Guild Wars 2

Do you have to stay with the guild rush event until the timer runs out for the guild rush to complete?

The thing with the living story content is that the first week of every month a piece comes out. That piece stays all the way through to the end of the month. On the third week of the month, a second piece comes out but it only stays 2 weeks because it leaves at the same time as the first piece. I don’t think the living story would be so overwhelming if every piece stayed for 4 weeks. For some people 4 weeks is too long but for others, they need all 4 weeks to get the living story done. I don’t think it’d be bad to allow the second part of the monthly living story to overlap with the next segment and allow all content to last for 1 month. Even if they’re placed in the same area.

For example, with this content, on August 7th or whatever the date is, you can take out all of the Bazaar achievements by having the sky people start to pack up. But you can allow events from the Candidates to continue for 2 more weeks. For me, sometimes, I finish the content is 1.5 weeks and have a nice break before the next bit comes out. But other times, like this past month, I don’t have time and so it takes me 3 weeks to finish the content.

In addition, clear outgoing dates need to start being posted on the events. Or even a timer in the achievements for how long is left to do the content. Every time I’m having to go scouring the forums for the leaving date so I can figure out how long I have to do the content. We need clear-cut end dates posted as much as the start dates are.

Havana, maybe you should go back and do t3 again? Can’t hurt anyway. :/

Orpheus.7284:

My post above yours explained a valid strategy.

The key is to immobilize, burst, interupt when needed, and run. You can’t stand and fight the veterans. You gotta disengage when there’s no plunderers around to kill.

This event favors thief more so than other classes due to several reasons:
Mobility, Damage, Stealth, and almost unlimited amount of Immobilize and Interupts (Sword #2, S/P #3, Pistol #4)

I’ll leave some tips for other classes here too:

Elementalists can RTL into plunderer, and use fire D/D burst combo (#3, turn around aim, #5) then mist form or lightning flash out of danger. In fact, elementalists can run a Valkyrie or Cavalier spec and use Arcane Power so they get some survivability and retain their Burst.

Guardian can assist in many ways. CC with Staff Line of Warding, Hammer Ring of Warding, Immobilize with Scepter #3, Pulling with GS #5…if that’s not your style try Burst Meditation build, for once maybe it gets to shine in something other than hotjoin pvp.

Warrior…I don’t think I need to go into this, but I will anyway. I think Axe/Shield or Mace/Shield do nicely, Axe if you want better burst (Evicerate), Mace if you want more interupts. Shield is for getting out of danger (3s block) and additional interupt. The other set I recommend greatsword as it is still king, #3 skill is pretty epic here as plunderer tends to run the other way, which makes u connect more hits. never use hundred blades unless the target is immobilized long enough. GS also has Rush so you can get in and out quickly.

Mesmers can do all sorts of fancy stuff, they can burst with MW, CC with pulls and pushes, blinking, AoE stealth to disengage, heck even portal to facilitate team mobility. Condition is u gotta be pretty good at what ur doing.

Not too knowledgeable on the burst capabilities of Necro/Engi/Ranger as those are my condi characters. Pretty sure its viable too!

Obviously our strategy only aims to clear it for the achievement, it can’t be compared to a full clear party.

Thank-you Orpheus and the others who have been posting helpful tips. I’ve been gleaning as much information as I can. I’m sure others have been too. I’m going to go back later and try to see if I can beat it at least once.

imaginary.6241:

Havana.8625:

Hard content is much better if it’s hard for everyone. Please at the very least remove the achievement for those who completed it when it was easy (pre-patch).

The thing is – it was hard content before you have only been able to skip most parts of it. I’ve finished it with a guildgroup on the first day without any skipping. So dare to take away my achievement which I worked for.

And yes, I liked it. Though trying it again with another guild group yesterday failed us often and we didn’t succeed (the guys gave up). Never do it for the achievement itself. If it ‘s to challenging for you, do something else instead. There are other achievements you can complete instead, they don’t force you to do that content you know.

Yes, there’s other content to do. But if all new content becomes like this and we keep having to go ‘do other content’ because ‘they don’t force us to do content’ and this content ’isn’t for us’ then what’s the point of new content? This isn’t necessarily about them fixing this content because more than likely, they won’t. This is about getting them to see the problems with this content so that future content will be better. This is feedback.

Most of us have probably resolved ourselves to not completing this content but we don’t want to see more of this kind of content so we are voicing our thoughts and ideas. If you liked the content and want to see more of it, then explain why. What did you like about and what didn’t you like about it?

To those singing Anet’s praises:

First, if you’re trolling, just quit. It’s not funny, edifying, helpful, or contributing to this discussion.

Secondly, if you’re here to puff up your ego, please do it elsewhere. I’m sure you could create a thread purely for celebrating completing the content. This thread is for discussing the pros and cons of the content.

If you’re not trolling or boasting, did you do it before or after the fix or both?

Did you really and truly enjoy the content?

Do you truly believe that such content should be temporary with only 2 weeks to complete it?

Do you feel satisfactorily rewarded for your time and effort?

Do you think the scaling was done appropriately?

Do you think the 4 tiers really should have been more of the same or could they have come up with more creative ways to make higher tiers harder?

Do you really think that having the content repeated twice was a good thing?

And do you believe that Anet’s stance as posted in the dev’s post here is truly the best way to deal with the issue of broken achievements and exploited content that is temporary and never returning?

The issue the rest of us are having with this content is that it is poorly implemented, it is not fun, we don’t believe the rewards are really worth our time, we disagree with the way groups are discouraged from doing this content, we disagree with the dev’s stance on exploitation and rushed content as presented in his post, and we wish they had told us upfront that this content was only meant for 1% of the community to complete. Very few, if any of us are saying that this content is too hard or impossible. So please quit putting words in our mouths and explain why you think this content is so marvelous and wonderful. Or better yet, post a detailed explanation of how you did it so the rest of us can complete it too. Thank-you.

Well having it so a group could faceroll through it is pretty much a zergfest in my opinion. That’s how a lot of the content in the game already is. This is only one out of maybe three DPS checks in the game. The other two being Simin and defend event on CoF Path 3.

I never said I wanted anyone to be able to faceroll through. Protesting the design of the fight is not the same as asking them to make it ridiculously easy. I don’t enjoy faceroll content anymore than I enjoy nearly impossible content. I prefer balanced content that is fun and requires more from a player than merely button mashing.

put what your problem is in bold. You’re expecting an event scaled up to FIVE people to be able to be done with two people who essentially carry the group with their DPS. You need the entire team working together and providing support and DPS.

You misunderstand. When you have two plunderers spawning at the same time, the logical conclusion is that you need to split your dps team but it’s a huge hassle to push your way through the mobs to the other side to kill the other one. By the time you get there, the next one on the first side will be spawning. If you have two dedicated DPSers on each one, you should be able to get them down. Especially if you can solo it in one pass while soloing.

Kasaeva.4691:
Finally, unoriginal because this is no different than anything else in the game. When you go to a dungeon, bosses with the exception of AC, are just spam buttons until he dies. There is no strategy and no teamwork. There might be some dodging you have to do but beyond that, it’s nothing more than button spam. I thought the whole point of the changes to AC and boss encounters like in the Aetherblade Retreat was to get away from this button-mash system.

Actually, there is strategy to AC and AR. It’s just that a lot of players are lazy and rely on exploits that essentially allow you to faceroll through past boss mechanics and just auto-attack.

Please re-read. I never said there was no strategy to AC and AR. I actually said that they were the exception and hinted that that was the kind of content I had hoped to see more of.

There are a lot of games that require you to change your game play to overcome an obstacle. People need to learn to adapt. From what I heard from people on the forums, one of the areas in GW1 after you beat Abaddon was extremely difficult. Players figured out the correct builds and they conquered it. You can still complete 95% of the game however you want.

That’s fine. I don’t have an issue with adapting personally. Especially since respecing is pretty cheap in this game. My issue with it is that they say one thing and do another. This is about them establishing a direction and sticking to it. I’m tired of chasing their ideas all over the map of directions for MMOs.

This isn’t really a grind. Most games actually have a grind because that’s what keeps players occupied. You can only realize content so quickly as to not overwhelm casual players or too slowly to bore hardcore players. If content is rushed then it’s more prone to bugs and quality often suffers.

I realize in hind sight that that portion of my post is a little confusing. I wasn’t actually referring to this content at the point but to the direction of the game in general. I apologize for diverting from the topic.

I push the +1 button but when I refresh or revisit the thread, all the +1s I gave are gone and the button is red instead of opaque.

To add my own thoughts in response to anet’s post:
A challenge is good. Difficulty is good. However, zerg fests and dps races are getting really old in this game. These “challenge events” feel lazy, half-done, and unoriginal.

Lazy because you made two of them that are exactly the same. For what purpose? One would have sufficed. If you wanted two separate events, you should have created something different for either Evon or Kiel. You made two completely different mini-games. Beautiful mini-games with a lot of skill and effort required. But you made one challenge event and pretended you had made two.

Half-done because the scaling is almost ridiculous. You just kept adding more and more of these mobs. There is nothing different from Tier 1 to Tier 4 with the exception of the number of mobs and their health pools. In addition, doing it with a group is harder than doing it solo. I have yet to complete it with either but I noticed a serious difficulty drop when I switched over to soloing it. If my group is coordinated and working together (which they were for the most part) it should be easier than soloing it. Want proof of that? Take a look at a plunderer’s health pool with 5 people versus 1. I can burn down a plunderer all by myself when I solo. When there are 5 people in there, 2 dedicated dpsers can’t down one before he goes and comes back even with as many CCs as we can muster being used.

Finally, unoriginal because this is no different than anything else in the game. When you go to a dungeon, bosses with the exception of AC, are just spam buttons until he dies. There is no strategy and no teamwork. There might be some dodging you have to do but beyond that, it’s nothing more than button spam. I thought the whole point of the changes to AC and boss encounters like in the Aetherblade Retreat was to get away from this button-mash system.

Regardless of whether or not this content is completable or not, I think this should be re-evaluated in terms of the goal and direction of the game as portrayed by Anet. If you want content to accessible to all classes and builds then all builds and classes should be taken into account. If I am supposed to be able to play the way I want, then I should not have to respec to complete this content. Changing out traits and utility skills, yes. But not completely respeccing my traits. If content can only be completed by a berserker warrior or if it cannot be completed by certain specs/classes then it should be told truthfully. (I am not suggesting that either of these are true about this content. I am making a point.)

If you want people to play in groups then you should encourage group play by making things easier for coordinated groups and discourage solo play by making it hard to do solo. Yes, you will lose players but riding the fence makes no one happy.

If you want people to enjoy your content, you should not make it a grind. Few people, if any, enjoy grinding. Having the same exact event twice with a different face and name on it does not promote happy feelings except in the few people who really enjoyed it and don’t care about repeating things.

Please step back and re-evaluate this.

Direksone.3867:

Matthew. While I understand where you are coming from I do not agree. Me and my guild play a lot of content together, we have no problems with any of the dungeons or fractals. Some of us do not play in the most optimal setup perhaps, but to each their own. We have tried several times doing the T4 and it wasn’t necessarely hard, but more that the mobs had WAY too much health. We were in the middle of the fray, not just killing the Plunderers, also trying to kill the veterans but it is kitten near impossible for us to burn two of them down before the next couple spawn. I seriously suggest you look into it again, because the scaling in terms of health is beyond ridiculous in my opinon.

I agree. This has been a common theme in recent content. New mobs that are being introduced all have higher health than in the rest of the word. Look at Southsun Shore. The health and skills on those guys are more similar to one level higher than in the rest of the world. By that, I mean that normals feel like veterans, veterans feel like elites, elites feel like champions, and champions feel like legendaries.

The same was true with all of the aetherblade content. At least in that dungeon, there weren’t too terribly many of them and we had a full group so it was doable and even enjoyable. However, run over to the jumping puzzle they introduced with the content and get into a tussle with the aetherblades there and you’re going to be hurting. Not to mention their ability to apply conditions, immobilize, knockdown, and damage is borderline overboard. This content with aetherblades is no different. They are scaled way above normal mobs in the world. Be careful or you will find yourself caught in an upwards climb of inflated numbers.

Thanks! I’m examining my spec and comparing it to yours. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish these achievements.

What was your weapon set?

Weena.6429:

I managed to solo both tier 4 trials on my d/d elementalist yesterday. It’s hard but once you get the pattern down it’s not so bad if you bring a lot of cc. If you happen to aggro any mobs it’s best to just run back behind the mortars and hope the vets will leash even if you have to risk losing treasure. Here is my build and gear setup with consumables for those interested. I only have one (not infused) ascended trinket so feel free to replace the others with your infused zerker trinkets. :p

I am Sylvari so I was able to get grasping vines for extra CC. I went d/d partially for magnetic grasp. I find sceptre to be a bit too slow, but if you feel more comfortable ranged, go for it. Immobilize the plunderers as soon as they spawn and just start destroying them. If you really need to get a plunderer on the spawn closest to the treasure, you can immob him with one of your many CC skills, burst him down, then RTL out of there (make sure you aren’t immobilized first though) so you won’t be absolutely destroyed you as you are incredibly glassy. Your heal skill doesn’t have to be ether renewal, but the condition removal is incredibly helpful if you happen to be caught.

I went with the water line trait stop, drop, and roll because of the incredible amount of chill. If you’d rather just sit in air a majority of the time, you could take ember’s might instead of internal fire, but I just found it easier to get the 10% damage boost in both attunements.

If you happen to be downed, don’t give up! Mist form into water and swim away. Seriously, you can res yourself much faster in water and can still complete the event if you are even a little bit lucky.

I am by no means a great player or theory crafter and I’m sure many of you can come up with better builds/strategies. I’m just sharing what worked for me. Hope this helped a bit.

Your build didn’t stay put together in the link :/

To say that I am frustrated would be a horrifically gross understatement right now. I have tried with groups, I have tried solo. I have tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried. And yet I cannot for the life of me get past tier 3 and 4. So someone please please please please explain to me how an elementalist can do this. I need tier 3 and 4 for both candidates.

And Anet, please don’t ever ever ever make something like this again. Especially not something that you have to complete twice. This is the epitome of UN fun.

Something’s been bothering me for a long time about this game. You promote group play and guild play and playing with your friends all the time and in every area of the game except one…. the activities and mini games. I noticed this the first time back during the Halloween events. For the first time, we had all these activities and mini games to do but when I tried to go with my guildie…we couldn’t get into the same server. I brushed it off then thinking, “You know it’s a new game. They’ll get around to it.” But now, nearly a year later, there’s still no way for groups to join an activity or mini game together. You might get lucky and end up on the same server anyway but there is no guarantee.

Worse, this doesn’t even seem to be a thought on Anet’s mind. Why not? I would think that if there was ever a team-building or fun group activity it would be these mini games. I mean, it’s still fun to play them with randoms but think how much more fun it would be to play with your friends or guildies—people you play with in every other area.

Yeah, it means the achievements would be a lot easier to get but honestly, is that really a bad thing? Most of these activities are only here for a couple weeks. I don’t want to be panicking in the last day or two of the event because I can’t win Sanctum Sprint.

Yes, it also means that your group can team up against other random players but it’s no different in PvP. I don’t really think that’s an issue so long as you’re not trolling them. If they don’t like it, they’ll either change servers or go join their group of friends to play it. If it’s really that big of an issue, just create a separate server if a group joins an activity together and allow them to invite the rest of their friends to it until it’s full.

If the game is really meant to be played with our friends, then we need to be able to play with them in all areas. We can play with them in dungeons, in the world, in pvp, in wvw, in FotM, even in personal stories and the living story. The only area we cannot purposely choose to play with our friends is activities and mini games. Please fix it.

Wukunlin.8461:

Kasaeva.4691:

I was unaware that Lupicus could be melee’d at all. We’ve only ever used 100% ranged tactics. How does that work? Doesn’t he just wipe out everyone in melee range?

What about p3? Surely he can’t be melee’d in p3 right?

basically:
P1:
dodge when he raises his hand so you don’t get grub on you
dodge 2 seconds after he tries to put grub on people and after he summons locusts so you don’t get kicked

P2:
no shadow step when all in melee range
he will try slap people in melee range but there is big windup so dodging that is easy
aoe can be reflection by mesmer feedback, guardian WoR (haven’t tried that myself but I’ve seen people avoiding all AoE by placing it directly below him and standing inside it) or guardian shield 5

P3:
you have to run away from big circle life drain
have to dodge single target life drain like you do ranged
rapidfire attacks negated using same things as AOE is phase 2 or dodging underneath him (may need 2 dodges)
can avoid bubble attack if you stand still in melee

once you get the hang of it, it is much easier than ranging cos he won’t be able to hit you with lupine blast (single target attacks that does ~15k damage)

Ok, thanks! My group and I will have to try this tactic next time we’re in Arah.

I was unaware that Lupicus could be melee’d at all. We’ve only ever used 100% ranged tactics. How does that work? Doesn’t he just wipe out everyone in melee range?

What about p3? Surely he can’t be melee’d in p3 right?

So my group and I’ve been doing Arah pretty regularly for the last few weeks and in the last week Lupi’s been absolutely unbearable. I’ve come to the conclusion that either he was buffed, he’s bugged, or we’re doing something wrong.

The first phase is the same and we never have an issue getting through it.
The second phase is a nightmare though. We’ve never allowed him to have more than 1 stack of the buff Empowered and a couple times we’ve managed to avoid the buff entirely. Once he goes into P2 though he spawns aoes, shadowsteps onto people, and throws some kind of heavy damage poison attack.

1. AoE
Before, AoE were easy to dodge or at least get away from. They were almost always patterned in a line that you could dodge to the side and get away from. If they weren’t patterned in a line, they were patterned in a circle that you could get out of so you wouldn’t be in the area the darts bounce between.
Now, you can be standing 6 feet from the circles and still get hit. They no longer have nice neat patterns but come in 1s, 2s, and 15s. On several occasions, my group has reported to be standing in the middle of a circle and taken no damage. This is not merely a case of lag because it has happened consistently to all party members in the last several runs through Arah that I’ve had.
2. Shadowstep
Before, every time he used this skill, he moved making him pretty simply to kite around the room in order to rez people who die. However, recently, the smoke will appear as if he were shadowstepping and he has stayed put. The damage that should occur from standing where he’s moving does not occur.
3. Poison Attack
Before, if I got hit with it, it took me down pretty hard but I could heal back up and was fine. Now, he hits me with it over and over. Since it drops me to half health, the second hit downs me, the third hit kills me. It isn’t dodgeable, or if it’s meant to be, it’s broken because it hit me just now mid-dodge.

If you can get to phase 3, you’re usually okay with the exception of the poison attack which I don’t remember being in p3 before. My memory on that could be broken though.

Another problem we’ve been running into is that where before you could typically do a little extra damage and pull him off of others so you can get people up. Now though, he has a mind of his own. His agro is all over the map and he seems determined to attack anyone who’s dying, rezzing, or running away to out-of-combat.

Can anyone explain these dramatic changes? Did they change the fight, do we just keep getting a bugged Lupi, or is there something we should do differently?

At least it’s not just me. Strange thing though, Caveth, your screenshot in Lion’s Arch is the same but the one in Rowanwoods is totally different. For me, she was green with green hair and she was wearing a skirt, not pants. Her face is totally different too.

I don’t think the line during the instance in Lion’s Arch can really explain it because I checked before I even got the thingy from Marjory and she was blue then. She was still blue after the fight too.

I agree 100% with the OP! I love, love, love, love, love, love, love this living story. I enjoyed the southsun events to some extent but this is like 1,000,000 times better! Finally, some truly interesting characters with personality, great voicing, and intrigue. A good character is never just thrown at the audience but slowly revealed with just enough information to keep you interested. Ellen Kiel, Marjory Delaqua, and Lady Kasmeer. Now we need some interesting male characters! (I don’t count E since he’s just a letter in the mail. :P)

I was a little disappointed that we can’t catch the villain yet… But I’m looking forward to it in the next update. (Soon hopefully!) Keep up the good work guys!

Anyone else notice Astorra was green out in Caledon but blue/purple in the instance? Or was it just me?

Same thing happened to my group the other night. The dungeon helper thing in the top right hand corner seemed stuck just before Bloody Victoria but all the cutscenes and dialogs triggered properly after her, except the last one. The dialog from the NPC though was as if she’d already given us the reward. We went back and killed everything we had skipped and still got no rewards. We all reported a bug and called it a night but it would be nice to know what causes it to bug out like this so we can avoid doing that in the future and actually get something for the hour investment.

Bright.9160:

We were running a W/G/M setup though, with 3 warriors, 1 non-DPS guardian and 1 DPS mesmer.

Since all the classes have certain builds that give you pretty solid DPS, I do think it’s possible with any team setup. Ele can bring LH builds, and throw in a Fiery Greatsword and put her against a wall and you’ll be taking her to town, Thieves are hard to get high DPS on, but they can diss out some good numbers, Ranger has a somewhat decent DPS build I saw on guru somewhere, etc. You might not do it in 2 tries like we did, it might take you 4 or 5, because your DPS is less than ours, but you should still be able to do it if you run a DPS build.

Obviously, your DPS wasn’t as good as you thought it was.

You assume our DPS was the problem but if it was there is no way we could’ve gotten through the rest of it. As I stated, all of us have dedicated hours of time into our characters and researching strong builds, testing, tweaking, and practicing. All but one (who was running tears) are fully and properly geared. Assuming DPS was the problem and not some rumored bug, it was not the fault of the players but rather a deficit in the class itself or an unreasonable requirement from the boss which is precisely what my first post stated.

Your group was 3/5’s the typical/recommended set up for this fight. I don’t think you can fairly point to that and say any group can do it.

Bright.9160:

This boss fight was already nerfed once because people kept crying over it.

We killed Dwayna in 2 tries the first time I did it. And do note, there were 2 people in the entire team that had done p4 before.

Obviously your DPS wasn’t as good as you thought it was.

What was your composition?

The Dwayna fight really needs to be re-evaluated. We went into P4 this evening 5-6 hours ago and we struggled through the dungeon but had fun too. We’re all good players who know our classes very well and aren’t just screwing around. None of us had been through p4 before so we were trying to figure out what to do as we went. We had 2 rangers, a mesmer, a warrior, and an elementalist. With the exception of one player, we all have high dps. If Anet’s goal is really to create a game that you can play however you want, then I should be able to bring that group into P4 and down Dwayna. We could not get her past 50% and everything we looked up basically said you have to have beserker guards, thieves, and wars to get past it. I shouldn’t have to bring a special composition to any dungeon when we have dedicated players who know their classes and do good dps. If our players can play their classes and work well together and do the fight properly and Anet’s goal is for us to be able to play the way we want, then we should be able to down this boss without a problem.

Please seriously reconsider this boss fight and recreate it so that any group composition with solid dps is capable of downing this fight. I don’t care if that means that a full beserker guard, thief, and war group can down it easier. In keeping with Anet’s declared goal, this fight must be made completable with any solid dps group composition. I’m not saying that 5 support specced characters should be able to down it. I’m saying 5 high dps specced characters of any class should be able to down it.

It’s a group’s prerogative to decide who they allow into their group and so long as they’re not exploiting that prerogative (eg. taking a pug and kicking just before the last boss to invite a guildie), you can’t and shouldn’t report them. Some people just get stuck in the mindset that “hardmode” dungeons are only for geared level 80s. Many players have come from WoW where there was normal mode and heroic mode. Normal was for anyone so long as they met the level requirement. Heroic was only for 80s who met a certain gear-standard. As such, they view story as “normal” and explorable as “heroic” and won’t take people below 80.

Not all groups are like that though. It really just depends on the group. I typically don’t take my alts into dungeons simply because I enjoy leveling in the world more but I have taken friends’ alts into dungeons and while some people have left, most don’t care. I’ll take anyone who signs up so long as they aren’t dragging the group down or being nasty. I’ve even taken a few underleveled people into dungeons.
Keep trying to run the dungeons. There’s no reason for you not to if you want to. Ignore the elitist groups and keep trying for the friendly groups. They are out there!

JJBigs.8456:

does anyone actually confirm if the burning from “Hot foot” ruins the achivement or is it one of those “Safe than sorry” things. I doubt it would count but than again it could since its so hard to get. Im ready to just pay people to do this level on level 1 fotm for me… and i just leech…. cmon ivec done this so much how can i never get it :c

I think it does because I’ve done it as carefully as I possibly can a dozen times or more. No fire from the rolling balls, no touching of full or empty lava pits, and no falls into lava anywhere else. Still no achievement. Thing is, you literally cannot stand still for more than the .05 seconds it takes to stop pushing keys to double tap for dodge or else you trigger it. This Hot Foot burning thing is the only thing left that makes any sense whatsoever.

Ethics.4519:

His agony attack also causes burning (the red bubble around you) and causes burning on anybody around the person with the bubble.

I’m not sure that burning counts… the achievement title and description focus on the floor which would suggest not standing in lava or getting burning from standing still.

Me Kill You.9035:

The main issue is probably that you can’t stop to res anyone who is downed because then you’ll get the burning on you :/

If you really want the achievement Id recommend rolling on lvl 1 til you get grawl and trying it on that

Yeah that’s pretty much what I decided I’ll have to do. Got into it last night on 28 but it’s just too hard to never stop to heal or rez or cast aoe spells. You can’t get downed either. I think it’s ironic that we have an ach for basically ignoring our party and not utilizing all our skills.

Thanks everyone!

It might be new. It happened about 3 times while I was on the island, roughly 20-30min apart and yes it’s at Pearl Islet.

Don’t see this one on the list..

Inspector Ellen Kiel: Tell me everything. These buildings seem to be the target. What’s inside?
Subdirector Noll: That information is strictly on a need-to-know basis. And mind your tone. The Consortium is the victim here.
Inspector Ellen Kiel: Fine. Have fun being trampled and eaten until someone who needs to know shows up.
Subdirector Noll: Wait, wait. Given the circumstances… These are simple storage depots. Tools, supplies, records…
Inspector Ellen Kiel: Why would wild creatures attack caches of tools, supplies, and records?
Subdirector Noll: Figuring that out is your job. And just so you understand the stakes—this isn’t an isolated incident.
Subdirector Noll: Our Southsun records on the mainland have also been targeted. Destroyed, in fact.
Subdirector Noll: The originals here are all that’s left. I’m having them collected so we can protect them, but I want Lionguard assurances.
Subdirector Noll: If the Consortium loses this important asset, the Captain’s Council will hear about your incompetence.

HELLruler.4820:

If I’m not mistaken, you get the achievement from not getting the “Burning” condition when you stand still on the floor (yes, it burns you)

The burning debuff only shows up if you stand still? So you can avoid it by continuously moving? What about spells that require you to stand still or reviving people? Will those trigger it?

FangedTerror.3852:

I beleive you may also need to stay out of the puddle areas altogether regardless if there is lava there or not.

I got the acheivemen without really thinking about it but I believe that is how a guildy got hers.

Yeah, I tried that and still don’t have it.

Is this achievement bugged or is there something special you have to do? According to the description, you get it so long as you don’t fall into the lava in there but I’ve run it several times now without falling into the lava or even getting caught in the puddles on the last boss and still not gotten it. What am I missing?

The difficulty scale means how hard the dungeon is. Mostly, it deals with number of mobs, level of mobs, and the intensity of agony. (Agony is a debuff that only occurs in fractals and can be negated with a stat called Agony Resistance.) You cannot open a higher level fractal than the highest level someone in your party has completed. For example, if all the guys in your party have never been to fractals, you will only be able to open level 1. If one person in your party has completed level 10, you can open any level up to 10.

Personal Reward level is how much you get rewarded. I am currently at level 26. If I go do level 10, my rewards are a little better than those who are at level 10. Likewise, if you are level 1 and you do level 10, you only get level 1 rewards. Your personal reward level is also the max level you personally can open.

To up your personal reward level and the max-level you can open, you have to complete a fractal either the same level or higher as your current level. A complete fractal run is all the fractals Dessa sends you to until she brings you back to the lab. As the people above me already said, odd levels (level 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc) are 3 fractals and even levels (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc) have a 4th bonus fractal that is always Jade Maw.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-secret-of-southsun/

•All players who enter the island for the duration of the event are scaled up to level 80. This content is available from May 14 to June 11.

They tried at least.

In Divinity’s Reach go to the Asura Gate in the big center plaza. It will take you to Lion’s Arch. From there, you need to go to the bottom part of the map where you’ll find a little boardwalk and two Asura Gates. The one in the corner is malfunctioning and is a dungeon. The normal one in the middle takes you to Southsun Cove. Alternatively, you can go to the docks in Lion’s Arch and talk to the guy with a boat icon above his head. He can send you there as well.

All players are upleveled to 80 upon entering Southsun Cove. It can be accessed via an Asura Gate in Lion’s Arch.

The Frost and Flame story arc mostly took place in low level zones. Wayfarer’s is 1-15 and Diessa is 15-25. Or somewhere around there. I’m not entirely sure but I believe the concluding dungeon and the personal instances in the Frost and Flame story arc upleveled you or adjusted to suit your level as well.

So, to answer your question—no. The Living Story is intended and designed for everyone to participate and enjoy.

Farzo.8410:

Only thing I dislike about this is that the achievement tab spoiled the whole story in mere 15 seconds reading them…

Not really. They don’t actually tell us anything. At most the surprise of seeing Canach again is spoiled and that there will be some sort of lair event/dungeon/personal instance. But we don’t know any of the details surrounding that event. We don’t know the whys, the wheres, the whens, or the hows. Personally, I feel like I have something to look forward to more than I feel like the story was spoiled for me.

I agree! I love that they chose to follow up with the refugees and bring the Consortium and Southsun back into the picture since I felt like they let that boat sink instead of bringing it all the way into port. I’m glad they put it out so soon after the completion of Frost and Flame instead of leaving us with nothing to do through the rest of May. I’m really enjoying the new activities and player-life on the island. I’m intrigued by the mystery behind the human nobles. I really love the crab toss game and I enjoyed chasing after the achievements.
There are things that could be improved but overall I’m pleased with this update.

Overall the mobs on SSC just seem imbalanced in difficulty to rewards. The young karka and young reef riders are easy and not a problem. But the “normal mobs” (eg. Reef Rider, Karka, etc.) are harder to kill—they have more hit points and they hit a lot harder. As a full berserker d/d elementalist, I’m accustomed to being able to kill normal mobs quickly without much effort and certainly without using my healing skill. However, on SSC, I often use my healing skill twice just in the process of bring down one normal mob. I daren’t dry to kill the veterens, let alone the champions, solo.
I don’t mind the challenge—challenge is what keeps things interesting—but I am a little irritated that for all my effort into killing these mobs, I more often than not, get nothing for it. There is an imbalance between the effort required and the rewards rendered. I am happy to report that (with the settler support buff) when you do get a reward it’s typically either a mat or green item. Even so, I think the mobs should either be quicker to kill or give good loot (mats, green or better items) more often.

I think they should archive achievements from completed events that are not returning to the game. They’re not achievements new players can ever hope to earn because the events have come and gone. Why should a new player have to look at achievements they can’t earn? Especially since they won’t know they can’t earn them because they’re new. Not to mention, the achievement group list is getting really long and it’s hard to find the group you’re looking for amongst all the mess. They should just put all the groups from events that are forever gone into one group that drops down into a list of the groups if you want to look at them.

Great idea! Anet should consider making their own polls because it’s a good way to gather data on what the player population thinks without using all their manpower to read the endless posts on opinion threads.

kitanas.3596:

about the orders being involved: they can’t necessarily have the orders involved because not everyone is in an order in their personal story yet.

You can’t experience everything in the dungeon from this update until you’ve completed last month’s questlines with Rox and Braham. Likewise, obviously if you’re not in an order, you can’t be called upon or contacted by them. There are already achievements in place for being in an order so it would have been simple to simply write two letters and have the system check your achievements to see which one you get. Or your quest progress since achievements are account-bound and each character may not be in an order.
They already did this to some extent because if your character has become Pact Commander you can enter the charr leadership meeting in the instance where Rytlock sends Rox out on a mission. If your character hasn’t become Pact Commander, they kick you out. They proved they can tell the system to distinguish where you are in your personal story.

kitanas.3596:

It ties in to what the dev actually said, which is that tying personal story characters into living story is complicated because not everyone is at the same place in their personal story. imagine the the orders were involved, and the OoW put Tybalt as their point man. do you see the issue with that?

Over the past few months of design work on the Living Story, we’ve overcome many challenges. Writing story in an MMO environment resembles building a giant puzzle. We want to avoid temporal paradoxes, for example. From a player perspective, the Personal Story is unfolding simultaneously with the Living Story, but how can characters be in both places at the same time? Furthermore, do we all presume that So-and-So is dead, because he died at level 80, or do we assume the opposite? There’s a minefield of possible paradoxes that we have to carefully move through when writing the Living Story, and we’ve had to shift our thinking a bit to accommodate that. This has taken a lot of thought and forethought.

There’s what the dev said in her post back in February. The orders are huge. There’s no reason they needed to use Tybalt. They could have created a completely new character from that order. Which they did, but they didn’t make good use of him to draw players from the OoW further into the story.
I think the problem here is that they assumed with their storyline that everyone was still working through the personal story questline which is simply not true. I completed that questline months ago. Many other players, in fact I would guess a majority, have as well. From our perspectives as players, these events are happening way after Zhaitan.

I think that they should have created questlines including the orders for those who are past a certain point in their storyline. I would guess that the majority of the players out there have completed it on at least one character. That would make it last longer because if you have one character in the Order of Whispers, you can experience as a spy. If you have another in the Vigil, you can assault their bases. If you’ve got one in the Priory, you can research what’s going on. Or something like that. People who haven’t completed the personal story questlines miss out. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing because people who aren’t playing right now are missing out on this whole story arc. It rewards your dedicated players and inspires less-dedicated players to become dedicated. It shows that it pays to achieve.

BunnytheSwordsman.4173:

The Vigil seems to be the one you get the notification from, and it makes sense. The Order seems to be doing more observation and the Priory probably will just be handling clean-up. The Vigil pretty much the group to turn to when you need to combat a force like the Molten Alliance.

I don’t have a character in the Vigil so I can’t say whether or not they draw Vigil players into it more. Notification is nice and would be a good step in the right direction, but mini-missions or quests would be even better. There is more to war than just the combat. We were told that the priory was researching what was going on. Where did they get their information? Likely they were searching camps and the like for any pre-existing hint of alliance. The Order had people undercover, sending out battle plans and camp locations etc. The Vigil is basically organizing raids. The three orders worked together to bring down Zhaitan and here we see that they are working together or at least covering the different areas and facets of war. The difference is with Zhaitan, the player was not just called upon but depended upon for help. With the Molten Alliance, the orders have almost forgotten who the player is and basically sends us to pick up trash.

Or did they disown me? The priory is on the scene, researching this strange alliance and the bizarre ongoings and yet… they didn’t call me. They had no task for a Magister of their order. They didn’t even have the decency to write to tell me personally about their findings. Even if they don’t need me, I’m still part of the priory. I love learning, research, and adventure as much as the rest of them but I have to seek out some silly priory robot thing to learn what in the world’s going on.

Likewise… The order of whispers clearly has covert operations going on but they didn’t call me up and ask me for help. I’m a Lightbringer—someone directly responsible for the downfall of Zhaitan but they don’t need my help. Instead, they enlist the help of random nobodies that happen to be wandering through the Black Citadel. What? They don’t even have the decency to tell me that I could be useful. Instead, I hear about it from the Heralds. How is it that they know more about what my order’s doing than I do? Especially when I’m one of the highest ranking members…

Drama aside, I really do feel like there was a huge missed opportunity here. You put the orders on the scene—orders that we joined but haven’t heard from since the defeat of Zhaitan. A new threat shows its face and they still carry on as if we’ve nothing to do with them. The Living Story is meant to bring the world alive. Overall, it’s been extremely underwhelming. The Personal Story took place in the world too and I distinctly recall a dev commenting on the fact that the living story gets complicated because of the events of the personal story. Despite that, there’s no point at which the two touch. They have no common storyline or characters. They are completely separate happenings. Here, we see our orders (the ones we are supposedly all-important members of) working hard to figure out what is going on and then fix it but they don’t call on us. They don’t even stop to tell us what’s happening. Instead, we’re told by our old mentors to seek out these silly gossip-mongers standing on boxes in cities for our information. Don’t we rate a little more than that?

You could have prolonged the fun of the living story and made it more relatable by pulling our orders into it. The questlines for the living story, once there actually were questlines, were easily finished in one evening. Then there was only the evidence left in the world. The events, the peri-sonic scope thingys, the dead and dying refugees, the foreverly broken sign posts, and the ice and dust storms. It just doesn’t feel life-threatening or important. There’s nothing relatable in it and I don’t feel needed. All these people send us mail at the beginning of the month, begging for help, claiming they’re swamped and don’t know how to handle anymore. Yet, when you go to them, there’s nothing to do. There’s too much drama for the tiny amount of activity. There could have been tons of mini-quests from our orders, or really from anyone, keeping the living story alive. But there wasn’t. When I compare the living story to the personal story, it falls extremely short. It seems like no one really needs us, they’re just sending us out with busywork to keep us out of their hair. My point is: the living story has fallen extremely short of expectations (at least for me) and the orders could have been an excellent tool for really bringing it to life but ultimately, they became a wasted opportunity.

lol, anyone who’s going to buy those are going to buy them anyway. Outside dungeons isn’t the only place to use them and I’ve seen people using them in Lion’s Arch where there are plenty of vendors and WPs are free.
Anyone who doesn’t want to buy them isn’t going to suddenly start buying them just because it’s annoying to run to a vendor between dungeons. They’re going to sigh and start running.

Squee Squashington.5189:

After mulling it over a bit I came to the conclusion that legendary weapons exist for the sole purpose of enticing people to gamble at the Mystic Forge, so that when someone loses all of their ingame gold they are more likely to cash back in through the gem store.

Many people know this and it is what we object to. If they wanted us to use them gem store they should’ve just put legendaries/precursors on the gem store and paid the consequences of people leaving outraged. This round-a-bout method is only different in that precursor drops are a huge scam. You always think, “Oh just one more try and I’ll have it.” or “Surely I’ll get it this time.” But it never comes. Putting them in the gem store in the first place would at least be honest.

That sounds overly complicated. There needs to be a set system of ‘do this and this and this and get a precursor.’ Whether that means that we obtain more mats to build it via crafting or have to accomplish certain tasks or something else entirely is up to the designers. Either that or it needs to be guaranteed after so many kills/dungeons/Forge attempts. RNG is a terrible, horrible system for anything as vital as this. Increasing RNG isn’t going to help matters.
In addition, if you want to avoid people trolling or farming then precursors and legendaries should simply be taken off the TP. The prices are completely inflated and ridiculous. If there was ever something that destroyed economy it’s something that’s worth practically nothing selling for hundreds of gold. If they don’t want to take them off the TP then let the market be flooded with them and drive the prices down. That would be a positive. Even anet has admitted that the prices on precursors are harsh and not quite what they had in mind.
The only thing that makes precursors so expensive is RNG. If precursors were more common, they wouldn’t be so expensive. If they were a guaranteed drop that was account bound, there would be no TP problem at all.

Precursors are just depressing. I’ve gotten nearly all of the mats for my legendary except the precursor and looking at the prices is just completely depressing. The prices keep going up and up and up. Everyday it looks more and more hopeless. I farmed the dragon events and other chest events every day for nearly 2 months. I only ever saw 1 exotic. My friends all saw their precursors drop in dungeons. I was running a dungeon with a random group, this guy got a precursor and didn’t even know what it was. There’s nothing fair, good, or right about that. I’ve run hundreds of dungeons, done hundreds of group world events, killed thousands of mobs and gotten nothing. Then some brand-new 80 wanders into AC and goes, “Oh hey look at this.”

I don’t care if it’s meant to be a long-term goal. Long-term means after a long time you obtain it. Not, “Oh well someday you might possibly see some precursor drop.” I’m not even guaranteed that should a precursor drop it’ll be the one I want or that it will even be worth the amount I need to purchase mine. As is, it’s simply not obtainable unless you’re lucky, rich, or don’t mind zombie farming CoF every waking hour for 2months.

“You can’t possibly play forever and never see one drop,” you say? I don’t care how you do the math, it is absolutely possible for every roll you make to not be the ‘precursor roll’. It may be unlikely but I promise you it is possible and I am the kind of person it would happen to.

I also don’t care if you think what makes a legendary special is that few people have it. People who have put 0 effort into it have gotten precursors and the rest of us who have put hours into farming and hoping have gotten nothing. If I am willing to put that much work into it, I should be able to obtain my goal.

Anytime now on the “scavenger hunt” thing would be great… :|

I’d love to see vendors outside dungeons. Surely there’s someone in Tyria that would love to get their hands on the stuff we’re bringing out. You always end up with so much stuff in dungeons and there’s no where nearby to sell it. I know you can always waypoint or run to some vendor or visit wvw real quick. I also know you don’t have to be at the dungeon to enter it, however, someone has to open it. It’s just a matter of convenience—especially when your party’s in a hurry or you’re trying to get in as many runs as possible before the dungeon closes and you have to wait for the event.

I’d like to know what the reasoning is behind requiring the same amount of time to build a guild training mission as to unlock guild bounties in the first place. These are worth nothing compared to the actual bounty in the area of rewards and take six times the time to build. What’s the purpose for this?
The only reason I can think of is that you didn’t want big guilds have another way to gain influence. I don’t think the big guilds will care about training missions though. They have plenty of ways to get influence and will be more interested in using their build slots for other upgrades and guild missions that give rewards. This will hurt small guilds more than limit large ones.

Gisei.5749:

I wonder if these incredibly small guilds (aKa. less than full parties)complain that they can’t complete a dungeon because they don’t have 5 players, and shouldn’t have to ask for help from pugs. It really is the same concept.

Guild missions are made as Group Events. A public group event. Emphasis on the public, and group. 3 people aren’t a group. 5 players are a dungeon party. Think bigger. 8 players is more like it.

My guild was able to rally a whoppin’ 8 players for our first round of T1 bounties. We successfully completed them, without cheating. We are an incredibly small guild, managing 8 players for a scheduled event. Any smaller than us, and you’re not a guild, you’re a fancy dungeon party.

And I thank you Anet on behalf of my guild. The only thing holding us back was influence. This will no longer be a problem. It has made all the difference.

Had Anet made a statement to the effects of “X number of players constitutes a guild by our definition.” Or “Guild Missions are intended for x number of players and up.” I would agree with your argument. When you go to enter a dungeon it says right on the popup that it’s for 5 players. As far as I am aware, Anet has said nothing to that effect and there is no recommended number on Guild Missions anywhere else.

Also, I’d like to know who died and left you to decide how many constitute a guild or a group. In real life, people tend to refer to any more than 2 as a group, meaning 3 could very well constitute a group. Also, Destiny’s Edge is only 5 and is referred to multiple times as a guild. Even if you count Snaff, it’s only 6 which is less than your count.

That said, I do believe this addition is a solid step towards opening guild missions up to smaller guilds.