Guild Wars 2

Digivolution, I recommend you just take your time. The game is incredibly rich in story content. Every little corner of the game has something special to offer.

Never mind. I muddled through it.

There are six tiers of crafting. Tier 1 = 0 to 74 points, Tier 2 = 75 to 149 points, etc., up to Tier 5 = 300 to 374. Finally, Tier 6 is 375 to 400.

Go to the Wiki for more info: http://wiki.guildwars2.com

If you repeat a message exactly, you’re going to get muted after (I think) 3 tries.

I’ve been muted for saying “Thank you” 3 times quickly because I got revived/rallied 3 times quickly. I opened a bug ticket on that. There are certain phrases that just shouldn’t count, like “Thank you”.

However, it works for us, too. When Noll was bugged yesterday, several people decided that people had to stop talking to him for 5 minutes; the were adamant that the clock reset each time someone talked to him.

Well, one Bozo decided that he was going to spam “STOP TALKING TO HIM YOU @#$% MORONS!” He went silent after 3, and I chuckled to myself.

One other thing: Once you are muted, you are muted for way over a half hour. I don’t know the time, but it lasted at least a half hour before I gave up.

OK, so I’ve made it to level 80, and I’m on the very last mission (Victory or Death). I’ve got what must be close to max armor (lvl 80, crafted) and weapons. But, I’m finding it impossible to get to the dungeon, let alone go in and finish it. Despite the fact that ANet repeated said you can solo the whole game, I can’t. It’s not even close.

But, also, there are very few people there making the attempt. It’s clear one needs at least 8-10 just to get there, but 4 is the most I’ve seen (including myself).

So:

How do I get to Arah (and the dungeon “door”)?

How do I complete the dungeon?

What do you mean by bugged?

A BSOD can be software related, but usually hardware. Especially a 1—8e.

THe next time it happens, write down the text of the top two lines in the blue screen. If it doesn’t stay up long enough, reply and I’ll show you how to change that.

LithePanther.5027:

Actually Orr has 4 types.

I’ve hit 5 in Cursed Shore. Not sure how I did it, but I did.

I can see some of the responses if the posters are from Iran or China or other countries without market economies. But, the vast majority of this games players should understand the basic law of supply and demand.

John is absolutely correct. When prices go up, suppliers have more incentive, and will produce more. It can’t work any other way.

The other thing that John did not mention, but should have: The bots/RMTs are stealing real-world money from ANet and NCSoft. These guys have made a marvelous game, and sell it on a very restrictive (to them) marketting principle: Pay once, only pay again if you want more stuff.

The bots would eventually render that model ineffective at producing revenue.

YES, ANet makes real money from gem sales. And ONLY they should make real money. They designed the economy very well, but cheaters and thieves have been stealing their income.

It will level off to the right equilibrium. Give it time. But, once there, accept that the prices SHOULD be where they end up.

Thanks. I’ll have to read up on that.

reddog.3216:

I can’t tell you how disappointing it is that I spent $120 today so my son and I could play your game together and because his install finished a few minutes before mine, and the server he picked went to FULL before I could get on I am still sitting here 4 hours later, haven’t played a single minute because if I choose a different server i have to pay you to transfer. What a joke.

I believe you get one free server change per week, or something like that. Write support@guildwars2.com and check. Also, see this: “https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Free-World-Transfers-Limited-to-Once-Every-7-Days” and the wiki: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Server.

Jabos.3491:

Daily Rewards
I think the daily rewards should be based upon the highest level character on the account, not upon the level of the character I happen to be on when I get the last achievement. Then I can just play on whoever I want all the time, now I got to be careful and check that I don’t finish all of them so that I can change to a level 80 character and beat it on that one.

I agree on your other ones. This one, though, I would tweak: Have the $$ be based upon the average level of the characters who earned the points. So, if I farmed the points with 1/3 of them done by my lvl 40, 1/2 on my lvl 10, and the remaining 1/6 on my 80, then the cash reward would be 1/3 of whatever the reward would be to my 40, 1/2 of that my 10 would get, and 1/6 of what my 80 would get, all added together.

It’s complicated for us, but it would be a piece of cake for a computer. And, it would prevent the “exploit” of taking your last daily via you lvl 80, just to get the 5k silver.

How about adding “shopping carts” to the traders? What I mean is sets of related stuff. Perhaps one could buy a “bones set” would include 1 bone of each tier (a bone chip, a bone shard, etc.)

Alternately, one could order a “tier 2 set”, which might include venom sac, bone, fang, etc., all from tier 2.

These would be in addition to the current ways of buying/selling stuff.

Is there a purpose for skill points once you have obtained all of your slot skills?

dirtyklingon.2918:

the y accidentally somehow idk how or why they were fidllign with it to begin with, made dye drops super common for a few days.

then they “fixed” it.

and now as of last night unidentified dyes are up to 4s50c

That’s always what they’ve been worth. At least the few times I’ve bothered to check: between 4 and 5 silver.

HOWEVER, I like the game. Overall, it’s brilliant. OP, your points have some value, but you’re missing the point of the game. It isn’t a vehicle to deliver you into more interesting combats. It is a world. It is meant to be explored, not just fought.

There are a HUGE number of stories being told. Zones are full of interesting events. If you only slog through the battles, well then yes, it is boring. But, if you try to find out why you’re having to kill wave after wave of pirates trying to attack some poor lass’es farm, it gets interesting. And there are HUNDREDS of these mini-stories being told constantly.

Don’t play to get to the end. Don’t play to earn titles. While both are fun, this game was intended to be MUCH more than that. It is a world to be discovered. And, when you get it all discovered, I suspect the devs will have cooked up a bunch of new sub-plots to keep you busy.

I hate the game sometimes (see the post above), but I keep coming back because there is SO much to discover.

So, what ARE the problems with GW2? They are many, but mostly of the “tweaks can fix that” variety. The game as a whole is solid. My objections like in areas:

• Death sucks. It double sucks. It triple sucks. You have to pay unless some sweet soul is nearby and has the heart to rez you for some piddly number of XP. And, even when you pay, you get to pay again. And, if WHEN you pay again isn’t just after you paid to rez/teleport, you have upped your odds of dying trying to get to the armor repair guy. Every time I die I want to quit. And the 2nd or 3rd time in a story-line quest pushes me further in that direction. I HATE dying! Not for dying, but because it’s so stupidly lame how you get penalized.

• The combat balance is atrocious. Some battles are amazingly easy. Others are beyond difficult and into impossible (alone). They need to count deaths per event (from a global perspective) and tone down some of the rediculously hard battles. If it says “Group Event”, fine. But nowhere else should you have to automatically die just to get through an area.

• Money is far from balanced. You can’t earn squat before you are 80th level. And, even then, you must go to the level 80 areas, or combat is ho-hum.

• Effective level is a brilliant concept. But, it is inconsistently done. In “Estate of Decay”, you are leveled down to the same as the boss. But, the boss is nearly impossible to even damage, let alone kill. If characters had been 1-2 levels higher, it would have been much more playable. The way it is I dread my next player getting to it.

• All battles are identical. Oh, the skills and effects are different, but a battle against 2 spiders in Caledon is basically the same as a battle against two risen farmers in Cursed Shore. While I like the effective level concept, it has reduced the game to a very small number of ways to make battles interesting.

Jabronee.9465:

…
The main attraction of GW is the Skills Combination, GvG, HA and AB.
…

I played GW1 for over 5 years and close to 10000 hours. But, I never saw the game’s attraction as any of the above. Heck, I did not even once play GvG or HA, and I found AB frankly boring.

The game was fun not because of those things, but because there was always something new to find. Not “new” so much as not seen before. Sometimes truly new.

I played GW1 to master it, as I do all fun games. That means I checked into the nooks and crannies to discover the jewels the devs had placed for me. Every holiday had new quests nearly every year. There were places I hadn’t been to yet. There were quests I never completed simply because I didn’t get to them — there was too much other stuff to do.

THAT is what makes a game good to me: The ability to spend time, become an expert, and yet still realize you have not yet scratched the surface.

GW2? Looks like the same kind of depth to me. In fact, more. Just in each zone are somewhere around 50 event chains. When I have done all of them, perhaps I’ll get bored. But, I doubt the devs will allow that to happen.

That would be a selling point (the light).

Does anybody know if there is back armor with better armor level? The one I replaced it with is the same, but it had a superior rune on it.

I earned Mad Memories (complete ed.) during Halloween, but now I received a better back armor. Is there any use at all for the book any more?

Use a keyboard pattern, and change it quarterly.

Targren is right. Also, the mad guy tells you to get in from the sides, but you really have to do it from the front.

So, it’s still bugged, but it does work if you are in the right place (front) at the right time (after he flings all his cows around the neighborhood and gives his speech).

Yeah, but both make things look like toast.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Yes, but it wouldn’t be used that way.

“Gear” can mean a wheel with sprockets that spins next to another wheel with sprockets.

“Gears” can mean multiple “gears”, as in, “a grandfather clock has many gears”.

“Gear”, in game context, usually means ones collection of equipment. “I bought my gear at that Karma vendor next to MacDonalds.” In this case, “gear” isn’t plural, because the gear is the collection, not individual pieces.

One COULD use it plural, but it would be kind of stilted. “I have 7 gears.” Meaning that character has seven sets of multiple gear items. Most people would consider that bad grammar, but it technically could be acceptable. However, it should really be “I have 7 sets of gear”, where “sets” is the plural. Alternately, “I have 7 gearsets” would work as well.

So, no, it’s probably not a good way to say it, but it could be right.

Now if I could just get the people to stop verbally speaking “lawl”, meaning “Laughing Out Loud” (abbreviated LOL in chat sessions).

Oh, perfect! That will do it. Then I can create a table on the wiki as well.

Thanks, both of you (and the others who replied)!!!!

Mine is only 45th, but I’ve noticed that all other professions find it much easier to kill things. Could be that I’m just an idiot, but I think the thief profession is grossly underpowered except for 1-on-1 combat situations.

One of the devs guiding principles is “no farming”. So, there will never be a way to “easily” level up.

Of course, that means grinding through, which theoretically they also don’t want to see.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

The maximum damage for weapons is easily seen. Look at a level 80 exotic weapon from a dungeon vendor. The maximum armor for armor is easily seen, look at a level 80 exotic armor piece from a dungeon vendor.

Wiki is a work in progress, if you’d like to help out, you could write down all those numbers and make us a table. Then you’d have it at a simple /wiki command, and be loved by the community too!

Not so easily: I’ve never been in a dungeon.

Thanks anyhow, though!

Jrunyon.3012:

http://www.gw2db.com/items/weapons

Hover over each picture and it will tell you the stats of it.

Thanks.

That has the info, but I was hoping to see a table of some kind.

Lightrayne.7829:

WvW counts as part of world completion.

Man, that’s awful. Are you sure? I don’t ever intend to play WvW (or PvP), so does that mean I can’t complete the map?

Sounds like a stuck key on your keyboard. Outside of the game, hit the ctrl, alt, windows, shift, and shift-lock keys a few times (no more than 3 each, though). If it is, it will break it loose.

Could also be a function key lock that some keyboards have.

Actually, on 7 and Vista, all that is needed is permission to write the Guild Wars 2 files. The ANet-proscribed solution is unnecessary and potentially harmful. I’m guessing 8 is the same.

But, ANet won’t tell you that. It’s easier for them to say “Run as Administrator” and “requires admin rights”. A ton less secure, but who cares about security. Most gamers are dumb enough to run as admin, so it works.

Go to the support page and look up administrator for their solution on Windows 7. It should work the same way on 8 (although, I don’t know for sure).

Stats. What is the max armor level for various armor pieces? What is the max damage (range) of various weapons.

If I typed “max damage” on the GW1 wiki, it would show me a table with all the weapon types and the maximum damage ranges they could do. Scythe = 9-41, for instance.

On the main issue this thread has become about: I understand why they need to have waypoints cost money while dead. It’s because otherwise people would use it as a free rez method.

While I wouldn’t want even the closest one to be free, half price for the nearest uncontested waypoint would be about right.

But, the travel expenses are absurdly high as they are. So, in addition to the above, prices need to come down to about 1/4 of what they are. They are a major hindrance to having fun as they are. At level 80, you only have two options: Walk or pay big bucks. I don’t like paying, so I walk as much as I can. But, that gets boring VERY quickly. I find myself equipping an IMS just so it takes less time.

Bluestone.7106:

…

Plus no one should be coming into GW2 not aware of the gem store. And therefore can’t whinge when things can be done faster with gem store purchases.

…

This is complete hogwash. Show me where I saw anything about gems on the page I bought the game via.

EXPERTS might know it. Perhaps most people SHOULD know it. It was NOT told you until after you bought the game.

Does anybody know of a resource that shows what the limits of armor and weapons are? In Guild Wars, you knew max caster weapons were 11-22, shields were 16 AL, etc. That’s way simpler than here, but I don’t even know what to shoot for in GW2. The wiki seems useless for this question (at this time).

Please don’t suggest it shouldn’t be soloed. This area is required for the story line quests, which are designed for soloing. Besides, ANet never said individuals shouldn’t buy the game.

Of course, their ability to balance is atrocious, so actually getting through there alone is impossible. There are areas you must pass through that have a minimum of an 8-1 ratio of monsters to you. There might be ways around those areas, but I haven’t found any.

I was only able to get through by following a team of 8. I had previously tried following a team of 3, but they broke up (mostly by dying), leaving me alone in an area with 25-50 enemies that could neither be escaped nor pulled individually. I was dead in seconds when I tried to run the gauntlet. Lesson? Find a group and stick with them.

Now, part of those 50 opponents was a champion and his minions. I suspect if that event hadn’t been active, I might have been able to squeeze through alone. However, in all the times I’ve been there, I’ve have yet to see that champion not present. Also, I’ve seen a couple groups try to tackle him, but I have yet to see anybody succeed.

But, if you think that’s bad, wait until you get to “Estate of Decay”. As BTO once said, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

I have occasionally paid what would look like an exhorbitant price for something. But, I don’t normally. In those instances, I simply needed to have it immediately, and was willing to pay whatever it took to get it.

Sort of like convenience stores in real life. You pay through the nose for your chips and dip, but when you gotta have it, you gotta have it.

Do you know what is, in the Unites States at least, the most expensive way to buy soda (pop)? Vending machines. They’re “price-gouging”. Yet, people keep buying. Why? Mostly because they’re making up for not planning ahead. (Or, in the case of us Mountain Dew drinkers: we simply GOTTA have it!)

So, I’ve caused a few of those spikes. And thank goodness I was able to; I just HAD to have that potion of Undead Slaying (or whatever it was).

No, cash-for-gems rate does not “force” people to go to 3rd-parties. It forces the 3rd-parties to lower their prices for their illegal stuff. Illegal goods are always cheaper than the same thing purchased legally, whether in real life or in a game.

ANet has no incentive to lower their rates. In fact, it’s more important to keep them stable, because stability causes the market to an equilibrium. When at equilibrium, they will have an easier time finding the real-money traders (RMTs) and ban them. Oh, and their customers get banned, too.

Is it worth the risk for you to buy 20 euro worth of gold and then lose your 50 euro investment in the game itself?

Furthermore, since ANet is now in “competition” with these 3rd-parties, they can go after them in REAL courts of law. After all, RMTs are stealing from the game for a real-world profit.

Just don’t do it. Accept the in-game rates as being the correct ones. And let ANet ban somebody ELSE for RMTrading.

Yes and no. Gems can be purchased with in-game money or with real money. So, yes, there is some of that.

However, the things you can buy with gems aren’t really of the game-breaker variety. You can buy extra pack slots, bank slots, etc. But, you can’t buy the bags, packs, and boxes to put into those extra pack slots.

In theory, you could buy gems and then trade them for money. In round numbers, you could buy a gold coin for $2. Is it worth it? I don’t think so. But, you CAN do it.

Looked at from another angle, this is not that different from Guild Wars. You could buy Xunlai slots, extra characters, costumes, etc. The only real difference when looked at from 30,000 feet is that you can buy gold.

One last way to look at it: Take that $2 that you spend to buy 1 gold coin. If you earn $10 per hour after taxes, it took you 12 minutes to earn that gold coin. Could you earn a gold in 12 minutes in-game? I think not, but you can earn quite a bit in 12 minutes. If you earn more or less, the time goes down or up, but you get the idea.

I think it gives people more options, but not any game-breaking advantage. For example, I play with 2 of my kids. For Christmas, they might receive those gem credit cards they’re selling now (a real-life credit card that uses gems instead of dollars — you spend it in the game). My way of buying them an extra character slot or bank slot or whatever they want. I think it enriches the game, in fact.

(Now if we could just get rid of the bikini-mail ….)

There’s an article “Configuring User Account Control (UAC)” by Matt Chernicky here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Configuring-User-Account-Control-UAC.

I want to lobby for a change. The reason User Access Control (UAC) is being set is so that the EXE and DAT files in the Guild Wars 2 folder can be modified regularly (every time we bring it up).

The problem is that UAC exists is because it shuts down most of the vectors through which malware can enter a system. This is, in fact, one of the foremost rules of security: “Never perform an unprivileged task from a priviledged account”. In other words, don’t use admin rights unless admin rights are required.

To allow the GW2 game to run with full admin rights is, frankly, way up on the computer security “folly meter”. NOBODY should commonly run with admin rights. And, arguably, gamers are the body of humans this rule should apply to the most. Why? Because gamers get hack attacks against them at a very high rate.

The right answer is NOT to run the game in a local administrator account. If someone hacks the game, without UAC active, you are a sitting duck. Worse, if someone hacks your computer, Guild Wars itself becomes an even better sitting duck.

But, that leaves us with a problem: How to make the client work more securely. Well, there is a way. Instead of running in full admin mode, simply change the permissions on the two files to allow the current user account to write those files.

It’s not a complete solution, but it’s far better than running as admin. This solution allows the game to still be hacked, but that hackjob can’t trivially infect the rest of the computer, because UAC will send up a warning.

NOTE: The above applies to ALL games that “require” admin rights. In every case I have seen, this smaller hole in ones security footprint works.

Zathras, I’m not sure on that question. Since I’ve already got it now, I can’t answer. However, I will go with you to help you through it, if we can meet up and coordinate things.

I’m level 80 with level 80 armor. However, I crafted it myself, and I’m only at 350 tailor, so it isn’t “max” (whatever that is). I was using both an apple and a wrench buff.

Neither Straits nor Estate is “easy”. For those who call Straits easy, please explain how it can be easy when you are aggroed by no less than 25 enemies, 2 of whom are veterans and 1 is a champion. Further, if you defeat one, it’s less than a minute before he returns, so it is not possible to pull and kill (someone will be in your pulling location before you get back).

PERHAPS if you could be level 80, but you are downleveled to 74, which is the same as the hoards attacking you.

(Specific location is between Crippled Bridges and Hunter’s Table. However, I tried going around several different ways, and found no path that didn’t include automatically aggroing more than one at a time.)

Regarding Estate, it helped a bit to use avoidance techniques. But, if a mission kills solo characters 6 times before they make it through, it’s too hard. Using the pillars as cover only works when you are directly behind the center. Any other position and you get hit.

Further, you can’t easily aggro the guys circling the boss. The only reliable way was to throw a rock at them. But, that takes a second, plus time to run to within range, and by that time you’ve been knocked down and conditioned into obvlivion.

And then you somehow manage to kill all of his circling defenders, and lo and behold they pop right back up again, and you have to do it all over again.

So, I’ll stand by my statements that they need to be nerfed. Perhaps it is easy to experts like yourselves, but to a normal guy just trying to get through the story, it’s NOT easy. (or, perhaps my class worked against me here).

This mission needs to be nerfed when there’s only one human present. Period.

No comments, huh?

I was able to get through by following a team through the masses of undead. But, now I’m trying to do Estate of Decay, and it seems impossible. The boss heals and his minions respawn. How can I kill him? I’m down to only one undamaged armor piece left.

Devs: Why is this so darned hard?

For the first time in 7 years, I’m almost ready to quit playing Guild Wars (2). I’m in the Straits of Desolation, and there is simply no way to get through without a team. And, you can’t even sort your pack after you kill something, because the next one spawns 10 seconds later.

This is so !@#$ frustrating, I’m almost ready to quit completely. I never thought I would say it, but there are times when I hate Guild Wars. Every time I die I get perilously close to quitting completely.

Does anybody have any idea how to get TO the level 75 story quest? There are too many enemies no matter which way I go.

The “endgame” is supposed to be the END OF THE GAME. This manual is about AFTER the endgame. Tell me how to get to Zhaitan if you’re going to call it “endgame”. Heck, just tell me how to get through Straits of Desolation without dying 10 times an hour.

Put a colored border around refinable materials for which no other character on this account can earn experience from any more. This would be in addition to the colored letters used now.

This could be done in the bank bins, or in the crafting and discovery windows themselves. Perhaps all 3, and maybe even the main bank (if one is storing stacks of mats there).

Collectibles really need to be able to be sorted and sections moved around. Right now they are in no particular order at all, nor are the sections.

Four types of sorting are needed:

1) Reordering the major sections. Should be able to move them up or down as a chunk.

2) Reordering items inside of a section. Alphabetical, by tier, by level, etc.

3) What I call “crafting sections”: A section that shows you all of the artificer’s material, all of the chef’s, etc. Note that these wouldn’t be the actual containers, but pointers. We wouldn’t want to allow multiple stacks of iron ore just because several crafting types can use it.

4) Fix the Discovery pane. Right now, it’s a fixed width of 4 boxes, with no ability to even resize, let alone sort by tier, name, or whatever. You have to scroll backwards and forwards just to see all of the items available for whatever you are making.

I think the crafting stuff is the best part of this game. The above are only tweaks, not major changes. While I might support major changes, that’s not what I’m asking for here. Just cosmetic and ordering stuff.

Can’t do it. There are far too many people who would spite the guy who just failed to rez them (or, whatever).

However, they could track reports, and auto-block accounts that receive (say) 3 or more reports in an hour or something like that.

Then, make it easy for players to unblock themselves, if they are human. Use one of those obfuscated word deals that so many web sites use to prevent botting.

They would still review all such instances, but the initial blocking would occur much faster.