Guild Wars 2

The Bells of Wintersday does count toward Meta completion (at least, the first time). You will not get a check-mark on the list but it will tick your Meta +1. Last night I was at 11/18. I then completed the Bells of Wintersday for the first time and it ticked to 12/18. The check-marks are either bugged or only check when you can no longer repeat it. Otherwise, it’s working fine.

Malediktus.9250:

Berserk Steve.1530:

achievements now confirmed working on all lanes just hold dmg and kill in 3rd.

Sound like badly designed achievements if they force you to play bad. Especially in open world environments where other people do what they want.

The right thing to do is for them to just make the achievement solely based on if your lane killed the Chak Gerent (and you participated). Isn’t that basically the same thing, only simplified and better? Not sure why Anet put in the 3 phase requirements anyways.

I think I tried about 30 times late at night even before I just gave up.

Pahis.7406:

@Boysenberry.1869
and bringing up a discussion of what other people feel about it. Please move on to another thread if you feel like being a smart kitten . Thanks.

So now it seems you just don’t want to hear about other viewpoints judging by your mild insult about “smart kittens”. Which is odd because you claim to want to know how other people feel about Necros. I was merely responding to your post (mainly your second post which brought up HoT and WvW) in how I feel about the State of the Necromancer. If players abandon their fellow players that speaks about the players themselves and not the class. People can feel differently than you without being smart kittens.

Soon.5240:

Boysenberry.1869:

There’s plenty of players. It’s just the system is broken.

I challenge you to go to any Boss, such as Jormag, Shadow Behemoth, Frozen Maw, etc. and not see 40 to 50 players.

That’s a poor comparison. Very few people bother with Central Tyria maps outside of specific wants and needs (like world bosses). Therefore when the time comes it is super easy to pile in tons of players for an event where you just auto-attack. The mega-server system worked fine for those needs. Go to a Central Tyria map outside of world bosses or guilds running a mission and you see an even lighter scattering of players then you would in HoT.

Tequatl is a boss you can compare to the HoT situation. Tequatl has a couple of full maps that players taxi into and run the event and then tons of empty maps that players couldn’t run the event if their life depended on it (so they taxi). HoT maps have tons of players at the Meta event times. But like Tequatl, it requires a taxi to get everyone together since there are too many maps spreading people out.

GW1 has the best system in place. The city maps would only open a new instance if the first map was pretty much full. GW2 needs to do this.

It’s a good thing then that my Caladbolg is rotting in the bank. Maybe that’s a bad sign for the bankers? I think the sword is broken though so maybe its curse is broken until someone makes the mistake of fixing it. I’m already blaming the Bookahs in advance.

If you’re main concern is that you feel weaker compared to HoT Necros then that is probably by design. They want HoT characters to feel strong so that everyone will buy HoT. Necromancer is my main character and I’ve enjoyed it from day one and still enjoy it. In WvW I mainly use my Necro to run with a zerg and with careful positioning and tactics they can survive just fine. I personally am terrible at 1v1 situations in any game but I’m sure there are many others out there that will tell you that in those situations Necro can be decent as well. If you die in WvW, just WP and continue on. Dying is part of the game. We can all learn and get better from it.

It may say 2:00, but the game might be rounding your real time of 2:00:01 or something to make it look like 2:00. So the game still thinks you’re over. If you do not have advanced gliding yet, then hold off until you do and it will be a lot easier. If you do have advanced gliding, aim for those floating yellow thingies that are inside the rings (and sometimes elsewhere in mid-air) and they give you a speed boost while flying.

Soon.5240:

Boysenberry.1869:

….then you need to use the LFG tool to taxi into an active map…..

Uh, is this not the very definition of a dead game?

Actually, it’s the definition of a broken Mega-Server system. Even at off hours there can be several full maps running Dragon’s Stand. The problem is Anet doesn’t understand how players want to play the game. If there are 500 players ready to play DS, instead of making 5 full maps for those players, the Mega-Server system creates 20 mostly empty maps and scatters everyone around. Since most players don’t want to fuss around trying to organize, they all stand around waiting for a few people on a few of the maps to tag up and do the organizing. Then they all taxi into those maps leaving all players who don’t use LFG in even emptier maps.

There’s plenty of players. It’s just the system is broken.

I like the idea. Sometimes I’ll be in a party and someone will go afk for awhile so I minimize the game and do other things and miss when they return. More indicators are always welcome.

It’s been a couple more weeks so…bump.

There’s a lot of posts about how awful Adventures are and how the much needed Mastery Points are locked behind them. This post isn’t about arguing whether they should be locked behind adventures or not but rather how to obtain the minimum points needed to avoid having to bang your head against unnecessary adventures.

You only need 12 Mastery Points (maybe 11, wiki has wrong totals posted) from adventures to max everything in HoT (excluding all points earned and spent in the raid). 12 out of the 30 available. They may not be fun but 40% isn’t too bad. After that if you want to go one step further you only need silver in specific adventures if you want a specific weapon. I have exactly 12 points from adventures and now have just enough to max my masteries.

For the adventure challenged like myself I recommend:

Verdant Brink
Tendril Torches: Silver, 1 point. No effort or strategy needed to get silver.
Salvage Pit: Gold, 2 points. Super easy once you have Itzel Lore tier 3 (Blazing Speed Mushrooms).
Flying Circus: Gold, 2 points. Save this one for much later when you have Gliding tier 5 (Advanced Gliding). It may take a few attempts to learn the route but it’s not too terrible and the adventure is open the entire Day cycle.

Auric Basin
On Wings of Gold: Silver, 1 point. Gliding tier 2 (Updraft Use) required. Flying and carefully aiming for tiny objects isn’t my cup of tea but there’s enough objects here to make Silver pretty reasonable, even perhaps on a first attempt.
Fallen Masks: Silver, 1 point. You will need Exalted Lore tier 2 (Exalted Acceptance) just to enter the adventrue area and Itzel Lore tier 1 (Bouncing Mushrooms) to participate. I won’t lie. This one can be really awful. I only put it here because it is always open (except during Octovine) and it’s mainly RNG based (not much skill required). Grind out Silver and move on.

Tangled Depths
Drone Race: Gold, 2 points. Itzel Lore tier 4 (Itzel Poison Lore) can help here but I don’t think it’s required. The time for gold here is very generous. Run through the track once to learn the layout and then just use skills 2-3 as much as you can.
Beetle Feast: Gold, 2 points. The time limit in this one is somewhat generous, even on a first attempt. The purple mushrooms grant you special skills (of which you really only need skill 2 to burrow under barriers). The final room can be really challenging but the best part about this adventure…you can bring friends who can kill everything ahead of you to make it super easy!

That adds up to 11. If I’m correct and you need the full 12, there’s a few options. If On Wings of Gold wasn’t too bad for you, go and grab silver from Bugs in the Branches in Verdant Brink (updraft needed). If you just want to settle somewhere and grind out an adventure that’s (just about) always open, The Floor is Lava is kinda unique (and irritating in a…unique…way). I personally can’t do the the jumping puzzle racing things at all, but there are three you can attempt: Sanctum Scramble, A Fungus Among Us, and The Ley-Line Run.

I would avoid the Shooting Gallery, Haywire Punch-o-Matic Battle, and the Scrap Rifle Field Test altogether.

Dragon’s Stand is run constantly every 2 hours (there’s multiple timers online). You need to arrive at the very beginning of the 2 hour window and then you need to use the LFG tool to taxi into an active map. Even very late at night I see dozens of taxi posts pop in and out of the LFG.

Underwater combat is all but abandoned.

Necros are great! They do decent damage, they are extremely durable, they have minions to distract mobs if needed, and you still can plow through mobs in melee as a light armored class with ease. My main has been Necro since launch and nothing has ever made me waver from that. Class animosity is only brought on by a tiny portion of the community that is best avoided/ignored anyways.

Lord Faren swordsman outfit coming soon*

I’m all for more skins but for Glider skins to be worth the cost they need to be available in more than 1% of content.

Has anyone else been playing and then randomly run into what looks like a Candy Corn node…only to have it suddenly vanish about a second later? They’re not supposed to be back until the 15th but I’ve seen them suddenly appear and then disappear as if they mistakenly showed themselves, realized that mistake and suddenly went back into hiding. It happens so fast I haven’t been able to take a picture of one or try to mine one. Wintersday is coming!

Playing as a Sylvari will take you through the exact same missions but the dialog will be a little different and there are a few other minor effects and changes you’ll notice. It is mildly more interesting than playing through as another race.

I’ve heard of it bugging sometimes for people but I was able to get it just fine. It might be one of those things where if it bugs you just have to try again.

No need for search when it’s all complaint threads anyways. :

This isn’t just a DS problem, but a Mega-server problem that can happen on any map (although only noticed on meta maps). The entire mega-server system seems to be very outdated for the direction the game is going in and a fix might not be quick and easy. I do hope they are actually working on it though…

Mastery levels solves the contested waypoint problem which may be by design. I know it’s not the solution a lot of people like but Wallows, Mushrooms and Advanced Gliding makes traveling quick and easy.

Most Waypoints in Verdant Brink are open unless the area isn’t progressed yet (Day) and those few blocked areas can be reached in less than 30 seconds from the nearest waypoint.

Auric Basin has portals at the start to reach areas around the city (Exalted Markings needed?). The Wallows here are also very useful and allow quick travel from one side of the map to the other. There are also wallows that bypass large packs of irritating mobs. Even contested waypoints can be reached very very quickly with mastery levels.

Tangled Depths is mainly wallows. I use wallows here far more than waypoints. Most of the waypoints are open here anyways unless an event is right on top of it. The Leyline hub room leads everywhere via wallows.

Dragon’s Stand waypoints open as you go so there’s no issue here.

Confirmed SAB will be returning for Christmas…

…in the year 2058.

I bought the $129.99 Super Deluxe version of your guide but I still haven’t received my autographed plush Chak yet. Who do I talk to about this?

[great guide by the way! ]

There’s no need for a workaround. Anet already resolved the issue 15+ minutes ago. I’m running the 64-bit fine now.

Fixed! Some poor guy is at the office all by himself in the middle of the night.

I feel special then that I’m downloading error messages slightly faster than other people are downloading error messages!

Another official reddit update: “Yup, sorry 64-bit client is not patching. That 1k or 2k a second is probably the error code – it’s never going to finish! We’re working on fixing it.”

Well over an hour as well and 25,500 and counting. How is the download a different size for everyone?

Anet official response on reddit: “We are aware of the patching issues with the 64 bit client and are working on it. For now, the 32 bit client is able to be patched.”

Anet official response on reddit: “We are aware of the patching issues with the 64 bit client and are working on it. For now, the 32 bit client is able to be patched.”

The game was running fine all evening. Not sure why they had to push out a patch so late in the day when they could have just done it in the morning when people are at work.

Ven Zehn.6573:

Confirmed, switch to 32bit client for DL

The actual client’s themselves need to update unfortunately. Sure the 32-bit downloads the patch immediately, but if you try to run the 64-bit client it still needs to download the client update part…which is barely working. So people can choose from either running the 32-bit client and crashing constantly, or waiting hours for the 64-bit client to finish downloading.

Anything to improve the leaderboards for the adventures would be nice at this point. I can’t make any sense of them and I’m glad someone’s taken the time to do some investigating.

On the Drone Race for example, it somehow says my best time and daily time is :53, no matter what I do. I can take different routes. I can use skills differently. I can go slow on purpose. I somehow finish at the exact same time every day I play it?

Cameron.2315:

Is it safe to assume this won’t be fixed till the morning everyones clocked off and gone home now?

On the bright side, by the time morning comes the client will have finally finished downloading!

Yes, 64-bit client has to patch in order to run. So start downloading and then go take care of real life for an hour or so.

So even though the 32-bit updates normally…the 64-bit client still needs to update also in order to run. So since the 32-bit client doesn’t work (crashes), it’s nap time! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

People are getting 2kb/sec…3kb/sec? Slow pokes. I’m at a blazing 4kb/sec!

Elementalist is the first thing that comes to mind reading your post.

Ayrilana.1396:

Guild organized or pug?

I believe the tag that handled the Nuhoch lane was guild organized but I think most people on the map were randoms taxi’d in (like myself).

It all comes down to luck. I finally got my first completion yesterday and that run went flawlessly. Nuhoch downed their Gerent in phase 2 and everyone else finished theirs off with over 2 minutes left in phase 3.

Virtually everyone on the map was there to participate. We had so many people that we had trouble figuring out where to place the late-comers after all lanes were “full”. People ate food. People brought their DPS. And it was super easy.

It’s all luck. You get lucky and have good players on your map. Or you get unlucky and have too many bad players. RNG when it comes to loot is frustrating but RNG when it comes to players is even worse.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

BTW, does it have to be done during the initial story? Or can that segment be repeated for the achievement?

You can return to attempt that achievement whenever you want.

With 95% map completion you probably only need to grab what…6-8 Hero Points in HoT to unlock your elite specialization. You can have it done in 10-20 minutes if you got for the commune HPs.

If you like group play and finding players to play with, you may enjoy HoT.
If you like to play solo, HoT might not be for you.

If you enjoy challenging content and wish there was more of it, you may enjoy HoT.
If you rather take it easy and press 1 for loot, HoT might not be for you.

If you like large map-wide meta events like the Silverwastes, you may enjoy HoT.
If you prefer hearts and one-off events, HoT might not be for you.

If you don’t mind lots of repetition to achieve your goals, you may enjoy HoT.
If you can’t stand required repetition to achieve your goals, HoT might not be for you.

If you like going on scavenger hunts, you may enjoy HoT.
If you find scavenger hunts tedious, HoT might not be for you.

If you thought the mobs in Orr were too sparse and lacking in CC, you may enjoy HoT.
If the thought of never ending hordes of demon-spawn that threaten to climb out of your computer screen and destroy all of your hopes and dreams bothers you, HoT might not be for you.

It looks like a daunting room but it’s actually very easy. Most if not all of the mobs can be pulled individually or in small groups depending on your liking. Just pick a character that kills fastest for you and hop to it!

TD nowadays all comes down to luck. You either have good luck that your fellow players are in Exotic Beserker gear (or other damage gear) and you are able to DPS the bosses down in time. Or you have bad luck and your fellow players are wearing Masterwork gear, remaining dead on the ground, or just completely ignoring the mechanics of the fight.

My personal success rate for TD is 0%. Lately my runs have gotten through all 3 burn phases more often than not but every time at least one lane doesn’t have the DPS and the event fails. Other bosses like Teq are much more forgiving when it comes to raw DPS than the TD meta.

There’s a lot more than 10 people using it, but it isn’t used nearly as much as it could be. I think a lot of players just don’t notice or remember it since it’s kind of tucked away.

Even late at night there’s about 20+ posts in just the Living World section. And they are constantly being filled and new ones posted. You could have 100 people cycling through it every 5 minutes or so, more so when taxi’ing is done for big events. The other sections like the dungeon ones are much less used, but still used to some extent.

Notsoperky.2348:

You need 13 silvers to max the mastery lines, if you have managed to get all the other masteries from everything else except raids.

Either you are exceptionally gifted as well as extremely lucky and have a wonderful connection with no ping and are god’d gift to SM8 (ie, all gates were open, nothing blocked by meta event, never missed a jump or glide, etc), or your claim of ‘an afternoon’ is completely bullkitten. Some of them are blocked most of the time and you have to get very lucky to even get in- then kicked out before you complete.

The other problem I’m finding now is even finding where my missing mastery points are without having to spend hours consulting outside databases and comparing to those I have to determine which ones I should have, do have, or can try for.

The Hero Panel tells you where you can earn more mastery points. You just open up the achievements and scan through looking for the green (HoT) icons. They’re all clustered into just a few categories and easy to find. Just pick one that you can do and go get it.

As far as having to get Silver in every adventure, that’s not exactly the case. Some adventures are awful and I can’t get silver in them. But some adventures are silly easy (Drone Race, Salvage Pit) and almost guarantee Gold. Getting a few Golds in the easy ones allows you do completely skip the worst adventures which helps a lot.

If any minis are involved in future birthday gifts then they need to be randomized/different minis. No more hordes of Queen Jennahs.