Guild Wars 2

I prefer this format compared to the new one

Right there with Blaeys in hoping we see more guild content in the future. CH and CV do weekly guild missions, but no new puzzles, challenges, races, and not to mention no new rewards for doing them after this many years makes it harder and harder to be motivated to continue doing them.

Are there groups that actively run this JP any longer? I need to reach a location near the top for a legendary collection.

I spent a few hours trying to reach it on my own with my mesmer and placing portals along the way to recover from missed jumps. I got as far as an upper spinning gear launcher, but after multiple tries, I still could not manage to aim it correctly and eventually fell to my death, wiping out all the progress.

The place was mostly a ghost town and during subsequent visits I haven’t found anyone there that could help provide a port or act as a teleport to friend target. I was hoping it might come up as a daily JP and get some mesmers offering portals, but I haven’t seen it come up as a daily.

Thanks for the update. I created a 2nd demo character and ran it through the intro, and now both characters have access to their mounts.

Would be nice to get an update from the devs on this. If the bug is tied to daily reset, then all new demo characters created since last reset are likely to encounter this at today’s reset, and that might be a much larger pool of players than yesterday.

Sounds like you hit this bug:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Daily-reset-wiped-mount-and-previous-mastery/first#post6690041

Did not remap keys. The issue seems tied to daily reset wiping progress, which includes the first story where you get the mount

Lady Lozza.9670:

I have very little difficulty with the turning, honestly it feels much like riding a horse but then I ride horses and I guess most people do not.

I’ve got years of experience riding a horse, and I understand that aspect of the movement.
That’s not the problem. Rather, it’s way the mount seems to get stuck on turns, or can’t pivots sometimes, and it has a hard time turning at all in some spots. It might be related to the terrain issue, and may just be another aspect of it.

It looks like some of my Crystal Oasis achievements were also wiped at daily reset:
- Bleached Bones
- Lost Lore of Crystal Oasis
- Crystal Oasis Champion Bounties
- Dune Rider (not surprising since the mount is lost)

OriOri.8724:

Kalendraf.9521:

The mount seems clunky to me.
- Gets caught on the terrain a lot
- Tends to be overly difficult to turn or pivot
- Jumps are hard to time for me. Either I jump way too soon and don’t cross the gap, or I end up waiting too long and don’t get off the jump. There also seems to be a bug where the jump simply doesn’t activate at all sometimes.
- The opening strike thing (even with mastery 1 & 2 unlocked) doesn’t seem very useful.

The jumping part will just take practice.

But about the opening strike, its intentional that its not very good, ANet doesn’t want us fighting from mounts. Its literally just a way to get that tiny bit of extra damage while you are dismounting, other than that its honestly just a dismount.

I’m sure it will be easier with practice. Also easier with the more advanced mastery that increases jump distance, I suspect.

However, the biggest issue I have right now is the terrain stopping, which is why I mentioned it first. I’ve seen the mount get stuck on terrain, that my toon can walk over without getting hungup. I’ve seen it on open ground, minor inclines and smooth ramps. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason why the mount gets stuck, but it’s really annoying. Each time, the mount comes to a standstill and then I need to restart movement to get it going again. I assume that’s not intended behavior or a L2P issue.

The heart where you train raptors or get food for them also seems to be broken by this. I can kill crabs, but it won’t let me put the crab meat into the baskets, nor can I offer the food to the raptors.

With the daily reset, I found that all my obtained PoF mastery points were cleared and my mount ability is gone as well. Prior to the daily reset, I had obtained 3 mastery points, and trained up the 1st two mount skills.

I can recapture the mastery points, but it’s not clear how to regain the mount ability. It was unlocked during the intro story, but I there’s no green quest marker to retry that.

Per map discussion, other players had this happen as well. No one seems to know of a way to fix it.

I tried this several times, and usually messed up a throw due to the chef moving just as I was throwing an ingredient. However, on my final try, I finally managed to not miss with any of the throws, but I still ran out of time. WTH?

Seems like the timer needs to be raised to make this actually be achieveable. It would also help if the chef didn’t move, or the target radius was bumped up.

The mount seems clunky to me.
- Gets caught on the terrain a lot
- Tends to be overly difficult to turn or pivot
- Jumps are hard to time for me. Either I jump way too soon and don’t cross the gap, or I end up waiting too long and don’t get off the jump. There also seems to be a bug where the jump simply doesn’t activate at all sometimes.
- The opening strike thing (even with mastery 1 & 2 unlocked) doesn’t seem very useful.

I’m extremely happy to see that they finally yanked out the ToKs. Those were worthless drops for me. I’m ok with them removing the unid dyes as well, considering I don’t need any of those, and the items they’ve replaced these with are more useful to me. Each Mystic Forge Stone is effectively a free exotic weapon/armor for purpose of a mystic forge attempt. Meanwhile, the new Black Lion Booster is really nice since it stacks with both the celebration booster and exp booster, making it incredibly helpful for speeding up wvw ranks, and wvw/pvp reward tracks.

Path of (the) Forgotten

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Most players play about 4 hrs a day (which is generous)

Definitely not “most”

From the data on gw2efficiency…
50% of players play less than 1 hour 14 minutes per day.
Only ~30% of players play more than 2 hours per day
Only ~10% of players play more than 4 hours per day

Snowden Drifts was the daily event map yesterday, and I took the opportunity to do some of the leyline events there. All 3 I tried were completed successfully. I ended up focusing on the golemancers each time, and that seemed to make a big difference.

There’s an option setting to display inventory by individual bags, or as combined space.

Warrior used to be main, but I stopped playing it a long time ago due to so many nerfs. Lately, my only reason to play it has been for Daily PvP Profession Winner…

…but the recent update removed that too! As a result, I no longer have any reason to play warrior in this game.

Brigand.9502:

It also serves as a great way to bring victims to a specific part of the map so you can farm them as they try to get their dailies. ::thumbsup::

:D

It works both ways.

I’ll admit it’s enjoyable to be part of a group that takes a detour through the ruins and facestomps the griefers and gankers trying to feast off other players getting their dailies.

Djinn.9245:

Kalendraf.9521:

Maybe you don’t belong to a guild that runs guild missions?

I think this is the answer. I also don’t belong to a guild that does anything in Southsun. When I go there, if it is not a daily map (hardly ever), there is usually no one there doing anything.

Population on this map varies a lot depending on when you arrive.

During the Karka Queen event, which appears to be occur 6 times per day, there should be many players on the map. At times, there may be so many that it forms multiple map instances. In the 5+ minutes before she can spawn, many players will likely be working to clear the camps and then focusing on the final boss after she spawns. However, between the camp clearing and boss fight, most players are probably only there for about 10 minutes.

The guild crab race seems to come up pretty regularly in the mix of random Guild PvE missions, and when it does there seem to be a fair number of guilds that do it. Although ANet changed when the weekly Guild missions reset, many guilds have stuck to the original time of running guild missions around 7pm EDT on Saturday nights (aka guild mission night in some guilds). Once the race is started, anyone can participate, though you’ll only get guild commendations if you’re repping a guild that has the race active. All guilds seem to get the same mix of PvE missions (assuming they’ve prioritized those), so it’s rather common to find multiple guilds there at the same time we run our missions. On guild mission night, it’s common to see that week’s races get continuously activated and by different guilds for a good hour or more. Crab toss is arguably the hardest of the races, and it goes through areas where events spawn that usually need to be cleared to ensure successful completion of the race. As a result, you’ll often find people doing the Broodmother event or the Steampipe events to clear those areas. Some guilds may also do the wurm event, though you can bypass that area by taking an alternate path. If you happen to arrive while a race is active, you’ll often see players spread out along the path clearing events or some of other mobs like Reef Drakes or Reef Riders.

The Guild Bounty, Guild Challenge or Guild Trek can also lead to additional players on on the map during guild missions. Thus, depending on when you show up, you might find quite a few players in certain areas of this map.

Depending on when it is happening, it could just be players doing their dailies for monuments.

I tried a few of these in Snowden a few weeks ago, but the map was largely deserted. With only myself and 1 or 2 others coming to help out, we were unable to hold off the Inquest.

If the map comes up in the daily event rotation, I will try it again. Knowing that we need to focus on the golemancers should help next time too.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Convert your no longer played chars to mules. $10 for for as many inventory slots as each has for storage isn’t that bad. Put them on a chest or at a node spot for a daily harvest and you’ll get a few mats for a few silver a day too. You can go to WvW, your guild hall or sPvP if you need access to a merch to clean out the inventory.

This is what I would recommend as well. Mid-level alts /mules are great characters for parking at JP chests or mid-tier nodes for daily farming. Some JP chests have a chance at valuable items like doubloons, and the items obtained will be of similar level to the toon so they can be salvaged for mid-tier materials which tend to be valuable as well.

Not sure which class(es) your having trouble with, but I don’t have any issues with melee combat. In fact, I greatly prefer it most range combat, especially ranged attacks that require aiming or targetting.

In melee, you often do need to move to stay in range of the target, but that is easy enough to do with slight moves (WASD) during melee combat. Some melee weapons even have skills that help close gaps that may form. For example: warrior axe F1, warrior sword #2, guardian sword #2, guardian greatsword #3, ranger greatsword #3, reaper’s deathshroud #2, revenant sword #3, thief dagger #2, thief sword #2, thief F1, and so forth.

1. Queensdale – On most my level 80 characters, this was one of the first maps I completed, even the ones that weren’t human. The Shadow Behemoth is still an enjoyable world boss for me, as is the easy JP, Demongrub Pits.

2. Mount Maelstrom – The size and diversity is great. I love that you can climb to the top of the volcano and look down into it. It features 2 world bosses (Golem Mark II and Megadestroyer) and a meta for access to the dungeon. It also includes two JPs. It’s also one of the few maps where you can encounter Largos.

3. Diessa Plateau – Cattlepult! Meatoberfest! Some of the hearts and events on this map have a great sense of humor and are fun to do. There are 3 relatively easy Jumping Puzzles which make this map come back through the daily rotation rather frequently. One of the few places where you can fight a giant. Has meta event to enter the Flame Temple Tombs, which is a really cool mini-dungeon.

4. Timberline Falls – Nice looking scenery, and good diversity. Two relatively challenging JPs (for me at least). Seems like it could use a world boss or something else to help bring more people here. The Legendary Ley-line Anomaly is an attempt to do that, I guess.

5. Wayfarer Foothills. The 2nd best starter map after QD. Nice scenery with transition to snowcover in middle area map. Features a popular world boss (with meta events), and another meta chain for assault on the svanir dome. Also features an easy JP.

Ashabhi.1365:

2. Southsun Cove: Nothing going on here except the occasional Crab Toss activity for the daily.

I assume that’s not a troll, but I’m surprised to see anyone feel theres nothing going on in Southsun. There’s actually a lot on this map.

Maybe you don’t belong to a guild that runs guild missions?
- Guild Challenge: Southsun Crab Toss
- Guild Race: Crab Scuttle
- Guild Bounty: Ander “Wildman” Westward
- Guild Trek: Monument to the Ancient One, Reef Drake Nesting Grounds, Sandwurm Prowl, Steampipe Perch, Steamy Steps, The Karka Klub

…and maybe you don’t like to get loot from world bosses like the Karka Queen or the associated meta events?

…and maybe you don’t like Jumping Puzzles like Skipping Stones or Under New Management which are sometimes daily achievements?

…and maybe you have no interest in joining groups to farm karka shells?

In that case, then Southsun probably doesn’t have much to offer.

Ley lines are more like ley tubes. As long as you stay above or within the diameter of the tube, it will continue to propel you along its path. If you drift or fall too far below or to the side of it, you’ll lose it’s propulsion and return to normal gliding behavior.

For entering/exiting, some of them seem to be more finicky than others, and might be due to the graphics for a few of the ley lines not aligning as closely with the actual path in some locations.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

cough instant-sell exists, but also, so does selling for more than a 1c discount on the next highest price. If you are really concerned about being undercut, just sell at 10g or more below the price … just like if you relisted once. Reduces undercutting quite a bit…

Instant sell prices are dangerous since they can easily result in a net loss, not covering the mat cost. Similarly, reduced sell prices can be problematic, and could similarly end up being too low to cover costs, or end up being at such a low profit that you would have been better of spending your time on other activities in the game that are more lucrative.

Trying to find a middle ground where the sell price is high enough to still earn some profit, but low enough to discourage undercut bids seems to be an artform. When I have sold some special skins that used shards, I listed the items for prices quite a bit below the lowest seller, only to be instantly undercut multiple times by 1 cp less bids. Thus even with lower priced sell orders there is still a risk of undercut listings.

sorudo.9054:

if there is really such a huge supply, it would be good to see them as a sell able thing.
maybe an NPC that has a passive rate, that way we don’t get tomes for 100g/pp.
something like 20 silver per tome to sell them but 30 silver to buy them, so you can sell them if you want but it costs more (in a steady rate) to buy them.

ps. the reason why i would not like them for the TP is because i know how out of hand this can go, a ridicules price for a tome will happen within a month or less.

If by “out of hand” you mean how low the prices would fall, I don’t really see a problem. With how many ToKs various players have banked up and how easy they are to obtain, the “ridiculous” price could wind up at the minimum 2 cp, though more likely they would be slightly above that.

Based on data from gw2efficiency, the mean (average) for all players is 222 tomes of knowledge. Last data I saw was that over 100K players are sharing their info with this site which would mean that there are over 22 million tomes of knowledge sitting in inventories doing nothing but wasting space. And this is from just the small subset of players have bothered to share their account info with gw2efficiency. The actual number of unused tomes is no doubt much higher since only a small percentage of players may have shared their info with this site, and it doesn’t factor in the top percent of players that have banked up thousands of ToKs (one has a whopping 5646 ToKs!), and continue to earn them, nor does it factor in players that have begun to just simply destroy further ones they obtain

What about spirit shards? The average player has over 1700 of those, and one player has over 24K!

Claims that spirit shards are worth 2+ gold are a crock. They are in such abundance, that shards act more like a reusable catalyst in crafting. It is true that some shards are needed for certain crafting or upgrades, but new shards are earned so fast from normal gameplay that a typical player never uses them up, even when they do some crafting that uses them.

The fact that so many players are sitting on hundreds or thousands of ToKs and thousands or tens of thousands of Spirit Shards throws a elder dragon-sized bucket of cold water on the idea that spirit shards are worth 2+ gold. If they were actually worth that much, it would be a no-brainer for all of these players convert them to gold and then buy something else that they need. The fact the reverse seems to be happening shows how unappealing spirit shard crafting is as an avenue to spend spirit shards, and similarly why so many players don’t bother to convert ToKs into shards.

(updated to simplify the numbers since gw2efficicency reports the mean (avg) for all players)

If you have not reached bronze level (i.e. rank < 150), and are on the last place server, you will only earn 1 pip per tick.

Eventually, the loyalty bonus should help add another pip, but apparently you need to get at least 3 wood chests for 3 weeks in a row to obtain that.

ArchonWing.9480:

Well the eldritch weapons are higher risk yes. I don’t suggest it. But even at buy prices they aren’t bad and I think that is way too safe. Mats though are only a few combines though. I don’t think that is very time consuming and it goes well with the forger daily.

Though to me it is more about making use of t1 mats that do me little good, as well as stuff like cores to lodestones rather than the shards themselves.

Suppose I want to convert 5K shards to gold by using mat upgrades. The immediate problem is that the number of shards needed for a mat convert is extremely small since most of the MF upgrade recipes use only 1 to 5 Philosopher stones. Miyani sells these at a price of 10 stones per shard. When viewed that way, 5K shards is really 50K stones, and each MF conversion will only nibble away 1 to 5 at a time. Thus, in order to spend all my 5K shards for material upgrades, I would need to do somewhere between 10K to 50K upgrade steps, 1 by 1, at the mystic forge. Yet somehow this isn’t supposed to be time consuming or tedious? How exactly is someone suppose to perform upwards of 50K MF attempts quickly?

Takashiro.8701:

Playerbase complains that they want challenging open world PvE content.
Anet gives them TD (and VB) where you can’t straight up rum from point A to point B but actually have to think about what you’re doing.
Playerbase complains they can’t half afk through the content anymore.

More a case of (a vocal minority?) of the playerbase asking for challenging open world PvE content, ANet deciding to use that as an excuse to go on a tangential Z-dimension map-making frenzy, and then a significant portion of the playerbase discovering that Z-dimension maps are overly confusing, annoying and not fun to play.

1. Tangled MessDepths – Confusing to navigate and explore. Lack of waypoints makes it difficult to reach some events during meta.

2. Dragon’s Stand – Exploration ranges from difficult to impossible due to continuous spawns and gated areas.

3. Verdant Brink – Too many map layers makes this ‘intro’ map of HoT unnecessarily confusing. Canopy layer ends up being way overboard.

4. Lake Doric – Endless spawns of white mantle don’t seem plausible. Where are they all coming from? Centaur camp needs to be addressed to either be viable farming location, or revamped to just be a ‘normal’ part of the map.

5. Snowden Drifts – Until HoT and new LS maps, this was the map I would have ranked as worst due to being boring and uninspired. For starters, it has several wide open areas without much happening. Meanwhile, most of the hearts and events are not very interesting. For Norn characters this is essentially the 2nd explorable map, but it pales in comparison to the the some of the much more interesting content available in their first explorable map, Wayfarer Hills. For example, Wayfarer Hills has 2 rather interesting meta events, one of which includes a world boss. By comparison, Snowden Drifts has a single meta, which isn’t very challenging or interesting, and many players probably never even see it since the final stages usually end so quickly. Addition of the leyline events seems to be an attempt by ANet to reinvigorate the map, but the low reward vs. high participation level needed to complete them is so far out of balance that it isn’t worth doing these.

Lyp Sao.1375:

ArchonWing.9480:

https://www.gw2shinies.com/shard-alchemy

Promote some crappy mats.

2-3 gold per shard?

yeah I’m rich (you know)

(eh no you are not little asura)

The table is misleading. In order to get the 2+ gold per shard, you need to craft some ultra-expensive items which initially ties up hundreds of gold. Once you complete crafting the item, then you need to play the TP game where you list the item, only to see other players undercut your price by 1 copper over and over. If you try to relist, you automatically lose 10s of gold each time. If you stand pat, your item may never sell, meaning you’ve essentially lost all those hundreds of gold you invested to craft the item.

In some cases, by the time the item sells, you could have probably made far more gold by investing that money by flipping something else on the TP that has much higher sales volume. I’ve crafted a handful of items with shards to try to resell this way, but the experience really turned me off. Between the time invested and the risk/reward ratio, it just wasn’t worth it to me.

As for promoting mats, most of them end up being extremely tedious and time-consuming, and you end up making only a few silvers per shard. The gain per time spent ends up being very low, and I can easily make more by playing other much more enjoyable content in the game.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Mmmm, that one, I gotta say that’s really kinda your own problem. I mean, I understand, but the problem is … unless y’all have literally unlimited storage, at some point you gotta get rid of something, and this might be that point. At least for a few thousand of ’em

Storage isn’t really a big issue at this point. Shards are currency, so they go directly to the wallet. The tomes stack to 250, so those only tie up 4 stacks, and between having fully unlocked bank tabs and multiple Alts that serve as packmules, I’m not lacking space to hold them.

Fundamentally, ANet should be addressing these types of items that continue to be rewarded at overly high rates (and in some instances, even increasing rates), but which are simultaneously becoming less and less useful or even useless to a growing number of players.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Kalendraf.9521:

Assuming this rate of obtaining tomes and shards doesn’t change, we badly need new ways to spend these items.

…or to just start deleting them.

My inner skritt (packrat) nature prevents me from deleting items which might have a future use.

I consider myself a casual player and I certainly don’t try to farm either tomes or spirit shards, but the rate of gain for these items far exceeds the rate at which I am able to use them. I currently have 782 tomes of knowledge and 5838 spirit shards.

I occasionally do key runs, but I still have dozens of instant level 20 and instant level 30 scrolls to cover many more weeks of key runs, so tomes are unnecessary for that. My main characters are are outfitted in ascended gear, so I don’t need to spend more shards for crafting those. At this point, I have very little interest in making the special MF skins either for myself or to try to flip on the TP, nor do I have any interest in trying to upgrade mats due to how tedious and/or time-consuming it can be.

Assuming this rate of obtaining tomes and shards doesn’t change, we badly need new ways to spend these items.

Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946:

polarbear.2497:

Yes! This is a great idea.

I have a better idea. Instead of the BLTC dropping these common items, it drops a “Common Item Ticket” that you can then exchange at the Black Lion Trading Company in LA for your choice of the common items. So, you open a chest and get a Common Item Ticket, you pop over to the vendor and trade your ticket for a bank access, or a ToK, or a revive orb, or a teleport to friend, or whatever else is on the list that you might want. Similar to the way Black Lion Tickets work for skins.

I like this solution. This way it gives players the choice to take an item that may be useful to them, and avoids them being stuck with items they can’t use or don’t want.

Astralporing.1957:

As mentioned before, Tribulation Caverns JP starts where the previous JP (rift scaffolding) ends. It’s really hard to miss entrance to the former if you’ve done the latter correctly.

I did the first JP at least a dozen times before I ever noticed there was an opening in that wall leading to another JP. After grabbing the chest and the vista (whenever I completed it for a new toon), I figured that was all there was. For various content including most JPs, I tend to play with my camera tilted way above my character, which might be a factor. Easy to miss that hole from that vantage point.

I agree that the Black Lion chest rewards need a serious overhaul, but the OP is touching on just one of the problems, and one that likely only affects a tiny fraction of players. There are several items in the game that have no use to certain players, or are easily obtained at such high rates during normal game play that they are effectively useless “prizes” from a black lion chest.

- Tome of Knowledge – These are useless for players that don’t intend to level-up any more characters. For others, the rate of gain greatly outpaces the rate at which they can use them, making them equally useless.

- Spirt Shard (not directly a BLC reward, but listing here since some people think this is supposed to be a fallback for players that don’t need ToKs) – These are useless for players that don’t do any of the MF-related crafting that uses them. For others, the rate of gain greatly outpaces the rate at which they can use them, making them equally useless.

- Transmutation charge – These are useless if there are no other skins you want to use. For others, the rate of gain greatly outpaces the rate at which they can use them, making them equally useless.

- Resurrection Orb – These are useless for players that always just waypoint to rez.

- Armor repair can – These are useless for players that always the free armor repair stations instead. (oh yeah, they actually removed this one)

- Access to Merchant, Bank or TP – These are useless for those lucky players that own a permanent version.

Regarding all intermediate crafting items (refined materials, cooking, scribing), was any thought given to revamping crafting as a whole to instead support direct mat to final item crafting, once a recipe is unlocked?

To support incremental discovery and different crafting levels, having a range of intermediate items makes sense. However, once a character has learned the recipe for crafting of an item, I suspect many players would prefer to be able to just grab the needed raw materials and directly craft the item. The time for that crafting step could be setup to include all the time that would be needed to make individual items. (e.g. If an item needs 20 intermediate items which would require 1 sec each to craft, make direct material to item crafting take 20 seconds). Incorporating that type of feature would greatly reduce the need to craft and store intermediate items.

Since the final item might require more than 4 components, the UI panel for direct mat to item crafting would possibly need to be changed. The guild panel for upgrades allows for many items to be listed, and that might serve as a possible template for how this could be implemented.

Regarding #1, do Guild Banners contribute toward WXP/rank gain? From the wiki entry for WXP modifiers, Guild Banners are not included, but that info could be incomplete. If it doesn’t, then I recommend removing the banner boost from this list.

Sarika.3756:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Sarika.3756:

I have zero problem with the max tickets. Right now, the system over rewards people who can play outside prime time and farm outnumbered pips.

Disregarding prime time, because that differs for people..
The current 175 is a huge time investment with anyone who isn’t ranked into the thousands. People with jobs and such are unlikely to even reach 175 tickets in a week regularly anyway.

As one of those people with a job, I whole heartedly agree with you. I think the pip requirements for max tickets are too high, frankly.

I completely agree. I think that either the pip formula should be rebalanced or the cap should be lowered to make maxing the weekly reward achievable even for players in lower tiers. Lower rank players still need to rank up to get access to the top end rewards, but at least they would not be losing out on the other rewards along the way.

To put those numbers into perspective, if someone below bronze level (rank 150) happens to be on the last place server earning just 1 pip per tick, they will need to spend roughly 121 hours during the week to max out the weekly skirmish rewards. That’s over 17 hours per day just playing WvW, leaving less than 7 hours per day for that other stuff like eating, sleeping, showering, work, school, chores, etc.

This is very helpful. Unfortunatately, despite having played in WvW on an off since release, I never focused on trying to rank up and I’m a mere rank 300’ish bronzer atm. I’ve spent about 6 hours so far in WvW since the update, but most of the time I’m only getting 2 ticks (1 for lowest server + 1 for bronze level) and as a result after all those hours of WvW, I am currently working toward just the 2nd bronze level skirmish chest. It seems that the rate of gain for bronze level or below is exceedingly slow, and it really punishes newer players or ones that haven’t previously focused on earning WvW ranks, yet may have been active or semi-active in WvW.

I often do nearby events if I see them on my map and have time to do them. For example, while gathering iron in the Gallowfields area of Brisban Wildlands, I’ve often participated in bandit events that spawn nearby. If I come across a dead NPC, I’ll often stop to rez them. From an altruistic view, I like to think that I’m helping others succeed by doing this. From a practical view, I’m earning a bit of extra karma, exp, gold or other drops along the way.

My Mawdrey II, Princess and Star of Gratitude are well-fed. And if I need to get rid of more, Herta or the Sentient Aberration/Anomaly/Oddity get a helping as well. Thus, I’m able to keep the quantities in check.

Lack of a trading post is what led most of my friends who tried GW1 to eventually abandon that game. Removing the TP from GW2 would likely kill the game off entirely.