9:46 from “go” position to killing King Toad / 10:09 from map screen to chest. Doing it without the slingshot resulted in a 10:40 run, so a slingshot is worth around 1 minute.
RNG on the boss can make a big difference. My previous kill for example was 10s quicker. I’ve also seen the boss start with a right stomp them do a tongue, then a left stomp then a tongue again – the fastest possible kill.
I made a few errors, which cost around 10 seconds. Factoring in that along with some good RNG, a sub 9 minute run should be possible.
If you bind a single key (using a macro) to press F1-4 at the same time, you will cycle to whatever attunement isn’t on cooldown from left to right.
Each attunement has a specific use and a time to use it, so cycling through them and needlessly putting attunements on cooldown would be very inefficient. It’d basically be the same as using your skills in order instead of when you need them. Swapping weapons is automatic since it’s only between two of them so there’s no choice to be made. If it were more, it’d most likely no longer be automatic, unless it was balanced that way.
You would press a single mouse button and it would go to Water Attunement, press it again and go to Air and again to go to Earth, then back to Fire? You were using a macro that played a sequence.
You had a mouse button for each attunement? You had the buttons assigned to F1-4.
There is no in-game command to go through the attunements in sequence. Doing so would not be a very efficient way to play an elementalist.
They only issue suspensions when an exploit basically allows you to print gold.
If this was considered an exploit, they would have disabled the SAB on day 1 to fix the problem. They would have simply either made the chest account bound or removed the rewards.
I figured they would have removed Obsidian Shards due to farming, since they much easier to get using baubles. The skill point items can already be easily farmed on level 1s. But it is for a limited time only, so it’s probably intended.
The more you advance through the SAB, the higher level weapons you can obtain. One such weapon upgrade is a fiery sword.
So it’ll probably not be available until the end (a very long time from now, probably more than a year).
Crafting gives a percentage of your level depending on your crafting level for each level gained in that discipline. Each discipline should be worth 10 levels.
Unless it’s possible to craft too fast (like when crafting a rare and jumping 10+ levels) and miss some of that XP, one of your disciplines is probably still in the 200-300 range.
All skill challenges are soloable, but that one is probably the hardest one I’ve done because of that event, as long as you try to do it. That event is not part of the skill challenge however. You should be able to run past it and find a safe spot in the back. If not, you can always run to the back, logout (it’ll drop agro) and log back in.
By creating new characters to farm the SAB, you can get roughly 6 bauble bubbles every 17 minutes and enough baubles to get 1 more after every 5 runs. Using existing characters, you can cut that down to 10 minutes.
Running zone 1 to 3 is slightly more efficient than just doing 1 and 2 as long as you don’t make many errors.
You would roughly have to complete 1 level 80 event every minute with a maximum karma boost (95%) to earn them at the same rate. If you just want to get them over time, using the max karma boost, you can earn 4 a day (250 in 60 days) by only using the karma jug from the daily.
It’s a repeatable bug by leaving the instance before your camera is reset back to normal. You can fix it by exiting the game or returning to and leaving an area that will zoom out the camera.
Zone 1 is ~2:30 + 15s wait at the end
Zone 2 is ~3:30 + 45s wait at the end
Zone 3 is ~4:00
It takes ~3 to ~6 minutes to create a character and run to the entrance. Add another minute to get to zone 1.
At 3m creation:
Zone 1 to 2 will get 50 baubles in 2h 8m
Zone 1 to 3 will get 50 baubles in 2h 5m
At 6m creation:
Zone 1 to 2 will get 50 baubles in 2h 46m
Zone 1 to 3 will get 50 baubles in 2h 30m
Factoring in slight errors on zone 3 however will make the times that much closer, so it really comes down to how many times you want to replay the tutorial.
10:40 (starting from the first map screen)
Allowing dailies to infinitely count doesn’t make sense compared to their stance on salvaging. Salvaging was basically an achievement for how much gold you spent while dailies are an achievement for how many days you actively played, assuming you do them.
Points from salvaging greatly eclipsed everything else, but the same thing is going to happen to dailies. The only difference is ArenaNet can control how fast they’re obtained. 5 dailies is already worth some of the hardest achievements in the game, so if they’re going to rank people by points, why should the guy that has never done a daily but has all the hardest achievements be ranked lower than the guy who’s done nothing except the daily. The same problem comes up in other aspects of the game – you’re not rewarded based on effort – but the average player probably prefers it that way.
Leaderboards are meant to give you a reason to fight for the top spots. That purpose is lost however when you know you’re guaranteed to fail, since it’s not possible.
I imagine however that achievement leaderboards will be scrapped or made part of a larger board, if it’s not like that already. Leaderboards based solely on achievement points sounds like a quick “throw it in” move until something more complex can be made. Also, achievements don’t fluctuate enough. A lot of people would eventually be tied for #1 if dailies didn’t count, and a stagnant leaderboard isn’t fun.
From what I’ve seen so far (stopped after the frog boss), the place should be solo only because unless it scales the mobs based on the number of players, the place must be a joke for 5 people, cheapening some of the achievements, like no deaths.
The frog boss specifically doesn’t look like it matters how many people you have. Once attackable, it seemed to only remain attackable up to a certain percentage, so having more people wouldn’t really matter.
Since this place is based on the old single player games these places are probably supposed to be done solo. If 5 people were actually expected, you wouldn’t be able to 2 hit mobs.
You retain everything account bound that’s not tied to a character, like your bank. Laurels are account bound.
You can delete all the characters on the account and then change servers for free. The transfer costs only kick in for accounts with characters on them.
4 ectos in a week is about right… if you only do 1 event a day and you’re unlucky.
Doing 5 events a day should result in 5-8 rares, which should on average give around 3-6 ectos.
Boss Chest
The normal chest that spawns on the ground.
A minimum of bronze contribution required.
Can be looted once per character per event each day.
Resets with the daily.
Bonus Chest
The recently added chest that appears on the UI, similar to the daily reward chest.
A minimum of bronze contribution required.
Can be looted once per event each day.
Resets with the daily.
Daily Reset
24:00 UTC / 0:00 UTC / 5 PM PDT
Doing one of the events, such as the Shadow Behemoth, twice will result in only a normal chest the second time.
The dragon chest can be looted once a day per character per event.
The daily dragon chest (the one that pops up like the daily reward chest) can be looted once a day per account per event.
Make sure your computer’s date and time is set correctly.
You can try deleting the cache of Awesomium, which is what GW2 uses to display the trading post. On Windows 7, the folder is located under “%LOCALAPPDATA%/Temp/” and the folder’s name starts with “gw2cache” and ends with an ID. GW2 cannot be running when you do this. You want to delete the entire gw2cache folder.
The full path on 7/Vista is “C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\gw2cache-{ <id> }”. On XP it is “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp\gw2cache-{ <id> }”.
If you haven’t updated or a running a very old version of Windows, you need to run Windows Update and install the root certificates update.
Some antivirus/firewall programs can block the connection made or filter it, but normally this would block everything, making the TP look like it’s loading forever. When you start GW2, awesomium_process.exe (located in the gw2cache folder) is created and is used to access the TP. This file needs to be excluded in your antivirus/firewall.
When you first access the TP, “https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/authenticate?session_key=<key>&source=/” is requested which creates the session. The response returned creates a cookie, storing the returned session key. To get an invalid session, either that request isn’t going through properly or the response isn’t being received properly.
(edited by Healix.5819)
Yes it can be done. Just gather or do collection events.
Yes.
After using the skin once, you’ll need to use a transmutation stone (green rarity) before level 80 and a transmutation crystal (yellow rarity) at level 80 to transfer the skin to another piece. Transmutation stones can be obtained as a random reward from completing zones, though not at a rate to continuously skin your gear every few levels.
You can contact support using Ask a Question http://support.guildwars2.com. Note that they will not recover items lost from guild banks.
Groups weren’t designed for PuGs, which is why some things seem wrong. All content that can use a group is designed for “coordinated players” (dungeons) and friends (personal story).
Unless they required everyone in the group except the 1 person to kick you, you’d still get kicked. People tend to just accept kick requests either because they simply don’t care of because they’re drawn towards clicking yes buttons. The only real solution to stop repeated kickers is to track how many times they’ve kicked people and then limit it based on that. The more you initiate a kick request, the less you’re allowed to do it. This type of system isn’t usually found in consensual groups however.
A LFG system is coming, which may or may not change how groups work.
The casual majority isn’t going to speed run dungeons and may not even run dungeons at all. Some people play solo or with just a couple friends. Farming dragon events yields the best open world rewards. If playing the game normally would offer similar rewards, these events wouldn’t be such hotspots.
The dragons are effortless. You can be 99% AFK the entire time and still get your rewards. People farming these don’t have to be actually playing the game. Simply run the game in a small window or on another computer and do something else.
Speed running a dungeon over and over gets boring quick, especially when you’re just doing it for the gold. I’d rather bot the TP.
Also, if you have multiple characters and guest, you can easily do the events almost back to back at roughly 1 event every 10 minutes. It was easier pre-patch when Maw was at a shorter cooldown, since it could always be done as filler.
(edited by Healix.5819)
Doing Rox’s story a second time, I got 1 karma gift box (2000 karma) and 2 bags of coins. It doesn’t appear to be a bug, since the reward is handled differently compared to doing it your first time.
The chest that pops up like the daily reward chest can only contain 1 rare (or better). It can sometimes also contain a few copper.
(edited by Healix.5819)
Yes you can still get a rare or exotic or multiples of them from the chest.
Dungeons weren’t designed with these items in mind, so they’re not balanced around having them. If you feel you need these items, then you’re either not doing the content at the intended difficulty or you’re not with a balanced group. These items can remove the need for people to actually specialize, in this case into defense/support, or remove the bonuses for bringing other classes. When specialization isn’t needed, the game turns into everyone wanting only the best DPS available, which usually results in 1 class becoming dominant overall.
If you can provide the utility of another class or spec just by using an item, what happens to the other person? They had to sacrifice something to get it, whereas you didn’t. This results in the other person being weaker than you in comparison, so why would you want to bring them. For normal groups, this doesn’t really matter, but when people start to min/max, those classes become useless.
ArenaNet never said that doing a dungeon with 5 of same class would be optimal, especially 5 with pure DPS specs, so don’t expect it to be as easy as running a balanced group. They only said that it was possible, whereas in a normal MMO it’s not even an option.
They could have left them useable and just gone the route of other games and simply put 10 minute to hour long cooldowns on them. They probably thought it was better however to just keep them as fun items and just disable them where they cause the most damage.
The problem with the daily/monthly counting is that eventually, that’s all that will matter. Just doing the daily (9), PvP daily (4), monthly (40) and PvP monthly (7) is worth 5309 points a year. A player that starts the game late will have a very hard time catching up and even if they 100% the game and do every achievement available, they might not catch up to someone who has done 0% of the game, but has always completed the dailies.
It doesn’t really matter though since certain things like the living story give achievements but won’t be around forever. Content like this, especially when you’re made aware of it, can be a turn off to new players, especially completionists.
the guy with 20,xxx achievement points now has 5,1xx LOL!
The guy who probably has the most, went from 35661 to 6549.
You get one as a reward for completing Braham’s living story. It’s basically a free sample.
In places where you’re not affected by culling, it’s possible to see people from very far away. For example, you could watch people doing the winter wonderland jumping puzzle from the other end of the map, which is pretty far. Targeting seems to have a limited range also, since although you can see it, you can’t target it once it’s at a certain distance.
You should be able to test it right now by finding a quiet spot (no other mobs/players/targets around) and walking away from another person until they disappear, at which point that would be the max distance. Once the change goes live, you should be able to see up to X people within that max distance. A zerg will still be able to pop in on you however if there’s already X people within your view.
All games use the same basic concept, MMOs just simplify it. In both styles, you’re nothing more than a cube hitting another cube (hit boxes).
In an MMO however, the only thing that matters is the distance between your cube and theirs. As long as you are within range, your attack will connect. Unlike most MMOs however, projectiles in GW2 are just like those in an FPS. Both are small moving cubes that hit another cube.
In more advanced games, the concept is the same except instead of a single cube, each object is made up of multiple ones. At the basic level, the cubes of a humanoid are their arms, legs, torso and head, which can then be further divided depending on how advanced you want to be. Depending on the style used, to hit the other cube, your cube simply has to be in range, just like in an MMO, or a specific cube (your weapon) has to hit their cube. Your damage is then based on which of their cubes you hit, a headshot being the most obvious. For special attacks that say, cut off an arm, impale, etc, are nothing more than animations at predefined points or within predefined areas.
Both styles are the same on their basic levels. MMOs just use simplified hit boxes.
The dragon events show a flaw with their engine or they simply forgot. The hit boxes for the dragons are fixed to the default model and don’t move with their animations. This is most notable on the shadow behemoth, with the hit box being its face when it screams. Jormag has a more advanced hit box, using 3, for the hands and head, instead of just 1 big one. Because of this, you can hit all 3 at once, doing 3x your normal damage.
They could have made the dragons solid objects, but judging by their hit box, the collision would have most likely included where it isn’t, making it seem like there are invisible walls. They would have to first fix them all. A more advanced shadow behemoth for example would have had collision on its body, and then when it screamed, it would do a frontal line AoE, knocking everyone back, which would then become another collision point. This however is usually when they have to decide if it’s worth the extra time and resources, which is usually a no for something not really needed.
Keep them slowed and stay at range. They will still try to leap to you at max distance, but when they do, they’ll go half as far due to being slowed. As long as you stay at range, they should never hit you.
Alternatively, you can simply spam blind them. Certain classes/skills can manage this.
Unsurprisingly, this topic comes up often. Here’s one of Gaile’s many responses:
The filter is not intended to serve as a “License to Swear” for users who choose to use offensive language. It is presented to afford some protection against offensive language, but we still uphold the stated rules regarding chat.
I like this analogy that a player posted a few months ago:
“Cursing in public chat channels is like cursing at an Olive Garden. You’ll get kicked out if someone complains. “Their kids could cover their ears” is not a valid excuse. Guild chat is more like a backyard BBQ. Swear and drink all you like — it’s your party. Threaten someone, though, and that’s still assault. Yes, I know we’re adults and hear plenty of bad things. It wouldn’t hurt to act like one every once in a while."
The temporary ban is your warning. The more you get banned, the worse it gets, which eventually leads to account termination.
(edited by Healix.5819)
The problem with guild missions is that they should have just called them missions and not packaged them as activities specifically for guilds. Doing so only tells guilds that can’t meet the requirements that they’re not real guilds from the dev’s point of view. Once you’ve been rejected by the devs, you can pretty much assume you will not meet the requirements of any future guild content, so quit or merge.
Raiding is normally a guild activity in MMOs, but they don’t call it that. Furthermore, an outsider of the guild still gets rewarded on the same level as everyone else. Guild missions should have been like that, fully rewarding people who are participating the entire time, rather than requiring them to represent or get nothing. If outsiders aren’t going to get the same rewards for doing the same thing, then the content should have been instanced. Normally, this type of content wouldn’t require a guild, but rather, a raid group. People outside of that group would normally get nothing, but the average MMO doesn’t feature scaling along with a “loot for participating” system. With the way it’s set up, requiring representation is basically going back to the old tagging system, which I can see why they would want to do that, but since guilds can already be a massive zerg, I don’t know why’d they care about the few extra people.
Guild missions should have been sold as “raid” content that anyone could start, but obviously a guild would be the best for, in the same way dungeons can be PuG’d but a static group is best. In this system, the item to start the content would have been tied to something like karma, where anyone could go and get one, then find a mass of people to do it, similar to how raid rifts are done in Rift.
ArenaNet’s problem however was that they specifically needed content for guilds, with people complaining guilds were useless and all, so they wanted to directly sell it as such. It would have been better however if this content didn’t revolve around guilds but rather simply benefited from it. If they actually wanted benefits for being in a certain guild, they should have gone with bonuses/rewards for how long you’ve been with the guild / how much influence you’ve contributed.
Lastly, considering they said guild missions were tested with around 30 people, requiring more than 10 people for any mission is going on the extreme side. 10 is generally considered now to be the standard smaller raid size so a guild of 10 should be enough.
(edited by Healix.5819)
From beta:
Linsey MurdockSome Chefs out there may have noticed that there is not a single recipe with fish in it. Nor do fish in the rivers, lakes, and oceans of Tyria drop fish meat. This was all done intentionally.
We aren’t going to have fishing on release and we may not even have it any time soon (initial expansions/Live updates), but there is a place for it when the time comes
It already happens in WvW and if you want to duel a specific guild, the soon to exist Custom Arenas.
except that unless they’ve read this comic chances are no program will assume your password is four random words because that’s not how the vast majority of people create theirs.
Back before people cared about security, a random word or sentence was commonly used as a password.
I went to change my password and apparently, they blacklist all passwords that have already been used, meaning if you change your password, you can’t go back to the one you just had. If someone actually brute forced the password creation, they could lock out all passwords of whatever length they desired. But what I noticed is that they recommended that comic on how to create your password. So actually, if I was going to brute force a password, I would start with 4 random words, then go on to full brute forcing.
But people generally don’t brute force from scratch anymore since it takes too long and is too easily detectable. They try to get a variation of your password, either by phishing or hacking some old site you used to be on and work with that. The only time people really brute force is when they have a copy of your password, which for online services means they managed to break in and steal the database, obtaining the password hashes.
With other security systems in place, it truly doesn’t matter what your password is. Your password could be password and it wouldn’t matter as long as you have both IP verification and an authenticator. The only time a password needs to be strong is when the place storing your password gets compromised. But the problem is, the people who do get hacked don’t bother with these additional measures, since they’re not required.
Mounts is a subject they’ve neither confirmed or denied. It’s one of those things they’ve left open as a future possibility, but anything really is a future possibility. Since they could profit a lot from gem store mounts and customizations, which would be purely cosmetic, there probably will be mounts one day. However, they might be against the idea since mounts are a main target for the anti-WoW crowd.
Dwarves rode mounts in GW1, so the subject isn’t exactly unheard of in the world of tyria and charr already have bikes and tanks.
So I implemented extreme security measures (unique e-mail, unique password, extreme strength password); and twice now my account appears to have been compromised. So, either gmail is both compromised and has someone using that data to datamine for GW2, or arenanet’s security is compromised.
That’s not extreme, that’s basic.
If your account is properly set up, the only way that someone can get into your account is by knowing both your game and email password so that they can verify themselves. Alternatively, they could know your IP and attempt to proxy to your local region to bypass the IP verification.
If you are using an authenticator, then that person must also steal your unique code, which is normally only available when you set it up. They could also steal or clone the device you used it on to retrieve it.
It doesn’t matter how strong your password is or how many times you change it if you have a virus. Depending on if you keep your computer up to date, it’s possible to get a virus from just browsing a website, even ones you think are safe, since they’re usually hooked into the ads. Recently, java and flash have had exploits allowing for these cases. Another common way to lose your password is by phishing, which is when you login to site that looks exactly like the official one, but it’s not.
Rift is an example where the company itself was compromised. Thousands of people were getting hacked a day. Everyone knew someone in-game that had been hacked. There were new “I got hacked” posts every day on the forums. You’ll know when their security fails.
Obligatory xkcd comic.
There’s a miscalculation in this comic. The password composed of 4 words will fail to a dictionary attack. Basically, it’s the equivalent of a 4 letter password.
Some events won’t start until a player is within range. For example, there are some escort events where the NPCs will just stand there. Once you get within a certain distance, they’ll start talking. Shortly after, about up to a minute, the event will activate. You can easily miss these if you don’t pay attention. These type of events don’t have the orange circle above the NPC’s head since you don’t activate them by interacting. They just don’t start unless someone is around to see it.
Since the daily change, some of the starter zones have been annoying to play in for new characters. Higher levels run around completing all the events quickly to do their daily causing you to miss them. Since 80s can practically 1 shot the mobs, it makes it even more difficult.
Other than that, nothing has really changed. I leveled about a week ago, getting to 80 after 100%ing 4 zones, only getting up to the level 50 zone bracket (I follow the personal story for what zones to go to). Crafting and gathering can make a major difference in your XP gains, if you’re skipping them.
The geo locations for IPs are guessed or the ISP controlling them registers them. I can only assume the EU servers are shown as Texas because they’re their own ISP (NC) and their main hub is in Texas with the NA servers. Look up 4.69.154.138 for example, it’s registered properly by only 1 out of the 3 of them and it’s one of the main routers in Germany.
Out of your tests, you didn’t perform one of the most basic ones, which would have revealed Frankfurt. You didn’t trace the IP.
Example tracert 206.127.159.131:
12 169 ms 169 ms 171 ms ae-5-5.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.143.221]
13 167 ms 180 ms 168 ms ae-43-43.ebr2.Paris1.Level3.net [4.69.137.57]
14 175 ms 172 ms 170 ms ae-46-46.ebr1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.143.137]
15 172 ms 168 ms 178 ms ae-81-81.csw3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.140.10]
16 171 ms 171 ms 171 ms ae-3-80.edge6.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.138]
17 170 ms 170 ms 176 ms 195.16.161.58
18 172 ms 171 ms 177 ms 206-127-157-86.plaync.com [206.127.157.86]
19 169 ms 176 ms 168 ms 206-127-157-102.plaync.com [206.127.157.102]
For comparison, a NA server (64.25.33.41):
12 81 ms 89 ms 83 ms ae-91-91.csw4.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.151.161]
13 * 92 ms 81 ms ae-4-90.edge2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.145.203]
14 85 ms 95 ms 85 ms 4.59.197.34
15 86 ms 82 ms 85 ms 64.25.32.9
16 85 ms 85 ms 87 ms 64.25.32.26
17 84 ms 83 ms 89 ms 64.25.32.82
Certain password were blacklisted because they were used in attempts to hack accounts.
To create a password, simply press random buttons: anJLA8($nam!Lk2. Set your password to remember then save that password in a text file in case you need it again. Set the file to be encrypted and remove/deny all permissions on the file making it unreadable and undeletable to the average person.
If every class was given the option to have 4 weapon swaps, then ever class would have their weapons nerfed to compensate. As a result, like the elementalist, every class would have to commonly rotate through their weapons. The average majority couldn’t handle it and would complain, saying their class is weak and that the game was too hard, because they wouldn’t switch weapons.
The guaranteed rare wasn’t part of the equation when determining the drops from the chest. It was already guaranteed. So the chances to get the Final Rest will be the same as it was.
False. I’ve gotten one of the unique exotics (Eternal Ice) instead of a rare. The slot was a guaranteed rare or better, as said by Martin in his last post.
If the account bound chest can contain Final Rest, then yes, the chances are the same. If not, that’s -1 chances.
(edited by Healix.5819)
The special drops, Final Rest lets say from SB, will still drop from the normal chest. The only thing that is changing is the ONE guaranteed rare will come from a chest like the daily chest is One per event, per account, per day.
The boss chest can still be looted once per day, per character. So you still have the same chance as before to get Final Rest or other special drop. That hasn’t changed.
The question was, can Final Rest drop from the account bound daily chest?
If not, that means your chances are actually lowered, because that’s 1 less roll you have at obtaining one, since 1 item is being removed. If you go with the theory that the guaranteed rare was actually a modifier, meaning it had a higher chance to be an exotic compared to any other item in the chest, that means your chances are actually greatly reduced.
Nah, the guy with 35,000 achievement points is me.
It was you. (original source)
I have not missed a single daily since the game out so there’s a good chance.
But have you 9/5 the daily since the change, because those extra 4 points will end up being worth a lot – 1460 a year, making them worth a lot more than any other achievement. You’re probably already doing this however.
It’s an option. They could always do it in an expansion or something, but it’s highly unlikely. The dual class system was after all removed for GW2 due to being impossible to balance.
Additional weapons will be added in the future. They’ve pretty much confirmed that in the betas when people asked about 2h axes, also, fishing.