Guild Wars 2

Karka used to count towards their own special title track (“Karka Slayer”) during the November monthly, so it’s likely they’re considered their own species.

It wouldn’t be unique either; Worgs are apparently counted as their own unique creature type despite looking like Wolves.

hithlain.4385:

Zaxares.5419:

But there’s already a Veteran Fleshreaver guarding that node. Plus two other normal Fleshreavers. (And some spiders might also join in the fun if you didn’t kill them before taking on the Fleshreavers). Having them be +1 level higher than the player just seems excessive.

So go there with someone, not alone, hey this is a MMO RPG

Yesterday I killed a champion mob with someone and NPC, I was kiting the mob while the other one, a warrior, revived the NPC, it took a lot of time but we made it.

GW2 can be done solo for the most of the content, but you do not have to. If you can’t handle something alone, just bring friends along…

Well, if it was a Champion guarding that Rich Silver Vein, yeah I’d agree. It’s obviously not intended for someone to reach it solo. But Veterans are generally intended to be soloable by players, even with a few additional mobs in the way. It’s just an anomaly because there’s no other areas (in the newbie-ish maps anyway) where the enemy is actually higher level than you and there’s no nearby zone that bumps up your level to match.

In any event, the fight is definitely doable if you have even one other person with you. The trouble comes when you’re playing at night during a period of low activity and there’s no other players in the area to help you.

At least yours still shows up. My Ele’s headgear is completely invisible. (He’s an Asura though.)

Arcalithe.6057:

Zaxares.5419:

My female human has dark red hair. :P

Mine does too, simply because it seems to fit a mesmer.

For me the choice was actually done for roleplaying reasons. My Mesmer is the great-granddaughter of my Warrior from GW1 (who can be imagined as a red-haired Conan. XD), and she inherited her great-grandfather’s hair colour.

I have no objections to Ascended items being changed to make them tradable on the TP. It would give players who don’t like Fractals or WvW (assuming that WvW will continue to be an integral part of completing monthlies) more chances to get Ascended items, and give regular Fractals players a chance to earn more from doing Fractals. (There are complaints from Fractals players who have a dozen or more Ascended rings and nothing to use them on.)

The drawback to this would be that everybody would simply buy Ascended rings/amulets and bypass Exotics altogether, effectively gutting Jewelry as a crafting skill. However, this can be rectified by introducing new crafting/MF recipes to allow Exotic items to be upgraded to Ascended tier.

You can sometimes find a normal Giant in Toxal Bog in the Brisban Wildlands. He’s a lot easier to kill than the Champion in Diessa Plateau, but I think he may be brought there by the Chaos magic, so there’s no guarantee he’ll be there. (I saw him on my Ele, but not on my Necro when they both passed through the area.)

I agree that it’s very annoying. Especially since many events have other events as pre-triggers, so one broken event can cause a cascade of other failures that result in a whole part of the zone going “dead”. ANet did say that they are including fixes for several broken event chains (like the Shadow Behemoth) in the January update, so hopefully this will fix many of these issues.

@laokoko: Actually, I have never done Fractals even once. I’m still too busy getting my characters through PvE! I only used Vials/Globs of Mist Essence in my example since that seems to be the key ingredient in crafting Ascended items. As long as there was a way for other characters to obtain those items (through Laurels, or maybe on the TP), I think it’s a fair system.

@Naekuh: And this is the other side of the equation. Regular Fractal players have so many Ascended Rings they don’t know what to do with them! I’d support making Ascended Rings sellable on the TP, or perhaps salvageable into Ecto/Vials of Mist Essence.

CJ said that Achievement Points will most likely be translated into a different kind of currency down the track, unrelated to Laurels. As part of the design process, they are looking at how to award this currency in a fair manner for people who may have completed infinite achievements (e.g. Agent of Entropy) multiple times, but without giving them an unfair advantage over people who haven’t (since it raises the spectre of people exploiting this by buying up thousands of cheap items on the TP now and just salvaging them all).

Being a Charr does not preclude wanting to look after the land/use it in a sustainable manner. In Plains of Ashford, there’s an old Charr who says he and his warband were assigned to watch over a lake, make sure it wasn’t overfished, culling drake numbers when they grew too many, and fighting off Flame Legion who wanted to pollute the lake with tar. In Diessa Plateau, there’s another warband who’s in charge of keeping the lake clean so the Black Citadel has pure drinking water, and they regularly fight off Flame Legion who want to turn the lake into tar.

From these examples, it can be reasoned that the Charr have a vested interest in not over-exploiting their resources, and Charr Rangers are the ones called upon to shepard the land and look out for its health. Nothing says you can’t play a Ranger who loves and protects the land.

Yes, Mystic Coins and Karma Jugs will still be given out for successful Dailies/Monthlies. The Laurels are an additional reward given out on top of those.

I didn’t say anything about being able to craft it “cheaply”. ANet doesn’t even need to create craftable Ascended items. All I’m looking for is a way to UPGRADE existing Exotic items to Ascended tier. 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
- 10 Philosopher’s Stones/3 Crystals
- 1 Bottle of Elonian Wine

And the Mystic Forge spits out an Ascended version of the same Exotic item. Like all Ascended items, the stats on the item are now fixed and can’t be changed, so you need to make sure that the item you want to Ascend is correct and properly runed/sigil’ed in every aspect.

To round it out, make it so you can trade in Laurels for Vials/Globs of Mist Essence, and you’d have a system that would please just about everybody.

Go ahead and complete your monthly. CJ has stated that Laurels will NOT be included in the January monthly. Laurels will only start being given out in February.

athuria.2751:

(edit: although I do know there are a couple Norn in Wayfarer Foothills who make skeevy pick-up lines towards any female characters).

Now that you mention it, I remember that guy! It’s Lodge Keeper Kevach, at Kevach’s Homestead, and yes, he did put the moves on my female Human and female Sylvari as well while I was there.

Hmm… If it IS going to be a volcanic area, could that mean a new map (released in later parts of the story arc)? Is there any room north of Diessa Plateau that could allow for a new map to be squeezed in next to Frostgorge Sound?

Dempsey.8760:

Zaxares.5419:

I posted my concerns about this in the Flame and Frost thread too. Without some way for Jewellers to upgrade Exotic rings/amulets/trinkets to Ascended versions, they’ll ultimately get left behind. Why would you ever want to level Jeweller to 400 (outside of crafting Legendary Gifts), spending a ton of money and time in gathering materials, when you can just save up your Laurels and get a ring/amulet that is undeniably better than ANYTHING you could ever make with Jeweller?

A valid point, however, exotics still offer one thing over ascended gear, and that is min/maxing.
“jewels” can’t be changed in ascended gear. So unless they make it so they can or the make an amulet for every combination exotic users can still take advantage of this.
I know it may not be a very important thing to some people but with ascended rings/back myself I know I have 10 precision that is essentially being wasted, I only use them because of resist :/

Also a valid point, but we don’t know how many different Ascended amulets will be available, or whether additional Ascended rings will be made available via the Laural merchant. (I imagine that over time more Ascended items will be introduced that will eventually cover all of the different attribute spreads one could craft through Jeweller anyway.)

There are only seven different jewels (nine if you also count Snowflakes and the ridiculously rare Passiflora) that can be put into jewellery, and considering the wide variety of rings and backslots we got with Fractals, I think we could hit that limit very easily.

I posted my concerns about this in the Flame and Frost thread too. Without some way for Jewellers to upgrade Exotic rings/amulets/trinkets to Ascended versions, they’ll ultimately get left behind. Why would you ever want to level Jeweller to 400 (outside of crafting Legendary Gifts), spending a ton of money and time in gathering materials, when you can just save up your Laurels and get a ring/amulet that is undeniably better than ANYTHING you could ever make with Jeweller?

Out of curiosity, what was wrong with “Crown” that it needed to be changed?

I’m personally interpreting it to mean that we won’t see Jormag or Primordus themselves during Flame and Frost, but that they or their minions probably have a hand in what’s going on. There are several instances of Corrupted Ice falling from the sky and creating new breeding grounds for Icebrood, and the Destroyers have traditionally always erupted onto the surface following earthquakes and other seismic activity, which matches the description in the teaser about how the sky and earth have turned against civilians.

It’s quite likely that this will be one of the new daily/monthly tasks introduced in the February-March update.

Now if only the Bank paid interest for you electing to keep your money in their vaults…

Grend.6251:

Perhaps I am among the minority, but as a player who spent my first 400 hours in game saving for the Triforge amulet, I am worried all my hard work will be for nothing once these new ascended amulets are introduced. Does anyone feel the same?

You’re not alone. I’ve been waiting (probably in vain) for ANet to announce a way that Exotics can be upgraded to Ascended tier items. The introduction of Ascended items basically kills the Crafting disciplines because there is no way that crafters can make items that are as powerful as Ascended items. Weapons and Armor still have a place in that their skins are still visible and players might buy items just to transmute their appearance, but Jewelers are completely out of luck. Why would you even bother levelling Jeweler to 400 (outside of crafting Legendary Gifts) and amassing crafting materials when you can just save up your Laurels and buy an Ascended ring or amulet instead?

I won’t be buying one, but I do think they are cute.

The game client still has to report to the server about your character’s current position and what you’re doing (the server can’t predict in what direction you’re going to run next, for example, or whether you’re going to cast Fireball or Flame Burst on an Elementalist). Most teleport hacks in games involve using a hacked game client that sends false data to the server about your current location.

It HAS to be option #2. Just think about it; if it were option 1, you would have situations where you could be playing on, say, Tarnished Coast, log off for the night, and then try and log back on in the morning only to see that you’ve been moved to the Sanctum of Rall server because TC is currently full. Obviously that doesn’t happen, so it has to be option #2.

This is why you can have servers with a listed population of High or Full, but if you transfer to it, it’s like a ghost town. That’s because despite having a lot of players listed as having that server as their “home”, most of those players have since quit, but their accounts are still listed as being on that server.

Personally I’m against Hard Mode, because of the very real potential that it will fracture the player base more. There is already a limited pool of people who run dungeons/Fractals, with the rest going to WvW/PvP and some just sticking to PvE because dungeons are already beyond what they can handle. Creating another difficulty mode will just split the pool of dungeoneers in two and encourage more cookie-cutter builds. (It’s already happening for higher levels of Fractals, from what I hear.) I don’t want a repeat of what happened in GW1 where if you weren’t running a specific PvX build (e.g. an assassin who wasn’t a Perma Shadow Form tank), you would NEVER find a group willing to take you into FoW/UW/[insert end-game content here].

It happened after Wintersday ended on 3rd Jan. I sympathise with you not knowing that you could make Endless Toy Tonics though, because unless you frequent the Wiki or sites like Dulfy’s MMO guides, there’s nothing in-game which tells you that these items are available.

All I can suggest is either holding onto those items until Wintersday rolls around again next year, or selling the Glue/Stuffing. (You may want to wait for a few months, since prices for those will only rise slowly throughout the year. You may even be able to turn a small profit this way.)

I guess I’m just very slow or one crazy OCD completionist. I’ve been bringing my characters on a world-wide tour of all the level appropriate zones before moving on. My characters are now completing the 15 – 25 zones… And they’re all level 62 – 65! I haven’t even stepped into the 25 – 35 zones or higher except for Gendarran Fields/Sparkfly Fen/Southsun Cove, and that was only for the Halloween/Lost Shores events!

That player was probably the same one who liked drinking the Yeti tonic in Kamadan and then spamming /sit over and over so people’s audio channels would be flooded with sounds of Chewbacca getting a hernia. It’s annoying, but I hope that they don’t remove the Choir Bells altogether. There are some truly talented musicians out there who perform in cities, and I think it would be a great shame if they had to be silenced just to stop some immature kid.

Aoshi, some confirmation from you whether or not the Guild 15% buff affects Jugs of Liquid Karma would be most welcome.

No, Nightmare Court (and Nightmare Wolves/Thorn Wolves) count towards the Nightmare Court Slayer achievement. The only creatures that count towards the Plant Slayer achievement are:

- Oakhearts (Kryta/Ascalon)
- Pinesouls (Shiverpeaks)
- Mosshearts (Maguuma)

And all three of the above only seem to be found in Veteran or Champion versions. I have never seen a single normal Plant.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

FWIW, I just checked the spawn in question and they’re guarding a rich silver ore node, which is why they’re +1 level.

But there’s already a Veteran Fleshreaver guarding that node. Plus two other normal Fleshreavers. (And some spiders might also join in the fun if you didn’t kill them before taking on the Fleshreavers). Having them be +1 level higher than the player just seems excessive.

I will still able to clear out that node by myself when I was there, but I was a grossly overleveled level 60 by that point. I very much doubt an ordinary level 23 player would be able to do it on their own (unless that was the point).

@OP: I support idea 1, and like idea 4, but ideas 2 – 4 would require a fair bit of coding work and UI changes, so I doubt we’ll see it happen.

The following are my ideas to beef up minions and make the MM role more attractive:

Minion Buffs:
1. Increase the base health of minions by 25% and their base damage by 10%.
2. Allow minions to regenerate their health in between battles.
3. Bone Fiends have a 25% chance to cause 1 stack of Bleeding with each of their attacks.
4. Shadow Fiends have a 25% chance to cause Blind with each of their attacks. Their Haunt special ability now inflicts Blind to its main target and all enemies adjacent to that target.
5. Flesh Wurms have a 25% chance to cause 1 stack of Poison with each of their attacks.
6. Flesh Golems have a 25% chance to knock down a foe for 1s with each of their attacks. This replaces their Crippling special ability (which to be honest, is so short that it basically does nothing in your average combat).

Death Shroud Powers Minions:
A Necromancer can summon more than one of a type of minion at a time, but at a cost of reserving a portion of your Death Shroud. For example, say a Necromancer has a small army of minions out:

- 1 Blood Fiend
- 1 Bone Fiend
- 2 Bone Minions
- 1 Flesh Wurm
- 1 Flesh Golem

He could summon an additional Blood Fiend by reserving 25% of his Death Shroud bar, leaving him with 75% of the normal duration. His army is now:

- 2 Blood Fiends
- 1 Bone Fiend
- 2 Bone Minions
- 1 Flesh Wurm
- 1 Flesh Golem

Next, he wants more explodey minions and chooses to summon another 2 Bone Minions, leaving him with 50% of his Death Shroud bar. His army is now:

- 2 Blood Fiends
- 1 Bone Fiend
- 4 Bone Minions
- 1 Flesh Wurm
- 1 Flesh Golem

He could continue in this fashion twice more, perhaps having up to 4 Blood Fiends out, or summoning an extra Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm. (Flesh Golems may only be summoned once; due to the extra buff they got above with the knockdowns, I think having 5 Flesh Golems out would make them basically be able to perma-KD any opponent in the game.) However, if he summoned 4 more minions above his normal limit, he basically can’t even enter Death Shroud at all (his bar is completely reserved, leaving him at 0%).

To add to what I said earlier, I frankly doubt that ANet will change this system because it’s a small, but quite effective, gold sink when multiplied across tens of thousands of players. I, and many other players, basically just buy the higher end tools and use them on all nodes out of convenience. We’re willing to pay the extra cost for convenience and time-savings, and ANet is equally happy with that because it’s extra gold sucked out of the economy.

I’m not a Steampunk fan, so I can sympathise with you, OP. I’m normally pretty big on keeping my technology out of my fantasy (crossbows and siege engines are generally about the limits of what I’ll tolerate), but I have to admit that GW2 has handled it pretty well. I nearly boycotted GW2 when ANet revealed the Engineer ("Grenades?? Turrets?! FREAKIN’ ROCKET JUMPS?!), but I’m glad I didn’t. GW2 is still a great game if you can get over the genre-mixing.

First off, welcome to Guild Wars 2!

While there are options to make your character more tank-like or more healer-like, you shouldn’t aim to make your character strictly in that role. GW2 aims to do away with rigid character roles, so your character should be able to handle a little bit of everything.

I would actually recommend a Warrior if this is your first foray into MMO’s. Warriors are tough, deal considerable damage, and are relatively straightforward to play. You won’t really have much trouble in PvE as a Warrior, and as you gain more levels, you can build them into a variety of roles such as raw damage (which most Warriors go for), tanking and defense (focusing on Toughness and Vitality) or even group support with Shouts and Banners.

I’m not sure what the reviews you’ve read are talking about, but all XP for members of a party is shared equally. It doesn’t matter if you did 0 damage in the battle and just stood at the back ressing fallen allies; you’ll still gain the same XP as everyone else in your party.

If you’re NOT in a party, then yes, XP will be lesser if you’re doing group events, because the game requires you to do damage equal to a minimum of 5% of the enemy’s health in order for it to tag you as a “participant”, but if you’re in a party, as long as one member of the party was a participant, everybody in the party gets the rewards (both loot and XP).

NoodllZ.8376:

Swapping for Orian nodes is acceptable because there are at most 5 orian ores and 2 or 3 sapplings on high level maps.

This is how I intend to run it when I’m finally up in the level 80 zones. I buy 2 sets of Mithril tools, equip one set with the other as a spare, and buy another set of Orichalcum tools. The latter set I only equip when I run across T6 nodes.

In fact, if you were really lazy, you could just buy nothing but Ori tools and use those on ANY nodes. Each use of a Ori Mining Pick costs 4 copper, but even Copper Ore sells for around 10 – 15 copper, meaning you’re STILL making a profit even if you’re using Ori Picks on Copper nodes.

Not all minions seem to be created equal, however. Two good examples can be found in Kessex Hills near Blackroot Cut. First, we have the undead wurms/fiends created by Draithor, the centaur necromancer. They seem to be able to react to and attack enemies even when Draithor is not around (when he’s out attacking Black Lion merchants on the road, for example), suggesting that minions do not always need their controlling necromancer to be present.

Secondly, I MIGHT be misremembering, but when Aria Venom (the necromancer who lives in Black Haven nearby) animates several Flesh Golems to help you in your fight against Draithor, the Flesh Golems actually speak. It’s just canned lines of dialogue like “I serve the Mistress” or something similar, but it might indicate that these Flesh Golems possess some level of intelligence.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Yes, no one really likes preowned erotic items.

I +1’d this post. XD

I don’t doubt that that karma mining pick not having a level requirement is an oversight when ANet made all gathering tools account bound. ANet should definitely look into that and fix it sometime.

Is this an exploit? Possibly, so I wouldn’t do it personally. Is it a big enough one to warrant banning? Not really, in my opinion. The time needed to create several new characters, equip them with the pick, run them over to Southsun Cove and then mine 25 – 125 Ori ingots (I doubt anybody’s gonna buy new character slots just for this), before having to repeat it all over again, isn’t out of proportion for what one could earn doing Fractals or just flipping items on the TP.

The reason why the karma weapons exploiters and the snowflake exploiters were banned was because it was a quick, easy way to earn dozens of gold in a very short amount of time. This Ori mining exploit may be easy (relatively, if you discount the trek getting to a Rich Ori Vein in the first place), but it’s certainly not quick, and it’s not an infinitely repeatable loop in a short amount of time unlike the other two exploits, because each Vein taps out after 10 uses and you have to wait for a day to do it again.

And of course, if somebody bypasses the whole “getting there” bit by using a teleport hack, they are OBVIOUSLY cheating and deserve a ban.

What are you playing? One thing to keep in mind is that each profession has a vastly different playstyle, and it may be that the tactics you are using are just not viable, resulting in you dying over and over. Each profession is designed with a certain mechanic in mind, and often once you discover this mechanic and realise “this is the way the profession was meant to be played!”, everything just clicks together.

One common example is the Elementalist. I often see a lot of Ele players just stick with one Attunement throughout an entire battle. This isn’t “wrong”; I sometimes do it myself because I’m lazy and I know I could kill these enemies with nothing but Fire, but the true magic of an Elementalist comes when you switch between multiple Attunements in a battle. Start off with Earth for heavy Bleeds and snares, then switch to Fire and blast them while they struggle to close the distance. When they get close, switch to Air and push them back. If you need healing, switch to Water. Otherwise, by now Earth should have recharged, so switch back to Earth and start all over again.

muses about creating a GW2 “Find a Valentine” service…

nightzirch.3126:

I excluded the +15% guild bonus on purpose. According to the wiki it only affects dynamic events.

That’s what the description says, but according to player feedback, the guild +15% bonus actually affects ALL sources of karma, including Jugs. I’m not sure if this is a bug or whether the description is incorrect.

benda.4893:

You run in LA and 80% of people you meet are human females. You suddenly start to realise something is wrong with design of other races. Yes there is some people who pick human because they want to relate. But most pick human because other races are not as cool… as in doesn’t look as good as humans.

I wouldn’t say that. I play on Tarnished Coast and I think the popularity breakdown is about:

Human: 25%
Norn: 25%
Sylvari: 20%
Asura: 15%
Charr: 15%

Morrigan.2809:

There are baby bears in a cave in Queensdale that attack you simply because you kill their mother to get to a rich node- I left the node and ran when that happend

I know the place you mean. When I first visited there I had no idea the cubs were in the cave. I was just heading there because I saw the Rich Copper Node icon on the map, and got attacked by a Veteran Bear. OK, fair enough. I defend myself, slay the Bear, and head into the cave… And then promptly get attacked by the baby bears. I couldn’t bring myself to cut them down too, so I just let them attack me while I harvested the node, then ran off.

The worst part of it all is that YOU’RE in the wrong here. The mother bear was just defending her territory or more likely, her baby cubs, and the player comes in and slaughters them all just to get the ore inside.

I haven’t been to an EBgames store in a couple months, and a search on the Australian EBgames website turned up no Gem cards, so I couldn’t rightly say. Afraid the only thing you can do is head into one and ask.

Death.3085:

whenever i want to port anywhere i always never have enough money to do so.

That. That is your mistake. Never waypoint anywhere unless you absolutely HAVE to. All those teleportations add up quicker than you think, especially if you’re also repairing your armor frequently.

Some other tips I can offer:

1. Don’t be in too much of a rush to repair your armor. Damaged armor confers no penalty. It’s only when armor is broken that you no longer benefit from that armor piece. As such, you can wait until the first armor piece is broken before using an Armor Repair Canister to fix them all in one shot. At lower levels, you may even end up replacing your armor with drops or crafted ones before getting to the stage where you have to repair it.

2. As some people earlier have mentioned, never WP back to Lion’s Arch or the cities. Instead, click on the PvP icon (looks like two crossed swords) and travel to the Heart of the Mists. From there, you’ll find a free Gate that takes you to Lion’s Arch. From there, you can travel to one of the cities for free. It takes longer and you have to sit through 2 loading screens, but it will save you money.

3. Harvest EVERYTHING, even materials that you don’t use yourself. You can always sell these unwanted ingredients, and you may be surprised at how much some of these materials sell for. For example, Copper Ore still sells for 15 – 20c each. In contrast, each use of a Copper Mining Pick only costs 0.32 copper. That means for each Copper Ore you harvest, you’re earning back 14+ copper. That is an astonishing return, especially at lower levels.

4. If you find unidentified dye, sell it, don’t use it. Unidentified dye sells for upwards of 13 silver each. In contrast, most dyes can be bought for mere coppers. It’s far more economical to sell all your unidentified dyes, and then buy the specific ones you want from the Trading Post.

The fact that they’re including Unid’ed dyes as a potential reward for Crowns suggests to me that dye packs are not a big seller on the Gem store. (Not surprising since the colour ranges are so limited.)

Dustfinger.9510:

Zaxares.5419:

I’m happy enough with my Charr choosing them for racial sympathy. Let’s just say he feels a need to educate them on not needing to worship something to have a sense of purpose in their lives.

They worship your Norn now, don’t they? ;P

Well, her… “attributes” are rather divine. XD

I’m almost certain that Mad King Thorn/Tixx will return next year. Whether or not they’ll offer the same skins/miniatures is anybody’s guess, but I’ll just say that ANet would be missing out on a good opportunity to earn more money by selling the old miniatures/skins to players who missed out last time.