Guild Wars 2

We’re aware of the problem and are working on an active fix. Very sorry about this, hopefully it will be fixed soon.

We selected a range of different skins from across almost all aspects of the game for all the drops in the dungeon.

We’ve been made aware of this and are actively working on a fix for it. The gaurenteed drops should be even and fair for everyone.

Thank you for pointing this out – they are certainly not intended to be soulbound on pick-up. They should function like all other exotic pickups in the game.

Res shrines are disabled in the FotM until your party has wiped, in which case you restart from a checkpoint. Just like in personal story instances.

People using MF gear can be a hindrance to a party if the player isn’t very skilled. PUGing always come with dangers – but I find the most dangerous thing is a glass cannon stat allocation combined with berserker gear. Great for damage, but if a dungeon Vet sneezes on you, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Personally, I run with a mixed stat set for dungeons. I have about 15% MF without consumables, and spread the rest through a mix of toughness, power, and crit chance. I pretty much remove my +crit% in favor for MF%. I play a very mobile ranger as well, and know the mechanics of combat pretty well, so more often than not I am carrying a team of PUGs, or even my friends.

The truth of the matter is that even glass cannon builds can be possible in the hands of a highly skilled players who know exactly what to do. It all boils down to the player skill and their knowledge of the challenge at hand.

My personal approach to stats and skills are based around utility and an even spread. Min-maxing has it’s potential, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I am no help to my team lying dead on the ground, and team-play is more important than personal output, so as long as I can be up helping my team, I am valuable.

one of the main reasons we put the tokens in the Wondrous bag, is because of people not always being able to reach the end of the path. We want partial rewards for players, but it has to be at an amount that won’t be abused by just killing the first boss over and over. We hope that 3 will be enough, and if we find it isn’t, we’ll balance it further.
I’ll look into our champion mobs not dropping lot. They certainly should.

there are three dungeon sub bosses that will drop the loot bags.

Also forgot to add:

Fixed a bug preventing melee attacks from hitting static objects in the world if the character was not moving. As an example, this should help players using melee in Ascalonian Catacombs to hit graveling burrows, amongst other offending objects.

Thoughts and such go here!

Dungeons

General

New dungeon rewards have been added to all dungeons.
Each dungeon has a new set of unique items with new stat combinations, ranging in rarity from masterwork to exotic. These items have a chance to drop off of certain bosses in the explorable mode of each dungeon.
Story and explorable bosses and encounters have a chance to drop Bags of Wondrous Goods, which contain coins and karma. Bags of Wondrous Goods obtained in explorable mode also contain dungeon tokens.
If the owner of a dungeon instance intentionally leaves his party to kick out players and invite new players, it will now also kick that owner out of the dungeon to prevent people from kicking PUG members and inviting guild members for the final boss of a dungeon.

Fractals of the Mists
There are new stories being told in the taverns of Lion’s Arch, usually in hushed tones by broken and bloodied adventurers. They weep into their ales and shake as they speak…not about dragons or the undead, but of something new, a mysterious portal that has emerged in the city, beckoning the bravest to venture through it.
Introducing a dungeon experience like no other—Fractals of the Mists! A series of unique “fractal” minidungeons, increasing in difficulty, offers players unlimited levels of challenge! With great risk comes great rewards, including new weapon sets, a back slot item, new Ascended loot, and much more!

New level 80 dungeon with dynamic leveling so you can bring your friends!
Endless and scaling. The deeper you go, the harder it gets!
The portal to the Fractals of the Mists will activate with the Lost Shores content Friday at 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Head west of Fort Marriner to the entrance and try your luck. Perhaps you’ll survive and reap the rewards, or perhaps you’ll be lost forever to the Fractals’ bloody secrets.

I’m seeing a lot of people reacting to Magic Find being an issue here, so I felt I should clarify something.

Magic find has always effected dungeon creature drops – we haven’t changed that at all. Magic find does not effect chest drops however. This has always been the case in dungeons.
The mention of Magic Find for the sub bosses, is to say that we have given them unique loot drops, and that Magic Find is a factor in what you get from them. That is no different in the past as it has been in the future. The more Magic Find you have, the better chances of obtaining a rarer item.

Hey Folks,
This patch will see a reworked loot system for dungeons. We realize our current system is lacking, and we have been working hard to correct that. I’m here to detail a bit about what is going to happen, and what you can expect.

So what did we do?
We selected three specific sub-bosses throughout each dungeon chain and developed special drops for them that are influenced by your character’s Magic Find. We also gave those three sub-bosses a guaranteed item called a “Bag of Wondrous Goods” which will give the players a consumable Karma item worth 400 karma, and a consumable monetary item worth up to 4 silver. In explorable dungeons, the bag will also reward three tokens specific to the dungeon.
We realize some explorable chains don’t have as many bosses within them, so we made sure to account for this and updated as many event rewarded chests as needed to ensure balance between all the explorable paths.

We hope these fixes address the issues with dungeon rewards that we have been seeing. As always we will be watching and balancing as new situations arise, but we feel confident that the improvements we have made will make dungeon more rewarding. We’re always looking to expand and better the system though, and regard this in a step in the right direction.

ADDITION: 11/15/3:38
I’m seeing a lot of people reacting to Magic Find being an issue here, so I felt I should clarify something.

Magic find has always effected dungeon creature drops – we haven’t changed that at all. Magic find does not effect chest drops however. This has always been the case in dungeons.
The mention of Magic Find for the sub bosses, is to say that we have given them unique loot drops, and that Magic Find is a factor in what you get from them. That is no different in the past as it has been in the future. The more Magic Find you have, the better chances of obtaining a rarer item.

I went and checked the history files for the creatures in question, and found there to be no changes to their HP or defenses recently.
Perhaps your previous party makeup had more damage output than your current ones are?

I fully realize how frustrating dungeons can be when they break – I run them with my characters and understand very well how annoying it can be.

The fractals dungeon team was comprised of some very fine folks, and I was just one of many. I’m not going to say any names (mainly because I want all those cookies and cakes), but know that there was a group of designers who worked on the Fractals dungeon

We’ve been actively fixing old content while building new content. We have a team dedicated to fixing bugs found throughout the entire game, and they have been fixing bugs related to dungeons.
Dungeons have had less blocking issues than say open world bugs that stop event chains or break personal stories and keep them from being completed. I’m not saying Dungeons don’t have their problems, but open world issues have more of an impact than the ones in dungeons.

That being said, I am now moving off of the new dungeon team and moving onto the bug fixing team. My focus will entirely be on dungeons, so dungeon problems should be getting more concentrated attention on them.

It’s certainly a possibility, but we feel that doing so will be very inefficient. Three islands must be completed between trips back to the hub area that saves your progress and advances you to the next level. You could certainly keep retrying to get your very first island to be an “easier” one, or one that you prefer over others, but if you try to quit the next island in hopes of going to a new one you will have to complete all 3 again. This would mean you’d have to get the preferred ones three times in a row with a possibility of 9 different islands. We feel the odds are so low in doing that, that you will run whatever island you get.

Also, in terms of difficulty, we tried our best to balance them accordingly. While some are shorter than others, or have different puzzle elements, we feel that you won’t be trying to quit tougher ones in favor for easier ones.

Lemon.4903:

There is also another Hodgins bug that I thought I would mention as this topic has you r attention; if after getting all the scepter pieces, you run toward the howling king through the under tunnels before Hodgins has finished his dialogue, the objective doesnt update and the Howling King doesnt spawn. Never had the bug that the OP posted, but this one has happened a couple of times.

I don’t always post in each individual thread, but I am watchful of section of the forum. Thanks for reporting, but please don’t hold back from posting under the assumption nobody will see it

xvalkyrie.6742:

What would be amazingly helpful is if you could talk to your npc and they had a “follow me” directive, and a “sit, stay” directive. We could tell Randall to not be in GL’s crotch, and stay with us, and during Dwayna, could have him follow our melee, and not our ranged kiters. Keep it from being exploited by having them leash like normal if you get too far.

I like this idea.

Thanks for pointing this out, I’ll be sure to have someone look into it. Sorry you got hit by the bug

To my knowledge we’ll be keeping the NPCs who accompany you through the dungeon. We do however need to enhance their AI and modify their skills to make them more valuable.

Zenith.7301:

2 kitten times we get to scepter room, 2 kitten times he bugs and doesn’t trigger the script to proceed. This is absurd and an absolute waste of time for the people involved. No, we didn’t skip mobs in the way save for Kohler.

This needs to stop, or just change your design model to player initiated progression inside a dungeon. I’m tired of wasting time on bugged NPC’s.

Kholer being skipped has nothing to do with it, and neither should random mobs. This bug is fairly hard to track down, but we are aware of it. If you could, could you either post/message me a more detailed description of what was going on when he bugged out (and the moments leading up to it)? It would help us in perhaps identifying what is wrong.

But as other people have said, this doesn’t always happen. I’ve ran Hodgin’s path maybe 4-6 times and haven’t been able to reproduce the issue on the live game. I can understand the frustration though, and I’m sincerely sorry you’ve run into this bug.

We’re in the process of reworking our loot for dungeons. Expect it soon!

I don’t imagine we’re going to put tokens back in chests, and if we do, it won’t be at the volume they once were. What we saw when that was happening, is that people would just farm the first chest or two in a chain and then leave/re-run it, instead of playing through the whole dungeon.

Thanks for bringing this up. I’ll flail my arms at the appropriate people to see what kind of solutions can be found about this issue.

Mad King is certainly a fun fight, although built more for a story encounter than a true dungeon encounter. That of course could be tweaked by number balancing and a few skill adjustments.
The great and fun thing about the fight is the amount of immersion, and the fear mechanic with the scarecrows. The environment and the boss were built together, which really plays well into the fight. His teleporting between levels and inclusion of jump puzzle elements, his bouncing around the battlefield to keep things from getting too static, and his fear mechanic and the threat of it all work together really well.

He’s not hard enough for my tastes though, but he wasn’t meant to be. He’s a fun fight though, and all props to the team of folks who worked on him.

which event is the one in question?

We’re in the process of working on loot drops right now for dungeons.

Adding karma to dungeons is a start, and the loot changes is a continuation of that, which are both things we have brought up saying we are going to do. We’re working on it, and we’ll continue to be vocal about the work we’re doing in the future.

Thanks for the heads-up on this. We’ve identified the problem and are in the process of fixing it now.

It did not make it into this patch. We’re hard at work on it though.

Glad to hear you’re enjoying the change so far. We’ve got more in store, and we’ll be watching it carefully to determine what type of balance it needs.

Of course, things like the Zerg train and such also need attention, so we can balance out the K/pm that players can get to make it more unified throughout the game, and give players actual options in the content they wish to pursue for their desired objectives.

Instead of locking this thread down, I’m just going to un-sticky it. People can keep it alive if they so choose. Otherwise, please transition all conversation to this new super cool thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Patch-Discussion-10-23

Talk about things here!

DUNGEONS
Dungeons now award karma on completion. The first-time karma reward for completing the story of a dungeon is larger than subsequent story runs. The first time per day a player completes an explorable path for a dungeon, the karma reward equals (Player Level) * 23.5. For the rest of the day, subsequent runs of the same path will reward karma equal to (Player Level) * 9.5.

Ascalonian Catacombs

Fixed an area where players could get outside the map in the Flooded Temple.
Caudecus’s Manor
Gunpowder Morgan’s maximum range and damage have been updated.

Sorrow’s Embrace

Inquest Grenadiers have been reassigned to a new task; some new enemies await on the long road.
Kreutzerova will no longer prioritize a player at the dungeon entrance when first encountered.
Nokk’s Gravity Distortion now properly displays the time you are distorted.
Shukov’s golems now properly display during his event.
Shukov’s mark II golem has had its electric field updated to be a bit more dangerous now.
The lava in some areas is now behaving as lava should.

Twilight Arbor

The maximum range of Nightmare Vines has been increased.

@Sebber,

I’ve been very vocal about the changes to dungeon loot here in the dungeon thread and my hopes it would be in by this next patch. While I still hold out hope, I don’t think it will make it in since it needs more tuning.

@Dacromir

It’s friday friday friday friday

I routinely PUG explorable dungeon paths in the game, and often take a back seat to someone else who is the leader (I don’t rep my ArenaNet tags so I can remain hidden) to get a better sense to what the meta is, and so that I can play the game from the true perspective of a PUG. I don’t always complete the paths with bugs, but I’d say 70% of my PUG groups finish dungeons.

We have a lot of work to do on our bosses and reward systems. We’re actively working on them right now by playing through with our Live characters here at the office, and sifting through feedback.

private message me about the exact details to accomplish this, and hopefulyl we can get a fix in and going for it.

it’s tied to the daily achievement system, which applies to all characters. This was an issue when we had our tokens soulbound, but now that they are account bound we don’t feel we need to offer the bonus first-run tokens to every character on an account.

It’s not an exploit to skip Kholer. He’s a bonus boss that unlocks a central waypoint, drops loot, and also gives a chest.

People skip him because:
A) He’s hard if you don’t know what you are doing, and don’t communicate enough.
2) Our changes to our token rewards moved the tokens out of his unlocked chest, so people don’t feel they have to fight him to maximize gains
III) Our dropped loot is abysmal, so you’re not finding anything of value.

Solutions:
A) He’s supposed to be hard, it’s explorable mode. We should aspire all our bosses across all difficulties to be of similar difficulty.
2 and III) We are currently re-working and changing our loot for dungeons. I had previously hoped that it would be in for the next patch, but it requires a lot of tuning and testing, so it might take another patch.

To say the dungeons will be the SAME 6 months from now isn’t going to hold up either. We’re going to be doing lots of updates to dungeons, changing things that didn’t work out, and introducing new features as we find the time/tech to implement them. Our hope is that dungeons will stay nice and fresh for a long time

We’re very aware it is happening with bunches of structures (bunches being a super technical design term). The fix SHOULD fix a lot of situations.

we’re very aware of it (and as a ranger am eternally frustrated by it), and working hard on resolving the problem. I don’t have an ETA for you though.

I approve. I feel this suits him very well.

Gonna lock down this thread since there’s already one about it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/One-Token-to-rule-them-all/first

Please take the discussion there so we can keep all this centralized.

I’m gonna lock down this thread and direct you all over here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/One-Token-to-rule-them-all/first

Since it’s pretty much the same discussion.

Hey Memph,

To my knowledge it has not happened yet. I imagine it will happen on the next patch, or possibly the patch after that. To evoke Colin Johanson, we’ll do it when it’s ready!

I don’t know exactly how it will work, so I can’t say whether or not for certain your situation will be covered. I’ll flail my arms at the people responsible for implementing it to make sure it’s on their radar though.

Congrats!

I’ve got a few left before I nab the title as well, mainly due to dragon explore paths… but I imagine I’ll get those when I get some vacation time! (Never gonna happen!)

I have to turn my screen shake of when I play guardian and am using the mace. I end up getting woozy after about half an hour lol