Guild Wars 2

The SoG gives Azurite Orbs?? Well, well, well… Very interesting. Still, probably too small a drop in the ocean of supply to really affect prices.

Nothing particularly special, but one time I was in Borderlands on my Ranger running to join my zerg who were attacking Bay. I stopped to harvest a Rich Iron Vein near the SW tower, and halfway through it some upleveled Thief (who was a plain old Assaulter to boot) decided to jump me.

Point Blank Shot, Immobilize, Barrage, a little Fear from my Wolf + Rapid Fire resulted in one downed Thief. I stomped him, then went back to harvesting the Iron before running off.

Moral of the story: Don’t attack people when they’re harvesting. That’s just rude. :P

Nokaru.7831:

They didn’t even bother adding new daily dungeon rewards. I doubt they’ll do anything with them.

I have to admit I am quite puzzled over how Daily dungeon paths weren’t included, yet Fractals were. I’d have thought a “Daily Detha path” would be a nice way of spurring players to complete paths that they wouldn’t normally attempt.

If I’m after a quick run, I will usually advertise for “80’s or be experienced”. Other times I’ll run “all welcome” groups, especially for the less popular dungeon paths, and I teach as I go.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ogden%27s_Ankh

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aspect_Amulet

The above two amulets were introduced into the game when Living Story S2 Part 2 resumed. However, it seems that some players (including myself) cannot purchase it from Laurel merchants while others can, and we have not been able to identify what is the trigger that makes them show up. So far, we have eliminated the following possibilities:

- The amulets are not locked behind any of the LS S2 Part 1 achievements. (I have all of them completed and the amulets are still not showing up.)
- The amulets are not locked behind any of the newer Explorer achievements in either Iron Marches or Frostgorge Sound. (Have those completed too.)

If a dev sees this, can you give us more information as to what exactly a player needs to do in order for these amulets to be available for purchase?

The Frostbitten tools only ever seem to give out Tiny Snowflakes. This may have been intended as you can promote snowflakes up tiers via the Mystic Forge.

In any case, the real value of the Frostbitten tools lies in the fact that they’re basically a free supply of Orichalcum-tier tools that can probably last you till next Wintersday, if you don’t do a lot of harvesting.

At this point I think it’s probably safe to say that the Annihilator is bugged somehow. Make sure you report it in-game with the /bug command so that the devs can get technical information that can help them track down the cause.

In the meantime, I agree that this is highly frustrating (I got the achievement a long time ago, but I feel your pain from having other bugged achievements in the past). Still, it’s safe to say that Silverwastes won’t be going away anytime soon (we still have LS Season 2 to finish up), and since the achievement itself is permanent, once ANet fixes the bug you should be able to get it without a problem.

It’s a phishing mail. I got one too.

If a message in-game really DID come from a GM, the player’s name will be a bright golden colour instead of the usual purple.

Also, any messages that did NOT come from a GM will have a warning at the bottom saying, “This message was sent by a player and not from the GW2 team” or something similar.

So, feel free to report the sender and delete the message.

If you are confident that you can win your 1v1 (sometimes 1v2) at Far, and can then hold it against re-attempts to take it, then by all means, go for it. I’ve had some truly incredible victories come from some players (usually Thieves, but sometimes also Guardians and Mesmers) using that strategy, while we had a bunker type (usually me) defending Home and supporting Mid where needed.

But if you’re not confident about it, then it’s best not to risk it and just dominate Middle and hold Home.

Yeah, I would heartily recommend Snowmen over Walls. They actually deal decent damage (500+. For comparison, Ballista deal 400 damage at their base level, but attack a lot faster), and the Chill actually works really well for slowing down toys/Toxx so the catapults have an easier time smashing them.

I spread the Snowmen out in front of the catapult ring and scatter them in between external siege to distract and occupy the toys, using them to soak up damage that would otherwise have gone to the catapults. The only time I would use Walls is either to wall off the maze, as suggested above, or to wall off ramps in the initial period when defenses are scarce.

@Guzzi: Bah indeed, my fellow Humbug.

But Merry Christmas to the rest of you cheery rapscallions.

You have my sympathies, khani. I’m also in the process of grinding out 5 Ancient Mariner’s bags for my 5 mains. (Currently working on 3/5.)

I expected the drop rate from Gifts would be abyssmal, so I decided to go straight for the guaranteed route. Still, it is a lot of PvP matches, so much so that I’m spending almost 3 hours a day on it. Thankfully Wintersday lasts until Jan 13th, so we still have a good amount of time left to get it.

I do agree it would have been nice if they were tradable though. What happens to players who only have one main, and just so happen to get 2 or more from opening tons of Gifts? They’re now stuck with a useless, but extremely rare, item, similar to Gwynnfyrdd.

Aha, so THAT’S why the Pristine Snowflakes are so much more expensive than the other types. I knew there had to be some reason for it, and now I know. XD

Thanks for the report, but when reporting exploits, especially if you know the exact method to replicate it, you should send the information to exploits@arena.net so they can be aware of it, as well as keeping the information about the exploit from the general public so others aren’t tempted to abuse it.

Aha, found it! For any future visitors to this thread, the dev quote is here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/when-is-the-winter-event-going-to-end

So yes, Wintersday will finish up on Jan 13th, 2015.

Do you have a link to an official post stating that, Xiahou? I’d love it if it were true, but these days I never take anything for granted unless it was explicitly stated by a dev.

Uh, I don’t think the Lyssa recipes drop from the Wintersday Gifts at all. They were only from Gauntlet chances during the Crown Pavilion.

So essentially, it seems that Theory 2 of my first post in this thread was correct. While there is profit to be made here (in the sense that you now own a lot more “goods” that could potentially be resold down the line), the movement is so slow and demand so low that honestly most players would be better served trying to invest elsewhere. (Of course, 12 days is not much of an investment period. In 6 – 12 months down the line, this could indeed pay big dividends. However, I expect to most players that’s far too long for their purposes.)

As a side note, Wintersday has been quite a profitable experience for me so far too, as I’ve been selling any Gifts that I get instead of opening them. It was especially delightful during the initial 24 hours.

Does anyone know when Wintersday 2014 ends? We know that Living Story Season 2 resumes on Jan 13th, and that the WvW Sneak Attack lasts until then, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Wintersday will run until then too.

Yeah, they upped the Snowflake drop rate. It’s obvious from the sudden crash in snowflake prices before and after the 17th Dec patch.

It seems that ANet forgot the lesson they learned from Halloween 2014, which was to give players a wide variety of goodies they could earn by turning in tokens (i.e. stuff we can work towards, with a visible, definable goal). This year, they drastically choked off the amount of stuff we could earn from the Wintersday merchants, instead locking a lot of it behind RNG through the Gifts. End result: Players get frustrated when RNG doesn’t give them what they’re after, while generating far too much “useless” junk that even the new MF recipes are not making a dent in. (Because the only things the recipes create is more Gifts to start the RNG cycle again, which the players are already sick of.)

A second part of the problem is that the loot tables of the Gifts are just too wide. They can drop loot, crafting mats, snowflakes, various wrapped gifts, finishers, clothes and more. The odds of you actually getting the item you’re after is tiny.

Instead, what ANet should have done is made the Gifts mostly give out just clothes, snowflakes and a few “wrapped gifts” that act like the “Ultimate Wintersday Gift”. (That is, when opened, the Gifts let you choose the specific item you want.) Next, adjust the Wintersday merchants so that you can trade in ugly clothes or snowflakes for the rare goods. Perhaps you could earn the Rime Rebreathers for 500 Ugly Sweaters, for example. (And you can convert up the Ugly Socks/Hats to Sweaters via the same merchant.) The same goes for a lot of the other rare gear, like the Endless Tonic recipes. (I’d prefer it if these goodies were tradable, but if ANet prefers to keep players playing, they could make these account bound.)

Voila. You now have massive sinks for the various mats dropped by the Gifts, and incentive for people to open lots of Gifts.

Astralporing.1957:

Popino Ano.1387:

Zaxares.5419:

So the latest word I’ve heard is that the repeatable achievements DO count towards the meta, but only the first completion. So that should at least give those of you who don’t like Bell Choir/Winter Wonderland/Toypocalypse/Snowball Mayhem a bit more breathing room.

unfortunately they don’t, i just checked with winter wonterland mastery

Why is that even a question? Wintersday meta lists every achievement that counts for completion. Repeatable/daily achievements are not listed.

I actually didn’t realise that clicking on the meta-achievement actually shows which ones counted. Nice of ANet to add this in, but they should have mentioned it in the release notes.

Wow, nice catch! Looks like Mordremoth is still being busy while we’re all off opening presents and pelting each other with snowballs.

It’s caused by latency. You take falling damage whenever you descend more than a certain distance vertically within a short period of time. The bug occurs when lag makes the server think you’re still at your old (higher) position, when in reality you’re already much lower thanks to running down the slope. The game briefly rubberbands your position back between the high and low positions, resulting in you taking multiple falling damage ticks with each step.

Unfortunately, there’s no real way to get around this except by stopping the second you see yourself taking damage. In the case of Winter Wonderland though, the lost health can make the difference between success and failure.

I’m not too pleased with the orphans either. After all that effort I went to to retrieve their ornaments for them, the blasted kids just disappeared without even a “thank you”! Ungrateful brats. :P Makes me wonder if Grawnk stole the ornaments this year because they pulled the same stunt on him last year.

I personally LOVE Bell Choir. I’ve done it enough now that I can achieve a perfect score of 600 almost every single time. If you’re even halfway competent at it, getting 500 notes can be done in 3 or 4 games, or about 40 mins. (If you can get an average of 250 notes per game, you’re done in 2 games, or ~16 mins.)

BUT I do get that it’s not for everyone, and is why I’m quite baffled that doing the Wintersday dailies don’t count towards the meta. It was a great system that worked in previous years; why change it now? Those who are skilled at all the activities could do the meta in a single day; those that aren’t could just get it with some dedication by doing the dailies over a few days.

The one consolation I guess is that the meta doesn’t really offer anything unique. The miniatures/gifts can be gotten elsewhere, same with the AP.

You will need them if you go down the path of Ascended crafting or Legendaries, as mentioned above. I personally burned through about 1500 Obsidian Shards as part of my Ascended crafting. (Fortunately I had loads of karma to spare as I amassed a lot of it during the early days of GW2 when karma boosts affected the drinkables.)

The incentive to make players craft their own Spinal Blades backpiece has long passed, I feel. Now would be the right time to either make the Blade Shards tradable, or introduce a new vendor for them.

That is one super cool gift. (Although it’s hard-pressed to take the position of “coolest desk accessory” from the ED-209 statue. )

That looks like it used the same mold that Josh used to make the gummi wurm some months ago.

Haven’t got it yet, but I’m ecstatic that I finally have something to dump all my excess Empyreal into. I’m still a ways before Dragonite becomes a problem, but if the trend is anything to go by, we should see one in the future too.

So the latest word I’ve heard is that the repeatable achievements DO count towards the meta, but only the first completion. So that should at least give those of you who don’t like Bell Choir/Winter Wonderland/Toypocalypse/Snowball Mayhem a bit more breathing room.

Tier 1 catapults do about 3000 damage. Tier 2 do about 4000. I didn’t specifically pay attention to the T3 ones, but I imagine it would be about 5000.

Yeah, it’s not bugged. Some of those trees are just hard to spot. Also be sure to check the walls near cliffs. Use the Toysmasher and smash EVERYTHING just to be sure, even if it already looks broken.

The one thing I liked more about the old Daily system was how a lot of them segued into each other. You would almost certainly get your daily Condition Applier while getting your Daily Kills, or your Daily Dodger while doing Daily Events, for example. The new system is a lot more “focused”, in that you have to pick specific tasks and then go out to achieve them.

It’s not a huge issue to me as the new system is still quite easy to get (especially if you dabble in PvE, PvP AND WvW, as I do. I just pick whichever are the 3 easiest ones), but I did like the old system for the way you could just do whatever your usual playstyle was and you could probably get 5/5 or 4/5 without even really thinking about it.

It’s a funny niche rune to use in WvW, but not a lot of use for it outside of that.

I just place my fingers on the 1-4 keys (left hand) and 6-8 keys (right hand), then play it like a keyboard. Stick with the same key (upper, middle, low) every time too. It’ll take a few tries till your brain gets familiar with the notes and you develop muscle memory, but once you get that down, it’s easy to get almost 90+% success each and every time.

After looking at some of the stuff the data miners have dug up, yeah, I’m convinced that this item is linked to the scavenger hunt. My hypothesis:

1. After you’ve fed Grawnk enough Bloodstone food, he’ll tell you where the stolen ornaments are. (They are hidden in chests, possibly JP chests, across the world in different regions.)

2. The orphans give you this Display Case, which opens up a new Collection that lets you collect the missing ornaments. You then need to go collect all the ornaments.

3. Completion of the Collection awards you the Wintersday Gift Tree HI node along with the Star of Gratitude.

And that’s why I’ve just been selling the Giant Wintersday Gifts themselves. XD Since I’m not after any of the rare drops from the Gifts (the only ones I’m actually interested in are the Frostbitten tools, and I can get those from Personalised gifts), it’s better to sell the Giant gifts for 5 – 6 silver each rather than open them and most likely get back stuff that sells for <10 copper.

While I found the meta easy enough to complete (did it all in a day), I do agree that they should have made the Wintersday dailies count towards the meta. It was a system that worked well; why change it now?

The Super and Mega catapults get increased damage and range the more you upgrade them though. (It is the Mega catapults that can cover almost 50% of the map. The normal ones can only cover about 30%.) I only bother upgrading when I see a catapult is almost destroyed.

At the early stages, having walls built on choke points and in between the dolyaks can help block off toys, but I agree that once you’ve got a good defense system going, building Snowmen to delay/distract toys near their spawn is a better strategy. Toxx pretty much blows walls over with her attacks, which is another reason not to go crazy with too many walls.

The “bug” seems to be stemming from the fact that Toypocalypse matches do not end even after the 10 rounds are complete. And since players can just drop into currently active games, even ones that are finished, you thus end up with players dropping into matches where the game is over. The map probably closes once there are no players inside, but since people keep joining, the map keeps on being refreshed and can’t close.

In the meantime, I completed the Wintersday meta by just leaving and rejoining until I got into a match that was in progress or just starting.

The two items have different in-game codes, so they are not the same item. It’s possible that this will be used later as part of the Grawnk scavenger hunt (so it’s not released yet), or it was an item that got created, but later removed when it was deemed unnecessary.

I’m also an AP hunter, although I’m of 2 minds about this patch.

On the one hand, I’m glad that the Daily AP is much easier to get now. (Now that I’ve done a runthrough of several Dailies from yesterday, I have an idea now of which ones are quick/profitable and which ones can be skipped unless I happen to have a character in the map.) I’m also glad that the base Halloween achievements are fairly easy to complete (did them all yesterday), since it allows me to get them done and go back to my usual playstyle.

However, I find it a bit annoying (and somewhat amusing) that ANet has made the Daily AP easier to get, then introduced high grind AP repeatable achievements in the very same patch. Last year the Wintersday repeatable achievements were capped at 3x (and Toypocalypse wasn’t included, I believe). This year it’s 5x, and the requisites have gone up for a few of them. At an average of 8 mins per Snowball match, for example, getting 150 games would require 20 straight hours of playing Snowball Mayhem. And that’s only one of the four!

The thing that bugs me the most is perhaps how a lot of these achievements are basically repeats of last year. Why not simply have the same achievement category be reopened up, but tie the requisite criteria to the new events? (This was how the SAB achievements worked, so it clearly can be done.) That way, you don’t need to have “Wintersday 2013”, “Wintersday 2014”, “Wintersday 2015”, new AP hunters don’t feel like they can never, ever catch up to the veterans, and veteran AP hunters don’t have to grind the same activities every year.

To be honest, I’d have made the recipe use those one-use tonics/the new runes/sigils that are quickly piling up by the thousands instead of Snowflakes. I can see them becoming another huge glut of unwanted goods that just sits on the TP forever. RNG is fine when it’s used as a sink to get an excess of goods out of the economy, but it needs to be targeted to the right area.

When I saw that the scavenger hunt would reward something that lets us consume excess Empyreal Fragments, I immediately went “MUST HAVE!”

Yeah, I missed out too, but I’m not upset by it. It’s just one day. You’ll catch up eventually when people get sick/lose internet/whatnot. Besides, it doesn’t lose your progress when you skip GW2 for a day.

I prefer earning the achievements myself, but if other people need help with theirs, I don’t begrudge them getting assistance as long as it doesn’t involve outright hacking or exploits.

What I do get annoyed at is people that clog up the Open World LFG with “WTS Dusk 1000g” and similar posts. That’s not what the LFG tool is for, people! Those posts warrant a report, I feel.

Great story, although this should be in the Fanfiction forum.

I’m honestly surprised we can’t just adjust our WvW traits freely the same way we can adjust our PvE traits/PvP builds nowadays.

Install and use at your own risk. I personally wouldn’t see a problem with using this to gather data for your own personal use to improve your skill and performance, but I’m not ANet. If you absolutely want to be safe, don’t use any 3rd party addons at all.

It can drop from any foe in WvW, I believe. I’ve gotten it from Tower Champions, Camp Supervisors, and once even from a Sentry.