Guild Wars 2

Howl from Badazar’s Champion (level 7), in Plains of Ashford.

Siegemaster Lormar (from Fort Ranik) is a champion in the ruins near the wall, has a nice set of pre-events, is on a longish cooldown, and could easily be made a legendary boss and scale up to handle more people.

Any class can use a pet with a ranger secondary. Since you have a Prophecies character, just do the Crystal Desert quests to get free access to change your secondary professions.

As for people, Embark Beach, Lion’s Arch, and Eye of the North generally have people. In addition, whatever zones or outposts near the daily Zaishen mission, bounty, or vanquishes are also busy. Kamadan is generally where trades happen, but you can’t go there if you don’t have Nightfall.

As long as I get Wild Blow.

Still, the best boss fight in GW1.

Options:
1 Rare Minipet: The Lunar New Year festival recently ended, so you may be able to find a cheap Celestial mini for no more than 10 plat. It requires shopping around though.

1 Pet statue: The best option is the Black Moa, but that requires Factions and you need to get a bit past halfway through the storyline, and choose the Kurzick side. That would get you two points (statue for the rare pet and a statue for any pet). If you don’t have Factions, then leveling any pet to 20 will allow you to put it in.

1 Hero statue: MOX, if you have all three campaigns, can be added directly to the hall without having to earn hero armor. Otherwise, if you have Nightfall but not Factions, do the Dajkah Inlet challenge mission enough to earn 1 Stolen Sunspear Armor (it appears directly in your inventory with no notification), put it on Koss, and put him into the hall. Dajkah Inlet is reached fairly quickly in Nightfall.

Harder options would be completing the other campaigns, Eye of the North reputation titles (you need to do hard mode past rank 6), Protector titles, completing “elite” dungeons (Sorrow’s Furnace is the easiest), Eye of the North hero armor, or the grindier titles like cartographer or vanquisher.

Getting armor is hard, especially with your limited funds (Prophecies elite armor is 60 plat (helm not needed for the hall) plus materials). Eye of the North armor is cheaper, but it requires at least rank 5 in the associated reputation title in order to purchase (it’s 40 plat plus materials).

Weapons are also hard, so while it’s fairly easy to get your first Oppressor Weapon by doing the War in Kryta quest/minimission chain the first time, it’s a good bit more challenging than Eye of the North which the OP is having trouble finishing. Getting a Tormented weapon is easiest with the Wayfarer’s Reverie event, which requires all the campaigns, and you need to be near completion for all of them (and isn’t until August). Destroyer weapons require fairly expensive materials to craft, and require completion of Eye of the North to access the merchant (and with just 12 plat, the OP couldn’t buy one in Kamadan).

There is a cooldown for the storyline linked events. I’m not completely positive on how long, but somewhere around 20-30 minutes seems like what I’ve experienced.

Note that in the normal PUG Tequatl fights, the two northernmost turrets (usually called 5 and 6) are unable to reach the zerg to cleanse or buff them. Turret 4 can have trouble reaching if a significant portion of the zerg is ranging rather than melee’ing. Also, turret operators can stand in front of the turret to have a tiny bit more range.

Turret operators get full credit during the initial 25% and during the burn phases. During defense phases, you’ll go to a battery or the laser and do one of those events. Staying on your turret will probably not give you defense credit (even if you fire on fingers or mobs at the megalaser), but that’s not needed since the turrets are invulnerable during that phase.

If you do the important job of clearing any remaining fingers on the beach during the defense phase, you’ll get bronze credit for the Megalaser defense. It still counts as credit and barring bugs, will give you that defenses chest; however it’s kind of insulting that you only get bronze.

This chain, unfortunately, has always had a few sections where it gets stuck. Regularly. Aside from the section tshbl mentioned, it also often gets stuck in the first part of the chain Protect Sentinel Whiptail… and sometimes in Help the Sentinels clear… .

Your best bet to do it is when large guilds do their guild missions (Save Our Supplies challenge) and hope you get into a newly created clean map. The newly created map will allow you to start the chain and have another attempt at getting it unstuck. In addition, you might be able to get a newly created map to make an attempt the next time Iron Marches Events daily pops up, which will be the dailies of 3/18.

Even if you can’t use stealth or can’t find an open temple, you can get a couple friends together (preferably with high DPS) and slowly clear a path. Focus fire the Veteran Acolytes first, as they spawn more mobs.

As above, but with one exception. Chaos Crystals in Iron Marches and Sharkmaw in Lion’s Arch use the same chest ID, so you can only open the chest in ONE of those puzzles per character per day.

Starting off with something a bit more challenging to play can be frustrating and have a steep learning curve; but in the end it makes you a better player. You learn really quickly what to watch out for, what must be dodged, and what sorts of defensive skills you have available.

Shiren.9532:

I think this is more of an easter egg. If it ever does get proper lore (and I might be wrong, maybe it’s a mirror from the ascension room) I doubt it will be more than “similar magic” and won’t be expanded upon and used again. Just a neat way to throw in a shout-out to GW1 players.

Especially considering the action parts of the rest of that mission are homages to Dunes of Despair, Thirsty River, and Elona Reach; the pre-quests to the Doppleganger.

The benefit to the Hall of Monuments is that it’s individually instanced, so loading screens are very quick unlike going to WvW or Heart of the Mists. There also aren’t any double-loadscreen issues.

And yes, confirming that you can use the HoM portal stone and look around (and even get the PoI inside) without having GW1 (had no trouble with it before I got GW1 this past summer). You just can’t do anything else with it but use it as a quick port, or a cheaper shortcut to CoF.

I never realized how much templates would help until I started GW1 this past August. Even if it were just traits, that would be a massive help when switching things around for WvW roaming vs. “zerging”, different dungeons, and of course different game modes in sPvP.

GuzziHero.5104:

A question for those who use their middle name instead of forename:

When did you decide/was it decided to use your middle name? Is there a reason why?

I changed my complete name for other reasons a few years ago. I like both of my names. Due to past experience, I felt it better to have more separation between my professional and personal loves. I use my first name professionally, and my middle name personally.

Claudius.5381:

- loved to play “Elite” on my old Amstrad CPC

There’s a new version of Elite that just came out in December, one of my guildmates has been playing it and loving it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Angel McCoy.1832:

KOPPER.1458:

I’ve been on the Magic the Gathering Pro Tour, it was a really long time ago now

Did you go to Kuala Lumpur on the tour? If so, I was there too. I was working at WotC at the time.

You both have my partial envy as a Pre-Fallen Empires player Though I know I am nowhere near good enough to make the Pro Tour.

Played M:tG from Ice Age to Zendikar. The worst mistake I ever made was becoming a judge. After that, I never was able to regain my love for the game, and eventually sold my collection for about $3200US. Dealing with the tournament atmosphere is also why I avoid almost all forms of PvP now.

There was some recent staff activity acknowledging it’s an issue. Hopefully something will come of it for the ~10% of men affected.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Color-Blind-Mode-merged/first

• I am Sarah, 36 years old. I use my middle name.
• I live in the suburbs of Philly, in one of the many college towns in that area.
• I work as a cataloging and systems technician in a university library.
• I grew up on a farm near Lancaster PA, and we specialized in raising exotic quail, pheasants, and pigeons; along with selling vegetables.
• Due to health issues, I can’t have any pets, though I’m definitely a cat person.
• My grandparents were guides and ran camps in northern Maine, so I spent many summers working up there. Waking up to a moose sitting in the pond in your front yard was interesting.
• I went to college for Computer Science, and actually use my degree a bit in my job (Database Design, Technical Writing, Data Structures, and Statistics were my most valuable classes)
• I once did a lot of open source development, mostly for IRC related projects; and wrote FreeBSD documentation; but have not done anything for a long time.
• My first video game was Millipede on the Atari, and the games that have made me a gamer include Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Tetris, Final Fantasy 3US/6J, Secret of Mana, Valkyrie Profile, Portal, and Transistor.
• My first “online” games were the BBS door L.O.R.D and Tradewars 2002. Then, a few 2D hobby games, a Korean grinder, D&D Online, then GW2.
• I played GW2 since beta 2, and GW1 since this past August. I love them both.
• I mainly read Sci/Fi and Fantasy. Authors I read recently include Ursula K. Le Guin, John Scalzi, Jim Butcher, Neal Stephenson, and Andre Norton.
• Due to several autoimmune conditions, I now have to walk with a cane.
• I love to cook, and was taught how to cook a number of Indian dishes from a coworker from New Delhi. I also make a pretty good Cajun gumbo.
• I listen to a wide variety of music, but gravitate mostly toward traditional folk genres. I prefer acoustic over electric sounds. I even like bagpipes (all major Scot/Irish types).

Evennnia, since we never learned her fate after War in Kryta.
Razah, as mentioned above. Could be a great tie-in to Revenant, due to both of their connections to the Mists.
Lazarus, and the fate of any remaining mursaat we did not kill off in War in Kryta.
Eventually the fate of the stone dwarves.
Dunkoro, since he was my favourite hero.

I played GW2 since beta, but GW1 only since last August (now at 42/50 HoM and 19/30 titles). I had a guildmate who was going back to work on her HoM/GWAMM as well, so it was much more enjoyable to have company. I love both games, even if they are fairly different.

The above comparison to Magic: the Gathering is very true. There are a massive number of skills, many of which are “draft fodder”, but you have a lot of really powerful non-elites, elites, and PvE-only skills to build your skill bar (deck) around. You had to change skills depending on what you were doing, and preparation was a bit more important in GW1 than GW2. GW2 lets you adapt on the fly, letting you change traits and skills before a fight in mid-dungeon.

Traits in GW1 were both simpler and more complex. Many trait lines had no inherent effect, only improving the effectiveness of skills of that type (duration, damage, etc). Balancing traits with the skills you are using is one of the fundamental aspects of a GW1 build. Traits did not affect stats (though weapon mastery traits did affect how much damage your autoattacks do).

GW2 traits do a lot more to vary how a profession is played. Traits don’t affect skill damage quite to as much of an extent as GW1 traits, but they can radically change how a skill is used or adding affects to.

The GW1 multiclass system added a massive amount of build variety, but also made it a balancing nightmare.

Team play is important in both games, but team play only really gets used by the higher end WvW, PvP, and dungeon groups in GW2. GW1 required it early, and often.

The graphics of GW1 are dated, and it’s very noticeable in Prophecies and parts of Factions. By Eye of the North, maps were incredibly detailed and really looked nice.

GW2 is much more action/rpg like in gameplay, while GW1 is a lot more cerebral. Positioning is important in both.

Mob AI was much stronger in GW1 than GW2 (aside from Beta 2 and before). Many mobs actively move out of and avoid AoE’s, making snares, “chills”, knockdowns, and cripples much more important. Hero AI was also pretty good, as long as you avoided certain skills that confused them. Micromanaging wasn’t always necessary, but could be extremely effective. GW2 allied NPC’s tend to not be very intelligent, and really need to learn how to run out of AoE’s.

As for the lack of jumping and the terrain blocking, it was a huge issue in Prophecies. The above comparison to a maze I feel is very true. The same is true in a lot of Factions, especially Kaineng city. The terrain issues eased up a bit in Nightfall and Eye of the North.

I have 7 80’s (no necro), and while I play most of them at least a bit every month, I definitely play my guardian the most. Guardian is over 60% of my total play time going by /age. The other 80’s are generally only used for special purposes (ele AC, thief CM and TA f, engi WvW roaming, war WvW grouping).

My guard is the only one I bought all the convenience items for, has everything all ascended, and is the one I know the different playstyles best.

In general, if it’s something that needs a special recipe sheet in order to craft, it cannot be sold.

Original Fire Ele, the memories….Same with the original Rhendak.

I like what was done with Teq. It was way hard at first, but very very doable with a well organized group. Once the tactics were down and known to the general public, just like raids and other such group content in other games, it became much easier to win. Teq also has rather good rewards, even if you don’t get one of the rare items (unlike TT Wurm).

I also enjoyed the smaller group type world bosses we had before megaservers when my home server was mostly deserted. You would get 5-15 people at best, and you got to see and experience the different mechanics of the bosses , without the crazy scaling that happens now (ie Caledon Wurm dying too fast, while Mark II takes 10 minutes to whittle down its health).

As said, Guardian is about preventing damage, not absorbing it and healing through it.

Guardian has a large number of party wide defensive abilities to prevent damage to your whole group. This includes the aforementioned blinds, blocks and the Aegis boon, the Protection boon, and projectile reflection and absorption.

All of those abilities work the same regardless of what gearset you use, so you might as well go all damage (in most of PvE), or just enough survivability to live through the expected damage (PvP and WvW, different styles of WvW would need different amount of survivability).

Maxing Sunspear came naturally from vanquishing Kourna and Istan (plus bounties in the other areas). Vanquishing gave me far more Sunspear points than I needed to max the title.

Vanquishing the Desolation and Vabbi (plus the few bounties in Kourna) got me most of the way to maxing Lightbringer, the rest came from doing Remains of Sahlahja (and getting a few daily bests) for hero armor and by doing random Realm of Torment quests in hard mode.

TLDR, no need to do the farms until you complete the vanquisher.

I spent a good portion of yesterday working on Elonian Skill Hunter without issue.

What I have seen happen is that sometimes, any instance on a specific IP (it shows up in the upper left when you’re zoning in, or by the /ip command once you’re in) is incredibly laggy, while everything on another IP is fine. That usually clears in a few hours.

Otherwise, take that IP and run a traceroute on it from your computer to see whether it’s you, the GW servers, or something in between that’s causing the latency.

In the wardrobe, there are a number of skins that are hidden unless owned. Mini Rytlock most likely works the same way.

That said, I put mine into my mini panel and am able to see and use him on all characters without issue.

I’m not really a fan of Cantha in general; but Shiro was probably the best boss fight in GW1. A well made homage as a channel legend would be amazing.

GW1 pets from the Maguuma Jungle and nearby areas:
a single Moa (looks red)
Warthog
Albino Rat (in dungeons)
Iguana
White Crab (most are in the Far Shiverpeaks, but one was in Arbor Bay, SE of the expansion area but close enough)

I personally would want a raptor, Shrieksy is a precedent.

As has been said since near the beginning of the game, the defend should give the daily “bouncy” chest and chest on the ground the same as the capture.

Wolfheart.1879:

I’m very much in the opposite camp.

I’d love to be able to make some truly ancient crone of a necromancer.

Or a male human warrior who actually looks like he’s been in a few wars and is all grizzly and time-weathered to show for it.

I’d love to be able to make a character as a homage to Dunkoro

It was the White Mantle in Beyond that found out how to tame them.

Mobs in GW1 did treat caster and martial weapons differently, such as not casting extreme caster hate like Panic on spear/shield casters. That’s the fundamental part of the “afk Glint farm build” and such. And, Totem axes before Nightfall.

I don’t recall any other differences, like sword vs. dagger.

One glaring issue is that during the same mega-event (Tequatl), you have both types of AoE circles used. The solid/patterned ones are quite easy to see, even in the water; but the light red circles are not, even on land.

Making the GW2 client honor your cursor settings on your computer (ie the high contrast or inverted options) would also really help. I’m not colourblind and still prefer the inverted cursors for contrast both on my home PC and my workstations on the job.

Given that upwards of 8% of males (and 0.5-1% of females) have some degree of colour blindness, I don’t understand why this isn’t a priority to fix.

The new style AoE circles do help, because even though the colours might appear close, the contrast is different enough to see immediately. The old style circles are not.

When my guild used Mumble, the option worked perfectly. When we switched to Teamspeak, it either does nothing or is so minor of a change it’s unnoticeable. I don’t know how it interacts with Ventrillo or Raidcall, as I have not used them recently.

The lack of any sort of quarterstaff type attack motion for any class is a glaring omission. I would have preferred melee staff to be used for ranger (to coincide with the nature/wilderness aspect of the class), but warrior works too. Ranger!druid staff is probably more of a caster type.

That’s definitely a nice one. The Rose Focus , one of the fans, eg Forgotten Fan , Totem Axe , Shiro’s Blades , and Reefclaw’s Refuge should also return.

My thief, Reyna

Sorry for the toaster graphics quality.

The map cap is necessary for balance and server performance.

Because of the existence of a cap to the amount of siege present on a map, there must be a way for the siege to be cleared. Before decay, a troll, spy, or overzealous commander could end up locking down a server’s ability to build siege on an entire map for the rest of the matchup. If the siege lock was due to a spy, the opposing server(s) would never destroy any enemy siege it found to maintain the lock.

As annoying as it is to keep refreshing desirable siege, it’s better than the alternative of not being able to build any siege until the next reset.

I also swap traits, weapons, and skills regularly. I just wish we had templates to store my most common trait setups to save time during a run.

I typically run the 4/5/0/0/5 setup, but will adjust things when I don’t need as much condition removal or reflects to get more damage (Unscathed instead of Master of Consecrations, or going 6/6/2/0/0 or 6/6/0/0/2UC). When I have the time to switch traits fully, will go into the hammer build for certain fights in Fractals (Cliffside hordes, Mossman). Some fights I pick up 1 in the second to last line for vigor on crit (Lupi, Grawl Shaman).

If you do nothing else, at least change skills depending on the fight.

I had my one and only drop at just over 2,600 hours from a level 7 champion in Plains of Ashford. I’m at just over 5,000 hours now.

I wonder if they’ll include a new form of Chomp, eat touched smaller creature (ally or enemy minion/spirit, making it disappear) and regain health.

While nearly everything in PvE can be solo’ed with heroes and/or henchmen, some missions are much easier with a second person. It’s also more fun to make the journey with a friend.

30 HoM points for all the GW2 skins, minis, and ranger pets is definitely manageable alone. It’s hard to give an exact time estimate, but 300-500 hours starting from scratch should get you 30. Just make sure to milk festivals for coin.

A PvP title is needed for full 50/50, but one of the PvP titles is for using 200 Zaishen Keys. Z-Keys can be earned by doing simulated PvP (turn in Balthazar faction, per-day limit); doing Zaishen Vanquish, Bounty, and Mission daily quests (turn in your copper coins for silver coins, then gold coins, then keys); or doing one of the actual PvP matches like Jade Quarry. They can also be bought from other players.

Excuse me while I curl up in fear of Shockwave spamming ceteradons and armor ignoring lifesteal spamming angorodons.

Racial skills were intended to be weaker in general than profession skills, in order to avoid giving too much of an advantage to a particular race. Some do have some niche use.

The norn bear and snow leopard transformations can give you some great mobility in PvE and WvW. They USED to be used as a “poor man’s Fiery Greatsword”, but that has been changed. They are still of niche use in the Thaumanova radioactive room. Snow leopard also can give you stealth on a profession that normally can’t get it solo (though with harpy feathers, that’s not as needed in PvE).

Tome of Courage is definitely weak, it’s best used by using the 4 skill to grant fury and quickness, then dropping back to your real weapons.

$50US from NCSoft’s store or Steam.

By shopping around, you can piecemeal it cheaper, but make sure wherever you buy it from is reputable and selling new copies.

There was a physical only complete collection (all three games plus the expansion) that will run you around $30, but it is getting hard to find.

Elona for sure.

Diverse cultures as mentioned above. Beautiful and terrifying areas. Nice challenges. Good ties to the Prophecies Crystal Desert storyline.

I just don’t like Cantha. Shing Jea island is OK, and the Jade Sea and parts of Echovald looked nice. The city was ugly, difficult to navigate, annoying to fight through, and I’d rather dismantle the empire than help those incompetent bureaucrats or deal with gang “politics”. The Kuzicks and Luxons are a bunch of squabbling babies. At least the core Shiro storyline was good.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Guild Wars 1 has a free trial available. Play it and see if you like it or not. It’s a very different game so there’s no use playing it for the lore if you’re not going to have fun doing so.

Unfortunately, when they changed GW1’s website a month or so ago, they removed the free trial registration links.

That said, if you can get it cheaply, it’s definitely worth playing the campaigns, Eye of the North, and at least War in Kryta. The AP and Hall of Monument skins are a good bonus. The cheapest way to purchase is to find somewhere in your area that still sells the physical only Guild Wars: Complete Collection. In the absence of that, you may have to shop around to purchase the different components.

Like said, it’s a VERY different game. If you’re uncomfortable with dated graphics and an older, less mobile combat system (positioning and movement is important, but you can’t move while casting), it may be tough for you to get into. Otherwise go for it, the combat is strategic, there is a LOT of content, and “end game” content can be extremely challenging.

While nearly all the game can be played solo, using AI controlled party members (heroes and henchmen), I strongly recommend playing together with a friend. Several missions really benefit from splitting up, and two people with their own mini-party of AI really helps get those missions done without much pain. Having someone to talk to and explore the game with you really adds to the experience.

It’ll probably take 40-70 hours of play to get through the three campaigns and the Eye of the North story. It’ll probably take 300-500 hours of play to get 30 Hall of Monument points without help (less if you have friends/guildmates who can give you stuff).

If you’re in a guild/friend group that can speedclear 10+ dungeon paths in a few hours, that’s the fastest. Otherwise Silverwastes.

A combination of them also works (do the paths that you know you can do fast, then SW chestfarm the rest of the time).

It’s odd that they would include a spirit weapon collection but not an “of the mists” collection.

Another missing one is a collection for dredge weapons to go along with the other “enemy-race” weapons (Grawl, Hylek, Ogre, Krait, and now Bandit)