Guild Wars 2

I’m not going to say any of you are right or wrong, but one thing here is really surprising to me. “I did all the new content in ~4 hours.” This boggles my mind. Did you use a guide for the Dry Top achievements, or are you not counting those?

Find 30 Lost Coins.
For many of these, you’ll just stumble upon them, but to get them all you really have to spend some time exploring every nook and cranny, just like Thomas’ English Muffins! I’m doing this now, I’m on 28/30 and it’s taken 3-4 hours, who knows how much longer to find the last 2? I like this kind of thing so I’m enjoying the time it’s taking. But hours worth of adventuring time becomes 30 minutes when you’re using a guide to connect the dulfy dots on your map.

Jumping puzzle and dive goggles.
Again, this took a couple of hours on it’s own. You finally make it to the goggles only to find out that it’s going to take 2-4 tries to get the dive just right for the achievement. Are people doing this, or are you ’mesmer’ing the content?

Story episodes.
I enjoyed these and it took me a good hour to go through all of it, maybe more. I’m interested in the story, so I actually read all the dialog along the way.

New events.
There are actually a lot of new events in Dry Top, you’ve tried every one of them at least once?

Zone completion.
Really this just gets itself done while you’re doing everything else, and even if you had to purpose to do it, it wouldn’t take long. But the place looks amazing, maybe it would take a little longer if you hide your UI and stop to smell the roses along the way.

Story replay achievements.
Not even going to ask about this one because I don’t see how it would be possible to do everything else in 4 hours, let alone all of that and all of these achievements.

So I guess what I’m getting at is that there are at least two groups of players in this thread:

Group 1: Doesn’t really love the story, exploration, open-world events angle and so they went through the content at a brisk-ish pace and aren’t interested in getting the story replay achievements. These people wanted more gear to work toward, and a new more dungeon to do it in. Or something along those lines (?)

Group 2:
These people are either casuals with less time, or are intentionally taking a slow pace trying to get as much as possible from each piece of fresh content. Not saying these people don’t care about gear or dungeons. I see myself as falling into this category for the simple reason that I love this game, I’ve been bored with it lately, and now I have some fresh content so I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth.

Boneheart.3561:

Welcome to adventuring with a couple. If you paid any attention to the story, you’d realize this is par for course.

I’m not sure how you’ve determined that I don’t pay attention to the story. I certainly do.

Maybe you misunderstood my gripe. I have no problem with a pet name here or there, or shows of concern for one another when danger is brewing. What I’m saying is that it feels forced. It’s like the writers have a checklist at the start of the episode that they want to quickly recap salient points for newer players, and at the top of that list is Marjy <3’s Kas and Kas <3’s Marjy.

First mix-n-match in Dry Top?

Aetherblade goggles
Deathly shoulders
Feathered chest
Fused gauntlets
Tactical leggings
Forgeman’s shoes

In general I thought the dialog was improved compared to last season. It would be nice, though, to not have an obligatory “let’s remind everyone that we’re gay for each other” exchange between Kas and Marj at the start of every episode.

They do consume it, but don’t destroy it. They store it within themselves.

I for one am glad. I’ve wanted to get a set but I’m not willing to pay 19g each. More than happy to take a small stat cut if it means these are no longer the meta and prices can come back down a bit.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

And guess what just got confirmed this morning!

Can you post where this was confirmed this morning? I checked the main news page, dev tracker, tumblr and facebook and I see nothing. I’m not doubting you, I just want the link and ANet doesn’t make it easy sometimes =P

EDIT: I found it on Massively =)

Revler.2359:

I’m expecting anything that is related to serious build customization (not just trait rework or one new skill): new class, lots of new skills, new weapons, perhaps customizable weapon skills…

Do you think these are reasonable expectations though? It just seems like this is all feature patch stuff and this update has never been touted as anything like that. I expect a living story update, which means story and playable content. I also expect a new zone(s) with this update or another one in the near future since they’ve made it pretty clear that’s what will be coming in season 2.

Another thing I’m really expecting is evidence that they’ve learned from some of the missteps in season 1, particularly the very slow start. I personally will not be satisfied if the mission for this LS episode is “Help the Zephyrites escape the crash site and recover their magical artifacts strewn about the crash area!” Two weeks of that would be not cool.

We had a big break after the end of season 1. They came back with a recycled event after that break, and left us with that content for more than a month. Some people have enjoyed it for that time and that’s great, but I think that many players are ready to get back to the new content updates, so I hope that ANet realizes this and is going to bring in season 2 with a bang.

Added bonuses for me = cosmetics!
New armor sets! Acquisition by gameplay or gem store would be fine with me.
New hairstyles!
New weapon skins!

I’m still staring at it…the sword hilt, her armor, her hair, this is really impressive, I couldn’t be happier with it.

Ah, sorry I’ve been out of town for a few days and forgot to keep up with guild wars stuff. I have to say though, the kraken sketch is really, really cool. I think you did an awesome job, the pose is epic and you worked in a ton of detail. Thanks very much!

Speak to the Historian, you will not be receiving another chest in the mail. You claim your reward(s) at the NPC.

A problem is that the nightmare court don’t behave like minions. They fight even amongst themselves for power, e.g. TA explorable. If they were corrupted and bent to Mordy’ s will, why would they backstab each other?

You know, I do wonder if skill point challenges were meant to be subtle lessons (the whole teach without making it obvious you’re teaching idea). Some SPs are ridiculously easy to get, but others have interesting mechanics that seem like an attempt to teach.

I’m thinking specifically about the Asura turret in the southern part of Cursed Shore. It seems like it was nerfed recently, but I think that it originally had higher HP, fired projectiles and cast a stack of confusion whenever it was attacked in melee range. I remember the first time I did it I kept trying to melee it down, but I went down much faster than it did every time. The reason this teaching strategy failed goes back to what people have been saying in this thread: the game isn’t punishing enough. It was a whole lot easier to simply melee like mad, then stop and let the confusion stacks wear off, then heal, then melee again, than it would have been to think about how to change my weapon/build to win. If that turret applied more stacks or had stronger projectiles, maybe I would have learned something from it.

I’m sure there are more SPs like this, though to my memory, for everyone 1 like this there are 20 or more “defeat veteran then commune.”

I read the whole post and I agree with you, OP, on pretty much all of it.

I also kind of agree with you, Hannah, that the game isn’t actually hard, and that’s true for anybody who makes a basic effort to understand it, but a central issue the OP raised was that at no point during the leveling process is it made clear that the bare minimum amount of effort will suffice “for now,” but you’d better know which skills block, reflect and grant vigor (wot? vigor?) when we throw you in with Lupicus.

My wife and I started played this game at head start and we both still play. Neither of us are GWAMMs or anything, but she even less so, simply because she has fun soloing in open world PvE and has found no reason to branch out beyond that. I have done pretty much all of the content the game offers, mostly because I must have “all the skins.”

Anyway, about a month ago, we were both just relaxing, probably getting dailies done or something mindless, and she asked me what a combo field was. That is a problem.

The CM dungeon heavy set is pretty beat-up looking.

IVIUIEI.9631:

Facepunch.5710:

Just bought a new character slot for THIS

This is stupid

Cool, thanks for making a point to share your opinion.

Just bought a new character slot for THIS

Redxon.6832:

thanks, ya idk cus lotta people been telling me that ranger is useless – but the people I run dungeons with say I’m great to have, and I LOVE WARRIOR but people are like “meh…not great dps…”

so what do people like the best these days? I know guardian is loved, but to me its not fun at all!

btw I think warr is the only class atm that can Solo ARAH…? why do people say it sucks then?

I’m not sure who is saying warriors suck, but if you’re hearing it then I won’t tell you you’re wrong. Perhaps people who are saying that are talking about specific builds, e.g. if you use ranged weapons on a warrior in dungeons, you will not be doing good dps.

You can rest assured that there is no inherent reason for people to complain about rangers or warriors. If you are running dungeons with friends, they will probably be cool with you using a build that is not optimizing your dps. But if you would like to optimize, both ranger and warrior can be built to contribute great dps to your group.

Thanks for the update, the gw218 pose will look great sketched I think. And the ele sketch looks great. The only thing I would say is maybe the hand that’s holding the staff looks a little small. Other than that, I’ll look forward to the finished version!

Thanks Hahnchen! I’ve attached a couple of screens of my elementalist, Gag Pol Env. For my commission, I’d like him waist-up, inked and shaded. Pose doesn’t have to be the same as the shots, but it can be.

For the full-body sketch, I’m thinking I’d like my warrior, The Kraken Queen. Here is a link to a .zip of screenshots of her playing with Sunrise. It’d be great if you could sketch something similar to whichever of these shots you like best. I’ve also attached an image of her close-up.

I’ll guess biology. Because science.

I’m on JQ, I completed the meta, never transferred. My achievement says we got 2nd, while we were 1st. I haven’t gotten my chest. Same for several people in my guild. Some kind of response/acknowledgement would be very appreciated.

Just to add one to the pile, I’m on Jade Quarry and did not transfer at any point during the season, I’ve been on JQ since head start. I did complete the meta, I do not yet have the rewards chest. I do have the achievement but it’s for 2nd place.

As, someone who doesn’t give two flips about minis, I don’t personally disagree with you, but I would still sympathize with an argument that 2nd birthday minis shouldn’t be for newcomers.

Devata.6589:

Well I did buy a B2P game so that gives me the right to ask for a B2P game not a cash-shop game. But yeah it’s been pretty bad for over a year so I could have simply dropped it and never looked back. Also leaving behind an awesome guild we build up and so on.

Not that these numbers have much to do with that. Why would good (or bad) numbers here means no change? GW2 in China is now where we where almost 2 years ago.. not where we where a year ago when things took a turn for the worse. Not to mention that China is a complete different market.

You did buy a B2P game, and that’s what you got. No charge to play, and play as much as you like. On top of that, there is absolutely no argument to be made that you need the cash shop to play or to compete with other players. So you bought a B2P game, you can play as much as you want without spending another dime and the game is being updated quite often with new story content and features. If the updates are not to your liking, that’s another matter, but I don’t see the argument that this is not a B2P game.

If you disagree, please explain which gem store item(s) you were required to buy in order to play the game, and for which gameplay mode you needed this item.

Dalanor.5387:

Do you even ele?
Staff ele can hit multiple times per second with Fireball and Lava font together against multiple targets.
D/X has reliable auto attack.
S/X use conjures anyway.

+1

It’s always easy to see who doesn’t actually play ele but maybe tried them once when they heard their DPS potential was good, then couldn’t figure out how to ele. Lava font staff dungeon ele may literally be the most boring playstyle in the game, but melt melt melt melt melt melt melt melt melt.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

My only gripe about last year’s gift was that the only mini was Jenna. One of her was cool, 10 of her…. not so much.

I absolutely love the birthday boosters. (I’ll take these again anet, pretty please). They helped me level both the character and my wvw rank. Handy indeed.

I had no issue with the experience scrolls either. I’ve used every one that I’ve gotten. Admittedly, I don’t think I need any more of them now though…

So, my thoughts on this year’s gifts:

-Create a set of 12 or 15 minis, like was done in GW1. Let us get one of that set randomly from the gift. Do make these tradeable.

-Include the birthday booster again. Even if people don’t have characters that need the experience anymore, the 100% bonus to karma, magic find, gold, and wvw rank is still very enjoyable. Not to mention, it stacks with other boosters.

-Not sure what to ask for as the third component. Lot of things I would like, but probably not advisable. Maybe a scroll that grants 5 levels to any non 80 character? A small bag of dungeon tokens? A random weapon ticket? An ascended weapon box maybe? Not asking for a precursor or anything here, but something useful would be appreciated.

I like these suggestions, Lanfear, I’m all for thought-out and useful gifts. My only thought is that I don’t think the minis should be tradeable, because then you’ll have people selling them to players who aren’t 2 years old, which seems contrary to the point of giving exclusive birthday gifts. Instead, maybe let players choose which mini they would like from the set, sort of like you get to choose which Zenith weapon you want from each achievement chest.

Some will still complain that they will need 10 2-year-old toons in order to collect the whole set, but I guess you can’t please everyone.

I’m surprised by all the cynicism here. I’m not trying to be a fan boy, but it seems to me that a very successful GW2 in China means more resources will be allocated to ANet than otherwise. More resources means more design time means more content. It doesn’t mean that ANet will change direction, though, it probably means more Living Story and more gem store updates, so if that’s not your cup of tea then I guess it’s not good news for you, but if that’s the case you probably should’ve dropped the game a year ago.

I’m getting neither. I’m going to use my tokens for either tomes of knowledge for an easy 8-10 levels for an alt, or the T6 mats bags, the favor of the festival will just sit in my inventory for all eternity. I don’t understand the point of tonics or minis. That’s just me. I also was fortunate enough to have been able to play and complete all the metas from LS season 1, so I have all the exclusive skins.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Farming is ok. I like farming too.
What is not OK is if pressing 111111 nets you more gold than other activities with a higher skill-requirement.

Yep, this. ANet hasn’t made the Pavillion non-farmable. They’ve just made it harder to farm than “11111111111” was. People are saying Megaserver makes it impossible to dependably farm it, but it doesn’t really. It just takes a little bit of organizational effort. It requires you (yes, you, not someone else) to be proactive.

1) Talk to a few guildies who want to farm gold Blitzes for a few hours.
2) Go to a Pavillion together.
3) Politely discuss with others in the map the possibility of organizing to farm gold events.
4) If they don’t want to, go to a different Pavillion map and try again.
5) Teamspeak helps but is not required, invite anyone in the map who is willing to join your guild or server Teamspeak.
6) Form 6 small groups and farm. It only takes like 15 minutes per cycle and you do get good loot for the time invested. Repeat immediately. And again to your heart and wallet’s content.

Farming. Clearly, ANet doesn’t hate it.

But yeah, you do have to work for it. Sorry.

Like you OP, I no longer have any desire to play the launch content. I’ve long since gotten the dungeon sets I’m interested in, the legendary I wanted, leveled all the classes and races I wanted, and generally had my fill of map completing and even WvW.

If ANet were to release an expansion, I would gobble up that content within a few months and then be bored once again. The only reason I’m still here is Living World. Whether this content is most often temporary or permanent isn’t the issue, IMO, because the model creates a permanent source of temporary content. That appeals to me, even now that we’re seeing repeats of temporary content we’ve had already. The only rough times are when the update cycle goes on hiatus, like the first quarter/half of 2014. Massively bored.

I was convinced that beating her is L2P last year when Wethospu posted his zerker video in which he made killing her look like swatting a fly.

I appreciate the advice, but honestly doesn’t it seem kind of against ANet’s play-your-way, no grind attitude if I have to do a bunch of rounds of aspect arena or any other game mode just so that I can enter the game mode I’d like to be playing?

By that logic, why not have entrance to aspect arena or sanctum sprint require victory tokens earned in the gauntlet? Just seems like a misstep to me, that’s all.

On a positive note, some guildies organized a couple of Boss Blitz gold attempts, and we got it twice in a row, 20 entrance tickets each time + whatever dropped from mobs. That was nice.

I’m kinda miffed about this as well to be honest. I was so excited when Liadri came back, now I’m spending most of my time slowly making my way through Blitz events and those long cool-down Labyrinthine Cliffs events to get tokens to buy more entrance tickets, just so I can play the content I’d like to play.

Hyperionkhv.1978:

I done achievement with crystals last time. Why I have to collect crystals again around all Cliffs?

Some players (many?) absolutely loved finding and climbing/jumping/grappling to each crystal location last time. That kind of discovery-associated fun isn’t as rich the second time around. So when many of us saw this in the patch notes: “Players can participate in an all-new scavenger hunt for sky crystals, with new, harder-to-access locations,” we were really excited to get some of the fun from last year back. Is it really such a chore for you to simply not do it again if you don’t want to?

#nobodyforcingyou

I guess I have to disagree, OP. I tried a few times last year and didn’t beat her before the event ended, so I for one am glad to have another chance at getting the mini, and now the title. After months of nothing to do, I’m especially pumped to have this goal to work toward. Yes, sometimes liadri deaths can be frustrating and seem to come from bugs rather than player mistakes, but tbh I’m having a great time anyway, and most likely once I beat her, I’ll be bored again. Maybe just try to enjoy it while you can and take the bugs in stride.

Sages.3496:

why did this happen? event status failed.

I guess you have to survive for the extra millisecond it would have taken to get teleported out.

Hi Warukitsui and Ryan, thanks for the comments! I am adding both of you to my list then closing it for now. Apologies ahead of time, these may be a little delayed as I have much less free time during the week, but I’ll keep you both updated.

Speaking from the ones I’ve done so far, it tends to work out much better when I take the screenshots of your toons myself, but I think it’s worthwhile for you to take some yourself first, so that you can get an idea of the sort of pose and angle you like best, then I will mimic that when I take them, unless of course yours are amazing and there’s no need. I’ll PM you each when I’m reading to begin on your desktops.

Glad you like it, Lilith!

Updated first post with Revyrie’s vector desktop

Here’s your desktop, Lilith. If you decide you need a higher resolution, I made it at 1620×1080 so if you want I’ll send you that one also. And if there’s anything you’d like to see changed or added in, feel free to ask.

Glad you like it, and feel free to bring on the repeat business. You can send me an in game mail anytime.

Here you go, poika! If there is anything about it that you would like to see different, feel free to request changes. I want you to be happy with it =) Otherwise, enjoy!

poika, was going to ask you this in game, but i missed you. is this character a warrior or a guardian? and would you like the class emblem next to your name as it is next to mine in the example desktop?

np, I’ll take the screen. pm me in game when you have some time. ill respond when i can.

I got it poika =)

But I’m going to need a higher resolution and higher quality screenshot from you. If you can’t take one that’s fine. PM me in game and I’ll come find you and take it myself.

Lilith, I’ll save the render slot for you. Take your time and get a screen you’re happy with.

poika, let me know what size desktop resolution you use. Also, would you like a red/white theme like the example, or a different color set?

Hi everyone, I’m starting this thread to gauge interest in commissions for character-based desktops. I have zero drawing talent, but I’m familiar enough with photoshop to work up decent looking photomanipulations and the like using in-game screenshots as my starting material.

I can offer two types of desktops:

The character render:
This one involves quite a lot of attention to detail and hand airbrushing, followed by significant work on background and after effects.

Cost: 50g – See the example below featuring my human warrior, The Kraken Queen.

Completed renders (see below for images):
Lilith (Mako Chan)

The minimalist vector:
This is a lot more forgiving in terms of the quality of the starting screenshot and the amount of time and detail on my part.

Completed vectors:
poika

Cost: 10g – See the example below of my Norn warrior, FishNCustard.

If you are interested in either of these, I would require one or several full frame screenshots of your character. The higher the quality the better, so pump those graphics all the way up, especially resolution, textures and supersampling.

The attachments below show examples of the kind of stuff I do. Feel free to post here or PM me with any questions you may have.

I will have one open slot for each type at a time, but if you’d like to be put on queue, I can work that out =)

Current status:
Working on Allie Eyrson’s render

On the list:
Warukitsui’s render and vector
Ryan’s vector

Slot status:
Renders – closed
Vectors – closed

jheryn.8390:

Dev’s may have said somewhere, but are we certain that Mordy will actually be part of LS2? I would like to know that myself.

Well no, I guess we’re not, I’m assuming that is the case because it seems to me to be beyond silly to awaken an elder dragon and the end of season 1 and then ignore it entirely in season 2.

I do remember hearing something about rebuilding LA, as you say. I guess it’s unlikely that this BotFW will feature the sanctum, some rebuilding and a visit from Mordremoth. Oh well, my fingers will be crossed anyway.

Thanks for the replies, guys.

Hi guys! I am by no mean a champion of lore like some of you, but a thought (or just a hope) popped into my head. Do you think there’s any chance that ANet will use the BotFW event to introduce the newly-awakened Mordremoth to Tyria? I’m not sure about when LS2 officially starts, and since this is a recurring event, they may not have anything new related to LS in it at all.

I know almost nothing about the Zephyrites, but according to the wiki page they traveled to Glint’s corpse after she was killed to protect the magic she contained, and during that trip they found the Aspects. I don’t know what the aspects are in relation to the magic in Glint’s corpse, maybe someone who knows more about that can jump in there.

My thoughts come down to these points:
1) the Zephyrites stumbled upon magic at or near the corpse of a dragon champion
2) they now protect and study it in the safety of their sky sanctum
3) Mordremoth has just awakened and may or may not be looking to bulk up on more magic
4) Mordremoth is a dragon, dragons fly and thus safe sky sanctums are hardly safe from a hungry Mordremoth
5) The timing fits, as in the next couple of updates we should (hopefully) expect to learn more or perhaps get glimpses of Mordremoth or the havok he/she/it is wreaking

Thoughts?

Korimor.2406:

During the spring and summer I don’t play much at all due to my fishing career.

If you need someone to, you know, keep your account warm for you during the winter, let me know.