Guild Wars 2

The Crow’s Nest is still there. Or rather, there’s a new one further west in the Commodore’s Quarter, all open air. I found it thanks to the karka hunt, but it’s a marked PoI on your map. It has the Captain’s Table, even.

I did the daily pretty fast last night and somewhere in there I got 3 spirit shards. I’m not sure if it was a drop or in a daily chest reward or in an embroidered bag from the SW chest in my home instance.

If you haven’t unlocked it it will be greyed out in Wardrobe. Go to your actual bank items and type “Incarnate” in the search window. If it’s there, you’ll see it. You can also type “Incarnate” in your personal inventory search.

The process is:

Buy skin in Gem Store.
Receive mail from ANet with item attached.
Take item from mail, it goes into your inventory on the alt you’re on.
Item is moveable from alt to bank, from bank to alt, though not to other players.
Incarnate is a set. You have to double click it to get the six pieces (make sure you have room in your bag). Then the pieces can be banked or used.
Double click an armor piece skin to apply to what you are wearing. This is a free transmute that uses up the skin. So do it on the alt you want to have it while wearing the armor you want to change.
OR right click (I think) and Add to Wardrobe. This uses up the skin without changing any armor and puts it in the Wardrobe for later use via transmute charges.

I don’t know if you could have deleted a mail containing items without a warning message because I never do that, I am obsessive about not deleting things or alts until I’ve stripped them bare of everything.

Anyway, retrace your steps in light of the above process and see if you find where your skin set went.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

See, what i read was that you couldn’t own both halls in order to have access to both new armor sets. It was explained that you would have to be a part of another guild in order to have access to the other armor set your original guild didn’t choose. Can you link the blog please?

I think it was also in one of the guild hall blogs but I found it in the ZAM article, linked to in Dulfy’s Livestream notes, in the text near the screenshot of the fountain.
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=36174

I love that my team did it without any walkthroughs or looking up of how-to. Though we did utilize two mesmers, one of whom stayed put as a “checkpoint” as we advanced. The other mesmer would port her to our next location when we got somewhere solid. Sometimes we all moved along as a group, but always making sure at least one mesmer stayed in a safe place as a backup for any falls we suffered.

On one occasion both mesmers fell and had to run the puzzle again to where we were. Otherwise it went quite well (I fell far too much for such an agile roof-running thief, but I’m not a superb JP jumper and it was getting past 1 am by the time we finished. I was groggy. At least I never fell to my death).

CorrynnStarr.7942:

Puma.7934:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Edited to add: Everyone will have to do the actual mission to capture the guild hall once per hall though no matter what.

So… can we have both guild halls?

no, you will have to be a part of at least 2 guilds to be able to use both types, including its armor/weapon sets.

According to the blog(s) you can have both halls. But you have to have them in sequence. Ie you can switch to a new hall if you want (very helpful down the road if/when they release new non-jungle theme ones) and carry over all your upgrades and decor, though you’ll have to reinstall the decor. Each switch requires you to go through the claiming process.

I assume that if you unlock the relevant skins you’ll still have them after the swap. This is only because that is how the wardrobe has worked in the past, not based on anything I’ve seen devs say.

I said it in the other thread, I’ll say it here, I 100% support this idea. ANet can pick and choose where the pads are set and where they go so as to limit the shortcutting to necessary business trips.

It just seems such a quintessentially Tyrian public transport system, and brand new cities do get designed with travel in mind.

It depends on how you define “earning” it. I think that getting people interested in helping you has its own merit.

Sorry for a slightly heavy bit here: I’m about to lose my dad to leukemia. I just spent the weekend visiting him. All the rest of the family is coming at intervals to keep him company to the end, and doing it out of desire rather than obligation. Dad earned that support by being a wonderful father, husband, and human being, a man that people want to aid and comfort.

If I get people to help me with JPs or guild hall claims or LS achieves, I feel gratified to know that they want to help me because I’ve been helpful and decent to them. In a game designed around teamwork, I’m grateful to find people willing to team up with me to accomplish goals and I will certainly feel I (and my guild) earned the help.

Double post!

Palador, as it was your idea, I suggest you make a [SUGG] thread on this to make sure it’s seen. I want this to be a thing in LA if it’s at all technically feasible.

/grins at Majic and points at her own post right after Palador’s

JINX.

I spent so many resources getting a zillion Daydreamer weapons and now I want just as many of the Gallants. The hammer is the must have of the lot. It’s a real looking warhammer, one people have been asking for over the years. And I don’t even have anyone who uses hammer except on special occasions!

I don’t feel the need to have every single Gallant weapon because some of them aren’t as perfect as the hammer, but if I had thousands of gold, I most certainly would complete the collection.

Palador, that is an amazingly fun idea. I’d go with the Tequatl pad system, though. You only get flung when you want and allowances needn’t be made for players aiming in strange directions. Plus you do get a safe landing, most of the time

I’m fine with not having access to the old version any more but have no deep feelings one way or the other. I’m responding to one part, though: the DR and Airship passes don’t split the player base because when you’re in one of those you’re still in the surrounding zone’s map chat. Since maps are big enough you can’t directly see everyone anyway, the fact that someone’s in one of those doesn’t impact your participating in discussion with them, and they can hop out reasonably fast if there are map events to deal with.

Thank you so much for the advice. I’m forwarding it to my techie husband so he can do a little research into possible systems, since he enjoys such things. (Although he’s a techie, he’s not a gamer, so he doesn’t focus in on game requirements when considering computers).

In one of the General Discussion threads a dev explained the reasoning behind the pre-set allocation of points and why the system doesn’t allow refunds of points.

It does mean a somewhat rougher time for alts who haven’t reached the next spec plateau, but was in the dev’s minds the least harmful way of accomplishing the changeover. There will always be rough moments in any major change

Check the next quote from Colin in that same thread. You just need others to join in and help, they don’t have to be in your guild. So even personal guilds should be able to claim a hall.

Mightylink.3816:

I hope they allow non guild members to join the group to fight enemies for your guild hall so you can at least get help for it, and if theres loot rewards as well that would give them inventive to help other guilds.

They will. Later in the same thread as the above quote from Colin, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/HELP-We-don-t-want-guild-mission/first#post5202966

“And no – you don’t need people to be in your guild to help you capture it. Bring friendly guilds to help you out, ask nicely in Lion’s Arch, etc.”

One time account upgrades have never been giftable, to avoid the repercussions of buying it for someone who already has it.

You might have to gift them enough gems, and spoil the surprise to make sure they don’t buy it themselves in the meantime. Or else do the pre-order yourself and send them the serial code at whatever moment you want to spring the surprise.

Now that’s a UI addition I see as useful far beyond any clutter concerns, especially as more time-dependent things enter the game, such as the Lion’s Shadow door.

tovadaun.6304:

So… From what I’ve read from Colin I hear this:
The Guild Challenge will be running as soon as HoT opens.
As long as you’re -in- the fight and succeed, you will open your Guild Hall (he stated that the extras in the challenge do not need to be -in- your guild to qualify your success).
This sounds to me like this:
Have one or two of your Guild’s members rush in with the larger Guild zergs during the first week or two. Be Helpful in defeating the Mord Lt. and claim your Guild Hall.

I think you’ve misread what he said. My interpretation is that whichever guild kicks off the claiming mission is the one that gets the hall. Look at current missions, that’s how it works. You can join in even unasked if you want to help but you only get commendations from helping if you tag to the guild that originated the mission.

Though hmm. You might be on to something. If you kick your mission off and head to the location, and others have done the same thing, maybe it works for everyone? I don’t know how instanced it will be once you’re at the precipice or cave, or how hard to get to the magic crystal to claim. Heck, I have to wonder about claiming, will it just need one person channeling or will there be a minimum number who have to gather around the crystal?

There is a Consortium office in the Commodore’s Quarter. One posh one, and next to it one full of cubicle desks. If you did the karka hunt, you shot a cubicle karka.

I’ll have to check to verify the cubicles are Consortiumites, but the posher office definitely holds them, they were in the blue and yellow outfits.

Otakun.1857:

The lobster is funny, but not really nice other than that. It feels more like an easter egg or a joke. Mainly, what I dislike is all that is in the center of the city =].

Moreover, where is the Lion? Shouldn’t the city be renowned as the Lobster’s Arch :p?

The lobster bothered me too a bit. But now it is completely redeemed in my eyes because while I was standing on a seaside ledge near it a tour group formed. The guide explained the building of the lobster in bitter tones because she wished a far better design had won the building contest. “Instead, we got this … lobster,” she snarls.

So if even some of the LA inhabitants consider it an eyesore, that makes it a much more real touch to me. Any major new city construction RL gets detractors, and sometimes deservedly so.

Plus the part of the JP where you inch along on cables strung around the “claws” adds a bit of … fear factor? … sense of scale? … hmm, I’m not sure how to describe it, just that the JP gave me a more visceral connection to the structure.

Kite.2510:

When was this implemented?
1-2 months ago I did some Personal Story for an Alt, and it took place on the destroyed LA.

It was implemented in yesterday’s patch. The details are in the patch notes. I’m psyched, I’ve been holding off on PS for quite a while now. I will have to find out which of my friends want to see the old version so I can bring them along on the PS for my alts who can still go there.

I spent 13 hours there. … I need to go to sleep now …

I love it tons. I spent 13 hours today in it (minus a food break). I haven’t been this jazzed for exploring a zone in GW2 for a long time. Everywhere I looked there was something new while the heritage of the city remained.

Maybe over time as I memorize the city it will shrink in my perception, but right now I feel like ANet took a stick figure sketch and fleshed it out. The old LA was supposed to house 40K residents, but all we saw were scattered buildings feeling like a seaside resort for a few hundred guests. Now we have urban areas, we have commerce and fishers all over, we have armaments and solid construction.

I do find the new lighthouse a bit jarring. I felt like I was trotting up the Hirshhorn Museum spiral. Yet it suits as a strong structure with asura tech lighting, something Tyrians likely would build for the purpose. And an exposed spiral presents far fewer camera issues in the ascent

Oh, five of those hours were on the JP with guildies. We just finished! The complexity of LA’s roof system really adds to the feeling of a good scaled trade city.

That’s really odd. You might want to post it in the Bugs forum. I just did the JP in 5 hours or so, with 3 guildies 2 of whom were mesmers (and one of those just hung out as a “checkpoint” to salvage our missteps). We encountered no bugs at all, let alone what you describe.

That’s a long standing bug though they are “close” to the fix. They have to carefully check it against affected accounts though, ie those accounts that got the title and skins and need to have them stripped away without wrecking the rest of the account. Check the Support forums for longer discussions.

(Oh, if you didn’t know, there was a patch with a bug in which anyone making a new character — or a lot of people making new characters — got mistakenly linked as GWAMM’s).

At least you can resize it once and then have the toggle button stay where your mouse is. As long as you aren’t someone who needs to resize your inventory window a lot, it’s not … that bad …

Yeah, I do hope better synergy between the two can be designed in.

Thank you so much! I found a bunch on my own, then discovered there were clues and found more, but I kept referring to your WIP for further hints on the ones that baffled me.

I think your jumping karka one in the Commodore Quarter doesn’t show the right aiming spot. I searched and found a German language guide that had a picture with a red x showing a slightly different spot and nailed it first shot there.

This picture, that is: https://screencloud.net/v/x3c0

I’ve only had a chance to look at Thief so far. Between the karka hunt, the new JP, and just running around to see all the cool things (which is also thanks to the Art Dept), I’ve spent over 11 hours in LA and not had time to do alt hopping.

Right now I’m waiting for guildies to get back to the 3rd JP chest so we can continue, so I have some time for forums.

Some time in the very near future, weeks to a month or two at the outside, I’m going to spend a month with my mom because we’re about to lose my dad. I don’t know how much time I’ll have to game, but I’d like the option. Here’s what I’ll be dealing with:

My dad’s computer is a Mac, so I won’t be using that. My mom’s computer is All Hers. She’s got decades of experience in computer security issues and is paranoid about contamination of her systems and networks.

I have to get whatever computer I use for GW2 from the east coast to Arizona, along with all the other stuff I’ll need for a month away from home.

I have got my old computer that I used to play GW2 up until April 2014. It got a corrupted registry at the end, but it is an option to ship it out there assuming it can be scrubbed well enough to satisfy my mom that it can be on her network. If so I’d ship it out in advance and find a monitor in Arizona.

My husband has noted that a Surface 3 isn’t that pricy. But he’s not a gamer, so I’m turning to you guys. How well does GW2 run on a Surface? Can I attach my Naga HEX to a Surface? My husband says the Surface 4 comes out in September, will the 3 be a bad thing to get now or will it have lasting use for future mobile needs? (I can’t wait to September for this purpose, as my dad is just hoping to make it two more weeks now so he can see all the planned visitors).

The price range of the Surface 3 suggests to me that it has a range of power in its versions; which one would be needed for GW2? I’m willing to use lower graphic settings during the month away, as mostly I just don’t want to totally lose touch with game happenings and RP plots.

Any advice on these points or other solutions I haven’t thought of would be welcome. I do have a back up 2TB Passport solid state thingie and have even put a copy of my GW2 folder on it, including the .dat, but don’t know if there are other files on my system I’d need or if the game can be run off the Passport via a USB connection, and would still need a computer with a robust enough system to handle an MMO.

Robyn Yew.6072:

Just saying. You get temp members to open ur guild hall. What happens when u have to defend it? As I saw from the luvestream it’s an on going thing……

I don’t think it’s ongoing. I think the “defend it” is lore, but mechanically a claimed hall is a permanent hall. A lot of people in the CDI (including me) expressed strong opinions that there should not be hall “decay” requiring constant attention to maintain one’s gained progress.

Regarding temp joining guilds, what I’m hoping is that the mission to claim the hall is like other missions currently are. A guild member has to kick it off, but then anyone can come help without tagging up to that guild. So OP, people might not need to agree to let others into their guilds (with possible bank theft issues etc) to get their aid. I hope it can just be a big cooperative effort. Or people could sell their help for gold (but sellers beware, a lot of players including me will be happy to join in for free) and be mercenaries for hire. RP potential: no game money changes hands but crack teams get “hired” to help clear out mordrem nests.

This isn’t the first time I’ve read about how hurtful internet vitriol can be to game developers. I take it, Savior, that you wouldn’t mind being pelted with epithets and refuse each day as you walk to work. Since you’re not a delicate flower like those silly ANet devs.

Criticism is expected and encouraged. Harassment is not. In my state, Harassing Course of Conduct is worth a few months in jail (oddly, Harassing Phone Calls carries years in jail … ). Being hurt by hateful calumny doesn’t make you a wilting flower, it makes you a human being who cares what others think of you and your work.

PlasticHippo.8934:

by unwanted ascended gear, will we be able to salvage all that for an item to put into the forge, so that the salvage items can stack? or will we have to keep all of those pieces around taking up tons of bank space to change stats later?

I think this is a direct conversion of one item into another. So you take your Leftpaw weapon, add the other mats including the new insignia/inscription/statholdythingie, Forge them all into the new item of the same type but different stats. Huh … spirit shards are a currency … how do they get used in the Forge?

Fast swap gear/build sets would be lovely. Alas, they said soon after the HoT announcement that they agree it would be lovely but are not working on it for HoT. I hope people keep suggesting it along with detailed ideas on the mechanics of the swap so that once ANet has time this change might possibly happen.

I thought they said Thief pistol range was extended. That might have been for Mesmer, though, as that’s the only part of the post-Twitch-shutdown video I’ve had time to watch.

I might be. Whatever it was I saw it a very long time ago and just once.

They don’t wait to reset for patches. This one’s a big one and those tend to hit later in the day but still usually 2 or 3 hours before reset.

I hope you mean the LA rebuild, not the PS — we don’t have an ETA on the PS yet. Check the sticky at the top of this forum for details on how that one is intended to work. LA, however, will get its airlifted modular buildings some time on Tuesday. I’ll be exhausted from travel but fully intend to be there and waiting for the patch. Barring emergencies that make me extend my trip, that is, as I’m not going for fun reasons

edit: Looking at the sticky, there’s a nice new post from Bobby in reply to someone sighing that the PS change isn’t in the patch notes: “The full patch notes haven’t been published yet.”

So maaaaybe we do get the PS change Tuesday after all!

In one of the blogs I read that the Guild Panel will include a button for fast travel to the Hall. Hopefully that includes non-HoT members, who just can’t step out of the Hall instance into the surrounding jungle.

The trailer seemed to be all about the Precipice version of the Guild Hall. However from blogs and some screenshots, there will also be a Golden-City-style cavern to use as a hall.

My guild is likely going for Precipice as fitting our RP plotlines better. Which do you guys prefer? (I know we haven’t seen enough of a preview of the Cavern to really judge its merits, though likely we’ll get some of that in the PoI in an hour).

I don’t know if I can watch the PoI myself, I’m heading to the airport in 1.5 hours, and as I won’t use my game password on my tablet I will be in forum read-only mode for a few days. Once the PoI YouTube is up I might manage to watch that this weekend (links will be welcome, tablet searching isn’t so smooth as on my PC). So I look forward to discussion on this. Entertain me!

Hedge.8760:

I’d hope that Anet would think of small guilds, since Guild Halls are a pretty huge selling point for HoT. I mean, I know they probably will forget about us smaller ones, since we weren’t included in guild missions, but still.. you can hope.

Also, having to recruit randoms to join your guild so you can do the event is a band-aid solution. I’d rather they design the system to scale, since it sounds like you’ll have to defend the Guild Halls later as well. If that event doesn’t scale, that’ll just recreate the earlier problem.

I read that “defend it” part as a lore thing. The comments on the mechanics of it all seemed pretty definite that any progress made on your guild is permanent. They even say that once you get to the glowy crystal the hall is permanently yours (until you choose to swap to another hall and take all your goodies with you).

Urban warfare ftw? It could be cool to make a PvP instance of it in the free-for-all style of Activities. And I don’t even like PvP!

OT, yes, any time you have the “last bastion” of a race you have a narrative invitation to wreck the heck out of it. I remember an animated movie, I forget the name — Treasure Planet maybe? — where humans were a despised nearly extinct under-race. I think Sylvari are getting that role in HoT but y’never know what can happen to others.

They’ve directly said it’s this Tuesday. Gaile posted a reminder so people can organize parties in LA. The info is in Events towards the bottom of the forums.

As to seeing the old LA pre-Scarlet? Once the PS restoration hits you should be able to see at least pieces of it in PS instances set there. You just need an alt that is early enough in the PS sequence.

I’ll join in the skins question. I have two Leftpaw weapon boxes I’ve been holding on to while deciding which weapons I want. Even though green is usually my favorite color, the green of the ascended weapons is my least favorite of all the ascended color options. That doesn’t mean I don’t want the skins, though! So if I convert them to other color choices/more useful stats, do I keep the green as well?

Also, so much thanks for this classy way of handling it. I wasn’t very happy about the alleged gap increase even though I personally don’t give a fig for having BiS, because it smacked of a huge departure from core philosophies. I’m quite glad it was unsubstantiated!

I’ve been wondering the same thing. Our guild is pretty small but over the years we’ve accrued a few hundred K influence. I’m thinking we want to see how many architectural upgrades we’ve unlocked, since whatever that special item is will appear and change at 1, 8, 16, and 24. If we have seven unlocks, I vote we unlock one more to hit the next tier!

It sounds like they want the influence to give minor boosts over time in the new system. And also it sounds like the unlocks carry over in that they become “craftable.” So you still have to spend the time and focus building them, I guess?

Merits, now, those sound like something to use up on influence-granting missions, since they’ll just poof.

That’s a pretty good summary of the reactions, and a nice appeal to reason at the end.

I take issue with one of the article’s comparison points, however, namely using ArcheAge as an example of what pre-purchasers got. The things offered were altered in actual play to lesser versions or outright removed without warning (the full length cape became butt length, the cash shop discount never materialized), and at launch they offered better packages to new purchasers, while strongly encouraging pre-purchase up to the very last moment.

ANet may have goofed up a bit, but they aren’t shady slimebuckets out to bilk their customers and encourage griefing and scamming as part of the game. ArcheAge should not be in any way used to show “better” business practices because that discredits the article author’s credible insight no end.

The switching info comes from the ZAM article (linked in Dulfy’s Guild Hall Live Stream notes). It says you can swap to another hall and all upgrades etc will transfer over though you’ll have to reinstall your decorations. But the question remains open as to whether you can just move in without doing the fight.

A simple move in might not matter so much in the context of the two starting guild halls with their similar claim processes. The Initiative could just say “hey, you’re doing great where you are but we’ve found another aether stone source and would love you to shift over to guarding it, our hirelings have done the preliminary hack and slash.” I assume, however, that over time more hall styles will emerge, possibly in other climates, and it would be a shame to forever miss out on the experience of claiming them just because you had one of the first two.

Goldberg.4831:

On top of what you have already reviled, add one dungeon with a story path and three explorables. And you can gladly take XX amount of money. Why you abounded these in the first place is baffling. One of the cooler concepts in mmo’s these days imo. I know I will get flamed for the same old crap, dungeon crowd is elitist (misinformed), stacking and skipping sucks (only a few bosses is this still and issue). I pvp, I wvw, I do random world bosses, but I also like dungeons, sue me. Or better yet cater to me.

I also enjoy dungeons as a subset of what I do and any time we got a new one to play in (such as Aetherblade in LA) I had a lot of fun chewing glass learning it. I’m fine with the ones we have, though. The “challenging group content” could be something that fills the same niche in a new way, who knows? I’ve seen plenty of innovation from ANet in their take on other tried-and-true MMO staples.

One suggestion: You may want to change “reviled” to “revealed” in your first line. The words have substantially different meanings.

RabbitUp.8294:

WoW doesn’t set the standard price. They have the largest MMO there is, on what base does any other developer ask the same price and offer you a much smaller community?

There is a certain base cost to producing an MMO. WoW has managed to get many many people to help pay that cost, and found a price point those people are willing to pay. With the money received from sheer volume of sales they can host an almost annual convention extravaganza, have simultaneous world-wide parties, run a gazillion servers, and employ ungodly amounts of people to churn out much more product. But they still have some minimum amount they have to make to cover their costs.

ANet is much smaller. So they have to charge more per customer (WoW far overcharges customers imo). Because at some point, charging too little per customer means not having the minimum resources needed. Let’s say a man needs $50 per day to remain solvent, to cover food, housing, and the chance to improve those necessities. He works as a painter. If he can paint 50 houses in a day, he can charge just one dollar each, the customers are amazed they got it so cheap. But if he needs two days to paint one house, then he has to charge $100 to make a living. The old cliche “How do we do it? VOLUME” has a real basis. There’s a reason handmade things cost so much more than mass-produced.

So on what basis? On the basis of if they don’t earn enough they’ll have to shut the game down or at least not create anything new and better for it.

Single player? Hardly. I play these games to hang out with friends and RP with them. Four of my guilds are RP guilds; three of them are mostly the same set of players, but each guild has a different RP theme/flavor. The fourth is inactive but made of my WoW friends so if they come back to GW2 they’ll have a quick way to find me and I’ll know they’re on line. (My fifth is my personal bank guild, so chat is irrelevant to that).

At game launch, my main RP guild was pretty close with another deep RP guild. Alas, we had a falling out some time after launch and went our separate ways. I think a lot of the reasons for that would have been there regardless. However, the lack of ability to chat with each other without hopping rep status contributed hugely to the lack of communication and definitely widened the rift.

Single player? Ha! This change is a boon to hooking up with people more easily. If your guild hasn’t got anyone on line when you’re looking to run a dungeon, say, you can peruse your other chats, find a team, do the run, and never stop repping the one you’re in. No more having to ask people one at a time off your friends list or guild panel or switching rep to broadcast a request.

Multiple guilds don’t dilute community. It is possible to have friends in more than one place.