Guild Wars 2

skullmount.1758:

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Zaxares.5419:

^ Good point. I’d forgotten about that little benefit. I never got into a situation where I lost all my lives, so that’s probably why it slipped my mind.

Remember that hidden secret at the end of level 2 in the first world? Where you had to jump in that hole and then jump corners (and don’t fall!) to find that hidden store? I lost my lives multiple times there before I finally got the hang of that jump…

You mean that horrible section where you have to jump on the roots and it you miss any of those jumps you go into the black hole and die? I really hated doing that one.

Oh yeah, that one. XD I had a bunch of SAB coins thanks to daily visits to the LA JP’s, so I just used one whenever I ran out of lives. I think I died 3 times trying to get to that shop. The “pillar jump” stumped me for a while before I decided to finally try it. Oddly enough, I still haven’t figured out how to get back out of there once you visited the shop!

I’m indifferent about time-gated materials. I would enjoy the extra convenience if it was removed, and I would enjoy the slower pace if it was included. Either way, I win.

That’s not going to happen. The only things that will add to your account-wide MF bonus is the bonus you get from Achievement Chests, and however the new Essences of Luck system is going to work.

All weapons/armor/trinkets/runes/sigils that currently have a MF bonus will become account-bound, and you get a chance to swap it to another crafted stat spread of your choice. You haven’t “lost” anything by this (except Celestial gear, which just flat out loses the MF bonus, so I agree you do have a case there).

MF food is unchanged.

MF utility infusions are unchanged, which is a bit strange, but I guess given the fact that so far only amulets can have utility infusion slots, the stat bonus lost from having one MF infusion was deemed to be acceptable.

^ I completely agree. If a player put in the same effort to get a title as you did by completing all the achievements for World 1, why shouldn’t they be entitled to wear it too? Posts like the two above Leablo’s remind me so much of jerks who say, "OK, I got my title/mini/reward. Now close off the content so that only I can have it and I can lord my “specialness” over other players."

I’m pretty sure that’s not true, Penguin. I’ve had instances where I duo’ed a Twisted Champion with another player and only got a Blue/Green/Yellow box, and others where I turned up to the fight in the last 10 seconds, got 3 attacks in on the Champion, and got a Gold box.

I’m inclined to think that it’s either completely random (50% chance to get Gold, 50% chance to get a box appropriate for the zone’s level), or that it’s affected by DR as Tobias theorizes.

It’s actually very easy to avoid Scarlet’s Torment during her final phase. Simply stand next to a barrel and shoot at her with a ranged weapon. When she does her teleport jump to you, back off slightly and then dodge roll right into the center of the red circle. This will let you evade all of her hits and the associated Torment stacks.

^ The only exception to that is Lifetime Survivor. You can be downed multiple times in a map, but as long as you don’t get defeated or leave the map before hitting the XP total, you’ll get the achievement.

This trend started with the Dragon’s Revelry Starcake recipe in Dragon Bakitten seems that ANet is trying to give crafters some “exclusivity” by making festival recipes account-bound. It’s not a move I agree with, however; I’d also prefer it if recipes could be sold on the TP.

I often get the feeling that there are two schools of thought when it comes to defining “casual” and “hardcore”. There are those who think it’s defined by skill (i.e. “casuals are unskilled players”) and those who think it’s defined by time devoted to the hobby (i.e. “anyone who plays more than 20 hours in a week is a hardcore player”).

I don’t think it’s as cut and dry as that. You have skilled players who can only afford to spend perhaps 4 – 6 hours gaming a week, and you have unskilled players who despite spending 20 or 30+ hours gaming each week, are still terrible when it comes to mastering advanced tactics. Yes, as a general rule, the more time you spend at something, the better you’ll be at it, but that’s not always the case. This is especially true when it comes to game modes that involve different skill sets. You may have someone who’s awesome at PvP, but he fails hard at JP’s. Likewise, someone may easily thrash the SAB, but she can’t get past T1 in the Gauntlet. Or someone who’s great at dungeons, but they never manage to win in Crab Toss.

I’m sure there will still be posts saying that ANet needs to nerf Tribulation Mode though.

^ Good point. I’d forgotten about that little benefit. I never got into a situation where I lost all my lives, so that’s probably why it slipped my mind.

Zaxares.5419:

Quicksilver is an archaic term for mercury, which has nothing to do with real silver either. And what do Steel Ingots have to do with Quicksilver? Because it’s shiny and silver-looking? If so, Mithril Ingots would serve just as well.

To add to my earlier post, maybe they SHOULD change it to Mithril Ingots instead of Steel. It would help lift the price of Mithril Ore.

Hehe, yeah, it can. Over the last year I’ve probably spent about $300 worth in gems to pick up things like the unlimited tools and the Salvage-o-matic, along with incidental purchases for things like Transmutation Crystals. I only ever go for items that have no RNG and are permanent, thankfully, or my expenditure budget would have been much higher.

Scarlet does not offer freedom. Scarlet offers anarchy. There’s a big difference between the two. In Scarlet’s “free world”, I imagine you are free only to live or die at her whim.

Some players play for the sense of accomplishment they get when they overcome a great challenge. I can understand this feeling, as I experienced it myself when I finally defeated Liadri after 86 attempts, but no, not all players play games for that reason. However, the fact that such players exist is why ANet SHOULD put in hard content like the Gauntlet and Tribulation Mode, so that players who do find satisfaction in overcoming great trials can have their needs met too.

I wouldn’t recommend trying to complete the achievements in a group unless everybody in the group loves JP’s, but doing it in a group is definitely more fun. It’s also easier in a group for those who aren’t as good at the SAB, since the better players can go on ahead and unlock checkpoints or activate shortcuts that cut down on the jumps players need to make to catch up.

I do miss the wider variety of dances we had in GW1, where both genders of each profession had separate dances. I understand that having each profession, for each race and gender, having a unique dance would be too much work, but one can dream. XD

Vayne.8563

That said some content is always permanent. For example the current invasions won’t be leaving the game when the event ends (though they will be less frequent).

Ironically the invasions are one part of the content I would prefer not to be permanent. XD At least, not in their current form. I’d love it if Twisted minions (and to a lesser extent, Aetherblades and Molten Alliance) remained foes we could challenge permanently, but they should be available only through specific means, such as a “Flashback” version of a dungeon accessible through talking to a Historian NPC. If the invasions are here to stay permanently, even at a greatly reduced frequency, then we haven’t really changed the world at all; we’ve never really defeated Scarlet. She’s just become another Dynamic Event villain that we beat up on a regular basis like the Dragon Champions.

Fighting the Twisted minions is fun because of their interesting mechanics, but I got fairly bored of the “mass zerg invasion” fairly quickly. After I got all the achievements, I went back to my usual map exploration activities at my (more enjoyable) sedate pace.

Yeah, the achievement is only granted if you complete the Playhouse without even getting downed. It’s unknown if this is a bug or if the achievement has an incorrect description.

I always salvage whites, and blues sometimes if I need the materials for that Tier from them. (I always check the TP before salvaging though. For some reason some people place buy orders for level 78 – 80 Blues at nearly triple their vendor price. I’ve yet to figure out why this is so.)

Greens I always merch since the guaranteed 1.5 – 2 silver I get from them is usually worth more than the mats I could get from them. No idea whether I will continue this trend once Essences of Luck are introduced. I’ll have to wait and see.

Well, the Ogre Beastmasters can just plop down Healing Spring to remove any poisoning their pets might get as a result of consuming chocolate.

Zacchary.6183:

I surely believe so. Just the other night I had both with caesar dressing, white cheddar and garlic butter croutons. Best dinner ever.

Are you a Charr? :P

As a player who straddles the border between casual and hardcore, any day I log off where my bank balance was higher than it was yesterday is a good day.

I wonder… Will Essences of Luck be salvageable only from level 68+ blues/greens like how only level 68+ Rares/Exos give Ectos?

I don’t want to be seen as jumping on Nuka Cola, but yeah, selling 3.5 million boxes for $50 may sound like a lot of money, but in the world of big business (of which AAA game development is one), that’s actually not that much money. I work for a small-med size software development company. Our annual turnover is somewhere in the range of 3 – 4 million dollars. Yet after paying out salaries, benefits, taxes, utility bills, share dividends and the like, our annual profit is only around $100k. Maybe up to twice or three times that if we had a good year.

It costs a LOT of money to run a business. The amount ANet made from original game sales was probably only just enough to cover development expenses and make a bit of profit, enough to convince NCSoft and investors to keep Guild Wars 2 going.

Quicksilver is an archaic term for mercury, which has nothing to do with real silver either. And what do Steel Ingots have to do with Quicksilver? Because it’s shiny and silver-looking? If so, Mithril Ingots would serve just as well.

Buttercup.5871:

From experience, I know BL mining picks work better than my ori/fused pick on the home instance quartz node, giving me a higher chance of receiving charged quartz.

I’m not sure about this. I had a spare BL mining pick that I used on my quartz harvesting mule, but I did not observe any increased chance for Charged Quartz over the Copper tools he was using previously. Granted, it’s a pretty small sample size, so perhaps your assertion could still be correct. I’d like to see more research data performed on this.

I, for one, welcome our new Leafy Demigod Queen.

No one knows for sure, but I’m personally hoping it is.

Would support the idea of salvaging Ascended items for Mist Essence (which could be one of the T7 materials, for all we know).

^ Same. XD My mule character is parked permanently in Divinity’s Reach, and he (used to) hold all my spare stock of Quartz Crystals. All he does is go into Salma District to harvest the quartz, and then take a short trip out to Shaemoor to charge it.

I still have a full stack of Quartz in my bank in case Quartz itself becomes needed for something else. My mule just holds any excess, and whenever he hits 25, he goes out for a charge.

Archon.6481:

Being inexclusive ruins nothing? Lets just do everything like spvp and give away as many copies of whatever armor, minis, or legendary you want because being inexclusive ruins nothing.

I actually would not object to that. :P For me, the value in having something lies mainly in the knowledge that I earned the item myself. Back in GW1, I got my Legendary Survivor title back when Nightfall came out. Then in Eye of the North, the Kilroy dungeon made getting the title extremely easy (if still somewhat grindy). Was I upset? Nope. I knew that I earned my achievement the “hard way”, and that was something nobody could ever take away from me. So what if there are lots of other Legendary Survivors running around now? I don’t care how they got the title; all that matters to me is how I got my title.

So no, if the Liadri mini became tradable, I would not be upset either. Heck, I might even sell mine since I’m not a mini collector and I imagine it would be worth a fair bit.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Queen’s Gauntlet will return, possibly as part of the activity rotation or even other events. In any case, you’ll be able to complete those achievements at a later date.

Anthony didn’t specifically say Liadri’s achievements will be back, but given that and the gambits would be what most players have had trouble with, I think it’s safe to say that they’ll be back.

Yep. I imagine that Infantile Mode will still be there for World 2. And Tribulation Mode is for those who thought Normal Mode was too easy.

I get the feeling that all those pointy bamboo stakes on the ground in Tribulation Mode are going to be “instant death” pits. XD

Nihilus.3015:

They said the same thing about Liadri but now everyone and their grandma has a Liadri mini.

I think that’s an exaggeration. We know that of the 50 (or was it 100?) ANet testers that fought Liadri, only 6 of them managed to beat her. Still, that’s about 15% of the playerbase. When you multiply that across 1 million+ players, that’s 150,000 players who should have the skill necessary to beat her. These players will almost certainly have their Liadri mini out to show off, so you’ll be seeing her a fair bit, thus the incorrect assumption that everybody was able to beat her.

This is reflected in my own guild experience too. We have a roster of 200 – 300 players, of which about 50 – 75 are regulars. Of these regulars, I only know about 5 of us who have actually beaten Liadri.

Anyway, thanks for the clarification, Josh. I think that having the King Toad/Storm Wizard skins be palette swaps of the Super weapons to be a very fair way of doing it. They are unique so players with the skills can have something concrete to show for it, but at the same time, the ordinary Super skins are basically the exact same thing so if a player has their heart set on the look of one of the weapons, they aren’t left out altogether.

Done about 15 invasions, have 4 Twisted Shoulderpads. I converted one to a PvP version for future storage, and have no idea what to do with the rest.

locoman.1974:

The minion bar lowers when killing minion mobs (watchwork and I think steam creatures, not 100% sure on that). When killing them, even if the event is over, stay and finish killing everything that spawned. Completing the event doesn’t directly count to lower the bar (but you’ll complete it by killing them anyway).

I’m not actually sure about that. I’ve hung around to clean up minions after Twisted portal events have finished, but I did not observe any movement in the bar every time a minion was killed. It’s possible you saw the bar moving due to other players completing Twisted portals elsewhere.

It can’t hurt, I guess, but I think it’s better to simply move on to another portal once the event finishes.

The only other tip I’d offer is that players who want to complete the event announce in Map chat that they’re LFG for similar players. Your group then moves around the map and focuses purely on Twisted portals, since the farmers will be prioritising Aetherblade and Molten events. (Despite claims of farmers deliberately delaying Aetherblade events to farm the Champs, I haven’t actually seen this happen in practice. What usually happens instead is that everybody in a zerg shows up to a Commander icon at an Aetherblade event, and then everybody whacks the Captain to make sure they get kill credit, which ends up killing the Captain anyway.)

The Second/Third waves of Twisted minions are independent of the Aetherblade/Molten event bar, so if you happen to complete the Twisted bar first, you can go help the farmers clean up.

I suspect the crystals disappearing after a short amount of time is the source of why some people are reporting that the 8 crystals achievement is bugged on Liadri. It’s because the crystals are disappearing right as they throw them (or even as the crystal’s flying through the air), so even though the animation plays, Liadri hasn’t actually registered as being hit with a crystal.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Got it in 50-60 tries, 30-40 to get the character and build and 20 to actually defeat her with it.
I never had the feeling It was luck at all. Just wll timed dodges, paying attention to where the shadows fall and making a build that dealt with her cripple and improving my movement speed and dodges.

Took me 86 tries from start to finish. Wasn’t until around ticket 70+ that I really had the hang of things and it was down to me not making mistakes.

However, there IS still an element of luck involved with the Cosmic Orbs, since where they spawn is random. If you’re lucky, it’ll spawn right next to you in Phase 2 and you can destroy it easily, but if you’re unlucky it’ll spawn on the other side of the arena and force you to take a risky detour to destroy it before it pulls you at a very inopportune time.

It can get costly and the time needed to run back just feels like salt rubbed in the wound. I ressed and ran back if there wasn’t anybody around to res me either, but I agree that it would have been better if the NPCs standing at the ring would res you.

I don’t object to the Living Story as a whole; I’m all for ANet continuing to update and grow their world. What I do generally object to is temporary content and the rapid-fire pace of updates. It feels a bit like we’re being shuttled from one story to the next with no real opportunity for a break in between. It’s a bit like being on a constant adrenaline high; it’s exciting for a while, but if that becomes the norm, then it just becomes exhausting. Festivals like Halloween and Wintersday were exciting BECAUSE the open world was relatively quiet and static in between.

Now there’s tons of new content to do every month, so the feeling that “something big is coming” has lost its novelty. At the same time, there’s a feeling that you HAVE to take part if you don’t want to miss out, since the Living Story (so far) has been largely temporary. (I will give credit to ANet here and acknowledge that they’ve taken note of this feeling and are making more of the content return on a regular basis.)

So yes, I would like the Living Story pace to be slowed down a little. Updates can occur every 3 or 4 weeks, and they stay around for a month to give players plenty of time to complete temporary achievements, with 75% of content being permanent additions to the world.

I’d be happy with a repeat of last year’s Halloween, except the part where the fountain gets destroyed. Instead, Levvi has developed a new Mists Portal that allows us to go into the Mad Realm and smack the Mad King around to make sure he isn’t getting too uppity.

Welp, I have 10 Mini Jennahs now. I guess they can go keep my Risen Priests of Balthazar company. XD

^ That’s unlikely to be for a very, very long time. If ever. Personally, my break point will be when it gets to 5g for 100 gems, which is when I’ll start considering buying gems to sell for gold.

And if it ever gets to 10g for 100 gems, that will be the day that I get my Emperor title. XD

I have always supported the idea of being able to upgrade Exotics to Ascended status. This could be done by way of a Mystic Forge recipe where you put:

- Your Exotic item
- 50 Vials of Condensed Mist Essence/10 Globs of Coagulated Mist Essence/etc.
- 1 Eldritch Scroll
- A number of T7 Crafting Mats appropriate to the item, on par with what you’d need to craft an Ascended item from scratch.

And the Mystic Forge spits out an Ascended version of the same Exotic item.

To round it out, make it so you can trade in Laurels for Vials/Globs of Mist Essence.

How often do you actually see people with SAB skins though? Out of maybe every 50 players, I will see one or two with SAB skins. Heck, I see more people with Legendaries than I do with SAB skins!

Ease of obtainability does not necessarily translate into “everybody in the game using it”.

There’s been no word that Ascended weapons/armor would look any different from Exotic skins though.

Yeah, it’s rather apt, considering “Coward!” knocks down any moving (a.k.a. “fleeing”) enemies. XD