Guild Wars 2

Blood & Madness ends Nov. 11th.

Official guide (Basic guide)

Dulfy’s guide (Full guide)

Edit: This was meant to follow CETheLucid’s post, before Astralporing’s, which is why I didn’t quote anything.

I’m not sure why you felt the need to devote three paragraphs to the hypothetical that KorKor is complaining about the grind here, but doing it anyway in-game. Dramatic, but hardly seems productive.

As for blaming Anet for giving you the option…In a way, that’s true; it seems like an expensive option is better than no option. However, that’s hardly the whole story; by making it so expensive, it teases players with a reward that is, for many of them, out of reach. That happens all the time, (including Halloween weapon skins, etc.) and that’s normal…but this is an extremely minor reward, for the most popular holiday of the GW year— It hardly seems like the time or place to be dangling “the expensive carrot,” for a bag that’s functionally identical to an everyday item that costs a fraction of the price, without even being visible on your character, which is one of the main benefits of aesthetic progression.

Players being generally unable to afford an item isn’t unusual, but that’s only the small part of the problem with the Halloween Pail, which is easy to do without. The real problem is that it suggests a major disconnect between whoever set the price for it and what people in general are happy to pay for it, considering they can get the same thing with a different name and icon for 12g. The price doesn’t feel like it had much thought put into it, and whether or not it did, that impression is important, and devastating for morale. Players might not like high prices, but they can understand them; prices that are inexplicably high, however, are more discouraging than a goal to work towards. Thanks to the Pail, a reward which is obviously out of whack with its cost, players have to doubt that the other Sonder the Seller items are meant to be as rare and expensive as they are, rather than also being strangely disconnected from player experience.

Messaging is important, and for whatever reason the Halloween Pail awkwardly mumbles the message “We don’t know what this should cost.”

I usually get most of them overlapping with what I’m already doing, although I will go out of my way occasionally, especially if it’s something I like but don’t always do (jumping puzzles, Sanctum Sprint, etc.) I typically log in, check the list for ones that overlap with what I feel like doing that day, then figure out which characters to play which part, and which ones I feel like playing that day.

It sounds long when I type it out, but it’s hardly a minute of decision-making. Mostly I like dailies for laurels, a little bonus XP on alts, and some sense of direction if I’m not sure what I want to do that day.

The first time I accidentally typed “guild wars 3,” right before release, my immediate reaction was “NNNOOOOOO”

A bit like having an election, and then hearing talk about the next one. It’s too soon! ;__;

But, in seriousness, I’m inclined to wait a few years and see how GW2 evolves before I starting thinking what I want out of any possible follow-up.

All excellent advice, Wolfheart!

Don’t worry about getting a particular type of armor until you’re high level, possibly even max level. You’re still figuring out what skills and stats you like best, at level 33, so there’s no need to worry about getting a particular gear set that you’re going to outgrow in a few levels.

Better equipment helps, and just learning how to dodge, pick off individuals from groups, how to play your class, etc. makes a huge difference in PvE. Have fun with it!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Fire

Slap one of these on it and it will be “of Fire.” Generally, whenever you have a weapon or armor piece that says “of something,” that indicates the upgrade component attached to it.

Since you said you’re new, I’ll remind you that adding one upgrade component (Sigil of Fire) destroys a previous one (Sigil of Force, in this case.)

Also, there are other longbows with the same stat set (Power primary, Toughness & Vitality secondary,) so you might find the same stats for cheaper if you shop around. The Ebon Vanguard bow does have a pretty cool skin, though.

Welcome to the game!

3-4 minutes? Have you tried not fighting back?

I mean, maybe my characters are just on the squishy side, but if I’m not using my healing or other skills carefully, it doesn’t usually take that long to go down if something is already on me.

Oh! I actually know this one off-hand, because I’ve run into Kari before. I’m not sure why they’re calling her “mistress,” but she’s a child who gets lost in the destroyer burrows. You help her get home as a dynamic event.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kari

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Help_Kari_back_to_her_mother_in_Overlake_Haven

Edit: Wow, not sure how I got so distracted between reading the OP and writing this post, that when I came back to it I just repeated what Sorann already knows. I’d say it’s the same kid. Seems like too big a similarity to be a coincidence.

That would be pretty fantastic. At this point, I have absolutely no idea what dives I’ve done, so whenever I get around to that achievement, I’m basically going to have to revisit all of them. Which might be fun, but is going to get tedious before the end.

I think the gem store does a surprisingly good job of offering convenience items, account upgrades, and skins without every upsetting the balance of the rest of the game. Only thing I really have to complain about there is the RNG-demanding Black Lion Chest, which I expect are mostly bought for the weapon tickets, instead of the store just selling the weapons outright. While the ticket system has made it much, much more tolerable than it used to be, you still wouldn’t see me gambling on it.

Well, that and I’d like to see their website sales applied to the in-game Digital Deluxe upgrade. I’m not going to pay 2000 gems when the main thing I want is the Mistfire Wolf, but I might be convinced to cough up the gold for it at 800. Maybe.

Yep, you can power through it. I raised my artificer straight to 400 after I created her (which was the limit at the time,) and while she couldn’t use the weapons that were too high for her level, she gained a ton of XP, shooting her up to…about twenty, I think it was, in character level.

As long as you’ve got the materials/gold, you can plow straight through any number of crafting disciplines. I think the first level 80 character I heard of, way back when, was done in an astonishingly quick time by a guild pulling together to fund a character completely through each crafting discipline.

It sounds like you’ve skipped the story sequence that was supposed to be the start of Blood & Madness. That’s okay; it’s short and easy, and if you bring your candy corn elemental, you can do the introduction instance, then do the finale instance. Just be sure to have it in your inventory.

Go to the Black Citadel, and follow the yellow starburst on the map to Haunted Nolani, where you can talk to a charr (marked with the same starburst) to enter the instance area and find Magister Tassi. There is a nearby waypoint, if you’ve explored the Citadel before.

Completing the intro instance will get you the “Containment” achievement, and completing the finale will get you “You, Back in the Box,” which rewards the candy corn node. “Beaten Bloody” and “Upset Stomach” are also obtained in the finale instance, by winning the boss fight in under a minute and throwing up on him, respectively. Bring a party and candy corn to eat to do those easily.

The node is linked to your account, so any new characters will have it. The same is true for the Quartz node from Bazaar of the Four Winds, and will almost certainly be true for the skill point from Tower of Madness.

:D

Malediktus.9250:

I just bought 80 stacks of candy corn for the miniature on the market (what a lot of work to order so many stacks…).

I think that’s a wonderful example of just how ridiculous the quantity is. The trading post isn’t bad if you’re trying to buy a couple of stacks of something, but 80? That must have been an enormous hassle.

It’s got to be an intentional Zelda reference. Wiki says they only spawn after attacking a normal chicken, which makes it a sure bet it’s a reference.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Angry_Chicken

There’s a guy in Divinity’s Reach who asks what you’re doing inside his house. You can answer “Looking for treasure?” and he’ll laugh it off “awkwardly”. That’s more of a general RPG reference, though, not just Zelda.

Then you have Super Adventure Box, which has more than a little Zelda in it.

Edit: Really? You’re going to censor that? Word in quotes to fix it.

Then it sounds like participating in GW2, which is itself a game. I don’t think it’s very confusing, once you’re aware of the terminology. If you talk to the Activity NPC in Lion’s Arch, their dialogue tree does use the phrase “activity.”

But, if it was changed to make it more clear, I think “Daily Mini Game Participation” might be an option.

Best advice I can give is just to try out a few different classes and see what feels right to you. Pick something you like the flavor of, try it on, and see how it feels.

Since you’re experienced with an engineer, you might try a light or heavy weight class, just to mix it up. At the very least, you’ll have different armor options than with the Engineer, so that might help keep them both fresh experiences.

You might also try a different race, for added freshness.

Sounds like you both acted like mature, friendly adults. Yep. That’s what that looks like.

I’m not sure what you’re expecting us to say. Yes? No? Sounds like you both could have done better.

If you’ve already left a party after someone was giving you trouble, just don’t say anything. Chances are, you’re not going to get anything out of petty sniping after the fact, and they’re not going to get anything out of it.

20,000cc / (10cc/day) = 2,000 days, or about 5 1/2 years.

That’s 5 1/2 years if I don’t miss a single day, longer for every day I miss. And that’s not counting travel time to and from the instance, or any waypoint costs. (2s/time=40g)

If “long term goal” really is the intent, then I have to question the wisdom of a time-gated goal that will take at least 5 1/2 years being introduced into a game that’s a little over one year old.

Of course, future Halloweens could reduce that cost by raising candy corn supplies, but, in the end, I think there’s really just no sensible way to get the mini other than breaking down and buying candy of the trading post.

When rhapsody says “time gated materials,” it’s a reference to materials like Glob of Elder Spirit Residue, which can only be crafted once per day. Since they’re account bound, if you need, say, nine Spirit Residue to make the ascended staff, it’s going to take you at least nine days to refine them even if you have the supplies.

The time-gated materials for weapons are Spirit Residue, Thick Elonian Cord, and Lump of Mithrillium.

I’d be absolutely astonished, and a little worried, if anyone did.

15,000 candy corn (for Pail; Mini is 20,000)
/12 days (from event start to today)
= 1,250 candycorn/day (1,667 for Mini)

If you played 8 hours/day, you’d have to be making 156 cc/hr. (208 for mini) Even if you could make that by just running around the max and mining nodes, I’d be a little concerned if anyone actually did that.

No, you will not.

I haven’t actually done that, of course, to test it, but I’m 99% sure you wouldn’t, because practically nothing else in the game works that way. I’m afraid you’re probably just out of luck, although you could save them for an alt if you like. Sorry!

The Lunatic Inquisition achievement isn’t intended so much as a way to get AP as it is a way to reward people playing it already; it wasn’t even an achievement at the start of Blood & Madness. Since it’s a cyclical achievement, like Frequent Sprinter, there isn’t even a permanent marker to earn with it. If you’re not already playing tons of Inquisition just for the fun of it, there’s really no reason to make yourself play it. <<;

If you don’t like the time commitment of getting daily achievements, just don’t do them. You get rewarded for them, but it’s not like you’re going to far dramatically behind for not doing them, unless you’re trying to compete on the AP leaderboards. And, frankly, if you’re trying to compete on the AP leaderboards, to be the highest-ranked in the world, yeah, you should expect an absurd time commitment.

GW2 eats up a ton of time if you feel compelled to do everything, so just don’t do everything. That’s a bit like being bothered that there are too many good TV shows on to watch in a reasonable amount of time. Focus on whatever game content you enjoy the most, within whatever amount of time you want to spend, and don’t worry about what you miss.

I’ve seen occasional complaints about getting killed at the start, or about having difficulty getting through the face of the clocktower, but I’ve never had an ounce of trouble with either, despite how many times I’ve run the tower. Is it possible lag, either with your machine or on your network connection, is the culprit?

Charming Rogue.8071:

What are you talking about? If you buy all the candy corn from TP this mini is still cheaper than some of the other uber rare mini’s on the TP. If you really want it, farm the gold and buy it. Why whine about something that is in EVERY MMORPG.

Using KorKor’s price of 160g for the Mini Prince, that shoots him up to being the second most expensive mini in the game, compared to those on the trading post. So that means there is one mini more expensive than he is. (Not counting, say, Mini Rytlock, Orrian Baby Chicken, or other non-tradeable minis. There’s really no easy way to gauge their prices.)

Looking at the most expensive tradeable minis on the TP, there are only four that cost over 100g, out of the 117 listings. While it’s possible Anet really was intending a holiday item to be abruptly in the top 1.7% price bracket for its type, it seems just as possible that the number was poorly thought-out. Even Tequatl (80g) and Mini Enraged Twisted Nightmare (70g) aren’t that bad.

Of course, while the Mini Prince is super expensive, okay, whatever, I guess it’s just a high-end collectible, unfortunately. That’s life. What’s more bizarre is what I said already about the prices with this event in general, where it’s cheaper to flat out buy the old items, with their cut off and limited supply, than to buy the items needed for the new recipes, even though their supply is increasing. The whole event seems poorly-tuned, which goes hand-in-hand with the idea that the Mini Prince is effectively way more expensive than intended.

Before I clicked that video, I was expecting some cutting-edge footage with high-res textures, high poly-counts, lots of gratuitous bump and specularity mapping. What I saw was…underwhelming. The textures might be a little higher res, but the poly count seems about the same or worse for a lot of it. The lighting effects are okay, but nothing spectacular.

I mean, I’m not going to argue that GW2 was “best in show” graphics even at launch, since it’s always had a “let’s keep lesser systems in mind” approach, but I’m just not particularly impressed by what I’m seeing in this video, even if I set aside my tastes regarding the art style. :/

As for Rangers getting quivers integrated into their core look, go ask the Engineers how much they love their hobo packs, hiding their back items and clipping with things.

cranked.3812:

Wanze.8410:

Because it contradicts Anets business model of micro transactions.

Whatever is gained through the gem store by RNG, favours gem purchases with cash, as soon as they make it tradable on the TP, they have to deal with a surplus of unwanted supply making these items less desirable and devaluating their product.

Gem store items that are obtainable at a fixed price, like mini packs for example, are useless on the TP because they have a fixed rate of gold through the gold->gem conversion.

I guess it would then show that anet’s gem store prices are way too high on a lot of items?

[…]

I think making them tradable would go a long way to show the true value of items like those. Obviously, anet would never do it because of the reasons you stated. But, if you feel like the items would be devalued, that means they just aren’t really wanted in the first place and they are way overpriced.

That depends on how you value the items. If I like, say, XP boosters enough to buy them, and I get one out of a daily reward, or something, then, hey, I’ve just saved the cash value on that booster. If I like them, but not enough to buy them, I’ve still gotten a valuable freebie. If I get a Glory Booster, but don’t play PvP, then either I’m encouraged to try PvP, or, at worst, I destroy it and I’m no worse off than I was before getting the booster.

Now, if I’m suddenly able to sell my boosters, the gem store market for boosters most likely collapses, especially for less popular ones like WXP and PvP. Anet loses value in their gem store offerings, and I lose value on every booster I pick up that I intended to use, since it’s no longer worth $1.34, but instead some most likely minimal amount of silver. Those rare bonuses are now about as exciting as selling a Masterwork item, or a maybe a cheap Rare.

Whether I look at it as Anet being greedy with booster costs, or especially generous with boosters I get for free (at least for ones I’m going to use,) it’s pretty clear that if they were going to be sellable on the TP, Anet would need a way to maintain their value in the gem store, which would mean drastically reducing their drop rates. Even then, the value would crash because of all the people who have held onto their boosters, and then suddenly dump them on the TP.

So that’s how I feel about boosters. For style items and services, the bigger question is: Why would anyone buy them for gems, then sell them for gold? Most of the time, you’re going to lose money both from the gold->gems conversion fee and the TP fee, so your only real financial incentive is if you stock up on, say, Mad King outfits during Halloween and sell them at a higher price when they’re out of season. We already have some amount of that, in a more complex form, via the Black Lion Weapons Specialist, but is this really behavior we want to expand upon?

For as few kinds of Destroyers as there are, I can’t say I’ve ever paid much attention to their lack of variety. Most of the places where they do show up feel like they’re overflowing from under the earth (or Mount Maelstrom,) rather than having established their own, permanent territory like the Icebrood, Branded, and Risen have. It’s natural that we’d see a lot of Risen, since we march straight into Orr.

Meanwhile, we haven’t gone far enough north to reach the Far Shiverpeaks or far enough south to reach the Crystal Desert, the homes of Jormag and Kralkatorrik. It’s possible the Dwarves, or what remains of them, are keeping the Destroyers busy in the Depths of Tyria, which is why we see less overflow into the overworld, if you’d like a lore-based reason why there aren’t more Destroyers.

And if it’s any consolation, they did change the Megadestroyer so that it’s not just a giant Destroyer Troll anymore.

joshc.3129:

Look at the Heroic Edition of GW2, Anet already gave one skin set that only GW1 players could get to new players that never played GW1. GW1 players earned the rewards and the rewards are Anet way of saying thank you to the GW1 players. New players that never played GW1 shouldn’t ever get access to those rewards (which aren’t that great, just saying).

Fiery Dragon Sword and the light Heritage armor are pretty darn cool.

But, more seriously, you’re mixing up the phrase “legacy armor” with Heritage armor. Heritage is the HoM stuff, and legacy is just a blanket term for the trio of Profane/Krytan/Primeval skins, which are inspired by the same skins from GW1.

/clarification

+1 for 30 Rock gif

Voice packs would be very expensive to do; there’s so much personal story dialog to record that it’s just not practical. And that’s not even factoring the cost of getting a big-name celebrity like Samuel L. Jackson, hah.

I went with Magic Find, personally. When you get into the higher tiers of raising Magic Find with Essences of Luck, 20% represents a pretty substantial number of essences.

Of course, I never pay much attention to how much karma or gold I get from events or mobs, so I can’t say how valuable they are.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Activity

“Activities” are basically mini games, like Sanctum Sprint. There’s a few that are on a daily rotation if you talk to an NPC in Lion’s Arch, although a few others, particularly seasonal events, can also be used to get the daily achievement.

It sounds like you’re relatively new to the game (is this your first character?) so I wouldn’t worry about crafting, personally, until you’ve at least got that first character pretty far along in the story, or even completed. Armor and weapons you get from karma vendors and Personal Story rewards are an excellent way to stay reasonably-equipped, as long as you’re doing renown hearts in each area.

The reason I say this is that crafting is much easier once you’ve built up a supply of crafting materials and money to feed it with. I like to do a lot of crafting at once, usually with a guide, and that’s easier if I’ve already gathered the materials I need, or can afford to just buy what I don’t already have enough of via the Trading Post.

I’ve been trying to raise my Guardian’s crafting level as he levels normally, but since crafted items have a level requirement, I’m usually left holding armor he can’t use yet, and I’m just not finding it that much more useful than gearing myself from drops and karma.

…Hide…weapons? That’s a pretty bizarre idea.

Although, since that was nine months ago, I don’t expect to hear more about that. I assume you’re bumping this for the numbers, mostly?

Oh! I’ve been wondering myself for a while now why my name occasionally gets auto-censored. Mystery solved!

rizzo.1079:

skullmount.1758:

All these threads and posts and still no response from Anet on their reasoning behind making these ridiculous requirements.

Marketing told them it was a hot potato so they’re not touching it other than that first correction post. The economist told them the extra cc HAS TO GO so that’s what they have to do.

Source, or just speculation?

rizzo.1079:

I swear a video game with an economist….

I’d be more worried if they didn’t have at least one person in charge of the economy. MMORPG economies are extremely complex, and to the players who have to interact with them, pretty important. Tracking and managing that requires a particular set of skills and expertise.

They’d be cool, certainly, but I think they lost out just on grounds of variety. They’re stuck in a spot between hammer (heavy two-handed weapon) and 1h axes (more visually flexible for medium/light classes, already using the axe style.)

What class do you think could use them? Warriors, obviously, but who else?

sorudo.9054:

if they really wanted to make classes unique they should’ve kept the profession specific armors, now it’s more a definition of heavy, leather and light rather then the class.
because of this the amount of armors to choose from is quite small, if only we had at least the amount of armors as we had in GW1 per profession type, the choice woul’ve bin 3X in size.

And then we’d have people complaining that their elementalist can’t wear mesmer armor, or that their guardian can’t wear warrior armor. Their goal with armor classes isn’t to make each class more unique against every other character class (as it was in GW1,) but to make it more unique against each weight class while giving you more options within your weight. GW2 already has more options available to each individual profession than GW1 does, and your options are split into three restrictive categories instead of six (or ten, after Factions and Nightfall.)

For comparison, I’m just going to look at GW1’s options for the six core professions. The actual math is a little more...complicated. (Warriors’ Silver Eagle set gives them an unusual number, Deldrimor armor isn’t a complete set, etc. Including expansion classes makes the comparison even more complicated, both in terms of pure numbers and in wrecking the basic terms of the comparison, given the extra years and player purchase price.)

Did GW1 have more distinct skins overall? Yes, but at the cost of fewer options for an individual character once you’ve created them. I might have 34x6 options if I make a new core-profession GW1 character, but that drops back down to 34 once I’ve selected a class. If I haven’t bought Factions/Nightfall/EotN, that drops down to...14 options for my level 80 character, say, a Necro. GW2 launched with 30 suits for a Necro to wear after choosing race (+5 options for the race you didn’t choose,) and order (+2 for orders you didn’t choose.) Without even counting Heritage Armor or Profane armor.

Guild Wars 2 trades higher numbers of overall skins for a higher number of options to you after you’ve created your character. I’m still restricted by weight class, which keeps soldiers from wearing dresses and casters from wearing full plate, but at least I’m never being told, "You can’t wear that because you’re one type of caster and it’s meant for another type of caster." This keeps weight classes unique while not locking people into one particular set of class-based armor. You might have fewer sets that make you shout "THAT is a NECROMANCER!" but you’re also not locked into "all necros are spikemonsters," "all female elementalists freeze to death in the snow," etc.

I don’t think there would be enough demand for this to make it worthwhile. When the market is “Players who buy more than one infinite tool of the same type (pick, sickle, axe,) and then equip it to the same character just to change the effect, but don’t like having to carry around the extra item,” that seems like an awfully small market.

Goobers.8509:

So because they made a way for players to convert gold into gems, we have to suffer? If they are relying on gem store revenue to keep thisgame going that wasn’t a wise decision. The reason the gem prices are at an all time high is because they want it this way. They want us to see that buying gems with dollars is the quicker route. Not a very smart move since this isn’t a free to play game. The only thing I’m seeing is a knife being shoved into the heart of guild wars. I’ll rant on more later after I get some sleep

As I explained, the fact that you can pay cash for these items generally doesn’t matter, because even if you do pay cash, it’s cheaper to buy them directly off the Trading Post than via the “upgrade candy” mechanic, which negates the usefulness of the upgrade mechanic regardless of how much gold you have. The issue isn’t merely “the prices are too high;” the prices are too high compared to existing ways to get the same items, whether you farm gold or buy it with gems.

The only exceptions are Mini Bloody Prince and Mini Carlotta, since candy corn cobs are the only way to get them. For everything else, though, Sonder the Seller is just a redundant, overpriced way to get the same items.

You can preview dye colors by right-clicking on them in your inventory, as chat codes, or on the trading post. Using the chat codes for the witch outfit, you should be able to change the dye colors in of the preview window.

Should be easy to preview basically any armor in any combination of colors this way, and it’s something I do fairly often. Let me know if you can’t get it working and I’ll explain in more detail.

Lord Gwyn of the Sun.3842:

I heard Volcanus is something like this, it can also be summoned by an elementalist for others to use. Is it possible for a level 80 elementalist to summon Volcanus and have someone, like say a lvl 6 character be able to wield it in battle?

Elementalists have a skill, Conjure Fiery Greatsword, that temporarily creates two, well, fiery greatswords. One automatically equips to the elementalist, and the other lands on the ground wherever its summoned. The ele can pick it up, or another player can, so the answer to your question is yes. You can read the article I linked on it to get a more complete idea of what wielding the CFG is actually like, since it’s a special kind of weapon.

Volcanus is a normal greatsword that happens to have the same skin as the conjured one. Unlike the CFG, it’s not temporary, does not have to be summoned by an elementalist, and does not replace the user’s skills with special ones. It is, however, rather rare and expensive.

Wow, that was a lot of "MMO"s and "WoW"s in one post. I haven’t played WoW, so I can’t make any comparison there, personally.

More seriously…If you play for a while and you feel like you just don’t “get” it, it’s possible you’re tired of MMOs in general, or that the basic game mechanics just aren’t clicking with you. I can’t decide if it sounds like what you want is a standard MMO or something different, but, either way, it sounds like the magic is just gone for you, personally, with the genre. Maybe play something else for a while and come back to it with a fresh perspective?

Or perhaps someone more familiar with PvP and WvW than I am can give you some pointers to try them out.

If you could be more specific with what you’re looking for, someone might be able to give you more specific suggestions.

Donari.5237:

Correction, the helms are at 9K. I’m past 8500 now, so I can easily see my next chest rewards. Are you sure anyone’s at 17K? I’ve been playing since launch on a regular basis and while I haven’t chased every achieve out there, I’ve sure got a lot of them. Yet I’m at 8500+.

The first helm is at 9k. At 18k, players get access to the other helm, the one they didn’t choose. They get a few more Zenith weapon skin picks after that, with the last one at 23k.

As for knowing where the top players are, there are official leaderboards.

From his shouts of “GOLD, GOOOOOLLLDD!!” I assumed the OP was joking. Or at least some kind of crazy, eccentric prospector.

Any guess how low prices will drop, O Trading Post Master?

Huh. I leveled up my huntsman recently, and I was wondering what made soft wood planks so much more expensive than expected. I didn’t notice the planks were taking four instead of three. Eesh.

I don’t mind the “trade in a bunch of _ to get a ______” mechanic. Jorbreakers were overpriced, but the system worked fine for other Dragonbash prizes, as well as with Fortune Scraps during Bazaar of the Four Winds. The prices for Halloween are just too darn high. Mini Carlotta and Mini Bloody Prince are the only Halloween items acquired with upgraded candies that are even worth considering. As for the rest:

Barring a major market shift before Nov. 11, there will never have been a time when it was cheaper to bother buying candy than to directly buy the item you want on the Trading Post.

Which means that while demand and prices might be relatively high for candy corn at the moment, surprisingly little of that is actually getting removed from the economy. Some people might combine a couple stacks of candy corn into cobs because they get the impression it will be valuable somehow, but few people are probably using those cobs for anything, since they can’t afford enough of them. So we do convert some corn into cobs at a rate of 1000->1, which is pretty impressive, but then very few of those cobs are themselves getting removed from the economy. Sounds okay, right? Even if the cobs are around, that’s still .001% the total number of items! Not so fast.

Since only a very, very small minority of players will have both the interest and wealth to actually use cobs, the vast majority of candy corn will go unconverted, and will probably get shoved up on the trading post. Supplies and demand are both higher now, leading to higher prices, but it’s hard to say how much is actually getting removed from the game— Rich players are probably aware that it’s cheaper to buy Halloween weapon recipes (or weapons) directly off the trading post without dealing with candy, so it’s really only the hardcore mini-collectors who are actually removing substantially large amount of candy corn from the economy completely. Cobs will show up on the trading post, but since corn prices have been dropping, it will likely remain cheaper to buy raw corn and make your own cobs than to buy them pre-made, at least until Halloween ends and supply slowly begins to dry up.

I really wish I had some actual metrics to see how players are behaving, since they’re not all going to play optimally (see: players who make cobs without being able to spend cobs,) but as far as I can tell, the math just doesn’t work. I could pay 98g for Recipe: Gift of the Moon on the trading post, or I could pay roughly three times that for the candy corn and chattering skulls needed to forge one. The copies of the Recipe that are on the Trading post must be leftovers from last year at that price, and though they have quadrupled since this time last month, they’re still cheaper than going the trade-up route. In theory, the old supply would run out, prices would climb, and the trade-up route would eventually become cheaper, but that option is more or less going to be disabled on Nov. 11, when Sonder stops selling Gibbering Skulls and the like, and I’m not convinced that will be enough time for the market to reach that point, given that it hasn’t already.

I’m going to have to say that I hope not. While it would be cool to finish the Hellfire/Radiant armors, I’m less enthused by the prospect of making more armor (a frequently requested feature) only to have it locked behind a 26,000 AP barrier. If the most dedicated achievement-hunters are only just now getting to 17,000 , I think it’s safe to say that an enormous number of players won’t reach half that many, which makes it seem like a bit of a waste of resources to develop more armor pieces just to use as AP prizes.

If they did add more armor pieces to round out the set, I think I’d rather see them integrated back into the current range, even if that means high-achievers get them retroactively, rather than as something to strive for. Seems like it would be healthier for the game in general to encourage those at moderate achievement levels to keep hunting than to put out a new carrot exclusively for the top x%.

Actually, on second thought, can you imagine someone decked out in a full suit of Radiant armor? MY EYES. I already hear the odd complain about legendary weapons being too flashy, but a suit of Radiant would be insane.

Well, since you bumped it, I’ll bite.

dbgamer.3407:

I think it would be an easy update

It would actually be a pretty significant update, since it would mean developing new skill sets, complete with icons and new animations for each move, which would have to receive some amount of balancing work. Maybe not necessarily a huge update, but considering balance work that could be done with existing skills, adding new ones might be more difficult than you think.

As for your class/weapon choices, I’m just going to comment on Elementalists, since they’re my favorite. I wouldn’t give them greatswords, as those are already extremely popular and I think giving them to Elementalists would take away from the visual distinctiveness of Mesmers using them. I’d rather see Eles use something a little more original, like a mainhand torch or even dual-wielding shields. Both options would make for visually-distinct styles (channeling energy through weapons that would be poor as mainhand weapons for physical classes,) that give some love to otherwise underused weapons.

That would be useful. There’s a gear icon that appears by the player using the weapon, but it doesn’t exactly pop out, especially if there are multiple players around.