending on how the code works., so that the extraneous craft is always displayed second. I’ll roll a level 1 when I have a few spare minutes, take a look, and update this.

Edit 2: OK, it was an idea, but it only works in terms of the displayed “current craft” icons, not the hover text. Once you’ve increased your skill past 0, the craft always shows in the hover text. So you could still, e.g., simply set everyone’s unwanted second craft to Armorsmith, and just look for the icon for the craft you actually want.

(There does seem to be a consistent sequence, though; hover text displays in the order Armorsmith, Chef, Artificer, Huntsman, Jeweller, Leatherworker, Tailor, Weaponsmith. No idea where Scribe comes; I don’t have access to it, but I guess on one end). Icons left to right for the currently active craft follow the same sequence reversed; so, e.g., Chef will always be left of Armorsmith, but right of the others.)

DeanBB.4268:

Or you could, you know, write it down on a piece of paper. A sticky note stuck to the monitor? I have way more characters than nine, so made a spreadsheet that I update occasionally and print out, scribble on, then update the spreadsheet and start over.

Spreadsheet, definitely. Massively powerful. And a second screen, so that you don’t feel that you have to keep printing and scribbling.

I have one spreadsheet for GW2 with all sorts of things on it that I want to keep track of, and to check from time to time. Character professions and levels; which ones have finished their HoT elites; story steps (PS, HoT and LW, current and completed**); birthdays; crafting skills; approximate area completion; roughly what their armour and build is; even trivia like what answers they gave at character creation, and which Tyrian Order they joined. I have 37 characters spread over 2 accounts at present, and I play regularly with RL friends who are only casual players; knowing reasonably closely which character has done what is very useful when we’re discussing what to do in a session, therefore.

**Completed steps because, whilst I do it less than I used to, I enjoy levelling new characters from time to time, and exploring content. When the PS offers me a choice, it’s nice to know which branches I’m least familiar with..

I also have sheets within the file showing me things like the approximate break-evens on some types of item salvaging; MF costs and progress; recipes for time-gated materials. And from a time when I was using it to generate cash, one I can plug the current cost of basic crafting mats into, plus the current TP prices of a selection of finished goods, that will tell me what the approximate likely returns would be. At the time I needed it, that sheet handsomely repaid the time taken to write it. Anything I want to remember for a while, or research, just goes on another sheet.

LinhZeri.6412:

that cool sound is gone from it already… can never have nice things… “bug” lol right how you bug in a sound. Doubt it will ever get a dye that would be too much of a draw. shame

If it had been universally well-received, I suspect it’s possible that it would have been left in – but, from comments I saw in chat, some people were also finding that sound seriously annoying. Given that it was never intended, it’s hardly surprising that ANet fixed it, therefore.

Bellatrixa.3546:

And I bet they’ll now complain they’re bored with nothing to do ;)

Let’s be real – I’ve been trying to do this, and frankly I’m bored as anything. I’ve been standing around in various maps for hours, and so far I’ve seen precisely one boss – and that died before I could get to it.

I get the strong impression that the spawns are:
One spawn, per boss, per rotation, per zone, per IP.

Which is maybe just about OK if you can get to the right map right up front, but hopeless otherwise. Miss the spawn, there’s no indication. T.b.h. it’s the sort of thing that makes me want to leave all the pain of working out what’s happening to other people, and go do it myself after a few days, once it’s crystal clear what’s going on. Whereas I OUGHT to be fascinated and stimulated to discover that for myself. Sadly, that’s not happening; I’m just peeved at wasting my limited playing time.

Edit: Just saw and actually got to another boss. By virtue of being in a suitable map within a minute or so of the device mini popping. After that – just lots of frustrated players asking whether or not it’s dead yet. Not really what you need from your player base.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Guys,

Please don’t put up the names of RMT companies in our forums. As one member pointed out, you’re essentially spreading the word of their business, inadvertently “advertising” for them.

Yes, sorry about that. That was incautious and bad judgement.

I always block and report. But that’s after the event, and my perception is that the same URLs simply keep on coming.

I’m no use. I’m slowly filling out a matrix across 2 accounts of all races and all professions. I’m down to 10 missing combinations. I have a surplus of 2 human mesmers beyond that – but they were both created human (and mesmer) for specific reasons.