Guild Wars 2

There seem to be some pretty significant differences in the story, depending on your race. Sylvari can actually hear Mordremoth’s whispers, so for example during the first bossfight, the cutscene towards the end (with the tendril/worm thingy spitting out more enemies) does not have any spoken lines for non-Sylvari PCs. If you play a Sylvari, you’ll actually hear the dragon and his minion talk.

I quite liked that.

The last one to post a norn was Nasuradin, so here’s my rating:

Overall: 8/10
Armour: 7/10

He’s quite the hunk! Although I guess by norn standards, he’s more of a “pretty boy”
The armour combination you use is largely fine. It’s a nice mix of T1 and T3 norn cultural skins, although I think that way you are playing it maybe a little too safe.

Unfortunately, the one piece of gear you use to break it up a bit is a skin which just doesn’t mesh well with the overall style. Even if we discount the fact that those vambraces are of human origin and a norn shouldn’t really have a reason to wear something dedicated to Dwayna, the style just doesn’t fit, either. Well, I suppose it can be a nice idea to sometimes break with the overall style (which, in your case, is more rough, barbarian-like), but I just feel like it doesn’t quite work.
To be fair though, it’s still a lot better than the random achievement gauntlets you had on the first screen! (I don’t mind the glowing eyes, however.)

Colours are great!

Here’s my norn elementalist in her battle armour. I consider this her visceral combat look. The highlights are the general silhouette, the mask (especially with her shaved head and tattoo) and her mantle. Oh, and the fingertips!

I will try to make her look like a raven shaman for her next armour set.

I’ve always thought that this chest piece looked somewhat ridiculous (on any race, really).
I don’t mind sexy, or showing skin, but this just looks somewhat silly. Considering how open it is in the front, I also find it really weird that it seems almost glued to the body.

On a different note, if you want a warrior-esque look, how about the Sorrow’s Furnace chest piece? It almost looks like heavy armour.

And totally unrelated, but everytime I look at the picture you posted… I think your norn lady has a beard. The tattoo on her chin is almost the same colour as her hair, so it would fit, and I end up being somewhat confused everytime!

My norn elementalist.
I had a Raven shaman look planned for her, but I don’t have all the necessary skins yet. For the time being, I still wanted to give her a little treat for hitting level 80, so I went with a completely different theme for this armour set, working with what I have unlocked already.

I consider this her visceral combat look. The highlights are the general silhouette, the mask (especially with her shaved head and tattoo) and her mantle.

1) Mix and match set.
2) Havroun norn racial.
3) Seer armour.
4) Winged armour.
5) Ascalonian Performer armour.
6) Masquerade armour.

The mask is the mesmer’s “Fanged Dread” mask, so it’s not part of a specific armour set.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Pretty sure it’s still a fern hound, rather than a normal wolf. It fits in with the Husks, keeping Mordremoth’s minions as being similar-yet-different to Nightmare Court critters.

Fern hounds are made entirely from plants (just like sylvari), so it wouldn’t make sense for them to possess a bone skull.
Moreover, if you look at its legs, you can see that these are actually covered in fur, which to me suggests that it used to be a normal dog/canine animal.

A few of mine.

I personally love the looks of the vines. The blue shimmer on the green vines along with the golden glint on the thorns is sublimely beautiful.
I hope we will see zones with some really crazy, twisted overgrowth.

7/10

I guess I like the sound of it (is it ma-tau-ik or ma-ta-uik by the way?), but that’s pretty much it. I would have never guessed that it’s a sylvari name, however. But then again, if all sylvari would have to stick to gaelic names, it would turn boring quick.

My sylvari mesmer is called Ceilidh Nightsong. The Nightsong is not her last name, but more of a title/nickname, really.
Cèilidh means “visit, visiting”, in some cases I’ve seen that it’s supposed to even mean pilgrimage. Nowadays, a ceilidh describes a social event of sorts, with dancing etc.

I kind of like the duality of the name, since in my mind sylvari are still very alien to Tyria, so they are somehow similar to simple visitors. Moreover, they are usually quite an optimistic, merry people, so being associated with a “party” also fits.

I would definitely agree that she probably is much bigger than she was in Guild Wars 1. I mean, the biggest enemy we ever got back then was Abaddon in Nightfall, and even he is small compared to any of the world bosses we have in Guild Wars 2.

Prophecies is the oldest Guild Wars game, and they were quite limited in both resources and in what their engine was capable of.
Besides, there’s this image of her and Destiny’s Edge:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/8/8e/Glint%27s_corpse.jpg

It looks like the distance from the tip of her snout to her eye is roughly equal to Eir’s height. Allegedly, many norn are around 9 Feet tall, but I’m not sure that ever truly matches up with what we see in game. Still, this would put her head alone at at least three metres – and with Glint, her head is actually quite small compared to the rest of her body (she has quite a slender build, with a long, snake-like neck).

And while it’s true that basing this off of concept art only might not be too accurate, but at the very least it can confirm that she is supposed to be much bigger than what we’ve seen of her previously.

Waypoints are part of the lore, however there are certain limitations to them which explain why people don’t use them as extensively as we do as players:
They are probably quite expensive.
You can’t ship large cargo with them.
You have to be at a waypoint to travel to a different one. So, no “kitten, our airship is coming down, let’s all just teleport away!”, unless there had been one preinstalled on the ship (one of the new books suggests that it would be impossible to have an active waypoint on a surface that is moving around. They need to be attuned to their fixed environment).

Now, in regards to this particular topic:
As far as I understood it, this simply serves as an explanation as to how Scarlet was able to constantly just teleport herself wherever (apart from using portals).

On the music sheet for the first song you could see it’s title, which was “Mordrem 01”.

But well, I doubt it’s actually going to be Mordremoth’s theme music. Did Zhaitan have one?

Kekai Kotaki hasn’t been working for ANet for a long time, so he won’t have created anything in specific for Living World Season 2.
Or course, this doesn’t mean that some of his old pieces which haven’t been utilized so far won’t be made use of in the future, but what we can say for certain is that there’s no point in trying to speculate based on things he drew.

By the way, the second image is most likely an early rendition of the Shadow Behemoth world boss in Queensdale.

Horst Hortensie.5420:

Dwayna left and because of that Malchor did suicide. He finished the statue before and should know the fact that she will leave if he is done (the other gods did leave after their statue was finished). Maybe he finished, touched her and jumped before Dwayna left, but it seems unlikely to jump into dead in front of your beloved. Now putting Grenth onto that cliff causes a lot trouble. It would have been the last action of Dwayna before she left Tyria and after all other gods already left it. In this case she probably would have omitted the rest of the pantheon with her decision.

Actually, while each of the Gods did “leave” after Malchor finished their respective statue, this act of leaving simply meant that they went back to their home in the Heart of Arah.

The act of leaving the world of Tyria happened later, although I think we don’t know by exactly how much. Meaning, you won’t have to worry about this particular timeline problem

Necroing this thread to confirm that I have just encountered the same bug as Cryptozy.

After picking up around 6 Dwarven Relics (probably were 6, if that’s the needed number. I didn’t count), the scabbard appeared near the dwarven gate to the north. When I swam there, it prompted me to press F to pick it up, however nothing happened once I hit F. I also could not pick up any other dwarven relics after this, weapon skills did not work, and neither did my healing skill (Utility skills did work, however).

The issue was resolved after being downed (in the downed state, I could use my skills, and after rallying, everything was back to normal), and I was able to finish the mission after this.

Now, as for what might have caused this… the only “weird” thing I think I might have done to cause this, was to pick up one or two additional dwarven relics on my way to the scabbard (F and skills bugged out only after I tried picking the scabbard for the first time, so before that, I was free to pick up whatever I wanted).

Actually, I don’t like this build since it’s really quite gear dependant. I tried it with subpar equipment, and I would barely get her down to 80% maybe. Besides being gear dependant, you will need runes/sigils that, at least now, are totally useless in pretty much any other aspect of the game.

I got her down by kiting her with DS in the First Phase, and then as soon as the third orb hit her, I would throw down all staff marks at my own position, activate Shadow Walk and Lich Form and then just keep on blasting her with my 1 while strafing in circles.

It might be slightly more difficult to survive at first (especially if you start the second phase with really low health), but at least you can do it with crappy gear and without consumables (I don’t know why, but I really really hate consumables, especially in Online Games).

Well, the problem with the CoF armour set is, if you want the fiery tail, you will always run around with a sort of robe.

My suggestion for a Flame Legion Shaman-esque charr would be:

Headgear: Glowing Crimson Mask or Elementalist’s Flame Eye

Shoulders: Hellfire Mantle (as long as you don’t mind the bad scaling on charr) or Tactical Shoulders or Dry Bones Mantle or Trickster Mantle

Chest: Flame Legion Vestments (sadly, this also covers your leggings, but you can get a really cool effect with certain gloves because your whole arm will be turned into magma*) or Flamekissed Vest or Trickster Vest or Tactical Coat or PvP Masquerade Raiments (with the incoming Wardrobe, you will be able to use this skin in PvE as well)

Gloves: Hellfire Vambraces or Flame Legion Gloves or Fused Gauntlets (if you can still get the skin, that is)

Leggings: Tactical Leggings or Invoker’s Leggings

Boots: Invoker’s Boots or PvP Masquerade Boots or Flame Legion Shoes or Hellfire Greaves (you will need 21k achievement points to unlock these, however)

Personally, I’d probably go with Crimson Mask, Trickster Mantle, PvP Masquerade Raiments (then again, my charr has really white fur, so you won’t notice the tribals as much), Hellfire Vambraces, Tactical Leggings and PvP Masquerade Boots.

*if you are wondering about the magma effect I mentioned, you should look at this post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/charr/Making-a-flame-legion-Charr/first#post1575581

Actually, you should probably check out that whole thread. There are a lot of suggestions as to how to create a Flame Legion charr.

We know that manipulation definitely happened, but that doesn’t equal possession (and neither does “direct demonic manipulation”).

She could even have influenced him in such a way that she cast magic on him to deteriorate his sanity and spurn on his paranoia, for all I know, but this is still different from what this thread was about

What you are describing (external influence) is a solution that some people have proposed to the OP so that he doesn’t have to rely on “possession”.

(I kind of agree with you though in that, if you drive the idea of “manipulation and influence” far enough, it could become a sort of possession – depending on your definition of what being “possessed” means. It’s a really semantic argument, but it’s important since the latter concept might be disproven one day if ANet ever decides to put out more lore on it)

According to the GW1 wiki, Shiro Tagachi had already turned to forbidden magic while he was still serving as a bodyguard (though I don’t really remember anything like that being mentioned anywhere in the game… well, it might have been mentioned in some side quest?).
That did not make him powerful enough to unleash the Jade Wind, however the Emperor had received a lot of magic from Dwayna during the ritual at the end of the Harvest Festival (this blessing would usually have been used to ensure a bountiful harvest).
With the Emperor slain, it was Shiro instead who absorbed this magic (along with the Emperor’s own soul/power).
The Jade Wind was unleashed as Shiro was slain and all this magic was being released.

Now, my guess is that this “forbidden magic” was one of the reason he was able to absorb the Emperor’s soul and Dwayna’s magic. It might also have played a part in the creation of the Jade Wind, although I think it would well be possible that this was caused simply by the violent release of unstable magic; it could just as well have been corrupted through Shiro’s resentment and bitterness as he drew his last breath.

Meaning, this can be explained without any sort of demon possession being involved

Tarreth, just out of curiosity: Did you delete your character after the Battle for Lion’s Arch, or do you simply consider him dead from a story/rp point of view while still using him for regular (non rp) play sessions?

(No name to rate, so whoever goes next: rate Tarreth’s charr names!)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

SunRoamer.5103:

They just have to figure out what they want to do about the time conundrum caused by Personal Story being locked in the past. Maybe they are going to retire it? There have been different suggestions around the forums already, but having different versions of the same maps is highly unlikely.

Why remove it? Just keep it there and make sure it’s clear “these are past events”. Hopefully they’ll one day get about to making LW Season 1 as an extension to the PS, and make Season 2 in the same format from the get go (or at least a much similar one that can make it function as a continuation). Won’t hold my breath for either though.

But there’s no need to remove the PS – especially since the game promises in advertisements the chance to face and kill Zhaitan… which will become no longer the case, thus false advertisement, thus fraud.

Yes, of course! I didn’t really mean that they are going to outright remove it, I should have been clearer about that part.
About the “playing in the past”, it is still going to feel horribly clunky though. Just look at the current LA story steps; let’s just hope they eventually implement a system which allows for a different version of a map to be loaded for personal story instances. Besides, some story steps also take place in the open world, and often players have to travel somewhere first to activate the story instance. If they say that this act of traveling is part of the past you relive, by all means you should already be in the past version of the map by then (but instead, you will be transferred to the “correct” version of the area once you activate the story beacon). If, instead, they say that the act of traveling is done in the present, and you go to that specific location to catch a glimpse of the past, they would have to change a lot of the personal story objectives (as, right now, they often suggest a sort of immediacy while you travel. Instead, they would have to be remade into something along the lines of “retrace the steps of past heroes and travel to x to relive what happened when Fort trinity was taken by the pact”).

Also, since these are then past events, won’t it be awkward that newly created characters have to relive this tale (imagine being a new player and constantly getting the pop-up “you are reliving stories of the past” while playing through their PS for the first time)? Usually, things like discovering past events should be more of an optional story. And since it is in the past, does that mean that all characters created now are already commanders of the pact?

Okay, this is going to derail this thread too much, so I have to stop. Point being, this issue is IMO much bigger than simply indicating “you are reliving events of the past”.

What you are describing would, effectively, be a form of phasing. ANet have explicitly stated that they don’t want that in their game (yes, it’s fine when it happens once, but the game is going to continue to grow and then we would have more and more instances of similar things happening).

They just have to figure out what they want to do about the time conundrum caused by Personal Story being locked in the past. Maybe they are going to retire it? There have been different suggestions around the forums already, but having different versions of the same maps is highly unlikely.

In case you are worried about breaking the lore*, wouldn’t it be fine if, instead of actually being possessed in the sense of hosting another entity, your character could be possessed in the sense of being heavily influenced by some external source?
Similar examples would include Varesh Ossa (she even ended up being turned into a demon through that influence) and, more recently, Ceara (that is, unless she has indeed been corrupted. We don’t have a definitive answer to that, yet).

*We haven’t seen anything where a single vessel hosted two souls/spirits, but I don’t think it has been stated anywhere that it’s outright impossible. Which means, you could go ahead and say that it works, but you might end up in a situation where we actually do get confirmation on this and then your character bio would be pretty much screwed.

And lastly, a question to everyone: What do we know about possessed/sentient/cursed items, by the way? If worn, they tend to exhibit traits similar to possession in other stories (e.g. The One Ring to rule Them all, several weapons, trinkets etc. in The Forgotten Realms, and so on).

There are many other gay couples in GW2 (the most prominent being, apart from Kas and Jory here, Caithe and Faolain).

Well, unless you play on the Chinese client, it seems.

They are simply addressing something that many players complained about (even back in GW1).

I guess it’s hard to find a good balance between giving too much and too little credit.

But well, in many ways it’s the same for the Personal Story, in some cases. Canonically, I doubt there are as many “heroes of Shaemoor” as there should be, looking at all the surrounding players. In fact, the title sounds more like the player was the only civilian getting involved.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Just to start teasing players, they should make a tengu one of the biconics, with slightly improved animations (maybe even the same animations as charr, like how human and sylvari share all but dancing – and then give him a unique dance), but the playable race… never… comes…

You should replace Scarlet as the new “evil mastermind”-villain!

You might also want to consider waiting until they announce their future plans in regards to Legendaries. They might add new ones in, and different means of acquiring them (I wouldn’t expect this to be in the feature patch, but they might still start talking about it at around that time).

But well, the most fitting weapon skins can mostly be found among the Exotic skins – many of which are actually “rarer” than Legendaries in the sense that people want to show off by getting a Legendary rather than an unique exotic skin.

First off Angel, thank you very much for taking the time to post in here! You definitely cleared up many questions I had!

But well, my issues lie more with the in game delivery of all this – and I know you at ANet are all aware of the faulty delivery yourselves, and have been actively striving towards improving this. Note: The following concerns your latest comment, and focuses mostly on the krait!

It’s just that you mentioned that you “walk a fine line between giving too much lore, thus spoiling players’ in-game discovery, and not giving enough”, which somewhat… irked me. Because, I honestly think that most of the lore explanations you just gave us, they are never established at all within the game. You can’t give us too much lore in this thread and thus spoil our discoveries when there’s nothing in the game to base any kind of speculation on. The only thing we can do is, pretty much, conjecture, and that’s not fun (well, in some cases it can be fun, i.e. the really cryptic lore surrounding the Elder Dragons and the Pale Tree leading to Pale Tree = Dragon/Dragon minion theories).

Since the toxic alliance is going to stay in Kessex Hills for some time, I think it would be awesome to eventually have minor changes brought to that zone which reflect the fact that both the krait and Nightmare courtiers of that alliance are considered splinter factions. Especially in the case of the toxic, warped krait I would LOVE to see interactions between them and another group of good ol’ xenophobic krait. In many of those cases, just a single scripted encounter (even if it’s similar to the patrolling Rytlock in Origins of Madness. People will find it, and they will definitely hear about it in here) would go a long way to solve this!

So far, while it’s true that their looks have changed, there is not much in-game which actually made me think, “oh right, by doing their thing with Scarlet, there’s no turning back anymore”. Which actually seems to be a really evident explanation, now that it has been spelled out – so it’s even sadder that there was nothing which would have helped us get to that discovery ourselves

In any case, cheers! And I look forward to the Finale next week!

Fair enough, but I think to save ourselves from insanity, we should stick to the most recent confirmation at hand – and it sounded like they finally have a plan in mind as to how to deal with this timelines issue, which adds even more weight to this recent one!
(Here’s to hoping that it will be the last confirmation needed in this matter haha)

I think MadQueen didn’t mean a literal deus ex machina in any case, just poking fun at the fact that most of the stuff so far has been pulled somewhat out of nowhere.

But actually I think it would be hilarious if it would turn out to be an actual deus ex machina as you described, as in the Six descend and blast Scarlet away.

(The sudden existence of leylines also feels kind of deus ex machina-ish, as in it’s something which came out of nowhere to answer and supply convenient plot points)

Frosch.7809:

Since the end of Zhaitan hasn’t happened in the Living Story timeline it doesn’t know that a big cannon shot (or will shoot) Zhaitan’s tail off. Mordremoth probably doesn’t know what up-to-date technology can do to it, or it could be that a shot from the Ethercannon is like a morning coffee for it, helping it to get up faster.

Actually, we’ve had confirmation by now that the Living World happens after the Personal Story. But anyway, a sleeping Elder Dragon probably wouldn’t be aware of such a thing.

Well, about the whole “why does god need a starship” issue, other Elder Dragons also had Champions prepare their rise, in some cases we know for sure that they even were actively waking them up (Great Destroyer).

My issue with this idea is more that I just find it weird that Mordremoth would have a Champion which entirely relies on technology and similar things to wake him up. (Something like a Poison Ivy-esque champion would be more fitting. Like a sylvari who constantly gives off a miasma as potent as the Tower of Nightmares one.)

But well, if it’s Mordremoth now, this could be explained by the fact that they would then have completely overthrown their initial plans – in which case Scarlet being all about technology would just be a remnant of what they were originally going for (they had stated once that Elder Dragons won’t be a part of the 1st season. If they do play a role in it now, they definitely changed their plans at some point).

What happens when you mix and match this set with other armour skins? Does your whole character turn blue or just the corresponding body part?

I think the aesthetic is interesting, but I can see why people would like to be able to turn the blue off (or colour it any way we like!)

Hey there, shouldn’t it usually go “such …” instead of “so much”? (In case you are going for the doge meme)

How about “stab” in the case of the thief, “sparkle” for the ele and uh… “Scare” in the case of the necro?

“So Much Stab”
“So Much Sparkle”
“So Much Scare”

It’s what they are actually going to do after the last Scarlet patch hits (which will be the patch after this one).

E: Source

Concern: ArenaNet won’t stop banging on about the Living World update plan and so will stick with it even if it’s not working.

Not true. ArenaNet is changing it this year.

The original idea was to have four story teams making a month’s worth of content each, to be released in fortnightly bumps, and whatever mechanical features were ready at that time could be rolled in and included. ‘An online world updated more frequently than any other’ was the dream, but the reality was confusion.

“It’s very distracting to players,” observed Johanson. “It’s almost a muddled message, where we put these releases out and we want them to be excited about the story, to follow the story, and we also want them to be excited about the features that are coming with it. And either one or the other tends to be the thing that people cling onto.” And the other thing, people ignore.

“What we’re going to do this year is we’re actually separating the two of those out.”

All the big mechanical features ArenaNet is working on will be held back for a bumper update presumably in the spring/summer.

“When [Living World Season One] ends [on 4th March], we’re going to take a break for a little bit and then we’re going to do one really big feature patch that is more akin to what people see from some of our [MMO] competitors,” said Johanson, "where they bundle a lot of features together into a really big patch every now and then.

“We’re going to provide that experience and have this huge feature build that has a whole lot of gameplay-changing elements, a lot of quality of life improvements, a lot of features bundled together into one big patch. And that’ll come some time not too far after Season One completes.”

1. Ranger
2. Necromancer
3. Thief

The Scepter of Orr has no link to necromantic powers however, right? It was used to control otherworldly beings in general and possibly the “outer world” itself, as well as souls etc.

While necromancers dabble in magic around souls, it’s probably not the same thing.

E: I really like how “Mesmer!” seems to make just about everything possible.

Antara.3189:

Don’t think it would be Livia, since it was stated Marjory felt no “Necromancer” powers.

Hey Antara, I addressed that issue in an earlier post:

SunRoamer.5103:

Marjory felt no necrotic powers from E, but Livia was a necromancer.
One might argue that she was around 250 years ago and has dabbled in other magic schools as most people did back then (lore on GW1’s dual professions is so uncertain though), or that, if she’s still around, she has well evolved beyond simply being a necromancer.
For example, some think she was/is a lich. There’s not too much lore on them, since there are only very few known liches, which means many things might be possible. Their powers, while often dealing with (un)death, might have a signature that feels different from that of any necromancer, for instance.
What is definitely known though is that she has dabbled a lot with orrian magic, which might make her more of a wild card, if not a lich. Appearing out of nowhere, appeasing Marjory’s sense of danger, and then disappearing just as quickly without leaving any sort of “necro was here!” behind could become well possible.

Do you think this might be a possibility?
I know that there can’t be a definitive answer at this point (the whole purpose of my idea was to turn her into more of a wild card, so this is to be expected), but I’m curious as to whether people consider it a possibility.

Does anybody know whether you would be able to feel it anyway when that other person hasn’t used magic recently? Can you “suppress” the magic aura you give off? (More general questions, not necessarily related to the Livia theory)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And that’s not really what I meant. But it certainly would mean that almost everything that’s edible would be. But the Bloodstone was made with almost all of the world’s magic – specifically everything that was not corrupted by the Elder Dragons already. That’s like eating a meal of a salad and steak, leaving the steak alone and saying you ate everything.

I’m curious now: has it ever been said that almost all of the world’s magic was used? You say yourself afterwards that it was all that had remained uncorrupted. This alone could mean that what remained was actually just a tiny fraction of what had originally been there: maybe still more than just some breadcrumbs and gravy, but certainly less than a whole steak. Maybe a single salad leaf or two?
(As in: 95 % of race x’s population had been corrupted, and their magic with them. Now the magic of those who were able to even wield that power among the remaining 5 % was hidden)

As I said I couldn’t find any mention of any “quantity”. Now this feels kind of shameless, but as I mentioned I am usually lurking these forums, so maybe this is why I didn’t know the appropriate source. If there is, I’d be glad if you could point me to it!

Besides, as for the Elder Dragons not taking note of a part of the food just disappearing and assuming that they had consumed everything, there is Six of them, and they don’t seem to try to consume the magic corrupted by/within one another (at least they don’t actively search each other out?). So maybe they assumed that somebody else got to the remaining parts of the cake first, and then fell, sated, knowing (wrongly, though) that there was nothing noteworthy for them left to consume?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Long ago, I lived in a dragon-dominated world. I saw how they feasted on all flesh, on all minds, on all life. I saw how they ate until they saw nothing left to eat, and then fell, waiting for life to begin anew so they may rise once more.

Not very hard to do. And certainly not so obviously biased and silly as your example.

Well, it was silly, I agree. I was trying for some light-heartedness though, not bias
Apart from it not being very hard to do though, do you really think that it would have been absolutely necessary to include such a thing? Especially since I don’t think that this alone is what makes or breaks my counter arguments (mostly questions, really).
Had the authors never intended for there to be any reason to deduce a theory such as yours from Glint’s dialogue, they wouldn’t have had a reason to specify that they consumed all until there was “nothing left that they saw”, either.

Oh god this is a long post, sorry about that everyone!

I had to shorten what you said, konig, but I have largely responded to one set of replies of yours at a time.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I interpreted it differently. I interpret “that time” not referring to the dark “dragon-dominated world”, but rather from the “a bright world that did not remember the rapacious beasts” time.

[Had to cut a lot here, up until the part where you wonder whether we actually know when exactly Glaust was freed.]

Hmm, if that dragon-dominated world had first existed and then been twisted into one of darkness by the Elder Dragons as you said just now, wouldn’t she have made more of a distinction to make sure that “they” who consumed are different from the dragons that dominated the world?
Because, as it sounds right now, the world was dominated by dragons, and said dragons feasted on all flesh until nothing was left.

I don’t have Edge of Destiny with me though, she might say something beforehand which might indicate such a distinction (although, with the way she said it, I think any such indication would still be pretty weak).

In regards to your interpretation of “that time”, consider this:

What followed after the world twisted into darkness was a new dawn, a “bright world that did not remember the rapacious beasts”.
Following your line of thought, there was at least another Dragon Rise after that new dawn (resulting in the Dragon Rise we actually know about, with the Mursaat, Forgotten, Jotun and other ancient races. Probably several Rises actually, when taking the Jotun legends you pointed out into account).
Would she call it a bright world that did not remember those Horrors when there had been several other Dragon Rises afterwards? (The others might not have ended in as much of a total annihilation as the one you are proposing here did, but they should still be anything but a bright world.)

Also, it was ever since “that time” that she feared her master. Had there been another Rise (or several), and she was already fearing him, why didn’t he seek her out straight away as he did in EoD? Which I take as an indicator that she was freed during the last Rise, or shortly before (so that Kralkatorrik didn’t yet know of her breaking free).
Which, in this setup, would mean that “that time” would actually refer to two different moments in time – the time in which the world recovered for the first time, and the time from when she was freed. Which I guess wouldn’t make sense.

Now I know that one could argue that it could fit if she had been freed shortly after that new dawn. After all we don’t know when she was freed, right? But, as I said, in that case I think Kralkatorrik would have searched her out and killed her as soon as he rose the last time, as he did right away in EoD.
This would also mean that this dragon dominated world had been two Dragon Rises ago.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Prophecies manual. All things eventually come from the Mists. With the Mists overlapping the world itself in various places […], is it so hard to believe that the Mists couldn’t create brand new life on a desolate world?

Furthermore, the jotun place the cyclic nature of the Elder Dragons in their creation myths with known mentions of multiple risings (see Scholar Caterin ), an odd place to put them if the world wasn’t fully or near fully ravaged at least during one rise.

An interesting point, but I think we shouldn’t rely on what’s written in the prophecies manual too much. It’s written from an in-universe human perspective, the texts having been unearthed only recently. Remember how much human knowledge has been brought into question, recently (not that I necessarily agree with the way we have moved away from the anthropocentric GW1).
Do we have any actual word of god on this? (I don’t actually disagree with what you said, I’m more personally curious about finding a source which can’t be as easily discredited)

In regards to the Jotun and their creation myths, I’d argue that there are other ways to not make it seem an “odd place to put them”, besides saying that the world is pretty much being reset with every Rise, and thus a new creation begins (this is what you’re proposing, right? World ravaged, then new life pops up (from the mists etc.), essentially being a new creation, thus a creation myth.)
The mention of the cyclical nature of the Dragon Rises would also make sense as being part of a creation myth when this myth suggests that the world had been “created thus”. Tyria was created, and an inherent part of that creation was that the Six Swallowers return every few millennia to reset the planet.

Seeing how they have removed the Instant Trait Reset from the Gem store, I have suspected for some time that they might be preparing to add Trait Templates.

Of course it would be awesome if we could store an unlimited number of builds as we were able to do in GW1, but well…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

“Long ago, I lived in a dragon-dominated world. I saw how they feasted on all flesh, on all minds, on all life. I saw how they ate until there was nothing left to eat, and then fell, sated.The darkness of those days slowly gave way to a new dawn—a bright world that did not remember the rapacious beasts. From that time to this, I have feared one of those sleeping dragons. My master, Kralkatorrik.”

While I think that dragon theory is really interesting, the bolded part contradicts that idea (IMO of course).

That dark, dragon dominated world she mentions, was “that time”. And forever after, she feared that her old master would awaken.
We know that she was freed by the Forgotten during the last dragon rise. Before that, she would not have feared, but rather welcomed Kralkatorrik’s awakening.

Which I think strongly suggests that “that time” she talks about was in fact the last dragon rise.

The things you mention are more of a case of her being stuck in her “prophetic lizard” persona – she’s a kitten fabulous drama queen, and she knows how to make things sound impactful.
Your main argument is that she said that nothing was left, and that we know that this is not true. But I mean, had the dragons truly consumed “EVERYTHING” during that first, primordial rise, Tyria couldn’t possibly have a biodiversity as rich as it is now (unless all living beings have, at some point or another, come from an alien world; or evolution from microorganism to proper species is pretty pretty fast in Tyria; or the Elder Dragons have been rising for billions of years which would have allowed new creatures to evolve after that initial tabula rasa).

So yeah, I think she’s just being poetic.
And anyway, from an Elder Dragon’s perspective, consuming everything might just be like us eating a whole meal. There’s always some gravy, breadcrumbs, rice grains or whatever else left behind.
Eating everything doesn’t mean that only nothing can be left.

In short: I think she does in fact talk about the last dragon rise, and either we shouldn’t take her too literally in concerns to the “nothing left”, or do so from an (Elder) Dragon’s perspective (comparing Tyria to that Thanksgiving turkey we have all reduced to the point where “nothing was left”).

E:
I mean seriously, how would this sound otherwise?
Long ago, I lived in a dragon-dominated world. I saw how they feasted on all flesh, on all minds, on all life. I saw how they ate until there was nothing left to eat – apart from these races that I hid, and that other race that hid themselves, and then there were some guys who simply managed to avoid them and yeah well anyway, ahem, gotta get back in my dragon voice – , and then fell, sated.

Arguably, they are writers, so they should be able to make it work where I can’t be bothered, but still… It just doesn’t seem necessary.

Thalador.4218:

So Edair fell in love with curvy Livia, she made less of a kittenbag of him and more of a patriot of Kryta and a champion of humanity (and its allies) while significantly prolonging his life similar to hers.

Since you mentioned her: why not simply assume that E is Exemplar Livia herself?

It’s something I’ve been considering for a while and I feel like somebody already mentioned that theory (since I’m mostly lurking the forums, I don’t remember who did, however).

I mean, they went that extra mile in pointing out that E might be a woman with the recent Marjory dialogue. She’d also have a reason to not like the Ministry Guard (messing with Jennah) and therefore had a motivation to aid Marjory with her first case. Ever since the Jubilee, she’d also have a reason to consider Scarlet a danger to the queen, thus starting to care about the greater picture (so she started involving herself with “international” politics, i.e. stuff concerning LA).
(I think Livia should have been interested in the larger picture anyway. I mean, most of the Living Story issues are global threats.)

Things to consider:

Why would she have gone into hiding in the first place? (It allows her to operate more freely? She doesn’t want people to associate her with the queen, with all the bad rumors about her flying around?)

Marjory felt no necrotic powers from E, but Livia was a necromancer.
One might argue that she was around 250 years ago and has dabbled in other magic schools as most people did back then (lore on GW1’s dual professions is so uncertain though), or that, if she’s still around, she has well evolved beyond simply being a necromancer.
For example, some think she was/is a lich. There’s not too much lore on them, since there are only very few known liches, which means many things might be possible. Their powers, while often dealing with (un)death, might have a signature that feels different from that of any necromancer, for instance.
What is definitely known though is that she has dabbled a lot with orrian magic, which might make her more of a wild card, if not a lich. Appearing out of nowhere, appeasing Marjory’s sense of danger, and then disappearing just as quickly without leaving any sort of “necro was here!” behind could become well possible.

pandora eight.9451:

ArenaNet purposedfully denies refunds to certain countries.

Just out of curiosity: where did you get that information from?
Preferably with a link to the source

Also, where exactly are you from?

Thank you for posting your findings!

Actually I think that part about the falling damage is pretty severe. I mean, I think it’s good that there’s a certain “instant death threshold”, but as long as that does not occur our DS should be able to properly absorb the falling damage that IS done (even if it’s a 1:1 ratio).

There’s a certain threshold of how far you can fall and still be able to survive. At some point, regardless of HP and mitigation, you are bound to die.

Are you sure it might not simply have been this?

E:
DS is bugged to a certain degree though. It is supposed to reduce damage by 50%, which is does as long as the damage does not overflow to your regular HP (the overflowing damage itself is obviously not supposed to be reduced; however once it overflows, even the damage taken to DS is not affected by this reduction)

In Bhawb’s example, we SHOULD only lose 1k HP (the 2k DS absorbing the equivalent of 4k damage), but due to this bug we end up losing 3k.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/DS-and-damage-reduction/first#post3249048

Which can be quite severe, in case the damage so much as overspills by one single point, we receive pretty much two times the damage we should take.

:O

I adore that Claw warband of yours!

In total, it’s a 9/10 for those three.
I mean, you just got to love a charr named after Kalla. Besides, it’s always nice so see such naming consistency across several characters!

(and for the next poster: Krall Blightfur hasn’t been rated yet hint hint )

:)

I’m glad my comment made you happy! Your response made me appreciate the name even more.

Again, out of curiosity: What are the other members of this Claw warband called?

7/10 for Dagmer Longclaw

It’s a simple and fitting charr name. I can even imagine a NPC wearing such a name
Which part of his last name denotes his warband though? (asking out of simple curiosity)

“Only” 7 because, while I think it’s a great name in it’s simplicity, and deserves reps for that, it sadly ends up not being quite as memorable. It also does not necessarily inspire as much curiosity as other names.

My Ash necromancer is called Krall Blightfur.
As his father had defected to the Flame Legion, his Ash superiors were wary of any magic talent manifesting in him. The only “magic” training he received was such that he became highly perceptive of magic usage around him, but did not actually harness any powers himself. This heightened sense was put to use by having him specialise in assassinating Gold legion shamans and other powerful mages.

At some point he entered an Ascalonian crypt with his warband and underwent a forceful awakening of his latent necromancer powers, turning his fur completely white. His other warband members were not left unscarred either, earning them all the name as the Blight warband.

8/10 or 9/10, I can’t really decide because you chose a “cool screenshot” which sadly means that the armour is not quite as recognizable as I’d like it to be :P It definitely looks good, I just can’t tell how good exactly.

Here’s my charrmancer, I tried to give him a battle ready medium armour look (he’s ash legion and fights with axe/dagger a lot).

[Neutral log-in screenshot and another action shot]

Why has this thread been unstickied? As far as I understood, people who skipped parts of their order storylines have had their personal story reset – however, there are many more instances of people having their personal storyline altered in the wrong way, many of which have NOT been resolved.
My Level 80 charr is still stuck on the wrong Level 71 quest, for example. Like I posted more than a week ago, I had helped the little asuran engineer out, and then my storyline suddenly switched over to punishing Syska.

Character: Krall Blightfur (Charr Necromancer)
Story Step: Level 70 – Battle for Fort Trinity
Skipped to: Level 71 – Delivering Justice (the problem here is that this is the wrong branch. The three story missions preceding Battle for Fort Trinity were “Tower Down”, “To The Core” and “Breaking the Bone Ship”)