Guild Wars 2

The Discovery pane only shows ingredients used in undiscovered recipes that are:

1. Either at or below your current Cooking level (shown in white)

2. Are 25 points higher than your current Cooking level (shown in red)

Anything higher than 25 points will not show up in your Discovery pane.

But yes, as you’ve discovered, Chef creates a lot of intermediate cooking ingredients that may not be used till well into the future. No real way around this other than buying some extra Bank tabs to store them in, unless you’re happy to just sell them now and purchase what you need from the TP when you are high enough level to discover them.

I am extremely confident that Azurite will make a return one day, possibly through the Living Story giving you a node to harvest in your Home Instance. It may come via the introduction of r500 Jeweler, whenever that happens.

One fun side-effect of Ascended crafting is that you can get a pretty good idea of what someone’s playstyle is like by looking at their excess Ascended mats.

Playable Tengu confirmed!

I’m only getting one spore on average from a seedling patch. Having to wait around 10 mins for one is a very inefficient way of getting them, at least in my experience. If you really want to farm spores, the best way is to go to Kessex Hills and just join the zerg going between the Meadows and Overlord’s Waypoints, doing the Offshoot events, and even that only yields about 10 – 15 spores for the same amount of time.

Prices for the Spores seem to have stabilised around 2 silver though. If my hunch is right and the Tri-Key chest gives more Spores, prices should collapse in the next few days as the zerg heads inside the Tower.

However, based on past experience, there is a likely chance the final Halloween daily will not appear on the 11th, so I STRONGLY suggest that your girlfriend get the meta complete before then. There are groups occasionally forming here in the forums for the Lich/Viscount/Horror. You could also try using the LFG tool in-game.

I love that little pause he does before “poor”, like he’s struggling to find a word that rhymes. XD

Male player. My characters in RPGs tend to be 50/50 split between males and females. In GW1, I had 3 males and 2 females. In GW2, it’s 3 females and 2 males. I create my characters according to a roleplaying idea I have of them. While I usually do try to make them attractive, that’s not the primary reason why I make them.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

1. Introduce Copper → Silver Doubloon Transmorgrification recipe.
2. Vial of Quicksilver now requires 250 Platinum Doubloons.

Done.

Scepter would be really good for shatter builds if the autoattack (and the projectiles) wasn’t so dang slow. -_-

Rule #5 of MMOs: Old people can’t be heroes, yo. ;)

If the Dredge didn’t respawn after being killed, I’d be more than happy to slaughter them all during the level.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Perhaps another look is needed at long-term rewards and goals that players strive for. It seems a lot of angst is directed at long-term rewards that players feel are “too grindy”, such as Legendaries, Ascended gear, and more recently, festive content such as the Halloween items. Of course we want to have long-term goals to work towards, as this heightens the feeling of satisfaction when we finally do get it. However, to avoid creating that feeling of “grind”, requirements for these rewards could be spread out across a variety of game content with lower tiers of completion. For example:

- Instead of relying on a Precursor to drop by chance, the player could acquire one (per character) by undertaking a quest to defeat a number of powerful bosses scattered across the world. This includes not just World Bosses, but also foes that are rarely tackled, such as Lieutenant Kholer in Ascalonian Catacombs, or Guild Bounty targets. This would encourage players to seek out foes and dungeon paths that are unpopular or rarely seen.
- Once they have defeated all of these foes, the player is then sent to a special solo instance where they have to defeat one last powerful enemy (a Doppelganger, perhaps?), after which they receive their Precursor. This Precursor can then be sold or kept for personal use as usual.

Another idea might be putting special NPCs in a player’s Home Instance that grant special rewards based on the player’s activity in-game. For example, suppose there is a Seraph Liaison in the Home Instance who tracks how much effort the player has put into the war with the centaurs. Completing Hearts/Dynamic Events/bosses linked to the Seraph/Centaur war grants karma (increased from the current amount) and increases the player’s “renown”. Depending on their Renown level, karma can be spent at the Liaison NPC to obtain materials, weapon/armor skins, or even special items that are used for Ascended/Legendary crafting.

For instance, to reach Renown Level 1, the player must have completed all Hearts in Queensdale linked to the centaurs, completed all the centaur-linked Dynamic Events in Queensdale, and killed the three Veteran Centaur Chieftains at the Righteous Hoofmoot. To reach Level 6 (the highest level), the player must have completed all Hearts in all maps linked to centaurs, completed all centaur-linked DE’s, and slain the World Boss Ulgoth the Modniir.

At each level, a new tier of rewards is unlocked at the Seraph Liaison, allowing the player to purchase things like Centaur weapon skins, Vials of Blood fine crafting mats, Onyx rare crafting mats, special minis etc. for karma. (Possibly also gold.)

Similar systems could be set up for wars against the Nightmare Court, Flame Legion, the Sons of Svanir/Icebrood, Destroyers etc.

To encourage players to return to past maps they’ve already completed, utilise the Daily system! Having a Daily task like “Centaur Crusher: Fight the centaurs by completing <X> centaur-related DE in Queensdale/Kessex Hills/Gendarran Fields/Harathi Hinterlands” would encourage players to go to a specific map and aim for particular events.

As far as encouraging players to travel all over the world rather than just sit in one map farming the same ones over and over, this seems to be linked to the new trend of Champ farming. The introduction of Champion loot bags was a fantastic idea, but as always, players gravitate to whichever Champions/areas are the easiest to kill. Although it’s normally regarded as a dirty word, Diminishing Returns on individual Champions will probably be needed to get players to move out across the world looking for fresh targets. A Champion may always drop an Exotic loot bag the first two times he’s killed, but after that it changes to a non-Exotic loot bag for the map level he’s in for the next three kills, and after that he stops dropping loot altogether.

While we’re on the subject, can I make the suggestion that Elite enemies also get the non-Exotic tier loot bags? Elites are almost as hard to kill as Champions, and having them give the same or worse loot as Veterans seems inconsistent. As with the Champions, Elites are also subject to Diminishing Returns and stop dropping loot after they’ve been killed a few times. These loot bags will also help keep supply for Fine crafting mats at a reasonable level.

I play games to complete my own personal goals I set for myself in them. As a completionist by nature, this usually entails trying to do just about everything in order to reach my standard of “completed”, which encompasses:

- Doing all PvE content
- Outfitting my characters in a look that I like (which doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive gear)
- Acquiring all achievements in game modes I play (which basically just excludes PvP and WvW achievements)

The last tends to cause me the most problems, especially since some past chapters of the Living Story forced me into game modes I wouldn’t normally set foot in.

Whatever you do, buy your Dreamthistle weapon before the Tower of Nightmares content goes away. Once the ticket price rises to 5 tickets (possibly more), it will never again be as cheap as they are now.

All I know is that if/when the exchange rate hits 100 gems for 10g, it’ll be “Zaxares gets his Emperor title” day.

Smooth Penguin.5294

Of course, John probably has a lot more reasons, but the main ones that I can see are the fact that it’s tied too closely to real money. I did my best to put my thoughts in writing, so hopefully you got my point.

Thanks for this post. You and I don’t always see eye to eye when it comes to the economic direction of GW2, but I do appreciate the insight into why things are done the way they are.

There are obvious logistical (and possibly legal) reasons why they could not open the contest up in every language. I’m not denying that, and I don’t think any sensible person is either.

At the same time, dismissing the disappointment of non-native English speakers is also rather insensitive. If ANet had flipped the situation on its head and said that they’re only accepting submissions in Spanish, or Chinese, would you not feel slighted or left out?

Yes, maybe ANet’s hands are tied in this matter, but there’s no reason we can’t be sympathetic to those left out rather than just saying “Boohoo, suck it up, babies!”

“But I DIEEEEED in that Box!”

Ascended weapons were only introduced a few months ago with the Tequatl Rising release, so salvaging Exotics before then wouldn’t have helped. I’ve only salvaged 4 Exotics since that time, but I’ve gotten 5 Globs of Dark Matter from them. The only thing I can recommend is “keep trying”.

I hate you, Azure. I now officially hate you. :P

Several Ranger weapon skills just scream “NORN!” when used though:

- Greatsword (Bear and Eagle)
- Sword (Snake)
- Spear (Shark and Jellyfish)

So, that’s something you may want to consider.

Whale

LOL! If you thought Bearbow was bad, wait till you see Whaleharpoon! XD

Nah, the new TA path was abandoned because it’s too long and hard for not much better rewards.

I do think that giving Story Dungeons a small amount of tokens (say, 10 – 20?) per day would go a long way towards encouraging people to do them more often. Then again, I don’t have any issues finding a group for Story mode anyway; just put up a LFG and you’ll find people within 5 mins.

The debuff does spawn on Veterans too. When clearing a centaur camp in Harathi Hinterlands during an event, there were 3 Veterans remaining in the camp when I got there, and all 3 Vets had the debuff. (No idea how long this event had been up before I arrived though.)

… Good point, laokoko. I wasn’t intending on getting a Legendary anyway (since none of the current Legendaries suit my aesthetic goals), but since you’re likely to use different weapons for different builds, being unable to freely switch the Sigil means that a Legendary isn’t as great as it’s made up to be from a stats perspective.

Thanks dulfy! Warhorn next please!

Sentinel Orichalcum inscriptions can be purchased from the Guild Commendation vendor.

Sentinel Gossamer insignia are currently only available via the TP, although I expect they will also get added to the Guild Commendation vendor once Ascended armor comes out.

I HAVE been saved by a Bearbow Ranger once, actually. They used “Search and Rescue!” during the Clockheart. (And the pet, unlike players, don’t seem to draw Clockheart gears when they revive you.)

durend.6237:

I had a guard in my party that used scepter on those things once. His reply to my “you know they reflect projectiles right?” was “special tactics”. When I asked what those “tactics” were he replied with “I have retaliation”

I could probably use some clarification about that. (Don’t have any classes that really use Retaliation, so I’m not too familiar with it.) So if you have Retal up, you get your projectiles reflected and take damage from it, you trigger your OWN Retaliation on yourself?

And is it possible to double reflect projectiles? (i.e. you use a projectile, he reflects it, you also pop a reflect skill. What happens then?)

Azurite Crystals cannot be transmorgrified to Orbs; the recipe simply doesn’t exist. If you are after Azurite Orbs, unfortunately the only way to acquire them at the moment is to buy them from the TP.

Buying gems to exchange to gold doesn’t create inflation, because the gold that the gem seller gets was already put up there by another player, which came from the game economy. In fact, selling gems for gold is another deflationary tool, because the gem → gold rate is LOWER than the gold → gems rate.

I did notice that my Sylvari’s eyes seemed to be a darker blue than before. (I’d made her eye colour as close a match to her glow as possible.) Good to hear it’ll be fixed.

I’m not sure where the OP got the impression that Charr speak perfect English though. Just about every Charr NPC I meet has a gruff voice, and the more important NPCs (including the PC) have a kind of growly, almost slobbery undertone to their voice, accompanied by the odd jowl’y sound.

Wasn’t the OP the same guy who made a post during the Queen’s Jubilee about how he wanted the Deadeye farm to be nerfed because he’d made a few hundred gold (or a similarly high amount) doing it, and now he wanted ANet to nerf it because he felt he HAD to keep doing it because it was so profitable, and it was stopping him from playing the rest of the game?

If so, that just brings to mind the same thought I had back then: "So you’re saying, “I had my fun. Now I want it to be nerfed so that others can’t catch up to me.”"

Don’t get me wrong. I do think that Champ train farming isn’t a good direction for GW2 to go down, but the OP hasn’t offered any suggestions for how he’d address the core issues for WHY people do the Champ train farm in the first place.

Hmmm… Your story makes me wonder if I shouldn’t try posting another offer for a now discontinued item, but higher than the price range the buy offers have been sticking to for several months now. I originally thought that all supply of this item was probably used/destroyed by now, but now I have to wonder if there might not still be some lying around in some hoarder’s inventory, just waiting for the chance to be sold once the hoarder gets bored/desperate for gold.

My Sylvari says she’s “freezing” every time she gets Chilled, so I’m pretty certain she can feel cold. As Aaron suggests, I think that Sylvari are just affected by cold to a (much) lesser degree than humanoids.

Hold onto them. They’ll be needed for Ascended armor crafting.

Thanks Khani! Is it possible to get a version without the tower on the right though?

Electro.4173:

I haven’t even gotten enough spores for one recipe yet >.>

…

Maybe the Tower will provide more Pristine Spores. Just have to hope the vendor sticks around.

Buy the recipes directly if you can. I got most of the recipes for around 3 – 4 gold each, buying them off the TP from people who got them from Toxic Seed Boxes (from Glory vendors). For recipes that were higher than 6g in price (like the various Toxic consumables), I just bought stacks of Toxic Spores and exchanged them with Marjory.

I’m almost certain that the Tower will give more Toxic Spores though. Probably something like 10 – 20 every time the dungeon is completed. I’m just hedging my bets by getting the recipes now just in case Marjory DOES stop selling them.

^ While I did like the M:TG style of skills in GW1, you have to admit that it got a bit out of hand by the end. There were so many skills that the vast majority of them never got used, and balancing them all proved to be a headache for ANet. They wanted to avoid that situation in GW2.

Having played this minigame extensively and won both as Courtiers and Villagers, the following is my analysis:

1. I Fear Not Death!

Courtiers have one MASSIVE advantage that should possibly be looked at: their ability to respawn right where they died in just a few seconds. This more or less makes it pointless for Villagers to attempt to fight off the Courtiers, because Courtiers can just res-rush the Villagers over and over until they win. Suggestions have included increasing the Courtier’s respawn time, or making them spawn back at the Mad King.

Now, I say “possibly” because there is the potential for this to go the other way. If you have at least two or three Villagers who are experienced and armed with Hammers/Torches/Bones, it is possible for them to keep killing the Courtier, forcing them back to the middle, and the Courtier will have no way to win. If the Courtier chosen at the start is not particularly experienced, they will not be able to catch and kill any Villagers.

2. Mad King Says spam.

While it is indeed possible for a villager to escape from a Courtier spamming MKS (I’ve done it numerous times), it’s kind of a cheap tactic, and the balance is heavily tilted in favour of the Courtier. For a Villager, knowing which commands to obey and which to ignore can lead to you escaping quite easily, but an experienced Courtier will just use the Scarecrow teleport to close the distance and wait till the MKS wear you down, forcing you to eventually obey the Command or die.

Suggestions to improve this include putting all MKS skills on a global cooldown when one is used, or making it so if the Villager successfully performs the command, the Courtier who initiated the MKS instead takes the damage/dies. (I lean towards the former, especially if Courtier death is changed so that Courtiers spawn back at the Mad King.)

3. The Futility of Hiding.

Currently, hiding is a worthless tactic as a villager due to the ability of Courtiers to see all villagers on the map while standing on a teleporter. (I do NOT support removing this Courtier ability though, as I’ll explain below.) There are only a few rare spots on the map which are out of range of the radar, and those are easily checked by experienced Courtiers.

At the same time, it would be a mistake to remove the Courtier’s ability altogether. Why? Because in matches with smaller amounts of players, it would make it next to impossible for Courtiers to win. The map is fairly large, and if there’s only 1 or 2 Courtiers trying to find 4 or 5 Villagers, it’s very possible for Courtiers to never find the Villagers at all if the Villagers go to ground (fleeing when spotted by Courtiers, outrunning them, and then finding another hiding spot).

As such, the radar ability should stay, but be modified so that the Courtiers have to channel on the teleporter for 3 seconds, and doing so triggers a global alarm (similar to the wall heads) seen by the Villagers so they know that the Courtiers (if they’re close enough) has been alerted to their position. The Villagers can then decide whether or not to move to a new location, or take their chances that no Courtier was close enough to see their hiding spot.

In closing, despite the advantages of the Courtiers, it’s actually very easy for Villagers to win if they are organised. The weakest time of the Courtiers is right at the beginning, when there’s only one of them. If Villagers band together, set up a base camp at one of the NPCs by running items, and cooperating to kill/incapacitate Courtiers when they come hunting, it’s easy to deny the first Courtier any kills and thus deprive them of reinforcements.

As an example, if you have a Spider Web/Torch and you see a fellow Villager desperately fleeing from a Courtier, throw your item at them to incapacitate the Courtier and give your friend a chance to escape. It’s better to waste the item (which just respawns somewhere anyway) than give the Courtier a kill, which results in one more ghost hunting you down. Just like in the real world, the best chance of success comes through cooperation, not through selfishness.

I actually thought maybe this was intended to make Pickpocket Traps more valuable! Good to know it’s a bug.

On the bright side though, supplies not dropping when you kill another player DOES make the matches go faster since rations run out earlier.

Erukk has a good point. As interesting a concept as it is, I think it would just be too much work for the devs going forward.

I run a three signet bar in open world (Heal Sig, Dolyak Signet, Signet of Rage), but I change it for dungeons/Fractals. FGJ is glued to my bar. Second utility goes to a banner. Third utility is either a second banner or SiO, depending on the dungeon and party makeup. If I’m in a guild group, I usually stick with SoR as my elite, but with PUGs I play it safe and bring Warbanner instead.

Tarnished Coast. We’re consistently in Tier 2 for WvW as well.

However, the server is Full more or less permanently, so switching over could be an expensive exercise.

JustTrogdor.7892:

One small change I noticed a while back is they replaced the ear piercing sound of Mesmer greatsword with a more subtle one. I had mentioned a few times on the forums that the sound bothered me and now it’s gone. I can play GS on my Mesmer again.

Actually, I hated that change. XD (Although I wield a Scepter, not a Greatsword.) Before, the sound was a sharp, sparkly tone that suited the glamour of Mesmer combat, IMO. Now it’s just a dull “thud, thud, thud” sound. It doesn’t have the same kind of impact.

Then again, because I only hear the sound on Confusing Images, perhaps it doesn’t get as grating as it would for a Greatsword user who hears it constantly when spamming 1.

I use it to distract Champions so I can run in and loot the chest unhindered while my pet tanks him. XD

Griffon and Basilisk is what I want. The pet Basilisk getting its Petrify attack on F2 would probably be overpowered though. My guess is that it’d need to be toned down to Immobilize.

The Vincent dye is VERY sweet, I’ll agree.