Guild Wars 2

True all that. I should have written “at least until the end of July.” I expect launch in late August but some hopeful sorts assume the July 31 cutoff means Aug 1 launch.

If launch is Aug 1 I’ll be playing on an old computer without any sound, and not have a ton of time in the day to play, so I am rather selfishly hoping it’s not until late August.

At a guess you have until the end of July, based on the cutoff for … um. Refunds? Loyalty slots? … from the Community blog.

Look at the FAQ. There will be no physical CE, as stated by ANet.

“Q: Will there be a collector’s edition for this expansion?

A: There are no plans for a physical collector’s edition for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. Heart of Thorns will be offered in Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate Editions (all of which are available for pre-purchase and include digital in-game bonuses only)."

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/105801626-Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-FAQ

I’m not nearly as cheesed off as the Mad Queen about this, much as I would have liked some physical goodies if I had room in my cluttered house for them, but she is right that there will not be a goodies-filled box.

The physical box in stores is probably just a jewel case holding a serial code.

It seems odd to complain that you have too much of something that’s not using up any inventory space. Would you rather be one of the sub-80 players complaining in other threads that you got the wrong trait-lines preselected for you and you can’t play the traits you want because you don’t have the points to spend? (Note: many of those complaining do have the points, they just haven’t noticed that they can buy a different trait line with accumulated points and swap to it).

You can’t avoid digital download, though. All the builds that come after the CD is printed come to you, y’know, digitally. My husband’s been setting up a junk machine so I can play while away from home for a month. I told him I had the current build on my Passport and he should just copy that folder over. He pshawed and let the game update from where I’d left it on that computer in April 2014. It took a really long time (I can’t say how long because I wasn’t watching him do it).

I have my disk(s) from game launch. I wouldn’t dream of using them to install the game now, it would be meaningless.

Also, I think they’re doing a lot of background loading in the various builds we’ve been receiving, so if you’re caught up on builds (and you have to be if you’re playing the game right now, you don’t get to stay in the May version, for instance) then launch will involve one more build on the scale you’ve already experienced and you’ll be playing fairly quickly.

I would have loved a physical CE with tangible goodies. Though then I’d be fretting about getting hold of it in time to play the moment HoT launches. But ANet digital loads have always seemed smooth to me, as compared to the incredibly slow process of other MMO’s. I can have a huge patch like we got on the 23rd loaded in a few minutes — TESO makes me sit through close to an hour for the big stuff, as did WoW when I was bothering with it. And I live an hour’s drive from ZeniMax!

As others have said a couple of times in this thread, HP will be used later. You might need 80-100 just to fully unlock one Elite with attached skills. Then they introduce a second Elite spec for your profession, and you need the points for that.

They aren’t “doing nothing,” they aren’t “useless,” they’re banked in advance of future need so you don’t have to go scrounge them up on short notice.

You will never (under current design) get more for post-80 “leveling.” The XP post 80 will go to advancing your Mastery tracks and you will only get more HP for doing more challenges (or whatever they’re working on for the WvW crowd).

GummiBear.2756:

Donari.5237:

Paulytnz.7619:

Diovid.9506:

Paulytnz.7619:

Thief – There was one that made deceptions have a quicker cooldown, that’s gone.

That one still exists actually. It’s an adept trait in Shadow Arts.

For me it’s definetely Ricochet. I know Pistol/Pistol wasn’t strong or anything but Ricochet sure made it fun for me.

Wow really? I must have looked through all the lines 3-4 times and didn’t see it, must double check this later thanks for the info.

I don’t think there is one in SA. The Master Minor makes Stealth skills last longer but doesn’t affect Blinding Powder, Shadowstep, or Smoke Screen. Adept 2, Concealed Defeat, makes Deception abilities recharge faster (along with making a Smoke Screen when downed). But nothing makes all Deception skills last longer that I see.

Ehmm he was asking for one that made deceptions have a shorter cd, not last longer :P

There goes my reading comprehension pride! But you’re right. At least my answer did tell him/her where to find the lower cooldown trait after all.

Thanks, guys. I checked out reviews of the Pro 3 and the Lenovo and then just “gaming laptops under $1K” and there were enough disgruntled comments that I shied away. Especially since I find it unlikely I’ll use the device after my month in AZ (yes, I know it’s hot there, I was there this past weekend to see him while he’s alive, though the monsoon wasn’t in yet so it wasn’t humid). So my husband and I have cleaned off my old Dell and done a reinstall. We’ll ship that out there with a cheap keyboard and my old HEX mouse, assuming the new one I added today stops acting flaky in cursor control, and I’ll Craig’s List search for a monitor. If the Dell fails, I will see what I can do with my Dad’s Mac in order to get my GW2 fix.

My Dad has a 54" wall-mounted HD TV. Nice monitor if I didn’t have to rearrange furniture to have a working surface facing it >< That’s not happening, not in that room.

They may have changed it in the patch but I’ve found the trick in reviving her is to give the pack of Risen a wide berth and drop over the wall by her to do the rez. Then only a couple of Risen come over at a time, and there are fish heads to dodge.

But if you are doing that and the whole swarm of Risen is leaping at you due to nothing distracting them, then ouch.

Paulytnz.7619:

Diovid.9506:

Paulytnz.7619:

Thief – There was one that made deceptions have a quicker cooldown, that’s gone.

That one still exists actually. It’s an adept trait in Shadow Arts.

For me it’s definetely Ricochet. I know Pistol/Pistol wasn’t strong or anything but Ricochet sure made it fun for me.

Wow really? I must have looked through all the lines 3-4 times and didn’t see it, must double check this later thanks for the info.

I don’t think there is one in SA. The Master Minor makes Stealth skills last longer but doesn’t affect Blinding Powder, Shadowstep, or Smoke Screen. Adept 2, Concealed Defeat, makes Deception abilities recharge faster (along with making a Smoke Screen when downed). But nothing makes all Deception skills last longer that I see.

Elsewhere the dog is chasing the cat (down by the Claw Island docs). I tried following the cat-after-dog set around the Commodore Quarters but they did a full loop and started along the same path as before. So either they do a few loops then run off and swap, and I missed the transition, or there are more than one dog/cat jogging couple.

Khani, are you saying it behaved differently from how Bobby described it in his OP in the sticky in General? I remember that there were some steps that if you were on them you would get advanced and miss out on a section. He listed which ones. I checked all my alts for where they were and none were on one of the “bad” steps so I stopped giving mental space to which steps were the miss-out ones.

I suggest you check the sticky to see if you’re bugged or were just in the wrong PS position when the patch hit.

I posted above in this thread and will point to what I said because people still aren’t understanding the OP’s question. If you log in during the free window, but do not at that point have HoT, will you have the episode unlocked later when you do buy HoT, or will the unlock only register on your account if it is a HoT account?

I remain baffled as to why people care so much about the spirit shard drop rate. What on earth uses them up in such quantities that missing a few is horrible?

This is a serious question. I’m sure there is some useful thing to do with them and it involves using the Forge to make something profitable, but after 3 years in this game (I include beta play) I still don’t grok the Forge.

You have to have had your account registered before Jan 23 ’15 and (pre?)purchase HoT at any tier to get the loyalty slot, which will come eventually at some point, hopefully before HoT launch.

Well, they’ll be adding five more to the game

It was far more confusing to have quiet conversation, kids playing, apple vendors vending, etc, while a firestorm raged around us. And now we have a way to see the way it used to be. It’s in sepia to indicate it’s in the past, unless you turn of post-processing as I did. Here are some pics, one in sepia, the others in color:

About the Whispers secret stuff: If you are on a Whispers alt, talk to the Surly Customer in the Whispers bar. Go on, do it. (Also listen to the bar conversation with people talking about “visiting Grandma to get a recipe”).

Based on that, I wonder if my Priory and Vigil alts will get some targeted things.

Here’s the lore glitch I found: A pair of Lionguard still using the ruined LA dialogue about the looters getting bolder. I got the screenshot on the second part of the conversation, and had my chat on Map rather than General so I didn’t record the whole thing but you can go listen to them.

You still have to buy a HoT upgrade, of any of the three levels, to get that vet bonus slot.

Veteran Player Appreciation

For our long-standing fans and loyal players, we would like to say thank you and show our appreciation. For all players who registered the core Guild Wars 2® game prior to January 23, 2015 and who upgrade their account by prepurchasing and registering any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns edition before Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns‘ launch, we will add one additional character slot to your Guild Wars 2 account. The process of delivering your additional character slot will take us some time, but rest assured we will get it to you as soon as possible. We’ll provide more details about the specific timing soon.

From https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

Then if you buy premium or ultimate you get another slot on top of that as part of the package. This is their response to the wide-spread complaints about vets who want to play revenant without deleting any maxed out characters or being “forced” to pay more money beyond the base fifty bucks.

As I read the blog on Masteries, it seemed to me they said location determined which tracks you could advance.

There was some Reddit commentary from a dev strongly hinting that you’d best not throw out ascended rings right now. I don’t know if they can be transformed the way the weapons and armor can, or if something else is still in the works.

Sorry I don’t have the link. As someone not burdened with an excess of Ascended items I mentally filed it under “huh, interesting,” and moved on.

Suggestion: Have a cinematic recap of Season One to explain the story, and a PS page in the Hero Panel that summarizes the events that happened in LS1. When someone completes the post-Arah victory party, give them an option — a very noticeable one, perhaps via mail, perhaps via a reward object that plays the cinematic when used (in which case also have an NPC somewhere who plays it, to avoid inventory clogging) — an option to view the cinematic.

That brings them up to speed as to what happened to lead to LS2 Chapter 1. Then there can be a clear note (in the mail? in a popup saying “you are now in LS2, and need to unlock chapters xyz to play them unless you join another player’s instance”?) to tell them what the next sequence of story involves.

Wow, I wrote that in a convoluted way. Short form: Until we have LS1 playable again, use a cinematic to inform players of the story bridging from Zhaitan to the biconics (along with a written summary in the PS panel), then direct them to how to access LS2 in the correct order.

agrante.2810:

For me the problem with the new system is the interface. I feel lost when looking for a specific trait or deciding which trait lines to choose. What would make it better for me would be to have all trait lines visible like in the old system. Then the inactive ones would be greyed out. One could hover the mouse over the traits and read what they do and this way have an overall view of the system at all times.

They are all visible. Go to your Build tab. Look at the top, there are three sub tabs. The right hand one is traits. Click that and the left column fills up with all five lines in a mini-grid format. Mouse hover over the icons in the grid and you see the info you want.

Every time they have a contest there is some country or other that doesn’t get to play. It’s always due to legal reasons that bar such contests or that make ANet extra liable in one way or another.

Persuade your government to change the rules on participation in international contests and maybe you too can enter! (j/k b/c we know it it tremendously hard and takes quite a while to make governments change economic laws).

I remain at 29/30 in the first DT coin collection because I found a bunch on my own, then followed the Dulfy video to each and every one. But since they disappear once found, I couldn’t tell if not seeing one at the spot meant I wasn’t quite in the right place or if I already had it. After doing the full Dulfy tour in close to two hours, I was still at 29/30 and gave up. Because of that I had no real oomph pushing me to do the next collections.

Give me an indication of which one(s) I’ve found and clues at the LA Exterminator level of difficulty to the ones I haven’t, and I’ll cheerfully spend my time searching them out. Until then, it’s content not worth the bother.

I’ve been holding off testing the restored PS, mostly so a guildie who was away for much of old LA (and had a crap computer when he was there) could see what LA used to look like with his current much better settings. He was free tonight so we did the DE gathering at the fountain and the Vigil meeting in Fort Marriner. Both had a good wide area to run around in beyond the active part of the PS so my guildie and I were able to go up on walls and in buildings such as the Commodore’s mansion.

Of note, the “past LA” is in sepia tones, but you can turn off post processing in Options and then you see it in color. It was glorious broad daylight while I was there. That’s a question: Does the old-terrain instance still follow the global day-night cycle? Or do we always get an appropriate time of day for the PS we’re doing?

I took a lot of screenshots, though just one in sepia, but it’s too late at night for me to process them for posting right now.

Quaggans can now jump and dodge roll, Rashagar. Try it with a tonic to see. Also someone did the JP in about 15 minutes as a pink quaggan.

I don’t know how accurate it is but That_Shaman has a calculator that is on Dulfy’s site.

I believe, based on a full reading of the blog NTDK linked, that merits will simply poof. Use them before HoT or lose them. Earlier in the blog the dev notes that some consumables will likewise be made obsolete and promises further warnings as HoT approaches that guilds will need to set up 25 of them or something like that (my guild doesn’t use consumables and I’m not the GM so I really don’t follow how all that works). If one thing is just vanishing, it seems merits will as well. (Commendations will continue to exist and accrue for individual guild members). Read the blog for details.

Here’s something you can try as well, since you have five slots. Make a profession without taking too much time customizing looks and story choices and head to the PvP lobby (I’m not sure how a brand new account does this, others may have to explain it). While you are there you will be level 80 with all traits and skills available. There are target golems there in various configurations to let you test what the profession does with different builds — they are like the target dummies on Orgrimmar’s walls only some will fight back so you can test skills that hurt attacking enemies.

Once you’ve found a profession or two or three that you gibe well with, then you can delete the sample alts and use your slots to make your desired professions to your preferred look and level up to get the learning process on how they work in the field. Alt hopping is quick and easy. To keep it fresh, you can head to other racial starting areas by going to LA from your racial city portal, then entering another racial portal and departing the city (make sure to ask in /Map which exit leads to the starter area, as some cities have exits to higher level zones). Or you can just make other races and thus get different personal story options once you get to level 10.

binidj.5734:

Out of curiosity, of those people who like the new system, how many played from launch? I ask because a lot of the “I love it” posts appear to be people who fell victim to the horrible trait acquisition changes made (relatively) recently.

I’ve played since beta and I like this system. I’m likely to level alts again (I only made one post NPE). I think the divide may not be between vets and new players so much as between people who heavily invest in theorycrafting and specific builds with intense focus on what every stat point does and those players who just take what feels fun even if they are reduced in effectiveness as a result.

I’m the latter, if that wasn’t obvious

edit because the feline filter didn’t like a slang term for being made lame.

Crunchbone.7341:

Thank you Donari & Shiki. I have about 60 hero points left to spend as I did every challenge I could find along the way so far.

I expect I will have to lose the “first time journey” to level 80. I don’t want to lose my 3 years of birthdays etc by rerolling, and I don’t want to get mad and quit playing (especially as I just bought the Ultimate pre-order) because I cannot level the way I choose. But I just REALLY do not want Skirmishing, lol. Instant 80, here I come.

I have another ranger at level 28 or so, that one has Wilderness Survival opened, sigh. I have really been enjoying GW2 so far and was looking so forward to seeing everything.

Just a one time “redo” button would have been SO awesome…

Whoa, hold on! You have 60 points? You’re golden. Don’t insta 80, please don’t! Go to the Beast Mastery tab, spend your 60 points. Then go to the trait selection. Click on the big icon at the left of the traits. Select Beast Mastery. Pick your three majors. Voila, you have Beast Mastery and can continue your slow journey.

You’ll need more points or levels to add more skills you can use, but you’ll be in the trait line you want and will still have all your current utilities.

Taevion.2896:

can you (devs) just show all 5 trait lines, it’s so bad that i can only see 3 at a time.

Look to the left in your Build window, click the Traits icon at the top. Boom, all 5 lines are there, nicely organized with the minors vertical down the left and three rows for the three tiers next to the minors.

I like the aesthetic and the use of the new UI. As a non-theorycrafter who never got very deeply into stat distribution beyond keeping them all roughly equal with an emphasis on the one most useful to the profession, I don’t feel any more limited than before. I’ll need someone to hold my hand through making any more specialized trait/gear builds

My one disappointment is that fall damage reduction traits are still part of the trait choices, and to me they are important enough that where the trait is dictates an entire line choice for me. Though at least my support Guardian no longer needs to swap between fall damage and vulnerability on immobilize for dungeons as those got separated.

The unlocking part of the new system is on the Very Good side, btw. So much better than the messed up world-event unlock system we’ve been fighting for so long.

Look at where this thread is going. That’s why I uttered my wish in my first post in here that this had been done simply as a request for the dye without making it into a tie in to a RL rights movement.

All sorts of threads asking for rainbow or other legendary dyes have gotten mostly positive reactions. Sometimes its better not to trumpet for a cause if you want to advance the cause, y’know? Ask for something that is inclusively fun for all, not something special only to you and your group, and you’ll get tons more support.

I think gliding in LA could be fun, though they might not want it due to the JP and could in-lore say any unregistered flights get the flak guns aimed at them.

But you’re right, the reason they couldn’t add gliding to old maps is that the maps weren’t designed for it — but LA is so new that they could have factored it in!

Let’s hope they at least put in the jump pads Palador suggested.

While there are many benign purposes such as you describe (and I’d love to be able to copy RP logs without having to carefully screenshot and fight with the terrible scroll function to get every line in as few shots as possible), I would wager ANet has no interest at all in making it easy to get links from game chat. Why? Gold sellers.

Right, the point is that you can buy traits before hitting 80 if you have the challenges done, and can even do so before you can use more than one line’s worth. Crunchbone desperately wants to get back to Beast Mastery without having to accelerate his/her slow, savoring the journey leveling process. Hero Points will allow him/her to swap over right away. S/he just needs to have 60 points banked to get full BM.

IrishPotato.6327:

Donari.5237:

Rainbows aren’t for the exclusive use of gay pride

No but it’s become a symbol of it and a representation….

Which is why having it available in game can be adapted to such interests, without asking to have it in game only to cater to those interests. I’m straight and I want the option of having rainbows too. It wouldn’t bother me for people to think I was supporting gay rights by using them, since I’m very pro gay rights, I just don’t want them to get shoved into being only that or to be a Message instead of a fashion statement.

I added some pics to my post to illustrate current possibilities.

I find it odd to associate a rainbow dye with marriage equality. While I am utterly thrilled that gender is becoming no bar to marriage I really wouldn’t use that as a basis for requesting rainbow dye. All you’ll do is fan the flames of controversy when you could have joined in on the threads wanting it just because it’s pretty and then if implemented in game used it to gussy up for a wedding.

Rainbows aren’t for the exclusive use of gay pride

Meanwhile, here’s something you can do with the dyes in game. I spotted this guy in RS one day. Bonus pic of what a guildie of mine managed early in the game.

Crunchbone, everything for core specs and skills is available when you hit 80, sooner if you do challenges to gather points, though there are some level plateaus to determine how many lines you can have open at once. I know you go from one to two lines at level 45, and have not memorized when you get three lines (my only sub-80 is 43). So yes, if you get to 80, you’ll have full spec access.

I am surprised you didn’t get BM as your line if that’s the only place you had points. All my alts got assigned lines based on most points spent on old-system lines. I don’t know if Support can help you with a swap. It might be a can of worms for them if suddenly millions of tickets come in asking for swaps.

Oh! You can also go to Training and put all your accrued Hero Points from doing challenges into the BM line. My ele was in Water because he had 2 points in that, 1 in Fire, but I swapped his one line to Fire, just missing the GM trait for now. I spent all his accrued HP to do it. If you have enough points you should be able to swap over to BM as fast as you can click the Train button and select the line in your Traits.

For reference, before they changed it to not needing the extra 65 challenges I got my alts to 100 challenges each (more for my two with world completion). After fully unlocking everything on my 80’s I had at least 100 points still on each, usually a few over 100, likely due to having done challenges that didn’t count to the 189 for world completion. I unlocked by clicking the last icon in the circle on the trait lines and each line was 60 points.

So unless they do another iterative change, I would guess you need 60 points for the Elite line. If more skills are needed, more points as well, but I didn’t pay much attention to the unlock points there as there were different numbers of skills in some lines (I think).

At least there’s more time available to accrue the points now for those that didn’t work on it already.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

My level 27 Ele was specced into Earth, but that’s fine with me since it was going to be my primary spec anyway. Maybe it has something to do with the current attunement you were on when the patch went live, as long as you were below the level required to get traits unlocked pre-patch?

I’m pretty sure they took where you’d spent the most trait points. I had a record of my alts’ line spreads so I could reset them quickly if I redid them for special case combats. I’ve been reworking the builds on each and I’ve noted that my three lines with the most points placed in them were the three I got set. In the case of my level 43 Ele, he got Water as his one line thanks to having 2 points in Water and only 1 in Fire (I think that was so I would have the fall damage trait). Fortunately he had enough Hero Points to get all of Fire except the GM trait, so I can eke him through on that for two more levels and then I’ll have two lines.

If ANet could do it as well as one of the dedicated third party systems, without affecting game performance or development of game features, I’d be fine with this.

However.

I was psyched when WoW introduced voice chat. Only … it sucked. I don’t remember the details now, but it was almost unusably bad and I ignored it forever after the first month or so. I’d much rather use a system made by dedicated experts. Example: Google Maps vs. our new car’s nav system. BMW elected to develop their own. And in the streets near our house, it has zero idea that a road that’s been there for over a decade exists, so it keeps screaming to make a U-turn and travel an extra six miles to get home. If it’s wrong there, where else is it wrong? Whereas Google updates its maps frequently and has given me flawless directions everywhere I’ve used it. Another example: I was a criminal defense attorney in one county in one state for two decades. I got endless questions from friends and clients about the law relating to divorces or civil suits etc. I had to tell them “you’re asking a plumber about the best shingles for your roof.” Related skill sets are not the same as true expertise on the matter under focus.

If ANet provided voice chat, it simply wouldn’t be as robust as dedicated voice servers in Mumble or TS, and they’d get no end of grief from dissatisfied users who expect it to be perfect.

LFG is one way to do it. But I want to make a standing offer:

Assuming I have not got a prior obligation or my own in-game goal at the time, I will be happy to take people through LS2 to experience the story on request (maybe not the moment it is requested, but scheduling can happen).

Advantage: You don’t have to pay and you get a guide who knows the fights. You can run around looking at things rather than relying on where a videographer chooses to point the camera, so long as your guide is patient.

Disadvantage: You don’t have control over the pacing of the dialogue other than asking the instance owner to go slowly so you can read it, and you can’t do the object interactions that advance the story. Also you don’t get the rewards etc, but this is about seeing the story with a chance to explore the area. No sudden surprises or getting to figure it out on your own, either, the guide will tend to take you to the right spots.

Any one chapter won’t necessarily take too long, but overall it will take enough hours that it can’t comfortably be knocked out in one session. LFG might help with filling in chapters if you want to continue and your guide is busy; the guide can join in at any point of the instanced parts.

Another possible disadvantage: I’m not sure that you will see the open world parts that bridge between instance areas. The clues in the SW desert will be there, but no green star helping you know where to go.

It’s the really huge building with two bright blue beams coming out the top with an airship sticking out of a large hatch way up high. I’m not in game so I can’t say which quadrant to look in, but you can see it at the end of the new LA video you get on first log in, which should be on YouTube by now.

I would love for it to have an amazing and accessible interior.

Setz.9675:

At the postern ward you have like 5-6 guild npc’s but they feel extremely out of place, as if they are private server NPC’s vendors . Could atleast give them a desk/workshop or something, feels very wrong/out of place/non-immersive considering the closed building behind them.

I think that must be temporary because the building behind them will be the instanced guild area and likely they will have places inside. For now rejoice that you don’t have to go through another loading screen to get to guild services, I guess?

The wiki will be a good friend to you, along with the “if only I knew” sticky at the top of Players Helping Players.

You can type in your chat box in game:
/wiki (subject) and it opens a window for you, so if you want to know how to, hmm, craft ascended armor, you type /wiki ascended armor — and boom, you’re at the relevant page.

I don’t remember the specs It’s the machine I had for GW2 launch, and it ran the game fine at that time. I replaced it with my current CyberPower in April 2014.

I did goof in my OP: my husband had suggested the Surface Pro 3, which has a lot more power than the Surface 3. I didn’t realize there were two things with similar names. I’m almost leaning towards that machine if it has USB ports for things like my mouse and if it can handle GW2, because it will be far more portable and less fuss than trying to get a full tower most of the way across the country.

We still have one Win7 license left to apply to a machine, I think, though maybe the Pro 3 wouldn’t let me have Win7 and I’d have to figure out Win8?

Khisanth is right. Target him and fire dash into him, the shield is gone.

I didn’t realize warhorn was possibly a thing until I saw this thread. My only concern would be aesthetic. Warhorns have very little variation in shape in this game. The only one that looks nicely horn-like imo is the Aetherized one which of course is no longer available by any sane means. I’d have gotten it long ago except I don’t bother to buy warhorns since my alts never use them.

Most warhorns are huge bulky things with clunky designs to differentiate one wide-flared curved cone from another.