Guild Wars 2

As leader of a very small guild, I need to know whether I should be spending influence now on unlocks (some of which take a week to complete) and which unlocks will benefit us the most. How much influence should I be holding back for the things it will be harder for smaller guilds to earn?. If we only get this information a few days before launch, it may be too late for me to do whatever needs to be done to get my guild ready. We need time for planning, discussion, and execution.

I hope the guild information comes soon. As leader of a small guild, I need to know whether and how much influence I should be spending on unlocks (some of which take a week to complete) and how much to hold back. If they give us this information at the last second, it will be too late for me to do anything with it.

Still waiting for them to monetize the loading screens. “TwitchCon and Stronghold! Brought to you by Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions!”

My guess is that the fix for these events is not as easy as one might think. It may not be a simple matter of fixing event X, then moving on to fix event Y, and then event Z.

The bugged events all seem to be escort events. Izzy bugs out during the escort to Mel and crash survivors bug out during the escort to Meddler’s (both Cursed Shore). Malchor bugs out during the escort to Dwayna (Malchor’s Leap). Dobbs bugs out during the escort through the Rankor Ruins (Timberline Falls). Fire Elemental pre bugs out during the golem escort (Metrica). The meta event chain for the Branded Devourer Queen bugs out during the escort of Sentinel Whiptail or one of the later escort events in the chain (Iron Marches). Offhand, I can’t think of a buggy event in any zone that isn’t an escort event that stalls out or fails to start, and most (maybe all) of them have been buggy since the original beta.

This suggests to me that there is some very deep, fundamental flaw in something that is common to all escort events. The amount of work to find and fix such a fundamental flaw may be enormous, striking at the very heart of the code controlling dynamic events. The fix might amount to tearing down the entire game and rebuilding part of the foundation, which would present the risk of introducing new bugs that would be just as pervasive as the escort bug. The cure could be worse than the disease.

I’m confused. Is this move/merge an admission that Howler’s Farter’s Wheezer’s shortage of legendary qualities IS, in fact, a bug? Or is it just a way of sweeping the topic under the rug where the general population won’t have to look at it?

If it weren’t for “Winds of Change” in GW1, would there be a Dominion of Winds in GW2? There’s one of your connections. Though it has yet to bear much fruit, I’m sure that the tengu will eventually have their day in the sun in the GW2 story.

Buttflaps are necessary. They keep the mud from getting all over your backpack or wings when you’re running through a swamp. I would pay extra for some that were imprinted with an image of Yosemite Sam with drawn guns saying “Back off!”

As for Dry Top being “holy”, I promise you that my “Dry Top: Rules of Engagement” would be even more pointed.

I agree that the rewards are not well balanced. You DO get dinged on participation for using siege, often only getting bronze or silver credit for the event. You also forgo what little loot does drop from mobs, like t6 mats. These problems really need to be addressed, since those who are properly using siege and keeping the signal fire lit are making a solid contribution to the defense.

ANet has apparently been trying to train us to use siege for a while now, but not doing too swift a job of it. Not just in SW. For example, they changed the event at the logging camp outside Fort Trinity. There is an arrow cart there now and many more mobs to eliminate. But the ac is rarely used. When it is used, nobody thinks to watch the back of the operator or to draw fights out from behind the tank to where the ac can hit them. But, heck, the problem even exists in WvW, where you can stuff a tower full of expensive siege and see the defenders totally ignore it despite the devastating damage it does.

So I’ve finally decided to get my tail out of Dry Top and spend some time in Silverwastes. After a couple of weeks of careful observation, I think I’ve finally figured out the Rules of Engagement for the map.

1. Do NOT keep the signal fire lit.

2. Do NOT use the siege.

3. Do NOT protect the siege or anyone using the siege.

4. Do NOT anticipate attacks and have people stationed by a torch and the siege, ready to spring into action.

5. Should some silly person actually use an oil pot, do everything possible to keep the poor mordrem from being burned horribly. Keep the fights out of range of the oil and knock back any poor foe that manages to blunder into it. They will thank you for it, and the silly person will shortly stop bothering them as per rule 3, when the silly person and the pot are destroyed.

6. Should a fort offer arrow carts or cannons, do NOT use them to provide any sort of cover fire for rubble collection or for pack bulls leaving the fort. Should you happen to have a torch in your hand when an attack ends, drop it immediately lest you accidentally light the signal fire to provide cover for the group collecting rubble.

7. Should a pack bull be dispatched to resupply your fort, there are two choices. Either everyone must leave the fort to escort the bull or no one must leave the fort to escort the bull. Under the first option, should the fort come under attack while everyone is escorting the bull (which is almost certain to happen), no one must leave the bull.

8. When a skritt burglar appears, all bets are off. Everyone drop everything to nail that sucker.

Did I cover everything, or can you experienced Silverwasters fill me in on the points I missed?

I’ve got to admit that it is a real adventure to have the most variable legendary in the game. First it was Howler, then it became Farter, and now I have Wheezer. I wonder where it will take me next?

But I can hear the howl now. At least … I think it’s supposed to be a howl. Sounds a little more like someone stepped on a dog’s tail. (Poor doggie!) However, that’s still an improvement over Farter, which sounded just like every non-legendary warhorn.

nateedubs.8053:

Thanks, now I feel dumb for doing all that lmao. At least I didn’t do the other borderland areas.

Don’t feel dumb. I still complete WvW mapping on new characters even though it is no longer required. At the very least it seems worthwhile to get all the hero points. If you ever decide to actually play any WvW, it will be useful to have all the PoI. If you do all that, you might as well just do the vistas too.

In case you didn’t know, your server’s borderland will switch from week to week on a semi-random rotation. You might have, say, the red borderland this week and the blue next week. So you might want to wait until a particular borderland is assigned to your world before exploring it, since that will make it a little easier.

achilleez.2750:

While these so called “sounds” are bloody dreadful, they have at least provided some amusement.

This morning I was running past a female Sylvari ele who announced “I summon the power of the wind!”

At just the point when my ranger blew his horn and I nearly lost my coffee down my nose

LOL. I guess one of Ventari’s tenets should have been “Be careful what you ask for, for you may receive it.”

Sometimes I think that should be one of our tenets as well. I fear what may happen if ANet takes our complaints about Howler Farter to heart and decides to make it really legendary again. We could wind up with rainbow wolves spewing into the air and worse.

Aspect.4163:

Ok thanks folks. what I meant was that I spent a couple points on things I do not need for the build I want to pursue. I (for whatever reason) was under the impression the hero points you aquire in the game was only enough for one specific build (traits, specialization, etc)

Not at all. In fact, the first character I rolled after the change to the HP system had every skill, trait, and core specialization unlocked by level 73 just from leveling, doing personal story, and completing maps as I went.

crawlerxp.1536:

Neither can I. Made for a mildly entertaining video, though. I got bored and decided to do it myself before dinner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAqyyAR1S04

Excellent! I’ve been hoping the video makers would step up to the plate to help shame ANet into reconsidering. And you stepped up in fine style. Well done!

Now we need one featuring the warhorn-wielding risen subjugators with their victims fleeing in fear from the toxic blast. “Who Cut the Cheese?” would be appropriate background music for that one.

Wiki is your friend. Look up “Mystic Coin”. Right at the top of the page is this recipe:

Mystic Coin + Mystic Crystal + Bottle of Elonian Wine + Crafted Chest Armor = Box of Armor

Prowler Coat is a crafted chest armor. Voila. Mystery solved.

Day 2 did not give half-price (500 gems) on any tool. Or any kind of discount for that matter. So it is irrelevant to bring this up in response to the OP. Day 2 is not a discount that has “been and gone”.

Day 15 is the pick sale to which the OP is referring. It did not include axes or sickles. OP is not asking for the pick sale to return, but for equivalent sales on the other two tools. Day 15 is not a discount on axes or sickles that has “been and gone”.

The message doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that the technology exists in the game to overlay such things on the loading screens. Which means that some day we might see “Drink Coca-Cola!” there instead. Uh, oh.

Hawken son of Z.1367:

I just found out about the howler sound… wth is Anets problem with this legendary??? it sounds absolutely stupid now.. why are they taking the legendary out of our legendary?

They aren’t, really. They’re just trying for a new type of legendary: Legendarily Awful. The next step will be to rename the horn to Farter, make the aura a sort of brown cloud, and make the footfalls look like little cowpies. Every nine-year-old in the game will love it!

I picked the LA Survivor kit on my first character to hit his birthday expecting to be able to pick Abyss. Alas, it offered only the exclusive dyes from the kit and not the others.

Jaymee.1560:

And if the acquisition is anything like making a Legendary Weapon, these outfits better be the End-all-Be all of Epic.

You mean like the Legendary Warhorn Howler Farter? Well, I guess Legendarily Gawdawful is still Legendary.

Finally! After months of effort I now have the materials, basic gifts, etc. required to make Howler. But, I am hesitant to actually start chucking these things into the MT with Howler in its current state.

It took me as much effort as Bifrost, Bolt, or any other legendary would have taken. However, because RNG favored me by dropping Howl in my lap instead of some other precursor, apparently I am not entitled to a weapon that looks and feels just as legendary as the others. Yet the tooltip on Howl proclaims that it is a precursor for a legendary weapon, not a semi-legendary weapon or a wannabe-legendary weapon.

Isn’t it about time we got an official comment on this situation?

Even on the first runthrough for a character, it is very annoying if you get a dc during the boss battle and have to redo all the preliminaries. I think I got dc’d three or four times the last time I did World Summit, and a couple of times doing Hidden Arcana. There are several missions with a huge amount of no-combat preliminary work, including dialogs, cut scenes, and finding books/artifacts. I agree that it should be possible to skip all that and get to the meat of the mission when necessary.

nyxkora.8356:

I can’t even…this sound. Please change it. It sounds exactly like what everyone says. I don’t even want to touch my Howler now, it too painful to listen to. It’s grates my ears.

You’d best stay out of Orr, then. Risen Subjugators have warhorns and are farting all over the Orr maps. One sort of loses respect for them hearing that. (But it is kind of funny when you run away from them immediately after hearing that “blaaaat”. If only there was an animation to make us hold our noses while feared … )

Begging ANet doesn’t seem to be working. I think we need to shame them instead. Somebody needs to make a music video featuring the new sounds and put it on YouTube. (I’m surprised this hasn’t already been done.)

About 10 months back Howl dropped for me from a risen sea turtle. My necro was thrilled, and I’ve spent the last 10 months gathering the necessaries to make my first legendary. I knew about the borked night effects, but set my sights on Howler anyway. I’m almost there now, but the new sound is making me think twice. Perhaps I’d be better off saving the mats for some other legendary rather than wasting all that effort on a warhorn I won’t be able to stand to use. But it’s hard to decide without an official answer on whether the problems, at least with the sound, will be fixed.

Envy.1679:

I make lfgs with the description “noobs join first timers welcome” and I still end up with 80s with 10k achievement points in zerk gear.

I enjoy running new people through the dungeon, so I make specific names to find new people. It doesnt make me “mad” or anything but i set out and make that lfg for specific reason. When a bunch of 80s join for ac story it kind of ruins the goal for me.

I have 10k ap and have been playing since the beginning. But, after doing the dungeon story modes on my first character way back when, it kind of soured me on dungeons. I never did the stories on my other characters and never did any of them in exploration mode. Until yesterday, because it seems I need Deadly Blooms to make my first legendary.

So, when it comes to dungeons, I AM a noob, despite my 10k ap and all my characters being level 80. If I join your dungeon group, I’m just as lost there as anyone who started playing last week. Be kind to me.

By great good luck, a level 80 with dungeon experience joined my “newbie lfg” group for TA. He/she was very patient in explaining the places to run, the places to hide or stack, and the dangers of each area and boss. It made the experience much more pleasant for me and the other newbies in my group. It will probably take me a few more runs to totally absorb all that info and fully learn the paths, but, thanks to our guide, I feel much better about being “forced” into doing a dungeon.

Sevans.4619:

Better yet, make it a big electric guitar that you hold by the neck and bonk people with.

Electric?! El Kabong used an acoustic! I insist on total authenticity in any weapon paying homage to the original guitar bonker. Ole!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

There is an invisible hero point in the Fields of Ruin in the top right area where the harpies are. Even when you get right on top of it, you can’t see it.

Even worse, it’s back in a narrow little area at the far end of the harpy-infested area. If you don’t already know where it is, you’d be very unlikely to stumble across it since there is nothing else of interest nearby to draw your attention to that semi-hidden little pocket. This has to be a nightmare for newer players taking their first toon through map completion.

Might want to think twice about it, though. I jumped on it when it first came out because my GW1 ranger always loved his Krytan armor. But it’s been changed. The worst change is that the hem of the greatcoat seems to be ragged and moldy, as if my GW2 ranger dug up a 200-year-old corpse and ripped the rotting armor off the decaying bones. Ummm, no thanks. But, hey, if that effect appeals to you …

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Mordremoth’s primary corruption isn’t exactly clear yet – likely to become clear in HoT – but we see corpses being corrupted (Mordrem Wolves and Trolls)

I must have missed something. Where did we see this?

Why would Mordremoth even need to corrupt corpses? The Pale Tree can grow a hound, but Mordremoth has to corrupt a corpse to get a wolf? The Pale Tree can grow a plant in the shape of a human, but Mordremoth has to corrupt a corpse to get a plant in the shape of a troll?

Given that:

• there were other seeds in the cave that Ronan found
• at least one of those seeds could grow into a tree that can produce independant plant life forms in shapes mimicking non-plant life forms
• Mordremoth was the source of those seeds

I had assumed that Mordremoth had mordrem “factories” somewhere out there in the jungle that were growing whatever critters seemed useful to the cause: wolves, husks, trolls, teragriffs, etc. I had assumed that the Pale Tree was designed to be one such factory, operating as intended in growing minions except for the inconvenient fact that she got free of the dragon’s control.

But you tell me that actually he’s making them from corpses? Well, assumptions seem to have led me astray, as they often do. When was this information revealed to us?

Genesis.8572:

True, but the dialogue in the Caithe flashbacks also implies that her Wyld Hunt may have been more ambiguous and something she was trying to figure out. She may have thought that it was over in VoD but when new info came up, then realized that her Wyld Hunt may have involved something else entirely.

I have been thinking much about that, along with the suggestion in the same flashback that it may be possible for a sylvari to misinterpret their Wyld Hunt. I could easily believe that of Caithe because, as Logan pointed out later, she is a “linear thinker”. Once she fastens onto an idea or course of action, she’s like a dog with a bone. No matter how wrong a course she’s on, it takes a lot to derail her, as she proved in her pursuit of Wynne and seems to be proving with regard to Glint’s egg. Her mind closes up tight and counter-arguments seem to go in one ear and out the other. She actively avoids giving explanations and opening her actions up to discussion and debate.

A sylvari PC’s Wyld Hunt may overlap with those of Caithe and Trahearne, but is not identical to either. We still don’t know exactly what Caithe’s Wyld Hunt is, and she may not know either, though she may think she does. Trahearne’s Wyld Hunt may have “reignited”, but it’s hard to see how it could mutate from “cleanse Orr” into “kill Mordremoth”. I suspect his true mission is removal of elder dragon corruption in general, with removal of the elder dragons being a necessary (but not sufficient) condition.

It might help if the writers were all of the same mind on what, exactly, a Wyld Hunt is. From the PS and Living World it would seem to be a personal imperative for some, but not all, sylvari. Other conversations we hear in the open world suggest that the Wyld Hunt is more like one of the Orders. E.g., “Did you ever serve with Caithe in the Wyld Hunt?” (Caer Shadowfain), and “The Wyld Hunt needs assistance!” (Sparkfly Fen).

SKATE.1394:

Gathering the required 25 a day would be easy enough, these are much easier to obtain than watchwork sprockets for instance.

With a watchwork mining pick, I can easily get around 25 sprockets in an hour. Gathering 25 quartz crystals per day is flat out impossible unless you have access to a home-instance node. The best you can do just mining Dry Top is three charged crystals every four days, and it isn’t all that easy since there is an additional favor restriction on the gathering.

There are three regular nodes and one rich node in Dry Top that can be harvested once a day per account (not per character), so you can only get 19 per day. (On a very lucky day I might get 20 or 21 if RNG gives me an extra gather.) Worse, access to the rich node requires at least tier 4 favor, which you may not be lucky enough to get if you have limited play time. So, as if the time gating weren’t onerous enough, you can’t even charge as many crystals as the time gating allows without jumping through some hoops (buying extra crystals and/or getting to a home node and a t4+ Dry Top map).

I have had my AoE or melee attacks thwarted once by a guardian with a hammer, once by a necro using fear, never by an engi bomb, and countless times by a ranger with a longbow. It’s gotten to the point where if I see a ranger coming in my direction, I head in some other direction. Even when I’m playing on my ranger and even if I’m in the middle of an event. (My ranger mostly prefers shortbow and axe/torch, so a knockback will likely mean I have to chase after the baddie to get back in range, and certainly means my pet will have to chase it.)

I’ve seen some try to excuse this by claiming it’s a reflex developed during solo PvE play. Baloney. You may need it more often when you’re alone, but spamming it is never optimal. If your pet is busy chasing after something that you’ve knocked back just because the skill is off CD, then your pet isn’t doing damage during that time, so you’ve just reduced the effectiveness of the team.

Next time you see a ranger using a longbow badly, suggest the shortbow. It has a nice little stun shot for an interrupt and an evade that moves the ranger instead of the target. The autoattack is almost as fast as Rapid Fire and, of course, has no cool down.

Kalavier.1097:

In the end, the player character did not settle and become head of a town or leader of a nation/major faction.

I think this nails it. The PC, regardless of campaign or origin, is essentially rootless, with no long-term social ties to cement his legacy. The PC started out as a nobody without the community history or ties of the NPCs who trained him or otherwise interacted with him. And the PC always moved on to something else too quickly to really establish himself in any community. He’s easily forgotten in the press of current events once he moves on.

In Prophecies, from the point of view of the Ascalonians who remained with Adelbern, the PC is just another exile who ran off with the disinherited prince. Anything you did up to that point gets credited to Rurik anyway, he being the one who formed and lead the Vanguard. The PC has no real ties to the Ascalonians.

Then you get the refugees through the Frost Gate and help them set up in Kryta after Rurik is snuffed. But you aren’t there long before you’re off dealing with the White Mantle and bopping around the Maguuma, Crystal Desert, etc. Captain Greywind is the one who remained to provide the day-to-day leadership for years, and he’s the one who got the big memorial in GW2. He, and others, remained with the wagons and kept order in the camps along the way, so they are easily remembered by the rabble better than the guy who was out of sight doing hero stuff to make the path safe. The PC has no real ties to the refugee Ascalonians either.

After the War in Kryta, did Salma grant the PC a title or a place in her court or a even a position as the lowest private in her army or the rawest recruit in the Shining Blade? No. You were off to the Far Shiverpeaks again while the Shining Blade and Lionguard and some suck-up advisers remained for years to clean up the mess and establish the new government. Out of sight, out of mind. The PC has no real ties to the Krytans or any organization there.

In Elona, the PC was Kormir’s right hand and considered the leader of the Sunspears in Kourna and Vabbi when Kormir was absent. But, when it was all over, the PC essentially had no position or authority left. Politics took over, someone else became Spearmarshal, and the PC went wandering once again. The PC has no real ties to any culture or organization in Elona.

In Cantha, the Emperor threw a party and promised the PC the honor of all Canthans forever. Yay, us! Winds of Change showed us how short “forever” could be. The PC had no position in the court, in the army, with the Kurzicks or Luxons, or even as a teacher in the monastery. The PC has no real ties to any culture or organization in Cantha.

The PC didn’t have the history or connections anywhere to get any kind of leadership position, and no chosen leader in his right mind would have wanted the PC as a subordinate after he had made his reputation as a slayer of liches, gods, and ghosts. So the PC couldn’t have started down in the ranks to eventually work his way to the top. Other than that, how would the PC have established himself anywhere? Is there anything more useless than a retired hero?

History remembers those who provide day-to-day leadership for the long term, not itinerant troubleshooters who are quickly forgotten once they move on. Who was that hero behind the mask? I dunno, but he left this silver doojigger before he rode off into the sunset. “Yeah, yeah, you killed a lich last year. He’s dead, we’re not, cool story bro. What have you done for me lately? We got troubles here. Go make yourself useful and kill some bandits or gtfo.”

Survivors of the explosion are still living in tents nearby. I would take this as another indication that the event was very recent. Perhaps some of the NPCs there have dialog or overheard conversations that would help you piece together your back story.

xaunpy.9081:

Sorry if this has been answered before, but seems to be plain ambiguous to me.
Are these changes live?

Yes.

I hope that’s not too ambiguous. The changes went live with the update that brought us the new trait system, hero points, etc.

Kalavier.1097:

eduardo.1436:

Given their circumstances it truly is a heartwarming moment. And little family? They made like 10 babies XD

Given the fact that is a quaggan village, it’s more likely that They are babysitting everybody’s babies (alongside their own) IMO.

Makes sense to me. We see the same thing in Bloodtide Coast and Timberline Falls, where all of the young are sequestered and supervised by quaggan dedicated to the job. They’re more like charr in that way, rather than following the human/norn “nuclear family” social structure.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’ve gotten spirit shards from champ bags, random mobs, etc; they don’t just drop from daily completion.

FYI for others thinking of crafting a ton of ascended gear at once: do the research before running into a bottleneck. The ol’ “measure twice, cut once” philosophy applies to efficient crafting.

^^ This, for sure.

I wanted to outfit my five current characters with ascended gear. My first step was to create a spreadsheet to total the mat requirements and unavoidable costs for items that can’t be farmed. The numbers are daunting, to say the least, for just five characters. I can’t imagine doing it for 15.

As others have pointed out, spirit shards are the least of your worries. Enormous amounts of bloodstone, dragonite, fragments, and crystalline dust are bigger bottlenecks. Dark Matter doesn’t come any too easily, either, and don’t neglect the cost of all the reagents and gossamer thread that must be purchased.

After nearly a year of farming my buns off, I almost have enough of everything to replace the current weapon sets on each character with ascended weapons, making no allowance for alternate weapons that I would like to carry in inventory. Ascended armor for those characters is still a loooong way off.

Ascended crafting for people like us who routinely play more than one toon is not so much a long-term project as a multi-generational endeavor. Scene: A house in middle America. Time: The distant future. “Come on, kids, let’s go salvage some silk for great-grandpa’s birthday! You know he’d like that!” “Awwww, mom, do we haveta?”

I noticed that mousing over any item in the mat tab of the bank now shows the item count in the pop-up description, just as it always has for items in bags. This is a great relief for someone with eyesight as poor as mine! It’s wonderful to be able to get that count without squinting and peering to try to distinguish the numbers against the background of an icon that obscures them by color or detail. Many thanks!

Tapioca.9062:

So I was exploring Seraph’s Landing and found these two bulls chilling in their home. What struck me as strange is that there is not a single cow in this entire village. Now, I’m not exactly a farming expert, but from what I know, bulls without cows aren’t of much particular use in an agricultural sense beyond their magical transformation into beef. It’s possible they could be stud bulls, but I don’t recall seeing cows anywhere in the Harathi Hinterlands.

Now I just happen to have the farming expertise that you lack.

There was an interesting case many years ago where a stock breeder advertised a stud bull for sale in a newspaper. He provided a picture to go with the ad. When the ad was published, he saw to his shock that some city-boy photo editor had airbrushed out the, um, dangly bits lest some reader be offended. The breeder sued the paper and won, given that any actual farmer looking at that altered pic would conclude that the animal was not fit for the advertised purpose.

Looking at the image you provided, my expert eye immediately notices something missing. Take a close look between the hind legs of that “bull” on the right. Or even a far look. What’s missing should be quite notably present on any bull in breeding condition.

Yep. Them h’ain’t bulls, Jethro. Them’s oxen!

DresdenAllblack.1249:

The goal was never to eliminate the undead from Orr. It was to kill Zhaitan.

Mission accomplished.

OUR goal was to kill Zhaitan. Trahearne’s goal was to cleanse Orr of corruption, though this, of course, also required the death of the dragon to proceed to completion. In one of his speeches after Zhaitan went down, he even speaks of the long-term process of exterminating the remaining undead.

What I’ve been wondering about is Caladbolg, which was used to begin the cleansing of the Source of Orr. Caladbolg was grown by the Pale Tree and is an extension of her power. But we now know the Pale Tree is a creature of Mordremoth (albeit a rebellious one), and any extension of her (including the sylvari themselves) is potentially subject to the control of that dragon. What does this mean for the cleansing of Orr? Might the presence of Caladbolg serve as a wedge giving Mordremoth the ability to interfere with, subvert, or take over the Source?

1. Date/time not recorded. A few days ago.
2. BrettM.9062
3. Isle of Janthir
4. Frostgorge Sound, on the main trail to Barrowstead, a bit southwest of Coiled Watch.
5. Just standing still, looking at the minimap for snow truffles.
6. No GIF available.
7. I didn’t notice any special animation other than “Arrgh!” followed by my corpse flopping to the ground, and the combat log didn’t show any damage or source of damage.
8. An event symbol (gold circle with white star) appeared at my location on the minimap just moments before I died. No events were in progress in the area, and I don’t know of any that begin or end at that location. There were no NPCs, friend or foe, in sight.

Linken.6345:

Vavume.8065:

So what are the rewards for finishing personal story now? I know we used to get a legendary pact token (still have 3 in the bank) but what do you get now? and can we still use these old tokens?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pact_Victory_Token

Edit

what I wonder if I still have one of these can I exchange it anywere

Players completing the story now get a Pact weapon chest that allows them to choose a Pact skin. But, if you still have an old token, you can still take it to the quartermaster in Caer Aval (Trahearne’s office in Fort Trinity) and exchange it for your choice of Pact skins.

I pre-ordered Ultimate the day it became available. I registered the code the day the Community Address was published and had two new slots, the gems, the mini, and the other goodies within a day.

Lasur Arkinshade.4107:

One issue I noticed:

At the end of Forging the Pact, Trahearne used to (before the personal story changes in the feature pack) have a short, unvoiced (text box) dialogue with you where he discussed what your next assignment would be based upon your greatest fear. That was removed with the feature pack, and it hasn’t been restored in the restoration update. This means that you finish Forging the Pact and then randomly get sent off to your greatest fear arc with no real explanation for why you’re going where you’re going or meeting with who you’re meeting. Just one thing I thought Bobby and co might be able to take a look at.

I noticed the same issue. It does make for a jarring transition to have a big discussion about a new HQ fort in Straits and then suddenly find your next objective is to go fight krait in Timberline, lead a mortar team in Mt. Maelstrom, or blow up towers in Sparkfly.

But, aside from such nitpicks, it’s great to have Greatest Fear back and be experiencing the story in proper order. Thank you, Bobby, and everyone else involved in putting this right!

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Well, it’s easy to jump on the bandwagon if you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. At the very least, I wasn’t expecting such a loss with practically no reward to offset the cost.

The OP said he thought the merchant was generating an unusual amount of wealth that might be the result of a bug. He stopped using the merchant at that point, which was the responsible thing for him to do given that exploiting bugs is against the rules. He suggested that ANet might want to disable the merchant until it was fixed, obviously to prevent others from inadvertently encountering the bug and risking a ban for using an exploit.

Does that really sound like the kind of bandwagon anyone should be jumping on? Are you now complaining because you expected an exploit but actually found a gamble?

mcwurth.2081:

You know what? I BOUGHT GUILDWARS! I want my OWN guild. Like everyone else should be able to have their own. I have my own guild and some friends who are even less on then I am (I am on each day they are more once a month due to real life and such) and yet I want a guild hall. But I do not feel like “growing” my guild with random people I never met before

You … you … you must be my long-lost, unknown twin brother!

I am in a similar position. My guildies and I were together in GW1. We were together in a game before that. We have more than a decade’s-worth of shared history. But we are rarely on at the same time, and trying to get more than two of us together at one time would be a challenge for a cat herder. Yet we would like a guild hall and see no reason why GW2 should make this any more difficult than it was for us in GW1.

Fortunately for us, we still have friends from that original game who are in other small guilds, all of which were allied in GW1. It should be possible for us to help each other out in obtaining GW2 guild halls, and I wouldn’t feel any shame in that arrangement. If it weren’t for that, I’d be feeling a lot more panicky right now.

Warpinator.9860:

Palindrome.8904:

Uh, people explain things in SW in map chat because many people don’t know how to properly do the fights. I personally feel that large PvE fights should be near impossible if people ignore the intended mechanics. Presenting such fights in a way that lets a handful of clueless people tank the event is just poor design.

SW been there for a long time, people know what to do.

Dry Top has been there even longer, and I guarantee that people there often do not know what to do. Even some that do it regularly never bothered to learn the mechanics of the events. Thus, for example, after all this time, people still go straight for the tendril and ignore the roots.

There is also a constant influx of new players. Some questions are so common that I have a text file set up with answers that I can cut-and-paste into chat, because every time I’m in Dry Top at least one of those questions will come up, and I’m in Dry Top every day.

OTOH, I’ve spent virtually no time in SW so I don’t know the events there very well. I’ve never done Vinewrath and know nothing about that event at all.

So much for people knowing what to do.

But there’s nothing new about this. There are still many people who don’t know the mechanics of events in maps that have been here since the game was released. People have to be told what to do for Teq, for example.

“Wade in and kill anything that moves” is the default mechanic for events, and that’s exactly what many people will do for any given event unless told otherwise. Which, of course, leads to failure when faced with an event requiring prioritizing targets, NOT killing certain targets, attacking the right target at the right time, or doing anything other than mindlessly whacking at a target until it dies.

Lion’s Arch was built by filthy, scavenging, shipwrecked pirates out of pieces of their wrecked ships. The people of LA are no longer filthy, scavenging, shipwrecked pirates but wealthy international merchants (i.e., cleancut corporate pirates). They rebuilt their city in a way that reflects their current status. Why do some see a problem with this?

Where is the impending doom to Divinity’s Reach coming from, you ask?? How quickly we forget! Two words:

White Mantle

They’re out there. They’re crazy. They’ve been plotting revenge for a couple of hundred years. They’re closer than you think.