Guild Wars 2

We have some new content in the form of the Bloody Prince story. I’m actually happy that most of the Halloween content is returning, since it gives new players the chance to experience past fun, older players the chance to revisit memorable content (Clocktower anyone?), and it means the devs don’t have to devote so much resources to revamping festival content and can focus on new projects.

It reminded me of the Phantom of the Opera mask, which I suppose is still kind of in keeping with the Halloween spirit.

@Solomon: By that logic, anybody who bought items for their normal price before a sale slashed prices should also be entitled to a refund. Yet you’ll never see that happen.

Don’t get me wrong. I can see where you’re coming from, but there’s arguments to be made in the opposite direction too. Exclusivity is, in itself, also a limited time purchase. When you pay extra to get a rare or costly item, what you’re really paying for is the ability to lord your shiny over those who don’t have it. If the company later re-releases the item 6 months or a year down the track, that doesn’t negate the time you had where you had something no one else did. That period of exclusivity is what you paid for, and got.

As to the second half of your argument, investment is always a double-edged sword. There is just as much opportunity to get rich as there is to get burned, and no investment should be considered as solid considering the market is always in flux. In a free market, there are winners, but also just as many, if not more, losers.

I wasn’t that taken with Reaper’s Rumble, but have no objections to it returning.

I, for one, am looking forward to the 20 Slot Halloween Pail. I could always use bigger bags.

I always support players being able to earn the skins they want, whenever they want. We do know for a fact that certain craftable skins like the Mad Moon and Arachnophobia are coming back, so don’t give up hope!

I don’t know for certain either. From the release page, it sounds as if all of the old content should be redoable (as all of the achievements from last year should still be doable with returning content), but at the same time, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Yeah, I noticed that too. From Regina’s explanation it sounds like that’s not intended (and the achievement description backs that up), but from the experiences of others here, it sounds like people should try anyway even if they all wipe at Spur because the achievement might still be granted.

The Clockheart is actually pretty simple to fight. It’s if he gets off his 30 stack multi-slam that usually screws up runs, because it does so much damage it will down most non-tanky builds. The strategy I usually use involves constantly pulling the boss closer to the holo, and then using Push/Pull skills to move the holo next to the boss before killing it.

If this isn’t feasible (and sometimes it won’t be, because the holo is just too far away, or the boss is standing right in the middle), then everybody should just run as far away as they can from the boss once he hits 30 stacks. His attack isn’t big enough to cover the whole room, so if you’re lucky you can be out of range of the whole thing. Dodging and skills that grant invulnerability can also mitigate the damage. Necros can go into Death Shroud and laugh off the whole thing. Not sure if block skills work against his attack, but it’s worth a shot too.

Well, given their rabidly misogynistic ideals, I’d find it VERY odd if a Son of Svanir were to willingly follow Scarlet.

Yes, Oswald had a son. In fact, based on NPC dialogue from last year’s Halloween story, when Oswald was finally murdered by conspirators against him, they also murdered his current wife and newborn son “in an attempt to eradicate the Thorn line from existence”. It’s unknown if this is the same son as Bloody Prince Edrick, or whether Edrick is Oswald’s son from an earlier marriage.

Thanks for the explanation, Regina! That really clears up the situation. So individual party members can die and be ressed/respawn without losing the achievement as long as the entire party doesn’t wipe?

Would still appreciate some feedback from the devs about this, whether or not it’s an intended change, or whether it’s “in the queue” and is just lower on the priority list of things to fix. (I work in a software company myself, so I’m well aware of what it’s like!)

You’re doing 12 unique jumping puzzles right? Doing the same puzzle (e.g. the 3 JP’s in Lion’s Arch) across 3 different characters would only progress the track by 3, not 9.

Risen children get “slurried” up and molded into the Risen Abominations. Hence their name.

That Jack-in-the-box Scythe is AWESOME!

Buuut I’m still gonna stick with my Consortium scythe. Having that creepy dude pop up every time I harvest plants would get old real fast, I think. (You could probably freak out players with it though.)

I rather enjoy underwater combat. Usually, enemies are weaker underwater than they are on land, so sometimes I will intentionally pull enemies into the water to make them easier to beat.

There’s also been a few neat moments where I’m swimming along the bottom harvesting stuff, and I suddenly see a large shadow of a shark (or similar beastie) fall over me and immediately go “Uh oh, time to fight!” And sure enough, the next second a shark swims into the screen, just as I spun around.

I’m one of the rare level 80 players who doesn’t mind letting lower levels tag along, it seems. I always put a notice for newer players to just say they need guidance, and then I happily teach them how to get through the dungeon as we go.

The funniest/most annoying part is when my post clearly states that we may have new players, and then players join and immediately quit when they see non-80’s in it.

Agreed on the boxes. I’d also like to see the skins made tradable so if you get a Fractal skin you don’t want (or you can’t use, or you just dislike the look of the Fractal skins), you can sell it to someone who does.

5 Transmutation Crystals is the best I’ve ever gotten from the BLC’s.

I sure wish those guys were back… If only because I feel terrible attacking neutral Oakhearts just for the Slayer achievement.

For me, the technique that worked was this:

1. Split the party into two teams. One group will go down to defend the Lionguard, the other will follow Caithe. Anybody who needs “What does she know?” or “Clockwork Destroyer” should follow Caithe.

2a. Lionguard defense drops down, fights Aetherblades. The Aetherblades are all normal mobs except for one Veteran at the end, so it’s really not hard at all to keep the Lionguard alive. Turma probably won’t even get in combat at all if you aggro the Aetherblades early. 1 Staff Ele can probably do this all by himself, plus he can switch to Water to heal up any Lionguards that get injured.

2b. People following Caithe kill the Aetherblade officer. He’s a normal Vet and doesn’t attack, so just snare and pile on the damage. After that, follow Caithe to the secret room and enter. Once inside, open the Suggestion Box and kill the Clockwork Horror that spawns for the achievement.

3. The people who followed Caithe now do the EMP achievement by running back to the box in the Clockheart group, grabbing one grenade, then running up the ramps to use the grenades on the 3 ships.

4. If done right, you should have about 5 – 6 mins left. This is more than enough time for people with Aether keys to go and unlock the chests. If you are after the Pirate Booty achievement, take note that you need to unlock all 5 unique chests to get it (they don’t all need to be opened on the same run, however).

It’s not 3 seconds. It’s more like 1 – 1.5 seconds. Basically you have to start running for the platform as soon as you see the person about to get up on it.

Studying the pattern works, but unfortunately most PUGs I’ve been in people just rush for the platform (tanking the damage) and don’t give me any opportunity to study the pattern. Then they yell at me for taking so long. :P

Of course, there are easy ways to skip past this if you have a Guardian, Mesmer or Ele, so that works too.

Tarnished Coast still takes him down on reset, but good luck getting enough people together after that, and we’re one of the most populated PvE servers!

Going forward, I think it’s crucial that ANet rework Tequatl so that it scales better for less people. Sure, we don’t want to get into a situation where one can solo Tequatl, or even 5-man him, but he should be doable with a group of, say, 10 – 20 people who know what to do.

Wanze.8410:

My guess would be that jewelers will be able to craft infusion once it gets upped to lvl 500.

Oooh, I would LOVE that.

I still hope we’ll be able to craft our own Ascended rings/amulets/trinkets though. As someone who enjoys crafting my own equipment, I’d much prefer that over farming Fractals for rings.

People who might have seen a particular thread on the BLTP forum can probably conclude I would be in favour of a change like this. It would help normalise prices between unwanted Sup runes/sigils and those that are highly demanded. However, I don’t think ANet really sees this as an issue, so it’s very unlikely that we’ll see a return to the old system.

Yeah, Wanze makes a good point above. It’s not a good idea to look at the currently available supply on the TP and think, “Oh, that’s all the supply available in the game.” A lot of trading on the TP actually goes straight to buy and sell orders, and thus are invisible to people watching the supply/demand casually.

While I don’t know if I’d use the skins myself, I don’t think they’re “bad”. In fact, I’m rather impressed by the amount of detail that’s gone into the Ascended armor skins (similar to the Dragon’s Jade weapons). I’m getting a very Byzantine/Renaissance feel from these armors, which, while they may not be my cup of tea, could be very appealing to the right audience.

Has this thread been taken over by Asura? XD

At the very least I hope they give us something to do with the 10+ stacks of Bloodstone Dust we have sitting in our bank. Heck, at least make them merchable!

linuxotaku.4731

I wouldn’t be surprised if metrics show more concurrency — the psychological tools the game designers are using are effective on a large scale. But that doesn’t mean that I like their choices, and I’m perfectly willing to walk away (I spent a lot of time and money, but that was because it was fun; if it’s not fun, it’s time to stop).

This is a very good point. I’m sure that the Living Story has, indeed, caused players to log back in more often, and to log more hours in-game. But what the metrics don’t show is whether the players are doing so happily, or whether they’re doing it in a resentful manner knowing that if they don’t, they’ll miss out on their chance to get unique skins, achievements, titles and items permanently.

In any case, while I still have some objections to the way the Living Story is being implemented (previously functional achievements no longer working, permanent content being discarded in favour of new content), I will say that September and October has been a great improvement over the past few months. SAB is returning content, and Tequatl Rising and Twilight Assault are both new content that has permanent new achievements that are available to players even after the month is over. This ameliorates a lot of my previous concern about players being forced to participate in the Living Story or forever miss out, although I would still like there to be a way for players who missed out on past skins to obtain them again (either they’re all tradable, or preferably, past temporary content can be accessed via a “flashback NPC” that sits in your Home District and allows you to re-do any temporary content in an instance).

I have a feeling that the Ascended armor (along with weapons) were DELIBERATELY designed in such a way so that most players didn’t feel that “omg, I MUST have that look for my character!” urge and then accuse ANet of putting in ridiculous grind to get the “coolest looking gear” in the game.

If Ascended weapons are anything to go by, Cotton will almost certainly be used. However, ANet will probably modify the amount needed to be less than what’s required for Silk/Wool/Linen.

Isn’t this rather risky speculation though? (Mostly in regards to people speculating on Hardened Leather.) Ascended weapons don’t use Ancient/Ori mats (aside from the Orichalcum inscription), so why would Ascended armor use T6 mats as opposed to combining lower tier mats? Or are people banking on the idea that since you need 6 Gossamer inscriptions, across all 3 armor-crafting professions, the demand on Gossamer will be a lot higher?

Wanze.8410:

Funny how you state in your prior post “that´s what you do” and now say, you only been forging masterwork and rare sigils.

Yeah, a poor choice of words on my part. It should have been “that’s what I’d do”. Ah well. I shall accept the appropriate mocking and move on.

Buttercup.5871:

Zaxares.5419:

Unlimited-use Food items = Ascended crafting for Chefs. Won’t really affect the economy as the final food dish is account-bound.

Done.

Except that it will crash the harvesting material market. Who needs mats, right, after obtaining the unlimited food buff of your choice? The only way I can see ascended cooking to work is that it gives higher stat buffs. The end product mush be tradeable if you don’t want to destroy cooking. Moreover, introducing account bound cooking will only increase the general sentiment of a “forced” ascended grind for those that want to obtain max stats. Getting the mats required for ascended armor and weapons is already a chore. The forum is filled with threads lamenting this fact.

Outside of WvW, do people really bother to have constant food buffs on themselves at all times? I don’t do that much dungeon running, but only a very few players seem to have any kind of nourishment buff on themselves. (I typically only eat something if I happen to have it sitting in my inventory, so why not?)

As to the second half of your post, I’ll grant that’s a valid concern, but unfortunately given ANet’s previous approach to Ascended gear, that’s likely to be the outcome. We already have a precedent in the form of Dragon’s Revelry Starcakes, after all. Crafting Ascended food will be so costly and so onerous (for example, an “Essence of Berries” item, which requires 250 Blueberries, 250 Strawberries, 250 Blackberries and 250 Raspberries. And you’ll need 10 of them for the Ascended food dish, along with 3 × 10 other “Essences”), for a marginally higher benefit, that most players will not bother and just continue to craft ordinary r400 food when they need it.

The source for Charged Lodestones has increased dramatically with the introduction of Champ loot bags though. Prices for them seem to have fallen (although not as much as one might hope since it’s likely that the lowered price means more people are going for the rare skins that need them now).

Wanze.8410

Neither of those bags you mentioned drops Silver Doubloons, Pinched Goods only drop t1 mats, Purloined Goods only drop t3. LB of Skritt Shinies drop t2 mats but Silverdoubloons arent on the loot table.

The only right information that you provided is, that you cannot confirm that Silver Doubloons drop from those. I bet that helped other people out alot.

Also, if you think the best place to farm Light Bags of Booty are pirates at Brigantine Isles, go ahead. Let me know how much you get per hour.

How much profit you make overall per hour farming those? 2-3g?

Why not farm something else that yields 10g per hour, then use those 10g to buy 4 stacks of lootbags from the TP from people who dont see the real value of the mats inside them?

Nothing beats the spawn and kill rate btw of Aetherblade Pirates during an Invasion in a low level area.

Well, since you were being deliberately coy about the types of bags you were opening, I had to broaden my range to stuff I wouldn’t ordinarily consider. The fact that you had a fair bit of chocolate and butter from your drops told me that I couldn’t rule out bandit and skritt loot bags, since they drop from those too, but since I didn’t have personal confirmation of Silver Doubloons dropping from those, I added the caveat for anyone using my information to try and get doubloons.

As to the second half of your post -shrug-, some people prefer farming their own mats as opposed to just buying them off the TP. (Personally, I use a combination of farming and buying to make up the shortfall.) It’s a playstyle choice, and while it may not be as efficient as farming gold and buying the mats, I’m not about to dictate to people how they should play the game. If you’re having fun doing what you do, go right ahead.

The Aetherblade Pirates in low-level areas are a good tip though. Still, as temporary content that relies on the event spawning in an appropriate map when you’re on, I wouldn’t rely on it as a reliable source for bags.

While I agree wholeheartedly with the OP, it’s worth pointing out that SAB could be done by characters of any level, while Tequatl is in a level 65 zone. (Although I’m sure elitists would lambast any non-80’s trying to take part in the fight.)

SAB is permanent content, but it’s returning content similar to Halloween or Wintersday. Personally I’d prefer it to stay too, but I’m OK with it returning a few times a year.

Yeah, add me to the list of players who are disquieted/unhappy with this move. Like Pixelpumpkin, I enjoy playing the game at my own pace. I love new content as much as the next guy, but the Living Story has forced me to play at a pace that’s frankly exhausting. ANet did good in September with SAB v2 and Tequatl Rising (although I’m disappointed that there’s been no reply yet to my requests for feedback about why the old Tequatl Megalaser achievement is no longer completable despite it still being the same functional mechanic), but this update is sobering with the realisation that even permanent content might be taken away in the future.

I think that adding the Scarlet path as a 4th path to TA would have been much more pleasant and a better solution than simply replacing path 3. Please consider doing this, ANet, otherwise you leave yourself open to the possibility that one day even this new path may get removed once lots of new players start muttering “Who’s this Scarlet? Why are the Lionguard mad at her? This makes no sense!”

They can’t? I’ve seen Superior Sigils show up as valid items to throw into the Forge, although so far I’ve just been Forging Minor and Major runes/sigils. You can forge 4 random Exotic items together, can’t you?

Aha! That includes Immobulus. I was quite baffled as to how it could have just vanished after the patch and no one bothered to re-craft/re-list it afterwards.

Unlimited-use Food items = Ascended crafting for Chefs. Won’t really affect the economy as the final food dish is account-bound.

Done.

Buy them up for cheap, toss them into the Forge on days with a Forgesmith daily. It’s what I do. Who knows, you may even get lucky and get an expensive sigil from it.

Wanze.8410:

You are also not providing information but a wild guess, which should always be free of charge.

That i used Light Bags of Booty, i already said in an earlier post. Good luck by the way, getting one of those from a Jetsam Pirate in Lornars Pass or a Bloody Buccaneer in Bloodtide Coast.

More like an educated guess. If I were truly guessing wildly, I’d just have said Tier 2/3 loot bags.

Also, the best place to farm Light Bags of Booty are from the pirates in Brigantine Isles in Gendarran Fields. The pirates in Lornar’s Pass tend to drop Small Bags of Booty (T3), and I wouldn’t even bother with the ones in Bloodtide Coast as they’re too high level.

The dredge in Gendarran Fields are also a good target for the Light Miner’s Bags, although the dredge in Underburg in Lornar’s Pass would be a better target if you’re after those, since they spawn in much higher density there.

I’m fully expecting to see this update down the line:

1. Upgrade recipes for Copper → Silver Doubloons and Gold → Platinum Doubloons are introduced.
2. Gift of Quicksilver now requires Platinum Doubloons instead of Silver Doubloons.

Are you sure you’re not in the Discovery screen?

Excellent news! I’m glad to see that ANet has really taken the feedback from players about the strict time-gating of content to heart. With only 10 dailies to complete the Meta, it should be fairly easy to complete over the course of the month too, even with Halloween taking up the last two weeks.

EDIT: Actually, I would like confirmation from ANet that the bonus content after the last boss in the Aetherblade path is defeated WILL be staying. (I’m talking about the bit where Lionguard Turma shows up, and the extra achievements such as “Above and Beyond”.) Dungeon paths as a general rule seem to be frozen in time, but it occurs to me that the bit about the Lionguard seeking revenge MIGHT be removed in the future because it might make no sense to newer players who missed out on the first Dragon Bash and the initial Aetherblade/Scarlet invasions.

Yeah, that particular event isn’t a Group Event (likely because you have the three Wardens there to help you out). He does count as a Champion kill, however, and depending on your build, he’s actually quite soloable. (I’ve solo’ed him on my Mesmer, Ranger, Ele, Warrior and Necromancer.) The Champion malfunctioning golem not too far away is a lot tougher, in my opinion.