Guild Wars 2

I too would like to see additional uses for Proofs of Heroics. Once you’ve unlocked all the Core and HoT HP’s, there’s really not a lot you can do with them. Yes, you can trade them (+ Badges) for Superior Blueprints, but a lot of other players have caught on to them and the prices are slowly but steadily declining. Someday soon the prices will get low enough that it’s no longer worth doing.

On a more general note, I don’t know what it’s like on other servers, but over on TC I have noticed that the new Borderlands always seem to be very quiet compared to EBG. Once in a while you’ll get guilds or commanders doing raid runs, but the other servers barely muster any sort of defense (if at all) and it’s generally just a k-train. Comments from other players suggest that while the new BL is very pretty (Really. I never fail to be astounded by how gloriously beautiful and spacious the Desert Borderlands is), it’s not very well liked by dedicated WvW’ers, although I don’t know why. Anybody care to shed some light on the issue?

Currently there seems to be an oversight where Green Pigment is not used for ANYTHING. Instead, Yellow Pigment is used twice, once for Fine tier and once for Master tier.

In the long run, I do have faith that prices will balance out (thousands of players are harvesting plants every single day and generating pigments as a side effect. It’s just that most of them are likely just sending them all to their Mat Storage instead of selling them like back in the early days of HoT), but I do agree that in general Scribing seems to be an awful lot of mats and expenses for not a lot of return.

This has probably been reported already, but for Sunrise I, the event to rescue villagers from the harpies in Fields of Ruin bugs out. A lot. I’m sitting there now and the villagers absolutely don’t want to move to the rescue zone even though I’ve killed all the harpies near them.

It’s pure RNG. While briefly in Orr to do Orr Forager, I killed a few Risen attacking the Caer camp in Cursed Shore and the Black Pearl dropped off the third Risen I killed.

+1 Supported. It’s really frustrating to have this happen to you, particularly if you’ve been the one helping to organize and run events, only to disconnect and now find yourself unable to get back into that particular map.

Gold is definitely possible with just Lean. I got it myself. You need to do your flight trajectory in such a way that you only aggro one of the snipers, and then you’re sailing up on the updraft before he can get a second shot off at you.

If it’s any consolation though, once you have Advanced Gliding, this adventure is quite easy to do. It’s an example, I feel, of an adventure done right. It’s hard to do at first, but you can compensate for it with either experience/skill or by getting Masteries that help, to the point where higher level Masteries almost trivialize the adventure.

^ Inculpatus has the answer. Only 4 (that we know of so far) different inscription types can be used to discover the Auric weapons:

- Berserker
- Assassin
- Carrion
- Rampager

I initially tried using the Minstrel inscription I got from an Act 1 achievement and no dice. I then crafted a Rampager inscription (since Powerful Venom Sacs are dirt cheap and all) and it worked.

Mordrem Loop is probably an exception because you can choose any stat you want for it (just like how Wylenn’s Manual of Style has never been purchasable from a vendor).

I agree that adventures need a bit of a balance pass, for the following reasons:

1. Several collections with popular skins (most notably Dark Harvest) are locked behind achieving Silver on several adventures. If the adventure in question is one that the player just doesn’t have the kind of skill set to obtain, it means they’re basically locked out of that skin forever.

2. A lot of players are hurting for Mastery points (and indeed, from everything I’ve gathered, you WON’T be able to completely learn all Masteries without doing at least some adventures) and thus feel compelled to do the adventures if they are to proceed in the base game, or even to simply feel like they are on equal footing with other players. (Let’s be honest. If you’re considering someone for the raid, are you going to take the player who has 100+ Mastery ranks, or the one who only has 10, all other things being equal?)

3. Some adventures like Shooting Gallery and Fallen Masks rely on RNG, which makes it hard for adventures to be using as bragging fodder when one can argue that you only scored high due to a lucky spawn.

4. Those of us playing from locations like Australia also have an additional handicap on many adventures thanks to our worse than average ping. In Floor is Lava, for example, several videos of Gold I’ve seen rely on the “hold down space bar to glide immediately” trick. Unfortunately, this simply does not work for me because lag means that our gliders open a split second too late, resulting in us missing the platform we’re gliding to. Every. Single. Time.

This essentially means that anyone who isn’t US or EU based is given a big middle finger when trying to get Gold. The adventures should have enough tolerance levels (either by allowing a longer time limit, reducing the qualification thresholds, and/or eliminating RNG) built in to allow players who don’t have all the advantages a fair chance to get Silver/Gold. Again, this probably wouldn’t be an issue if important stuff like skin collections or Mastery points weren’t tied to them.

So I’ve noticed that there is currently no way to obtain extra copies of HoT trinkets, whether it’s the ones you get from the HoT Story achievements (such as Abaddon’s Cowl) or the ones that were added in newer Tyria achievements (such as the various Ascended amulets from the Order weapon collections). In past Living Stories and collections, we were able to buy extra copies for our characters either through the Laurel Vendor or for map currencies.

I’m not sure if this situation is intended or a bug/oversight that will get corrected at some point. Would a dev be able to chime in on this?

My guild picked the Gilded Hallow (and I voted for it too), but after being able to run around in both halls now, I actually wish I’d voted for Lost Precipice. GH is definitely prettier and more centrally organized, but LP feels a lot more… epic. Being able to stand on a high crag and look down at buildings, canyons and cliffs feels much more awe inspiring.

Either way, it’s obvious that a lot of time and energy went into designing the two halls, so kudos to the devs who put them together.

It could be a bug in the drop tables (Anyone else remember the Final Rest debacle?). Looking at the staff, it looks like it might be something that drops from Auric Basin. Perhaps a reward from the Grand chests or maybe the Vinetooth Prime’s chest? (But even so, surely somebody must have found it by now.)

Unfortunately yeah, ANet have stated that they don’t want GH’s to replace cities (which is why you won’t see other crafting stations get added to the Halls), and putting in a BLTP would be a huge blow against that.

That said, I do think it would be very nice if there was a high level Marketplace/Hall upgrade that adds one in. “Evon Gnashblade is so impressed with the size and scale of your guild that he’s willing to post a permanent representative here!”

Without getting into the debate here (since I feel that both sides have fair points and I’m kinda on the fence on this issue), I do have one major concern regarding the large amount of effort and money to get just about anything in HoT. It’s that newer players might come in, get overwhelmed by the massive costs, and decide not to bother with guild halls or the new maps, or even leave altogether. The other day I was playing with a cousin who was new to GW2, and showing him all the different skins I’d collected. He got pretty excited upon seeing some of the Ascended skins, but after he learned just how expensive or time-consuming it was to get them, he got disheartened. I think his exact words were “It would take me YEARS of playing to afford that.” (Which considering what it took me to get my Ascended gear, isn’t that far off the truth.)

For better or worse, it seems that Ascended gear has now become must-haves. It used to be that we could just tell newbies to ignore Ascended gear and stick with Exotics, because Exotics were more than sufficient for everything. But with raids and high-level Fractals and super-nice skins getting tied to Ascended items, along with a broadening mentality among players of “You’re still using Exotics? Noob!”. I fear that the low bar of entry for GW2 is disappearing. And that feeling of “I have to do/spend that much just to catch up??” might prove incredibly damaging to the future of GW2’s playerbase considering that, as the OP put it, GW2 has always been marketed as the “casual player’s MMO”, where you would never have to grind.

I honestly doubt ANet will add more sources of it, since it’s another hook to keep people playing in Dry Top. That map’s the best place to acquire Coarse Sand and Quartz, so even though I personally would like to see more places to acquire both materials, I can’t see it happening.

They DO drop from Airship Cargos, but this is quite a rare occurrence. (As someone who has nearly 700 Bottles of Airship Oil, that should tell you just how rare the drop rate is.) I have gotten two more from the various Strongboxes as TexZero mentioned, but again, it’s not necessarily a guaranteed thing.

I’ve probably salvaged close to 200 blue/green Reclaimed weapons now using Mystic Salvage Kits. No plates so far. I suspect the drop rate is probably 1% or even lower.

Someone mentioned that ANet should have used the system they used for Silverwastes, where the map’s progression is based on player participation rather than a hard timer. This is far more ideal because it means that once the map reaches the critical stage where lots of players are needed, they can throw up LFGs and taxi people in who do want to do that particular content.

I also agree that the maps seem a lot quieter now. Particularly in Verdant Brink, when at least a third to maybe even half of the players in the map are all clustered at the Spirit Vale entrance. ANet should take a page from what they did for SAB and create a separate lobby inside Spirit Vale that players can simply go into so that they aren’t taking up valuable map space in Verdant Brink.

I do think that they are perhaps harder than they need to be. Like others here, I hardly ever see anyone doing them now. It seems that the vast majority of players (me included) just did them to Gold once to unlock the AP and Mastery points, and then never touched them again.

And that would be fine, if the standards for getting Silver/Gold were fairly easy to get with a bit of practice, but it varies quite a lot from adventure to adventure. Some of them I still cannot get Gold on, despite hours of trying (and that’s after having to grind an event chain to open up the adventure, only to get kicked out 10 mins later because of the map’s meta-event changing).

I honestly feel the adventures need a balance pass. The high scores can stay the same, so that players who are genuinely competitive about that sort of thing can still feel the pride in their accomplishments, but I think that the leaderboard and bragging rights should be its own reward, not something that most players desperately need more of.

We had this same problem trying to do Scratch Sentry Defense yesterday. Some of us were in squads (leftover from when we did bounty and trek previously), others were not, but each time we entered the NPC said the mission was closed and to try again later.

Heh, it’s still broken? It’s been broken pretty much since launch. Well, hopefully the new attention on this event chain will finally give ANet the incentive to get it fixed once and for all, same way Ogre Wars finally got fixed after years of waiting.

Yep, you definitely want to go with salvaging Weapons and Armor for Balls of Dark Energy. From what I hear, those two give a 100% chance of giving back Balls of Dark Energy. The drop rate from Accessories and Amulets is MUCH lower. They DO drop, that I can confirm, but it’s so rare that I wouldn’t recommend wasting your Laurels or Guild Commendations unless you are also after the various legendary Salvaged Essences for the collection.

I’ve only salvaged three Ascended backpieces so far, got 1 Ball out of them, so I can’t confirm whether or not it also has a decently high drop rate.

In essence, basically what ANet is doing is setting up yet another “line of defense” for gold and mat sinks for the foreseeable future. Before HoT, prices for various Ascended materials were already starting to drop. This approach (plus as anyone who’s looked at the various Precursor collections will have realized) is a means of driving up demand for Ascended mats, and thus the lower-level mats, for years to come.

It’s onerous, yes, and it’s going to be an incredible grind, but I’m still going for this, because I need to have to goal to strive for over the next 3 years (or however long it takes ANet to come out with the next expansion). Considering that Ascended gear has now been confirmed (I’ll be holding you to that, Colin…) to be the very last tier in terms of power levels, any new power creep via gear will be via the introduction of subtly more powerful gear stats, just as we saw with the introduction of Viper’s, Marauder’s etc. Crafting Legendary armor/backpieces is now my way of future proofing myself against having to craft more Ascended gear in the future. (Weapons I will probably ignore since weapons tend to be much more skill-locked and don’t change very much in their usage.)

Ehhh, I dunno about that. You don’t want to make them too squishy otherwise by the time someone calls out in map about them, it’s dead in under a minute before players can get there. That would just result in players camping the Mushroom spawns and not participating in other events (which results in them both getting annoyed, and raising the ire of players who are trying to get the meta going and getting no help).

I do agree the aggro range of the Mordrem Cavaliers is utterly ridiculous though. Thankfully they are still incredibly dumb about trying to charge at me while I’m standing on a rock/tree branch and safely out of reach. :P

As someone who would love to see the people in VB actually doing events, I have to downvote the idea for making T4 night a compulsory criteria for opening the raid. That would just aggravate the raiders and create even more bad blood between players.

Instead, what ANet should do is create a separate map lobby that raiders can zone into, similar to what they did for SAB (how I miss you, SAB…) a few years ago. There, they can form groups, plan strategies etc. without taking up map spots from the people who genuinely do want to do the VB meta.

Yep, I can confirm that Nar’s theory is correct. As someone who has all 9 Elite Spec weapon collections unlocked, it has indeed been dropping the spores in alphabetical order. I’m currently up to “Reaper”, so tomorrow it will be “Scrapper”, then “Tempest”.

Yep. A large part of it is due entirely to a huge number of players who didn’t get their map completion rewards for Southsun/Dry Top/Silverwastes and whatever HoT maps they had already done. Once the bug was fixed, a HUGE number of Exotics flooded into the market.

I really should have held onto mine for a week or two before selling, but my bank is already bursting at the seams storing all the new stuff for collections and what-not that I simply had to free up some space.

Here’s how I’m currently making a nice, small profit every day.

1. Login on my several alts parked at the Flax farm in Verdant Brink. Harvest all of them.

2. Make as much Linseed Oil as I can.

3. Sell the oil for about 1g profit each.

As others have said, head to Toxal Bog in Brisban Wildlands. There is an ambient bull that spawns there periodically from the chaos magic. (This is the only place in the entire game where an ambient bull will spawn. Several other critters including raccoons, rats, rabbits, ospreys, spiders and frogs also spawn there, allowing you to get lots of trophies at the same time.)

A couple of bugs that I’ve spotted to date:

1. Predator Tier 1 – If you have already completed the Quandry Scratch heart in Mount Maelstrom, you are unable to interact with the Experimental Asura Rifle scenery in order to obtain the required item. You can work around this by using an alt who hasn’t done that Heart yet, but this needs to be fixed in case there are players who already have completed Hearts on all their characters and have no more slots with which to make new ones.

2. Minstrel Tier 1 – Not a direct bug, but it is currently next to impossible to obtain the Swift Egg from Three-Toed Tootsie since she was given a Break Bar like all other Champs. However, her unique mechanics mean that it’s next to impossible for players to break her bar before her Take Off skill in complete. Even organized Dry Top maps have given up on trying to beat her.

I don’t even know if it IS actually dropping at the moment. There is zero information about it on the Wiki, and even trawling through the forums and reddit has turned up no information on how Indigo Mushrooms are obtained. It may be a bug in the drop tables, or it’s found from a very specific mob/spot that nobody has discovered yet. (Which I consider highly unlikely. I still remember the Final Rest bug where the devs swore up and down that it was working properly and players simply hadn’t found it yet, only for the error to finally be found, patched, and within that VERY DAY several copies of Final Rest dropped and were up on that TP.)

Well, I guess that’s one way to fix the problem. XD Yeah, this issue is apparently now resolved. Shame. I would have liked 5 more AP.

Has anyone tried this event chain again since the patch to see whether it’s been fixed?

I think BRA is exaggerating about that part. :P It depends largely on the type of opponent you’re facing, and where. Sure, most of the regular Orrian undead can be facetanked like that, but the trouble is that the Risen travel in packs. Plus, some of them (I’m looking at you, Veteran Risen Subjugators) deal a surprisingly large amount of damage.

Anyway, back to the original topic. I think it’s undeniable that HoT is harder than the base game. Alas, this is all part of the inevitable power creep that comes with expansions. You have gear stats that are better than the original ones in the Core game (sure, on paper maybe Crusader’s stats will hit less hard than Berzerker’s, but on certain professions the difference is minuscule, and you’ll be WAY more survivable), enemies that have a wider array of hard-hitting skills, and then you have the Elite Specs that are all undeniably better (some by just a margin, others by a HUGE amount) than their base counterparts.

Yeah, that sometimes happens to me too. And I’ve also seen videos where multiple targets start appearing for the shooter even before they hit 30 targets. I was hoping for some balance patching on Shooting Gallery (and some of the other adventures), but no luck yet.

Ah, so it’s an RNG thing, is it? That explains why I didn’t get it from the VW chest earlier. (Got the Vinewrath Tendril for my Legendary backpiece as well as the Vinewrath Petals for Rodgort, so I was really puzzled when the Tiny Vinewrath Blossom didn’t drop at the same time.)

Those of us playing from locations like Australia also have an additional handicap thanks to our worse than average ping. I’ve seen some videos where the person going for Gold aims the reticle and then fires off pin-point shots. You can’t do that with ping like mine; skill delays means you’ll waste lots of precious seconds waiting for the gun to charge up (the initial shot takes longer than subsequent shots, for some reason), so I just hold down the left mouse button for autofire. Unfortunately, this tactic means that the shots can sometimes obscure your own reticle and make it difficult to know if your shots are actually on target till you see the confetti explosion.

So yeah, I also would urge ANet to tone down Shooting Gallery (as well as the other RNG-based, very tiny margin of error, adventures like Floor is Lava and Fallen Masks) so there’s more leeway for us players who have to operate with lag, time restrictions due to lock-outs etc. Plus, it’s hard for adventures to be using as bragging fodder when one can argue that you only scored high due to a lucky spawn. Level the playing field, and let the leaderboards themselves be used as the reward for achieving the top score. So maybe at least half the population managed to get Gold (and their AP and Mastery point), but holding a top 5 spot on the leaderboard is still something that’s worth striving for if you’re trying to appeal to the ultra-competitive.

I got mine off a random Smokescale that just attacked me in VB. However, if people are still looking for them, there’s a few spots I can think of where they spawn in fairly decent numbers:

1. Axemaster Gwyllion spawns Veteran Smokescales frequently during his fight. Killing them gives XP, although I’m not sure if they drop loot.

2. During the Pact Encampment chain, there’s an event where you need to calibrate the detectors for Saurians. Smokescales and Vet Smokescales spawn during the fight.

3. A Veteran Smokescale and several normal Smokescales are standing on a small hill near one of the Pact Towers in the Ordnance zone. It can be annoying trying to fight them all at once though.

I’ve seen his chest spawn in two locations so far:

One is on the level below where Scout Acan sits strumming hikittene (just a short glide down, not a several screen-long fall. There’s a Bouncing Mushroom not far away that takes you back to the Pact Encampment).

Another is above the Ameyalli Temple, just S of the main Itzel rally point.

I’ll settle for the icon at the far right of the bar being lit up and glowing in a very noticeable way. But yes, as others have mentioned, if your XP bar is full, any XP you accrue will simply get allocated to another unfinished Mastery for the region.

Agreed. The best I’ve ever done was 35, and that was with a very lucky spawn. There’s a number of factors that combine to make this adventure particularly aggravating.

1. This adventure isn’t unlocked until almost the very end of the Nobles chain. By the time most maps accomplish it, there’s usually only 10 or so minutes left till nightfall, which gives you only 4 or 5 attempts to practice, followed by well over an hour until you can try again. This results in “the groove” being lost, with short-term memory and muscle memory fading in the meantime.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that occasionally the Nobles chain bugs out at Faren’s training where the last Bongo illusion disappears somewhere and makes the event uncompletable, resulting in even more lost time.

2. This adventure is unfairly harder for shorter characters, especially Asura. This is because the Action Camera positions itself relative to your character’s height, meaning that shorter characters have their vision obstructed by things like grass, making it far more difficult to spot targets or aim properly. As a result, this is the only time in the entire game where I would recommend using a max-size Charr or Norn character.

3. Two of the targets are particularly annoying; the one in the cave that’s partially hidden behind a bunch of baskets and boxes, and the one that’s blocked by a tree trunk and further obstructed by foliage, requiring you to go around it to get a clear shot. This means that if you get a spawn where you have to shoot these two targets, it will result in a lot of wasted time repositioning yourself.

Considering that the adventures are meant to be exercises in repetition until you have the rhythms and patterns down pat (for most of the other adventures, once you know where the targets are and what route to take, achieving Gold is merely a matter of practice), Shooting Gallery is extremely frustrating. I think the following suggestions (not all of which need to be implemented) might help alleviate the issue:

1. Change the targets from dummies to a simple round target. This gives the targets a bit more surface area, and helps players who have memorized the target locations a bit more room for error by not making them miss just because the shot happened to pass underneath the arm or a bit too far to the side.

2. Change the tiers for the reward threshold to 10 – 20 – 30, as viola recommended. 30 is still no mean feat for a lot of players, especially those who are not familiar with FPS-style gameplay.

3. Increase the time limit from 2 mins to 3 mins.

I know exactly how you feel, but I think the answer is just “Relax. Take your time.”

You’re not in a race with anyone. HoT is probably going to be the bulk of our new content for at least the next year. (Maybe 2.) You can choose to focus on one new thing (HoT, Fractals, the new Legendary collections), or just do a little bit of everything and build your progress slowly that way. It might not seem very much at first, but it WILL add up.

Has anyone checked to see whether ANet stealth-patched this bug in the latest update?

Even if the Itzel Champion vendor doesn’t sell it, I think that would be a good compromise to give players another avenue of acquiring the Chestpiece. Having an item you need to complete a collection be trapped behind RNG is NOT a good way to keep your players happy. Unless the odds are very good (and even if it is), there will always be outliers who try dozens of time, spend all their effort organising maps and getting them to T4, only to get nothing.

There is a HUGE amount of stuff that requires Airship Parts, including crafting recipes, decorations, Bladed armor boxes, collections for the various Legendary and Elite Spec skins, that it will keep players coming back to VB for years to come. Allowing players to purchase the Bladed Chest box from the Itzel Champion rewards them for spending enough time and activity in the game to unlock the Mastery, and for taking the time to go out of their way to engage in different content. (I have a guildie who has Itzel Champion Mastery unlocked. So far he tells me he’s thoroughly unimpressed with the rewards so far. “Your standard two blues and a green”, he says.)

Are you sure that it’s a Husk? Or is it a Mordrem Vinetender (which look like Mordrem Trolls)? If the latter, you’re not really supposed to do anything to it; the Pale Reaver snipers will down it in one or two shots.

Haha, I came across this bug too! Should remember to report it in-game as well.

If so, that sounds WAY too rare for me. I think that any of the Night canopy bosses should have a small chance of dropping the Bladed Chestpiece, with the % increasing the higher the map’s tier.

I noticed this bug on the first day too. It seems to be that, after his initial first spawn (where he pops out of the wall), the Labyrinthine Horror never respawns.

As such, your best bet is to head into the Labyrinth immediately after a new patch where you can be guaranteed of a fresh instance.

I noticed this bug on the first day too. It seems to be that, after his initial first spawn (where he pops out of the wall), the Labyrinthine Horror never respawns.

As such, your best bet is to head into the Labyrinth immediately after a new patch where you can be guaranteed of a fresh instance.

The Bark Breaker achievement in Verdant Brink seems to be bugged. You’re required to break a Husk’s defiance bar to attain it, but the only Husks that spawn throughout the entire event chain (the Pale Reavers) do not have any defiance bars, making the achievement impossible to obtain.

Someone on this thread mentioned that the Husks used to have defiance bars back in the beta weekends, so this may have been an unintentional oversight:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Bark-Breaker-Achievement-Bug/first#post5680129

Same here. I’ve done the entire event chain several times now and I’ve never seen a Husk with a break bar to break for the achievement. I’ve tried letting a Husk get all the way up to the NPC while at the temple cliffs (nothing) and breaking the bar of the Vinetenders (nothing), and I can’t think of anything else.

Has anyone actually completed this achievement that can shed some light on this issue? Or is it definitely a bug?