While not seasonal, the Mini Karka, Mini Karka Hatchling, and Mini Reef Drake can be acquired from the Trading Post and they came from a one-time event that is never going to happen again.
The Endless Halloween Tonic started out as an account bound only item, but ArenaNet listened to feedback about it and at a later date removed the property so it could be traded with other players (although this got bugged a bit and sometimes you can’t sell yours). There’s nothing really stopping them from removing the property this month, next month, or the month after.
Only the frames were removed. They kept the NPCs up as promised per the patch notes. It’s probably intended but not really sure why.
The Tixx Gift was originally broken into two parts, PvE and PvP. PvE got 200 cogs, 15-slot bag, 3 Unsafe Wintersday Gifts (contains only the in-game weapon skins), Toymaker’s Bag (back piece, mostly just for skin purposes). PvP got 3 Snowman Finishers, 3 Gift Finishers, and a PvP version of the Toymaker’s Bag.
It bugged out in all kinds of ways though so they just had it pushed out as in-game mail afterwards and upped the cogs from 200 to 250.
They probably changed it because of the “hacked off” that was in the original title. Not everyone is up to date on jargon I suppose. It’s likely it was changed so someone who didn’t know wouldn’t think it meant you got hacked.
Also I wouldn’t say GW2 is all about dress-up but it is one of the main things to do at the end.
They are too busy banning people for ruining the economy due to an oversight on their holiday recipe that allowed you to generate infinite money (that has been reported since the day the event started).
I bought and will probably hold onto 50 stuffing because of a silly rumor I heard for what happens to things later on after the event has ended. It probably won’t even happen but eh it’s just 40s so I’m fine with that.
Yeah nothing today. It’s pretty buggy being so inconsistent with who it hits and how many times they get hit throughout the event.
To me and many old GW1 players this doesn’t seem the same game company anymore.
That’s exactly how I feel! As if all the people who used to work on GW1 and create great content has left and the head of the company only focus on how to make players buy gems. Where is the fun?
This game should not be allowed to be called GW2 because it has nothing to do with GW1. That’s such a shame
Well for the most part the main ones who were behind it did leave and made other games or are working for their competitors.
950 cogs, might as well hang onto them, maybe they’ll be good for something in the future, even if it is just a pet I actually want
Endless Toymaker’s Tonic, well thats obvious, I’ll be watching the price for that closely. Funny how much it’s already risen because one guy said he found a secret use for it.
I just sell my ugly clothes, the money you get is better used toward more presents than actually using the clothes for presents.
It would be funny if it turns out to be nothing at all and he was just using techniques to cause inflation.
I have opened the jump puzzle chest everyday of the event. Today is the first day I did not receive a reward from the chest.
Was there anything different that you did this time around compared to the previous times?
It looks like the bug that popped up when Tixx arrived at Lion’s Arch (some people receiving nothing from chests). If it was their anti-botting code it would be hitting quite a bit more people.
They added Glory Boosters and a Heavy Bag of Coins. That was about it. The rest of the changes for the Wintersday patch were rebalancing drop rates / lowering tonic drop rates / etc.
Everything that isn’t spam or flame wars tends to get presented to the development teams, if the argument on the other side of the forums is to be believed, so I wouldn’t say it’s pointless.
They are always being informed of what is going on; they choose whether or not it is important enough to think about going forward / fix now / etc
Plus they have mentioned that the gem store is an ongoing “problem” to use your choice of word, trying to find the perfect balance of selling things that doesn’t anger their potential buyers. They are always looking for possible solutions that they think would work in the future.
Got a reward today. Purposefully slowed how I approached it so I could see if it would hit if I moved like a snail.
Guess it’s just random if it’ll bug or not. I remember them mentioning their detection system is a little haywire at the moment. Wonder if that has anything to do with it?
Yeah I can see it. Unfortunately based on the other forum section (with some argument about how ArenaNet isn’t transparent enough) it seems the people who would be able to implement this change if they wanted to are on vacation.
Also the buying thing was their comment from the interview. They know people can convert gold to gems but they would have liked it if you would open your wallet a little for the holidays.
Based on their interview I’d say it was intended from the beginning. Doubt they’d do anything with cogs since commerce team would prefer if you bought the ones you couldn’t make as a small sign of support for the company. I also don’t see them doing anything with stuffing or glue since it doubles as a temporary gold sink.
I wouldn’t complain if they actually did anything, but it probably won’t happen considering the time.
It’s kind of interesting he discovered an “extremely useful purpose” for the tonics that will make their price sky rocket.
Outside of him driving up interest I wonder if it’s related to WvW and culling.
Kind of curious, do you all remember what your health was at percentage wise when you finished? I wonder if having too much health is triggering it or if it’s random.
When I didn’t get my reward today I finished at ~15% (2600~2800) health remaining.
No reward, though I’ve noticed the karma jugs shares a drop table with another item.
Anti-botting /hacking code gone haywire?
It seems he wasn’t truly satisfied with his number, so he opened even more gifts. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/15omze/update_i_have_now_opened_300000_giant_wintersday/
15 Bells and 9 Toymaker Tonics after a grand total of 300,000 giant wintersday gifts. If true drop rate (he doesn’t think it is) he says the Bell droprate is 1/20000 (0.005%) and Tonic is 1/33333 (0.003%).
There’s some other stuff he puts like guesswork about how many bells / tonics will be in the market for this year and how many gifts will be sold by the time the event ends.
Not like the ArenaNet style? Look at Candy Cane Shards from GW1. Once Wintersday was over they had no other purpose since they were only used to complete quests or exchange for holiday items.
They said they revealed everything that was intended to happen for the entire duration of the event on day one. No surprises because of the holidays.
That’s cool. Unfortunate the OP’s boyfriend hasn’t gotten it. Hope it’s not bugged (again) like the chest was.
It seems sometimes it bugs out and you have to put them in a specific order? I haven’t gotten any minis to try it but that’s what I read when someone mentioned it being bugged earlier in the event.
We’ll never get an answer during the event since most of the team is taking their vacation it seems. I’m leaning towards it being a conversion error when going from internal documentation to readable format. The specifics of those things might not have been in the documentation and he had to go ask someone from the commerce team.
24 Princess Tonics before I got Endless. Then the very next day I got Endless Toymaker’s while opening some wintersday boxes.
It was the same thing with the cogs from the dungeon. They posted saying they are looking into it and they will post here when they fix it and what they are going to do to compensate everyone hit by it.
They never posted on the forums what they were going to do, they just went and did it (the cogs in the chest in LA) which ended up with this topic being made. Same thing with the response given, they didn’t update us and just went ahead and mailed out the chest rewards to every account.
Most dev activity I’ve seen was gathering procedures to attempt to replicate a zone crash, outside of that it’s been mostly the same ol’ community people dealing with support tickets.
The highest it’s ever been was 60g. Since then it’s been slowly dropping in price because it has two possible methods of being obtained. There are some moments (usually in the early hours of the day) where it’ll jump up in price by a few gold but it will slowly and steadily keep going down.
If it did go up in value it would probably be after the event is over.
I’d be kind of interested in seeing some kind of stats of how many people were able to complete it, how many times they’ve done it, etc.
Unfortunately they don’t have any ways to track that, according to the guy who created them.
Also 1-2% would mean the puzzle was harder than Halloween (which was intended for only 5% of the population to complete in its original design before it turned out the way it did.) If anything it is probably 20~25% minimum.
Yep. Originally numbers like 25% were being tossed around and some people said it couldn’t be less than 10%.
People also hadn’t fully considered the draw-back of recieving a random amount of an account bound non-consumable item you will never need more than 1 of.
Ah yeah. I think the rates are closer to 2~5% per pet which is pretty bad for something you can’t get rid of if you are unlucky.
Weren’t the chances in the very beginning estimated to be very high because some people got really lucky?
Although the problem with that was the sample size and the methods of counting the drops.
Yeah the commerce team seems pretty stuck in their ways. It’s a bit of a shame because it’s not like making that one change would ruin them or anything.
Best guess is that they are determined to stay with it til the end so they can discuss it within the team and figure out what to do for the next event. It sounds like all the different teams for the most part act independently and only come together when they need assets created or to give them a vague description of what they are doing for when the other teams get interviewed.
The sad thing is it could be either one of those options lol.
Considering all of the patch notes are converted from the mess that is internal documentation it is possible that the poor guy who had to read all that stuff messed up when writing it in a consumer-friendly format.
Also considering the amount of bugs that come with every event it is just as likely to be a bug.
It is a bit unfortunate that the commerce team was the one that was in charge of that box because they seem like they are one of the most unreachable teams around.
Nah, they said sometimes the boxes are empty on purpose. They needed some type of randomness in it.
I think only accounts created before the compensation was sent out will get the mail with the extra cogs.
I wonder if it’s their anti-botting code that’s messing up. It was doing that earlier in the event when people would get booted straight to Lion’s Arch or the waiting platform after jumping into the giant present at the end of the puzzle.
They got rid of the chest that gave your reward in favor of sending out mail for it.
Got my reward today too. Curious what makes it so you don’t get anything at all.
I am confused. I did all of the events each day, but i’m short a stack of the stuffing.
i got 3 stacks of cogs(one was mailed), 3 stacks of glue, 5 mini pet items, but only 2 stacks of stuffing.
where did i miss a stack of stuffing?
You didn’t. The original plan was for two pets to be made for sure, the rest bought from gem store. They messed up with some bugs and had to send out more cogs for those who couldn’t make two.
It is approximated to be 0.005% droprate (1/20000) based on someone getting 8 from 160,000
Endless Toymaker’s Tonic is 0.00375% (1/26667) although if you wanted to test your luck even more you could attempt to forge that one.
It’s usually better to buy things from the trading post unless you are farming the drop. Although there was a short period of time where you could have make a profit buying the boxes.
It’s pretty easy to do most jumping puzzles with Asura. I find Charr the hardest if you aren’t able to draw a weapon or hold something. Love their running and running jump animation but sometimes it’s easy to forget where your center of mass is while jumping.
You could wait maybe one or two seconds if the big guys are blocking your view. Most people will fall to their doom after that initial set of snowflakes. For the most part you don’t need to see your character, just their feet or a general idea of where your feet are.
The problem is no one should have to spend 50$ on each mini-pet. ArenaNet has never stated that these mystery boxes were the only way to obtain these mini-pets, in fact according to the patch notes, the mystery boxes are supposed to drop around Tyria. (Which they haven’t been.) The poster who spent 163$ even says he can’t afford to keep doing this, I think he’d be willing to take a hit this once for the sake of having these mini-pets cheaper in the future.
In the interview with the event team they said the commerce team decides how you obtain all mini pets. In response to “How do you obtain Foostivoo?” they said one way (and the only method they knew of) was by fusing the three pets which only come from the box. They didn’t know the other ways because it’s handled by a different team so they try to avoid speaking in absolutes. It’s interesting because before he was interrupted it sounded like he was going to say “As far as I know the only way”
So if there are other methods to obtain pets outside of the boxes, the teams aren’t fully communicating with each other at all.
It is a bit odd that they haven’t bothered to update the patch notes or even clarify whether or not the Mystery Wintersday Box can even drop in the world. It’s obvious it doesn’t, but they don’t want to come out and say it.
I agree with you that no one should have to pay $50 for each pet.
It breaks trust, as mentioned in either this or some other thread where that suggestion was brought up.
Would you be willing to spend money on a company that would have no problem changing methods of acquisition weeks after previously stating the only way to obtain it was a Mystery Box?
Look at it from a different POV. Say you were the guy above that spent $163 just to get all of those pets. Then ArenaNet came out right after and just silently added a trio pack without telling anyone (since that’s probably how they would do it lol). Would you, as that guy, be willing to spend money again? You would probably only wait until the end of events or something so that you don’t end up in that situation again.
If they are going to do anything to this specific set of minis (which they aren’t, commerce team has pretty much laid down that law) while the event is still going they’d be better off removing the account bound property. That’s something they could do at any time though I guess.
Well, he seems to be the forum punching bag as far as the topic of the Unbreakable Choir Bell is concerned so it is a bit natural that he would be defensive.
Someone mentioned in another thread that they would refuse to return to the forums and the only reason they posted is because ArenaNet refused to listen to their suggestion via a ticket and directed them to the forum. Apparently their hatred of the forums came from constantly having personal attacks and flame bait directed at them after a dev told them to post their suggestion on the forums.
Unfortunate. Discussions should be promoted and not discouraged.
You know, I think it’s something like ~40% of all purchases for virtual goods are Mystery boxes (if it’s in a game’s cash shop), and they are mostly bought by males in their late teens / early twenties or over forty.
It isn’t that surprising, sadly.
Canthan New Year was the only event that had pets that rotated out. I could see them changing out pets though just so that they have something to attract collectors.
Buy Lunar Fortunes from the gem store, get nothing. Shoot off fireworks across Tyria. Maybe more PvP modes, and the return of Rollerbeetle Racing?
I got a reward today. How about you guys?
Maybe the challenge is avoiding carpal tunnel?
It’s kind of funny how yesterday I spent ~8g on 10 attempts for the princess and got it on the 9th one. Today I spend 50 silver on 100 gifts and got the Toymaker. I think even adding up the cost of all the gifts I’ve bought from the Trading Post it still came up under 8g.
Random gonna random.