Guild Wars 2

Passiflora and Blooming Passiflora are unique in that they are limited to 15 nodes for Passiflora per character, and 3 nodes for Blooming Passiflora per account. They seem to reset after 24 hours similar to node farms, and not during the Daily reset. However, I think you can bypass this limit by guesting to different servers.

Huh… I hadn’t considered Canach joining the new Destiny’s Edge. That would be an interesting addition, although I think his dark, tortured, brooding anti-hero status would overshadow all of the other characters, except maybe Kasmeer.

I really liked the one about Canach too. Poor, poor Blingg. XD At least we now know where Subdirector NULL comes from.

The Reef Drakes apply confusion with several of their skills. When first aggroed, they create a mirage-like field around them, before using their tail sweep. This creates 1 stack of Confusion (2 if you’re right in melee range). They also have a screech move which pulls you to them, inflicts 1 stack of Confusion, and Stuns you for 2 seconds (this is the move I hate the most).

Finally, they have a breath move where they create a red circle on the ground that lingers for several seconds. Each second you stand in this field inflicts 2 stacks of Confusion on you, and it can rapidly add up. The worst scenario is when they create this field, then pull you to them so you’re stuck in the field while Stunned.

Long story short, stay as far away as you can from Reef Drakes when killing them.

I’m with you on this, Gabby, but I agree that our character’s hands are tied by ANet story-writing. What’s more interesting is that there’s apparently an achievement whereby our characters will need to safely transport Consortium contracts (gee, I wonder which ones?) to the ship for evacuation. I’m not sure if that’s something I want to do, but then again, ANet could always surprise us.

Noll: “The contracts are safely aboard! Those settlers won’t be getting out of them now! Let’s get on board and go!”
-ship blows up and sinks due to a Crazed Karka Queen jumping out of the sea and landing on it-
Noll: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

PopeUrban.2578

Cosmetic rewards are Trophies. Difficulty should exclude people from a limited selection of trophy items. These items don’t affect your build, and only serve as an indication that you were able to complete some of the most challenging content in the game. I don’t see why people have a problem with that. What’s so horrible about people having things you don’t? What’s so bad about having an incentive to improve if you really really want that particular cosmetic thing? Why is “Just buy gems” a suitable alternative to getting better at the game? That’s like buying a professional championship trophy and skipping the season altogether. Sure, you have the trophy, but it’s lost all of its meaning.

I see where you’re coming from, but I’m of the belief that a player should be able to acquire the exact look they want for their character without necessarily having to do activities they don’t particularly enjoy. If somebody wants a bow that shoots rainbow unicorns or a gun that shoots confetti just because it suits their character concept, I don’t believe we should deny it to them just because they don’t like WvW or don’t like dungeons. Likewise, if a player who joins now sees the Molten Gauntlets and goes, “Man, that would look AWESOME with my armor set”, I don’t see why we shouldn’t let him buy a set from a player who has one, but hates the appearance (like I do. My Molten Gauntlet ticket is still sitting unused in my bank).

I’m not advocating making it EASIER to get these cosmetic options, just that there should be more avenues to do it. That’s actually why I DO support Legendaries being up for sale on the TP. If every kind of skin can be bought and sold on the TP, supply and demand will take care of it from there.

As far as having unique rewards to show off your participation, we can use titles or badges like the 100% completion badge to showcase player accomplishments. It doesn’t need to be armor or weapon skins.

The memo in the fortress at Driftglass is new. There is also new dialogue between Noll and Kiel at Pearl Islet. (There might be more, but I haven’t found any yet.)

I’ll have to take another visit to Cragstead and North Nolan Hatchery to see what else has changed.

Yep. Just like how some people are hopeless at PvP or Crab Toss. JP’s require a certain skill set to do, and not all players have it.

Skipping Stones was extremely annoying at first because of having to learn the timing of the vents, but once you have that down you can run it fairly easily. The only really annoying thing is having to run/swim all the way back to the start if you fall on the 2nd or 3rd areas of the JP. It would have helped if the JP was designed so that falling in those sections means you just restart from that portion, similar to how Spekk’s Lab and Goemm’s Lab have checkpoints.

Unintended bug/oversight. Will be fixed in an upcoming patch.

It’s not broken. I’m living in Australia so I’m playing under a minimum 300 – 400ms ping handicap, yet I can still win most of my matches. The game is loads of fun to the right people (of whom I’m one). I get that you don’t like the game, and it won’t be for everyone, but it’s no more a misfit for the Dailies than Keg Brawl is.

It does indeed. Thanks for the answer, Gabby!

^ What Konig said. I’m certain that there are occasional inter-racial relationships in the game world. It’s just that it’s not spotlighted by ANet. The one rule we have is that the different races can’t interbreed with each other. Other than that, feel free to go wild with your roleplaying.

While I support your suggestion, Malafide, I’m surprised you picked DR. It’s by far the most populated city (on Tarnished Coast anyway) at any time, on par with Lion’s Arch. In contrast, the Grove and Black Citadel are usually eerily empty. Rata Sum got mega-packed during the SAB days, but it’s back to being a ghost town, while Hoelbrak pretty much got the same treatment during F&F.

A few others have basically said what I feel is going on. All these convenience items are there for the people who are buying gems with real money. They are the players with the disposable income to spare, and have limited time, who are willing to buy these to speed things up/make their game more convenient. Players who buy gems with gold will never buy these disposable items; they’re meant for a different market.

I’ve bought all of my gems with cash myself, but I only ever buy gem store items with permanent benefits (extra bag slots, extra bank slots, Molten picks etc.) The one exception to this rule are Transmutation Crystals, which I buy a few of whenever they go on sale, since I know I will need a fair number of them once I start equipping my characters with level 80 Exotics.

For me? I wouldn’t pay more than 1g for any dye. I’m not enough of a fashion designer to have a particular specific colour for my armor. If I want a dark colour, and I find that Ash or Ebony looks similar enough to Black or Abyss in giving the same sort of colour scheme, I’ll go with Ash/Ebony.

Obviously the Consortium slipped Evon Gnashblade a big sack of shiny, shiny gems for the opportunity.

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

This issue will go away when people STOP BELIEVING THERE’S A FAVORABLE / REASONABLE CHANCE TO GET WHAT YOU WANT. As with gambling in a casino, expecting to win the jackpot is unreasonable and will only help addict the gambler and destroy their finances. These RNG boxes are a much smaller scale gamble, but the belief you will beat the odds will only hurt you in the end. If you happen to get lucky, remember that you got lucky.

Unfortunately, that will never happen. People are hard-wired to think that they will somehow beat the odds. They can hear stories every day about car fatalities yet they somehow think that it will never happen to them because they are safe drivers/better-skilled drivers/not impatient drivers. Yet the odds of being in at least one car accident in your life is close to 100% (even if you never drive anywhere, the odds of your bus/train being involved in an accident is also fairly high).

Ironically, it it wasn’t for the risk-takers, human society wouldn’t be where we are today. It is to the good of the species that there are always people willing to take the chance for a big reward down the track.

Vol.5241:

That’s why I’m stock piling on copper doubloons! Several months back I bought several stacks at about 3g a piece. The risk is minimal and the price hasn’t dropped much since then.

As soon as they release a transmutation recipe it’ll go waaay up.

Heh, interesting investment gamble. Just hope that ANet doesn’t introduce transmute recipes, but they change the requirement of Gift of Quicksilver to Platinum Doubloons instead of Silver at the same time. (Hey, they’re both silvery metals!)

The Largos are individuals as much as any of the other races are. I wouldn’t put it past some Largos to be so in love with the kill that they hunt sentient races that they don’t have bounties for just for the sport. The Unseen Hunter might be an outcast or criminal from his own race.

Call me paranoid, but I’d like some confirmation from ANet if the “massive final onslaught” on the Southsun settlements will be a one-day, one-time only event similar to what happened with Halloween/Lost Shores. The text used in the description is a bit vague, and if it IS going to be a one-time only special world event, I’d like as early a warning as possible so we can start clearing our schedules.

Huh, good point Gabby. I interpreted Robert’s post to mean that the Solo Instance and Group Instance dungeons are different, with different endings (similar to Story Mode and Explorable Mode for the standard dungeons), but he could just as well have been referring to the grand finale battle against the Crazed Karka Queen.

Which, by the way, I’m still waiting on confirmation on from ANet that it’s not a one-time, one-day only event.

I’d say the Amulet/Keepsake/Ring are unique accessories (Ascended? Doubtful, but it could happen. I’m betting on them being Rares or Exotics) that will only be introduced in the May 28th update. They will be rare (maybe extremely rare) drops from the event reward chests and from Crab Toss, and will probably not drop from the Crates, since they weren’t mentioned in the description.

PopeUrban.2578:

This is essentially the same thing. You’re rigging for achievements, and disrupting play for people that actually want to play the game.

I’ll agree that it’s extremely annoying to get stun-locked by players with Planks/Fishing Rods (although in my cases, it was a few griefers who wanted to annoy the kitten out of other players), but if you end up in a game where people are obviously trying to get the achievements, why not just leave and rejoin? There’s no penalty for leaving early, and you can find another game where they’re playing normally. Let them do their own thing, and we’ll go do our own thing in another arena.

Firebaall, I’d expect Crab Toss to be the 11th Daily task at least until the Southsun event is over. So that’s 2 more weeks (possibly more) of crustacean carrying.

Conner.4702

I’ve gotten that message many times before getting the achievement which I only got this morning.

Oh? Maybe I was just very lucky and the entire enemy team got steamrolled when that message popped up and I got the achievement. Still, I’m quite sure that there was still 1 guy left alive when I turned around to look…

It may be that the message pops up when you get 3 Eliminations while holding the Crab, but you need to down a higher number, like 5 or 6, for the achievement to trigger. I’m still certain that it doesn’t need to be all at once.

In any event, I agree that getting this achievement requires a hefty dose of luck, and I’d prefer it if ANet didn’t make any more achievements like this in the future.

PopeUrban.2578

The idea that the “main reward” should be overcoming it is a silly one. If that were true then how about giving no reward at all for the solo instance? I mean, if the “main reward” is overcoming it and unlocking the group instance.

In fact, I’m absolutely a believer in unique looking loot for harder difficulties, like the fractal weapon drops. You shouldn’t be required to do harder content to get mechanical power just to do harder content (AKA the raid progression/annoyance model) but there should absolutely exist status symbols that can only be obtained by doing difficult things, whether they be skins, titles, whatever.

The pervading concept that everyone should have easy access to every reward ever is flawed. Everyone should have easy access to power but cosmetic rewards are a different matter. There should exist shinies that are only obtainable by a few players, as long as these aren’t the majority of all items in the game.

I actually wouldn’t mind getting no reward at all except an achievement for completing the solo instance (outside of standard drops from mobs, of course). It’s obviously something that’s meant to be played for the story.

As to the rest of your stance, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I believe that every player should have the opportunity to obtain any type of cosmetic skin in the game. If the skin is locked behind difficult content/RNG, then the player should also be able to buy it outright from the gem store or off the TP. If Legendaries, the supposed ultimate trophy for players, can be bought on the TP, why not anything else? More skilled or dedicated players will probably obtain the skin FASTER, but I believe a casual player should be able to obtain a Legendary through, say, 1 – 3 years of playing. (And in all honesty, they probably can, if they save wisely. I’m slowly saving up for a Legendary one day, but I don’t expect to get one for at least a few years.)

The SAB did an excellent job of offering multiple avenues to obtain the Super skins; you can try and get lucky from the chests, buy it off the TP, or just accumulate tokens to buy an account-bound version. I would prefer it if other cosmetic skins were to receive the same treatment.

From reading the above, I conclude that this applies purely to people who are buying items on the TP for cheap, and reselling it for a profit. The people who undercut by a significant margin (like me) are players who happened to get the item as a drop and just want a higher profit than what we’d get at the vendor. Therefore, it doesn’t matter to us how much we undercut, as long as we get something that’s higher than vendor price (after sales tax). By all means, buy our cheaper item to resell yourself if you wish. Just bear in mind that it’s in our long-term interest to drive prices down, not keep them at some equilibrium for flippers to profit from.

This is why I always price my items at midway between the buy and sell price. It’s still high enough to give me a nice profit mark-up over the low-ball bids, but it’s low enough that I’m unlikely to be undercut by other sellers who are reluctant to give up a chunk of their profits. (And if my item happens to be bought up by someone who wants to relist it at a higher price, more power to them. I’ve got my money and I can go back to playing.)

^ What Rainzar said. Although it still baffles me that there’s no transmute recipe for Copper Doubloons → Silver Doubloons. (Or Gold Doubloons → Platinum, but there’s not much demand for those anyway.)

Personally speaking, I see this as a good thing. A general lowering of prices across the board is good for keeping the playing field balanced between veteran players and new players.

The fact that Canach was wearing Molten gloves was a dead giveaway that he’s somehow connected to the events of Flame & Frost. Perhaps the same “snake-nosed” person that encouraged the dredge and Flame Legion to ally in the first place approached Canach, gave him some gifts to seal their friendship, and then encouraged him to seek vengeance against the Consortium (while providing him the wildlife-aggression spores to do so).

Whoever this Personal Nemesis is, it seems like she’s intent on destabilizing the Tyrian continent. First by throwing the Norn and Charr regions into disarray, and now by possibly driving the Karka back to Lion’s Arch. Whether this is at the behest of one of the Elder Dragons (she is an agent or even a Dragon Champion in disguise), or a foreign power (a Canthan sleeper agent sent here by the Emperor to cause internal discord so that the invading army will have an easier time conquering when it gets here? Or a Mordent Crescent agent of Palawa Joko doing the same?), or even out of twisted personal reasons (an ancient Margonite survivor who still thinks she hears Abaddon whispering to her and carries out what she believes to be “his” orders) remains unknown for now.

They also seem to have had their drop rates from Passiflora greatly increased. I’ve gotten about 4 or 5 Passion Flowers so far just from harvesting normal Passiflora.

Instigator chest farming is nice for chances at Rares/Exotics, but not so good for Crates. The OP is correct in that you’ll have better chances at those by just farming regular mobs. However, most of the Crate stuff isn’t exceptionally valuable unless you get lucky and get a mini Kasmeer/Faren. All in all, farm with whatever suits you.

Personally I got one Crate from a random Young Karka I killed while on my way to an Ancient Sapling. Nothing but crafting materials in it.

I’m enjoying the Southsun content. It’s manic and sure, most of it consists of an unending zerg running between Driftglass Springs and Kiel’s Waypoint, but people seem to be having fun. Crab Toss is loads of fun, I laughed at the convos between Kasmeer/Faren and Tengvi/Job-o-Tron, and the new backpack skins are absolutely beautiful!

The tooltip is actually not correct anymore. The Friday patch changed Crabtacular so it’s much easier to achieve now. Previously, you had to be holding the crab and be alive while every other opponent was dead. This pretty much meant everybody else needed to be steamrolled by Karka, which was next to impossible to achieve if you had someone who was AFK or a halfway decent Crab Toss opponent.

Now, all that needs to happen is you need to be holding the Crab, and you get 3 Eliminations while holding it. If you see the “<X> eliminates the opposition!” message pop up, you’ve just qualified for the Crabtacular achievement. The 3 Eliminations don’t all need to occur at the same time; I’ve gotten 2 Eliminations at once, then a third went down about 4 or 5 seconds later, and gotten the message. In all the situations I’ve gotten the message, there was at least 2 or 3 opponents still alive on the field too.

Osi.3504:

While surfing the achievement page on wikia, I noticed in the tips: section that it stated if you don’t earn a Living Story achievement when the event ends it will be removed off your list.

Is this true? I do not know…

What is the reason of this if it is true? Probably so people can’t get the achievments in the future like you’re asking… or because ANET doesn’t want people looking at achievements they can never earn again.

I actually think this would make a lot of completionists happy. This way, they don’t have to stare at an uncompletable achievement for the rest of all time every time they open their Hero bar.

Olba.5376:

Oh dear… The Far Shiverpeaks Yakslappers and the Southsun Crabgrabbers sound like pretty good sports teams.

Pfft. I’m a loyal Ascalonian Moapuncher all the way!

PopeUrban.2578:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

timidobserver.7925:

Sounds good to me as long as the reward for the harder version is better. It would kind of make the group dungeon pointless if you could just go solo easy mode through it alone and get the same rewards.

go away elitist :P

I don’t think that’s elitist. I think that makes sense. Harder content should, logically, equal better rewards. Without increased rewards there is no point in increased difficulty.

Not true. The main reward for increased difficulty should be the satisfaction in successfully challenging yourself and overcoming it. I’m not saying that beating Hard Mode shouldn’t give greater rewards, but it should be in the form of increased Flowers/Karka Shells/coin, and not in the form of a unique skin that isn’t obtainable otherwise.

In any event, I’m looking forward to Last Stand, both the solo and group dungeons. I’m a little concerned about the “big monster” on June 5th though. Is this going to be another one-time event similar to the Lost Shores finale, Robert? I’m hoping it isn’t, because I imagine there will be many players worldwide who will miss out on it due to scheduling conflicts.

Refugee Malia and Refugee Lawta are both in North Nolan Academy. Malia is in the devourer hatchling pit, while Lawta is standing near a group of Blood Legion soldiers.

Refugee Barcas and Refugee Biron were still in Lion’s Arch at the conclusion of F&F, but said they was thinking about going to Southsun Cove. They’re probably enroute there, if they haven’t shown up somewhere already.

No idea where Refugee Kirk is.

There was also a Refugee Henrika in Lion’s Arch. She’s since become a dialogue NPC with Kiel where she reveals that she helped Canach spread his wildlife toxins on Southsun.

You can also just wait until Last Stand is released. Completing one of the remaining 5 achievements should be enough to net you 25/25 and get the Sclerite Karka Shell.

As far as the Tengu go, this is how I imagine their customisation will be set up:

Plumage – The equivalent of “hair”. The Tengu are unique in that the males have brighter and more colourful plumage. Female Tengu are bigger than the males, but have drab plumage. (As such, it’s a reversal from the other races where the males are invariably bigger than the females.)

Beak – The equivalent of “face”. The different Tengu species have different styles of beaks, and within those beaks you could have shorter or longer beaks, more/less mandibles, and chipped/damaged beaks.

Feather patterns – The equivalent of tattoos/Sylvari glow. Players can choose a variety of feather patterns like dappled, sweeping or just a flat single colour, and dye it accordingly.

The player can then choose which ancestry of Tengu they hail from (Caromi, Avicara, Angchu or Quetzal). They also choose one of the Four Houses of the Winds (East, West, North or South) to belong to, and these choices determine their initial personal storyline.

I don’t really know enough about the Largos to speculate on their customisation or storyline.

Never seen any tonics drop from Crab Toss, and I’ve probably played close to 90 or 100 matches by now. I’ve gotten about 3 Exotics, 4 Rares and a whole bunch of Greens and Karka Shells from it, but no tonics. (Or Passion Flowers too, for that matter.)

Passion Flowers seem to be hovering around the 20s mark now. That’s on par with Ecto! You’d be silly not to hit the Blooming nodes whenever you visited Southsun.

What were prices like before the introduction of the Blooming Passiflora nodes? I didn’t really pay much attention to them before.

Torqueblue basically has it. Because it’s easier to craft Jewelry than it is to craft other items (which are gated by Fine crafting materials), ANet needed to put in the Ecto requirement to prevent people from creating an infinite loop of salvaging high level Rare Jewelry for Ecto.

Why does it matter if everybody else on the server has a Legendary? Is your enjoyment of your Legendary really diminished by the fact that other people have one too? If your goal is just to have something that nobody else has, or that nobody else is using, then you may as well just run around in a super ugly suit of mismatched armor while wielding Bandit/Ogre/Dredge weapons. That way you can be pretty sure that nobody else will be using the same combination as you.

In any event, the “prestige” of Legendary Weapons vanished the moment they went up for sale on the TP. Now you can never be certain if the other person farmed their own Legendary or just hit the credit card up to buy it. But if you made your own Legendary, the sense of satisfaction in completing the journey is something that nobody else can take away from you.

In short, don’t care what other people think about you, and don’t care about what other people are using. Just equip your character in a way that suits YOUR sensibilities and preferences.

The Giver’s stuff will probably return with this year’s Wintersday. I personally hope that Sentinel gear comes back too (and that it becomes permanent), but I purchased enough Azurite and insignia (didn’t bother with inscriptions) for a stockpile to last me for a bit.

Personally I would recommend crafting as you go. The different crafting tiers correspond to the quality of the crafting materials you gain as you journey into higher level maps, so if you wait until you reach level 80, you might find yourself having to return to lower level maps to get the mats you need.

Don’t bother trying to craft new gear to use, however. You gain levels fairly rapidly in GW2, so odds are your crafted gear will be obsolete within a very short period of time. Craft gear to gain experience, and possibly for their skins.

Yep, I can confirm he’s still there and still sells the picks after his event.

Of course, I don’t need them anymore with my Molten picks, but the option is good to have for players who don’t have it.

I don’t have any concrete answers, but I strongly suspect the finale of Last Stand in Southsun will be in a dungeon. I’ve already pinpointed the likely entrance (a vent wall inside Ember Passage), and the descriptions of the coming achievements are strong indications that it will be a dungeon. There will be traps to evade, 2 mini-bosses (Canach and Subdirector NULL) and a Crazed Karka Queen final boss.

It IS possible that the Karka Queen will be a world boss event similar to the Ancient Karka, but given the lagtastic experience Lost Shores was and the overwhelmingly negative feedback ANet got about it, I doubt they’d repeat the experience.

I’m not a fan of locking cosmetic skins behind RNG either, but I accept that it’s the best compromise ANet could have come up with. The skins don’t grant players unfair advantages in the game, and ANet has to keep the money flowing in to pay the bills. These RNG microtransactions are obviously incredibly profitable, or they wouldn’t keep doing it.

If you really feel that strongly against it, don’t buy it. Tell all of your friends not to buy into the chests. If enough people stop buying the chests, ANet will stop making them. (Of course, the problem is that enough people obviously do feel lucky enough to take their chances that this will probably never happen.)

Personally, I liked the SAB system the best. You have chances for a skin drop from farming the dungeon, but you can also accumulate tokens to buy the skin of your choice. It’s the best of both worlds, and I hope that ANet gives more consideration towards structuring future content to that standard.