Guild Wars 2

I am terribad at all jumping puzzles, and timed ones the worst. But I’d have to say that most of the advice given here is stuff I eventually — through lots of trial and error (and falling) — figured out as well.

First of all, try to set aside the frustration and treat each attempt as a learning experience. I also highly recommend checking out the videos — there are some great ones on dulfy.net, for instance.

Secondly, it’s what others here have said: Hold down that right mouse button and use that to turn your character as you’re moving along. It so happens that if you swing that camera, your char will jump in the direction it’s now pointing. HUGE time-saver over trying to use the keyboard, which means 95% of the time you will be using only two keys — forward and jump. (Occasionally you might need to do a backwards step if you’re not lined up just right, and possibly a strafe side-step to fine-tune…but honestly, I almost never needed those on a successful run.)

Once I stripped my controls down to just these — and using the mouse to control direction — all of a sudden the only reason I kept falling was when I made dumb mistakes, like aiming for the wrong snowflake or jumping too soon.

Sorry, I can’t quite agree because there are plenty of rewards available to encourage the growth of larger guilds over the tiny ones. And I say this as co-owner of a tiny two person guild — myself and my spouse. It took us a loooong time to earn enough points to get the guild vault others were probably enjoying the first week after launch.

Our second big push was to buy the guild armorer, and only just now are getting into producing banners now and then. But because we’re such a tiny guild, it’ll take us months to grow our vault any bigger, and even a banner purchase represents half an evening’s rep gain for us, so we don’t do them often.

We both know we don’t have the backing of a big guild to do some of the things we might like to do, such as group events or introductions to dungeons we’ve never played (which, for us, is nearly all of them). On the other hand, we definitely don’t want to join one of those “must represent 100%” guilds (we did work hard for that vault of ours), or ones that aren’t for casual players. Nor are we interested in recruiting anybody into our 2-person guild because we don’t want anyone to feel like we’re ignoring them. I have a feeling quite a few of the smallest guilds are the same way: Just friends and not interested in the politics of being in or running a large one.

I’ve even had the experience of running a fairly large-ish guild of around 150 members in another game. It was a TOTAL pain in the kitten and the day it began fracturing and breaking up, I was actually happy to see it happen. Eventually we ended up with a core group of about 20 and became a hassle-free guild all the way until the time when most of us left for good.

Speaking for me and my spouse, if creating guilds was really hard and expensive in GW2, we probably wouldn’t belong to one anyway. As it stands, ANet was good enough to allow for relatively easy guild creation AND for people to belong to multiple guilds across their accounts. That alone means I could imagine a day when one or the other of us goes ahead and joins another one, as long as they didn’t have any silly 100% represent rules.

I honestly believe that making guild creation expensive and difficult would result only in those mega-guilds existing and dominating the servers, and lots of resentful solo players. As it stands now, solo-ers and small groups can still get most of the perks, but it takes a whole lot longer.

For easiest/relaxing? I’d go with what the others here have said and suggest either Warrior or Ranger. For the latter…well, there’s a reason all the Ranger botters use bears as their pets: The bear is an absolute tank. My first L80 was a ranged-DPS Ranger (bow, throw traps), and I swap between bears according to which F2 skill I want. You’ll probably want longbow since I think it requires the least maneuvering to use effectively, plus there’s the rain of arrows attack, but others might feel differently. (I actually switched to shortbow because with a little maneuvering work, it can be very effective and fires much faster.) Take the piercing arrow trait and the trait to reduce your bow attack cool-downs by 20% and just mash those buttons.

However, I’d also add Guardian to that mix. After I finished with the Ranger, I cast about for which alt to focus on next, started a Guardian — that gal just does not die. “Oh, look, I have four enemies attacking me all at once. Excellent! Here comes two more — not a problem.” End of the fight, the loot-filled corpses are helpfully piled all around me. Weapon? Greatsword or hammer (I prefer GS). Keep a mace around and some offhand weapon you like for more defensive fights. A staff is also handy, especially in group DEs.

BTW, I also love playing my juggernaut/condition-damage flamethrower-wielding Asura Engineer (currently L65). It’s VERY relaxing to set things on fire, and now the flamethrower auto-attack stays set. In group situations, you can tag nearly everything.

Once nice thing about the Ancient Karka Shell is it has an unused upgrade slot, and unlike the flaming book from Halloween, you can actually put a level 80 elite gem in it.

Mine is now an “Ancient Karka Shell of the Explorer.”

Once nice thing about the Ancient Karka Shell is it has an unused upgrade slot, and unlike the flaming book from Halloween, you can actually put a level 80 elite gem in it.

Mine is now an “Ancient Karka Shell of the Explorer.”

I couldn’t see much reason to go back either (I’m sick to death of barrel-rolling karkas and “crap, there goes half my health” drakes) except for all those ridiculously easy-to-get-to mithril and cyprus nodes, plus the rich, unguarded rich orich node, plus a couple of ancient trees. And the fact I can send any character I have over level 60 to go get them because they’ll be boosted to 80 and thus be reasonably able to survive the place.

I was up on my server’s Harathi Highlands this past evening and saw at least a dozen identical bots running around with brown bears, tracing the same path over and over.

Hours later, even though I and many other people had reported them, they were still there. Sadly, I was informed those same bots had been there for not for hours, but for DAYS.

I’ve been in zones where I was pretty sure the honest players were outnumbered by bots. And it’s for darned sure that the whole game economy is being completely screwed up by the bots.

All I can say is I hope ANet gets a handle on them soon, because they are literally breaking the game.

Mostly, I just want an option I can select so I do NOT see commander icons on my maps, especially in the PvE zones.

Personally, I think much of the problems in the economy can be traced to the single worst thing going on: Unchecked botting.

I have literally seen a dozen or more identical characters running in circuits, reacting to nothing but attackable mobs. They’ve been reported, but they remain in-game for days at a time.

There are reasons why it is impossible to make any money providing resources or selling items on the TP — and it’s the bots.

They’re screwing up the gold/gem economy. The ‘fine’ items economy. And the resources economy. They’re breaking the game, because while some of us are trying to play honestly, they’re online 24/7 exploiting.

But seriously, ArenaNet: I walk into Harathi Highlands thinking to hunt some centaurs because I need cotton scraps for my tailor alt… and I see 15 almost identically named Ranger characters run by, all of them with brown bears, traveling in a synchronized circle. I report them, as have many others. I come back hours later and they are still there. I can come back a day or two later, and they are still there.

This is supposed to encourage me to play? In some zones, I strongly suspect the bots outnumber the actual players. Something has got to be done about them.

Personally, I’d like to see my name and a health bar so I can better track when I’m about to die. But more importantly, my main is a L44 Ranger and in tough fights I can never see how my pet’s health is doing because there’s so much junk in the way. I’d give anything to have a pet health indicator somewhere near my own, as well.

I’m sure Mesmers would feel similarly.