Guild Wars 2

You can’t interact with them if you’re currently in combat, IINM, so keep that in mind. There are a few that are guarded by mobs that you’ll have to kill or sneak past.

But the physical object at the vista point will let you interact and play a cutscene once you get there in the clear.

You can get the map area unfogged by just walking right up against it, IINM. But either way you should be able to get the achievement without it, I think.

In the second image you’re missing the area to the south (you can see where the entrance is just west of the WP in the bottom right corner) and tribulation caverns… the caverns are accessed near the vista at the top of tribulation rift scaffolding.

Also check timberline falls, near the south-east corner. Lair of the Coil and Tail of the Serpent are easy to miss down there.

They’re still better than the ICC, since you can get more lives by using 5+ at a time. ICC is a safety net (though obviously I wouldn’t complain if they gave us a way to trade them in for something more useful).

You’d have to salvage it from an exotic with Rabid stats. It’s not craftable, IINM.

You can get 100+ empyreal fragments a day in about an hour’s work just by doing jumping puzzles and the like. 20+ per day in Queensdale alone in about 15 minutes from the 7 chests in the open world there (and all of that is per level 80 character, so if you have multiples)…

Granted it depends on how much time you have to dedicate to this, but in reality the wood (and maybe the metal?) needed for the materials is a bigger hindrance than the shards unless you want to spend too much money on them.

Catnic.5309:

As many of you I am in the process of crafting an ascended weapon. I’ve levelled my huntsman to 500 and now i’m gathering mats for the pistol I want to make.

Fot this pistol I need a Vision Crystal which needs a bucketload of Dragonite Ore and loads of other stuff. It also needs Obsidian shards and as far as I can see in the Wiki it is obtainable (amongst other places) at the Cathedral of Glorious Victory for 2100 karma a piece. Since I have about 500k karma this would be a nice option.

But… Cathedral of Glorious Victory has never been uncontested on Whiteside Ridge and noone seems to care doing it. Is there any other server where I can guest to where it is uncontested or anywhere I can see that it is uncontested?

Cheers.

http://www.gw2state.com/temples.html

Looks like Piken Square is open right now. Make sure you check right away when you want to try it though.

Could also mean the server Devona’s Rest (though you’d only see that in a WvW chat, I imagine).

Right, just go to any renown heart (yellow heart) and do the things they ask. Go whereever you want. You only get directed to a little bit in the very beginning, to kick you off, but otherwise exploration is very much self-directed.

You can talk to scouts (telescope icon) to get a feel for what matters in each area and they’ll show you nearby hearts on the map. But that’s not really direction so much as context.

Go to the city connected to your starting zone. Take the purple asura gate to lions’ arch. take another asura gate (they’re all in one hub) to another city. From that city, go to the attached starting zone.

There are 5 starter zones, with level 1-15 content, one for each race. You can probably do fine just by exploring two of them and hopping back and forth to keep up with the content, but obviously you can go through all of them if you want.

You won’t get “quests” in another starting zone, not the kind that are prompted. Your personal story is the only questline you’ll really follow like that, and you only get the one (with some branching paths of course). Dynamic events that NPCs can sometimes point you to will always stay within the same zone. Exploration is really up to you to do at your own pace.

You can get ~20+ empyreal from a 7-chest loop in Queensdale per level 80 character. Beggars’ Burrow, Wolf den+Harpy nest in the Crossing/Vale WP areas, centaur camp by Godslost WP, Spiders+dead end (second room)+proper puzzle end in Demongrub pits.

Can do that relatively quickly and if you have several 80s it adds up.

Races have very little to distinguish them. Racial skills do not matter all that much.

Asura, Sylvari, and Humans have creature-y summons as elite skills which may feel like a fit for your Ranger (though honestly grasping vines or rampage as one are probably better fits for most situations). Norn can transform into their beast forms which may fit an image you have, and they have normal utility skills to call owls and wurms though they’re mostly useless.

Sylvari are probably my favorite race from a character size perspective. Especially for jumping puzzles and platforming gameplay. But none of it really matters otherwise.

1.) Collecting materials would be grindy. Buying them on trading post obviously isn’t. How long it takes you depends on how much you can spend (it’s rather expensive, either in amount paid for materials or amount not made from selling materials, to get a craft to 400 or 500). The crafting itself is reasonably quick. You can max a craft in less than an hour if you know what you need to do (follow a guide or something) and have your materials handy.

2.) Certainly not a must, unless you’re going for a legendary weapon (that’ll require you to max out one craft). It’s the only reasonable way to get ascended weapons, but those are still potentially available as very rare drops. You can get exotic weapons and armor etc. elsewhere… they’re all the same quality, it’s just a question of getting the right stat combination you want.

3.) You can buy most items on the trading post (including items others have crafted). You can get some from laurels collected from daily/monthly achievements. You can buy them with karma. You can buy them with tokens gained from running dungeons. The standard NPC weaponsmith/armorsmith merchants will not sell anything useful (they only sell the lowest rarity, white, which isn’t worth using) but karma vendors have useful items. It’s just a matter of finding stuff that’s level appropriate and has the right stat combination.

Join some temple runs or just jump in at the end to get 30 dragonite each (defend the pact interrupter at melandru, beat up malchor or defeat the statue of dwayna at dwayna, defeat the risen priestess of lyssa at lyssa, etc.). You can get ~20 each from Shatterer, Tequatl, and Claw of Jormag.

For empyreal do any and all jumping puzzles you know (and can do quickly) on as many 80s as you have. Also there’s a set of 7 chests in Queensdale that will all give you a few shards, so you can get ~21 per level 80 character just by grabbing those (Beggar’s Burrow, the wolf cave in the middle of the map, the harpy nest by Vale WP, the centaur camp by Godslost WP, and 3 in Demongrub Pits [one guarded by spiders, one by the dead end to the left of the second room of pillars, one at the end of the jumping puzzle])

Supposedly there’s a chance of getting a trade-in if you put in a support ticket and say pretty please. And IINM if you infuse one of them you can equip them both (one infused, one not).

I would do it by budgeting karma. Set some minimum amount of karma you want to save to buy them directly from Balthazar (leave yourself enough to buy like 400 maybe; if you get unlucky with the boxes you can just farm more karma and come back later). Then buy boxes until you hit that level of karma. Then refill your karma from the boxes and repeat.

If you do the boxes first you can continually adjust the amount you need from the priest down (and hence afford even more boxes) when they contain shards, but they’re too unpredictable to try and rely on them. Make sure you can always go to Balthazar afterwards to get what you need.

Increases your chances of finding higher quality loot from normal enemy kills, and only kills (not chests, not bags, etc.)

I didn’t get any from Behem Gauntlet when I did it. Craze’s Folly only seems to give them to you in one of its chests (whichever you open first), though Demongrub Pits and Dark Reverie do not behave that way (got them from all of the chests in those two).

Crafting isn’t usually about making/saving money. If you’re good at reading the market you can end up being profitable, but for the average person it’s probably not a good reason to go there. So if all you care about is getting the weapons or armor you want, just buy it.

So you can craft for the title of master crafter and the achievements related to that, you can craft for the experience (to raise an alt, for example), you can craft because you think you’ll one day want to make a legendary, you can craft because you want ascended weapons.

As much as I’d like to see a better Zhaitan fight (or Jormag, or Kralkatorrik, etc.) mechanically, I doubt you ever see it as a big open world event. There’s only one Zhaitan. He’ll never be out in the open world where he’d have to respawn etc. I don’t think they’d do that with any of the true Elder Dragons. And I’m ok with that.

You don’t have to make it an open world event to make it more interesting or “epic” or whatever you want it to be. Just add cooler mechanics.

Engineer has by far the best group utility (the big exception being thief’s shadow refuge which specifically can be very useful to a group). You can become a very good support player with lots of healing and a fair amount of boons and condition removal, you can do big time ranged damage, you have some decent CC abilities… there’s lots of versatility for engineers.

But as long as you become good with your class I think you should be able to fit in with a group no matter what. Rangers will always be at a disadvantage in dungeons with pets being what they are now, but better a ranger who can play his class well than a bad thief or engie.

No armor yet. It will be added eventually, presumably through crafting as the weapons are.

Is there a surge in supply due to people trying to raise weaponsmith past 400?

This is definitely a feature that would be welcome. I’d love to either hide my personal story box, or at least set it so that it always starts out collapsed by default. Really no reason not to give us a bit more control over it.

Depends which ones they are specifically. Sometimes you can sneak around to access something from an angle you didn’t see at first to get what you need without having to fight. Some of them you really have no choice but to find someone to help you.

Just move on and come back periodically or find someone in a city (or in your guild if you’re in one) who will tag along for a few minutes to knock the troublesome ones out.

1.) Ascended gear is available as accessories, amulets, rings (all available from the laurel vendor), and some back items (purchased from fractals of the mists or created in the mystic forge). As well there are now ascended weapons; you farm the crafting materials from e.g. champion loot bags, world bosses, keeps/towers in WvW, jumping puzzles, dungeons, mini-dungeons, then you raise an appropriate weapon craft to 500 to create them. Also available as tremendously rare drops anywhere you can get the materials.

2.) They’re highest-level weapons (were comparable to exotics before, now have been boosted to be comparable to ascended) that have unique visual effects. They’ll always be comparable to the highest-level items, but they’re vanity items. They’re prohibitively expensive. You must craft, purchase, or forge several different “gifts” which require you to get 100% world completion, collect lots of badges of honor and karma, collect or purchase lots of high level crafting materials, run whatever dungeon your specific legendary requires, and find or purchase the precursor exotic weapon. Once you have all your gifts and the precursor you can forge them into the legendary in the mystic forge (check the wiki for specific recipes, it lays it out quite nicely).

3.) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony
The mechanics page shows you what each amount of agony resist gets you at different levels. I can’t commend on how much you need, but at least that’ll give you some context.

4.) Queensdale if you don’t mind lower level stuff. Frostgorge Sound if you want mostly 80s. Popular loop that starts at drakkar waypoint in the far northwest.

5.) Many different options, don’t want to comment on a “best” (unless you’re good at playing the trading post, that’d have to be the quickest way to make cash if you’re a good investor). Farming champions and events is not bad, though. Do Scarlet’s invasions if they pop up (I only see one, maybe two per day now though).

6.) World boss for the Kralkatorrik’s Legacy meta-event (he’s Kralkatorrik’s champion). Lowland Burns waypoint in Blazeridge Steppes.

7.) Anything. I farm world events and jumping puzzles (which I love) right now. Keep up with living world content if you like it. Play the daily activity til you can’t stand it anymore. Go for 100% world completion on at least one character.

8.) You can use it to combine 4 of a given item (4 pieces or equipment, 4 sigils, 4 runes, 4 crests/jewels, 4 mini pets, OR 3 of those and a mystic forge stone if you have them) of a given rarity to get a new one of equal or higher rarity… basically gambling on getting something more valuable out. You can use it to promote crafting materials to a higher tier. You can use it to craft specific weapons. You can use it to created infused versions of ascended items. Check wiki for all the details, there’s a lot of possibilities.

Considering it will cost you like 60 gold to get your crafts to 400 if you do them all (and possibly another 100+ to get to 500 for even a single weapon profession), yeah 40-50 silver is nothing.

Keep in mind that salvaging ectos seems to give a very large amount of luck essences (though I don’t know the actual number, just that it seems to be very high). So since you get, what, .8-.9(?) ectos per rare on average, they can end up being very good sources of luck. Of course you may still prefer the cash, from the rare itself or from the ectos.

It makes no difference. Swapping takes 2 lines of dialog with a master crafter. Your material bank is account-wide, as is your wallet (so you no longer have to worry about moving money around from character to character if you’re buying/selling crafted stuff).

I did them all on one because I just powered through them in a couple days. You can spread them out if you want to use the experience to level several different characters, perhaps. I like having them all in one though because it’s easy just to park him in Lion’s Arch and swap to him when I want to do something. Also, if I need to accumulate a lot of extra material (either stuff that’s not considered a collectible for crafting or stuff above and beyond the 250 item limit from the collection tab) it’s nice to just keep them on one character.

It’s entirely up to you. Recognize that taking a craft to 400 is quite expensive (and taking weapon/huntsman/artificer to 500 is ridiculous) so you won’t want to do it more than once per craft. Taking them to 50 or 100 on multiple characters though isn’t that big a deal, and is a nice little boost of experience for lower level characters.

Ascended should be quite a bit easier… but they do use somewhat different materials (obsidian shards are the big crossover, I think, but you do not need many for an ascended weapon).

Does the ore actually drop more than once per day if you’re on different characters? The patch notes don’t specify whether it’s per account or per character (the chests are per character, obviously, but that doesn’t mean you can get dragonite ore more than once).

You do realize it still works, right? It’s the only gear-related source of MF left in the game.

If you can afford it, getting to 450 in one of those crafts now ensures you can make your time-locked items as quickly as possible. But yeah, some of these material prices are insane.

You do the closing ceremony first.
Then talk to vorpp and he’ll send you to gendarran fields near ascalon settlement (there’ll be a portal to inspect and then an NPC nearby to talk to).

Then you’ll talk to vorpp and you’ll need to complete 5 unique invasions (the scarlet events you’re talking about)… you must be there until the end of the event, and they must be on 5 different maps, but you do not need to succeed. Participate, though, so that you get credit.

Then you’ll talk to him and he’ll have you get three pieces of the teleporter… you can get them all during a single invasion (once from killing an aetherblade pirate captain, and usually the other two from killing a champion twisted nightmare and closing one of its portals).

Then once you have the 3 items he tells you to get you can talk to him to get into the funhouse.

The much shorter way to get in, if that’s all you care about, is to have someone who has already unlocked it all pull you in as part of a party.

Ranger is surprisingly good here. Longbow is good for quickly tagging from range (either AoE or single target), then something like axe/torch is useful for hitting many mobs in a group (axe 1 bounces, axe 2 hits multiple targets, torch 5 is PBAoE). Damage output is a little low and conditions kind of get marginalized in big zergs, but I’ve never had issues with it as a farming profession.

Kjeldoran.3849:

cpg.7140:

It’s supposed to be based on how many people are buying and selling the gems. Now since it’s not a direct post-and-buy system like the trading post you have to take their word for it that that’s how it works, and it would be sensible for them to give it a shove here and there. But for the most part it certainly seems like it’s based on demand and such. And in that case it’s unlikely to change; the exchange rate probably isn’t high enough for it to be worth buying gems just to covert into gold, at least not for most players. So as long as the gem shop has things people want (and they roll out new stuff often enough that that’ll probably be the case for a long time) the exchange rate should keep climbing.

ok that sounds interesting but… if you are right, why during this period gem’s price has grown up so much? this mean that no one is buying gems with real money but golds… really? this sounds legit but… if this will continue ò.ò in two months gem’s price would be like 1gold per gem!

It doesn’t mean nobody is buying them with real money. It mean more people are converting gold to gems than are converting gems to gold. Gems to gold isn’t a conversion too many people want right now, but gold is easy enough to get for some people that gold to gems is not a bad deal for them.

It’s supposed to be based on how many people are buying and selling the gems. Now since it’s not a direct post-and-buy system like the trading post you have to take their word for it that that’s how it works, and it would be sensible for them to give it a shove here and there. But for the most part it certainly seems like it’s based on demand and such. And in that case it’s unlikely to change; the exchange rate probably isn’t high enough for it to be worth buying gems just to covert into gold, at least not for most players. So as long as the gem shop has things people want (and they roll out new stuff often enough that that’ll probably be the case for a long time) the exchange rate should keep climbing.

Turrets are there until they die or you pick them up. They’re not as useful as you might think (though healing turret is good for water fields and flame turret is good for smoke fields). Of course as you’re leveling you can play around with them, and there are traits that make them stronger or make them placeable via ground targeting… but they’re probably not something you’ll want to build around. Kits seem to have more potential.

If not for preferring range you might want Guardian.

Maybe try Engineer, though you’ll need to give it time to get comfortable I imagine. Grenade kit for long range, flamethrower or rifle or pistols for mid range, bomb kit or tool kit for close range. Trait for backpack regenerator and you can have constant regen with any kit equipped. Lots of very useful support tools for dungeon/fractal groups. Solo map completion will be a bit tough but doable.

It strikes me that the biggest issue is not so much that farmers want to farm, it’s that they’re probably doing it inefficiently. Farmers taking up 4, 5 events at a time (which depending on how many waypoints are contested etc. can become a nuisance) is sub-optimal for both groups, I’d think. In general everyone could benefit from being more organized, and that is part of where any commanders who choose to wear their tags could stand to step up.

Now that would require most of the players on the map to have a decent understanding of how the meta-event works, pay attention to mapchat or whatever to keep coordinated with everyone… it may be wishful thinking but if it could be done, I think everyone would end up better off. Farmers would probably get through their events more quickly (and hence get to farm more events), completers would make more progress in the meta and have a better chance of success… just need everyone on the same page.

0-80 = full 400 in all 8 crafts… that’s gotta be over 40 gold, right? I don’t know exactly, you can find a crafting guide (just google, there are many but I’d look for anything that looks a little newer) and check with gw2spidy for material prices. I mean it’s only the upper levels that’ll be really expensive so you can save some time by just looking there.

teyjattt.5214:

Brother Grimm.5176:

bhagwad.4281:

What are you suggesting? That players put someone else’s needs ahead of their own? How can you even expect something like that? I just don’t understand this style of thinking…

We’re all rational beings. It’s insane to demand that people act otherwise.

What I’m suggesting is that if a player is going to be a full tilt, selfish prick, they should just admit to it and quit trying to blame the game (or designers) for “enabling” them to be selfish. I don’t understand the current acceptance that EVERYTHING has to be some one’s fault (and those that think that way are absolutely sure it can never be their own).

I’m not saying that ANet could not make changes to alter the current behavior of selfish players, but putting the blame for selfish behavior 100% on ANet’s shoulders is what I don’t understand. The content presents a choice. It is NOT black and white. I often join in and help close portals and then later waypoint across the map to hit a Pirate event. From my observations there are a lot of other players that do the same.

Sorry but I didn’t read every post in here yet. Who’s being the selfish prick? The ones who want the farmers to give up their loot so they can get the completion that they want, or the ones who are more concerned about getting their loot instead of helping with the event completion? Couldn’t the argument be made that both are being selfish?

Exactly. People are doing whatever they need to do. Some need the Scarlet achievement, so completion is their priority. For anyone who doesn’t, all that matters is being there at the finish, so getting as much as you can out of the event itself is likely the priority (granted, taking down scarlet at least once per day can be rather profitable, though more than once isn’t worth going out of your way for).

Is it selfish for people to inhibit the event because farming is more profitable for them? Sure, but it’s not wrong.

Is it selfish for people to want to inhibit the farming because completing the event is more important to them? Sure, but it’s not wrong.

Both groups have things they want/need. They have the right to pursue those. Obviously they have the right to complain about other groups working against them, but then those groups have the right to ignore those complaints or lodge counter-complaints or… well, here we are. I doubt much will get changed.

At worst by farming you’re making it tougher for a portion of the players to get a single achievement, but who should lose any sleep over that? Obviously I encourage those who want to finish to take any steps they can to coordinate and try and progress as much as possible. Honestly the optimal setup is probably to have all farmers at one or two events and all completers spread out among the others in teams of 4-5 or whatever, just in terms of both working towards their own goals. But organizing that many people is going to be tough even if you all agree on those sets of goals.

I mean, Zhaitan has been up for decades. Primordius has been active for over 200 years, no? A year’s worth of living story doesn’t seem like much downtime compared to that.

Sanctus.8350:

Why would they introduce new account bound mats and increase to 500 crafting for ascended weapons, and then give you a way to skip past the time and craft requirements? You will have to use transmutation crystals if you want to use those skins with ascended stats.

It shouldn’t be tough for them to implement a way to raise them to ascended that would require lots of those T7 mats or whatever… meaning you wouldn’t get a headstart vs. crafting to 500, but you’d get to keep your weapon and ascend it (for lack of a better term).

Ascalon settlement. She’s marked with a gold star.

Seras.5702:

Gems -> Gold, but it’s not much
Save it for something you really want

If you ever do buy gems, then this is halfway to an armor skin set.
Also halfway to an unlimited pickaxe, which they just brought back.

Gathering tools are back for 7 days only (granted, they may choose to bring them back again at a later date because I have to imagine they sell reasonably well) so if you’re interested you’ll have to come up with the extra gems now.

Markadis.9012:

A month ago, I spent $50 to get enough for a ticket to purchase an the Aetherized weapon skin. I hope this helps you make your decision.

It should be noted that $50 for the aetherized skin is probably relatively good luck (and that’s when they were 1/5 what they now cost). If all you care about is the skin (and so can’t really give much value to the other chest contents that you’d be receiving) it tends to be tremendously cheaper to convert gems to gold to buy the skins on the trading post if they’re available.

IINM the grenade kit for engineer has some very specific benefits in certain fractals (such as uncategorized?) because it is not a line-of-sight weapon. And of course in general there’s more group-versatility, more fields you can generate, etc. Though to be honest I imagine your skill with either class should override any of these little considerations if there’s any difference there. A good ranger is better than a bad engineer I’m sure.

Does it show you having all WPs, POIs, Vistas, Skill Points, Hearts (512/721/266/202/301 or whatever they are)?

If they’re all full and you still didn’t get your gifts of exploration etc. then obviously that would be a bug. If you’re still missing some of them then, depending on what you’re missing, that could point to something you may have overlooked (e.g. something in divinity’s reach, the chantry of secrets, etc.)

Eliteseraph.4970:

The problem lies with the design. The way it’s set up does not promote finishing the event, which REALLY sucks for people who haven’t yet accomplished it. Players should be rewarded and encouraged to work together towards completing events successfully. They should NOT be encouraged to ignore the event objectives.

The easiest way to do this is to up the rewards for a successful completion, and diminish the rewards gained from simple farming. There are numerous ways to accomplish this without being overly draconian.

I think an even bigger thing, which is sort of a core design issue with the game, is that for some events (not all), doing them with, say, 50 people takes way longer than doing them with 5. There’s no real reason it has to be that way. If the scaling were more balanced then farming wouldn’t be such a drag on the overall progress. I mean, people are always going to find a way to farm (obviously) so the real fix is probably not to nerf farming but rather to make it so that farming of any reasonably sort is not disruptive to any bigger goal.

When your scaling design pits farming and completion as opposing goals, that’s IMO a core issue.