Guild Wars 2

Learned my lesson from Halloween/Wintersday and immediately sold all of my stashed Black Lion Chests when the update hit for double their usual value.

According to what I remember from Factions lore, male Tengu have more colourful plumage, while the females are slightly bigger than the males, but have drab plumage.

^ What BananaStand said. Won’t stop me doing the 3 LA JP’s every time I pass through there, but if you’re looking to complete 12 JP’s for the Monthly, then yeah, you’ll need to find 12 unique ones.

I’m not up to that stage of crafting yet, but I believe that Intricate Gossamer Insignias craft Exotic items, while Intricate Silk Insignia craft Rares. So yes, there would be a noticeable difference in stats between the two.

YAY! More shinies!

Unfortunately not, as far as I know. That’s the pose you go into whenever you level up.

You have to admit that the whip being able to snag baubles from inside locked chests was an unintended bug. :P I’m more sad about the upcoming change that will make Queen Bee Dogs immune to the whip.

I’m listening to the Zone 1 music right now. It makes me happy. ^^

True story: I was stuck in a 1 hour traffic jam on the way home last night. Humming the tune to myself kept me peaceful and content despite the circumstances.

I’ve got this problem too, but going to the first shop in Zone 1 didn’t fix it. The feats seem to be awarding for reaching certain locations, so I suspect that there’s probably a hidden point in Zone 3 that I missed as I was using the rainbow bridges to move around. I’m going to do the Master of Baubles/Secrets achievements tonight, so I’ll report back if I find the last feat while doing it.

That really depends on you as a player. It seems about 50% of us love the juvenile cat out of it, while the other 50% think it’s awful and can’t wait for April to be over. If you like jumping puzzles and have fond memories of 80’s era video games, you’ll probably love the Super Adventure Box.

Disappointing, but I’m fortunate in that I’m largely content with the colours I’ve unlocked (which are mostly a mix of Commons and Uncommons). It’s not worth the amount of money (both real and in-game) it would take to unlock those specific colours.

Nothing wrong with speculation, I feel. It’s just people tossing around ideas while waiting for the next installment to come out.

My thoughts:

1. “It would help a lot if the achievement for collecting every Baubel in a stage, tracked them as you collected them. Right now its always stuck on 0%, and jumps to 100% after collecting them all. It would help if we could see how many Baubels were left in a stage.”

Agree with this. I used a guide to find them all, but I can see why it would be frustrating for people who like to do it themselves.

2. “Some jumps, especially the one in World 1 Stage 1 (the secret cave behind the waterfall) are too tight. They are barely doable, even with a running jump. And with the camera backed in a corner like that, that jump is way harder to make than it should be. Please make this jump a bit easier. I am of course talking about the jump that comes after the two jets of water. Try and not make jumps that are exactly at the maximum jump distance.”

This is one of the jumps where you actually need to jump right as you’re about to fall off the edge of the platform (another one is that killer jump with the 3 Baubles that always gets a few players). It’s annoying, but once you figure out which jumps are the problem ones, you can make it every time with no issue.

3. “While we’re at it, fix that camera please. When ever it is too close to the ground, or any object comes in between it and the player, it goes insane. It bounces back and forth constantly, and that’s very nauseating. And it makes platforming way harder than it needs to be.”

Totally agreed. This problem is especially aggravating on larger characters like Norn and Charr.

4. “The big slam attack of the Frog boss is nearly impossible to dodge, which is very frustrating. Even when you know its coming, it still hits you as you dodge-roll. I think this could be made a bit easier.”

You’re not supposed to be standing near King Toad when he’s stomping. Ideally, you run in and hit his amulet, grab a jewel shard, then retreat back to the stone platforms to wait until his tongue attack. You may get hit a few times, but that’s what health potions are for.

If you have a coordinated group, you can have one player standing back as spotter and shouting out which direction he’s going to stomp next. This can make it easier for those in the center to know where to run to.

5. “Fix the targeting! It is really hard to select the frog boss, or the necklace. And if the wrong one is selected, your character will throw every gem into the ground!”

Targeting has always been wonky in GW2, so totally agreed. I usually manually click on the boss himself before throwing the jewel, just to be on the safe side.

6. “Make cinematics skippable please.”

Agreed. The intro cinematic was cute the first 5 or 6 times, but when I’m solo’ing the zone for Bubbles or achievements, I’d like to be able to skip it. Let players who want to watch the cinematic do so, but don’t hold up the others.

7. “Please provide a quick way for people to rejoin the final boss battle after using a continue coin.”

Don’t they respawn back at the last checkpoint, which is right before the boss room?

8. “The bee queens aren’t much of a threat, due to the fact that they can be stun-locked so easily with the whip.”

They’re laughably easy with a group, but I think that’s a good thing because it promotes cooperation. It’s not so easy when you’re solo’ing because the animation delay between using the whip and attacking with the stick is so long that the boss has a chance to come out of the stun and hit you.

9. “Waiting for a character to stop talking, before being able to use their services, is a bit annoying. This mostly applies to Moto when you want to hand him your coin.”

Agreed.

10. “Please don’t make us whip a turtle or crocodile from a sinking lily pad in hazardous water. Those things sink instantly, which means we sacrifice health to hit the kitten animal.”

Agreed, and I even know the exact spot you’re talking about. Now I just sacrifice a Bauble and toss a bomb down to hit the croc from safety.

11. “Allow us to smash pots and furniture by hitting them, instead of picking them up.”

Agreed that this should be an option. Maybe in a future update when we get a more sturdy weapon option like a hammer, as I think it’d be rather hard to smash pots or tables with a stick.

I doubt it has any effect. I was lucky enough to get a Shield skin from the Zone 1 chest and I think our score was less than 20.

Tsch, who cares about grimy refugees dying in some far-off hellhole when there’s shiny baubles to be farmed in a virtual world, right?

“In the end, I see that my hoarding has only brought me sadness.”

- Best quote in the game.

(chitter) (purr)

<3

Unfortunately I already have a few Devourer pets and I think they wouldn’t take kindly to another rival for my Ranger’s affections. XD

Rox’s eyes look much too large to me. That’s my only gripe about my otherwise new favourite Charr NPC.

I managed to solo it with level 80’s who are wearing level 35 gear, so it’s definitely doable even with kitten stats. Rox and Braham can tank fairly well, and the enemy tends to attack them over you, so focus on skills that deal damage and that supplement group healing. The NPCs also follow you in between combats, so don’t hesitate to retreat back after a fight if Rox/Braham’s health is less than 50; wait for them to heal back to max health before going in again.

The Decoder quest is also once per account, so once you’ve done it on one character, you’re safe to destroy it.

I’m not very fond of Braham (or his appearance) myself, but I’m appreciating the chance to get a deeper look at Norn family values and about Eir’s history and motivations.

It’s entirely possible that Borje and Eir had some sort of falling out, but personally, I have the feeling that when Eir became pregnant, she and Borje discussed what would happen next. They were both famous legend-seeking (the equivalent of career-oriented) Norn, and settling down to raise a child would probably mean the end of that. Perhaps they came to a mutual agreement that Borje would become the caregiver, or more likely, in true Norn fashion, the two of them competed to see who would get to raise Braham. Borje won (or lost, depending on what their contest was like), and so he went to Cragstead with Braham.

Eh, I think it’s grindy too, but I’m planning on doing the Daily/JP/Event/Veteran ones instead.

The Norn still don’t believe in sending unprepared youngsters to deal with situations beyond their ability. If that were the case, they’d be happily booting their children into the forest to hunt for themselves as soon as they were weaned. I concur with what the others have said; Eir believes that it would be too risky to try and defend Rudgar’s Steading and that it would be wiser for the survivors to flee to Hoelbrak where they can protect them. In the meantime, they can learn more about their enemy and then mount a retaliatory strike once they have identified their strengths and weaknesses.

There’s a couple of strategies you can use to deal with Periscopes:

1. Use Stability. Depending on how much damage you can deal, you may be able to destroy the periscope in a single use of the skill.

2. Use minions/pets/clones to distract the periscope while you attack it. The periscope can only attack one target at a time, so this makes it the easiest method.

3. Use ranged weapons. 1200 ranged weapons are long enough to allow you to sidestep the blasts just by moving. Otherwise, you’ll have to dodge.

4. The periscope has to “reload” after every 5 or so shots. You can therefore stand at a safe distance until this happens, then charge in to attack the periscope. Repeat as necessary.

Note that attacking periscopes has a chance to trigger an event (usually around 50% health) where Molten Alliance mobs (including one Veteran) pop up around you. If that happens, it’s best to retreat to a safe distance and deal with them first; the periscope makes it too difficult to deal with them.

1UP

Our adventure is now forever!

However, I can see the point of the people who are saying that keeping something like this permanent would diminish the novelty and enjoyment. As such, I would also support the SAB returning annually (during April), bi-yearly or quarterly.

In that event, I ask ANet to at least leave the SAB Zone 1 open so I can go there and have 8-bit picnics whenever I want.

Raine.1394:

Tonight I found out that the chests were only in the open world for one day. This poses a problem for me. They released some nice skins associated with the event and available for baubles. No problem if there is a way to acquire them in the open world. Hey, there are chests all over; it will be no problem to get enough over the course of a month. But no, they have removed the chests.

I’m not into platform games. It’s why I bought an MMO. I do like nice skins, especially staff as there are few nice ones in the game. Why release a nice skin solely into a platformer mini-game that some players will hate? They had a win/win going and then they chose to remove the chests.

The skins (Rare versions that drop from the zone chests) can also be bought off the TP. Prices have fallen quite a bit since the first day, so I imagine it won’t be too hard for you to snag the ones you have your heart set on. It’s really no different from people who want Fused/Halloween skins that only dropped from the chests during the event.

Adding my vote for the SAB to gain a permanent home in Rata Sum. I love this mini-game SOOOOOO much! I seriously can’t stop humming the Zone 1 music; it makes me happy.

Failing that, I’d at least love to see the SAB come back on a regular basis (once a year in April is fine, but I’d prefer to see it more often than that.

I can barely tear myself away from the SAB to do my Dailies… Help!

I’m 32, and I LOVE the SAB! I’m seriously humming the Zone 1 music to myself right now as I’m writing this.

It’s not for everyone; I get that, and there’s nothing wrong with disliking it, but don’t try and tear it down for the people who are enjoying it. The 8-bit chests are now gone from the open world too, so aside from people using the Super weapons, there won’t be anything to spoil your immersion. (And personally, I don’t think the Super weapons look any more out-of-place than weapons made out of solid lava or ice.)

Yes, I did see that post. Nevertheless, I still believe that any economic correction is a side-benefit rather than the main purpose of the change.

I actually have the most fun just exploring, doing events and poking my nose into every corner of the world just to see what I’ll find. One of the most satisfying experiences I ever had in the game was doing the Loreclaw Expanse JP and seeing another guy a little distance ahead of me. He obviously didn’t know I was there, and I lost track of him for a while, but I later caught up with him when he was downed by the Veteran at the end. I helped him up, we took down the boss together, then both of us opened the chest, waved/bowed to each other, and went our separate ways. All without ever saying a word to each other.

Reminds me of my childhood days at the arcade where 2 random kids, total strangers to each other, would pound dozens of coins into the machine to take down Death Adder, then smile at each other as the credits rolled before heading off to another machine.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the chests restricted to one per boss per character per day anyway? (And yes, I know the upcoming update will make it once per account instead of per character.) If so, how does guesting to another server to do the event there count as an exploit? They can still only get one chest per day, regardless of whether they did it on their home server or not. Unless you’re saying that somebody who did all the chests on all of their alts on their own home server is also exploiting?

The main problem that ANet is trying to fix with this update is the severe lag/culling that is occuring from too many people trying to do the world bosses. By limiting the rewards, they are aiming to cut down on the number of people present at each event, because there won’t be any reason to do the event more than once a day.

I seriously doubt that this change is because they were worried about the price of Ectos, as some people (not here) have suggested. More likely, they considered the fact that Ectos would rise as a result of this update, but they consider the trade-off for more playable world boss events to be acceptable.

Transmutation Stones were on sale 2 days ago… Each sale only lasts for 24 hours, so I’m afraid you missed your chance.

Hmm… You may be on to something there, draxy. It could be a heavy armor-wearing, magic-using profession that’s kind of like the offensive variant of the Guardian, with a blend of Orders (Necro), Shouts (Paragon) and Spirit Weapons (Ritualist) to infuse allies with greater fighting ability. While the Guardian is mainly about protecting his allies, this guy could be about driving them into a frenzy so they’re more potent during battle.

However, this also raises the spectre of imbalance that the Paragons had in GW1; too many Paragons made large scale battles a joke, but after their nerf, there wasn’t any point to having more than one Paragon in a party because their abilities didn’t stack.

Jeweler? Just get up to 25 ranks and then craft Jewels (T1 gems + copper filigree). Making jewels counts as a masterwork item.

It’s worth noting that real life law is starting to catch up with virtual worlds. There was a famous case in South Korea where some guy’s roommate logged into his account (I forget which game it was. Maybe Lineage II?), stole an expensive rare sword and sold it for real cash. It wasn’t a great amount of money, as I recall, but the victim took his roommate to court on the basis that he’d spent months, possibly years, of time and effort to get that sword.

And the court agreed with him, and sentenced the roommate to a couple of years jail.

So, yeah, people should start watching their behaviour in online games. For all you know, stealing from your guild bank may one day land you for 5 years in the slammer.

Rifter.6591:

Adine.2184:

Rifter.6591:

IMO they cant blame you for their buggeed coding.

no but they clearly know its bugged and would be exploiting the bug and THAT is what is bannable

If they clearly know its bugged its on them to fix it not on us to avoid it.

That’s not the view ANet takes on it, and the people who were banned for using the Snowflake exploit is clear evidence of that.

I personally don’t think that farming endless mobs from a bugged event would raise red flags because you still have no control over the drops. You could wind getting awesome loot or nothing, but that’s no different from farming anywhere else in the game.

Why does it need to be every 4 months? The chests from the World Bosses already have chances to drop Precursors; just reduce the chance for Precursors from the Karka chest to match World Boss chests and have the Ancient Karka become a timed mega event like Tequatl or the Shatterer.

Centaurs have an unusually long lifespan as well. Ventari dies in 1180 AE, but it’s hinted that when we meet him back in Ventari’s Refuge during Prophecies (in 1072 AE) that he’s already an old (or at least fully mature) centaur. So we’re looking at about an average age of 140, if not more.

The Steam Ogre in Metrica Province does give an achievement though, so I recommend hunting him down at least once.

Notsure.7028:

So ban the IP. If its a known hacker with a provable history then ban his IP. and for every one of these people that you find that you can prove that they are known for hacking and RMT, again keep banning these IP’s.

Or better yet, simply block access to china. In perpetuity. No more Chinese RMT hackers.

Sure. Punish a whole country for the actions of a few. Wouldn’t you be rather peeved if some morons from your country decided to, say, launch a Denial of Service attack on Youtube, and in retaliation, Youtube decided to IP block your entire country from visiting Youtube?

Besides, it’s well known that most hackers use IP spoof software when conducting their activities anyway. IP blocks wouldn’t really do anything to solve the problem.

Price for Silk and most T5 base crafting mats are so dirt cheap because almost everybody and their Krytan Warhound is busy salvaging Rares/Exotics for Ectos. And what does that give? Silk/Thick Leather/Mithril. Which everybody then dumps on the TP, and hardly anybody buys because the market for people wanting those materials is small (and getting smaller by the day as more people reach level 80).

If ANet were to intervene, I’d prefer they did it by creating MF recipes where you can chuck in large quantities of unwanted materials for a chance to get back a random Fine/Rare material of the same tier. For example, perhaps throwing in 250 Silk, 250 Silk, 10 Philosopher’s Stones and 1 Mystic Coin gives you either:

a) 10 – 50 of a random T5 Fine crafting material (80% chance)

b) 1 – 5 random T5 Rare crafting material (20% chance)

Chefs have only two options when it comes to crafting Masterwork items:

1. They can craft Masterwork (or Rare) dyes.

2. They can craft Trays/Feasts.

Both options can get fairly expensive, although you may be able to unlock a Feast recipe, buy up a bunch of the required food for cheap on the TP, and pump out a number of Trays that way.

As a MM with Vampiric Master, I pick Bloodthirst every time. All those little nibbles from my pets adds up!

emikochan.8504:

Minipets, pets and necro minions exist – server resource wise they take just as much. 1 more summon is nothing.
Are you implying that: if everyone played a ranger/necro it would break the server ?

Minipets aren’t as much of an issue as they are invulnerable and do not take part in combat, minimizing the data they send up to the server.

But yes, if you had a Group Event with 30 people involved, and then compared that to the same Group Event where all 30 people were Rangers with pets or Necromancers with minions, I guarantee you that lag and performance would be noticeably worse than with the first group.

That said, ANet IS introducing new options to help reduce culling, so changing summons might be feasible after all once the changes go through.

Midnight Gypsy.9360:

But how did a Largos get all the way to Snowden Drifts? That’s high up in the mountains. He would have to travel on land for days to get up there. So clearly Largos can reach any place in Tyria if they can get up there.

We will have to go underwater to fight DSD. All of this underwater combat and emphasis on underwater will be there anyway and the Largos are just adding on to that, not the reason for it. His Army is made up of underwater creatures so I don’t think we would be fighting him on land. So really if you want to argue against emphasis on underwater it would have to be against DSD, not the Largos.

Waypoints? Hehe, I don’t know. There’s also the Unseen Hunter in Brisban Wildlands which doesn’t connect to the ocean either. Maybe the Largos have a means of teleporting themselves from one body of water to another, which I would consider perfectly acceptable. My greater concern, again, is how a Largos would cope with an extended sojourn on land (or even if it’s possible for them to do so), since we never encounter a Largos any significant distance from the water.

We don’t know if we’ll actually confront the DSD as a combatable foe. For all we know, ANet may simply come out and say that the Largos managed to find a way to defeat the DSD all by themselves (or perhaps they allied with the other underwater races like the krait and quaggan), leaving us to focus on the landbound dragons.

I should probably reiterate that if ANet does end up making the Largos a playable race, I’ll accept it. I would rather that the Tengu, Krait, Skritt or even the Kodan become playable first, but ANet will make their own decision. I’ll adapt.

Chessrook.8643:

That just leaves the Dervish, an armored warrior with a scythe and a focus on enchantments.

Take out the scythe and that basically sounds like a Guardian, with boons instead of enchantments. The Avatar transformations, which were the Dervish’s other major defining characteristic, also got subsumed into the Human racial skills. Finally, the Dervish’s focus on veneration of the Six Gods means it would be out of place on any race apart from Humans.

I don’t know what a 9th profession would be, but it would have to be generic enough that it could be freely used by any race (including any new races that might be introduced).

There’s also Bramblethorn. It’s a random MF drop from combining 4 staves, I think. It looks similar, but not identical, to the Warden Staff.

There’s also Kudzu and the Living Short Bow (which is only accessible as a HoM reward from GW1). Both would be excellent weapons for a Sylvari Ranger.

Pretty sure you can’t accomplish this in-game due to game restrictions, but as far as story-wise, it would be an easy matter to lure a giant into chasing you over the edge of a ravine (which was hidden behind a thick hedge), but you duck out of the way at the last minute. Giant can’t stop in time and goes over.

Oglaf.1074:

That’s not the kind of size he is talking about…

Oh, I knew that, but genitalia size would also shrink commensurately with the decrease in size of the Norn partner. If a near human-sized male Norn were to have as big a “sword” as a gigantic Norn, he’d probably pass out every time he had an erection because of the sudden decrease in blood circulating in his body.