Oh . . . that’s about to change in a week or so. . . .
Yeah, and after everyone is done grinding the last carapace/luminescent armor pieces, it’ll be even worse.
FWIW, I share the problem of the OP, despite being in the EU. In my experience, four out of five map instances are either desolate with no more than one or two forts under Pact control and no more than a handful of active players at those forts, or they are outright chest farms.
As a result, finding a working Silverwastes instance that’s playing the events and properly advancing the meta-event is hard, especially when the meta is below 60% (at which point all the breach-hopping vultures start slowly trickling in). Other than using the LFG tool a lot and hopping instances to find one that’s decent, there’s probably not a lot you can do. Except, hm, are there dedicated Silverwastes guilds?
The strange thing is, between all the rares and the champ bags you get, let alone the chests, Silverwastes is actually not a bad open world map when it comes to loot. But then I guess breach hopping, and thereby mooching off others, and then chest farming is more profitable than doing things all proper-like.
Access to that Asura Gate will only unlock after you’ve done the story tasks in Fort Trinity. And yes, that’s a known problem with the pathing hints ignoring what is actually accessible to your current character as opposed to someone who has unlocked everything.
The solution is to ignore the green swirl and get to Concordia on foot. If you don’t have a nearby Waypoint yet, go to the southeast corner of Lornar’s Pass, enter Timberline Falls from there and then walk south along the river in the western half of that map.
It’s a shame that we can’t repair the gates
Run more supply dolyaks. Dolyaks repair the gates when the fort is under pact control and they arrive outside a defense event.
Huh, I’d assumed you just needed to unlock it and then the chests would drop the grubby boxes whenever.
Given that the grubby boxes only start dropping from the chests once you’ve unlocked the achievement and stop dropping as soon as you’ve finished it, I tend to agree. I’d still play it safe and try to finish it before the next patch, but given the way this is working right now, there’s no good reason for it to stop once the Wintersday content gets phased out. Especially since you don’t need to take these ornaments back to the kids, which is kind of a huge plot hole right there but would tend to support this theory.
Hope this get fixed next patch…
That would be nice, although I’m not holding my breath. But can you imagine the number of people camping Red after the fix? :-D
Also would be nice if they fixed the broken “Reduce the mordrem threat” events (the ones where you kill a mordrem veteran) near Blue and Red while they’re at it. The events activate but unlike at Amber and Indigo, there’s no mordrem vet to kill near Red and Blue, at least in the maps I was in over the last two weeks.
Yep. A few months after they got fixed, the vertically displaced spirits are back, making this particular Renown Heart impossible, or at least extremely slow, to finish in some instances.
Yeah, they’re displaced ghosts, all-right!
I haven’t seen that particular bug for a while. It’s been around for ages, though, and I vaguely remember there having been a fix for it a few months ago.
Suppression seems to be bugged at times. However; varying what you are saying in map and common chats seems to prevent it from happening very often.
Not really. I was organizing a Dry Top run today by announcing events including where they are (linked POI or WP). Each of the messages I posted in map chat during the first 40 minutes of the hour was different – although since the events repeat on a 15 minute timer, each message is very similar to the one posted 15 minutes before. So we got to T5. Yay!
So I tried to do the same again a few minutes into the next hour and promptly got suppressed after not saying anything in map chat during the whole 20 minute sandstorm because someone else was announcing the sandstorm events.
This, from where I sit, is completely broken. How the frell are we supposed to organize things like Dry Top that need organizing to do anyone any good, if the only thing that allows us to do so in-game bugs out after an hour? As if farming for unidentified fossilized insects isn’t frustrating enough as is. :-(
BTW, tagging up and using squad chat is not a solution, because tagging up in my experience only leads to a gaggle of random people following the tag and up-scaling events.
That’s been a problem for some time now. The workaround is to talk to the little golems near some of the asura gates (e.g. by dying or going back). They will port you to the correct stage of the puzzle.
The meat rack gives you an item. Consuming that item gives you the skill point. Having that item still in your inventory prevents you from acquiring it again.
So it’s only a bug if you do not have that hunk of meat in your inventory.
The Devs are not looking at the handicapped players so will never complete the daily because of that reason. They should give more choices like the daily. Once the five is reached you get credit. The extra for fun. Just a idea.
That would be nice, yes. As it is, two of the six Wintersday dailies require you to be good at twitchy content, thus excluding those in the player base who aren’t.
I have more or less normal mobility and dexterity, but I suck at the choir bell activity. Part of which is me just being bad at this kind of thing, the other part is that choir bell is just really poorly designed: I have never been able to choose the song, and I don’t even know which song has been chosen at any given stage, so I have no control over the difficulty level. Bad design. Really, really bad design.
As for the jumping puzzle, I actually have no problems with the first stage, even though I rather dislike the time pressure I’m under. The third stage with the rolling snow balls is easy. But the second stage with the randomly exploding parcels has so far stopped me all but three times in as many days. It has also made me hate all the players who apparently can make that first jump without the row of blue parcels being there – which I’ve never managed, ever – and which therefor make me wait for minutes on end until the coast is finally clear for once, only to either fail on my own or get interrupted by the stupid and useless score sheet.
So yeah, I’ve given up on the Winterday daily.
Same experience here. Not sure how the new system changed this, but I have not received credit towards my monthly since the new dailies started.
I suspect that Monthly Completionist only fed off the old daily meta-achievement which required 5 daily achievements and gave you karma and a mystic coin, and that the new daily meta-achievement which requires 3 dailies and gives 10 AP is a completely different beast (even though it is still a daily meta-achievement) that no longer triggers Monthly Completionist.
And for completeness’ sake, I have that happen when I leave the jumping puzzle. The second time usually works fine.
Also, I think you can get laurels from the reward chests for specific daily achievements. Check their descriptions to see what you get from each, as the rewards vary.
Because I don’t even have a clue about what’s required to unlock certain traits in the first place. As this is not mentioned anywhere in-game
Locked traits should have a spyglass icon (see http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/4/42/Trait_interface.jpg/800px-Trait_interface.jpg ). Clicking on the spyglass should zoom the map to the place where the unlock happens.
It’s under Community Corner -> Looking For …
That sub-forum is a near-unusable a mess though, because PvP, WvW and guild recruitments/looking for are all jumbled together.
Yes I know about the mines. No they don’t help after you launch the flare.
True. But then, after you launch the flare, your job is largely to just stay alive. So let the NPCs tank most of the damage, burst down single mobs or small groups, and dodge a lot. Also, follow the advice of one of the NPCs and actually go way down the slope. I find that there’s far less action down there than at the upper end of the slope where your companions are battling it out.
It means: just another zones for event trains?
I can’t speak for the Silverwaste because I haven’t spent much time there yet, but Dry Top is actively anti-train except during the sand storm. Raising zephyrite favour beyond tier 4 requires distributed small teams, not zergs. From what little I’ve seen of Silverwastes, the same seems to be true there as well.
Stupidly strong monsters, especially that flower dogs – they are acting like unpredictable lightning! And all monsters there just a pain in the a… for any non-ranged class/spec
The Mordrem are part of ANET’s attempt to lessen the Zerker meta, at least in open world content. Conditions are great against most of them, and you want some condi clear, CC and dodging to go with that. Also, all Mordrem mobs have certain mechanics. Learning those makes fighting them a lot easier: Wolves do lots of damage from the sides and back, so pay attention to your positioning. Husks have high armor and low hit points, and thus melt to condition damage. Threshers are squishy from behind. And so on.
I never seen friendship score more than 4 in the Dry top – how do you think, why?
Because going beyond Tier 4 requires central organization and a bit of discipline (ignore the Dust Monster, for goodness’ sake!), or alternatively several small teams of players who already know what they’re doing, especially when it comes to the mechanics of events that can give bonus favour. If no-one steps up to do the work and everyone just muddles along, Tier 4 is possible simply by having a bunch of reasonably active players on the map, so tier 4 is what you get at best, most of the time.
It will be like Orr. […] There is even tricks, like how to spawn more champs or fail some events to force it faster restart, etc
Dry Top doesn’t work that way. Upscaled champions don’t drop champ bags, AFAIK. Failing events, or not finishing them in a timely manner, only possibly makes them respawn slower, not faster. And your champ bags mainly come from a few events on a regular, fixed schedule or from the buried locked chests during the sand storm, which imposes a kind of delayed gratification scheme that doesn’t work for everyone.
Answer 1: 1
Answer 2: 68 (It is ostensibly possible to get ectos from salvaging lower level rare gear, but if so, it’s a very low probability.)
Seeing as people have asked for the unidentified fossilized insects to be tradeable basically since the day Dry Top has opened and we still don’t have that, I would not hold my breath. It would be pretty nice, though.
Have you just reached level 11? According to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Level_rewards this is when the daily and monthly achievements get unlocked.
And yes, that’s the way it works. It will display a list of six random daily achievements unless you specifically select at least one to watch. Once you’ve done the Daily (5 daily achievements), it will do the same for the monthly achievements. Once you’ve finished the Monthly (4 monthly achievements), the list will go away.
The number 5 skill is supped to unlock when the mob you’re fighting goes below 50% health. Unfortunately, this has been bugged for a good while now and works unreliably. I had much better luck fighting the minotaurs than the drakes – the drakes would often die before the skill would unlock while the minotaurs could be captured IF you’re fast enough once the skill unlocks.
Tip: watch the bleeds you’re inflicting with the 1(?) skill and use the other weapon skills once the mob’s health gets close to 50%.
Try to aim carefully at the center of the breach when you jump and not to hit anything on the way down. Not snagging on any of the structures at the side walls of the maw is what solved the problem for me. Then again, it may have been random. :-P
Dodge more. Use defensive utility skills if you have them (you’re not saying what level you are). Axe offhand is pure DPS, IIRC, so maybe use an offhand with more utility? (I happen to like axe/mace.) Look at your traits and see if you can’t find traits that help you survive better.
Also, what content are you talking about? Open world? Personal story?
But honestly, a Warrior shouldn’t really have survivability problems in solo content until you’re fighting either undead or Mordrem. If you’re absolutely frustrated, you might try Soldier gear, but that’s kinda like running with training wheels. Avoiding damage through dodging and positioning is a key combat mechanic in GW2, so learning it as early as possible is kinda, sorta a requirement.
When all else fails, you might look into condition builds (sword/sword for the Warrior, IIRC), as those tend to be able to get tankier than direct damage builds. They are only really useful in solo content, though.
As far as I know, there are no explicit diminishing return (DR) curves built into the game’s formulas – mathematical formulas for damage, resistances, healing etc. seem to be largely simple and linear (y = a * x + b) or inverse linar (y = a/x + b) (a and b being constants, x being the stat, e.g. power, and y being the desired result, e.g. damage)
That said, there are “natural” diminishing returns:
Once you’ve reached 100% crit chance (or 80% when you’re running with high Fury uptime), stacking more Precision doesn’t make any sense.
Stacking Toughness will make less and less difference the higher you get: Adding 100 Toughness when you only have 100 Toughness to begin with will make far more of a difference than when you already have 2500 Toughness.
Given a high crit chance, it may be better in some circumstances to stack Ferocity than Power in order to increase your average damage output.
It’s a bug and it happened to me earlier as well also on yellow(amber)
But after walking back there I was able to get in no problem by jumping towards the center of the jaws
Same here. And yes, the key seemed to be hitting the center of the hole, since I definitely snagged on something at the side walls before getting teleported to the Labyrinth waypoint.
It’s directly left when you enter from the Grove, where the shallow pools are.
This is purely an animation bug, and unfortunately it’s been like that for a good long while. At least there is no need to interrupt anything (unless you’re in a hurry), because that fourth swing will do nothing: no ressource gain, no decrement on the tool use counter.
durmand priory have fastest base access via lions arch east portal gate.
and with that, quick access to the portal gate that leads to the map straits of devastation.
Access to the Fort Trinity gate is granted through Personal Story progress, not Priory membership.
You don’t have to put up with Tybalt?
Aww, I liked him quite a bit. Certainly more than the other two – airhead Sieran was even more annoying than Tybalt and Norn McGrumperson was a complete non-entity, as far as I am concerned. I’m currently levelling my 5th character and I had her join the Order of Whispers just so I could meet Tybalt again.
1. http://www.gw2crafts.net/weaponcraft.html says it’s currently around 22 gold to level Weaponsmith to 400.
2. Not sure. I like having it, both for the crafted back item skins and the craft-only stat combinations (like Celestial). And also the achievement points/completion. YMMV.
3. That varies but the crafting guides take that into account. Sites like gw2spidy.com will also break this down for you.
But in general around the lake in Kessex Hills is the best place. Gendarran Fields and Brisban have the toxic events but nobody ever does them.
Actually, my experience is that the Toxic Spore events in Gendarran Fields see almost as much action as those in Kessex Hills. But yeah, no-one seems to do those in Brisban Wildlands.
It seems that the Rich Veins (along with T6 nodes like Orichalcum and Ancient Wood) have a hidden “limit” to how much mats they can give out in a particular map.
<snip>
These limits are character-bound. Using the same character and hopping instances will not respawn the nodes for you, but using multiple characters will.
Yep. Just for completeness’ sake, there are three other nodes with limits on them, but for those nodes – Quartz, Passiflora and Blooming Passiflora – the limits are not per character, but per account: each Dry Top map has three normal and one rich Quartz node that you can farm once per day per account. That the three normal Quartz nodes can vary in location has no bearing on that: farm three of them and they all get disabled. Also, partially farming the nodes does not help – nine hits on normal Quartz nodes is all you get per day in Dry Top, so you can farm more nodes but get the same amount of Quartz. You can farm three Blooming Passiflora and a total of about 20 Passiflora nodes per account per day.
Extra gathering chances from WvW bonuses do work as expected, though.
This is not a new issue – Lightning Pull has always been flaky and sensitive to lag – you’re just “lucky” that you got hit with this problem only now. In fact, all three Aspect skills suffer from that problem. Lightning Pull is just the one were it’s most noticeable (and usually most deadly).
maybe they wanted us to use conditions????….. nahhhh
Well, my celestial engineer and condi thief didn’t have overwhelming problems with the retaliation, although both had to be careful about the kits/weapons they used against mordrem wolves. So maybe?
But with the new, retaliation-less wolves, there is certainly no point in switching ouf of the engineer’s grenade kit or being careful about quick dagger strikes from the thief, so fighting mordrem has gotten a bit boring.
I think they also may have nerfed the ranged vine tentacle attack of the Leeching Thrashers – it certainly seems easier now to dodge out of those without taking damage – and I find that particular change highly welcome.
84? Ouch! I’ve seen them go up to 83 during the Silverwastes chest farm, and their HP pool could hardly be dented even then. I think that might be part of ANET’s answer to zergs upscaling events in order to farm champion bags: instead of (or in addition to) upscaling the mobs from Veteran to Champion, raise their level.
It’s been that way since the September feature patch or thereabouts. Ignore the event – it’s apparently what ANET does as well. The event for re-taking the town is at a more more sensible difficulty level, IIRC.
It’s been happening repeatedly to me that I’m in Dry Top, making some progress in getting the instance to T4, and I get the “We’d like to close this map, would you like to transfer” prompt. Seeing as things are kind of slow and T4 looks iffy, I say yes. Only to land in an instance that is considerably less far along in the tier progression.
Thanks, ANET, for wasting my time, and for making it unnecessarily hard to find a good map instance!
When deciding which Dry Top maps to close, the Megaserver should take into account not just population but also tier advancement. If possible, tier advancement should rise in priority the closer we get to the sand storm. Otherwise, it is not only not helping, it’s frustrating and actively counterproductive.
It’s been that way, I think, since the September feature patch or at least thereabouts, when that event got uptuned to be pretty much unwinnable. There were lots of complaints then, but apparently nothing has changed in the intervening months. :-(
I’m using “backpack kits” in my e-mail, but would you suggest I use “weapon kit” instead? Or “bomb kit,” “grenade kit,” etc? I thought backpack was more descriptive and accurate but whatever you think best describes would be helpful.
I think that as a descriptive name, “backpack kits” is exactly right. No-one here complains about the look of the Flame Thrower or the Elixier Gun after all, i.e. the things in the character’s hands, but about those backpacks.
(edited by Gudy.3607)
I just watched the Living Soundtrack video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex9McZRWi40), and there is only very limited footage of the wind section of the orchestra, but in the shots that show the conductor from the back, there is something huge and tubular standing in the background to the right…
Two points here. 1) ANET is apparently trying to weaken the endgame Zerker meta, or at least confine it to dungeon runs. The Mordrem creatures are designed with that in mind. 2) Yes, those Seraphs take a longer than usual time to kill, and no, it’s not armor. My condi thief just melts Mordrem Husks (which are heavily armored but don’t have that large a hitpoint pool), but those Fallen Seraphs still took her a while to kill.
It affects everyone else. And that is a problem. It’s just not your problem. The September Feature Patch intentionally reshuffled the higher level parts of the Personal Story for reasons no-one outside ANET understands. It completely neglected to fix all the inconsistencies that have crept up as a result, though.
As a thief, I actually find the Thrasher + Husk combo more dangerous than Thrasher + Wolves. Husks can immobilize, which is bad against Vile Thrashers (lots of torment stacks) and Leeching Thrashers (those kittening tendrils). Even worse are multiple Leeching Thrashers close enough together that one is in tendril range while you’re meleeing down the other.
With Thrasher + Wolves, I use movement and evade skills to stay around the Thrasher and avoid the Wolves while dealing damage, then dodge out of the leeching goo and try to burst down the Wolves in the mean time. The important part is to get back into melee range of the Thrasher as soon as the goo is gone so as to avoid those tendrils.
Mordrem are basically ANET’s answer to the stacking Zerker meta, so are specifically designed to counter parts of that:
Husks have high armor but melt to conditions. Beware their immobilize, especially with other Mordrem around.
Wolves need to be immobilized unless you can dodge and evade their hard-hitting backstabs. Also pay attention to their retaliation, which they spread to other nearby Mordrem, when you have a fast-hitting weapon.
Vile Threshers are weak from behind. Dodge their torment-inducing trails and especially the whirl.
Leeching Threshers should be meleed due to their hard-hitting ranged attack (tendrils), but stay out of their health-leeching goo circles.
It’s been like that for ages, yeah. I’d love to see that marker moved closer to the Priory.
The badge is easy to get without getting hit by any of the traps. At least it was for me, by sticking to the outskirts of the zone. Or it could have been dumb luck for all I know…
Also, the latest patch is supposed to have fixed the attackable by other players thing.
Nope, not that I’ve seen lately. Piken Square has queues on Friday nights and sometimes over the weekend, but even then they tend to be relatively short. Otherwise, queues are mostly an indicator that we’re up against a mega-blob server that is currently rampaging through one of the maps. :-P
To sum up:
Story achievements (Containment, Back in the Box, Beaten Bloody and Upset Stomach) do NOT count.
Lunatic Inquisition Regular does NOT count.
Again doing the same Halloween daily that you already did on a previous day does NOT count.
Doing each Halloween daily for the first time DOES count.
All Blood and Madness achievements besides Containment, Back in the Box, Beaten Bloody, Upset Stomach and Lunatic Inquisition Regular DO count. That means Candy Corn Crusher, Death to the Undying, Bonebreaker, Something Good to Eat, A Royal Tradition, Stomping Good Time, Pumpkin Carving and Shut the Doors. (Did I forget anything?)
Pro-tip: If you can’t seem to find one, activate your Commander tag (or ask if anyone in the map has one). The moment people see a Commander in the map, they are more likely to stay and help it fill.
True. The zerg I was with yesterday evening was more or less created that way (not by me). Except for the Lich King, the content is easy enough that you don’t need a lot of actual leadership if your group isn’t super small. Apart from the 2nd Lich King pull – the first one actually worked reasonably well – things only got hairy when the Candy Corn champ and the Labyrinth Horror ganged up on us.
Actually, the relocated potato farm in Wayfarer has completely been removed as of Tuesday’s patch. […] So it would seem that we are down to one potato farm, and whatever handful of nodes there are in WvW. :/
:-( Which one? Without the Wayfarer farm, there should be two, one in Plains of Ashford and one in Metrica Province. Or so the wiki still claims.