Guild Wars 2

Is that new armor that Rytlock’s wearing in the latest teaser? It doesn’t match any existing heavy Charr armor that I’m aware of.

Mhenlo became the new Headmaster of Shing Jea Monastery after Togo’s death, and the last we saw of him (at the end of Winds of Chaos), he was still there. The logical assumption would be that he settled down in Cantha along with Cynn, and both of them are buried there. I don’t know whether Devona, Aidan and Eve would have followed suit (Aidan and Devona have very strong ties to Ascalon), but it’s possible they decided to stay with their friends too.

Other “demons” would include the Aatxes and possibly the Shades you fight in swampy locations like Godslost Swamp.

Zaklex.6308:

That’s not the way I read it…you can do either 3 PvP, 3 WvW or 3 PvE…I don’t think you can mix and match. Unless that is what you meant an I misread your comment, and if I misread your comment, apologies in advance.

The original quote from the release page was:

“Instead, we’ve created a new meta-achievement for completing any combination of three daily achievements from any category.”

I interpreted that to mean you can do any 3 combined Dailies from any of the 3 categories to get the AP reward, although it’s possible that your interpretation is correct, of course. We probably need an ANet dev to confirm this for us.

You’re in that little cave in Lornar’s Pass near Jetsam Isle. The cave is used by pirates (Taidha’s pirates, I think) to store their booty. (Must be some pretty refined pirates if they decided to loot artwork!)

Who’s buying up all these chests, I wonder? O.o Are there really that many “whales” or “key farmers” out there?

There’s a number of ways to get Blade Shards:

1. Kill Aetherblade mobs. You can find them in the Not So Secret JP in Gendarran Fields, in the Aetherpath route of the Twilight Arbor dungeon, in some Fractals, and in the central zone of Edge of the Mists. (Note that the Aetherblades in EotM are a much tougher breed to their PvE counterparts, and can be hard to solo.)

2. Purchase the Watchwork Sprocket Generator from the Laurel Vendor (under the Living Story Season 1 tab) and harvest it everyday for the chance for a couple of Blade Shards.

3. Use the Mystic Forge to create more Blade Shards. You will need:

- 1 Pile of Glittering Dust
- 1 Pile of Shimmering Dust
- 1 Blade Shard
- 50 Watchwork Sprocket

This will create 10 – 15 Blade Shards (and apparently with a small chance of 50). This is the quickest way, but also the most expensive; Watchwork Sprockets aren’t that cheap.

4. Park a character at the end of the Not So Secret JP and open the chest everyday for a chance to get some Blade Shards.

Well, that would be disappointing. I graduated from Apprentice Toymaker to Journeyman Toymaker, and now I wanna be a Master Toymaker! :P

OK, so from all the posts, this is how I understand the new system to work:

1. AP from Daily/Monthly is now combined and capped at 15,000. (Which would put me at just about 10k right now.)

2. Dailies are now split up into PvE, PvP and WvW. There will be 4+ Dailies in each category. You only need to complete 3 Dailies, across any of the three categories, to get your “Daily AP” reward, which is 10. (Which means that I’d complete my last 5000 AP in 500 days. This is actually a good change for me since I was at 8.6k Dailies, but only about 1.7k Monthlies, meaning that in order to hit the 5k limit for Monthlies, I’d need to be playing GW for more than 4 years.)

3. Each Daily now has a bonus reward associated with it, such as getting a bonus Pristine Fractal Relic for a daily Fractal run, or extra WvW XP for capturing a Tower. These rewards can still be obtained even after you complete 3 Dailies for the AP.

4. Laurels and Mystic Coins have now been moved to a Login Calendar, which also contains a bunch of other rewards that you get simply for logging in. (Will need more information about what the rewards are like, but I don’t think ANet will drastically reduce the number of Laurels/Mystic Coins being given out.)

Overall, I’m quite excited for these changes. It means I won’t need to spend an hour or two every day doing every single Daily; I can just pick the 3 Dailies that most appeal to me each night (or the 3 that are most profitable), and just pick up whatever else comes through normal play. (Assuming that Dailies like “Kill 50 foes”, “Daily Gatherer” and “Daily Interrupter” still exist.)

Yes, it does feel a bit like a skinner box getting us to hit the lever more often, but eh, I was already hitting the lever every day anyway. :P This way I’ll actually be getting MORE rewards just for showing up every day.

@Skoigoth: Yeah, Koss was my best buddy in Nightfall too. I loved it how he was able to slum it with Corsairs and other malcontents, but he was still a good-hearted guy who tried to do the best he could for the Sunspears and everyone.

It’s a “test event”, obviously. I don’t think the removal of white swords will be a good thing, but adding points for kills is a nice move that I hope they’ll end up keeping.

While overall I do like the changes to the Daily/Monthly system, I think that this change may very well see me go less into WvW. (I do stick around long enough to help out, maybe 30 mins to an hour, but I don’t spend hours in there fighting for TC as some true WvW lovers do.)

I really hope that ANet does give us more options to spend our BoH on though.

While I don’t think that WvW equipment should be split off entirely from PvE, I would like to see a “WvW build” saved so that when you log into WvW it automatically swaps in your favourite WvW build and equipment so I don’t need to spend a couple of minutes each time changing my weapons, armor and traits. :P

Don’t remind me. :P I’m quite grumpy that two of my favourite sub-forums (Crafting and BLTC) got the axe.

1. The “chance for rarer materials” refers to getting higher tiers of crafting materials from a salvage. For example, level 80 gear will always return stuff like Elder Wood, Mithril and Silk, but there is a chance you’ll get back Ancient Wood, Orichalcum or Gossamer instead. The higher your salvage kit, the bigger the chance you’ll get back the higher tiers.

Note that the increased chance is a percentage increase in the BASE chance to get those rarer materials. For instance, let’s assume that there is a 90% chance to get Silk and a 10% chance to get Gossamer. If we use the Basic Salvage Kit, there’s a 10% bonus to get rarer materials. However, this is a 10% increase to that base 10% chance, meaning the final chance is 11% to get Gossamer, not 20% as you might think.

2. Salvage experiments conducted by many players have shown that the chance to get back Ectos from Rares and Exotics, as well as the chance to get back Exotic insignias/inscriptions, is higher when using a Master/Mystic Salvage Kit, and slightly higher again when using a Black Lion Salvage Kit. That is why you should generally save your BLSK’s only for Exotics, and use only Master/Mystic Salvage Kits on Rares and above. There appears to be no real benefit to using Master/Mystic Kits on Masterworks and below (unless you really want the runes/sigils from them, but most Minor upgrades are selling for their vendor value anyway.)

Generally, big sales, or when new stuff comes out in the gemstore, are when you should convert gems to gold. Demand for gems always spikes up around this time. Since ANet started the practice of having regular sales on most weekends, prices don’t rise as high as they used to, but once in a while when a lot of popular stuff (especially account upgrades, like Bank/Bag/Character slots) come out at the same time, you can expect to see a big spike.

This is a well-known bug affecting all melee minions. It appears to trigger if you get into combat while the minions are still moving, resulting in them getting confused over how to “get to the enemy”. Unfortunately we’ve been asking for it to be fixed for a long time, but it’s lower on the list of priorities.

No, Ayrilana is talking about keeping the BAGS you get from the Mordrem champs with the Extractor. (The ones named “Mordrem Thrasher Parts Bag”.) Their loot table gets updated with each new LS chapter, even though it’s the same bag. So by saving them all up and opening them after Chapter 8 is released, you decrease the chance of getting “wasted” parts that you already have.

Of course, if you’re someone like me and you’re partly farming the Champs in order to get parts which you then turn in for extra Bandit Crests, then no parts are really “wasted”.

They’re definitely viable, yes. I take my condi-minion hybridmancer into dungeons/Fractals all the time. The key is that you just need to be aware of which boss fights require the boss to be moved around (or not moved, as the case may be), and don’t spawn your minions for those fights. It’s really no different from how Rangers can set their pets on Passive or recall them so the boss doesn’t get bogged down attacking their pet while the party needs to pull him to a specific spot.

Are they a meta build? Definitely not, but it works, and it’s still very fun. (Ever done a full 5 MM necro run through a dungeon? It’s hilarious with that many minions running around.) Just don’t try to join speedclear/zerk meta PUGs and you’ll be fine.

Are you sure? I’ve often watched the bars closely after Bull/Rubble events and they don’t move at all after completion. Unless the percentage is so small that I don’t even notice, it might be possible you confused it another Fort’s defense event that finished at the same time.

So the “bets” can only be entered by the competing players themselves? No outside spectator betting?

@The person with the “send them stacks of salt” idea: LMAO, that’s brilliant! XD

New WvW Consumable:

Potion of Commander Slaying. Gain +100% damage against players with an active Commander tag. Conditions you inflict against Commanders last +100% longer.

Costs 1000 Badges of Honor + 1 gold.

Also works against Siegerazer, just for consistency’s sake.

I still think it would be best to split Solo and Team again, but I’ll give it more time to let MMR settle before making a final judgment. (I do see why, from an efficiency perspective, it’s best to keep all Unranked and Ranked players together.)

Yes. Only the Defense events progress the bar. Killing Mordrem, escorting Bulls and doing Rubble events all do not count.

They’re obviously heading towards Camp Resolve. It seems that Mordremoth has had enough of us killing his minions and Champions and has decided to strike at the source.

I’m disappointed that I won’t get to finish my Luminescent armor over Christmas, but I actually don’t mind the break too much. It’ll give me more time to do the Wintersday content, grind 4000 Bandit Crests (plus some extras for when Jan rolls around), and maybe start on some other games that I’ve been putting off on playing.

That’s a good point. Considering that Chest pieces are weighted as being more “important/expensive” than other pieces (as Leggings was), it’s quite possible that the Chest piece will require 3 parts (Heart? Stomach? Brain?) as compared to the others.

It’s just RNG.

Husk – 6+ attempts. 1 Spleen, rest were Fangs and Tendons.

Thrasher – 2 attempts. Both Bladders.

Teragriff – 3 attempts. 2 Bladders, 1 Fang.

Troll – 1 attempt. Toxin Gland.

Well, we’ll be waiting till Jan 13th for the next one. :/ I’m just going to go ahead and open bags in the meantime until I complete the Leggings/Boots, but any spares after that I’ll go ahead and save.

It’s possible. I actually almost managed it when doing it for the first time with my guildies (I was playing as Caithe, but I unfortunately Dash’ed forward right into a sand pool that was half-invisible thanks to being on the lighter patches of sand.) There’s also a Youtube video someone posted in another thread that showed it being done, I believe.

While I’m disappointed I won’t get to finish my Luminescent Armor collection over Christmas, I suppose the break will give me more time to do Wintersday stuff, farm 4000 Bandit Crests, and maybe even get started on Dragon Age: Inquisition, so… it’s fine. Enjoy your Christmas break, ANet.

It’s not too bad, but I really do believe that the Crafting and BLTC forums should remain separate from the General Forum (perhaps being merged together to form their own sub-forum). The General Forum is quite fast moving compared to the other two, with the result that the Crafting and BLTC forums developed their own “cliques”, with most of the regulars there knowing each other and could be relied upon to provide solid advice and insight on related topics there for newcomers.

I fear that this new change will mean that questions regarding crafting and trading will quickly get lost in the din of the General Forum and thus go unnoticed, since many people only ever bother looking at the first page.

Yeah, if you look at my replies back in the old BLTC forum (RIP…), while I don’t agree with market manipulation or attempting to corner segments of the market in general, I’m very interested to see the results of whether this experiment succeeds. Many people, including John Smith himself, believe that such attempts invariably fail because either:

1. There is a lot of hidden supply in the game, with items remaining off the TP and in player’s banks and inventories. As soon as they see the rising prices, they rush to sell and undercut the person attempting to manipulate the prices, forcing them to either buy up the new supply, or risk making a huge loss.

2. The item in question is so slow moving or has such a low demand that while they successfully corner the market, income from it is so slow that it’s honestly not worth it to sink all that money into the attempt when you could be investing it elsewhere.

So the primary reason why I’m interested in seeing this play out is to see which camp is correct. Is it possible to make huge bank on manipulation/cornering, or will market forces ultimately prevail and force the price back to its old equilibrium in the end?

Yep, it was just a bad streak. As if to make me look stupid, the very same day I posted about this, the game gave me 2 Blade Shards from the Watchwork node. :P

Ah well. Back to patiently harvesting. 226/250 now!

Fransson.7910:

True, but if one person were to really want their gems back, take a look at how the clothrack looks both on the bltc AND in your actual homeinstance… it actually shows sheets of both silk and linen!
Thera is nothing telling the consumer that these items are not being gatherable from this node, hell some could even believe these are guaranteed drops, from the look of it.
So having these sheets of unobtainable materials hang there could be seen as false advertising, something that isn’t legal in most countries.

If you were to point this out you could perhaps get a refund

ANet, please upgrade my Cloth Rack so it also gives out Linen and Silk, kthx.

No, I’m quite certain that you DO get an Unidentified Dye at some point between levels 1 and 20. (The 3 common dyes is separate.) I’ve used Experience Scrolls a few times on a fresh character to help hit the 40 Skill Points monthly target, and I always end up with 1 new Unid Dye at the end of it.

I think the biggest “risk” with re-release will come when ANet eventually releases the adapted LS Season 1 content again. It would make the most logical point to bring the previously exclusive rewards back. So all of these Molten Facility specific rewards can be earned by either running the Molten Facility dungeon again, or players can choose from a number of highly exclusive rewards by completing a tricky series of Collection achievements (similar to how the Luminescent armor is obtained). The Molten Jetpack, for example, may be the final reward for completing all of the Flame & Frost achievements.

But anyway, let’s not derail Wanze’s thread too much. The most interesting thing to come from this is whether or not it IS possible for a well-heeled player to corner some parts of the GW2 market.

Thanks, Inculpatus. I trust your word, so I’ll just chalk it up to me having a very unusual dry streak then. (It’s kinda frustrating since I thought I had set aside enough Blade Shards for my Ascended Spinal Blades, but I’d forgotten to account for the 250 Shards for the Gift of Blades itself. So, I was one stack short. Over the last six months I’ve slowly accumulated up to 224 Shards again, so I was worried that a stealth patch meant that I had to farm Aetherblades or forge the Shards from Sprockets.)

Welp, guess that means I’ll never be Team Leader then. XD

As others have said, the GW2 PvP community is actually pretty tame by most competitive game standards.

If someone is flaming/being a troll, block them and encourage everybody else to block them. The worst punishment you can inflict on a bad apple is silence/apathy.

Are you SURE that it actually affects the final reward? You get the 25 Autobalance bonus for clicking the button, but I’m pretty sure the final rewards are only awarded if you actually get MOVED to the losing team.

And in any case, even if it was giving out the rewards, I don’t really see it as a big deal. Hotjoin rewards are capped at 2 tiers per day anyway, and Rank was never a true indicator of skill; even a hopeless player running the worst builds imaginable with a “0 wins|infinity losses” record could eventually get to Dragon rank if they kept at it long enough.

Wynne is wearing T2 Cultural Light, so she’s also a scholar class.

Underdark.3726:

They paid Caithe to steal the egg cos they cannot have one on their own.

Now THAT would be something I’d pay to see. XD The new Elder Dragon is raised by Quaggans and thus is friendly, peaceful and constantly speaks in "OoooooOoOOooo"s.

Somehow, I have a feeling that a large segment of players would consider this too high a price to pay for peace.

While I DON’T think that cornering the market in an attempt to profit individually is “fair play” under ANet rules (it feels too much like trolling, in my opinion), I’m nonetheless very interested to see the results of your experiment and whether you’ll actually pull it off. (Or if, as JS has said a few times, it will “fail miserably” due to a lot of hidden suppliers or just a general lack of demand for the item in general.)

Unid Dyes can drop from the Personal Story (and at least one from going from level 1 to 20, so it’s quite possible that key farmers will get one each run they do), as well as from Loot Bags from the Living Story, so supply is not as choked off as you might think. It IS an investment, but the profit margin from them is so slow and spread out over such a long time that it may be you end up getting bored and quitting GW2 before it ever reaches your sell price point.

And if possible, we’d (okay, I’D ) love to see an updated version of that infograph showing the current spread of wealth throughout the population, along with what are the new major sources for player wealth in terms of activities.

While I completely agree that the market is capable of bearing current Silk prices (I’m also about 50% of the way to having all the Damask I need), there is a noticeable discrepancy between the three, which could look to players as being “unfair” to light armor wearers when compared to Heavy and especially Medium armor classes.

That said, simply cutting down the Silk requirements would only make cloth prices for the lower tiers skyrocket, as more players start going for Ascended armor. If you really want to bring cloth prices down, you’d need to do it as a holistic approach, such as increasing the rate of ALL cloth scraps from salvage by 50% (so Wool, Cotton and Linen all go up in supply along with Silk), and maybe giving cloth scraps out as a rare salvage bonus for plant crops. (Since with the change to Unid Dye drops, there is no special “whee! I got lucky!” bonus from plants anymore.)

So over the last week now, I haven’t received any Blade Shards while mining my Watchwork Node in my Home Instance. This is quite unusual, since I used to receive an average of 1 or 2 a day.

Has anyone else also noticed that Blade Shards are no longer dropping? Or is it just me having a very long streak of bad luck? (To verify that this isn’t a bug, only count Blade Shards if they have dropped from the Watchwork Node within the last 1 – 3 days.)

The rewards given out for the Fort defense events improve the more Forts the Pact has under their control (the level of the Fort may also improve rewards, but I’m not sure about this). As such, if you need Crests, the best thing to do is find an organised map (just taxi into one that’s above 50% if you can’t find one), then pick a Fort and defend it, escort Caravans if they’re close, kill the Mordrem, and then briefly sojourn over to the next closest Fort to tag its defense event while yours is quiet (but make sure you head back soon because you don’t want to leave any Forts undefended). Because the events pop every 5 mins, in a properly organised map, you can earn 25 – 50 Bandit Crests every 10 mins.

Afterwards, do the Breach (for another ~10 Badges, plus a big bonus if all 5 are killed), then do all 3 Tiers of the Labyrinth for another ~50 Badges. All up, in a good, organised map you can easily earn more than 300 Badges every Breach cycle.