Guild Wars 2

Wish I had pulled out at least one of each skin and applied it to something so that they would all be unlocked in my wardrobe.

Wanze.8410:

Thats because the september 2013 patch introduced ascended weaponcrafting, which was a huge additional sink for t2-4 mats.
Ascended crafting is a minor sink for t5 mithril/elder compared to crafting rares for forging pres.

Yep, made that connection, too.

Then there’s another T5, silk. The standard answer on the forum is that the recipes for Ascended armor were intentionally skewed to drive up the price of silk scraps, which were sitting at vendor cost. If that is true, there’s evidence that ArenaNet doesn’t want T5 mats at rock bottom prices, and precedent for doing things in game to adjust them back upward.

I’m not sure that making gambling for a precursor more expensive is problem enough to not try and balance T5 demand against lower tier mats.

Gobble D Goop.4081:

this must include T5 leather as well considering it is…worthless

Hard to imagine too much leather going into rebuilding LA, but why not? I suppose it could be used to… uh… lash things together. Yeah.

Zania.8461:

From the information released, ANet is determined to have people go back to lower tier areas (can’t blame them for not wanting large chunks of barely populated world).

Yes, I was thinking of this. The idea was that if the ratio was balanced, so that the majority of nodes were T5 or T6, it would still be most efficient to hit low level zones for low tier mats. But there would still be a supply of low level mats that would start coming out of the endgame population, and a reduction in the amount of T5 nodes, balancing the supplies of the tiers back.

What the ideal ratio would be, I have no idea, but I’m sure ArenaNet could gaze into their Metrics and produce a very good guess.

CureForLiving.5360:

But yes, ANet please give us silk worms! And cotton, and some sheep, and some flax. Should theoretically be able to make jute… not sure though not a tailor by trade.

Yes, jute is a plant that grows in humid conditions. Could fit nicely into our new zones.

Checked out the cost of mats over the lifetime of GW2.

Interesting to see t4 and t5 mats running about the same up until the middle of 2013. That’s when T4 mats start a pretty quick climb up to where they are now, while T5 mats bounce around and settle back down to the baseline.

mtpelion.4562:

Precursor crafting will only get you one of each, and will likely be very expensive. The Mystic Forge will continue to be a primary source of Precursors going forward.

That’ll be interesting to see, if the mats going into precursor crafting will outweigh the cost of making all those rares to gamble.

So T5 mats need to be cheap as dirt because Zomorros is too stingy with his drop rates.

What if they increased demand for T5, then adjusted the Forge to compensate?

Wanze.8410:

It takes around 36 common t5 mats (mithril and elder) to craft 1 lvl 80 rare weapon.
And you need around 2000 rare weapons on average to forge a precursor.
So for every copper the price of t5 mats rises, it wil cost 7.2g more to forge a precursor.

Now i dont know which prices you had in mind for those 2 mats but if you plan to raise them to t4 level (hard wood/platinum) you are easily looking at more than 1000g additional costs for forging a precursor with rare weapons.

Wouldnt that be fun….

Thanks for pointing that out. I haven’t messed with legendaries at all.

I have no price in mind for T5 mats. I wasn’t angling to somehow get rich off of them. I was just looking at the thousands of elder wood logs I have in my bank, as well as the oddity of Mithril being a third of the cost of common Iron. If there was something useful to do with the logs I’d probably end up doing that rather than selling them.

With the new precursor crafting in Heart of Thorns, do you think the Mystic Forge will still be a reasonable way to approach getting a precursor? I know we don’t know all the details yet, but I’m kinda expecting precursors will become either ‘buy on the TP’ or craft once that is in game.

Now that I’m thinking about it, based on your response, it sounds like increasing demand for T5 mats would also give a price boost to high level rares, provided people keep gambling for precursors.

Other than people doing that, would an increase price for high level rares be a positive or negative thing? I tend to salvage most of the ones I get as drops for ectos, since they are usually priced a little under the cost of the ectos they will give.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Maybe that’s another reason why they increased the drop of those ‘teleport to a friend’ items in the BLC.

Hmmm, I hadn’t thought about it until your post, but Mesmer Portals could be extremely handy in these new, vertical zones.

Does Portal take into account the Z axis? Is it limited by distance across map, or a straight line from surface to surface in three dimensions?

Jaxom.7310:

think silk is expensive cause everyone needs it. at least heavy ascended armor needs dat silk too, maybe not as much, don’t really kno, but still needs a good bit

Yes, that’s one side of the equation.

One solution would be to change recipes to require less silk, but that’s pretty clunky compared to the other solution, which is increasing supply.

To increase supply, they could just give us more from salvaging, or they could give us the option of actively seeking it out through nodes, like mithril.

Very funny stuff, Minandreas. Thanks for writing it.

I hope they do plan on rebuilding it. The city built of ships was a wonderful idea that I’d hate to see gone forever. The recent ambient dialogue between a Citizen of LA, Magnus, and the Hero-Tron points at some kind of change coming to the city.

I’ll admit, the think that got me thinking about this is my recent work on crafting Mawdrey. I decided to get all of the foxfire clusters myself, which means I am now sitting on several thousand elder wood logs.

Players have been pointing out the inequity of Light Ascended Armor for a while now. As of this post, silk scraps are going for 2s24c a piece on the trading post, while mithril ore sits at 49c and thick leather sections go for 11c.

I’ve seen suggestions for silk gathering nodes before, usually envisioned as cloth racks in towns. That’s always left me scratching my head, because why would I be walking into a town and taking someones fabric without paying them?

The idea occurred to me that silk could be a naturally occurring substance in our upcoming jungle biome. What if there were silkworm colonies throughout Heat of Thorns zones where we could come in and harvest with the sickle tool?

The numbers of harvesting areas would have to be carefully considered not to flood the market with too much silk. Perhaps they could be small clusters of nodes fairly few and far between.

So far GW2 has followed the traditional pattern of having tiered crafting materials that correspond to zone levels. The higher the level of the zone, the higher the crafting tier. ArenaNet has also made sure to include lower tier mats in endgame recipes to keep up demand for them.

This has caused a disconnect, however, because demand remains for both low and high tier mats, but due to population being concentrated in level 80 zones where there are only high tier mats, the supply does not match up. There is a glut of T5 mats.

What if future level 80 zones included a mix of mats?

There would still need to be a larger number of high tier mats than low tier, because there should still be an incentive to go to lower level zones if you want to farm lower tier mats. But if, say, 20% of nodes in Heart of Thorns zones were T1-4 it would help to reduce the flood of T5 mats coming out of the endgame population, as well as boosting the supply of T1-4 mats to balance their cost down against the higher tier mats.

Elder wood logs are currently 38c on the trading post. Compare that to Hardwood at 2s19c and Seasoned Wood at 2s29c.

Mithril ore is 47c, while Platinum goes for 1s71c and Iron 1s48c.

T4 and T3 mats are worth 3 to 6 times as much as T5 mats. It makes perfect sense, since the majority of the players in a mature game are running around endgame zones collecting a lot of T5, and ArenaNet has made sure to include lower tier mats in endgame recipes like Ascended gear.

What if the players were enlisted to help rebuild Lion’s Arch by supplying Mitrhil and Elder Wood logs? Put some nice awards for contributing, and help the demand for T5 mats rise to meet the supply.

What if laurels could be earned this way?

Just to play devil’s advocate, chests take up a lot less inventory space than their contents, so you can spend more time out looting before you have to go vendor trash, salvage, and dump things to the BLTC.

I acknowledged verticality, and didn’t say anything about only one zone.

“More than one zone” doesn’t mean “plenty more zones.” It could mean one or two more. I know this forum makes people touchy, but yikes.

Light.7493:

…to be as realistic as possible. :S

Cause that’s the goal. Uh-huh.

Haven’t played the game you linked, but I’ve seen examples of “OMG” “physics” where you’d swear you were looking at helium balloons rather than the female breast.

Looks smaller than I thought.

I know, verticality. And hopefully plenty more zones.

Serophous.9085:

Isn’t that the definition of a good evil character? The ones who rub their hands together and chuckle evilly are just poor characters. The ones who do terrible things thinking they are pursuing good ends are more interesting. But both are evil.

Rhaegar.1203:

Sorry, but Dwayna is Air and Life, among other things…

Yeah, that’s why she has a question mark behind her. It definitely doesn’t line up neatly.

We refer to Jormag as the “ice” dragon, but it could equally be the “cold” dragon, since ice is just water at low temperature, and Bubbles is already the water dragon. So if Jormag is cold air to Dwayna’s warm air…

Extreme cold also links into suspended animation, creating a kind of twisted eternal “life” to mirror Dwayna’s happy warm life.

Okay, it’s a reach. Like I said, it doesn’t line up neatly.

The six orbs of the Antikythera correspond to six magics in Tyria, and the six dragons. This got me thinking about the six Human gods and their spheres of influence, as well as player character professions, and the magic they wield.

Primordus – Fire – Balthazar – Warrior
Bubbles – Water – Lyssa – Mesmer
Jormag – Ice – Dwayna? (Ice as the flipside of “warmth/life”) – Guardian?
Zhaitain – Undeath/Shadow – Grenth – Necromancer/Thief
Kralkatorrik – Crystal – Kormir? (order and spirit associated with crystal?) – Guardian?
Mordremoth – Plant – Melandru – Ranger

Leaving Engineer as the non-magical profession, and Elementalist and Revenant as professions that dance between spheres of magic.

It, by no means, lines up neatly, and I’d love feedback on whether there’s a better placement for anything in the list.

I’ve also been thinking about a parallel between the gods and the dragons in that they can’t really be killed. The dragons can be defeated, but they are forces of (super?)nature that go dormant and then awaken later in history. The Human gods can be killed in the sense of an individual manifestation, but the essence then transfers to another who takes their place. That seems like an interesting parallel.

Which got me thinking about the ebb and flow of magic, as well. There’s a link between the increase of magic in the world and the rising of the Dragons. This also seems to be timed with the withdrawing of the Human gods. As powerful beings who manifest one of the six magics at the core of the Eternal Alchemy or cosmology of Tyria, is it possible that, while they were present, they were channeling enough of their aspect that it siphoned off the energy that would have roused the dragons. Is the withdrawal of the Human gods part of what caused the dragons to begin to rouse during this time?

So Omadd’s device unlocked Mordremoth’s influence buried within Scarlet when she saw the vision of the Pale Tree and the Antikythera.

The same vision that our PCs saw.

Non-Sylvari don’t have a seed of Mordremoth within them, but Sylvari PCs do, even though it is being influenced by the Tree, the Dream, and Ventari’s teaching.

Is it possible, sometime in the near future, Sylvari PCs will have to deal with being exposed to the vision in Omadd’s machine?

They cut themselves to fuel magic and invite disease/poison as a means of damaging others. I figured that the corrupted looking options for Necros in GW1 were a reflection of the fact that Necros embrace death rather than manipulating it at a safe distance.

Kinda appreciate that more, really, than sanitized “Oh, death magic is just another kind of magic like elemental or illusion magic”.

I’d be happy just to see some more of them as NPCs. They are maddeningly, tantalizingly rare.

Kinda like the Wizard’s Castle, they seem designed to make us wonder, and try to hold onto hope without any evidence that it will some day pay off.

“Willpower” is difficult to define and ends up not being terribly useful.

At the same time, stories in which the characters have agency are so much more powerful than those in which characters are simply puppets of their accumulated circumstances.

I’ve always felt that the Dragons’ corruption was a little too simplistic. For the most part, it seems like something that renders characters completely passive. Corruption is about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Corruption is a one-way street, and there is no hope of redemption. The tablets influenced the Pale Tree, who then protects the Sylvari.

In that case, where is the struggle against the temptation of the dark side? Where is the hope that someone who succumbs may yet be pulled back into light?

There seem to be hints in the story that maybe ArenaNet is not completely tied to characters who are either passively corrupted or protected, but it remains to be seen how that will play out in the story.

The discussion of whether drug addiction is a disease or moral failing is complex, emotionally charged, and really not fit for these forums. Putting that aside, giving characters the ability to resist, give in to, and even come back from corruption opens up a lot more interesting story options.

Thanks, everyone. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. The tip about watching for KH daily events is something that didn’t occur to me.

Looks like a very long farm to get enough of these put together for the recipe. On the other hand, is being able to turn into a non-combat Toxic Krait worth 23+ gold. Hmm….

Animism.9803:

lordkrall.7241:

Why should they change and/or cater changes to unsupported activities?

Unsupported activities?

Dungeon selling is a pretty integral part of the game now, even if a player-made idea.

There’s a difference between accepted activities and supported activities.

Kinda like texmod in GW1. It was used by a lot of people, and allowed by ArenaNet, but with a very clear warning that ArenaNet didn’t support it, and if you screwed yourself over it was your problem.

I’m happy to report vulgarity in names and chat. It’s not because I’m deeply offended, outraged, self-righteous, afraid for the children, triggered, prudish or trying to protect the marginalized from hateful speech.

I report it for the same reason I’ll pick up a piece of trash if I see it on the sidewalk or in my yard. I don’t like living in refuse, either in the real world, or in a fantasy game.

When I report sexual chat, drug references, racism, or any other speech that violates the ToS, I’m simply doing my part to tidy my little corner of Tyria.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

They don’t have the effect on the preview. I don’t think they will make the flames.

But the preview often doesn’t show particle effects, even when there are some in game.

IEximius.9204:

Much better than this cakewalk we have nowadays…oh im not punished for dying so lets rush and run through everything, waypoint all around, skip mobs, because if I die, well no big deal.

I’d definitely be on board with removing about 2/3rds of the waypoints from the game.

Could mob skipping be fixed with some tweaks to how they path and leash?

Healix.5819:

Adding a penalty does not punish that specific player in the open world, it punishes everyone else. You can show up to Vinewrath as a low level naked character and let people carry you. That low level is not being punished, you are. Even if you choose to ignore them when they’re downed, they’re not pulling their own weight and due to scaling, you have to put in more effort.

You’ve given me a great idea. I think I’ll start a service for all those players who complain the game is too easy. For a modest fee, my family will all log in and stand around naked at whatever event they would like to be more difficult.

Looking at the concept art, and knowing that sometimes the armor preview doesn’t show particle effects correctly, I wonder if the orange bits we’re seeing will have more of a flame effect.

I’ll agree with the (it seems) minority, that I don’t really care for this armor. It looks like it’s trying way too hard. That said, it does look adorable on Asura for that very reason. I have an Asura warrior that I dress as much as I can to fit adolescent power fantasy for the humor of it. If this was armor I could mix and match, I could see getting it for the helm to use with him.

As to capes, it seems clear to me from the screen shots that we’re not really dealing with a cape here. There’re two metal points on the side of the back that appear to be gathering the ‘cape’ in to the back. So functionally, we have another butt-cape, it’s just they’ve extended the visual up to the shoulders.

The idea of giving characters a temporary debuff as a punishment for death has always seemed bizarre to me. Someone has a hard time doing content, so make it harder?

Seems like all that does is lead to waiting out the debuff.

For me, being defeated is penalty enough. Even with waypoints and free armor repair, getting defeated makes me rethink my strategy and try a different way.

I know that’s not true for everyone, but I don’t want to deal with stiff, and usually frustrating penalties just to chase some unapproachable ideal of making people try harder.

This game was originally billed as a non-death-penalty game. ArenaNet had a whole blog post about how DPs aren’t fun, and that dying is enough of a penalty. Of course, they then took a slight detour from that and instituted repair costs, but after a few years, they are back on track with their original mission, and I’m glad for it.

Before instituting a harsher DP to try and break the zerker meta, there are some cleaner solutions to try. Both the dodge mechanic (invulnerability!) and downed state (instant revive from trash mob kill) could be reworked first with a probable greater return.

Believe it or not, there was a time when people were complaining that there were too many holidays in game, and not enough other content being released.

Fix forum bug.

/10charr

Kossage.9072:

However, it seems this might not come to pass if this foreboding conversation is anything to go by about people’s unrest and losing trust on the council to get anything done…

There’s more to the dialogue. It looks like Hero-Tron has been hired to lead a New Deal WPA kind of thing to engage refugees in rebuilding the city.

Captain Magnus the Bloody-Handed: So, if you’re going to be my aide, I have to ask. What exactly do you…do?
Hero-Tron: This—unit—is—programmed—with—a—variety—of—skills—ranging—from—
Captain Magnus the Bloody-Handed: Look, we’re going to have a lot of people coming back without homes or jobs.
Captain Magnus the Bloody-Handed: No jobs mean lots of idle hands. I can handle a little crime. This city was founded on it. But riots? They’ll end everything.
Captain Magnus the Bloody-Handed: Can you help people get back to work?
Hero-Tron: I—can—do—that.

…Here’s to hoping that when the inevitable kitten hits the fan (whether through riots or something else like Consortium shenanigans), Evon Gnashblade, Hero of Lion’s Arch, will be ready to save the city he considers his and our home. He’s not the hero LA deserves but the hero it needs in this time of crisis, and his new, profitable alliance with Hero-Tron will ensure a bright future for us all. Go, Team Gnashblade! ^^

Hero? Wasn’t he essentially strong-armed into using BLTC resources to aid the city?

And continuing with the aforementioned dialogue, it looks like he’s up to something fishy. He’s blackmailing the Hero-Tron into being his informant.

Cherokeewill.7504:

That same brashness and impatience could also have been an artifact of the Pale Tree’s current state and had She not been pre-occupied with Her own well being, trahearne may have been more able to see the dangers that lie ahead.

Does this, then, implicate Caithe as well? If she had been more of a team player, rather than grabbing the egg and running, the PC wouldn’t have been constantly running off on that tangent rather than being closely involved with the Pact.

Then again, if she hadn’t, and those ships launched anyway, the PC would now be in the smoking ruins of the fleet along with everyone else.

The ambient dialogue in Fort Mariner feels like it’s pointing at a change in LA. There’s a sequence with the Hero-Tron that starts off with Captain Magnus being chewed out by a citizen for the city still being such a mess. There’s mention of people abandoning the city altogether, more refugees arriving, and possible riots.

Hero-Tron has been hired to give jobs to the people of LA, which sounds like Tyria’s own version of the WPA. He’s also being blackmailed into serving as Evon Gnashblade’s informant, but that’s another story…

I’m hoping this all points to a rebuilding of LA in HoT.

Wreave.2138:

Complaining about grinding in an MMO is like complaining about sugar in a sugartart.

MMOs are time consumers. That’s their primary feature, and its there by necessity. People play MMOs to kill time. But, psychologically they want a reason to play, i.e. there has to be something that draws them to play. Hence, there has to be something that gives them a reason to play a lot — hence… grinds.

I was going to respond to this, but Test covered it really well above.

Just because MMOs are traditionally about setting up huge time-sinks so people can treat them as a second job doesn’t mean that have to be designed that way. Sooner or later, an inspired team is going to have the backing to make something different, and MMOs as we know it will shift.

As it is, the status quo is slowly bleeding out.

Kossage.9072:

However, the Nightmare Court remain oblivious of the sylvari’s true origin; Scarlet claimed she knew Caithe’s secret which even Faolain didn’t know, and we learned later that that secret was what Wynne told Caithe. If Faolain, Grand Duchess of NC, didn’t know the truth, then it’s unlikely any of her minions did either, or the news would’ve spread by now.

It was said in an article or interview that the NC are just as opposed to Elder Dragons as Dreamer sylvari are, they just seem to be focusing on changing the sylvari’s outlook on themselves and the world first before committing themselves to battling the Dragons. If NC knew the truth about Mordremoth and/or they were already its corrupted minions, surely we would’ve heard them yell “Hail Mordremoth!” or something of the sort by now since dragon minions are extremely fanatical towards their dragon master.

I wasn’t thinking that the Nightmare Court were conscious servants of Mordremoth, just that the existence of the Nightmare Court may be Mordremoth’s influence permeating the Pale Tree’s protection of her children to erode the influence of Ventari’s teaching and bend them toward rebellion and pain.

BrettM.9062:

It almost seems as if his cabbage brain got coleslawed by the cleansing ritual or something.

Or perhaps Mordremoth’s corruption is leading him to act against the best interests of the Pact? Is it possible Trahearne was corrupted long ago, and his success against Zhaitan was Mordremoth using the Pact to take out the rival dragon? Now that Zhaitan is down, Mordremoth had to dispose of his tool before it was turned back against him.

Last few weeks have been.

1) Log on to each of 6 level 80 characters and run a loop around southeast Malchor’s Leap chopping trees in hopes of foxfire clusters dropping.
2) Craft plant food.
3) Craft mithrillium.
4) Collect daily award.
5) If I have time left, work on either Mawdrey steps, or progress LS (back)story on one of my characters.

I now have all the plant food and foxfire clusters I need. So now the routine goes:

1) Log onto the eight characters parked at rich ore nodes and mine either iron or platinum.
2) Craft mithrillium.
3) If there’s time left, advance a character along LS (back)story.

Current goals in game are, A)Accumulate geodes for Mawdrey,craft all characters Ascended versions of their most used weapon(s), C) Catch up all characters to the end of the LS.

carabidus.6214:

I have used lesser known languages like Samoan and even Elvish for my character names. Works every time…

Kinda surprised at this, as I went through a ton of Elvish names at one point, and found that even some of the most obscure characters from the Silmarillion were taken.

I’ve found a lot of success using Google Translate and not trying to get actual names, but words from another language. For example, using Irish/Celtic in line with the Sylvari naming convention, I came up with Breaga Alainn, meaning “beautiful lies”, for my Mesmer.

Special characters are also very helpful. There’re a surprising number that are accepted. http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/altchrc.html

The one difficulty I’ve had is with Asura, as I like the convention of short, sci-fi sound effects ending in double consonants. Depending on the character conception, adding a title can diminish them.

rapthorne.7345:

I’d appreciate a feature like this (or give character creation a “map select” option so you can preview what a character looks like out in the world). The many hues of the sylvari skin all look very different in the actual game compared with character creation

This could be very useful. Maybe a half dozen options simulating lighting in various places around the world.

The problem with this is that the starter instance doesn’t necessarily give you any better idea than the character creation tool. It’s been a while since I’ve created a new one, but I remember at least the Sylvari starting instance having very saturated light. I’d make a character, get it into game to see how it changed, but then I’d run it through the instance and get a very different look once out in the world.

I wish the character creation preview just had lighting and settings a bit closer to what neutral light looks like in game.

Hello, fellow Tyrians.

The whole toxic alliance chapter of the LS happened while I was barely playing the game, but I did get a recipe for the endless krait tonic that sat in my bank for a long time. I recently used it, and thought it would be fun to set out and craft one of the tonics.

250 pristine toxic spore samples is a lot, now that the LS chapter has come and gone.

I see that there are still toxic seedlings spread around Kessex Hills, thought you get a lot of mushed spore samples for each PTSS you actually receive.

Unless I’m just not understanding the Toxic Offshoot events (very possible), they don’t seem very solo friendly.

So, I was wondering if anyone has advice on the most efficient route to farming PTSS’s. Can anyone link a farming route through Kessex Hills, or should I be hitting Toxic Offshoots (and figuring out what I’m doing wrong), or is there something else I’m missing?

Thanks!

Because pets work so well in this game. Amirite?

kash.9213:

… almost like those weird dreams where you get in a fight and you punch people with a bent wrist or whatever.

“Fascinating…”

writes in notebook

“Tell me about your relationship vis your mutter…”

Agreed. An i5 is fine, and no need to overclock (or go to extraordinary cooling measures).