Guild Wars 2

I have a friend who makes a ton of Sylvari. For her most recent one she actually was just doing a makeover and rename on one whose story had played out. She generally picks a plant as inspiration; this time she wanted to make a sycamore tree sylvari, so she and I got on Mumble to chat while staring at googled images of sycamores and using the character generator to noodle out the design for texture and color and leaf style.

For my little subset of ‘varis, lessee. First one I did with dark brown bark and white leaves with a yellow glow, using the grooved wooden face and adjusting everything to as narrow and pointy as I could so she would look like a winter wood spirit. Next alt I did a much softer face, which I kept, but after realizing I couldn’t stand the limitations the Apple Red skin and mushroom hat gave me in terms of dyes that would work, I swapped her to lichen green with a short leaf bangs look with a bright blue glow (then the new hair came out and she got the fern dreads, then more new hair and now she’s in the flat spike forward do). The face has a less dazed expression than many ‘varis, as she’s my intellectual researcher one, a necromancer studying decay and rot with an eye to stopping it before someone hurts the Pale Tree with a necrotic attack. (She wasn’t fast enough, it seems, and is quite unhappy just now).

Somewhere in all that I made a ‘vari man to be my second warrior. He’s never been RP’d but I still like his cheerful smile and vivid gold skin, if only it didn’t blotch dull brown into his cultural!

My latest ‘vari is a mesmer made to be a Scarlet Pimpernel. He has a debonair face and a deep red ponytail with vivid pink-purplish glow. In his cover identity he’s in pinks and golds and reds; in disguise he covers up completely, even a gas mask to hide his distinctive hair and glow.

So I guess I make them “perfect” by figuring out what sort of plant they are, whether they’ll be wearing cultural or not (glow and bark patterns depend on that), and shaping the face to an expression that fits the intended persona. For color I go with what will blend with the most dyes, and I always take the brightest possible glow.

It’s all so subjective, though. I’ve seen people post pictures of sylvari they are incredibly proud of that did nothing for me, exaggerate features I’d minimize and vice versa. What’s perfect for me is a yawnfest for others, I’m sure. If you’re finding yourself unhappy with your designs, take some time to ask yourself what about them irritates you. Instead of putting in the things you think are cool, leave out the things you think aren’t! Much as ANet did when designing the game and deciding what they thought wasn’t fun in an MMO so they could toss it out. You might just end up with something that you love because it doesn’t have anything you hate in it

As long as it doesn’t require me to get Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media thingumbob. #suddenparanoia

You get the loot for finishing the events. If the mobs dropped loot there would undoubtedly be those intent on failing events to keep mobs up and charging, leading to the toxic community splits that such things entail.

I know you play this game quite a bit, Mad Queen, and run amazing events for people. So it just goes to show there’s always something someone can miss.

I think what may have happened is you conflated the merchant right next to the anvil in the Pact camp with the repair function. Possibly you had the coin jingle sound while standing there (by selling to or buying from the merchant), and that made you think you were spending on the repair.

As to the Labyrinth, I’ve done it twice now. I have to say I don’t think I’d do it on anyone but my thief, toting heal-stealth and shadow refuge, but I think I got a Gloves box while in there and so I’m very happy I went in tonight! At least, after doing a successful 5 kill Breach for the very first time, I got a Nightmare Key and thus went in the maze, and upon emerging and sorting out my stuff I had the gloves ready to go, thus saving me 1K more crests of farming. Hurray!

I’m wondering if the order you attempt the fangs makes a difference. My plan was to go counterclockwise for each Breach in order to keep track of which one I still needed. Worked great at Red, I got a fang. Next I went to Amber, applied a fresh new extractor — and got a tendon. (Note: TENDON not TENDOM).

Most likely it’s just RNG is RNG, but could those who got loads of fangs say what order they did the forts, if they remember?

After realizing it was a trap I ignored the content of the shout and used it as a flag for when the boss was going to be standing still long enough to do some ground target ranged attacks on it (thief shortbow). It’s a highly misleading shout.

Because within a few moments of my first time fighting, the quote that came to mind was “It has nasty pointy teeth! It can leap about!”

I would have liked some warning of the change before I picked the medium gloves on my main. I’m actually going for the light carapace set but figured I’d just get the weight for the alt as I did my three run throughs on Thief, Guardian, and Mesmer. As to farming up the crests, sigh. I enjoy a bit of time in Silverwastes but there’s no down time there. I can’t just stop and go to the bathroom, grab a snack, check forums, chat with my guild, etc. Not without feeling guilty about using a map slot, anyway.

Fortunately the gloves are the least important part of the set for me, and I don’t really need luminescent, so I can scale back on my GW2 efforts now that I know how extra tedious they’ve been made. So much for doing it all. Now I’ll do even less, whee!

I love these forums. They are clean, easy to read and navigate, well organized, and they load incredibly fast compared to any other large forums I use.

However, they do have one broken feature: the Search function. It hasn’t worked in years and still there are those surprised by it as well as numerous duplicate threads due to new posters not knowing the topic’s been addressed. Perhaps the person who originally coded the forums did a poor documentation job and is no longer available? (That’s the situation with a major database my husband’s office has been developing for years now). That could also mean any changes such as simply deleting the search box have the potential of breaking the forums, which would be less than good.

Anyway, if the search box can’t be completely removed, could we perhaps get a translucent red “OUT OF ORDER” stamp overlaid on it? Maybe with a note to use search engines to find discussions?

I was looking at traiting my level 60 necromancer today. A trait I was interested in required me to do level 70 content. That simply makes no sense; if something’s usable at a certain level, one shouldn’t have to get ten levels higher to achieve it.

It won’t work for the achieve in the OP’s title, but as to just completing the story step: I did get confused by the NPC’s shouting “Get below to fight!” and I jumped down to a place from which I could not jump up again. The fight proceeded on a timer, desperate shouts and all, until the chopper arrived and I could just barely manage to get in range to board it. Caithe and Canach hung out with me down there, even, adding irony to Canach’s snarl that “At this rate there won’t be anyone left.”

Tachyon, are you NA? I’d be happy to come in and help you with the LS; I’ve done it on three alts now plus achieves. I’m available starting right now! Though I won’t necessarily refresh this page often, so you might want to PM me on these forums.

I could get caught up doing other things as well. I see you posted 5 hours ago so you and I may not be on similar waking schedules, but let’s see what we can do. (Also, if anyone else needs help, we can assemble a group! And I’ll bring another alt along for sweet, sweet loot).

Different /sit choices would also be very nice.

I will stop there … I could very easily make a huge list of desired animated emotes. One thing to consider, though, is that the larger the options, the more need for a quick way to access them. Fallen Earth did it by a popup tree so you picked the category you wanted and then the specific emote. Even that can take too long to get the emote off at the right time. So I would also consider making the emote commands as short as possible, and publishing a list (or having it on a hero panel tab) of all those available so people can keep it handy for reference.

But GW2 patches usually take under 5 minutes …

Do you mean the medium armor Nobles set, or the Noble Count Outfit? Even if the top hat did what it should hair-wise, you still could not wear it with an Outfit (though many have requested this be changed). Outfits are all or nothing; you can hide the Outfit helm, but not replace it.

3 Mesmers, 2 Guardians, 2 Warriors, 2 Necromancers — actually 3, the 3rd isn’t 80 yet — 1 Elementalist (and a 2nd who is an RP shill, not to level), 1 Thief, 1 Engineer, 1 Ranger.

I think that’s the list. Of the duplicate classes, no two of the same class are the same race, and I vary the gender as well. They each get their own RP personality, and I try to give them weapon variety, though all the mesmers have GS and all the necros have staff as a go-to.

That variety is the answer to your “why?” I am an altoholic, so long as I can have different IC and game roles for each alt.

I’m curious what state you’re in. I just spent 19 years as a defense attorney in the DC area. The only jailable gambling statute I ever saw was for shooting dice in alleys (at least, that’s where the police grab people and charge them with gambling). Granted, I represented the indigent who didn’t usually have computers, let alone do a lot of gaming. Still .. yeah no. I’m not even slightly worried the law will come calling because I bought some Black Lion Keys.

I saw them mentioned in another thread — in Reddit maybe? — when I searched for it after seeing the giant arching vine. One commenter said he happened to be there when the vine appeared, there was some shaking that others said was part of an event and then bam, vine.

The teaser video shows fighters racing down a vine tunnel. Perhaps that is related?

Well I certainly don’t want to know the story in advance. Hints of a pending situation, sure — that’s called a teaser! — but not how it will be resolved.

Yet it certainly would invigorate interest to be told “The main things on the table right now are raids, hopefully but not definitely within a (month/half a year/a year), a new race, a new profession, a dungeon revamp, expanded fractals, world boss tweaks, major QoL tweak X, etc etc etc.” Then people can speculate about the specifics.

It’s sort of like Christmas. I want to know which family member is hosting and a general idea of what my nieces want gift wise; I want to know we are having it (missed it one year due to the inlaws traveling to their inlaws in another country), but I really don’t want to know what presents I’m getting until after I pull off the wrapper. Or, more accurately from my perspective, what presents everyone else is getting since I usually get more glee watching other faces light up than getting things myself.

So yes, please, tell us about big gameplay changes coming, and give us the areas they’ll affect. Tell us big stories are coming, but not the surprises those stories hold. There’s a substantial difference between story spoilers and game mechanic heads ups.

Normally I let these threads alone to die their inevitable death, and they do make a good running joke (yay for that gif).

But a recent fall damage thread included a link to a video that illustrates why flying mounts in particular won’t work here, same reason they didn’t in pre-Cataclysm Azeroth. The world is a Hollywood facade, and asking for flying mounts is, along with all the other issues, asking ANet to rebuild Tyria from the ground up.

Take a look at the disconnected floating arch bits here. That’s what everything looks like that players aren’t meant to get to.

How exactly do you sell GW2 items for real cash? I mean, without trusting a third party money exchange? They aren’t even codes you put in that could be EBayed, they’re digital items inside the game. ANet makes it clear they will not support player-to-player trades. Not that I’ve ever been clear on how money laundering works, but I fail to see how it would apply to someone lucking into a 2K gold item out of an RNG chest … do they become a gold seller with the proceeds? (Which gets them banned, so again, not ANet’s liability).

I’ll go with Guardians. I was absolutely sure I had no interest in them. I’m not a tank, I don’t go for Paladin classes.

Then after getting to 80 on my Thief, dying left right and sideways, I started work on my Guardian. And she lived through everything. She turned into my dungeon main for a long time (nowadays I seem to like Mesmer more for that). It’s just made me aware that GW2 has a unique spin on most everything and one has to try it out before discarding the option.

What about a Jellyfish Mesmer?

I hope something does come of him! Though on Points of Interest Bobby Stein (I think) said he basically put that conversation in as filler to give some payoff to the long walk to the kitchen. He saw the two NPC’s, thought it looked like they were having an argument, and as he’d done stuff on Mawdrey he wrote that chat simply to have fun with it.

Of course that could have been the seed but they can still actually do more now that people have begun to sink their teeth into the ramifications. And he could have been holding back on expanded plans based on it, too … he did look quite smug in that PoI.

There is truth in that. I haven’t even gone looking yet for a macro site and have no idea how easy they are to use for this.

But … I have no musical talent. Really, I have negative musical talent. I cause san loss in others if I try anything musical, I can’t even clap to a beat. Fortunately I’m not tone deaf, I can enjoy music. I simply can’t make it. Even with a “music sheet” for the game instruments telling me the key sequences, nothing remarkable comes out.

So all my instruments have languished even though I RP musical characters now and then. I wouldn’t mind having some macros of tunes they’d play, to use in RP situations (and would loudly proclaim to anyone thinking it was RL skill that it’s only a macro, as I did with downloaded .abc’s in LotRO). I’d use it for IC flavor, not to pretend I personally had the slightest skill in it.

Indeed, the end of Tower of Nightmares did that, with a brute force just-fight-it option for those not wanting to figure out (or redo) the puzzles. That let people enjoy puzzles if they were of such inclination without forcing it on those who want to pummel mobs.

Ah, I forgot to mention a serious oh-wow: Cleansing Orr the first time, no idea what the boss would do, I got knocked down, I got up again. And then all the game sounds went away, replaced by the instrumental Fear Not This Night while I was still fighting, and it felt like I was in a major motion picture doing slow-mo fighting to beautiful music.

Ever since, I’ve told anyone I’m helping with that PS to make sure their game music is on before we begin. I don’t tell them why.

Before that of course there was the battle to retake Claw Island, when a freaking dragon appeared and I charged it with an army and we killed it to glorious music I’d not heard before. Now I can just speed through that step (hello 14 80’s) but the first time was magic.

I’ve had plenty, and have about three minutes to type … aiee.

In beta I found the Kessex JP just by exploring into a cave. I didn’t solve it, but I got through to the overlook near Garrenhoff. Also in beta I got a Pirate Outfit (with sword) and did the Walk the Plank option and died laughing.

The whole world was an oh-wow every time I went to a new zone or found a new heart mechanic. I felt so immersed in the landscape!

Marionette was a continuous oh-wow. Loved that fight. Same with the dragon attacking the Grove, first run through was epic for me.

More recently the Machine cinematic and the current Lair just visually blew me away. Jumping into the Breach the first time not knowing what was down there. The Priory library secret area had me squealing, and then the cinematic after you do all the ciphers, wow.

Synced dancing — never saw that in any other MMO before. The first time I saw various armor skins. Sure they’re common as all get out and I can salvage them without preview now, but coming from WoW to this real wowing … Love the armor in this game.

The attack on LA was astounding. Heck, the first one, with the karka, I loved that. I never dc’d, so I didn’t get a second shot at a precursor, but I didn’t mind.

So many more, but I have to depart now!

While it’s been a significant amount of time since the town clothes change, back when it happened they offered gem refunds for anyone unhappy with it. As I had inventoried what alts had what garments, I was able to submit a detailed list to Support, including my two extra Rox’s quivers purchased in the sale a couple of weeks prior to the Wardrobe — it was ridiculous of them to sell those without a warning one wouldn’t need duplicates soon. I fully expected them to delete the items from my inventory, but they simply credited me with 12K gems or so (I was a whale for a long time) and I still had enormous numbers of outfits and skins and tonics.

Anyway, if you have a solid list of the clothes you’ve lost, you might be able to recover the gems for them even now.

I remember a similar thread a couple of years ago in which posters posited that warriors had an advantage as the fall damage is calculated in some manner off your health pool.

You can’t wear glasses with the outfit, but you can hide the hat by toggling it off in Equipment or Wardrobe.

I continue to hope the tonics conversion and current implementation of outfits are interim measures and they will give us some of our old town clothes back as outfits in useful configurations (for instance, my ex-Seraph guardian is prone to sleeveless vests over loose trousers when in RP, but the hoodie tonic insists on jodhpurs and riding boots with the hoodie, and makes it all dull brown with a 15 minute reapplication requirement. Pretty useless).

It went fairly smoothly for my group. It was my instance, so the 2 NPCs followed me. My guildies pummeled the wolves that didn’t trigger the mines while I stayed back after mining the corpses. Once we got to Caithe’s squad, the achieve was complete (you just don’t get the popup credit until you finish the instance).

Were you trying to save Caithe’s NPC’s? If so, I’m impressed that you managed to, they’re meant to die. And puzzled as to how one can get the achieve and the other not — unless the one who didn’t died during the fighting, as the player’s death also defeats the achieve.

Apologies, you’re right. Here’s the video one for comparison. My apology for it being small, the video shrank every time I clicked the Snip tool.

When you enter DR from Shaemoor, you want to go slightly left or right in order to proceed straight up a ramp. The bank will be in the middle of the upper level to your right as you get to the top, the trading post to your left.

It’s the bag symbol on your map. Some maps have layers, you can click on them to the bottom right to toggle between them.

Also any crafting station acts as a full bank, anywhere in the world. In DR, they are on the main middle ring, south side.

But you can’t reach it “on the run” ever, you must go to a bank, a crafting station, or use a banking golem or express. However you can use the little cog in your inventory upper right to get a drop down menu that includes “Deposit Materials” and all crafting mats you have will be auto dumped to their own bank tab.

I think you don’t have to successfully kill the underground bosses to get the tendons, just be in the fight with the extractor active. I could be wrong about that, as I was in a Silver kill in the first couple of days and might have gotten that tendon then (I’ve yet to see Gold die). I know I’ve ended up with tendons in inventory on failed kills after getting my 4 for the collection.

You don’t need to kill the legendaries to get the shoulder luminescent collection, either. So for Living Story rewards, you’re set if you can just get in some boss fights, I hope. If you’re trying to complete the zone achieves, those will still be available for a long time; it’s possible that the next phase of Living Story will get people pushing maps to completion again. What if we need to have the Breach open before we can do what looks like lane defense near Amber?

In the teaser trailer released today, we see a woman inscribing that mark in the air, much as when Mesmers do mantras.

Right now? Silverwastes and achieves. In general? RP. My RP guild has people from other servers, even.

But then I’ve been RPing for fun since the 1970’s, in one form or another, so I generally boggle at the idea that an MMO can be engaging without using it as a story backdrop …

I have to say I’ve found the tag a real boon. I seldom switch it on, but here’s how I’ve been able to help people thanks to having it:

- made a squad for an RP gathering where we had non-guild guests in the scene who needed to join the ooc commentary.

- tagged up on my mesmer when offering portals to JP tops so people could quickly find where to stand.

- tagged up in Labyrinth to form a nucleus for the zerg (only after checking there were no tags up already, and declaring in Map I was merely a magnet). Any time I did that, in a few minutes we had a good crowd and once even took down the Lich (despite my going wait stop wait bad plan … I was wrong!).

- Today I found myself in a quiet map in SW. A few of us decided to make it an events map, we taxied folks in, and I tagged up in Indigo just to show there was stuff happening there. I don’t think we lost Indigo in two entire rotations (maybe once?), though Silver and Gold was a pita that went nowhere.

I couldn’t have done any of that if I had to do a ton of WvW or other leadership things to get the tag. I’ve seen very responsible organizational use of the tags in large group areas like the Labyrinth and Silverwastes. Let’s blame the fools who follow a bad tag rather than the tag system itself, hey?

Stooperdale has a point, though I found myself excited by the OP’s ideas.

The thing is … normally I cringe at replies to suggestions that go, in essence, “I hate your idea because it would mean the devs doing your thing instead of this other thing I find much more personally important.” Like somehow suggestions shouldn’t be made in the first place because they aren’t in line with the responder’s interests.

Yet here, I’m going to be one of those people. Not because I think your suggestions are bad, quite the contrary, I love them (the tribal armor tie in is wonderful). Because right now it feels like we’re going to new places and getting new things and your suggestions would be near as much work as making a new zone, without actually giving us a new zone.

So I would love these to happen some day. Just not, y’know, now.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Glowing blue eyes.

I need these because I want to run around Dry Top in my Fremen/Dune outfit.

I need them asap for an RP plot involving a magic overload for several guildies. There’s hope, thanks to That_Shaman:

[&C3QWAAA=] Glint’s Gaze Mask Heavy
[&C3MWAAA=] Glint’s Gaze Mask Medium
[&C3IWAAA=] Glint’s Gaze Mask Light

(It’s in the wardrobe now).

One thing I do is as quickly as possible acquire one of each weapon the profession can use, and park those in my second bag. As I level I invest in the better rarities of the weapons I find myself using most on that alt, and keeping blues and greens of about my level on hand of the others. Thus I can swap out in situations calling for it, and get a feel for what all the weapons do.

I am not a min maxer. I found guardian sluggish until I started using scepter/focus around level 40, with sword/shield to swap to when bored. Shield is as others have said weak, but I love mine for looks and for knockback on demand. She’s not a dpser by any stretch, though! So my next guardian went with greatsword/staff — GS for dps, and staff because I hadn’t used it much and like some variety. But he also has all the other options when needed for fights.

For instance the end of chapter 3 of LS season 2 features a fight where you have to do a lot of blocking, knockback, snaring, etc. Hurray for having a level 80 rare hammer on hand!

I killed the Annihilator today, I believe, if that’s the Red Rock one. I got the others yesterday.

I’ve heard that all forts must be at level 3 but I think that means they must reach level 3 at least once, not be there at the time of the spawn. As we were at level two for one of them but had been 4 forts at III.

grins
Well, if all of Spain were smaller than the Amber fort area ….

Is there a guide somewhere to how the fight works? I’ve heard random comments about “pop the bubbles on the boss” but that’s it. I still need Gold to die, so I’d love a clear explanation of the mechanics.

I have to agree with most of the thread. The Grove attack dragon? That ate me alive on my thief, an hour or so in which all my armor broke for the first time ever in this game. I was raging (in a good way), it was epic. I’ve never beaten the Clocktower. So that’s my level of skill. (Note I have gotten Fractal 20 or so, and Dungeon Master, I’m not totally inept at PvE).

The only reason I didn’t ace the final boss first try on my thief was that a new build dropped one crystal shatter away from victory.

This is not overtuned.

Clarifying: The chest farm has zero impact on the story achievements, it only affects the zone achievements which will be there as long as the zone is.

I haven’t seen any massive chest farming maps. I’ve been able to pick which fort to defend (and boss to fight) every time I’ve been there. Just need to kill Gold and find a pile of seraph badges now! And that’s with at most a couple of hours a day in there.

Oh, this is so extremely subjective. GW2’s beautiful texturing and attention to detail ruined my tastes for WoW’s low-rez big blocky giant-shouldered crudeness in armor, big time.

Some effects on some armor can be nifty, but not for the mere goal of making it sparkle. Me, I like stuff that looks wearable and useful while still beautiful and elegant. I’m so happy the base Carapace doesn’t have the washing-out blue glow, though I’m working to unlock Luminescent anyway. But dyes will work so much better on the Carapace!

About the crests and such being consumables, and therefore not wallet suitable: what about dungeon tokens, then? They are mechanically the same, items you earn for doing specific content that can then be spent on things related to that content. Or transmutation charges? You get more of those, your “bank” of them goes up.

It absolutely would work for Dry Top and Silverwastes tokens, and save a ton of alt hopping. It’s not like ANet doesn’t want us to use them on alts that didn’t do the fights, after all. Why not QoL the process?

Ah I see. You meant the “hasn’t repaired anything” part. Nope, I haven’t seen any references to work on that; everyone seems more concerned with going on the offensive against Mordremoth than dealing with wreckage.

I’ve been searching for and unable to find the datamined image of a shoulder scarf that may or may not be coming. It wraps around the neck a lot, doesn’t seem to have long flowing trailing bits, but is clearly a long wool scarf.

Meanwhile there is the Adventurer’s Scarf, which is more of a face bandana.

While it can’t be soloed, it doesn’t have to be. Win or lose, when the event timer runs out you get the green star to progress to the next step.

No, that’s not really fun or empowering, but it means it’s not impossible either.