Guild Wars 2

Gaile — Thanks for the clear answer!

Byakhee — I had forgotten that, thanks for the reminder. What I don’t recall is if the beta weekends were before we got the multi guild chat. It could be that now we’ll be able to see chat even though we can’t rep (so as to avoid exploits using the guild bank to collect mirror account items). I hope so, that was troublesome. At least now I can chat on Discord with guildies if in-game channels are silenced.

dbarron — There was a tweet yesterday from Rubi (or Regina? I never recall which one has the “2”) “We’re planning for sometime Friday morning PDT–similar timing to Living World releases. ~RB2” Which means probably by 9 am Pacific but could go later in the day depending on any problems.

I can’t really pick just one since I know I’ll make at least one of each. I already have multiple 80’s of all but Thief (just got my second Ranger to 80 to get ready for Soulbeast, will level-boost a Thief rather than level or even tome one again).

I voted Holosmith, though, because I will have to make one of those pretty early on in order to get the sword. /makes happy little light saber sounds, very quietly in a corner, so as not to rouse the wrath of a certain mega franchise.

Tayyib Nur Tahiri, newly 80, plan is he’ll be a Soulbeast. Until I can get him Elonian/Sunspear skins, he’s in
Daredevil’s Scarf — Redemption, Hydrangea, Shadow Abyss, Flare (actually just changed Flare to Electro Blue for better contrast on the scarf, but I already took the screen shot).
Hidden shoulders and gloves
Vigil’s Honor Jerkin — Gold Fusion, Pyre, Enameled Sky
Sneakthief Leggings (mostly hidden so I left them, Shadow Abyss, subject to change)
Whisper’s Secret Boots — Tarnish, Hydrangea, Mahogany

Dwayna’s Axe would go perfectly but as I don’t have it, I’ll wait for the nifty PoF skins.
Ebonblade for current GS look. Still deciding on a final weapon set before I choose more skins.

Until the news post I was 100% certain that this would be just like the HoT beta weekends, where we’d get a duplicate character and all progress on that duplicate would be wiped at the weekend’s conclusion.

But “You’ll be able to play the first part of the Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire story, which will kick off your journey to the Crystal Desert. Once you arrive, the Crystal Oasis map is yours to explore. Take in the sights, unlock the raptor mount, and have fun with other players!” is ambiguous. If it said “let you experience the start” or some such, it would be more clearly a test session.

I’m still 99% sure no preview progress will convey to live accounts when the weekend’s done, but I’d appreciate ANet clarification on this.

(Yes, I know the answer will be “obvious” in the opinion of many, but I can see it being argued either way, hence my calling it ambiguous. I’m not reading anything into it one way or another, I just had my 100% certainty shaken by the phrasing and would like it restored so I know how to approach the initial session ).

Heads up from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/new-items-and-anniversary-sales/

August Anniversary Sales – Week 1

August 09: 20% off Amethyst Aegis and Emissary’s Staff
August 10: 20% off Peaco(’)ck Scepter and Dragon Kama
August 11: 20% off Caithe’s Bloom Dagger and Belinda’s Greatsword
August 12: 20% off Kurzick Dual Axe and Storm Bow
August 13: 20% off Chain-Whip Sword and Replica Mirror of Lyssa
August 14: 25% off Watchwork Mining Pick

I am sure AP will continue the amazing daily work of listing Gem Shop changes but for once ANet has given a schedule in advance, so enjoy!

I love the new launcher! Except for this:

As I got to the last 10 or so files, it had connection errors. And it told me so by rapidly jittering between the new pink/purple frame and a simple white box holding the usual “Connection errors detected, retrying …” line in red text.

Sorry no screen shot, I am not set up to do videos and a screen might or might not have caught the moment when the two were superimposed — it flashed back and forth nauseatingly fast. Rapid flickers give me motion sickness and I had to hold my hand between my eyes and the monitor.

Please see what you can do to smooth out the launcher display when it bounces in and out of connectivity.

Actually this coming Friday we get raptors. The elite demo is a week later.

LW1 is not replayable due to design choices and experiments. You can get -most- of the story in this 3 hour compilation video that Dreamy Abaddon did incredible work on. (It leaves out the initial fight with Canach, for instance). Though it doesn’t show much of the open world zerg stuff, it does give the major plot points.

If you don’t want to watch a long video, or do but would like accompanying text, the wiki has a comprehensive write up at https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_Season_1

Then you will want to play through LS2, HoT, and LS3 to be up to date on the story as it begins in PoF. You do not have to own LS2 and 3 to play them, you just need someone who does own them to take you through the instances. You get no rewards or achieves if you don’t own them and only the instance starter can progress the dialogues and use the objects in the episode, but you can see the story. You do need to own HoT to play that part of the story, so it’s good you’re interested in buying it

Actually I think there is a bit for gliding. Maybe just a sentence, somewhere. But the impression is the first gliders are kludged together in the jungle and the Commander is an early adopter.

I think they elected to balance downed skills elsewise, hence thieves getting a downed shadowstep and elementalists a mistform to flee in.

I haven’t made a new Elonian yet but I do have two concepts picked out for my pending Soulbeast. And I’ll be making a new Thief to become a Deadeye. Thing is I have at least two of everything except Thief and Ranger, and my current ones work best as Daredevil and Druid. So, two new medium armor types on the way!

I just don’t know male or female yet for the Soulbeast. So here are the two leading contenders from my designs (I really do want a woman with a full afro some time, but it didn’t look right on this face — the file name is due to wanting to group the images and I started with the afro). Bonus, the before and after pics of my half-Krytan half-Elonian mesmer.

I thought “kiwi” myself when I saw the Holosmith video. But a friend suggests they are cacti, which makes sense for a desert expansion.

I just hope they aren’t the mushrooms-with-legs of PoF: cartoonishly bizarre, make you go wtf, and turn out to be the most horrid things to fight in the map

Hooray! Glad that was the answer!

I don’t know off the top of my head, but I have a guess: Maybe you have a separate HoT code you need to apply? Did you buy through the website or through the in-game gem store? If via website, check your email for a HoT code to apply to an existing account.

I hope it’s as easy as that.

Xaretic.2318:

Are those weapons like Twilight still a thing? They were end game weapons a couple years back when I played, I suppose by now they have a new type.

You’re talking about Legendary Weapons. They have the same power as Ascended weapons, with the bonus that out of combat you can swap their stats for free. They are still very much a thing (in fact Wooden Potatoes is doing an insane contest, grand prize being every legendary weapon in the game, though at least it’s not random luck to win). There is nothing with better stats available. ANet does not want to create a gear treadmill, so they’ve committed to keeping Ascended the BiS.

Nowadays you can craft the precursors for them yourself, once per weapon. The mats grind is as heavy as it ever was to make them, and you do need max crafting to make them. None of which you will get with the 80 boost, other than having an easier time roaming around lower level maps gathering mats. The boost will let you get into the lucrative maps sooner, though, which might help the process if you work on making enough gold to get the mats needed.

But here is a strong reason -not- to boost to 80 and run off to the hardest maps: You won’t know what you’re doing. You won’t be geared properly unless you somewhat blindly follow someone else’s advice. There are frequent forum posts complaining that it’s impossible to survive in the HoT maps (it isn’t, far from it, but you do need to use more of your skill bar and also get to know the mobs’ patterns and abilities).

You’ll get the hang of it all; it’ll all still be waiting for you later on. No need to push to max everything out in a short time.

This again. It’s not “clipping issues.” It’s technical impossibilities given the underlying armor rigs, the “bones.” They can’t mix armor weights.

If you just want to wear a complete set of one weight without regard for profession, that might be slightly more doable but would still involve the complexity of how you swap weights since you can’t rotate in one piece at a time. And who knows what spaghetti code under the hood will do when trying to link armor weight to a profession not intended to wear it. It’s so core to the game’s software that they could break the whole game trying to modify that one thing.

I’d love to be as wrong about this as I was about no gliding in Pact Tyria, but in that case I didn’t have as definitive a set of dev statements to go on. (No, I don’t readily have links, though I’m sure some other forum regulars do. I’m starting to think there needs to be a sticky holding the dev quotes on why mixing weights is not possible with the current code limitations).

I would say max your bank and storage space first, if you haven’t yet. Then consider a salvage-o-matic. But keep in mind, we may get some really awesome fun things in conjunction with PoF’s release. So unless you see something you’d like that is leaving the store soon, perhaps you should hold onto the gems for a little while.

Mostly I’d say get useful QoL things, then account-wide guaranteed things you will be able to use for a long time (outfits, skins), with an eye towards items that aren’t always there. And if some things are just too awesome to wait on, well, that is a fine option too!

My rule of thumb RL on buying non-essential fun things is “will I regret passing this up tomorrow? Next week? A few months from now? A year or two from now?” and weigh how long I’ll regret it versus how much of a hit to my wallet it is. You can do the same with your 4K gems budget.

I’m just glad we have a minimap at all, one on which I can easily see which direction I’m facing and spot gathering nodes around me. ESO doesn’t provide one; worse, it spins you 180 degrees when you consult your map, then spins you back when you close it, causing frequent moves in the wrong direction. I had to get a mod to get a mini map and even the lowest footprint one causes glitches.

Do you have a sample of how a tiered minimap would look, one that would better aid you in navigation while fitting the GW2 UI aesthetic? I cannot picture it in my mind without imagining a confusing multicolored line drawing. Each time I see a thread on it I hope someone links to a video of one in action.

I was looking through the new ThinkGeek stuff and spotted this http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jukg/

Might be worth a look for those who crave SAB plushies that don’t exist yet. (For those who do not wish to follow the link, it is a curved rainbow tube with a little face and a grey cloud flat cushion also with a little face, x’s for eyes and a mouth with a tiny tongue sticking out. It is not anything close to a ripoff of the SAB artwork but it has the vibe). The only plushie on iam8bit is a blue quaggan.

drunkenpilot.9837:

Why isn’t anyone here talking about the clipping issue with this outfit on Norn males? (see image attached below)

That’s not just norn. My lanky human nobleman also flashes his thigh when one leg is stepped up.

Though I just chalk it up to “it’s not a solid skirt, it’s a lot of strips and if you lift your leg up through it you’re gonna show some thigh.”

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Um, Ragnaros was a demon made of fire stuck up to his waist in lava (ok ok Ragnaroses got legs). If I recall correctly from raiding years ago, his summoned minions were not canine in any way.

Balthazar is a human-shaped god who favors battle and war and has fire powers and burning hounds that his followers can also invoke in lesser form in a fight.

WoW was first released (with the Molten Core that had Ragnaros as end boss) in November 2004. GW1 with its lore of the Six was first released April 2005 (source: Googling "when was (game name) first released’). MMO game development and central matters of lore aren’t originated in the last five months before release.

Consider it parallel development, at most, but your conversational partner is really reaching to call one high powered flame being a rip off of another. It’s not like no one had ever thought of a destructive deity of flame before these games came out. Now, the newest twist on Balthazar does involve going to the mortal realm to undim his light but we haven’t heard the whole story yet and what we have seen so far has a more Greco-Roman pantheon feel to it than a demon-of-wrath vibe.

Ohoni, what you’ve just described is cutting up the outfits into armor pieces and making 6 different armor pieces from them. This is exactly what they’ve said takes them far too long to do: making armor sets.

Should it take that long? Not in my opinion. They designed a game with looks progression and mix-match armor, they really should have coded in such away as to allow them to crank out new pieces relatively quickly. I’m not defending the design. But I do accept they are telling the truth that for whatever reason, they cannot feasibly churn out armor pieces using the armor rigging as coded.

I understand that you would like them to take the effort to completely redo all the armor in the game to work together and to be able to speedily make individual armor pieces (I would too, if only it could happen). However, I wouldn’t characterize it as “ALL they need to do.” Like it was a mere trifle. Remember, the outfits don’t have pieces. They are a seamless cover.

(I will concede on some pieces though, to wit the old town clothes — they had those individual and to this day you can hide shoulders and gloves on the Cook’s Outfit. Rather than redo the whole system, I think they should turn the Town Clothes into armor pieces and offer those. Perhaps give the original level one cultural clothes free to new characters and make us re-pay for the others? After all, they did refund a crap ton of gems when they ruined Town Clothes by making them tonics, so we’ve been made whole in the legal sense).

If the elites were available the first weekend, you bet they’d have said so. The FAQ spells out what is available, and elites aren’t on the list.

When a restaurant menu says “Prime Rib available Sunday afternoons 1-5” one doesn’t really need to ask “So, I’d love to have some Prime Rib on Wednesday, are you offering it then?”

Game of Bones.8975:

A bush/tree with berries that bear fruit that makes us grow/shrink to fit into small crevices to access new areas of the map or step over obstacles.

Like in the spider cave in Caledon?

I’ve swapped out my blood fiend for Your Soul is Mine! because I got tired of resummoning it after every fight. My Rise! minions seem to still do something for me but it’s harder to track their effect so I can’t be sure.

My main Reaper is my go-to for all the new maps for long-term play in them but I’m thinking I’ll want to find something else for Siren’s Landing. Though she’s doing ok, I’m just annoyed my favorite build isn’t 100% useful like it is elsewhere.

(tongue in cheek)

A dolayk with a jet pack. Scarlet designed one, after all, just look at her secret lair under the Priory.

Skimming — after the death, I just see her collecting an urn with Snaff’s ashes. The tree is mentioned rather earlier, when Glint tells Snaff the green gemstones on the emerald tree are “petrified drops of blood from Kralkatorrik — blood from his last battle. For thousands of years I have gathered them from the sands of the desert and hung them on that tree, keeping them from mortal hands. They are magically potent.”

Snaff then realizes he can use them to mind-control Kralkatorrik if the others shoot enough of them into the dragon after Glint gets a yoke containing a ton of the “powerstones” made of the gems onto Kralk.

Ahah! Later Caithe walks in the Dragonbrand and collects some large green crystals aka dragon blood. In fact, that’s the closing scene of the book.

Give me a few minutes, I have it on Kindle and will have to scan around for it. Brb!

I’d say the point is to put a big neon sign on “this is play acting, just part of the ritual, you aren’t actually getting swarmed by White Mantle.” It’s something you get in a lot of movies where a character is acting within the show; somehow the “acted” part comes out extra cheesy, or a villainous person has all sorts of I’m a villain tells, just to help the audience along.

Hmm, I distinctly recall thinking “Ah, shortbow” during the announcement stream. Just from one comment by the dev talking.

I was able to do that with HoT. It should be fine. I believe you’ll need to order from the website (or authorized retailer) rather than via the in-game Gem Store. That gets you a code to apply to an account by copy pasting it in. So long as the code isn’t used by anyone else before your friend does, it should work. (I cannot verify that PoF works by sending you a code to apply because the Java errors got me to order via the Gem Store interface and that had it go straight onto my account).

Each time I gifted HoT I made sure I was in direct communication with the recipient and had them confirm first that they got the code and second that they successfully applied it to their account. I did not want any problems caused by delay or carelessness in handling the code.

Here is a gallery of them http://dulfy.net/2017/08/01/gw2-new-hairstyles-and-faces-in-total-makeover-kit/

Note that Dulfy did not alter slider settings to take the new face shapes into account so her gallery makes them look a bit grotesque. Not her fault, she shouldn’t have to fully remake an alt just to show us, plus it takes a good amount of time to do that. But take that into account when viewing. The male faces in particular have a huge range of appearance and a lot of chiselled faces. One of them looks excellent for an older, weathered vizier type.

I tweaked my Canthan-descent necro into a pretty wild Elonan (did not commit, so it’s from the kit view). And that was without really going whole hog on face structure to suit the ethnicity.

I’ll hold onto that name change. I don’t have any immediate reason to change anyone, but my male human ele was made to a guildie’s specs to be the villain in her plot line and whenever he finally gets his comeuppance I’ll be remaking him. It’ll be handy to have that available … even though it’s a bank slot that will be filled a very long time due to most of the players of the plot leaving the game Meanwhile I’ve commandeered him for a villain in other plot lines, just have to leave him in position for the main story.

But I digress.

I’m looking forward to the Lily Pass. I hope the riverboat is awesome as a place to hang out.

They said Shortbow. That’s also in the PoF site spec videos.

Yes, the voice over in the announcement referred to them as summoned/conjured weapons made of light.

Here is the FAQ https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010688287?_ga=2.111328580.133531747.1501525481-291613596.1411503758

It confirms no later upgrade to Ultimate.

Confirmed. Also like before, you cannot access the new slot without using up the boost. I instinctively tried swapping the boost to another slot positioned better for my purposes and was denied, lol.

My half Elonan half Krytan Mesmer looked good before. Now he looks amaaaazing. I kept the older dreads, they are too established in RP, but the face detailing is so much better for him.

Even though I’m overflowing with humans, looks like my new level 80 boost is going to an Elonan Ranger since I only have one Ranger right now (a Norn) and I like her as a Druid; she’s geared as one, too. Male or female, hmm … the male faces have so much range, but female medium armor is generally niftier. And that female ’fro is beyond glorious, even if I am sure almost every new Elonan female will be rocking it.

Whatever I choose, I am excite!

Ragnarox.9601:

Yea video overview but wooden potato showed skills and trees in his stream for few specs. Those videos means nothing to me. Its just effects I just want words and numbers.

Ah, sorry, I thought you meant ANet by “They.” I didn’t watch WP because I didn’t want to see someone else playing in the new areas before I go in for the first time. I’m happy to learn any mechanics stuff in advance, but story and environment? I look forward to the impact of discovery

They showed all nine of them. Check https://www.guildwars2.com/en/path-of-fire/#specializations for info on each.

Oh drat, I didn’t notice that. I guess I will have to test them in the Mists Lobby.

Success! The trick is to go in game and open the Gem Store. Click on the Pre-Purchase promo box at the top of the main page. Then pay as you would for buying gems.

: “With the purchase of any edition of Path of Fire, you can add in Heart of Thorns during checkout and purchase both expansions together for less than the combined prices of the expansions. If you already own Heart of Thorns or only want to play Path of Fire, you can purchase Path of Fire separately.”

From https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010688287?_ga=2.111328580.133531747.1501525481-291613596.1411503758

So it looks like you pay a little bit more to add HoT in but can still get the bundle for less than HoT originally cost? There will be yelling from players over this, given the previous policy statement that all expansions would be included in the newest one. I bet they are trying to avoid the yelling about veterans not getting a discount for already owning previous releases. They can’t win here.

Also being discussed in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/TAKE-MY-MONEY/first#post6662869 though your thread title is more likely to get swift attention.

Edited my post to add an image of the errors in case that helps anyone.

I want to buy this thing! I knew I would before I even watched the stream, but still … got other things to do in my day starting shortly. Help us, ANet! Help us buy your stuff!

I got a 404, and now I’m getting Java string errors.

The pre-show is about half done now. 30 mins to official part of things.

And meanwhile, I found a spillover party in LA — and the tour guide strolled through with a hilarious comment!

I probably was Doing It Wrong — but I swear that I was still on a huge cooldown once at 25 stacks, just had the cooldown timers colored green to show they had sped up. I don’t know what the boss’ buff was doing, since it couldn’t hurt me at any point.

Well, come to think of it, my 1 skill did turn into a 4 second cooldown and I think it was longer sans Alacrity. Still not enough to hurt the boss in the short time available during Alacrity (remember, that darn boss was siphoning off me like a maniac, so up its health went in between my attacks). I have every profession available so I’ll see what’s most recommended, if I bother with the attempt again.

Or if anyone has a Reaper traits/weapon setup they’d recommend for this specific fight, I can easily enough swap out for the fight. I’m running Soul Reaping 321, Death Magic 133, Reaper 112, with GS/Staff, bone minion, Rise!, You are all Weaklings!, Nothing Can Save You!, and Chilled to the Bone! Gear is mostly exotic, a mixture of condi stats.

I haven’t tried using it but YoloMouse might do that for you — it’s used by Dulfy so I imagine it’s ok by ANet since it really just changes your mouse for you.

Another workaround is the Assistance settings in Windows (works in 7 and 10) where you can ask it to put a shrinking white circle around your cursor when you hold down CTRL. That helps find it.

I see. Well, that’s not terribly helpful then — 4 or 5 seconds off of 2 minutes is on the useless side. I’ll have to pick an alt that doesn’t give the doppelganger much to work with.

Or just not get that achieve. There are others to work with for the meta. But now that I’m capped on dailies, I find myself greedy for AP