Guild Wars 2

Since they had the name of the Druid waaaaaaaay back in January with the announcement, that sounds to me like they were very confident in what the Ranger’s Elite Specialization would be and that it was set in stone. Whereas they had not yet decided on the other profession’s Elite Specializations.

So it can go both ways.

YOUNGaz.5690:

As far as #1, you can try binding a key to Show/Stow weapon under Controls to cancel actions.

This certainly for #1, I have a key bind for weapon stow and it works like a charm for cancelling skills.

As for #2, I agree that in the Open World there should be less forced cutscenes (like the lack of cutscene at the start of Tequatl, which makes the player look around the find what the heck just started). But for dungeons, I think forced cutscenes should remain.

Question #3 is subjective, and I don’t think there will be any changes there as many, including myself, like the new Trading Post UI.

You are allowed to play dungeons whenever you reach the level the dungeon story mode opens at (Level 30 for Ascalonian Catacombs for an example).

It is just that a lot of players prefer having level 80 players so they can complete the dungeon faster. By no means does it mean you have to be level 80 to experience it.

There are often LFG’s that say “Anyone welcome” or “First timers” etc, or you could even make your own LFG for whichever dungeon you wish to play through and write its description as “Story mode (or P1, P2, P3 if you are doing a path) First time, anyone welcome!”. That way you will find other players in your position to play with.

Edit: Terrible wording.

Dantert.1803:

Ok as in the title, 2 questions:
1- Is it possible to know how many main missions and how many hours of main missions content we will have in HOT?
That would be amazing to know, so that people like me that like Pve would understand if the expansion is worth it.

2- I’m in a small guild with just a few friends always playing the game (I think I’m not the only one in this situation). Most of the time we manage to have 5 or 6 people connected. I was really disappointed when I heard about the 10 people team for the raids, I was hoping for more content for small groups, something that would make it easier to play some exciting content with groups from 5 to 10.
And be honest, nobody would like to take random people in for a raid if you’re a small group with ts and so on…it makes things too complicated…
So….would it be possible to have the scaling system? Or can we expect something different for small groups in the expansion?

1) We won’t know unless ANet themselves answer, or the entirety of the expansion is made available to test in a BWE, which is unlikely. So unfortunately, the answer to that will likely not come until the expansion is released.

2) I doubt scaling under 10 people will ever be introduced, but scaling over 10 people is a possibility (from my speculation). Dungeons are always intended to be 5-man content, and so I presume Raids will always be intended to be 10-man content, and I highly doubt they would make them available in 5-man also.

Centurion.7296:

Finer Tuning Restrictions: It would be nice to have an feature that stops players in guilds to just take everything out of the guild bank at once and then leave the guild. Some guilds that this has happened to would understand. Maybe the game’s GMs can punish these players by 1. Transferring items back if they are still with the player (seen as stolen goods) otherwise; strip him down, starting with his golds and 2. Make him suffer, everyday +1g is taken from his wallet and transferred to the “victim” guild’s bank.

That feature is already in place; by giving all new players a customised rank which does not allow them to withdraw from the Guild Banks and Vaults. Further, I recommend to only give the commanders or organizers of the Guild the access to withdraw from Banks and Vaults.

Centurion.7296:

Guild Punishments: Say if a player is in a bad mood and swearing and stuff; then you wont be able to block him in the guild chat, but what if the officers or guild masters could block him from the guild chat?

I don’t think “Guild Punishments” would be a great implementation, as Guilds are intended to be sociable and fun for organizing events, groups, chat and whatnot. To me, adding a punishment system would make Guilds feel more like a prison rather than an extra form of socialization.

If it gets really bad, you could always kick him with the reason, and state that he can re-join at any time when he gets over it – that is what some Guilds do when one of their members starts flaming.

They are still there – I just checked.

Just before Tequatl goes invulnerable at 75% health to go into phase 2, whirlpools will suddenly appear as swirling circles (as opposed to a fixed circle) randomly across the area. I have attached an image from Dulfy’s guide on what the whirlpools look like, though keep in mind they are now also fully colored in orange, but have the same animation.

Stand in one of those circles as fast as you can, and you will get pulled under. Then just swim down whilst holding your Ctrl button to see the name text of the Sunken Treasure and interact with it. You will likely die on your way back up, but you can just waypoint.

pdavis.8031:

Not entirely true.

Skill 2 has a chance to break the shovel upon use. It’s a low chance to be sure, but I’ve broken more than a few shovels with that skill. I just manually find them now, and don’t use skill 2 any more anyway.

Huh, that is news to me – thanks for letting me know.

You cheeky you, I had a shot glass ready to take a swig of some good cider for the forum drinking game.

And I definitely agree; every penny was worth the price for the thousands of hours of entertainment I have had from this game.

Yes.

When adjusting the key binds in the Options, it adjusts them for your entire account, so every character will use the newly adjusted key binds.

I’m not sure if there is a way to make it specific to one character.

Elementalists are still incredibly fun to play, especially with the condition changes in the last year – try it for yourself to see if you like the change and try to figure out some new builds, there’s a lot of them.

And welcome back!

If it’s not from the makeover kit, then it is possibly one of the few that people managed to change to when the HoT hair-styles were accidentally added to makeover kits for a brief time.

See this thread for a similar discussion.

Still manages to look quite beautiful running on my toaster. Always a pleasure to look back through past screenshots.

Also check that on your map you don’t have “Commerce” unticked at the bottom left corner of the world map by clicking on the ‘Eye icon’.

NeoSoul.4198:

Ah ok, I didn’t even know that it was in the personal quests. It’s locked though and every parts has to be bought for 200 gems or am I missing something? I got the chest box, gloves box in the Silverwastes and once got the gloves box out of a PvP track (not sure how, probably low random chances in a Maguuma pvp track). So the pants are the only ones where I need to buy a chapter to unlock? If it’s all I care for, I could buy only chapter 7 alone? I can see all the items to buy except for the pants.

Ah, I presume you weren’t active from August 2014 to January 2015 – players that logged on whilst a Season 2 episode was freshly released during that period were given access to that episode for free forever.

In that instance, if you want a guaranteed leggings box then you might want to consider purchasing Episode 7 with gems (which you can transfer from in-game gold if you have about 50 gold – though, I would wait until the Anniversary sales are over as they have spiked the conversion significantly) and then you can play through it as often as you like and get a leggings box for each of you level 80 characters.

Or if you don’t want to buy anything, you can do the other method by purchasing from the vendor using Bandit crests, although that can take quite a bit of playing around in the Silverwastes to reach 1,000 crests.

Tag as many events as you can to get the maximum amount of crests, and try to stay on the same map after defeating the purple flower, as you will get a bonus to Bandit Crest acquisition.

It acts as a nudge for free accounts to purchase the full edition – effectively a restricted demo account which won’t expire. Giving them access to gold:gem conversion would perhaps draw the line too far between the new player purchasing the game and remaining on a free account.

Surely giving them free access to the core game with restrictions was enough to help them decide whether or not they wish to purchase the game?

NeoSoul.4198:

As for the Seeds of Truth, that’s what I don’t quite understand how to do. Am I supposed to do parts 1-6 first? I’m just pretty lost with that.

I don’t believe you need to play through all of the previous episodes in order to play Episode 7 (I can’t test this myself as I completed them all as they arrived), so give it a shot in your story journal and see if you can activate Seeds of Truth.

If you are able, a green icon should direct you on the map on where to go, and after a few instances and story cutscenes (roughly taking 1-3 hours depending on your play style) the episode should be completed.

Of course, if you are into the story and haven’t already played through Season 2, I recommend you start from episode 1 if you like stories and don’t want spoilers.

You can acquire the leggings in a number of different ways:

A) Complete “Seeds of Truth”, the 7th episode of Season 2 and you are given one box of Carapace leggings (you can repeat this on numerous characters I believe). The episode can be completed solo, although it will be quicker with a group.

B) You can purchase a carapace leggings box from Camp Resolve in the North-Eastern part of it (near the entrance portal to Brisban Wildlands) there is a vendor that will trade 1,000 Bandit Crests and 1 gold to give you a carapace box in return.

There might be other ways, but that was all I could find for now, but I am quite confident the purple flower only gives Carapace Coat boxes, so don’t worry about that if you are only after leggings.

It is a gold sink. And one of the main ones at that which helps keep the economy balanced.

Make sure he created his account from this page, which is the free sign up page. At the bottom right of that page there is also the option to simply “Download the client” as well.

Cathbadb.6079:

(…Snip…)

I just checked and it states the same thing when I hover over the Revenant icon (and I have Heart of Thorns as well), so I figure it is just poor wording on Anet’s part that should be fixed (though I doubt they will adjust it).

With that said, the next beta weekend event is starting on September 4th, so you should be able to create your Revenant placeholder quite soon.

Since Guilds can have players from any server, that would make me think the Guild banks and vaults are all based universally on every server (at least for EU and NA servers – if you are transferring somehow to the Chinese servers, which I don’t think is possible, you will most likely lose it).

So the Guild bank and Vault should be safe, but hopefully someone else will also give their thoughts – don’t go solely on my comment just in case I am incorrect.

Good catch.

I think it is there to give players an idea of where to go and what to complete (so that they are knowing what to test), but as to whether it is for BWE2 or perhaps an Open Beta down the line, I’m not sure.

One would think that we could actually earn these permanently, as why else would they have actually given them an AP value if they to be removed at the end of the beta?

Just my thoughts.

Once it is unlocked, you have that ability applied passively (always active) on all of your account characters. You don’t have to change back once you have it unlocked.

1) The veteran slot is added on a weekly basis (every Friday) and some players have reported it took up to 10 days for their veteran slot to appear.

So if it doesn’t appear after 10 days, I would submit a ticket on the matter.

2) I don’t think you will be able to customize your Revenant character until the release of Heart of Thorns – I think one reason is to stop players from choosing a character name and locking it off from others to choose (I am sure there are may other reason, but my mind is blacking out right now).

In some way, I think you could create a placeholder by creating the Revenant using one of your beta slots, and then simply re-creating the Revenant on the release of Heart of Thorns. That way you have an idea of what you want to create, though of course the beta slots will be removed upon release.

If you don’t receive your gems after 72 hours, I would submit a support ticket. Otherwise, see the other posts above, the reason it takes 72 hours is in the link they gave.

Well, with Heart of Thorns you will be able to see the chat of all of your Guilds you have joined at once (and I believe be able to filter which ones you want to see – correct me if I am wrong). So in a way, that can become an Alliance chat.

Edit: Here is the blog quote on that:

Blog

As of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, this will no longer be a problem; we’ll be introducing cross-guild chat. From your main guild panel, you’ll be able to assign which guilds you can chat to with new channels, /g1 through /g5. You can then decide which channels will be visible in your chat tabs. The existing guild chat channel, /g, will continue to chat to your currently represented guild. – Source

ham.8209:

agreed on that fully thus so in the mean time with not being able to get the game from amazon its self in the USA. needless to say iam stuck with getting it from here on the gem store . and in the mean time wait for it to go on sale some time and get a second account . or just buy more toon slot,s from the gem store.

You can’t purchase the expansion in the gem store, only the Deluxe upgrade to the standard edition of the expansion.

Or did you mean the GW2 website store?

ham.8209:

i see but the Amazon Us with the digital serial code i tend to think Anet says that is not legal for some stupid reason .

Where did you read that?

From the retailer list page for the United States, if you click on the “Digital Download” tab next to “Retailer Locations”, AmazonUS is listed as an official distributor of Heart of Thorns for ArenaNet.

ham.8209:

it is a shame that in the USA Anet one is using game stop which is not that great by any means . if they went with another one like amazon it would give a more better and easy way to get this game. since from what i get there will be no disc,s at all coming with this game at all . so we in the USA are stuck with our choice of game stop or the gem store. not sure how that works out for thos wanting a second account. maybe after the game comes out Anet will let amazon sell it too

Both AmazonUS and AmazonUK sell Heart of Thorns for pre-purchase, only that the former is a digital serial code and the latter is a box with the code on a pamphlet.

bladezero.9470:

I’m sorry, I’m just not interested in how “easy” it is. I don’t want to do it at all. From what I can see in guides there are even daily timers on crafting the ascended mats (which is disgusting).

Alternatively, you can purchase the product of the time-gated materials if you aren’t interested in crafting them for yourself (Bolt of Damask etc).

Crafting in this game is a heck of a lot better than most other MMO’s out there (especially on the time sink part, other MMO’s have you afk for minutes or even hours to craft a lot of stuff at one time).

As for Ascended acquisition, we don’t know yet if ascended items will drop from Raids (we know Legendary will, so perhaps some ascended drop boxes will as well?).

Otherwise, Ascended items earned by drops seems to be staying almost exactly the same with Heart of Thorns, although I reckon you will be able to find more ascended things from the updated fractals with Heart of Thorns.

It would be a great feature to have, but keep in mind that a large amount of human and sylvari story dialog revolves around what happens in that tutorial area. The “Hero of Shaemor” as the human example would not really be earned if you skipped saving Shaemor.

Of course, that is me trying to point out tiny issues to every suggestion as usual, and a skip option for veteran players would come in handy a lot.

I don’t think a pop up tick box saying “I am new” or “I am a veteran” is the best way to do it, but perhaps a toggle-able option in character creation should appear once you have a character to level 80?

Many Pesky Monk.3140:

- Sad that they have abandoned dungeons.

- They haven’t received any updates since the last time I played..which was like 8 months ago.

- They haven’t added any new DE’s that are permanent or worth a kitten . And problems that have existed since release on some DE’s (Shatterer) still exist.

I wasn’t being intentionally vague, I was just certain that people already knew about the issues surrounding PvE, didn’t think I had to elaborate much =P

1) Raids and Fractals are where they are focusing their “dungeon” content development for now.

2) Heart of Thorns is introducing a huge update to fractals, which you can read about here at your leisure.

3) 2 new maps were added in the last year which introduced several new Dynamic Events and map-meta events. Not quite sure what the issue with the Shatterer is (apart from the stand and spam 1 that it has always been )

Could you be a little more specific on these “issues”?

On one note, fractals are receiving a huge update with Heart of Thorns.

Brother Dulfite.5793:

Ugh, Best buy isn’t on that list. So basically I either save money by buying from Best Buy and lose out on pre purchase rewards or lose more money by buying from gamestop?

Unfortunately, that will be the most likely outcome. You can of course regularly check Gamestop to see if they put any flash discounts on it. I know AmazonUK had one distributor that sold Heart of Thorns at a great discount and was legitimate.

There is a list of official retailers from which you can pre-purchase Heart of Thorns.

You can find the list here. Just make sure to select whichever country you are in for that link. Buying from any retailers that aren’t on Anet’s official list can be risky, but will sometimes be legitimate.

moiraine.2753:

You know a lot of people don’t read what is written right?They just click and join…

And the same can be said to filters that already exist in the LFG tool; people will read what language flag the LFG party is in just as much as the LFG description itself.

symke.3105:

What was your idea and reasoning behind such pay gating otherwise free content?

The reasoning was to keep players interested in the game and to continue logging in.

Those that stuck with the game during Season 2’s release time frame were rewarded with having free access to that content forever. Those that were less interested in the game and did not log in missed out and have to pay a small fee (either with in-game currency or real world cash) to unlock it, or even just group with someone that has it unlocked.

Seems reasonable to me, but that is just my opinion.

The thing to consider though, is why would Anet hinder their income by introducing a permanent version of an item that is also found as a consumable on the gem store? If a permanent version were introduced, no one would ever buy the consumable version again, rendering any income from that completely moot.

That would be like adding an infinite transmutation charge to the gem store, or retrospectively like adding consumable basic salvage kits to the gem store (when there is an infinite copper-fed salvage kit readily available).

However, I agree that this item should be added, but just in a different way – perhaps comparable to the permanent Hair-Stylist (and the others) that are very rare drops from Black Lion Chests. In that case, Anet would be more likely to receive a higher income from chest key purchases, and players would be pleased that an infinite version of the item was now available in-game (albeit rare).

You can already add those filters by typing them into your LFG message that you are “looking for X class” or “5k+ AP only” or “lvl 80 only” etc.

Seems a little redundant to add filters when you can effectively already use them in some way.

As BWE1 didn’t have a unique conclusion event (as far as I remember), I doubt BWE2 would have one either – although I hope Anet prove me wrong but I won’t be disappointed if they can’t.

You can’t buy shovels for Bandit Crests – not sure where FlamingFoxx heard that from.

Otherwise, the best way to acquire shovels is really only through the Silverwaste events (and very rarely from mob drops in the Silverwastes). I recommend the fort defence and capture events, as those seem more likely to drop a shovel when compared to smaller/easier events such as escorting a dolyak and killing a veteran mordrem.

I don’t think there is a correlation between sticking to a single fort to capture/defend it over and over again and the amount of shovels you acquire (but of course, capture/defend events already have a high chance of bestowing a shovel).

symke.3105:

Can using skill No. 2 “destroy” the shovel, like using skill No.1 does?

(Edited following pdavis’ post below)

Yes, but it is very small.

Skill #2 has a small chance of destroying the shovel, but the shovel itself will also despawn from not being used to dig something up for too long. You will get used to spotting the mounds after you have dug a few up, and thus you won’t need to use skill #2 as often.

Skill #1 on the other hand will instantly break the shovel only if it manages to dig up a buried chest.

Hah, good catch! Reminds me of SAB where most things had a smiley face on them.

The 4 maps does not include the Guild Hall maps.

While the Guild Hall maps are supposedly instanced in the open world, they are specific to Guild Halls, as opposed to the Maguuma Wastes content regions.

BIGHARSHNESS.3510:

You do that, I’ll have a couple of mastery points to spend by that time, bugs or not. :p

Very true!

Though, I will definitely be playing on the launch day, but I just recommend to others to not take a day off until a couple of days afterwards to have the best full day experience.

Of course, I can’t command your decisions

Part of me wishes it back, but part of me wishes it doesn’t also.

It would be great to have it back, most likely because it would return with SAB itself, which was such a joy to play.

However, I am selfish and like the prestige value that the finisher now has (rage at me being selfish, I know!) and would hate for everyone to be running around with it. Of course though, I would understand if it returned in its exact state, and would not be too frustrated.

But perhaps if they re-introduced it as a slightly modified version that had a slight noticeable difference from the original finisher? Ah, that’s just my hope – but if it does ultimately return (which is quite likely), I’ll just agree to it (and squee with joy for SAB’s return).

Well, there is the LFG tool which sort of does that already, except it isn’t automated. And with that said, I find the LFG tool is already near perfect as it stands – we don’t really need a new method of forming groups for raids, and Guilds can chat to each other and decide who wants to group up for a raid or not.

Entropy.6784:

You’re supposed to get another char slot? ._.
It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve pre-purchased HoT standard edition and still nothing xD
Lol, thought I imagined that extra char slot.

You only get the veteran character slot if you had already created an account preceding 23rd January 2015, so if you created your account after that you won’t be eligible for the veteran character slot.

If you did create your account before 23rd January 2015, and you have definitely not received the extra slot within 10 days of pre-purchasing Heart of Thorns, then I would contact support by submitting a ticket.

If you purchase Heart of Thorns, you are given a single serial code with which you can either do the following:

1) Apply it to an existing account which it then upgrades to have access to Heart of Thorns (you don’t have to re-start anything) and you already have access to the core game.

2) Start a brand new account which will have access to both the core game and Heart of Thorns.

In short, you don’t have to make a new account unless you wish to start brand new from scratch – just apply the serial code to your account to upgrade.