Guild Wars 2

Aaaand Grenth is once again bugged. Every couple of seconds a player gets teleported to a seemingly random location above the ground suffering huge damage hitting the ground, sometimes enough to go from full health to defeated state right away. This is not even a fight anymore, it’s random application of death penalty.

EDIT: The problem still persists and seems to affect everyone with those newly arisen connection problems (Germany, Telekom and 1&1 customers mainly, tracert shows massive latency and data loss between servers and Telekom data center). No red circles or red circles after you are already in the air. At this rate the event is simply not playable for those affected.

Yeah, those connection errors during the update are evil today. At the best gaming time here in Europe, on top of that. Not good.

Well, there is a small chance for a node returning ruined materials when you are in combat, but some people do experience this a lot more regularly than others. I have no idea if this is a bug (seemingly with the warrior profession in your case) or just a statistical oddity – like that guy you and everybody else know who always gets exotic items despite barely using any Magic Find.

When reviewing the “My Story” panel of the Hero window you can only see Personal Quests up to and including “What the Eye beholds”. If you try to scroll even a little bit further down, just as you can make out the title of the following quest, the list goes completely empty. You can make the quest list reappear again by scrolling up far enough so that “What the Eye beholds” is once again at the very bottom of the window.

Seeing that this bug could be reproduced with multiple accounts on multiple computers with no occurence of the panel behaving as intended it would be interesting to hear if anybody does not experience this bug.

My charr has white fur… well, actually it is light grey with a white pattern, but I guess that still counts. This has nothing to do with white tigers (my charr’s pattern is actually more hyena-compatible) or how I am a white male myself. It is rather a combination of the following:
- it just looks great
- it fits the necromancer theme (“ghostly white”, “bleached bones”, white as a color of mourning in some cultures etc.)
- it fits the “anime-villainesque” IC personality of my charr (white hair → badkitten, most likely villain)
- it has become some kind of “trademark” of many of my pen&paper or mmorpg main characters
- it just looks great

I guess the amount of player complaining about any blog entry is somewhat stable. There are those who would have liked more detail – in many cases so that they could complain at a later date that the developers had lied when they clearly promised this and that – and then there are those who do not like what the blog is about because they would have liked information about something else entirely. So far, so predictable.

But looking at what the blog is about and what it did tell makes me fairly optimistic. Specifically the option to get certain things – apparently including even such illustrious stuff as Ascended gear and obsidian shards – via achievements intrigues me and I hope that these tokens are given out retroactively. It would be a shame to see tokens awarded for completing achievements that I have already got and missing out on those tokens because of that.

I have never seen an asura attribute any kind of consciousness, let alone a will, to the Eternal Alchemy. It is just the name for how everything works and is connected to each other, “the greater equation” that no asura has yet been able to solve yet many devote their lives to. So, to be clear, any kind of “theism” is out of the window.
Also, you have to misunderstand the term “religion” if you want to call the belief in the Eternal Alchemy a religion. As with the quoted wikipedia article: “it is sometimes used interchangably with…” as in: “people who do not know better sometimes say ‘religion’ instead of…”. It is about as much a religion as the search for the Higgs boson was a religion among nuclear physicists until recently: they have a strong set of theories that imply it exists, there were several who claimed to be that close to uncovering it, but they haven’t quite found it yet. As with all unproven scientific theories it could all be bullkitten and eventually go the way of the geocentric universe and the aether, but until that happens the asura are certainly devoted to looking for proof.

Apparently this is not a singular occurence, and if it happens in WvWvW as in sPvP it sounds all the more like a cheat or exploit that should be rewarded with a nice lengthy ban.

Let me guess: you were not able to even turn your character, so it was basically like a never-ending immobilize without the accompanying condition icon. There are several things that can cause this kind of bugged behaviour, but those skritt traps are definitely one of them.
From the other occasions I had this happen to me I get the impression that the bug occurs when an NPC or object is killed or destroyed just at the exact moment when he/she/it uses an immobilizing power on you. If it is an object that basically detroys itself when activated, like, say, a skritt trap, this happens on a regular basis.

The Eternal Alchemy is not a religious term at all, not by a long shot. Their belief in the Eternal Alchemy is not like the faith in some supernatural being, but rather like the belief a scientist has in the theory he is trying to prove.

So, it goes without saying that the closest thing the asura have to religious buildings are their colleges, laboratories and other hoards of knowledge. And I am quite sure that most asura would find the idea of a “priest of the Eternal Alchemy” offensive. If one asura wants to tell other asura anything about the Eternal Alchemy he is expected to bring scientific evidence.

Although I do not know the Disney abomination I, too, would think those are the graiai or grey sisters. They have their counterparts in germanic (and other) legends, but they are not equivalent to the norns (nor are the norns ever described as ugly hags to my knowledge). The mediterranean counterparts to the norns would rather be the moirai, the three goddesses of destiny.

Elricht Kaltwind.8796:

And do charr bombs do more damage than human longbows? No. Case solved.

So, that is the reason why pact forces shun all modern technology and rather deploy archers at the Orrian front instead of charr choppers and tanks.
Not even close. Try again!

If we theorize that charr developed from some kind of evolution we can be pretty sure that they are not as closely related to any Tyrian great cats we know of as humans are to chimpanzees. Just look at the huge variety in the charr species. Compared to them all humans practically look alike (like chimpanzees that is). Also, charr are the only living “charrine” species (horned felines) known to us.

As I see it this leaves you with basically two (evolutionary) options: either a multitude of feline species formed branches that independently developed horns and intelligence and/or the ability to interbreed without the common drawbacks (sterility) or a possible common ancestor of charrine and feline species must have lived a great number of generations and environmental changes ago, long enough for one branch to form all common feline species and the other branch to develop horns and intelligence (very likely in that order) with all non-intelligent charrine species (except for the Blood Legion) going extinct somewhere down the line.

Both options leave you with enough mutation potential to outright discard any notion of “this is the case with cats, so it must be the same for charr”.
And if the charr are not the result of a natural evolution but rather have supernatural origins (feline-kittening demons or whatever) all bets are off anyway.

Apparently there is some back and forth with this bug. One day you can find the bugged shield at every turn and the next you have “mixed shields”, for example bugged shield the first time around and normal shields for the rest of the Event.

There is already a longer thread about this very issue including a dev response. Please try this quest again with minimum graphics settings. For some people this has resolved the issue.

I think you answered your own question there. If you just stayed there, not attacking anybody (basically you are just taking a short afk break) you are merely a distraction or bait. Those are borderline cases unless you consciously acted as bait.
But if you used such a safe spot as a shelter against certain defeat or to launch attacks without fear of retaliation you exploit a bugged game mechanic to your advantage and rightfully deserve your Report for “cheating/exploiting”, an option we desperately need for those cases.

Only the problem is not solved, because these people can still drain the supplies of frontline fortresses. Also, somebody who enters WvWvW only occasionally may not know that a particular player is only there to cause mayhem, see the commander’s symbol and run to their doom without any fault of their own.
What you suggest is a band-aid for those who already know that this player is up to no good, and one that removes only the smallest of the issues he causes.

Thankfully that guy did not cross my way yet, although lesser forms of trolling (or sabotage by server-hopping double agents from opposing servers) apparently do appear. Roughly one week ago there was one player who repeatedly took supplies from fortresses. People asked her repeatedly to leave the supplies alone for reinforcements, but she seemed to be on a mission to keep her chosen fortress (usually a threatened one right at the frontlines) drained of supplies. Never built something useful either, but rather constructed rams on open field etc.

Oh, that is interesting. I checked and I do not have it either. I usually do not sPvP, so it never occured to me that the PvP tab in the HoM could be incomplete.

I just tried to finish a ranger from Fort Ranik (FR) in WvWvW (blue borderlands) only to find her “invulnerable” to three finishers in a row. After she rallied off my poor non-cheating self others joined the fight, downed her, too, and found her impervious to finishers, too. Also, her pet seemed to be instantly back in shape each time it was killed to stop it from reviving her, so with finisher-immunity and a perma-reviving pet she was effectively immortal. Smells like cheating or exploiting to me.

Also, we definitely need a “cheating/exploiting” option for the Report button, although I feel like I might need an extra shortcut for that each time we are up against Jade Sea or Fort Ranik.

Reanimator is just the worst Minor Trait in the game.
While there are other weak Minor Traits to be found there is not one other that does little good to begin with and gives you all the negative effects of having a pet on top of that. As soon as you put your 5 points in Death Magic you are weaker for having it, mainly for the following reasons:
1.) This Jagged Horror does very little damage and dies easily as soon as there is some AoE damage or an enemy concentrates on it (<- must be a bored PvE mob). This leads to a statistically irrelevant amount of damage over its lifetime.
2.) The Trait triggers upon an enemy’s death which means that it is completely and utterly useless during prolonged fights against single strong enemies (Champions etc.). For the same reason it is often useless when it triggers since the Jagged Horror dies before you enter the next combat or very shortly thereafter.
3.) The Jagged Horror suffers from serious pet AI issues. Sometimes it contributes in the laughable way it can. More often it just watches as you fight or charges off to aggro new enemies or does similarly useless or detrimental things.
4.) Despite its lack of actual use it counts as a fully-fledged pet with all its positive effects for enemies (mostly PvP) fighting you and needing a target for some effect (stealth from Cloak&Dagger for example or a gift-wrapped Vengeance Rally).
5.) The Reanimator Trait probably is the (weak) justification for the next Minor Trait, Protection of the Horde, which is equally weak unless you play a pet-necro. If you do not want to play a pet-necro Death Magic is very costly trait-wise as two of your Minor Traits are basically worthless. I do not remember any other profession being coerced into a special kind of build by Minor Traits in one line.

People who say that horns make charr look like cows probably have never seen a cow in their lives, bonus points if they came from that stupid game with ugly cow people and therefore think that anything with horns and walking on two legs can only be some tauren copy. If that is your source of education, do yourself and us a favor and stay out of any discussion about charr appearance.

I find it hard to talk about evolution in a game world where we know practically nothing about possible predecessors. Adding magic into the mix does not make the list of possible origins any shorter.
Apparently there have been parallel developments of intelligence in quite a lot of species’ ancestors, because I find it hard to believe that there was one recent common ancestor for humans, charr and asura. So, at some point there might have been something resembling a horned cat with opposable thumbs learning to use rudimentary tools. Or there might have been some sort of magic whatchacalllit that started a series of wild mutations on otherwise ordinary animals and, voilá, intelligent cat-people with horns, semi-intelligent rat-people, arrogant floppy-eared shark-toothed mini-people etc. We simply can not know.

As to why charr did not lose those horns over the course of many generations… yeah, it is probably sexual.

Charr are proud carnivores, but like many carnivores they do add some other food into the mix from time to time, although they would not call it a meal unless there is plenty of meat, too. Also, they do have some feline features and because of that are often compared to cats by other races. But saying they are practically cats and therefore can not digest chocolate is even less accurate than offering a human a meal of tree-bark because he is practically a chimpanzee.
So, while I understand where the question comes from there is only little reason to believe chocolate poses a problem for charr and the game itself actively disproves it.

Ah, well, might as well post a picture of my charr, too. Ladies and gentlecharr, I hereby present to you Lothyr Scareclaw, “cook”.

This is Lothyr Scareclaw. He is a charr necromancer and, as you can see, the sexiest thing in all of Tyria.
Sounds funny, but that is just how it is.
(To be fair, most light armor looks a bit strange on charr, but when they do rock an armor they rock it rock-hard.)

I remember the scene where the OP got the idea for this thread from. To clarify: the original question the asura was talking about is which race was most relevant to the Eternal Alchemy. They postulated that the answer to that would hinge on something that you could call brains:brawns ratio. So they measured the mass of the brain and compared it to overall body mass. As I see it this theory is utter bullkitten, but if charr as the heaviest race rank second on that list this means in any case that their brains are frikkin huge.

So, since that list is now out of the way we can concentrate on things that we can actually see in the game: each of the races seems really adept at the things their members are dedicated to except for humans who do not seem to be really dedicated to anything special (unless you count religious fervor) but appear to shine as catalysts or “the ones filling the blanks” (so, if you want to connect asuran and charr technology leave it to the humans to figure it out although they are inferior to both in their respective specialties).

I think the impression that asura are more intelligent than the other races is false (although they would certainly disagree) but understandable since they focus on technology that preferably does something outlandish, but they seem to be unable to reproduce things other races have already achieved. For example, levitation seems to be something they do almost casually judging by the amount of hovering things you see anywhere near them, but if you actually want something to fly to another location (and preferably bomb the kitten out of anything there) you get yourself some charr engineers and their choppers.

As a result, if we want to discuss which race is “smartest” we can only speculate unless the question is which race has the “smartest” technology, in which case charr and asura are probably tied for 1st place with the sylvari as a wild card (since we really do not know the limits of their ability to reproduce other races’ technologies “florally”).

Yeah, it is funny that instead of a purely cosmetic item rangers actually get something that makes them weaker in comparison for all their trouble of earning HoM points. Doubling up on one F2 skill does not make you stronger than others (unless the copied F2 skill is, in which case the F2 skill is the balancing problem, not the fact that it is doubled), you are sacrificing a different F2 skill after all, but having a pet that dies faster makes you weaker than others. As a result HoM pets are pretty much glorified roleplay companions for out-of-combat uses only.

We are so sure because it works that way for every single weapon in the game. Each of them. Not a single instance of something different happening. So, unless some developer says that Legendaries should be an exception to that rule (and I have no idea why they should) it is very safe to assume that the same also applies to them.

You are welcome. Happened to me, too, on my first character. Cheers!

Thanks for the answer. My load times are a bit sub-par, but not so spectacularly long that you could say they fall out of the expected range. Later today I will try this quest once more on minimum settings and see if that changes anything. Maybe this is related to Elli spazzing out and the plank not spawning any Risen, too. You never know before you try.

EDIT: I was curious and so I postponed some other things to try this out immediately. As I see it those issues are very likely related. On minimum settings I was still not able to spawn on the boat but at least I spawned on a ship much closer to it.
The only problem after that was that the Risen from the first ship all spawned directly on the plank which was not really a problem since that way they were all nicely clustered to be chopped into mincemeat. The last ship was no problem at all. Merri Sunbower immediately found the undead arm (which she did not on previous tries) which triggered the Risen Hylek ambush and I could complete the quest nicely.

Do you still remember the personal story quest that gave you those Master gathering tools? (I guess not, since you mentioned them piling up, but still…)
Unfortunately there seem to be many – optically indistinguishable – “versions” of Master gathering tools, each of them more efficient for gathering than normal tools you would use on the level of the quest you got them from. So, while one stack of Master gathering tools might be excellent for Mithril and Orichalcum the other, older stack might just be suitable for the same materials that Copper tools could harvest and give ruined materials for anything above that.
So, you might want to try those tools on lower level nodes until you hit gold – figuratively speaking.

Interesting observation. I never gather materials under heavy fire and I am quite sure that the huge part of acid puddle damage on the occasion mentioned above came in after I was already done harvesting since I only realized the other player with the karka in tow when I had already begun, but then again I am known for occasional peaks of extremely good luck connected by long streaks of incredibly bad luck, so it might as well be one of those instances where everybody else would have gotten away scot-free. ^^

This month I have encountered this bug a couple of times, every time either in WvWvW or in Fractals. Seems to be connected to something recent, because before December I have never had any problems of that kind. Around that time nothing changed on my end that I would know of, except regular Windows updates and a graphics driver update.

Ha, that’s great! I did not even report that one, just shrugged it off. Again: you rock! ^^

Just got mail. Thank you very much! You rock!
EDIT: Ummm, this looks like a simple Black Lion Chest which has little to do with the contents of Tixx’ present. Is that intentional?
EDIT2: Just checked. The contents of the chest are indeed standard Black Lion Chest stuff which is a bit of a letdown considering the original present to say the least.

You are just out of luck. Relogging and waiting to get into LA proper (not overflow) worked for some, but most of us have to rely on the devs finding a solution.

For some reason this seems all too familiar to me. One of my female guildmates apologizes every time she has to hurt those plush griffons.
Also: /signed

There is a thread about this problem over in “Game Bugs”. Devs are already investigating.

At least it seems to be that way. Also, so far everybody who encountered this bug in LA seems to have the same bug in the Mists. I have sent some guildies into the Mists to check how it should be and they reported that you go through the same dialogue, can open the chest but do not get any more items.
So, the LA and Mists versions seem to be connected: if one works the other does, too (even if you still get only one present), and when one bugs out for you the other does not work either. Anyone noticed anything different?

Yup, it does not seem to be working as originally intended in any case. None of my guildmates got their present from Tixx directly, all from the chest. Would be interesting to hear if you can still interact with the chest or if you can get a present from the Mists version of Tixx. If not, then you probably have the same bug as the rest of us.

Well, getting the present from the chest next to him seems to be the rule rather then the exception (although he says that the items are in the chest when your inventory was full, not every time). Did you check that chest or was it open and unusable, too?

Parvati.5780:

This feels a little like the karka chest fiasco all over again :p

Only that this time the “present debt” stacks for each day that this issue remains unresolved if I understand Jeffrey correctly and there is one present per day. Now I do not know if I should hope for a quick solution or not. Either I get my present quickly or I get a huge heap of presents later. :P

I guess the chances of landing in the same event are pretty slim at peak times. You might want to try at off times if this is somehow doable for you. However, leaving when you do not end up together might be considered kitten kittening kitten by those other people in your respective teams who actually wanted to play the Toypocalypse. So, unless you are looking for ways to make yourself unpopular you might want to settle for a “maybe next year” if you absolutely have to play this together.

Just tried the Mists version and went through the same process as with the LA one: dialogue but no present, chest open and unusable. So, regardless if you can get 1 present per day each or 1 present per day total I remain at zero presents.

Nope. Neither did I get any present from the Mists nor did I get any other present on any of my characters. I received precisely a total of zero presents from any source.

Item color depends on the item that gave the stats, not the skin. So if you use your Legendary as a glorified weapon skin the resulting weapon can never be a Legendary (at least as long as there is only one Legendary of each weapon subtype). Theoretically you could even have a white weapon with a legendary skin if you so chose.

Being patient is so hard. This is Wintersday after all!
Also: I was on an overflow shard, too, and heard the same bug reported from others who also were on an overflow. So, there might be a connection.

Masaki.2153:

Look in the Chest to the Left of Tixx (Hit F as usual)

Try reading the complete text. Chest is open and unusable.

Same here, including the open chest and bug report.

I just talked to Tixx about this present he wanted to give to me. He says he gave me one but actually he did not. Although I had plenty of space in my inventory I checked the chest next to him, the one that should give the present in case the inventory is full, except that the chest appears to be open and is unusable.
So, I guess I was not a good charr this year.