Guild Wars 2

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

But Marjory tells you. She pretty much says “everything caught in its flux will have its magic reversed”
Not to offend you, but I’d expect someone who plays for the story to pay more attention to the dialogue.

Actually, I did find this pretty easy to miss and not well explained. I’m usually decent at figuring out mechanics, but my youngest came in distracting me just before the bloodstone elements, and guild chat was in the same chat window as npc chat, and so it wasn’t until my 2nd try at the instance that I noticed Marjory’s line. It was obvious then, but it wasn’t before.

In my case, I somehow managed to strip the shield off of one of the elementals, but not the other, without seeing how it happened. I tried to keep close to both the bloodstone and the elemental, hitting my special action key repeatedly, as all the descriptions I saw seemed to imply to me that it was a question of proximity, but no luck (of course not … but that’s hindsight).

So yes, the mechanics were explained, but I’d argue the explanations were too easily missed in this case. I ended up quitting the instance last night (on the impenetrable bloodstone elemental) and trying again this morning. Once I caught Marjory’s line the rest was a piece of cake (ok, a zealot’s druid is pretty durable ), but I still think a mechanic this crucial to the instance should be explained in a way that isn’t this easily missed, or at least the hint repeated again after a while.

Is the ultimate edition even still available or has been available in the last 30 days? I thought is was just available for preorder, so any account that bought the ultimate edition has purchased HoT way before the 30 days refund period.

Last night in game, for some reason I ended up on a character that hadn’t been to TD before but needed some of the hero challenges for their elite spec that I hadn’t unlocked yet. Shortly after entering the map, I stumbled upon another player that was venting their frustration about not finding things on the map, so we teamed up and explored together, me showing the way to the more obscure challenges and vistas.

After about an hour of the two of us duo-ing challenges all over the place (except for the mushroom queen … that one single-handedly wiped the floor with us ) not only had we picked up a good bit of exploration points but I felt that the other person was a lot more comfortable with moving around the map, too.

So if you are still fighting to learn the map and are on EU, feel free to message me if you see me online. I have a bunch of characters still waiting to explore the map, and it’s much more enjoyable if you aren’t stumbling around alone .

The one that currently holds the least threat for burnout .

Really, all of the HoT maps are very rewarding when you participate actively, so just jump to which ever map you enjoy the most at the time, and switch to another when the one you are on starts to feel like work. Your gold per hour will not change drastically, but your enjoyment per hour sure will .

Tangled Depths is a challenge to learn. Even I had to take my time to learn my way around, and I usually memorize maps the moment I step on them, but once you understand the map it is much easier to get around and nicer layed out than any other map in this game. It is hands down my favourite map in the game.

Basically the map consists of the four major lanes (ogre, nuhoch, rata novus, scar) underground that connect to the ley line confluence in the south of the map. Above ground, there is a camp corresponding to each of the lanes, with a waypoint, a wallow that leads right down to the lane, and a path to alternately take you to the lane without the wallow.

Once you have got that basic map layout down and know your way around, everything else is close by one of the camps and/or lanes. Only a few points are really so much out of your way that you have to take a huge detour to get there.

If exploring the map on your own feels too much for you, I’m sure there are people around happy to lead you through the map and help you find your way. Just the other day, somebody in our guild chat asked about TD, and we ended up with a 6-man squad spending several hours exploring and enjoying the map, with a mix of players new to the map and veterans still stumbling about in places but having tons of fun .

Nerzul.6875:

tolunart.2095:

Again, the server can’t tell if you accidentally disconnected or logged out.

Ah, but it can. Itentional logout means the game client tells the server that i logged out. (logout button etc.) a disconnect means my connection idles and disappears due to timeout.
This issue can be fixed, on a disconnect simply save the ‘slot’ for 5min then clear it.

How then would you tell the difference between a disconnect due to internet issues and a disconnect due to purposely alt+f4 or simply pulling the networking cable to break connection? No matter how you set up the system, people would game it by faking disconnects if it would give them an edge, even if the “edge” is just collecting the rewards with doing only half the “work”.

OriOri.8724:

Mea.5491:

Good idea but let us pick the suggested mastery track even if we do not have maxed mastery! I maxed gliding to not use endurance and the pact commander for autoloot but I honestly don’t even touch the rest because I don’t care about them.

Nope, if such a thing is implemented it should require you to max your masteries first.

What about the people who don’t play fractals, and therefor don’t have the fractal masteries unlocked, nor the points to do so (since they are locked behind fractal achievements)?

What about the people who don’t play raids, and therefor don’t have the raid mastery tracks unlocked nor any desire to burden a group with carrying them through a boss encounter to get the track unlocked?

If such a repeatable reward track is implemented, it needs to be open and selectable for every player, regardless of mastery status. If they don’t want the progression that the mastery system offers for whatever reason, don’t lock them out of getting the feeling of doing something else useful with their experience.

Personally, I’m not big about rewards. I hardly play anything in this game for the rewards, but rather for the fun of whatever content I’m doing. But I still have to admit that playing my second account, which still has a lot of masteries to level and points and achievements to collect, does give me a more satisfying feeling than playing my main account to try and force the last couple of missing mastery points (exp is long maxed).

You have to learn how to navigate the maps by trying to navigate them. There’s really no way around it.

Start out in Verdant Brink. If you’re there just when the day cycle starts (check the event timer by typing /wiki et ingame in your chat box), then head south and you’ll find the start of one of the event chains, the pale reaver outpost chain. Follow that chain all the way through to the end to get a tour through a large part of the southeast of VB, including unlocking the shrouded ruins waypoint.

Next time you’re there at daybreak, head north as far as you can go, then slightly west to the village of Yakka Itzl, where another event chain starts that will take you around that part of the map. A third chain (that covers the center of VB) starts at daybreak near the pact encampment waypoint which you’ll get to by playing through the HoT storyline.

There are two more meta event chains in VB starting at daybreak, one around the nobles camp at Faren’s Flyer waypoint, and one towards the northwest that is probably the most difficult to catch the beginning of since it starts in a cave in the middle of nowhere and only gets to its waypoint towards the end of the chain.

As long as you’re not comfortable with navigating around VB, try to avoid the zone during the night cycle. Aside from the fact that it’s dark, there are also a lot more mordrem around and no long event chains that can lead you to places. Also, try not to beeline for pois, vistas, or hero points unless you see the way or have an idea of how to get there. Until you’ve got the feeling of how things flow (and how event chain status might effect the map accessibility) trying to force your way to an unknown point is a certain recipe for frustration.

Once you’re comfortable with (or tired of ) Verdant Brink, move on to the Auric Basin. The event chains here start after the battle of Tarir, also known as the Octovine event (check the event timer again if you want to know when the cycle starts). There is one chain each in the north, west, south, and east of Tarir. If I’m not mistaken, northwatch and southwatch chains start at their respective waypoints just outside the city gates. I’m not quite sure where the other two chains start, but they should be easy enough to find, since AB isn’t quite as twisted as the other two maps.

By the way, if you are in one of the new maps and unsure where to go, the current outpost event status including any active event will always be shown at the top right of your screen, so you always have at least some idea where the action will be closest to you.

Once you get through AB and want to go even further, Tangled Depths basically works like the other two maps. There are four outposts (ogre, nuhoch, rata novus, scar), in this case corresponding with the four lanes that feed into the ley line confluence, the central waypoint of this map in the very south. TD, however, isn’t quite as accessible at first as the other two maps, although once you’ve figured it out it becomes a favourite map for many people.

The easiest way to deal with this map is probably to follow the HoT story that leads you past the Teku Nuhoch and Rata Novus waypoints, as well as the ley line confluence and dragons passage points. Alternatively, you can get to the ley line confluence point by following the Nuhoch or Rata Novus lanes which are accessible from their respective outposts, either by nuhoch wallow or a short walk away.

Leave Teku Nuhoch to the southwest and head straight south, or leave Rata Novus through a tunnel to the southwest, and you’ll eventually get to the corresponding lane. Now that I come to think of it, the exits from Ogre camp and SCAR camp to their lanes are southwest of each camp, too, so while in TD, heading southwest out of either of the four camps/outposts should set you well on the way down to the central lanes.

All of TD is accessible without the nuhoch wallows mastery (nuhoch line tier 2), but the map has a good number of those that make navigating much easier. There is, among others, a nuhoch wallow connecting each of the four lanes to its corresponding outpost and waypoint, which makes moving around much easier, so you might consider leveling the nuhoch line until you have the wallows unlocked before you dive deep into TD.

Just like Nuhoch Wallows for TD, Exalted Markings (exalted line tier 1) are recommended to make traveling through AB easier, and gliding, updrafts (gliding t2) and bouncing mushrooms are good to have on all these maps. If you have those masteries unlocked you’ll be able to get to most parts of the new maps. A very few areas are locked out if you don’t have poison lore (Itzel t4) or leyline gliding (gliding t6), but you can easily come back to those later on.

Good luck in the jungle! It is confusing at first, but once you learn your way around the maps you’ll have a hard time going back to the plain old core Tyria maps. The jungle maps are just so much more fun to be once you’ve learned them .

Khisanth.2948:

Charges were always easy to get in PvP and now also easy to get in WvW so basically it is just PvE exclusive players(and do not do the PvP dailies) that are left out …

PvE exclusive players have access to charges via map completing. While it may not be as quick as a reward track, it does lead to a good many charges, and offers options to farm them relatively quickly (via city completion).

Eidolonemesis.5640:

The above stated is a viable solution, Anet, but will you implement it?

I doubt it, simply because allowing an unknown number of skins unlocked per equipment piece would create a huge data overhead. While it sounds like a nice qol feature, I suspect that the purely technical limitations of data storage would make it expensive to the point of being not worth it.

If you want an in-depth explanation of what activities award leveling experience, type /wiki leveling into the game’s chat box. It will open the wiki page on leveling (or you can just click the link I included to get to the same page) which has all the information you might ever want (and then some more ).

There isn’t really such a thing as “best xp” in the leveling process. Everything you do in game (short of standing in one spot chatting) gives you experience, and the best for you is generally what you enjoy the most. If you like the story missions, then play them, they do give a good chunk of experience (about 2-3 levels per chapter, with a new chapter opening every 10 levels) as well as some useful loot.

If you like exploring, do so, every area of the map you unfog, every waypoint, vista, point of interest and hero challenge you unlock gives experience. Exploration experience is even relative to your current level, not to the area level, so you are free to explore lower level maps, too. Unlocking a waypoint in Metrica Province gives you as much experience as unlocking a waypoint in Bloodtide Coast.

The wiki also has a page on all the zones in game with their suggested level. An asura is placed in Metrica Province to start, but there’s nothing keeping you from jumping over to the Plains of Ashfurt (the charr starting area) and exploring that instead if Metrica isn’t to your liking. Thanks to level scaling you will have an interesting time exploring lower level areas but still get loot relevant to your current level. Check out the zones overview and just pick whatever area looks interesting. By the way, the level ranges of each map can also be seen in-game on your world map.

As for “guide for levelling”, in this game it’s really just “go find something you enjoy”. No matter what you do, you get experience (or in the case of wvw and pvp related activities leveling tomes through reward tracks), so it’s really up to you to figure out what you enjoy most.

100%ing maps is a good source of leveling experience with the added benefit of unlocking waypoints and getting to know the world. Make sure you harvest all ore, wood and plant nodes you come across, too, since harvesting gives a lot of experience and the low- and mid-level materials are worth quite some coin on the trading post (or come in super helpful should you ever decide to craft yourself).

If you see an event on your map or radar, jump in and take part. Events give a good bit of experience, too, and often events located near a heart even contribute to that heart’s progress. If a heart is too tedious just skip it for now and come back later. There are hearts that can be quick if certain events are active but awfully slow if the events are down. 100%ing a map does give you extra experience and loot, but sometimes it’s more fun to go visit another place instead and come back for that heart another time.

Your bank has a whole tab full of storage for crafting materials that takes a stack (250 pieces) of each crafting material you may come across on your journey. If you have e.g. a few pieces of copper ore in your inventory, either right click them and choose the option to deposit them in material storage from the context menu, or right-click the little cog icon in the upper right corner of your inventory panel where you will find an option to deposit all materials in your (non-invisible) bags at once.

Equipment that you find while exploring is perfectly fine while you are leveling. Compare what you find to what you use, and switch out anything that looks like it’s an upgrade to what you currently wear. Don’t worry about the perfect stats and runes yet, they are outdated so quickly due to the natural speed of leveling that it’s not worth min-maxing yet, especially on your first character.

Always carry a salvage kit with you. Salvage all blue and green equipment you find that you can’t or don’t want to use. Again, this gives you more of the mid-level materials that you can either deposit in your material storage (see above) or sell at the trading post. You can sell stuff from anywhere in the world through the trading post icon at the top left of your screen, but you need to visit a trading post representative (most of them are located in the cities, but a few are scattered throughout the world) to pick up the coin you get in return. In an inventory emergency, selling unused and non-depositable stuff at the trading post is a valid strategy to clean some inventory slots on the fly.

You may also want to check the trading post for larger bags, if your bag slots aren’t maxed out yet. The largest bags have 20 slots, but (cheaper) bags also come in sizes of 18, 15, 12, 10 and 8 (and a few special sizes aside from that). You will find different bags on the trading post, plain ones but also ones that will take equipment/crafting materials/junk and a few other things first, which depending on your storage sorting may come in handy for inventory organization.

Most of all: have fun! Exploring Tyria is just as much fun on a leveling character as it is on an 80. There really is no need to hurry to maxlevel in this game .

Highlord.7158:

I’ll put this simply. I don’t have tons of time to play or grind, or treat anything other than my job like a job. My time is more important that some else’s sense of digital accomplishment. I play GW2 because it’s fun, fast, flexible and accessible. If I wanted to blow hours of time on frustration, I’d be playing Allods.

I’m in a similar boat in that I have family and job and not much time to play, but I still find TD one of the most fun maps in the game. It helps a lot if you get a friend or two explore with you, and you’ll soon figure out how the map works. It’s a really beautiful place.

If you are on EU, hit me up during the evenings (mostly 8-10 central European time), and I’ll take you on a sightseeing tour.

I enjoy jumping puzzles. I’m not very good at them, and it took ages to train my jumping skills to do many of them, but I nevertheless enjoy them. There are many by now that I take a detour through whenever one of my characters is in the area.

World bosses on the other hand are not my cup of tea. With family and fulltime job those timed events just don’t amuse me, so I’ve been skipping most of the world boss dailies unless I accidentally stumbled upon them.

Personally I really enjoy that there’s a mix of days with world boss dailies and days with jp dailies. That said, any daily that’s too far out of the way of whatever game content I’m fancying at that moment I won’t do it. I play this game for the things I enjoy, not to tick off stuff on a shopping list.

Just in case, make sure to run fractals with lots of loot-dispensing mobs. The spoon will drop as loot from a mob, so only running swamp will likely not get you one in a long time.

You are confusing hero points (used for unlocking a character’s traits and utility skills) and mastery points (used exclusively for unlocking trained mastery lines).

There is a specific number of mastery points in this game, same for every single player. Go to your achievement panel and check out the sections with the green (HoT mastery) or red (core tyria mastery) mastery point marker. They’ll show you which achievements you’ve still got open that give you mastery points.

For HoT mastery points, you can get those by following the story (story journal tab on the achievement page), communing at special mastery commune points (Heart of Thorns → Mastery Insights), map-related achievements including getting silver and gold rewards from adventures (Heart of Thorns → whatever map you’re interested in), or even running raids if that’s your thing.

To be honest, the longevity of the added ESO maps comes mostly from grinding out the new crafting materials for better weapons and armor. It’s a direct product of the traditional gear-based system where every update invalidates your former best in slot equipment and forces you to farm/grind the new content to keep your characters relevant.

We already have tons of content in this game that any player can do daily for extra rewards. Dailies, fractal dailies, daily dungeon bonus, daily world boss bonus, daily (hp) champs in the HoT areas, daily crafting (and the material gathering involved in that), and probably many more “daily extra rewards” that I can’t think of at the moment.

There really is no need for another “do this task daily for rewards” system in this game, especially not if it’s content that’s made exclusively to be a playground for daily farming/grinding routines.

ESO is a nice game that has a lot of strong points. I like to play it occasionally, and a lot of good friends of mine from former MMOs play it fulltime. But saying that they’re putting out more content than GW2 is (in my opinion) false. They only put our “more” content if you define the content by the time you need to grind through the gear treadmill tier that content introduces, which is absolutely not what GW2 is about.

I haven’t done a lot of fractals since the patch. 3 times t4 I think, and maybe 6-8 t3 runs (all daily fractals). In total I got two gold fractal weapons, about 5 or 6 rings (2 infused), one ascended accessory, and a variety of other stuff (no ascended mats or boxes though, but I never got ascended boxes before either).

It’s RNG, and will even out in the long run.

Personally, I would appreciate a kind of ranked pre-season. I was still learning pvp in season 1 and thus went into season 2 with a pretty lousy MMR that made it near impossible to me to improve (since the opposing teams often was vastly superior to my own way beyond the point I would’ve been able to carry).

I ended up having much more competitive and enjoyable matches when playing with friends in higher divisions than playing solo in my own. I would really appreciate it if this time around a pre-season would allow me to keep improving my skills (it’s hard to improve your game in unranked when half the team is yolo-ing) as well as my ranked MMR.

The daily isn’t required. These days you can get 2 gold easily in many different areas of the game, so if you don’t like the daily, simply spend the time to earn your gold another way.

AllNightPlayer.1286:

Rangers and Thiefs should start with a one-handed sword

Are you serious? Don’t get me wrong, I love my one-handed swords on my rangers, but it’s hands down the most difficult weapon to get used to in the line-up of ranger weapons. Aside from that, the ranger sword skills don’t really have much in common with the thief sword skills, so what good is putting those as starting weapons?

As a general rule, I don’t see any advantage in leaving new players, unused to our combat system, the skills, skill animations, and dodge rolling, stuck with a melee weapon. The current starter weapons leave much more margin for error, making it easier for new players to learn the game and mechanics.

Especially new elementalists are often overwhelmed already due to the squishiness of the class. Making them start on dagger and going toe to toe with foes in the starter areas will surely turn a good part of new elementalists off the game before they even get a chance to really experience it.

It’s not even necessary to do the story once.

But if you do, there’s some nice rewards to be had, including a couple of blacklion keys, weapon and armor skins only available on karma vendors otherwise, lots of crafting materials, unidentified dyes, and more.

There also are some very interesting storylines to follow in the different story branches that you’ll only get to see if you play through with several characters (just in case you’re interested in that kind of thing).

You can trade coins at the decorations vendor as soon as you have them in your inventory, regardless of whether you’ve finished the achievement or not.

That said, the coins in the furniture shops are daily as far as I can see, so even if you skip that one you can get a good amount of them. We only have a handfull of people in our guild playing SAB and picking up coins, and we’re already at around 1k clouds.

For this week I’d suggest get into the SAB, and don’t come out again before it closes its doors . I’m having an awesome time in there, either by myself or with friends. Unfortunately it’s only a time-limited festival, but one week of insane fun is much better than a week being bored .

In general try to sit back and figure out what goals really do interest you. I know I’m starting to get bored (or rather burned out) if I go after material goals too much. Trying to farm wood for a specific weapon I want to get, or going after a specific meta event to gather those map tokens is a sure-fire way to turn me off the game.

Whenever I realize I’m on such a dangerous path, I make myself sit back, let go of that “goal”, and look around for something fun instead. Just taking an asura and going on a map, looking behind all corners, gathering all materials on the way, fighting with classes/builds/setups I haven’t used before, usually makes me find the “fun” in the game again pretty quickly. What good is that one stupidly expensive weapon to me when I can spend the time I would need to get it having fun instead?

Maybe it’s time for you to try something different. Create a character of a totally different race and class that you haven’t played (much) yet, and see where it gets you. Gather your own equipment, build your own builds, pug dungeons on-level rather than at 80, go slow, smell the roses, have as much fun as you can find without thinking of way-off material goals.

Go on a sight-seeing tour through all the jumping puzzles in this game, and see if you can still do them all (or (re-)learn how to do them in the first place). Check out the different area meta event chains, follow them from start to finish, and see their stories evolve before your eyes. Hunt out the most beautiful screenshots from vistas all over the world to use as desktop background.

And the best thing about it: by the time you start wondering about your former goals again you might just find that all that goofing around has actually filled your material storage with a substantial part of the stuff you need … and all that while having fun .

This usually happens if you’ve replayed “Prized Possessions” (HoT story step #7). Finishing that step flags your character as the egg bearer, regardless if he’s currently on that step or went back and forth in the story log. Once you have replayed the following story step (City of Hope) the egg should be gone again.

Paulytnz.7619:

Rasimir.6239:

Did you unpack it yet? The pack you buy from Moto is actually a bundle containing the skin and one of those no-level-no-stat backpack straps you get all over the place. The skin only unlocks once you’ve unpacked the bundle.

Yeah thanks for that, I thought I would take the risk and did this yesterday. Still it’s strange that the slot is not in your wardrobe until you unlock it by opening the bundle.

Some people like to collect all skins and so they search through the wardrobe to note which ones they still need to hunt. With cases like this in the game people could very well miss out on collecting them all without even knowing it.

Unfortunately this is fairly inconsistent. There are several backpack skins that come bundled with backpack straps this way, but not all of them do, and I personally, despite being aware of this, often find it confusing to figure out if I’ve got a certain skin or not.

This problem also extends to tradeable and black lion skins. Check the trading post for plush quaggan or charr backpack skins, and you’ll see both the bundled and unpacked versions for sale, sometimes at vastly different prices. I remember a time when it was actually profitable to buy the bundled pink quaggan back, unpack it, and relist the individual skin.

Anari.2137:

I’m lazy on forums when it comes to grammar etc. Bleh, old habits die hard.

Basically what i am saying is that multiple guilds (at the same time) kill the “purpose” of guilds.

Define “purpose of guilds”, please.

To me, the purpose of guilds is to band together with a bunch of people I like to play with, be around with, share common goals and playstyles with.

As such, I have my main guild (of which I am one of the leaders) with 50-80 casual members, many of which have become real life friends, that do all kinds of content in this game. We’ve got our guild hall built to level 62 by now and enjoy it very much as a place for meeting and fooling around as much as for the convenience.

I have a secondary guild, a bit smaller, again with many friends. They’ve got a different language as well as a different focus (more dungeon/fractal/raid oriented than general everything).

I have a family guild with my daughters. The kids love the fact that we have our private chat channel even if one is in a wvw squad while the other is fooling around the SAB, and we make good use of our guild bank for sharing and storing stuff. We don’t have a guild hall, but that’s fine for us.

I have a friends guild with some of my closest friends. Again it’s convenient to see which of that circle are online (friends lists tend to be too chaotic to see that at a quick glance), to have a private chat channel even if one is in wvw, another pugging a fractal, and a third doing Dragon’s Stand meta, and to occasionally band together and do some small guild missions just for fun.

These are four different communities, with four different purposes. Alliance chat wouldn’t help me any, since the communities don’t mesh. Some don’t even speak the same language and wouldn’t be able to communicate.

I love that GW2 gives me the option to be a part of multiple communities and groups of friends. It doesn’t take anything from me being loyal to those communities. In other games, I’d have to spread my characters across different guilds (and lose access to guild chat whenever I switched character) or I’d be forced to choose between communities and friends, which to me is more anti-social than anything.

If your guild can’t keep people loyal, have you considered that it may be you rather than the playerbase after all? Maybe this game just isn’t suited for the kind of guild you’re trying to build?

Calling for a removal of one of the main social systems of this game just because you can’t manage to surround yourself with the kind of people you are hoping for does seem pretty short-sighted, if not selfish, to me. Other guilds thrive just fine in this system.

Did you unpack it yet? The pack you buy from Moto is actually a bundle containing the skin and one of those no-level-no-stat backpack straps you get all over the place. The skin only unlocks once you’ve unpacked the bundle.

This inspired me to build my own stairways to heaven in our Gilded Hollow. We only just had enough clouds to catch a glimpse of Tarir for now, but guildies are already busy farming furniture coins so we can go further .

On the subject of trading back, would it be possible to add a trade-in option for extra minis? I got some extras back when SAB was released to outfit several characters with them. They’ve been sitting in my bank, staring at me accusingly ever since the wardrobe patch. I’d love to trade them in even at half price.

To be honest, I like that titles are “pointless” regarding game-mechanics and rewards. I prefer them to be cosmetic and fit my character, rather than having to select a specific one because it gives the “best” boost. We already have guild boosts for things like +gold or +exp, personally I think that’s enough.

I actually had the first game yesterday where a loss with disconnect didn’t cost me a pip (and didn’t even count as a loss … the win after that gave me an extra pip for win-streak). The game nicely informed me that the loss would not count since there was a deserter on my team.

I’ve already had three or four games this season where I lost pips due to (non-partied) disconnects though, some of these with way longer disconnects than yesterday’s match.

Nekomages.5672:

If people believe account unlocked way points are a bit to much, maybe make it where you can’t teleport to the area unless you are at or above the minimum level for the area, that could deter people from instantly jumping in to things like dragons stand and simply leeching from the event.

No thanks. One of my most fun experiences in GW2 was when me and two good friends took a trio of lvl 20 Asura south from Hoelbrak all the way down to Fort Trinity in the Straits of Devastation. We had intended to get to the Gates of Arah, but the risen proved too much for us .

Level-locking waypoints would put an end to outings like that, since every wipe (and there were several … even in the Dredgehaunt Cliffs, if a mob as much as sneezed at us it would one-hit kill is due to level difference ) would mean we’d have to start from the very beginning instead of going back to the last waypoint we passed.

Besides, I once tested how long unlocking waypoints really takes, and unlocking ALL core Tyria waypoints (without the help of guild portals or teleport to friend) took me a little less than 10 hours total on a new ranger running all areas on or below level. Opening all major waypoints on a lvl 80 is considerably faster to the point where account-locking them really is just a minor advantage (but a major inconvenience to things like experience gain through exploration and feeling of world size).

You’ll always have people who think they know it all and need to run the show, and call others out if they don’t play by their rules.

I remember back during the marionette update (quite some time before the introduction of megaservers), some tequatl guilds used my back-then home server as their “private” overflow. I went to the fights a couple of times, but as a “server native” not in those guilds, you’d get called out in map-chat, being called names that were every bit as nasty as some of what’s reported here.

Personally, I sometimes join squads for meta events, and sometimes I don’t. It depends on what I’m doing and who I may be partied up with at that point. If anyone thinks they need to rant because I don’t play the game by their rules (hasn’t really happened with the HoT meta events for me yet, but I’ve had similar experiences in other game areas before), then I just block, report, and go on my way. Fortunately I’ve not come upon this in the new maps yet, so from my experience it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem.

Rebound.3409:

Again..lost pip with random d/cer. So yea…that system doesn’t work.

Me too just now (on my other account) … I sent off a bug-report with all the info I could think of, hope this helps.

FogLeg.9354:

WoW, how lazy can you be… It takes only few days to complete the whole map. Plus you get all these lovely chest keys while doing it.

I timed it once (when I had way too much time on my hands ): It took me a little less than 10 hours to unlock every single wypoint in Core Tyria on a fresh ranger, only using whatever equipment came my way through leveling and drops, and adding a few leveling tomes whenever I was seriously underleveled for the next map.

As far as I know, the winter’s presence collection will return next wintersday, so you’ll be able to get it about 10 months from now.

If you have an open character slot, starting a new character sounds like the best option to me. A lot has changed over the last couple of years, including the whole leveling and skills system.

Your old characters should get birthday gifts for first, second and most likely third year in their mail. The third year box contains a scroll that will boost a new character to level 30, so that might be a good place to start. Do your lvl 10-20-30 personal story on that character. You will get one or more bags of loot as reward for most story steps. Don’t open those on the leveling character, but put them in your bank and open them on one of the 80s. That way you will get lvl 80 equipment out of them, as well as some gathering tools.

They’ll mostly be blues and greens, but should be enough to get your 80s outfittet to the point where they’ll be able to roam lower level areas, gathering materials that you can sell on the trading post or use for crafting, as well as more equipment for your 80s. It’ll also help you get used to how this game plays again.

Once you’re comfortable with the level your 80s are at, check the world boss timer for world boss events within your reach, and play those on your 80s for guaranteed rares that you can use (if useful) or sell at the trading post. Within a couple of weeks you should be able to make it to a point where your characters are comfortably equipped and ready to explore the jungle.

Good luck!

edit: If you haven’t finished your personal story with any of your 80s, that might also be a good point to continue once you have some very basic equipment on them. The later story steps do give some decent equipment that could well be an upgrade to your basic stuff at that point.

You might also want to think about finding a guild or friend that will run the first HoT story instance with you to unlock masteries on your account, since you need to level those through gaining experience on lvl 80 characters.

Map exploration actually gives a decent amount of experience, so if you have any alts at 80, going for a completed map on each of them (which you need for the specialization collections anyway) will take you a long way.

Experience boosters also help quite a bit. Get fireworks from the lunar new year, experience boosters from wvw dailies or the laurel vendor, and whatever food and utility consumables you enjoy to speed things up.

Eventually you’ll find it’s not so much the experience limiting you but rather the mastery points. Check your map and achievement log for mastery points that are within your reach. Going for those will also give you experience on the side.

And last but not least, do event chains you enjoy. There’s achievements tied to most of these, often even with mastery points attached, so it’s always a good idea to check your achievemnt logs for event chains you haven’t done/finished yet and play those.

The Carapace Shoulder Box is a reward for completing Hidden Arcana , the last story instance of chapter 5 (Echoes of the Past). If you have finished that chapter (actively, just joining another player without being on the right story step yourself doesn’t count) and didn’t get the box you should open a support ticket.

Go to your bank, open the wardrobe tab, and check out the weapon and armor skins available. You might find some you especially enjoy. Check the wiki for where you can get them (type /wiki <nameofskin> into the chat box ingame to have your browser open on the correct wiki page automatically) and try to get them.

Open your hero panel, go to the achievement log, and check out the different kinds of achievements there are. There are achievements for all game modes and a variety of activities (from killing a bunch of monsters to playing different personal stories to exploring out-of-the-way places). See if you can’t find some related to activities you enjoy.

Play the personal story, make alts to play the different racial and order stories (there are 3 story archs per race = 15 different stories to play through up to level 20), play living story season 2 (if you’ve got that) and the Heart of Thorns personal story. There are also achievements associated to the ls s2 and HoT stories, some of which are pretty challenging.

Check out dungeons and fractals, 5-man instanced content. Dungeon story modes actually offer an additional story arch running parallel to your personal story. You should’ve gotten invitation mails from your herald all through leveling to make you aware of whenever a new story mode dungeon/chapter was available (typically every 10 levels).

Go out and explore the world. You will get map rewards for every map you explore 100% (all waypoints, vistas, hero points, pois, and renown hearts ocmpleted), as well as a special reward for 100%ing all of the core tyria maps.

And most important: Have fun!

If you’re new to the wardrobe, you may want to check the original blog-post introducing the wardrobe as well as the wiki page that explains the feature.

Or just go to your bank and check out the lowest tab, which will lead you right to your own, personal wardrobe .

Wondrouswall.7169:

I’d like to see Anet make it available as a reward for completing an (insane) achievement as an alternative.

Complete the Chak Gerent meta event successfully 1,000 times.
“If you didn’t get it by now, well… here you go.”
Reward: Chak Egg Sac

>x}

Can you imagine the outrcy on these forums about the insane amount of grind this achievement would require?

That said, I’m fine with random (desireable) skins having precursor-like rng. If it’s one I like tough luck, but fortunately there’s so much variety in this game that I can always find something else to use instead.

There are people who just enjoy “winning the lottery”, and there’s not many skins in this game that actually require you to be as lucky as the egg sac. As long as there’s really just a very few skins that work this way I think it’s a good idea to have them to give the “want to feel lucky” people something to look forward to.

Actually dungeons provide a decent income even these days. The liquid gold at the end of the dungeon is less (but still generous for several of the dungeon paths that you can easily finish in less than 15 minutes), but the dungeon-specific loot has actually gone up a lot on the trading post. Just the other day, I joined some guildies for AC and noticed that the masterwork quality back item that drops in there frequently has gone up from barely above vendor price to around 40 silver since I was in there last.

Just open up an lfg post yourself if you want to run a dungeon. They don’t really take much longer to fill these days than they did before the expansion, and the amount of coin you gather between the end reward and the drops is still in a very good place.

Actually dungeons provide a decent income even these days. The liquid gold at the end of the dungeon is less (but still generous for several of the dungeon paths that you can easily finish in less than 15 minutes), but the dungeon-specific loot has actually gone up a lot on the trading post. Just the other day, I joined some guildies for AC and noticed that the masterwork quality back item that drops in there frequently has gone up from barely above vendor price to around 40 silver since I was in there last.

Just open up an lfg post yourself if you want to run a dungeon. They don’t really take much longer to fill these days than they did before the expansion, and the amount of coin you gather between the end reward and the drops is still in a very good place.

VaLee.5102:

Vayne.8563:

Because no one in wow every complained about balance issues. lol

No, but WoW never had this 48h after releasing a patch (and expect more to come):

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Bug Fix:

• Fixed a server crash.

Bug Fixes:

General

• Fixed a client crash.
  * When each player in a raid enters combat, their boon prioritization will be locked in based on the composition of the subgroup they are currently in. That prioritization will not change until the player has left combat, even if their subgroup composition changes while they are in combat.
  * Added messaging for swapping squads in the Enhanced Squad UI.
  * Fixed the Shatterer’s defiance bar text.

Skills and Traits:

• Necromancer:
  * Wells: Fixed an issue that caused these abilities to go on full recharge when interrupted.

• Dragonhunter:
  * Wings of Resolve: This ability is no longer able to be activated in midair.

• Warrior:
  * Wild Blow: Fixed an issue that caused Wild Blow to not remove all weakness.

• Thief:
  * Flanking Strikes: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to not have a reduced cooldown when paired with Trickster.
  Staff Autoattack—Staff Strike, Staff Bash, Punishing Strikes: Increased the damage by 36%, 15%, and 33% respectively.

• Ranger:
  * Moment of Clarity: The effectiveness of this trait has been reduced from 100% stun and daze durations to 50% stun and daze durations.

• Druid:
  * Ancestral Grace: This ability is no longer able to be used in midair.

• Elementalist:
  * Ride the Lightning: This ability is no longer able to be used in midair.

• Engineer:
  * Static Shot: Fixed a bug that prevented the correct number of confusion stacks from displaying when the Chemical Rounds trait was equipped.

• Guardian:
  * Shield of Courage: Added text to the effect description to indicate the active block.
  * mite Conditions: Fixed an issue that was causing this skill to remove only 1 condition instead of 2.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue in the “Defeat the Marmox Packleader and his Pack” hero challenge that prevented the Veteran Marmox Packleader from spawning.
  * Squads can no longer be used in PvP matches and activities.
  * Fixed a bug preventing certain party sizes from advertising in LFG.
  * Fixed a collision issue that was blocking access to the Stronghold of Ebonhawke vista in Fields of Ruin.
  * Ranger:
  * Healing Spring: Fixed an issue that prevented this skill from triggering after the trap was placed.
  * Thief:
  * Guarded Initiation: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to grant bonus vitality.
  * Guardian:
  * Wings of Resolve: Fixed a bug that caused this ability to be affected by movement modifiers while underwater, or when paired with the Soaring Devastation trait.

Bug Fixes:

• Items
  * Superior Rune of the Trooper: Fixed an issue that caused some shout skills to cleanse conditions incorrectly.
  * Fixed an issue that could prevent object markers from being properly removed when the object leaves the visibility of all squad members.
  * WvW Capture and Hold guild missions have had their timers increased to 1 hour.
  * Dolyaks in Eternal Battlegrounds have had their movement speed increased.
  * Fixed a bug that could cause the warning message for launch pads to erroneously display for players who had trained the Glider Basics Mastery.
  * Fixed an issue that allowed players to kill the Mossman in the Fractals of the Mists with underwater combat.
  * Mesmer
  * Feedback: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to use ground targeting while submerged. When used underwater, this skill will now cast on your current target.
  * Ranger
  * “Search and Rescue!”: Fixed an issue that could prevent some players from gaining access to this skill.

Comparing GW2 response times to bugs and fixes to similar games I play or used to play, I’ll take this game hands down. I haven’t played WoW, but several other MMOs with PTS, and all of them had a similar amount of bugs and glitches with each release, with the only difference that it usually takes/took weeks and a several-hour server shutdown for them to fix them.

I saw a bristleback named “Klobürste” (toilet brush) the other day

There are also several rare crafted weapon sets below level 80 that have unique skins, like the dredge weapons and the ogre weapons , als well as exclusive skins found on karma merchants like the jotun greatsword , the wooden sword , or the charr meatoberfest chalice (which shares skins with a rare exotic named focus).

If you open your options panel, there is an option “Snap Ground Target to Current Target” in the Combat/Movement section . Check this prior to the fight, tab-target the mouth and point your mouse in the general area of the target, and the game will automatically center your aoe on your target. This has helped me immensely in actually hitting the mouth.

Other than that it’s down to luck to get a chopper/mouth spawn that you can do and not get hit on the way. Once you have your targeting down, it should only take a few tries to grab the achievement.

The Tarir adventures (Fallen Masks and Sanctum Scramble) are open all through the pillars phase and closed for the challenges and octovine phases. Since those are on a fixed schedule, this means that you can access those adventures from 30 minutes past every even hour (UTC) to 45 minutes past the odd hour. There’s no need to take part in the meta events, since the outcome of those doesn’t influence the opening times of the adventures. Check the wiki if you are unsure about how those times relate to your local time.

If you don’t enjoy the Auric Basin meta events, log onto another character and do something else in-game (or even out of game ) for the 45 minutes out of every two hours that the adventure is not available, then come back to the character parked in the adventure area when the pillars phase starts up again.

Although, like somebody else posted above, I wouldn’t advise spending too much time at once in there. Personally, I only try most adventures a couple of times before moving on and coming back another day. I’ve been in Fallen Masks several times, and actually gotten close to silver once or twice already, but I make sure to go do something else whenever I start getting frustrated by it (for me that’s around 5-ish tries with this adventure, different with others) because I find my “performance” to degrade at that point, which in turn increases frustration.

If they’re truly afk for 30+ minutes, their map participation percentage will drop down into nothingness, which prevents them from getting rewards. To keep receiving map rewards they need to participate in events regularly. Besides, if they really are inactive for an extended period of time while people are trying to join the map, they’ll be automatically disconnected sooner rather than later.

I’ve had both happen to me on different HoT maps, not because I afk to leech rewards, but rather since I often get called off the pc for family reasons and don’t want to loose my map participation when I don’t know if I’ll be away for a minute or an hour (kids have the tendency to be unpredictable ).

ANet has systems in place that “protect” you from afk-ers while at the same time protecting people with real lives from loosing progress prematurely. Unfortunately there will always be a few people walking the fine line between those two groups to game the system, but from experience I’d say ANet has done a pretty good job at balancing the activity level. No need to put any power over other people’s participation in the hands of players with a subjective view of the situation.