Guild Wars 2

Well, the page that introduced the new log-in rewards said…

“materials necessary for crafting your legendary weapon (including mystic clovers)”

So clovers at the very least are included, and some undisclosed stuff as well.

Gulesave.5073:

It could also be an unskinned backpiece, like the straps you get at low levels. Ascended sinister stats without a new skin would be perfectly in line with the other items.

I don’t really see them giving out a free ascended back item like that. Every single ascended back item in the game requires massive grind or heavy crafting, so to just give one out for free like that (then allow you to buy more for 1000 crests) would be rather out of line with the other back items, even if it would be in-line with the other accessory awards we’ve gotten from LS recently.

I do hope we get some way to get a Sinister back item at some point, tho. And all the recently added stat combos for that matter.

Last year you got the Daily Bell Choir for just being in the instance when it ended. That meant you couldn’t leave before the final score comes up, but as long as you didn’t you’d get credit.

Not sure if they changed that this year. If they did and it actually does require you to get up on stage and successfully play one song… that’s still super easy.

I just ran through the first song and did literally nothing, and I only got kicked on the last few notes. Which means you only need to hit something like 3 notes total to finish it (as long as you don’t miss notes). With as slow as the notes are in the first round, I think that should be doable for anyone.

Some things to note as far as general tips, though… you get penalized for missing notes AND for playing the wrong notes. So don’t mash buttons or anything like that, you’ll only get kicked faster that way. Maybe just play the two center notes (4 and 6) and ignore everything else if you can’t handle watching everything.

Also, you want to hit the notes AFTER they pass the white line, not before or the moment they cross. You get more leeway pushing the note late than pushing it early, so take your time and don’t jump the gun.

I really don’t see why people are so up in arms about this.

I’m not going to go claiming that its “fair”, but its one day. One single day. Some people will get their daily login rewards one day earlier. Big deal. Its not like any of the rewards are exclusive to the daily log-ins, like those people will get some super special armor or something a day earlier. You have to wait one day for some laurels or luck or random crafting materials.

I don’t think its intentionally being “disrespectful” anyway, for that matter. I’m sure there’s some technical reason for it, something to do with the old dailies and the new log-in bonuses using the same variable or the system simply making a “has player logged in since last reset” check or something that ended up causing the issue. And hey, whatever the reason, at least the devs warned us about it beforehand and didn’t just leave everyone wondering why some were getting it and some weren’t.

I suppose they could have been “fair” and just blocked everyone from getting it until today’s reset. But you could turn it around then and say its unfair to the people who didn’t do their daily before the patch and thus end up losing the chance to get anything today.

TheAngryRogue.7182:

I never even got the first popup today. There really needs to be a way to view this at-will.

If you logged in any time after yesterdays daily reset and the patch today, you won’t get your daily login reward until after todays reset.

It would be nice if they at least gradually repaired SOME parts of the city. Fix a few buildings one month, fix the bridges another, ect. Right now the people are just hammering away with nothing actually happening.

They’re salvage items. You can salvage them for random cloth-based materials and “ugly” versions of the item (EG salvaging a Beautifully Knit Sweater might get you a few Gossamer Scraps and an Ugly Sweater).

They’ve never specifically pointed out a new collection related to Black Lion weapons, they just kind of show up every time a new set is put in. So I’m doubting that’s the 3rd one, though I suppose its possible.

Its a collection. If you only need one thing to trigger it, not much of a collection at all.

Plus, I don’t think it would even work with the coding. I assume the way the collections work is that it triggers on use of the tonic, when the game detects you’ve consumed it. Not when you happen to take the form of a random Wintersday thing. So the game would detect you using an Endless Wintersday Tonic, not a Princess Doll Tonic or whatever.

But yah, I second Khani’s question. How do you unlock this collection in the first place? I know the patch notes mentioned 3 new collections (and I assume this is one) but I’ve only found a way to unlock the Toy Weapon one.

You can already see the new interfaces, but ONLY when you first claim your logon reward. I can’t find any way to view them outside of that.

Which is a rather odd choice if intentional, or an oversight if not. You should be able to view them any time.

oshilator.4681:

I never farmed this, myself… but I honestly don’t see why it needed to be fixed/nerfed.

It wasn’t hurting anything.

Arguable whether or not it was hurting anything considering situations like the poster below described.

But even if it wasn’t, it was still out of line with the rest of the game. The ambients in every other city are non-hostile and non-attackable. So now these match everywhere else.

It showed up for me after I claimed my first login reward. Can’t figure out how to manually look at it after closing it at that point, though.

Nabrok.9023:

Electro.4173:

So I just checked the “calendar” in-game.

How?

Can’t figure out how to get to it separately (though I assume there is a way, at least I would think so), but I looked at it when I was awarded my daily. Once you click the chest it shows you the whole calendar until you finish claiming the reward.

So I just checked the “calendar” in-game. Looks like you get 35 guaranteed laurels every 28 days.

That in addition to whatever amount of laurels you get from the 28th day chest IF you choose to take laurels over the other possible reward choices (can choose from Ascended Materials, Legendary Materials, Laurels, or Tomes of Knowledge).

So I’d say its basically a wash if you don’t choose laurels in the final box. Technically its 5 less compared to a full month of old dailies / monthlies, BUT since its only 28 days per rotation that means you can get started on the next rotation earlier, so you basically make up the difference that way.

And of course, if you do choose laurels in the final box its an increase to the gain rate.

Its not a bug. During the early phases of Mordremoth’s awakening (back when Dry Top was new), Mordy started sending out vines to various waypoints. Some were wrapped up (which didn’t negatively effect them in the end, since we stopped them via the story), others were broken completely. Fort Mariner was one of the ones that got broken. If you go there you can see the pieces of the WP lying on the ground.

Mind you, I would still like it to be fixed regardless, just like a lot of the other broken things in LA. But its very much intended.

Hopefully its a bug. It was something they only changed very recently (with the last patch I believe) and at the same time there were a number of other odd things that started happening with the TP.

Yah, the ranged Teragriffs seem to be pretty tough to deal with. Can’t even reflect their projectiles or anything, its basically just a constant DPS drain on you. Its not super high burst damage, but it adds up over time, especially if there are other enemies around.

If there is a trick to them, I haven’t found it.

It also bugs me that they’re basically identical to the melee teragriffs visually, minus being a bit smaller. It’d be nice if they were a different color or otherwise had some sort of feature to differentiate them from the charging variety at a glance, without having to compare sizes (which only works if both are next to each other) or targeting them to read their descriptions.

You’re trying it using a character that has already completed the storyline once, right? You can’t get achievements on your first run through the LS segment, have to finish up all the missions in Echoes of the Past then go back to try for achieves.

Its character-bound as well, so if you finish it with one character then try to get achieves with the other that won’t work either. Need to finish the storyline with one character then do the achieves with the same character (or finish he storyline a second time with the other character then go for achieves).

I’m more than a bit dubious on the new system based on the small amount of information posted (mainly the screenshot).

Before, you had generic dailies you could mostly do anywhere. Kill stuff, dodge stuff, gather stuff, ect. Not specific items or locations, anything and anywhere. Sure, some areas were better for some dailies than others, but on the whole you could complete or at least progress your dailies anywhere. There were a few region-specific dailies (the regional killer ones) but those were always just one of a batch, so you could usually skip them. Which was good, because it meant that no matter what you were doing and where you were playing, you’d eventually end up getting your dailies done. And that was the point, it was an extra reward for playing the game in whatever way you chose.

This new system, though… it seems exactly the opposite of that. At least, again, based on the screenshot. Every single one of those dailies involves a specific activity in a specific region. Its no longer “do whatever you were going to do and you’ll get them done eventually”, now it seems like you’ll have to intentionally set out to specific areas and do specific tasks. Want your daily for the day on the day that screenshot is posted and you only do PvE? You’ll be travelling to no less than 3 different areas, and that’s assuming you’re already at one of them when you log on. You were planning on doing a bit of Dry Top farming that day? Well, too bad, nothing there can give you a daily, off you go to somewhere else.

It just seems to be contrary to what dailies were set up to be. Heck, maybe that’s the point, maybe Anet just isn’t happy with that system any more. Personally, though, I’d rather be free to do what I want to do and get dailies along the way than have a checklist of places I need to go and specific things I need to do.

That’s not to say there’s nothing good here. Its going to be great for the people who previously felt compelled to do EVERY daily for the AP, so that’s nice for those people. But that change could have been applied to the current Daily system just fine. More PvP / WvW stuff is nice, but it could have also applied to the current system as well.

Then again, I guess all the rewards from the “new” dailies (sans AP) are going to be new and separate from the current dailies anyway. With the old stuff going into the logon reward calendar thing. So maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. Maybe now all I need to do is logon and still do whatever I want, just ignore the dailies. The laurel is the main thing I do dailies for anyway. Though the AP is also nice. I’m hardly a huge AP follower, but its nice to work towards those chests at least.

Honestly, I’m willing to give Anet the benefit of the doubt and say that I doubt it has anything to do with Anet “not being able to keep up with the 2 week schedule” or needing extra time to finish the content.

I think the reasons for the break are Wintersday, and the fact that Anet as a whole takes a break starting the week of Christmas and ending sometime in January.

The former is an issue because it would divide the attention of players between multiple new things. And yes, they used to do festivals and content updates at the same time, but they haven’t really done that this year, so I think they’ve decided more recently that its better to just have 1 thing at a time, especially with the larger scope of the LS updates of late (with new content additions, expansion of the Silverwastes, and of course the story missions).

The latter is the bigger issue, because it means that any content pushed out would have only a few days of bugfixing at most before Anet goes on vacation. Which means any major issues that are a little harder to nail down and take a bit longer to fix might not be fixed at all before the vacation hits, which means putting up with a month of buggy content. Wintersday, on the other hand, has already been bugfixed since its pretty much the same as last year, so there should be a relatively low risk of anything like that happening with Wintersday.

Quality setting doesn’t matter. I have both my mine set to highest possible and I still see the “dummy clones” appear for a brief moment sometimes.

If it was the setting causing it, they would appear as dummies permanently, not just briefly. The brief dummy phase seems to just be related to the game “catching up” and loading the model.

I agree that in theory it shouldn’t be necessary to load anything since its just a clone of another already-loaded player, but I imagine the game doesn’t really differentiate between the two. Data to load is data to load, regardless of whether its already there on another form or not.

I thought for a minute and had thought maybe you were on to something, as I didn’t remember getting any shards recently either.

But the game immediately proved me wrong and gave me one today.

I had more trouble with the wind walls than the sand pits. The pits from the elementals are easy to see coming since they always happen when the elemental dies, so just range or condition them and its easy-peasy (not to say I didn’t slip up multiple times and melee the things to death >.>).

The pits the boss throws are a bit more of a problem since they come with very little warning (just a small hand wave), but after a while I noticed that he rarely (if ever) spawns sand pits unless you’re at close range, so then I just started to hang back at long range until he started tossing rocks, then dashed in with 2 for a few hits and ran back out. Caithe’s 2 skill does a ton of damage anyway. Either that or just stealth with the elite and he’ll never do anything at all, including sand pits.

The wind walls, though… ugh. They come with absolutely no warning cues whatsoever as far as boss animations and seem to be able to spawn anywhere. Had a fair few runs ruined by them spawning right behind me and giving me no time to respond, and when that wasn’t happening I was thrown off by the fact that they spawn at different times (sometimes during the “burn phase” on the boss, sometimes during the elemental phases, its anything goes).

Regardless of which part gives the most problems, though, I agree that its very frustrating thanks to the lack of a retry node forcing you to sit through the instance every time. And yeah, the individual reward sucks, but most of the individual rewards for the Story Journal are less than impressive (especially more recently) and basically just for building up AP and for getting you that final reward from doing all of them.

See, this right here is why I’m a terrible farmer. Something like this seems so simple, and yet I’d never think of it that way.

Yah, this is a very good point and one of the major downsides of forcing you into the role of another character. Rather than having different approaches to the instances, there’s one approach, one playstyle, and that’s it.

This achievement would be 90% less tedious if they’d put a reset node at the end of it. Having to sit through minutes of dialogue and 5 minutes of centaur mobs just to get another attempt at it is just annoying, especially when its so easy to make one single mistake and fail it. Its not the worst LS achievement in that regard, but its still annoying.

I really can’t fathom why they didn’t do that after the very positive responses to those nodes during Echoes of the Past (and the requests for such before that).

It also doesn’t help that most of the things you need to dodge come with little to no warning. The sand pits at the minion’s feet when they die, those are easy enough (though annoying given Caithe’s melee moveset). But the wind walls literally just seem to pop up whenever they feel like it with no input from the boss (it seems they USUALLY come when the boss goes invulnerable after a damage phase, but I’ve seen them come earlier), and the sand pits the boss summons only come with a quick hand raise from the boss as warning.

Given the fact that you can choose to just say “screw it, I’m killing you all” instead of actually stealthing, I have no problem with it. Forced stealth sections can be pretty annoying in games, but optional ones are cool.

I don’t really think the stealth was super well-done here, though. I mean, it gets the job done, and considering the game isn’t stealth-based I’m sure they had difficulties trying to cobble something together. But aside from the first section, all of them had some issues.

The second section with the golem and the switches seemed to imply that you were supposed to time your switch activations while the golem was furthest away from you and he wouldn’t hear them then, since Faolin says at some point “try doing it when the golem is further away”. But really, it seems he hears them every time and all you’re supposed to do is rush and hit both switches before it turns one off. Not very well communicated.

The 3rd section is just too much of a giant clusterkitten of stuff going on. From the end of the room you can’t really see everything and get an idea of what you need to do, and yet you can’t move any further into the room without being in the path of one of the patrolling golems. A safe spot or two in the middle of the room where you could watch patterns and such with a better vantage point would have been helpful.

The boss section, like the second one, is kind of unclear what you’re supposed to actually do. I, and I’m sure plenty of others, just figured you were supposed to break all the shield generators one by one. It makes sense, they’re generating the shield so if they’re gone, no shield. It never really gets across that you’re supposed to destroy the shield in advance of the boss teleporting around and have him step into the field. In hindsight I’m sure that’s what the cutscene is supposed to be suggesting, but it didn’t click with me until I’d already done it.

Also, the 2nd portion of the boss fights gets kind of ridiculously tedious. You’re still trying to time your generator destruction ahead of the boss but now you have to lure the guard away by pressing a switch, and in order to press the switch you have to wait for the 2 asura nearby to look away from you. Basically you’re rushing to “beat” the boss but you’re forced to wait sometimes extremely long periods of time (or what seem like extremely long periods) for the guards to look away, and by that time you miss the boss.

Sylvari and Asura would be my main races without the Charr. I always go for fantasy races, I get enough of humans in real life.

Its not treason vs the Pact. At worst, its a betrayal against you specifically, since only you and your group (and a handful of others) even know about the Egg. The Pact is getting ready for the assault on Mordremoth, not worrying about the egg which they don’t even really know exists. That’s your personal quest at the moment.

And heck, we don’t know if its treason at all yet. We haven’t figured out what she’s up to or what she knows.

As for the centaur slaughter… horrible as it is, I think the world has more pressing matters to attend to than some random Sylvari who killed some centaurs 10+ years ago. Besides, who would try her anyway? The Centaur tribe she commited the crime against is long gone (either she and Faolin killed all of them or they just died off / moved on afterwards), the other Centaur tribes probably couldn’t care less about it as they seem largely separated from one another, and there’s no central “world government” ala the UN or anything which could punish her on behalf of the whole world.

I guess maybe the Sylvari could punish her, but I don’t think that likely either. Caithe IS still connected to the Dream and the Pale Tree as far as we know, and she most definitely was prior to these particular events (seeing how she’s the one who appears to guide player-created Sylvari through the dream during their tutorial), so I find it hard to believe the Pale Tree doesn’t already know about her prior exploits. Especially since it was the Pale Tree who gave us the seeds and sent us on the quest to see Caithe’s past, which I assume means she knows about her past AND knows or at least suspects it may have something to do with her current location. And if the Pale Tree already knows, then either Caithe has already been punished or the PT has decided not to punish her.

The way it faces you now makes perfect sense, considering its a waypoint meant for going to the harbor (hence the name). Which is that way.

The fact that the Forge and stuff happen to be near there is secondary and only happened after the city was destroyed (originally, there was really nothing of interest in that area).

I’ve never really had a problem with the “tag and leave” thing.

I mean, I don’t doubt it happens, I’m not at all claiming it doesn’t. In fact, I’m positive it does. But it doesn’t happen to the point where it ever becomes an actual problem, in my experience. There are never (or very rarely) so many people doing it that the events don’t complete. There’s always people who do stay and finish the event. Because if no one completes the event, then no one gets rewarded.

The whole breach taxi situation, though… that I definitely notice constantly and cannot stand. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I actually LIKE the Silverwastes. I like working together with the map to capture and hold forts, move supplies, ect. That sort of coordination and working together is very fun to me, especially since I don’t do PvP / WvW, so I don’t really get that experience too often in PvE.

But actually doing that is becoming increasingly difficult, because everyone just taxis to the next map close to breach instead of actually sticking with the map and doing the events all the way through. I’ll be in a full map with a nice population, plenty of people, complete the breach, complete the maze, and then… the entire map just implodes. What was previously a full map with every fort turns held at level 3 turns into a map with so few people that you’re lucky if you can actually hold 2 forts. What was once a good 10+ people defending each fort turns into me and one other guy feebly trying to hold off half a dozen teragriffs while having rocks rained on our heads from outside.

I mean, I get it. Rewards-wise, why stay on a map for 30 minutes doing events which only give a few bandit crests when you can jump on LFG and do 3+ breaches in that same amount of time, especially when you need to do dozens of breaches to get all the parts you need. Its just a shame the normal map dynamic is being killed off because of it.

Mere.9352:

I can’t even exit the instance to start over! All my armor is broken, no matter what I do I never have the knock out option for the second part – so I’m not sure what is going on in my game.

Any thoughts?

Not sure what’s going on with the lack of a knock-out option, but if you want to leave any instance without completing it, simply go back to character select.

Cherokeewill.7504:

IIRC, Caithe was not at the summit and may never have reported what she saw to the Mother Tree due to her guilt over being complicit in the slaughter of the innocent Centaur Tribe. The only other witnesses would be the Secondborns, who were so close to death they might not remember anything, and Faolain, who noone would believe anyway.

Caithe was at the summit. She never had any dialogue or anything (unless you talked to her anyway) but she was the last one during the processional and off to the side during the actual speech your character gave, as well as defending the Pale Tree when the mordrem attacked.

As for the idea of Phlunt being the one who was experimenting on the Sylvari… nah. That would be a bit too coincidental and contrived, I think. Its already contrived enough that Canach happened to be there. Besides, as much of a jerk and a tool as Phlunt is, I don’t think he’s inquest or into Inquest-esque experiments.

Novuake.2691:

You need a specific unlock item to enable the merchant to sell you the leggings.

You can get the item via random drop on the map, its a pretty common drop.

Or you can do one of the achievements on the map to get it, think its the Bandit event achievement, can’t remember the name now, but has something to do with Scrit and bandit event.

The event gives you an item that unlocks the ability to buy the boots, not the leggings. Its the event that involves clearing out the bandits from the Skritt lair in the northeast part of the map.

I don’t think they’ve actually confirmed that the next patch will ONLY be Wintersday, so I suppose its technically possible we’ll get another LS as well as the start of Wintersday.

However, I’m not sure how likely that is, since at least this year we tend to only get 1 event at a time . Either LS or a holiday event.

And also, I believe Anet usually starts their holiday break sometime in the middle of December, and that wouldn’t leave much (if any) time for them to push fixes for any content they release on the 16th. Lack of fixes probably won’t be a huge problem for Wintersday alone, since they’ve already confirmed its basically going to be last years content returning and that’s already had a live fixing period. But if they push out another LS episode at the same time… well, being unavailable for bugfixes could be a very big problem indeed.

I’d throw my input into the mix, but I have yet to loot a single Carapace Armor box period.

That said, the first 2 weeks shoulders were the only things you could get anyway, and even during the last patch there were only gloves or shoulders. Pants and boots were only added yesterday, and I doubt you’ve gotten 4 drops within a day (if you have, I hate you :p). Its not at all impossible for a 50/50 chance to come up 3-4 times with the same result.

I’m surprised there isn’t a reset mote, given the reception to those in previous instances being extremely positive.

Give it a few days for people to clear the story, story achievements, zone exploration, and such, and it’ll pick back up again. People tend to knock those things out first before they return to the “regularly scheduled grind” as it were.

I’m guessing they just don’t want people to forget about him, and are building up to something exciting.

I’m betting that its going to be the same model as the Hourglass from the Glint Lair instance. It was pretty cool looking, and why not use an asset already in the game.

I assume its a typo, yah. It would make no sense for all the others to be T6 mats except the wood, especially since T5 wood remains one of the cheapest materials out there (and I assume these are supposed to be nice bonuses).

That actually sounds pretty handy for determining what new items you’ve gotten recently. But it shouldn’t be so strong as to block what item it actually is visually.

The common use of the LFG tool is for the people advertising to be putting together a group on them, not for the people advertising to be looking to join someone elses group. Not to imply that anything else is necessarily wrong, but the largest number of people are going to be expecting to be joining in on the advertiser, not for the advertiser to want to join someone else.

So yah, unless your message is 100% clear that you are NOT the thing you’re looking for, then you’re going to get people who join on you thinking you have what you’re seeking. Probably get some even if it is perfectly clear.

Its also possible that some people join you because they’re also looking for the same thing you are and are hoping to stick around in the group until the person with that does come along. Tagging along, essentially.

Its not a true harvesting node, seems more akin to something like a chest that just spits out items daily, so it doesn’t seem to play by the same rules as a node. Which applies to both your points, really. Stuff like chests don’t disappear off the map when you open them.

They could change it so that it did, but I’d hesitate to call a it a bug. At most its an oversight, and it may even be the intended behavior.

Yes, the reason you can’t put an Exquisite jewel in is because its a level 78 item. Exquisite jewels can only be put in level 80 gear.

One of the crafted back items like the Elegent Jeweler’s Pack and a level 65 jewel is better than a normal Exotic backpiece with an Exquisite Jewel anyway, though. So its not really a bad thing. Just a bit confusing, perhaps.

There are no rules on putting an upgrade in and changing later. You can always slot a new upgrade into an item, it’ll just delete the old one.

First Karka, then Crab Toss, now this…

I think someone at Anet has an unhealthy obsession with crabs.

I’d prefer equipment with unique skins to titles, personally. I would be absolutely thrilled with some sort of Amber-themed back item for completing the Ambrite weapon collection, for instance. But yah, a little extra something to display would be nice.

But not for BLC collections. They already give you a number of tickets, and like you said, more incentives would only mean the price would keep going higher and higher. Its high enough as it is just to buy one or two weapons with people trying to complete the collections.

I want new pets so badly. There are a multitude of animals and magical creatures in GW2 that have no pet version, and I’d like to see all of them at some point. The top of my list are Wind / Breeze / Reef Riders, Skales, and the new Beetles found in Dry Top. But seriously, add pretty much any new pet (that’s not just a reskin of one of the current ones) and I’ll be happy.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure if / when it’ll ever happen. The thing is, pets are in kind of a weird place where they’re 100% Ranger specific, and other classes have no equivalent to them. So adding new pets to the game is completely exclusive to Rangers, and other professions really have nothing they could add at the same time to “even it up”. And the devs have said before that they prefer to add stuff that applies to the highest number of players, not just specific groups.

I guess maybe the best chance for it would be during a major feature patch, probably one which added new skills or weapons. Rangers would still get pets on top of other stuff, but the other professions would at least get new stuff to play with at the same time as well.

The OoW pact representative, Doern Velazquez, is the only one of the 3 order reps who actually appears in the Pact camp during the story segments. He’s not directly involved in any of the dialogue or anything, but he’s off to the side (by where the people are practicing on training dummies).

So that’s something I guess.

It was fixed ONLY in the maze, though. The mobs in the boss instance still triggered nothing.

I understand the little minions summoned by the boss not giving anything, certainly. The other enemies in the instance (the vines and deformed teragriffs before the Thrasher mini-boss) should have, though.

So its a step in the right direction, but not quite there yet.