Guild Wars 2

Unfortunately this is exactly how the boxes are expected to work.

Last I heard the chance of getting a mini was around 1-2%. You might get them on your first box, you might never get them at all, but on average if you want all the minis you’re likely to need a few hundred boxes.

Most players are better of avoiding them and hoping Anet see sense and give us another way to get these minis (like making them not account bound so those with extras can see them) in the future.

I’m pretty sure a few people managed to hit level 80 within 48 hours of release, and that was without the option of doing it entirely though crafting because they wouldn’t have the materials available.

ZaiTh.6378:

An 80 in 3 hours lol. They spent 5 years and you can get an 80 in 3 hours, that is pretty kitten funny.

Only if you think getting to max level is the be-all and end-all of the game. Which would be pretty silly because even without short-cuts like crafting reaching 80 is relatively quick and easy and only a fraction of the total gameplay available.

Lafiel.9372:

It’s sad how people make optional content sound like it’s compulsory and things you’re entitled to because you participated.

Agreed. I’ve never done the monthly achievement because the requirements didn’t appeal to me. It’s never bothered me because I always knew I could do it another time when they had ones I did want to do. I didn’t feel like I was missing out or was obligated to complete it because it was there, it’d only re-set the next month anyway.

Garambola.2461:

Or you could make friends with a crafter. Friends often make things from your materials for nothing more than thanks and seeing you wear them. It does not diminish the crafter’s pleasure even if you change the look of the item with transformation stones as long as they know it. Link to the transformed gear and say thanks.

I once made something for someone for no compensation and used some of my own materials when his weren’t enough only to learn he immediately sold it at the TP for over 2 g. It did not feel good.
In contrast, another case we hunted the Karka Island big ori vein together to get enough materials for another guy’s axe. That was fun and rewarding.

This. Many people in my guild will craft stuff for other members, as long as you provide the materials, for no reward other than knowing other guild members will do the same for them when they need it. There are also people who offer the same service to anyone every so often.

Why would you put a legendary in the mystic forge?

There is nothing better you can get out of it, and you always make/buy a specific one so it’s not like you might need to change it into the one you want.

I think they were hoping at least some people would actually go out into the world looking for jumping puzzles, or re-visit ones they’ve already done and either find they enjoy doing them, or find other fun stuff to do along the way.

But I’m sure they were equally aware some people would just look for a way to skip to the reward, then complain that it was boring. But those people would do that no matter what and it’s not worth Anet’s time to try and make them enjoy playing the game. If they can’t jump to being rewarded for not really doing anything they’d just complain that it takes too long and Anet have ruined it that way.

Personally I’d rather Anet kept all the options open rather than saying “we will definitely 100% never do XYZ” and then feeling they are obligated to stick to it forever.

Of course there are a lot of things they shouldn’t do because it would be a terrible idea, and a lot of things they might say they will almost certainly never do, but if they think it’d work and that players would enjoy it then they should do it.

I assume they’re using the same approach as in GW1:

Gaming mice/keypads/joysticks are ok as long as action are mapped 1:1.
Programs that provide only cosmetic changes are ok, like Textmod which just changed the images. (Textmod does make the GW1 Cartographer title slightly easier, but it’s not a big difference.)

But anything which automates gameplay, or gives you an advantage over other players isn’t allowed.

I can’t see them objecting to first person though, unless someone can seriously claim you can fight better that way, which seems unlikely since the whole combat system is designed around 3rd person and with it being so movement focused being able to see what’s going on behind your character is extremely helpful.

Compared to most RPGs all GW2 professions are hybrids.

All of the casters can use at least some martial weapons and all martial professions can use magic to some extent (I’m not 100% sure about warriors, but I think they have some spell-like abilities at least).

I’d recommend looking up the professions on the Wiki (link at the top of the page) and see which one sounds most like what you want to do. All their skills are listed on there, as well as the weapons they can use, so you should be able to get a pretty good idea.

You won’t ever lose any of your items when you die. They don’t get dropped or removed and no one can loot your corpse. The armor you’re wearing will be damaged (and eventually destroyed if you die enough times) but even then you don’t lose it. At worst you lose the little bit of gold it costs to ressurect yourself at a waypoint.

If you use the ‘Deposit all collectables’ option (click on the cog symbol at the top of the inventory window) or right click the mini and pick ‘Deposit collectable’ it will put all the crafting materials into your bank and also any minis you have in your inventory.

You can get them back by speaking to a banker in any city (they’re marked with a money bag symbol on the map and have [Banker] after their name) and clicking on the second tab, then scrolling down to the bottom of the window. Nothing will happen to it while it’s in the bank either, it’s just a place to store stuff you don’t want in your inventory and a way to access it on different characters (they all share a bank).

Safe boxes and invisible bags are special types of bags you can buy or make using certain crafting professions which hide/protect the items in them. You can see and use them as normal, but they won’t show up in lists of stuff you can sell to merchants and they won’t be sent to the bank when you use the deposit collectables option.

I think they’ll add the Tengu as a playable race and the Domain of Winds as their new starting area. Which will also open it up to other races.

Simply because I think this is why it’s sealed off at the moment and if I’m right it’d make sense to add that before adding other races.

I doubt transmuted legendaries will be upgraded. When you transmute an item all you’re doing is putting the skin of one item onto a complete other item. So if you put the legendary skin onto an exotic you don’t get a legendary with new stats – you get an exotic that looks like a legendary.

Although in this case Anet may make an exception because of the inevitable kitten storm from people who didn’t understand what they were doing when they transmuted their legendaries.

I doubt Anet have decided yet exactly how it will work.

Unless they’re already planning an update which will include a level cap increase and new max-level gear they’re not going to know how that new gear will work and won’t be able to plan how to upgrade Legendaries. And they haven’t given us any hint that they’re planning a level cap increase any time soon.

All they’ve said is that Legendaries will always be top-tier, they probably haven’t worked out the details yet.

I think it just takes practice. A lot of people have said this game takes some getting used to, especially for those coming from WoW because the combat is very different. (I can’t say how exactly, I played WoW for about 10 hours and that was over a year ago so I don’t really know how their combat system works.)

Considering a lot of people have managed to play the game, and even do things like solo end-game content or dungeons (the Wintersday dungeons especially) I think it’s safe to say it’s not a fundamental problem with the combat system.

I think they’re definitely intending to add Cantha and Elona at some point. During the promotion for this game they put a lot of detail into the lore of what’s happened to those continents since GW1, and Cantha even had a GW:Beyond update with a bunch of new content to tie into that.

I don’t think they would have done that if they weren’t planning to add them to the game at some point, they would have just said Tyria (the continent) lost contact and left it at that.

I think a norn or a sylvari would be your best options. The norn have a very nature-based religion and value fame and glory so a lot of them like to go exploring the wilderness looking for something that will make them famous – either a great enemy to fight or a new discovery.

The sylvari are a very young race and have a kind of shared awareness of the world – everything they learn informs other new sylvari. So a lot of them tend to be very curious – either seeking out things they’ve learned about from others so they can experience it for themselves or learn more about it or looking for things no sylvari has found before.

But any race can work, even the charr who are the most warlike race have scholars and researchers who investigate and document their history and the history of their lands.

Whichever race you choose I definitely recommend joining the Durmand Priory when you’re given the choice between the three factions. They’re scholars and historians who want to record all the history of Tyria and use it to find a way to beat the dragons. The other choices are the Vigil who want a more straight-forward, combat based approach and the Order of Whispers who are more focused on politics and convincing the races to work together.

I’ll probably sell whatever I can, but I’ll hang on to the 2 frames and cogs just in case they come in useful later on down the line. I’ve got 5 characters so I can keep them in a bag somewhere if I don’t have enough bank space.

I don’t think the two systems are all that different.

In GW1 we had attributes, which raised the power of skills. And then individual skills which we bought, unlocked or were given as quest rewards.

In GW2 we have traits, which raise your stats and therefore the power of your skills. Then we have individual skills which we buy with points we earn through levelling or challenges.

It’s pretty much the same as the stat/feat system from DnD or any other RPG.

As for which I prefer I think I’d say the GW2 system because it gives us more skills in total and therefore more flexibility. The bonuses you get every 5 or 10 points on a trait line are things that require an entire seperate skill in GW1 so you have to sacrifice another skill to use them. This way you can have both.

I’ve played games with negligible gold sinks and trust me, sooner or later it’s not fun for anyone. You have to spend all your time farming in order to buy anything.

Personally I think the waypoint system works well. I rarely use them because unless you’re going a very long way running there with a speed boost is fairly quick. If I do use them I usually either stick around the end destination after doing whatever I came for, or walk back and always manage to make back the cost of the waypoint fairly quickly.

It also has the benefit of encouraging people to do just that, and therefore get more involved in what’s going on in a zone instead of teleporting in, doing what they came for and teleporting out again without even looking at what else is happening around them.

Yargesh.4965:

NetherDiver.6079:

We’re getting a huuge patch this month, if it’s anything like Lost Shores, there will be an event with the new permanent content.

God I hope it is nothing like lost shores.
It would be nice if they had a big event every month but it usually winds up being pushed back to irregular updates. Keeping a schedule leads to a lot of problems.

“Usually”?

The game came out right at the end of August. They never planned an event for September, or even hinted they would (I assume they wanted to give everyone time to experience the normal game before adding extras). They then did events, on the dates they originally announced, in October, November and December.

We’re only on the first day of January so they’ve got plenty of time to add something this month as well.

When exactly have they missed or delayed even one monthly event, let alone “usually” missed them?

I have never done the monthly achievement. Ever.

I check it every month and decide I don’t want to do what’s required, so I skip it. I’ve never felt like I was being “punished” or however else people have described it and it’s never occured to me to complain about it. I just assumed that sooner or later they’d have requirements I’d want to do and I’d do it then.

I’m pretty sure they never intended it to be practical for everyone to do the monthly achievement every month. Same way most casual players only do the daily on weekends. Otherwise it wouldn’t be an achievement.

As for why they’d pick visiting jumping puzzles I’d guess it’s another look at ways to get players to spread out and do something other than farming the same few areas over and over. If you’re going across a zone to get to the puzzle you might as well stop and do a few DE’s along the way. And the monthly achivement is a fairly easy way to do it – minimal effort required on Anet’s end and if players don’t like it then it’ll change next month and everyone can forget about it.

What Pinder said. Explorable mode is the only mode for this dungeon and it is definitely possible to get the achivement in it, and with a partial party. (It’s possible it is bugged, but we’ve never been able to establish if that is the case or if people have just missed something because there isn’t really any way to check.)

I recommend using AoE attacks, and making sure you have combed the entire dungeon. Remember to check every little thing – every tree, every bit of building, even things that look too small or you think you’ve already done. I actually found it easier to do when everyone in the party was going around trying to do it solo rather than moving as a group because then you go back over stuff other people have done and might find bits they missed, instead of assuming it’s been done.

Unfortunately not.

This is one thing that really frustrates me about the Gw2 skill system. I’m fine with the attack skills being defined by the weapon, having one slot dedicated to a heal etc. but I really wish we could change the order.

You can re-map the keyboard so that (for example) key 1 activates skill 6, but then it will be the same when you change weapons so it won’t help with situations like yours.

Traits points?
Trait points are like the stat points found in most games. You earn points as you level up (from level 11 onwards) and then you can choose which trait line to assign them to. Each trait line will improve two of your stats to make your character stronger and for every 5 or 10 points you also get a passive bonus (for example an extra effect on your attacks or gaining health regeneration when your health drops).

Before you can do that you’ll need to buy a trait manual from a trainer for your profession. Trainers can be found in each city and are marked on the map with a book symbol.

At first I’d recommend just assigning them to whichever trait sounds the most useful. As you level up and get a better feel for your character and what kind of build you want you’ll know where to put them, but you can change your traits at any time by talking to a trainer so it’s not a problem if you decide you need to re-do them.

Skill points?
You earn 1 skill point each time you level up, and once you hit level 80 you earn an additional one each time you earn the same amount of XP it took to go from level 79 to 80. So you can get an infinite number of them. You can also get more by doing skill point challenges which are dotted around the map and marked with a blue icon.

You use them to unlock new skills to put in the utility slots (keys 7-9) and later the elite skill slot (0). At first only a few skills will be available but more are unlocked as you buy them. Each tier uses slightly more skill points so at first you’ll be able to buy a skill every level but later you’ll need to save them up.

If you accidentally click the wrong skill, or buy one and then decide you don’t like it don’t worry. As I said you can get an infinite number of points so eventually you will have more than enough to buy all the skills. But it is worth trying to pick good skills because it will make levelling easier.

Skill points are also used as a currency to buy certain items in the game, including some components for a legendary weapon.

I got a guild invite so i joined, how do join other guild, only by invite?
Yes.

How you get an invite depends on the guild, each one will have their own rules on who they invite to join them. Some might have open recruitment, meaning they’ll advertise in map chat and other public places and let anyone join. Others have specific requirements and might require you to apply to join or will only recruit people they know.

If you want to find other guilds your best bet is to decide what kind of a guild you want to be in and then look through forums and fan sites to find one that suits you and see what their membership requirements are.

You can also make your own guild by speaking to a guild registrar in a town, but that can be expensive and if you want to make a big, successful guild it can be extremely time-consuming as well because you need to not only recruit players but make sure you give them an incentive to stay. I wouldn’t recommend it until you’ve got more experience with the game.

I don’t wish to bug some one everytime i got a question.
Honestly, don’t worry about it. If someone doesn’t want to answer they won’t. But you’re just as likely to find someone like me who has nothing better to do (I’m sitting here waiting for the family to arrive for a New Years dinner) who is happy to answer.

You can either ask here, or in /map or /say chat in-game, or ask your guild.

What is crafting, how does one do crafting?
Crafting is the process of making items. Weapons, armor, accessories and food. You’re probably best off reading the wiki page for this one because there’s a lot to cover but in brief:

You start by picking a crafting profession by speaking to a master of that craft and asking to learn it. Then you need to gather useful materials (the crafting station panel and the masters can give you an idea of what you need) and then start making things. As you improve your crafting skills you will unlock more options and can make increasingly powerful items. You can either use these items yourself or sell them to merchants/other players. You will need to make far more than you could use to level up but at the end of it you’ll be able to make your own end-game gear.

I see craft items, i mine rocks, chop trees for what?
These give you the raw materials you use for crafting. You can also get some by salvaging drops from enemies. Not all of them are used by every profession so if you’re only wanting to use a few crafting professions you might want to sell the ones you won’t need (the wiki can tell you which ones your profession uses).

I see upgrade slots on my armor, I assume they are for jewelry pieces, where do i get those?
You can use either gems or runes to upgrade your armor and weapons. Gems can sometimes be found while mining ore (or trees for amber) and runes can be made by armor crafters or found on armor that drops from enemies. (Like most things you can also buy both from the Trading Post.)

Potions how do i get that?
Some of them you will find in the world or be given as quest rewards. Most can be made by chefs (one of the crafting professions), or you can buy them from other players. In my guild people levelling cooking will often leave potions in the guild bank for anyone who wants them, but that will vary between guilds.

Click on PvP did the training, go into a map, window open gives me three option, one is travel , i click travel and go nowhere, what should i do?
Sorry I can’t help with this one, I haven’t done much PVP and I can’t get into the game right now to check.

How do i get back to pve map?
Look for a pink swirling portal (asura gate). This will lead to Lions Arch and from there you can either walk/waypoint to where you want to be or use one of the other portals to go to one of the starting cities.

You don’t get to choose your armor when creating your character. Like most RPGs you start with a default set based on your character class (profession). In this game there are 3 types:
Warriors and Guardians wear heavy armor which usually looks like typical armor – chain or plate mail mostly.
Rangers, Thieves and Engineers wear medium armor which is made of leather and cloth and mainly looks like trench coats with tops and trousers.
Elementalists, Necromancers and Mesmers wear light armor which is made of cloth and looks like regular clothes, although often more elaborate and decorative than you’d wear for every day use.

Every character also gets a set of town clothes, which are based on their race. You can switch to these using the hat and cane icon at the top of the Hero panel, but you can only wear them out of combat and can’t see your weapons when wearing them.

As you level up you’ll be able to get more kinds of armor. There are 3 ways to get it:
1) Drops from enemies. These are largely random so it might take a while to get something useful but it’s always worth checking because it can save you some money if you get something good.
2) Buy it from karma merchants and armor merchants. Karma merchants have a pink triangle symbol over their heads and are often unlocked after completing hearts. Armor mercants will have [Armor] after their name and be marked with a helmet symbol on the map. They tend to sell more basic designs and charge copper/silver/gold.
3) Make it at crafting stations. Before you can do this you need to speak to a master crafter to unlock the profession (if you want to make armor for the characters you have now you’ll need to take leathercrafting) and then gather crafting materials and start practising making things to level up your crafting and unlock more items. It can be expensive and time consuming but can also make some cool stuff.

At first you won’t have many styles available to you. For the first few levels all the armor you can buy or find is going to match the starting set, but as you level up more will become available.

The markets you’re talking about sound like crafting stations. As I said above you need to speak to a master crafter and then use the crafting station to make things.

Merchants you can buy from directly will have a tag after their name like [Merchant], [Armor] or [Weapons] and are usually marked by a symbol on the map as well. The actual stalls are basically just decorations and not representative of who sells what or how big their selection is (for example the cultural armor merchants who sell a wide selection of armor often have no stalls at all).

The other option is to buy stuff from the Black Lion Trading Company. This is accessed through a tab at the top of your screen which looks like a lion’s head, or by speaking to a [Trader] NPC (marked with scales on the map). The first pane is the gem store (which uses real money and sells mainly cosmetic items), the second one lets you buy gems (in-store currency) with gold, or visa versa, the third one down is the trading post which is how you trade items with other players.

You can search on there for items other players are selling and either buy it directly (if you have the money) or put an offer in to buy it for a lower amount and then wait and see if anyone is willing to sell it. If they are the sale will go through automatically and you’ll get a notification that your item is ready for collection and can go to a trader NPC to pick it up.

The next tab down lets you sell your own stuff. It will show you everything in your inventory which you can sell (generally speaking anything that isn’t soulbound or accountbound). If other people have put in bids to buy those items it will show the highest bid next to it, if not it will be blank. You can then decide if you want to sell to the highest bidder (if there is one) or put it up for sale at a price you decide. Just like when you’re buying items if someone accepts your offer the transaction will go through automatically and you can pick up the money from a trader.

I would say it depends on the situation. If there’s a lot of enemies around, especially if everyone else in your party is already having to fight to keep themselves alive then yes this method might be better.

But in a lot of fights with fewer enemies, especially ones with higher health, it’s well worth the time for one ally to go and help revive a downed player because unless there’s already an enemy in range with low health it’s often faster than wearing one down and leaves the other 3 players free to keep fighting rather than diverting them to focus on an enemy which provides no benefit other than rallying one player.

Clark Skinner.4902:

Giles Marchand.6970:

Some people in this game pride themselves on their complete collection of mini-pets, they don’t farm for legendaries or fractal relics, they spend all their gold on completing their collection, it’s what’s fun for these people, some of those people have spend roughly 200$ and still haven’t received all four Wintersday mini-pets to completed their collection. In your opinion those people should just forget about their goals?

This is called OCD gaming. Anet shouldn’t encourage it. Making it impossible or unreasonably expensive forces these people to not get too crazy about completion. If it’s fun for people to collect minis, they can go ahead and do it. When it gets to the point where it’s not fun, they can stop. If they can’t stop, they need a mental health board instead of a change in the game. And I fully encourage them to get it, because it will make their lives easier and less stressful.

This is absolutely ridiculous. OCD is nothing to do with wanting to collect something and I think it’s extremely belittling to everyone who suffers from it to compare a potentially serious mental health problem to a hobby.

It’s attitudes like that which leave people with mental health problems struggling not only to live with their condition but also the condescension of people who can’t (or won’t) understand why they don’t “just stop” or want to try “helpful” things like making a mess of an OCD person’s apartment so it “doesn’t matter” where things are supposed to be.

Agreed. I think it says a lot that these boxes have never made it in to the ‘hot items’ list on the gem store. Players who have been burned by RNG boxes before have avoided them, and I’d be willing to bet if they try them again during another festival the sales will be even lower after more people were dissapointed this time.

It might be profitable in the short term but it’s not going to generate as much money long-term as making their customers feel they got value for money and want to buy again.

Yeah that’s about right.

There are better things you can get from them, but what you actually get is random and you usually have to buy a lot to get anything good. You’re better off avoiding them, even if you wanted the stuff that might be inside them.

Probably yes.

I don’t commit to buying anything before I know at least roughly what I’m getting. Even when my favourite band who I once flew 6,000 miles to see live announce a new album I think I’ll almost certainly get it and wait for a chance to hear at least some of the songs before I decide for sure.

But based on the fact that I’m really enjoying GW1 so far I think it’s quite likely. Yes there are issues but most of the things people seem to think are game-breaking bugs/missing features are more like minor annoyances to me, especially when they’ve already said they’re working on things like a LFG feature and guild halls.

Races are all equal. There are a few racial skills but they don’t make a big difference so pick whichever you want.

Same with professions really. I think Warrior or Guardian are the easiest, but not necessarily the best or most fun. I’d recommend checking out the mechanics for each one, either looking them up online or trying them out when you get in-game and pick the one that fits your playstyle best, or you find the most fun.

Mystic.5934:

I bet the name lIlIlIlIlllIIlIllI1l1II1 would be impossible to report :P

If you could count the letters it’d be easy because you can only put capitals at the start of a word, so it’d have to start with an I and then be all L’s.

I’ve been playing since launch but simultaneously levelling 4 (now 5) characters and doing it extremely slowly because I’ve been doing things like going around speaking to all the named NPCs in the cities so I’ve spent almost all my time in the low level zones and I don’t think it’s unplayable.

There are far, far fewer people in starter areas than at launch, but that’s to be expected. On my server (Desolation) you never go far without seeing other people, even at quiet times, and groups tend to appear for DE’s, especially if someone calls it out in map chat.

It’s probably a shock to people who were levelling fairly quickly at launch, focusing on end-game activities for a while and then went back to starter areas to level an alt because they’d be thinking of the zones the way they were at launch, but the zones are hardly dead.

It has also been quieter than usual the last few weeks because a lot of people have been focusing on the Wintersday event stuff, but that will be over in a few days and people will go back to their normal activities.

You can buy the upgrade in the Gem Store in-game.

The best way to get a name that isn’t taken, regardless of length or number of words, is to use something unusual. I like using Welsh, Latin, Quenyan or Sindarin words, but ones you’ve made up yourself can work as well.

The only one I’ve had trouble with was my asuran because I wanted a lore-appropriate name for her, which meant it had to be one or two syllables, have the same letter twice in the middle and end with a vowel. I must have tried about 20 different names to find something that I liked which wasn’t taken.

I don’t think there are any special rewards in the Black Lion Chests, hopefully after the mess they made of Halloween drops at first they won’t try that ever again. (Although the rediculous random chance for account bound minis system this time is nearly as bad.)

But if you’ve got the keys why not use them anyway? If they have changed them you’ll get a chance at Wintersday items, if not you’ll get the same stuff you would normally.

Pendragon.1602:

I don’t mind difficult puzzles. The problem I have with this jumping puzzle is the time limit. I like to puzzle stuff out, not jump like crazy. This JP is more a dexterity test than a thinking test.

That’s true of a lot of the jump puzzles though. Once you’ve found the start (or in my case gone past the start and suddenly realised you’re doing a puzzle) a lot of them are more about making the jumps than figuring out where to go.

There’s even timed puzzles in the main world, and others that don’t exactly have a time limit but where you need to defeat enemies and then jump before they respawn or they’ll mess it up, so I don’t think this one is really any different.

I think I’d prefer them to add a new festival if they’re going to do anything. Maybe we could have a new in-game only one like the Dragon Festival.

Since Halloween was presented as a mainly human festival which the other races joined in with maybe they could do the same for the others. Each race could have their own festival celebrating something in their history or lore and everyone else joins in for the fun of it.

I think it’s a bad idea to judge the game on the numbers of people in starter areas and/or typical end-game activities during a festival. A lot of people have been focusing almost exclusively on Wintersday content since the event started. You might well find Orr somewhat empty and have a harder time than usual getting a PUG for a regular dungeon, but try going into the Snowball Fight, the Jump Puzzle or even Toypocalypse and you’ll see a lot of people.

Wait until after the 3rd if you want an idea of typical game activity, when everyone goes back to what they’re usually doing.

As for guild activity mine is on Desolation – one of the first EU servers to fill up and apparently one of the ones that rarely has spaces open. Back in mid-November we did an activity check on our forum and kicked all the inactive people and tightened our recruitment requirements. Since then we’ve actually managed to increase the total membership. I wasn’t directly involved in the recruiting but we didn’t seem to have any trouble finding new people, even when asking them to represent 100% of the time.

A few people had the same thing with the beached whales in LA during the Lost Shores event, they’d be visible from the diving board before they actually showed up on the beach, and sometimes afterwards as well.

Nevarato.3178:

As for Glint’s baby, someone told me apart from the actual fight, there’s never any mention that she can actually reproduce, and all her eggs were crystallized. (info from someone else, i’ve never played GW1) So originally i was thinking they may have decided to not acknowledge it in the future.

Her eggs are made of crystal, but then so is she. There’s no reason to believe they couldn’t hatch. She’s certainly quick enough to defend them in the mission.

There are Whispers Agents in all the cities, and dotted around all of Tyria. At first you probably need a character in the order to spot them, because they will get extra dialogue options relating to being in the Order but after you get the theme you can spot them yourself.

I’m not sure about bases though. I think the Maiden’s Whisper must be the one in Divinities Reach, if I remember right there’s a banner that looks a lot like their logo in the basement, and it’s near Minister Wi’s mansion and his wife is a member.

I haven’t found any sign of a base in Hoelbrak though. There’s several Agents around Raven Hall, but that’s probably because the two groups have a lot in common.

Basically killing Zhaitan means there will be no new Risen and the ones left lose their focus but they’re still around and need to be wiped out gradually.

Personally I think it’s more realistic that way than if they all suddenly fell-down. It also fits with the GW lore about necromancy – in the first game if you killed a Necro their minions stayed but they went ‘wild’ and would attack anyone instead of just their masters enemies.

I have email authentication turned on but so far I haven’t needed it – I’ve never had a login attempt that wasn’t me. Admittedly I don’t know if they’ve even tried, but if they have then a unique password has been enough.

You don’t have to queue to log in to any of the servers. If the map you want to get in to is full you’ll go into an overflow – a second copy shared between several servers – and at the same time you’ll be automatically added to a queue for your server so you can join it when there’s a space.

Sometimes you might not want to switch back to your server straight away – for example if you’re in the middle of a Dynamic Event you should finish it first (you always have the option to re-join the queue) because the servers aren’t in sync so it might not be happening on the one you go to.

There isn’t a generic new player profession but I think Warrior and Guardian are the most straight-forward so they’re probably the easiest to learn.

Personally though I’d say unless you’re completely new to RPGs you may as well pick the one you like because they all play differently and I don’t think you can really treat it as a linear scale – learning one doesn’t necessarily mean learning another will be easier. So learn the one you want to play, and then you won’t have to spend more time re-learning it later. (Or you can create several characters to play around with.)

From a gameplay perspective I don’t think you need to worry about the choices you make during character creation. Most of them just determine your personal story or cosmetic aspects of your character. But if you’re in to role-playing at all you might want to check the wiki (link at the top of the screen) to find out which storylines are tied to each choice so you can make sure they suit your character. (In particular each race has a “comedy” choice which leads to a much sillier storyline.)

I didn’t even really attempt the Snowball Fight achivements. I tried the fight for a bit just because I’d done everything else but I don’t tend to enjoy PVP unless I have a lot of time to get to grips with it and I didn’t want to do that, so I just left and went back to things I do enjoy.

I’m very glad they spaced the event out because if it had been done like Halloween or Lost Shores I would have missed the entire thing.

I think there was a bit of a miscommunication issue where some people obviously expected to treat it the same way – doing nothing but Wintersday activities for the entire duration and got bored repeating the same things, and of course it would get boring because they intended it all to be doable in a fraction of the time.

As for the events themselves I’ve enjoyed all the ones I’ve done. I didn’t put much time into Toypocalypse because I’ve had about 6 hours to play since it started and wanted to do other stuff more. But I love the jump puzzle and really enjoy Bell Hero, the dungeon is fun (as you may have guessed I haven’t had time to do it enough to get bored) and I like the minis as rewards.

The one let-down for me is the rediculous approach to the festival minis (the Snowman, festive Golem, Airship and Foostive). I’d be fine with the RNG boxes if they weren’t account bound so people who get lucky could sell extras to those who don’t. As it is I’m not willing to risk the little money I have to spend on it on getting screwed over by a rediculous mechanic.

Incidentally you don’t have to purchase the Mistfire Wolf, you can use it right away at level 30, so it’s a nice first elite to use until you save up some skill points.

I’m actually sticking with it on my ranger until I can get the Hounds of Balthazar because I don’t really like their other elites.

I think a lot of hackers also want to use accounts for botting (why buy an account to do something you know is going to get banned when you can steal one for free?) and it’s harder for anyone to report them if they delete all the characters with recognizable names and replace them with ones called Ajfhhhajderjgrt or something.