Guild Wars 2

Misc site dump

Checking trade price trends as well as Gold→Gem rate

http://www.guildwarstrade.com/

Same as above but also info on crafting and what’s profitable for your crafting level. Longer history of prices but the Gem exchange chart broke back in July.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/

Illustrated Armor guide

http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/

Major Event Tracker – Select your server to see when the big boss events will occur next (takes the surprise out of it)

http://us.gw2stuff.com/en

Crowd Source map of where to harvest rare tier 6 materials in the high level areas, again by server

http://www.orrmaps.com

WvW tracker, check your world’s progress and overall ratings.

http://mos.millenium.org

That’s what I got bookmarked.

Which means as soon as it turns the 16th in the US pacific coast. So I think that’ll make it 7 UTC on the 16th. Sucks if you are in Hawaii … wait no you’re in Hawaii.

FrostyRulez.7052:

Remade the build I listed earlier. This would definitely be better as well as it lands perfectly in your price range and you get a free game.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Bnjq

Nice. And that’s how you play by the rules guys.

The Wiki is your friend.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

New Player Tips

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players

Griffonrook Run is in Lormar’s Pass.

Tribulation Rift/Caverns is in the lower left of Dredgehaunt Clifts.

Both of these areas contain jumping puzzles.

Almost right with the link, here.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=20443411

Unsure about the memory since it’s marked “server”. Try these, lower latency, same price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231428

Case is a microATX case, won’t fit the motherboard you picked (There are no uATX AMD 970 motherboards at NewEgg).

Tom’s Hardware reviewed 11 sub-$100 gaming cases over three articles.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/silverstone-ps06-nanoxia-ds2-lian-li-pc-9n-cougar-evolution,3483.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bitfenix-shinobi-enermax-ostrog-gt-rosewill-r5-zalman-ms800,3501.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/antec-gx700-cooler-master-storm-scout-2-advanced-in-win-gt1,3512.html

Last one has the overall results. Just food for thought. Generally the cheaper you go, you get fewer fans, front panel ports and limited or no dust filters. The Corsair 200R and the Antec ONE are very basic, reasonably inexpensive gamer cases.

With a PTR there will be more people taking advantage of it and it’ll be a race just like it is today. Players on the regular server will wonder why the TP suddenly went all wonky because even with a PTR, the actual percentage of players checking out a prerelease will be very small.

It doesn’t solve anything, only let a few more people in on the secret.

EQuake.3456:

This is my updated build. I changed the cpu, gpu, psu, case, and ram.
http://secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCart.aspx?Submit=view

I’m going to give pcpartpicker a look over and see if I can get a build around $650 with an i5 quad core., but that build being $616 might be tough for me to beat.

Take the link I gave you and append your wishlist number at the end instead of mine, assuming you saved your wishlist. It takes 24 hours if you set the wishlist to be public and all you get in the end is what I described.

There is an area I overlooked in Shiverpeak that’s behind the ledge that you get to from the tower jumping puzzle. Tribulation Caverns off of Tribulation Rift.

There’s also Griffonrook something that you can only get to by a very concealed entrance in a lake.

I’m saying it’s a hardware or software issue and not an anti-bot measure.

If it’s a hardware issue, they may not want to spend the money upgrading the TP server so it was easier to put a “speed limit” on the rate of posting items for sale or updating queries.

If it’s a software problem, it may be due to them licensing a “online MMO market solution” from some 3rd party and the limit isn’t something they can configure.

There are only a couple of setting that are “Ultra” or “Highest”. The default “Best Appearance” is pretty nice all by itself.

FrostyRulez.7052:

Buy these parts instead, it’s pretty much the same price for a way better more reliable build.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1B1e1

With these specs you should be able to play GW2 on high with 60 FPS stable no problem.

Let’s see where to begin.

- Two generation old Intel quad core. Out of stock.
- Two generation old business class motherboard. Sub par audio, no USB 3 or SATA III.
- Cooler, not needed on a CPU you can’t overclock.
- Ram, too fast, you pay for that.
- Power Supply is an older design, not efficient, not even really a 500 watt according to the wattage break down (450 watts according to it’s limits on the label).
- GTX 650, the HD 7770 is faster.
- Case, no USB 3 (which is fine since there’re none on the MB), no filters and only one fan.

Granted, the i5 would be better for GW2 than an FX-4300 or FX-6300.

A better approach @FrostyRulz would have been a slower i5, Ivy Bridge or Haswell, 8GB of 1600 speed memory, ignore the cooler for now the Intel one is adequate when not OCing and an inexpensive Haswell motherboard. Still the making up the extra expense of the rig’s core by downgrading everything else to stay within the budget lines has it’s drawbacks. It’s annoying that it’s so tantalizingly close.

Ash.5034:

Behellagh.1468:

I wouldn’t say 8 is “way better”. The major problem with 8 is it’s like you went on vacation and when you got back someone moved everything around in your house and you can’t find anything. Why is the silverware in the bedroom closet? Why is my chair in the shower?

If you are use to knowing where everything is in 7, you can feel very lost in 8. And if you are on a laptop with 8 using the track pad, weird stuff can happen because sometimes it’s input as if you are using a touch screen as oppose to a mouse and trigger it’s tablet like features. It can be quite frustrating.

8 does have a more informative task manager.

LOL – there is that!

That is a pretty good analogy.

Microsoft made a big mistake by hiding your silverware.:)

I still can’t believe they removed the Start Button and replaced shutdown etc with charms:).

It ’s even stranger in Windows Server 2012!

But technically the OS- (not the UI), has a lot of new features, yet is faster and uses less memory.

And don’t get me on the “flat” look. Is it a button, is it just an icon that does nothing? Try it and find out, sure nothing bad will happen.

I wouldn’t say 8 is “way better”. The major problem with 8 is it’s like you went on vacation and when you got back someone moved everything around in your house and you can’t find anything. Why is the silverware in the bedroom closet? Why is my chair in the shower?

If you are use to knowing where everything is in 7, you can feel very lost in 8. And if you are on a laptop with 8 using the track pad, weird stuff can happen because sometimes it’s input as if you are using a touch screen as oppose to a mouse and trigger it’s tablet like features. It can be quite frustrating.

8 does have a more informative task manager.

But 8 is the future, it’s not like they are going back. I haven’t seen what they “fixed” in 8.1 but if the upgrade is free then more power to them.

In Kryta I was missing Beggar’s Burrow in Queensdale, much to my surprise.

The POI might be either of the ones they added back with Frost and Flame. If you already cleared those areas before hand they were added they would still read as 100%. Also there was that POI they added in DR for the Dragon Bash arc. Lower ring, outside wall at about 5 o’clock. Same thing, if you already had DR totally explored it read as 100% even after they added it.

That’s right. 650 watt is more than enough for one HD 7950 even with an overclocked i5-4670K.

You get trait points every level once you get to level 11, maximum 70. You spend them at the trait tree which you unlock with the manuals.

Here, read the wiki.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Traits

I don’t do it every hour of every day. Maybe a few times a week, shafting Oceanic usually (sorry Aussies). I get one or two items, the guy who out bid me gets one or two, I out bid them and get one or two, etc. In the end I get a few items, they (singular or group) get a few items and those selling them to us, get a bit more copper.

I am not a bot, I’m a human being. But it’s not me this time.

I do something like this when playing the market. I put in bids starting with A’s (or Berserker) work my way to the end and they go back to the start and update any bid that’s no longer the highest. Rinse, repeat for and hour or two then cash out. Entirely manually. No automation, just a mix of asperger, OCD, market PvP and a fanatical devotion to the Pope.

One TP to rule them all including the gem exchange. At least for NA and EU.

As for the exchange rate differences, that’s by design. The Gem to Gold rate is 0.7225 of the Gold to Gem rate. The gap is to discourage players from playing the exchange market like they do with the TP as well as to make sure the exchange has plenty of gold on hand for players willing to sell gems.

As for what sets the rate, the exchange was established when the game went live with a little gold and LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of gems. Gold and gems sold to the exchange aren’t destroyed or the ones you get aren’t created but are deposited or drawn from the exchange’s inventory. The ratio between gems and gold in the exchange sets the rate where the Gems to Gold is 85% of that rate while the Gold to Gems is 1/0.85 of that rate.

Why they choose this method rather than letting it float on the open market? Again, playing the market. This way they are going it eliminates any possibility of player manipulation. The rate is artificially set based on player purchases with the gap between rates large enough to prevent any profit from short term transactions.

Ectos … must crack rares for ectos … must crack ectos for luck … brains…

Also there was a time when the power demands for video cards switched from 5 volts to 12 volts. Unfortunately that left power supply manufacturers with a lot of power supplies that could deliver a lot of it’s wattage at 3.3 and 5 volts and not as much at 12 volts which was mainly used just by the CPU, drives and case fans.

It was too easy to find say a 450 watt power supply that could only deliver 216 watts at 12 volts. Compare that to the 384 watts a modern Corsair CX430 can deliver at 12 volts. And because of that video card companies started to request very large power supplies simply to reduce the chance of a PSU not providing enough watts to power their cards. They later included a “amps at 12 volts” in some of their requirements just to be clear what they were hoping for.

Actually a lot of those older designed power supplies are alive and well in store bought PCs (looking at you HP). Which is fine because 80% of their customers won’t ever crack the case open much less than add a video card, hard drive or more RAM.

So going back to Reborn’s article and chart, that HD 7950 in a rig playing Crysis 2 at 1920×1200 at Dx11 ultra quality used 339 watts at the wall socket. Ignoring PSU efficiency and simply doubling it to 678 watts should indicate that a modern 650 watt PSU, which that Rosewill is, is plenty to get the job down with plenty of slack and putting it’s usage near the 80plus 50% sweet spot for efficiency.

Someone PMed me about how to get Win 7 for “free” and I felt like responding here rather than PMing them back.

As someone who develops software for a living, any suggestion about pirating a product is anathema to me. I know people do it and it’s unfortunately very big in the DIY community as a way to use the funds for the Microsoft Tax on hardware to stay within budget.

I’m haven’t always been a goody two shoes, there was a time back as a poor college student where I facilitated “trades” of Atari 800 games and development tools, although my computer was back at home, but that was 30 or so years ago. Can’t believe that it cost over $2K for the Atari back then (with 2 drives, 48KB of memory, expansion port box, 300 baud modem and Epson 8 pin dot matrix printer with graphics chip, it was a college package deal that included a 20% discount).

Something burped at your end because this last patch was only 50-60MB.

No the i7 has 4 cores and the hardware equivalent of mirrors to fool the OS into thinking that there is 8. It’s done to improve the overall efficiency of the core.

GW2 have numerous threads, over 40. It’s just that the 7 or so that use the most time, half use about 1/4 of a core’s total performance each with the remaining use 1/2 to an entire core’s performance.

Couldn’t be T5 to T6 promotion, that’s perfectly legit, just not profitable until just after the original Tuesday patch.

Edit: made clear which patch I’m talking about.

Oh, and suggesting a cracked copy of Windows as a way to save money. Bad bad person, you know who I’m talking to.

Okay just cracked 175 green armors with basic kits. No particular level range

188 – 10 luck
55 – 50 luck
2 – 100 luck
2 – 200 luck

Total 5,230 – 29.9 average

Also …

10 runes (all 175 had runes)

6 iron
22 platinum
53 mithril
1 orichalcum

16 coarse leather section
49 rugged
102 thick
1 hardened

69 linen scraps
45 silk

Whan an SSD fails on write it’s true that you can still read all the data on it. It’s like having a bad spot develop on your hard drive. You can read everything but files that are in that bad spot. But the failure on an SSD is absolute. All you can do is copy it to a new one and start again.

Yes, the amount of writes needed to cripple an SSD is extremely high and the average home user will likely replace the machine before experiencing it. This is a “I can drive on a paved road or take the old unimproved dirt and gravel road with all the rocks and ruts, which will wear my tires out faster” question. All I’m saying is if you can avoid the wear on the SSD, you should. Many newer defraggers are smart enough to not let you defrag an SSD.

Budget $650 max Espionage for a rig with a copy of Windows. Feel free to figure out where to take $60 away to put toward an HD 7850 ($130 after rebate Vs $70 after rebate for the HD 7770).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202004

$90 if you want a 2GB model.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127727

Infernia.9847:

An interesting bit of news. Not really hopeful for this iteration of GW but for the future, it looks promising.

http://www.examiner.com/article/guild-wars-2-publisher-inks-unreal-engine-4-guild-wars-3-coming

Specs for Unreal engine 4:
http://www.unrealengine.com/unreal_engine_4/

Yea, that’s for the new games they have underdevelopment in Korea. Entirely different development teams. Aion uses URE3 I think. B&S as well I believe.

You can only write data into flash a fix number of times before it can no longer be cleared. SSDs try their hardest in spreading the writes around to stretch life out as much as possible. So defragging, which does no good on an SSD because data isn’t stored sequentially because of sector remapping to spread the writes around, does needless writes which will reduce the life of an SSD ever so slightly. You may not be able to control many writes on your SSD but you can prevent this.

I’m talking average here. Pacing, selling 15 to 20 items over the entire minute, one every 3 to 4 seconds, not selling 15-20 things quickly and then waiting out the rest of the minute. I do it all the time selling runes after a large salvage run.

Here’s something to think about. The entire TP could be a 3rd party app that they license. They can customize the look, it’s just a web page, and they can set the rules on how trading is done (auction house, consignment shop, trading post, fees) but the underlying infrastructure is out of their control. That’s why font scaling is bad and may be why it doesn’t perform as well as well or they would like. Even error messages could be beyond their control. Just something to think about.

I wouldn’t recommend 6GB, pairs of matching sizes are preferred. Same memory but two 4GB sticks is $70 at NewEgg.

Cases are part practical (good cooling, ease of assembly, has all the front ports you want) and part personal taste. You want the controls to be behind a door to keep the little one from pressing buttons to get your attention. I hate doors because I access the DVD drive all the time. I think a window on the side is silly and won’t pay extra for it. Some people like fans that light up. Different strokes.

NewEgg can filter the case selections down somewhat, narrow the list down to a few that meets your practical and esthetic tastes and then look for reviews of those to check on ease of assembly and native case cooling (to see if any extra fans are needed). For cable routing look at case width. Wider the case, the more room behind the motherboard tray to run fat power cables.

Remember rebates are fleeting at NewEgg, several end very soon. Their regular discounts and special offer codes change very frequently. So it’s best to have alternatives for the parts on sale and with rebates.

Reborn.2934:

ok i just read this article that this vga needs 339 watts in full load

source : http://www.techspot.com/review/496-amd-radeon-7950/page9.html

so the calculations now is in full load both :

1 . not oc-ed cpu + gpu = 504 watts

2. oc-ed ( 1,3v + 4.0ghz ) cpu + gpu = 611 watts

good luck OP with the 650 watt psu . when you will try other games that need 100% of the cpu and the 100% of gpu like crysis 3 then the luck and the GOD will be the only help

crysis 3 i5 3570k cpu usage ( cry-i5 )
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/366455-28-3570k-bottlenecking-crysis
i5 3570k vs i5 4670k
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4670K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-3570K

and
crysis 3 fps results with hd radeon 7950
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/crysis_3_graphics_performance_review_benchmark,7.html

System power. That’s the whole system, CPU (an i7-3960X hex core stock clock), motherboard, ram (4 sticks), video card, drive (SSD), measured at the wall, running Crysis 2. Go to page 2 of that article to see the system specs. They are using a huge 1250w 80+ Gold PSU so it’s only using maybe 315 watts of DC power for that system.

If the card uses as much power as you seem to think then why would AMD list under requirements only a 500 watt PSU with 2 PCIe 6-pin connectors?

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/7000/7950/Pages/radeon-7950.aspx#2

I know the whole issue about sizing a PSU is confusing. Few sites actually measure power going into a video card or the VRM for the CPU/RAM so they report on the entire system as measured at the wall. TechPowerUp measures just the card.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7950/25.html

here’s an overclocked HD 7950

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_7950_Vapor-X/26.html

That’s one reason the PSU calculator is popular but can still be slightly confusing with all the options.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

I still liberally throw some extra wattage on it’s results just to be safe.

WHITE SPACE … please. Makes wall of text a bit more attractive to read.

I haven’t done greens but the 119 blues yielded a bit more than 11 luck each on average. Used crude kits.

So now 75% of a player’s karma doesn’t come from daily and monthly jugs x boosters.

I think they noticed players buying 100s of Lost Orr Jewelry Boxes looking to turn it into coin. And with the wallet putting karma into one spot for all characters, it’s easier to afford Orr Temple armors on the character you’re playing than before.

Nobody likes a “pay” cut but Karma doesn’t have the sink that coin has with TP fees.

That is true. Salvaging or even selling to the TP blue and green drops prevents new gold from coming in to the world while TP fees and salvage kits remove even more. Salvaging does provide some materials (wood, grain leather and sheepmetal) which should increase those supplies and drive down cost.

So less money in the economy. Wood, leather and metal mat prices should start to go down if not needed for the new weapon level and level of the items being salvaged. And that’s just the blue and greens. Exotics will get salvaged for dark matter and ectos are being cracked for luck and not just for the T6 dust, which has driven down that price as supplies for T6 dust balloon.

That is loading from the character select screen. I would be interest if you were popping in by the MF waypoint from a different zone for instance. I found that loading times were faster zone to zone than from character select to zone.

But still, that was really impressive. Amazing what 3 to 4 times faster transfer rate and 200-300 times faster access times translates into.

1) It’s alright.

2) It’s alright but 430 watts is plenty IMO but lets go with 500 watts.

3) Those are DDR2 sticks (OOPS!) not DDR3 but you are getting the idea. :p

Here I threw together a rough draft over on NewEgg

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=22778652

There is currently a total of $58 of rebates, $30 HD 7770, $20 CX500 and $8 on the case fan. Brings the total down to $626. This is just an outline of parts we talked about here, any manufacturer difference is due solely to the part not being available at NewEgg. If you use PCPartPicker you could do a little bit better, just check to make sure the place with the best price actually has it in stock. I picked faster DDR3-1600 Cas 9 memory because it didn’t cost much more than DDR3-1333 Cas 9. If you choose to pick your own memory, make sure it’s 1.5 volt DDR3.

An alternative for the CPU is the slightly slower FX-6300. You trade two more cores for a loss of 300MHz of clock speed (7.9% slower) but for the same price (at least at NewEgg). No idea if that’s a net gain or loss with GW2 but in my opinion it would be a slight gain, maybe 15% but that’s a SWAG (scientific wild kitten guess) on my part.

Edit: I went looking and found the MSI HD 7770 was cheaper after rebate than Sapphire HD 7750 after it’s rebate. But be aware that sales and rebates at NewEgg are fleeting so YMMV (your mileage may vary).

I was full screen windows and toggled back and forth between the wiki map with the browser full screen and the in game map.

It’s not your ISP and not there ISP but the hop into the US where the lag is. You can always get your current server’s IP address with /IP and then pingplotter it and see if there’s any lag up to the point it get’s lost in NCSOFT’s Austin (assuming you are playing on a NA server). If there is, it’s not ANet. If there isn’t then they are having problems in the server farm.

Remember, the Internet wasn’t designed to be fast (low ping), just that it’ll deliver what’s sent even if that means bouncing the packet around the planet or off a satellite.

Game suffers when you are surrounded by lots of players fighting so WvW zergs and boss fights give you fugly framerates. Going into a boss event you can drop the Character Model Limit and Quality to their lowest and it will help some but it’s still not great.

It’s a problem with their game engine. They say they are working on it.

So you brought up each and every map in the Wiki dealing with Shiverpeak and scanned the in game map looking for any blurred area either around the edge of each zone or a blurred area over a hill in the middle as a clue. That’s what I had to do and I did eventually found what I was missing.

Yes it’s annoying but it’s the only way to be sure. You want “been there done that” title don’t you?

ANet didn’t consider the pet collectors among their populous when they decided upon a unique yet not game changing item to give away at events they are at. They couldn’t do a weapon or armor skin which leaves city clothing and pets. Pets can be shown off everywhere. That is probably the logic they used. What they didn’t realize is those who buy pets at the gem shop are collectors who want them all and in doing this, the mini Mr. Sparkles exclusive, have now denied the ability to collect them all, so why should they bother to collect anymore. Bet they didn’t realize they just removed a prime reason to buy pets. Let’s see if their monthly/quarterly report on what is selling at the Gem shop shows a significant down turn in pet sales.

Here’s my quick and dirty method for guesstimating PSU size. CPU thermal wattage, double if OCing + max video card wattage + 50 watts and then multiply the whole thing by either 1.5 or 2. So i5-4670K is 84 watts, double to 168 watts, the HD 7950 is 200 watts max so this yields roughly 630-840 watts.

The PSU lite calculator suggests that your system as listed even with a 1.3v 4.4GHz overclock and 30% cap age … drum roll please … 505 watts. So 650 watt is fine and dandy. Only reason to go bigger is if you know you will be getting a 2nd HD 7950 at some point.

Fortunately once you get into PSUs of this size, the modern ones can provide nearly all that power at 12 volts, important because the two biggest power users in a rig is the CPU and the video card and they “feed” on the 12 volt portion of the PSU. Less than 50 watts peak of 3.3V + 5V is used nowadays.

@Reborn – The rated wattage of a PSU is in DC watts. Efficiency is based on DC watts/AC watts. A PSU with a 92% efficiency at say 250 DC watts means on the AC side of things it’s using 272 watts of AC power with 22 watts loss and likely radiated as heat. The loss isn’t on the DC side. A 650 watt (continuous) PSU will produce up to 650 watts of DC power regardless of it’s efficiency. It’s just that a 70% efficient PSU will draw 929 watts of AC power to deliver that 650 watts of DC power instead of 722 watts with an 80+ Gold rated PSU. It saves on the power bill, lower carbon footprint, green blah blah eco friendly blah.

Also that bit-tech article you linked to about power use of an i5-4670K. That’s an entire PC measure at the wall socket, so AC wattage. Their test system uses a 80+ Gold PSU and includes a GTX 680. This means that even at worse case the entire system, not just the CPU, while running a Prime95 smallfft is using 150 watts on the AC side of things. On the DC side of things is only using 138 watts, likely a few watts less since it’s below the 20% of their 850 watt PSU so efficiency suffers.

Current estimates suggest you need 4 million plus EoL to get to 300% so no, they would never grant 1%. 300% MF is a very, very long range goal that will flush of the world of blue/green items while flooding the kittens mat supply making more items than silk worthless as an investment.

Yea Shiverpeak is annoying.

The ones I needed were

Dreadgehaunt Clifts – Forsaken Hills which you get to on the opposite side of the map and Tribulation Caverns which you get to from the JP that gets to the Vista in Tribulation Rift.

Lornar’s Pass – Griffonrook Run which you get to from a very well concealed entrance in False Lake.

Timberline Falls – The previously mentioned Tail of the Serpent and Lair of the Coil.

Hope that helps you.

And 10 per minute is no were near the limit, 15 to 20 a minute is doable without triggering the time out.