Guild Wars 2

nsochoa.6589:

I feel like I should add that thief has plenty of traits that heal it by attacking so maybe read into them. I know I’m being rude, but I dont like people who complain at the presence of a slight challenge one bit.

I think some people don’t know about the traits/skills/food that heal thieves when they attack, but google is there to help. It’s when you run out of targets and have a condition that dodging cannot cure when you get into trouble.

I did it with my thief with double pistols, because…why not. The hounds didn’t even get to me, or I didn’t notice because one Unload almost fills up my health bar. With the Thieves Guild’s help, a hound was done before I recharged initiative after the fourth Unload. Stupid me tried to kill them only from the air though for the first 5 minutes because I thought they only get damaged by the special skill. That’s what we learned on the way down, right?

Only thing that sucks with thief are one-shot kills, but in this fight, there were none of those.

Hevoskuuri.3891:

And before anyone says you don’t need Ascended in those game modes, you don’t really need it in any gamemode at all. That’s a poor argument, since everything is, after all, doable in exotics.

Well, you definitely need it in higher Tier Fractals for the Agony Resistance slots, other than that, exotic is fine.

Levelling a craft is fairly cheap and fast, can be done within the 2h duration of a crafting booster and maybe 25 to 30 gold, if you are low on iron and hard wood. Then comes the expensive and tiring part: crafting the ascended item. With the restriction that some materials can only be crafted once per day and the huge amount of raw materials you need, that’s something that requires either patience or gold. If you have some materials and 100 gold, you can go from zero to ascended weapon within 3 days (6 days for 2h weapons). The bottle neck are the time gated items, otherwise you would be done within 2h 30m. If you have some more gold, you can simply buy the time gated items from the trading post and be done with it that quickly. Then spend another 10 gold for good signets, and maybe another 18 if you need Agony Resistance.

I really don’t think that’s too hard. I played my character almost 500 hours and crafted two ascended weapons, and have ascended trinkets. Remember people, this is a long term game…

I find it actually too easy to max crafting.

I’m not talking about ascended armor, haven’t done that yet

Pifil.5193:

Faaris.8013:

It’s fine for me to have them in the material storage, only thing I noticed is that you don’t see how much of the stuff you have when you are at a vendor. The item you desire just shows red but you don’t know if you need 1 more Berry or 100. I use gw2efficiency for that, but would be nice to see how many of the items you have while being at an Unbound Magic vendor without bank access.

If you click on the item you’re interested in then the status bar at the bottom of the merchant window show that information.

So if you select something that costs Unbound Magic and Winterberries the status bar at the bottom of the merchant window should show your current amount of Unbound Magic and the total amount of Winterberries you have in your inventory, bank and material storage.

That’s how it worked before, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t show the winterberries anymore if they are not in your bag slots. I’ll check later when I’m home and can log in.

It’s fine for me to have them in the material storage, only thing I noticed is that you don’t see how much of the stuff you have when you are at a vendor. The item you desire just shows red but you don’t know if you need 1 more Berry or 100. I use gw2efficiency for that, but would be nice to see how many of the items you have while being at an Unbound Magic vendor without bank access.

According to this current thread, it means you get a piece of armor every 2.5 or 3 days.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Best-farms-for-gold/first#post6573446

Doesn’t sound ridiculous to me.

liltree.4872:

I have completed every single chapter of my personal story and defeated Tequatl and the Karka Queen, and I have a grand total of 6 Central Tyria mastery points. Certainly doesn’t add up to me.

I think that is easily explained. The HoT story rewards don’t go to the Tyria Masteries, but to the Maguuma. You get Tyria Mastery points for doing the Living World story.

I think they would have to rework all the old mobs to counter that, otherwise people would just perma-glide and grind them down. I did that a few days ago in Bloodstone Fen on a champion, using the bouncing mushroom to get into the air, shoot at it until I land on the mushroom again, and so on, until it was done. It had no chance to hit me except the short moment it takes for the new jump.

We would do that to the Legendary Wyvern in Verdant Brink and lots of others.

It sure is possible, but there are a lot of things that have to be changed to balance it.

This person put a bet on the market, nothing more. He can lose or win, maybe there will be other sources of AG with the next patch

Also, I really think most people never put those up on the Trading Post, so I doubt that the demand will be as high as he expects. Of course, I could be totally wrong and miss out on an opportunity, but my gut says don’t do that gamble.

OriOri.8724:

I never understood why game companies were so hesitant to post that information.

Because it’s sensitive business data. You don’t expect other (successful) companies to give away that kind of information.

Also, people would constantly post that the game is dead because of a seasonal drop in active players. Simply because they don’t have the full picture. People usually aren’t good with numbers, especially big ones.

TheMagickDoll.7594:

Just like those crappy gambling boxes aka Black Lion Chests.

That’s true. If you know you tend to gamble, this game is not for you. There are several gambling aspects, mystic forge, Skritt Ectoplasm gambler, those things you can buy from some karma vendors that have an item in it or not.

I have 33 Black Lion Chests and no key. Of course those chests drop more often than keys…

I’m not a gambler, so I’m not even tempted to buy keys. I will never gamble with Skritt and never drop exotics into the mystic toilet and hope for precursors, or buy salvagable stuff and hope for good drops after salvaging. The people who sell those instead of salvaging themselves are no gamblers either, they will win and the buyers lose.

But this is different from the controlled scarcity that ArenaNet uses to distribute dye or skins. Those are rather gold sinks. And when they notice that there is too much currency, they put them up for sale. In a way, the Skritt is also a gold sink, but when you buy dye or a skin, you get what you pay for guaranteed.

I’ll add another one I just noticed while looking through my stuff.

Apparently, I got “Dry Silver” Dye at some point, and being clueless, I just double-clicked it and it’s part of my collection now. Not that I have used it on anything.

I just learned that I could have sold it for 200g at the Trading Post…

Got it, thanks. I wanted Berserker, nothing “exotic”, so I didn’t even check if there are karma traders who sell different stat combinations.

Wanze.8410:

I think Anets goal with HoT was to make exotic armor harder to obtain compared to vanilla exotics to better reflect the time investment they intended for it.

Can you explain that to me please? I don’t understand the difference between exotic armor I bought with karma and exotic armor one can craft. I know you get no resources back when salvaging them, but is there any other difference other than looks? Is the karma exotic not as good as crafted exotic? Can people even see if you are wearing crafted or bought armor, if you can use your wardrobe to change the looks?

Thanks

Risto.5741:

….i spent 4 hours with help from another player…

I think that needs some more detail, since most people here will have a hard time understanding how that could happen. I cannot imagine a setup that would lead to this result. How often did you have to restart the fight? There is something weird you did and I’m curious what is was.

The game is definitely on sale these days. The basic version has cost 45 Euros 2 months ago when I bought it. Now it’s 30.

Obtena.7952:

Anet has done exactly the correct thing here; allow players to take more control of the market by introducing more bandwidth to farm. The market will dictate the price all goods in it; it’s completely self-regulating.

Sorry, but you are contradicting yourself here. ArenaNet acted deliberately to control the market by adding more hardened leather to the economy (Centaur farm in Lake Doric for example). That is the opposite of “it’s completely self-regulating”. It is not self-regulating if the world’s god feels the need to intervene in the economy. That’s like saying the French agriculture economy is self-regulating while recognising that it is heavily subsidized by the government.

I think ArenaNet is doing a good job balancing the economy btw, in most games, it’s too easy to get currency, and that’s no fun either.

Pifil.5193:

…you will need to craft quite a lot of exotic armour to get your crafting level up to level 500 in order to be able to craft ascended armour.

I googled around for ways to get the crafting up from 425, and stumbled over this video:

It’s 2 years old though, might be outdated. Is it not possible anymore to level up from “discovering” things by using inscriptions I got from salvaging exotic items? I hoard exotic weapons and armor I loot for this purpose.

Pifil.5193:

• I can buy one for 42,000 Karma from Keeper Jonez Deadrun.

Serious question: I am rather new to the game and that’s where I got my armor from. Why would anyone argue about crafting if you can get stuff that is identical to crafted for 250k karma? After only 2 months in this game I had over 800k karma before I made the purchase.

Crafting your exotic armor is purely optional. I won’t bother doing it because if I spend all those materials, then it will be for ascended stuff.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

If you are running out of storage space, it’s worth investing a few hours in learning how to better manage your inventory. There are a number of different strategies and tools that already exist.

Even with good inventory management, at some point (and that’s soon) you run out of room, hoarding stuff you cannot sell. My latest mule has 92 slots and is mainly filled with Dragonite Ore, Bloodstone Dust and Empyreal Fragments. Those alone fill 64 slots in my account. If you want to play your other characters, filling their inventories is not a good solution either.

I am only playing for 2 months, I cannot imagine how people do it that are here for years. Do you just destroy the materials? I’ll probably start selling mithril, thick leather and elder wood because I can buy them again when needed. But this just means we are all using the trading post as storage. Upgrading the material storage with gems is not worth it because storage shortage is only caused by those 6 materials. I’ll soon start turning dust into bricks, but those will eventually fill up slots too.

I admit, I’m a bit of a hoarder though. I should probably sell the surplus exotics I loot, but I want to keep them for salvaging when my crafting level is up.

cyn.2157:

I assume the ‘no in-game gifting of gems’ is there to ensure the TP gets its conversion claws into things, or to disincentivize the act of people from pooling their remnant/leftover in-game currency (there’s a term for the ‘problem’ you run into with in-game currency when you have, for e.g., 100 or even 15 gems lying around – it’s a good problem for the store to have, because you’ve got potential value there, but you need to give them more money to realize that potential – which keeps you coming back.) – crumbs? something clever and humorous like that…

At some point I had 170 gems and only one chapter of season 3 left to buy, which costs 200. Did I buy another 200 or 400 gems? No, I traded gold for exactly 30 gems, and now I have 0 gems lying around.

It’s easy to not buy more gems than you need for the item you desire.

Got lucky and looted Tequatl’s Hoard, picked the revolver. Wanted to turn it into Zojja’s Revolver for Berserker stats.

Checked a Youtube video on how to do it to make sure I’m not messing it up, then bought “Zojja’s Berserker Inscription” for 60g. Then realized that I actually need “Berserker’s Orichalcum Imbued Inscription” which costs only 6g.

I’m only playing this game for 2 months and 60g is a lot for me. Guess now I have to max my crafting to use the Zojja’s Inscription
——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Started a new character and while slaying worms at level 2 for the Heart quest, I noticed someone follows me and always starts hitting the same worm. I thought “well, fine for me, there’s no kill stealing here and together we kill those things faster”. Then I realized I’m playing a Mesmer.

mauried.5608:

Well, after 22 goes at this mindless event, Im giving up.
I cant even get past the first room with the jade constructs as they kill me in less than 5 seconds, and are now not possible to evade.

You can run to the entry hall, there’s enough room to fight. And if you didn’t finish the chapter, Canach will join the fight. Only downside of this is that you spawn right into the battle when you die. And maybe bring some trash armor if you don’t have repair canisters.

Or better just get a couple of other players who want the achievement and do it in a group.

Plautze.6290:

I finished the fight after dying maybe 4 times (which I consider to be many times). After that, I tried to collect all the letters. Needless to say that I left the mansion naked except for my helm. That must have been a sight. A naked dude wearing a helmet and carrying a bunch of letters. The fight itself was pure hate against the game but eventually, when I feel particularly strong, I will try again.

Walk of Pride :P

Ardid.7203:

Narcemus.1348:

It’s going to be the subject of a raid, and all the lorehounds who aren’t good enough to raid, or don’t have time will be stuck on the sidelines raging against the raiding community because they get all of the interesting stuff that we’ve always wanted to experience.

AND raiders will not even value it.

They will auto-click to the end of all story-animations and will never know what that specific NPC has done to deserve death, because you get more gold/minute that way.

Cyninja.2954:

…can’t stay focused on 1 task for 15 minutes at a time.

That would be the person who starts fights with Veterans while his main objective should be harvesting berries ^^

I don’t feel bad not joining fights, I happily cover everybody at the bush with Shadow Refuge. If you start hitting mobs, it’s your decision.

So I got to fight Caudecus this weekend. I found the first part harder than the second with the spinning room. That second part took about 10 minutes, and having the camera set to show my character from the top made it easy to avoid red circles, pick up those crystals and see the trash mobs.

I set a mouse button to click the counter magic icon and knew I had to look out for it to pop up.

In the current version, that fight is not harder than, let’s say, Mordremoth. The Jade Constructs are more deadly than Caudecus.

What really is hard in this story part is getting the letter achievement. Seriously, you pack Jade Bows into those small rooms?? If you plan on getting that achievement solo, make sure you bring some repair canisters or fight naked, because there is no anvil around.

One tip: Get the achievement before you go upstairs to Canach to finish the story. As long as Canach is waiting for you, you can pull the enemies to the mansion’s entry hall. Canach will join the fight and even resurrect you. You can probably let him do the whole job while stealthing yourself, but it might take a while. If you stealth yourself to enter the rooms and pick up the letters, you will spook the NPCs (because the door opens) and they will roam around afterwards and even show up in the entry hall.

I stopped after 11 letters and will do the rest at another point of time, together with other people who want the achievement.

On a last note, I used random dumpster armor (whatever I looted while playing the game, with a different rune on every armor piece) for everything up to yesterday, where I finally turned some karma and gold into decent armor with good runes. And boy that makes a difference! I’ll redo some encounters with my new armor, it should be much easier. Thanks ArenaNet for good balancing of stats on characters. I wasn’t really aware how much of a difference it makes until I tested the new armor on mobs. I even started getting aggro in champion fights.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Faaris.8013:

I agree that it could be better communicated.

Perhaps by sending e-mails each time there was a new episode released, informing you that it would be free to unlock until the next one came out?

That wouldn’t have helped me because I only bought the game 2 months ago. They could add a package that includes Season 2. There are 3 packages you can purchase, none of them mentions it. If there was one package that has a bullet point “Personal Story Season 2 included”, that would have told me that there is something important that is not included in the cheaper packages and needs to be purchased.

I’m not against having payed content at all, I happily pay for the fun I have with this hobby. There are much more expensive ones around

I just say it could be better communicated that Season 2 needs to be purchased extra.

You can see how long the Elixir works, for me it was 9 hours (until 2am). I recommend getting the Mastery Point in that area and the diver achievement while you are at it.

I had to brew that stupid elixir again and know your pain. At least I found a way to travel to it via Thermal Tube.

What shocks me more is that brewing the Elixir is part of the daily for that area. I highly doubt that anyone brews it for the daily. It practically means there is no daily completion achievement in Bitterfrost Frontier.

I agree that it could be better communicated. I purchased the game key around the same time you did (HoT), and I didn’t even consider that there could be locked content. Not even the most expensive package has LW2 included, only in the second step of the purchasing process you cann add this season (for 16 Euros atm). But at that point, I didn’t even know how the game and the story works.

Then, ingame at some point I noticed that Living World 2 was completely locked and that only the last chapter of Living World was unlocked. I did buy gems to unlock all chapters, and traded some gold to get the amount of gems I needed instead of buying surplus gems.

I don’t find it expensive though, and had I known it beforehand, I would have purchased it with the game key. The way it is done caught me a little bit by surprise though.

Pifil.5193:

Ah yeah, he’s using the Fused Molten Sickle it and the Consortium Harvesting Sickle take about half the time normal sickles do. I think that the other gem store sickles are the same speed as a mithril or orichalcum sickle.

The time savings are great and it means that you can often get in and out without being hit by the lumbering trolls.

Thank you, I think the convenience those items provide is well worth the money. I wasn’t aware they have different speeds. Before I buy them, I’ll make sure to learn that.

Good to have discussed this, I see now where the “5 minutes” come from.

Pifil.5193:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7_U9jcHyzw

This is pretty much the route I take, the video is 6:43 long, the first 30 second and last 40 seconds are getting into position and the guy showing what he got which leaves a run that hits every berry bush in the north west of the map and takes 5 minutes 33 seconds or so.

I watched the video. That guy swings at a bush and has the berries. I don’t know which buff or sickle he uses, but it takes 3 times as long with a normal sickle. That makes the difference because in that additional time, the mobs get more opportunity to slow you down. When the griffons show up, he’s already gone from the spot.

Seriously, I would love to have that speed when gathering stuff, do you know if the gem store harvesting sickles are faster than the normal ones? Or if one of the buffs he uses speeds it up? Otherwise I am thankful for the Necromancers for keeping the berry nodes free from aggressive mobs.

Pifil.5193:

It takes about 5 minutes to do a “berry run” that gets about 50 berries and 400-500 unbound magic so about 20-25 minutes to run 4-5 characters through there (assuming you have that many level 80s) to get a ring. Let’s call it 30 minutes. Not too bad, IMO, you’ll also get some loot from the mobs that’ll attack you.

You are obviously not talking about Winterberries, otherwise you would not claim it takes 5 minutes per run, including killing mobs for loot. With my thief, often in stealth mode and with basically perma-dash, it takes me maybe 15 minutes, without killing anything and not including the 3 nodes outside the main berry area. If you collect some wood, unbound magic and ore on the way, it takes longer (and there is an orichalcum node that you don’t want to ignore).

It’s still not much “work” though for the rewards compared to rubies or petrified wood.

Linken.6345:

Maybe you should listen to them again?

Will do that as soon as I’m home, if I confused them, sorry about that!

Kako.1930:

Lol, if all the characters had the same voice and personality it would be boring. With variety comes things you don’t like as well as things you do. It makes us appreciate the characters we do like even more.

Well, if that was a priority for ArenaNet, why is there only one female voice for the characters you play? I was quite surprised to hear the same voice when I created my second female human, but thought “well, maybe they had one voice actor per race”. Then I created a female Asura, and guess what, same voice!

There is only one reason for ArenaNet to do that: saving money. Seriously, are voice actors so expensive? Time cannot be the issue, since the whole recording process can be done in parallel. How long does it take to record everything a character says in the story? A month? 2 months? In a game of that scale, I really have no tolerance for saving maybe 20k by copying & pasting the same voice on every character and race.

There is a way to fix that though. Hire a couple of voice actors and do the recordings, then add choices to the character creation process and to the ingame options. I would even switch the voice of my Asura after having started to play it.

The voice is a major part of a character, not just a little detail. If you live in a country that translates all series and movies into your own language, and then you start watching the originals at some point in your life, you know what I mean

sobachiekishki.9204:

Is there or will there ever be a garbage basket in the game?

No!

If they did that, we would use it as storage.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Anyway, I’d suggest putting it somewhere close to hand so you can push it instantly it pops up anywhere, and just getting into that habit.

Evil as the designers are, I’m surprised they didn’t make the icon pop up at random locations all over the screen.

Best way would be to have the sound triggered everywhere this icon is needed, like with the Jade fights. Without that sweet sound I would miss it almost every time because I have to focus on a lot of other things in those fights.

Also, we trained our brains for years to ignore pop ups on the screen. After 20 years using the Internet I’m basically banner- and pop up blind.

It is interesting that the designers haven’t thought about that. Or have they?

I only have my thief Herleve at level 80, and she’s using double pistols. Yes yes, I know Dagger/Pistol gives more dps, but I love P/P, so I’m not changing it for a little more damage. So far I managed to solo all story content with her, so that’s fine.

I think it doesn’t matter much which class you use, you should be able to play your story with any of them. And this thread is not about creating a decent build or about people failing because they don’t dodge. If you made it to Mordremoth or Caudecus, you already have a grasp of the boss encounters.

Djinn.9245:

In real life, the entire group would be brought up on charges for keeping this information from the Asuran government during a time of war. But in GW2 Taimi’s research will save the day so everyone will overlook what she did and how we helped her hide it. This is why the Taimi writing is nonsensical.

In real life…

This is a story, if it followed real life logics, it would be a boring story. A lot of things mentioned here fall into the category “Rule of cool”.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

Stated another way, all but the most pedantic of viewers will forgive liberties with reality as long as the result is wicked sweet or awesome. This applies to the audience in general; there will naturally be a different threshold for each individual. Also known in some circles as a “rad herring”, in which something doesn’t make sense within the guidelines of the story’s reality, but it’s too cool not to include it.

If your “real life” logic applied to stories, most of them would end after the first chapter, or we would never learn about them in the first place because they would die before anyone reads them.

Mahou.3924:

Faaris.8013:

Personally, I would like to have a choice. A difficulty level for the story bosses that I can select. There is already the idea of it implemented, with the achievements. They could have designed it so you only pass “The Sky Is Falling” if you “complete the instance without being damaged by falling bloodstone shards or their explosions.” They chose to not do that but let you succeed even if you get hit a few times. For those who decide to challenge themselves, they implemented the achievement. And those achievements provide Mastery Points, which are otherwise quite hard to get in Tyria.

I haven’t noticed that leeway personally. My achievement qualification symbol always disappeared as soon as I got hit by falling shards or the exploding AoE, but maybe I had been hit beforehand without noticing it.

Sorry, bad wording on my part. I mean, you succeed in the story as long as you kill the last boss, no matter if you got hit or downed or if you died. They could have made it much harder

So I finished all remaining bosses last weekend and started the Head of the Snake. Had to retry Mordremoth 4 times. It was basically luck in the last try that I dropped close to an air vent when he hit me with a stone, so I could get up again. It’s true that the fights are easy if you know what to do, it’s the learning what to do that’s frustrating, and that luck is involved. One unlucky fall in the flying parts and you have to start over. I didn’t even use any food or nourishment, if you know the drill, you can fight him naked.

Also, it’s kind of cruel how your “team” acts. Whenever they say “we have your back”, I know I’m in trouble. They don’t even have a spot under the shield for you in that fight. It’s like you are going to the club with friends but they put you into the trunk, despite having a free seat in the car. In real life, that means you need new friends. Queen Jennah is more kitten and helpful. I really think this could have been solved better. Obviously the designers want you to use the air vents to elevate the difficulty level (pun intended), but they didn’t find a good reason for you to do so other than “because you can and should”. They could have punished the rest of the team by downing them for the pitiful attempt to use a shield instead of going airborne. Then, after the air phase, they could have got out of the downed state. But that would mean they try to use a shield again afterwards, knowing better ^^

Anyway, looking forward to meet Caudecus this time. I’m getting used to having the camera view set from top, totally ignoring what else is going on, going through my rotation, only watching the floor.

Djinn.9245:

What you personally find hard now could be called easy for other (and no you don’t need to go into raiding to find easy).

Personally, I would like to have a choice. A difficulty level for the story bosses that I can select. There is already the idea of it implemented, with the achievements. They could have designed it so you only pass “The Sky Is Falling” if you “complete the instance without being damaged by falling bloodstone shards or their explosions.” They chose to not do that but let you succeed even if you get hit a few times. For those who decide to challenge themselves, they implemented the achievement. And those achievements provide Mastery Points, which are otherwise quite hard to get in Tyria.

I would probably choose an easy mode for the bosses in the first run and get less rewards just to proceed with the story. Whenever I reach the last part of a chapter, I check the Internet to estimate how much time I will need. I did not do that before the end of the Personal Story and told my wife “I should be done soon.” several times for more than 2 hours. Since then I skipped a few boss fights and went on to the next chapter, to do the bosses on weekends. I’m at the Caudecus part now and haven’t fought Mordremoth yet. I will do it this Easter weekend and Caudecus too.

I simply don’t have as much time to play as I had a couple of years ago, and if you play a little bit after work, a long, exhausting boss fight is not what I’m looking forward to.

Do I spoil my fun by learning about the fights beforehand? Maybe, but that depends on the meaning of fun here. Usually, I like to jump into cold water and learn by mistakes, but in this game, there is simply confusing stuff. When Aurene and me had to lead the injured soldiers to a save place, I tried to defend them from the attacking mobs. That is what you usually do in this game, you fight wave after wave until it’s done or you fall asleep. In this case, I learned that I was supposed to interact with the people so they start moving. But before I learned that, they were all dead and I still fought wave after wave of mobs. At this point, succeeding was a major PITA because I had to resurrect each of them and lead them to the save area, while “encouraging” Aurene a couple of times because she was down. One simple misunderstanding made this experience terrible. Had I read about the mechanics before, it would have spared me the pain.

btw, I don’t think I’m a terrible or stupid player, I am soloing all story parts and bosses with my thief. If this happened to me, I’m sure it happened to others. Trial and error is not a good option if you only have a few seconds of survival time in a fight with Mordremoth because you have no clue what you are supposed to do.

30 years gamer – so you know the so called ‘Nintendo difficulty’? If so you should be better than this.

I think you are onto something here. Many encounters in this game feel like this. I couldn’t put my finger on it before, but it’s indeed “Nintendo difficulty”. That is where this homelike, warm feeling comes from. Balls/bullets coming at you from the enemy in different patterns and circles, that cannot be reflected. The red areas on the floor popping up in patterns that sometimes require trained movement, Spikes od Doom, vanishing or moving platforms, basically Jump ‘n’ Run game mechanics. One shot kills and insanely fast and deadly NPCs like the Legendary Bandit Executioner. Pocket Raptors or those little mosquitoes in Bitterfrost Frontier. Those sadistic additions that just add to your frustration.

The only thing missing is the harsh penalties for failing.

I’ll stop here, the devs use almost everything from these lists:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClassicVideoGameScrewYous

Honestly, I think there is no bullet point in those lists that does not apply to Guild Wars 2 on every level. Even Easy Mode Mockery:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EasyModeMockery

Remember this task in the lab where you had to disassemble the power generation blind? You had two options, read the manual or not. “Reading instructions is for chumps.”

Although I did start playing games with Nintendo and the other games of the 90’s, which just got harder and harder each level until you died, it is not what I expected from GW2 when I started 6 weeks ago. I often find the encounters a little bit too frustrating, without the “difficulty” adding more fun to the game. A boss that’s almost finished becoming invulnerable and healing up to 100% after a long fight…come on… It does teach you something important about grit and perseverance, but in military style.

But somehow, I guess the gamer part of my brain is hard-wired to this masochistic experience, and that’s why I enjoy the game in general. Thank you Nintendo!

First, thanks for the video Healix!

As a new player, I reached the first Shadow of the Dragon encounter last week (at the Summit with the Pale Tree, The Dragon’s Reach: Part 2), got wiped out a dozen times, then took a break.

I was looking for advise on the Internet because I was quite frustrated. I stumbled over this thread and expected the worst. I watched the video, set up my thief built appropriately, and went in again yesterday. Only died 4 times or so before I won.

To my surprise, the encounter consisted only of the Shadow of the Dragon and tendrils (and one fragile minion). When I got him to zero HP, I fully expected him to respawn with full health, but that didn’t happen.

I confused the encounter at the summit with the boss fight at “Point of No Return”. So I guess I will face the Shadow of the Dragon again, including the ring of fire thing. Not looking forward to it to be honest.

So for anyone who’s having the same problems I had: being wiped out by the first encounter. If you search for tactics and come to this thread, note that there are two Shadow of the Dragon encounters in Living World Season 2. The first one comes at the end of “The Dragon’s Reach: Part 2” and is not the one with the ring of fire that the video here shows.

The second one is the final of Living World Season 2 and has the ring of fire thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYpHSeJct9k

That wasn’t clear to me when I searched for “Shadow of the Dragon”, and maybe it isn’t clear to others.

In addition to the tips for those fights that people here gave, I will add one: stay calm, bring a towel. If you die, take a deep breath and sip on your tea before rejoining.