f13.net

We always need one of these, and since I didn't really play beta much I've got a couple.

Is there a general chat channel? What are Trophy items?

Trophy items are vendor trash.  If you go to any merchant, and go to the second to last tab, the selling one, there's a sell all junk button that'll auto vend most of those.

How the shit do you trade with someone?

The only way I know of is by mail.

This. Mail is (or should be?) instant, and is the only trade option.

Thanks. Is there really no kind of chat though?

There is /map, but no world wide general chat.

Ahh, /map is like, local general chat?

Yeah, chat with everyone in the same zone as you.

Gate of madness is full. (Having not selected a home realm.) Do I not play til it opens up, or is that free transfer thing in effect?

I'm also completely new to the game, so here goes:

1) I've done lots of events and all those quest type thingies in order, in most of them I stay to kill plenty of extra mobs, but I'm falling behind on levels already (7 now). Am  I supposed to go grind random mobs now, go do past events repeatedly, stop soloing, or am I just missing something?

2) Where/when/how will I first get to try WvW?

From the moment you start your toon, press B and click "Go to WvWvW".  Enjoy.  :)

This was a common complaint in beta.  The dev response was, I shit you not, to mine resource nodes for exp so you don't fall behind.

The real response is to do your story quest and other newbie zones.

The other zones thing. That's how I level.

Free transfer is on as far as I could tell, I picked GoM to fuck around in the character creation screen and then transfered when Jade Quarry had space.

I require more cloth.  Anyone figure out how to get tons of it without relying on random drops?

How do you get to other newbie zones?

That is goofy! But OK.

There should be a portal to Lion's Gate, or whatever it's called, in your home town.  From there, you can take a portal to any of the home cities.

Hit H

Go to the Mists.

Take the portal to Lion's Arch.

Portal to other zone.

After that, you can fast travel from respawn node to respawn node.

Salvage light armors if you haven't been.

Kill More Centaur.

The little bags humanoids drop are your best bet for tons of cloth/leather imo.

You can be in multiple guilds, correct?

How do you make sure one is your "home" guild?

The one you chose to represent is your main guild.

It's the one you give points to at that moment, and gain bonuses from. You can flip representation at any time though.

Is there a way to use BOTH guild chats?  It seems you can't even see the second guild chat at the moment.

I believe you can only use the features of the guild you have activated so only one guild chat at a time.

If you're having trouble with keeping a regular leveling pace:

a) you should be gathering. (every single node is approximately 3 non-bonus monster kills: if you're passing all them up, you're missing out huge)

b) you should always have food in your belly. (There are vendors in each starting village that sell 16c - 32c food. Any food, any food at all gives you a buff which is worth +10XP for any kill, which is essentially +100% kill xp at low levels)

c) you should be prioritizing DEs first. DEs are often really efficient for your time, often have hordes of monsters (see b) and a few of them lead into a chain of DEs, one right after the other. The hearts will always be there.

d) don't be in Queensdale. It's pretty suckily done from a level flow perspective.

Had no idea at all about food.  Will have to check that out.

I am a gathering fiend, and enjoying crafting too.  Love that I get XP for exploring, gathering, and crafting, as well as goodies from gathering that are immediately useful (like the gems from copper nodes).

Alternately for less running around, port to the mists and then take the mist portal back to Lion's Gate.

Simple question: are they updating the game every few hours?  Everytime I launch the client, I have a pre-download (undetermined size) and then a post-download of approx 40 MB.

Since there is nothing on the launch client to indicate what is being patched, I have no idea whether I'm downloading content/updates or my installation is somehow borked and I'm constantly re-downloading the same stuff (beta client cut/paste from old computer to new computer).

Not a huge deal, but since my connection is not great it amounts to a 5-min login lag each and every time.

Not a question, but definitely a newbie-like-me surprise. So, when I heard that your skills were based on your weapons, I figured for Elementalist, my "weapon" was Fire, Water, Earth and Air. When I started unlocking the skills, I figured "eh, cool, but just a skill grind, so what's all this positive buzz about weapons and skills then?". Just found out from the GW2 wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_skills) about how an Elementalist with a staff has different skills within those lines than a main hander only, a dual wielder (which I am right now) and an off-hand only. That is damned cool.

"DE" is "Dynamic Event"?

Found out about the food thing the hard way. Was looking at a vendor's list, saw the food had XP+ and bought what I could afford with my starting cash. That was before I realized I needed to buy the tools that would allow me to gather. Doh!

Arena Net is notorious for daily updates to the client.  Guild Wars 1 was that way, too.  It's worse in the beginning as they're getting things stabilized.  However, they seem to like to push smaller, frequent patches instead of compiling everything for three months.

Did everybody grab his/her free hat at the store ?

Given the fact that they've got huge RVR queues on a lot of servers, the sensible thing to do would be to bundle those once a day, instead of booting everyone twice during PST prime time.

Don't forget, the game only officially released today.

How does the food bonus work?  I tried some and went and killed various things at various levels and I wasn't getting a 10xp bonus.

I got mine, and then realized it only shows up when you are in casual clothes and realized I will never see it again.

Dunno. I never really paid any attention to it. I'll try tonight and see considering I am cooking - be shitty to throw away coin on something broken.

(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb57887/southpark/images/4/4c/FreeHat05.jpg)

Wait, can you salvage the hat? I need tailoring supplies.

Has anyone done the Asura quest where you're supposed to protest and get sent to the jail?  The quest marker is WAYYY out there in the middle of BFE with no easy way to get there.  It'd take half an hour just to trek to the waypoint.

Food will have a note if it has +10xp bonus. I'm eating some pies with the bonus that I bought.

Since this is a simple questions thread, I have a dumb one: Is there any reason that I should craft if my guild already has crafters and all I'm interested in is pvp?

Nope. Leecher.  :why_so_serious:

I guess I'm asking if there is anything that you craft that can only be for the crafter?  Can crafters sell/mail everything? 

Other than experience, there really isn't a point if you hate crafting.  I don't believe there are any BOP stuff.

Thanks.  I don't mind crafting and will probably do a bit after I get bored with adventuring and pvp.  Cooking intrigues me and I see how it would be easier if I just saved everything while leveling.  I've been mailing everything to the guild crafters so far and I wondered if I was missing out.

Crafting is crazy XP though, especially through discoveries.

So says the lv 80 charr.  :uhrr:

Without crafting I don't think I would be able to keep up with zone levels without repeating stuff or going to another race's zone path (which I don't want to do on the assumption I'll want to go through them each once.)

True...and though I'm not normally a "crafter" in games, for some reason finding nodes in the world makes the whole experience better.  There's so much to do off the beaten track, that you should carry crafting tools just to add another layer to the experience.  Maybe not in RvR so much...but, hey, when you do PvE think about harvesting.

You'll want to visit all the zones for the skill points even if you've played through them on other races.

I wasn't even talking about the gathering, I mean the actual standing at a forge combining part. The harvesting is also nice XP, but I assumed everyone was doing that since you can sell on the commodities market and there's no competition for nodes.

Fake edit: yeah, good point Trippy.

My char is a tailor/artificer, so I need a metric asston of jute and those little blue drops from mobs... as I'm over level 30, fighting in 'expected' zones gets me tier2 stuff (and sometimes even tier3). Since the auction house was dead every time I tried accessing it (have they fixed it with the launch patch, btw?), the only way I could get enough of that stuff was by fighting in low-level zones -- and exploring some other race's 1-15 zone is better than sitting in one spot/DE and farming it until my eyes bleed. Doing this made me really appreciate the COH-style smooth auto-scaling the game has (even though I do feel very overpowered in low-level zones -- whether I refuse to use my second+third utility slots and elite skill or not).

Plus if you want the perfectionist achievement(s) on one character, you'll end up 100%ing every zone anyway... completing zones also gets you more of those chest keys which will allow you to open chests and fill your very limited bank with consumables that you end up never using (speaking for myself here) :why_so_serious:

e: WvW may be good xp, but (as predicted) my server is pretty terrible at it, so yeah. In fact I think it's the fastest non-insane levelling path if you're in a group that just chain-takes objectives and you are obliterating the enemy team(s) while doing so.

In my experience, it's not.  Our group makes experience much faster doing pve than pvp.  That may change after level 30 though.

My xp was going up crazy fast when I was in the tower taking zerg briefly in Eternal last night.

Is there a way to transfer silver between characters?  I get an error that you can't mail to yourself, and haven't located a bank exchange yet.

Bank. Deposit coin on the bottom right. Then withdrawal on other character.

It really depends on what action is going on.  You gain great xp if you are rezzing people, repairing gates, etc..., probably moreso than killing (depending on the circumstances). At 30 I got a level in a half in WvW in about 30-45 minutes, and it wasn't all action packed

What's the general consensus on launch-day population vs pre-launch? I feel like most GW2 players would already be here given this market and how easy it was to pre-order.

The human starter zone was unplayable right after official launch. I was randomly going to tool around with an engine and decided to leave that idea for a few days.

I have a feeling a fair number of people may have been on the fence due to the BWE selection method/no open beta.

I got hit with lag for the first time last night in Queensdale. Abilities were taking a good 2 seconds to fire off and some slight rubberbanding later in the evening. Also noticed a few events were bugged - completely unplayable. The one escort quest I came upon and decided to help out with had a swarm of mobs spawn that were immune to everything. Was kind of hilarious to watch other people see the event and come running to throw their hat in the ring and watch those hopes get dashed.  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah, I've hit a bunch of script triggers that will occasionally break. Invulnerable bosses, escorts stop moving, last wave of a defense never spawns, etc.

Kind of related to that, has anyone got the group event in the Sylvari starter area where you have to get covered in Hylek spit to uncover the Krait witch to work? I've tried it a few times now, spent a good while spitting on Moas (:awesome_for_real:) since they seem to be the only thing I can use it on but nothing has ever happened. Wondering if I was doing something wrong or do you need a certain density of players before it will trigger?

Nope.  Think that one is broken.  Tried for a while as well.

Spit harder.

I think it's broken.  Saw her up once, early in the weekend, but never again.

Same.  I tried a few different kinds of +10 xp food and the xp per kill stayed at 8.

Coming back to this... found the same.  :oh_i_see:

On the crafted food, it says +10%, but on the regular, it looks like +10.  Typos? 

Hmm.  Well mine was bought food, one was blue and one was white, both said +10.  After getting 8 xp per kill for pretty much every mob, I popped the food and killed several more of the same mobs for, still, 8 xp.  Even if it's +10% I imagine it would at least round up to 9.

Yeah I have the same experience. I don't seem to get anything from food, xp-wise. The other buff it gives seem to work OK.

Could be it's not showing up on the combat log but you're still getting it? Need to check that tonight. Can I even mouse over the exp bar to see numbers there, haven't paid any attention to that...?

No I checked that when I first tried the stuff out.

Simple question.  How many crafting abilities can I have?  So far I have two, Leather Working and Weapon Smithing.  Can I get all of them if I want?

Over the last 10 years of playing MMO's I guess I have gone from being an achiever to being an explorer.  I really just want to wander around, poke my nose into the nooks and crannies and collect nodes with an occasional trip in to craft stuff.

You can only have 2 active tradeskills at one time.  If you want more you have to suspend one of your active tradeskills (meaning you can't make anything for that tradeskill but you don't lose points).  You can then re-activate it later for 10 copper per craft level.

Yeah the fact that you can just go back and pick up where you left off in your previous craft is really nice. Never made much sense (from a character perspective) in other MMOs that you suddenly forgot everything about Armoursmithing if you decided to become a Weaponsmith.

Where do you actually get the gathering tools and how to you activate/choose your crafting skills? I ignored all of that in my first real day of play but just before I logged, I went around trying to find a tradeskill trainer in the starter Norn area and didn't find one. (Pavlovian WoW response, I guess.)

The Norn crafters can be found in Hoelbrak middle tier, of in the first zone at Twinspur Haven, which is roughly level 10-12 and is the first walled fortress in the snowy part of Wayfarer Foothills (first Norn zone). 

The tools are found on "Merchants" (So very descriptive!) and they are one of the more common vendors.  As you're exploring settled groups, just check out the merchants and you should find one soon.

Tools need to be equipped - 100 hatchets 100 pickaxes 50 harvesters (50? why?). I had that derp moment where I bought them, had them in my bag, and was wondering why I could not harvest anything.

Once you have both crafting skills, talk to another crafting trainer to learn that craft - they'll give you the option which existing craft you want to "put on hold."

It's fifty sickles because it takes one gathering action for the whole node, whereas axes and picks use multiple strikes, each of which decrease the counter by one.  It's not a very clean system.

Next question, I had a dye drop off a random mob.  It said double click to have your character learn this dye.  I did and it poofed, now what?  How do I apply it to my armor?

pull up your hero panel and look for the eye dropper just above the list of armor you have equipped.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hero_panel#Dye_view

Dyes are character bound, not account bound.  Which is shifty, imo.

What is the recycling option?  I found some dyes and apparantly you can either learn them or recycle them at the forge or something.

I asked in /map if it's better to learn or recycle, but the unanimous answer was to sell them.  When the trade system works of course  :awesome_for_real:

There are a lot of forge recipes where you can turn 4 of type of thing to get one something of the same type but better.  Say 4 common dyes -> 1 uncommon dye.  I am guessing but that's a pattern they have been using.

Can I say that it's really smart to have gathering tools be used up through gathering as a small gold sink? Otherwise, having to have a gathering tool that never wears out, etc., is just a kind of annoying "inventory tax" designed to hog a slot in a bag (e.g., WoW). It also took me a while yesterday to grasp that the node isn't exhausted for *other players* if I gather it--I kept trying to outrace people to nodes.

That is one of my favorite things about the game. Too bad Scott Hartsman said that was going into Rift and then it didn't. I think in a lot of ways GW2 nailed a lot of the objectives of Rift, even if I prefer Rift's soul system a lot more.

And a simple question I asked in the sploiter thread that got glossed over in f13 hurfdurf: What use is the charm/dignity/punchy stat?

Flavor of how some NPCs react to you.  Supposedly.  It's purely for RP reasons though.

Someone told me it affects some branching story choices in the personal story, but I don't know if that is true for sure.

It shows up in some of the story dialog responses. Not sure if it actually changes what the other character says in response if you pick the option that isn't what your character's story background is. I.e. if you pick the Charm option but your character has Dignity I don't know if that changes the flow of dialog.

It impacts how the mission plays out, but I don't think it ever impacts the actual branches.

So for a lowbie human mission for example, having a high charm allows you to talk down a hostage situation instead of fighting the NPC. Nothing is actually changed about how the mission plays out, just that one fight turns optional.

edit: and having a high score in one of them unlocks successful checks on this. They'll be labeled like charm: blah blah blah (Captivating) to mean that you have that choice because you have a really high charm score.

Is it just me or did they fuck up the camera with the latest patch? It's constantly zooming in and out on my character now as I move around varied terrain.

I haven't seen that, but I will say I wish the camera could be zoomed out even further.

I noticed this today when trying to do some vistas and jumping puzzles, the camera kept zooming into first person and back out again repeatedly even though there was plenty of room behind my character. I don't remember it being as twitchy last time I did some of these.

Yes it's like they reversed the algorithm. Instead of zooming in the camera when your back gets close to something it's zooming in when your front does.

Okay, it wasn't just me thinking the camera had gone wonky.

Here I thought it was my drinking causing problems again...

Is that was the mystic forge is for and mystic coins that I get as drops?  So should I be saving up my old staves and then do this recycle thing?  Any idea what the level of the final item will be?

I can't get my camera to lock behind me which causes me to lose sight of my target as I leap and frolic around it.

Edit: Grammar

Why does the client think that my firewall is blocking it when it isn't?

I have that same problem.  Have to keep AVG switched off to play while AVG clearly states GW2 is allowed.

Also, for me to play for any period of time, I have to play on my laptop's battery.  When it gets low I plug in and can go on it seems.  :awesome_for_real:

Whatever it takes but yeah.

Food works fine now.  Questions:

Buying gems:  it seems crazy cheap now to exchange in-game money for gems.  How expensive can we expect them to get?  (if this is knowable)

Traits:  sorry if this is obvious or has been answered, but is there going to be a dual spec of some sort?  I'm reading that traits for PVP and PVE are considerably different.

I'm expecting mudflation to take hold and prices to rise over time. 

My turn to ask a question:

I'm in two guilds.  Is there a way to see guild chat from the guild that I'm not currently representing?

No, you only get anything at all from the one you're representing

Yeah the multi-guild thing is not nearly as useful as I had imagined it would be.

I filed a /bug about being unable to chat with my non-representing guild.  Maybe everyone else should too! Not sure if volume helps, but it usually does for customer support...

It helps me see who is on in BC and what level they are... that's about it.

The fact that if I go into Bat country to chat means that any guild points I earn are completely wasted because guild points are saved based is also silly - it actively discourages me from going into bat country to talk even when my own tiny guild is empty because any points I generate are specific to my own server, so in maybe a years time I'd be able to buy a guild bank.

Also from what I could see last night half of bat country are now representing other guilds as wellso even ifi did most people arent around to chat with either!

This is my main peeve with the game.  I want the points to go towards my small guild that can use all the help it can get, but I'd really like to be able to chat with BAT and SLAP members all the time.

Chat channels need to be implemented, sounds like.  It seems like people want their small guild, and have a Bat Country chat channel (not like people talk much as it is).

Or they could just have /g1 /g2 etc.  I'm a bit confused how they had the foresight to let people have multiple guilds but restricted guild chat to just one.

I try... my only friends half the time are crickets. Then I remember most of the guild is spread all over the server list.

edit: appalling grammar.  :ye_gods:

Just put your small guild that is just you and Vu anyway full time into SLAP, problem solved.  :why_so_serious:

WE CRAVE YOUR POINTS

POINTS FOR THE GUILD VAULT

.. doesn't work as well as I'd hoped, hm.

The non-intuitiveness of certain features like UI layout pisses me off at least as bad as SWTOR when it launched.

How can yet another AAA MMO title not have either UI layout fully implemented and tested long ago as just a standard fabric of the game design *or* a decent addon system for replacing their wired crap with what you really want to stare at forever. Thank god they included Invert Y-axis or I would be looking form someone to shoot.

The only thing I have found is that they apparently put in a joke of a hack to move the chat to upper left and the minimap to upper right ONLY. And they don't let you move any of the other windows at all, so if you did want to put your minimap into that one upper right corner spot, it covers your quest/story log. Do they even test this shit?


Does anyone know how to both move the minimap to the upper right AND also move the goddamn quest log so it isn't covered by it?

EDIT: Apparently it is flaky, and sometimes it adjusts the quest window to be under it and sometimes it doesn't, I finally got it to work. They still need a damn normal layout editor though, and there are other issues like loot notification that get messed up when you move windows around.

I have no direct experience of this, but was reading up on traits on GW2 Wiki and it was mentioned that PvP and PvE traits are separate. YMMV.

Specifically that's sPVP and PVE traits. Your traits in WvW are the same as your traits in PVE.

Crap I didn't realize guild points were server based. Does that also explain why I can't access the bank of the guild I'm currently representing on Isle of Janthir.

Yeah, I ended up transferring to GoM so that representing BAT actually accomplished something, the guild bank is accessible, etc.

I'm pretty sure it's intentional... otherwise everyone would be funnelling points towards their personal storage guild rather than the guild they are gaming with and gaining advantage from.

Is there a way to change the order of the abilities on my 1-5 buttons? 

No. Sadly.

Thought you can reassign the hotkeys to different values. Of course, you would have to do mental jumping-jacks to keep it straight that the first ability is now on the '3' key.

Re-binding as you're saying though would only work if keys can be re-bound by weapon set, whereas re-ordering would fix the weapon without messing with the other weapon set and hoping they're located on the same keys which you've re-assigned.

Why are the jumping puzzles so hard/infuriating?

Because they're in a MMO, where precise movement/controls aren't really a strong point.  I'm a lot better at the jumping in this game than in TSW.

I haven't done a lot of the jumping puzzles or any real outside of starter zone vistas, but they haven't been that bad so far. I'm assuming the exploration ones are a lot worse. 

After the god damn nightmare that is SWTOR's jumping puzzles, these are a dream. The platforms seem to be much more forgiving here as well...

They seem about equally bad to me - neither of the games have animations/controls that really suit doing jumping puzzles. The special exploration ones are much more frustrating than the hop hop get a vista ones.

Have you done the vistas in the higher level zones?  Some of them are rage inducing.    I don't want to have to play Super Mario in an MMO.  I want to kill shit... particularly if that shit includes other players.  

I'm also getting annoyed by the fact that endgame PvE is all about circle strafing while spamming a few buttons.  After 70+ levels, I'm sick of running in circles.  I'm all for dodging abilities, but it's a constant kite fest for cloth users.  It gets old.  Also wtf is up with putting mobs with huge ground effects in narrow passages?  Really?  I'm getting Diablo 3 flashbacks... and that's not a good thing.

I've done a few high-level vistas (Vizier's Tower  :ye_gods:) and none of them compare to the vista at the southwestern castle in the wvw eternal battlegrounds. We actually had mesmers setting up portal chains for that one, it was pretty amusing. Tribulation Rift (dredge subzone in a low-mid level norn zone) was quite long, but not THAT challenging (veteran miniboss at the end included).

e: however, none of them have induced as much rage as The Cost Of Magic in TSW, or the jumping puzzle in the bug lair in SWTOR.
e^2: YET.

I missed the very last jump on Cost of Magic 4 times.   :tantrum:  I think the first part with the platforms was worst, honestly, but both parts made me want to throttle the dev responsible for it.   I think TSW's stealth puzzles were more rage inducing, because at least you're given the means to jump. 

Did Rift have many jumping puzzles?  I just remember the one in Rock Ridge.  I don't remember hating that one as much.  Some of their zone puzzles were a bit raging inducing as well, especially since they were griefable or could get tied up with one retard for hours.

I like the one in the bowels of Rata Sum, where it's possible to fall to your death  :uhrr:

Edit:  forgot that I had an actual question:  Is it true that once you hit 80, the alts you roll start at 20?  And if so, does this mean that if I have a level 2 alt at the time of hitting 80, it stays at 2 or does it bump up to 20?

I love jumping puzzles, I enjoy the actual jumping and I enjoy how it makes so many of you despair.  :heart:



I wish I had any idea what numbers meant in this game outside of "more is better". Like I have a trait, gives me +90 toughness while holding a shield. Is that good? Great? Awful? I have no fucking idea!

I still enjoy the act of jumping around. Wasting 15 minutes of my life because I missed one jump? Not so fun.

I love the jumping puzzles - I want to murder someone when they go wrong, but i love the feeling when I get to the top of one.

Falling off a jumping puzzle hardly bothers me at all. It's more of a "aww nuts". I think it's partly because I can do them very quickly. I don't spend 30 seconds in between each jump carefully planning. I just go.


The most frustrating one I ran into was this hidden shaman cave in a norn zone, with a flock of ravens on this narrow walkway. If you got too close to a raven they would knock you off and my giant norn lady could not fit through the gaps. I eventually just figured out I could use a skill that granted stability to blow past them though.

So far, the most frustrating one for me was the broken wall in the Charr zone - for some reason that took me forever.

Yea I find the jump puzzles to be hit or miss. I like the pirate cave one with the veteran troll at the end, mostly because there was only a few minor jump puzzles and the one at the end was more about lighting than accuracy. I absolutely hated the one in Lion's Arch that lead to that chest at the end. I don't know they tested it all that well with all character heights, with the double pain being the retarded non-reward from the chest.

That seems to be a theme though. There are certain styles of events where the rewards in no way match the effort. These zone puzzles seem to all be like that. Either I can't use the reward at all, or I've way outleveled it.

A few jumping puzzles annoy me. Mostly the really high up ones, because I get serious vertigo going on with them (about 80% up the sylvari tower for instance I start feeling uncomfortable)

Yay for irrational fears.

That might get difficult for me, heh. I have trouble driving over bridges.

I get that same feeling.  There is a peak in Lornar's Pass that made my head spin.  Still got it though!

Yeah, I've had the same at some of the taller ones where you have to jump to a 2x4 then run to the end of it to get the view.

The heights don't bother me (working as a stagehand cured me of any fear of heights ... Ingmar would say I am TOO cured), I just suck ass at jumping.  :why_so_serious:

I have a slight problem with some heights (not all of them, kinda wonder how it works for me tbh o.O), but it's never translated into a game world :/

My hands get sweaty from a fear of heights, which I think is a pretty bad evolutionary trait, but I was definitely getting a little moist palmed from the sylvari jumping puzzle.  Hell of a thing to put in the 1-15 zone, but loved the jungle spider for my ranger at the end.

Never had any problems with heights in games, and I think it's mostly because atmospheric haze is never rendered correctly, and my brain realizes it's a fake situation with no danger at all.

The jumping hasn't been so bad for me.  It's the other shit along the way that I fall for.  For example, there's a big one in the Charr starting zone I think it is, and I'm jumping along and suddenly, rockfall insta-gib. 

Am I going to be screwed later if I never do the story quests?

There is at least one POI that is only accessible via story quests (in the first Orr zone), so it's going to be a problem if you want 100% map completion. Of course you can always ask in chat to tag along in someone else's instance...

? I don't think it is restricted like that. What area are you talking about specifically?

Caer Aval in Fort Trinity (Straits of Devastation), it's walled off from the rest of the zone.

Can someone explain finishers/combos to me?

I've looked them up, and I think I get that if I shoot an arrow through a fire AOE it turns into some sort of Fire arrow... but what does a "whirl" combo finisher mean with a Water aoe heal zone?

Like I say, I sort of think I get it, but there doesn't seem to be any feedback in the combat log (which sucks by the way) and I don't really get a visceral visual that something good is happening.

Should I care?  If I should, why doesn't the game give me the feedback that combos are important?

fake edit: oh and yeah, what Kildorn said above... other than 10 health for 1 vitality, what do stat points do per point?  (and why would you build a tooltip that just says: Toughness 153 + 43)

You basically got it. The finisher changes the graphic and the little heart thing you see is the title of the effect applied. For example, if I drop a Fire Ring and someone (or I) shoot a projectile finisher through it, it applies Area Might, increasing Power and Condition. Buncha charts out there, and i can't seem to locate one I thought was really good. But here's another one (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/gallery/image/2794-combo-fields/).

What I don't know is whether it's a buff to players who were in the field at the time (and therefore stays with them through duration even if they leave the field), or it's a buff that only applies as long as you're in the field.

From what i saw from regeneration, it's an xx second buff.

Projectile finishers will generally apply a condition to the mob it hits depending on the field type you fire through (burning for fire, chilled for ice etc). Firing through a light field will remove conditions from players around the mob you hit, water will apply regeneration in the same fashion and dark will steal life from the mob and give it to you. Note that most, if not all auto-attack projectiles only have a 20% chance to proc a combo effect for balance purposes. Whirl finishers are basically the same as projectiles but are an AoE that shoots out bolts in random directions with the same effect as projectiles.

Leaps either apply a buff to you or a debuff to your target depending on the field type. And Blasts are basically the AoE version of leaps, applying area buffs or debuffs as appropriate. The buffs/debuffs have a set duration and will persist if you leave the combo field or it disappears.

Some combos are more equal than others in a group setting against hard-hitting mobs and bosses.
Smoke+projectile/whirl: blind (if you keep an enemy perma-blinded, he won't be doing much damage)
Water+blast: aoe heal (pretty sizable, too)
Light+blast: aoe retaliation (this damage can add up very quickly if the enemy is AOEing, esp. if it's using conditions)

I found these the most important ones for general mobility and pvp:
Lightning+blast: aoe swiftness
Smoke+blast: aoe stealth

Well, according to the chart (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo), a whirl finisher in a water field creates 'healing bolts'.

I was just wondering about combos myself.  I found two really nice charts listing fields and finishers.  This chart shows which classes start which fields (http://i.imgur.com/UAwyv.png), and this chart shows  which classes do which finishers.    (http://i.imgur.com/RYj5h.jpg)

Nice tables. A couple more graphics I found. Both informative but the second takes a second to decipher:
 
Fields and Finishers by Profession (http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/8991/gw2combofields.png)
Some tried their hand at an infographic (http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Guild-Wars-2-GW2-Primer-Combo-Infograph-b.jpg)

Many classes can cast both fields and finishers. And some can do it quick enough to get their own benefit. I personally like Flame Ring and Arcane Bolt or Dragon Tooth (depending on my equipped weapons) for Area Might, but also Static Field and Arcane Blast or Ice Spike for stacking vulnernability. Depends on length of the fight.

But I'm also just getting good at recognizing a small set of fields. I like this system though and want to get better at it.

My favorite as a dagger/pistol rogue is black powder for a smoke field then heartseeker for a leap finisher right through it into stealth and backstab finisher.

Also you can steal "Gunk" and then throw it.  Leaping into that gives you Chaos Armor which always feel awesome.

Ok, this is a really dumb but sincere question:  If all I want to do is PvP (sPvP and tournaments) is there any reason to level at all?  So far I'm not seeing any tangible benefit to it.  Is the only reason to PvE to be more effective in WvW? 

Correct ,there is no reason to touch the PvE if you are staying in SPvP all the time.

I prefer to level some before doing it, to actually know how the class plays and get a feel for it before getting dumped with full lvl 80 gear and stats/skills, but thats my personal preference.
I know we ahve somebody in the guild who's lvl 8, despite being online quite ofte, simply because he doesn't do anything else than spvp.

If you feel you know the class/will get to know the class well enough by purely spvping, then nop, no need at all to level up ever.

Are there stats on items that increase damage done by conditions like burning and confusion?  When I shop at the trading post I see gear with +power or +precision, then I'll see something with +healing, and basically I have no idea what is going on.

There's lot of gear with + condition damage (malign).  There are also runes and food that add +% burning duration.

Are there published formulas for how much difference 1 point of + (healing, toughness, condition damage, etc...) makes?

I did some small experiments on identical mobs with +10 power and saw ~5% change in raw damage.  Then did the same thing with +10 condition damage and saw no change in poison damage, though to be fair +5% may have been < 1 point of damage.

+Vitality is easy, 1 point = 10 hit points and I've heard that point for point +toughness is better than vitality for an effective hitpoint calculation but I'd like to know the actual numbers...

So I've found the Shatterer and the second dragon last night.  Are there any other cool things such as those that I'm missing if I don't hit a zone while its going?

Also, if you're 65+ and need some xp. Just north of the second dragon there is a spot where two DE spawn within a few hundred meters of each other.  They pretty much spawn back to back or even at the same time. Running between the two will give you about 8k xp for gold medal each. Each even seems to have about a 6 minute timer.  Stumbled upon this last night as I found about 30-40 people crewing through them both. Bring something that does AE damage though. Stuff just seems to melt. I think it was the first time I actually wanted to use a staff on my guardian just to tag everything.

There are 'big events' in every zone that give the reward chest in the end, they typically are timed and/or require significant build-up from DEs before they start. These are LONG encounters too, especially ones with soft dps checks like Claw of Jormag (aka Spine of Deathwing 2: electric boogaloo).

Aside from the ones in the noobie zones, I seem to remember three dragons (Tequatl, Shatterer, Claw of Jormag), the Megadestroyer (also another boss/DE where you need to split your zerg or you'll likely fail), the Priest of Lyssa, and the Avatars of some gods (Balthazar, Grenth) in Orr. A lot of these are timed, and some people were saying in chat that they logged in for the Shatterer every 3 (4?) hours to get their phat loots. In my experience the loots weren't THAT phat (some greens and gems, 1-2 yellows), but you do get a lot of loot when you kill one of the big bads.

I did the 'Slay the Shatterer' event last night and got a bucket of loot - think 2 greens, 4 blues and 2 runes which wasn't bad for a level 46 that only got a bronze medal due to running around taking screenshots. One thing I thought was that it was extremely easy. I didn't notice a single dead body on the ground and it took a very short period of time to take the Dragon out.

Not that I'm complaining - I just expected it to be a bit... more? I find that this game goes from stupid hard to very easy and back to hard and I don't really get when or why it does. I couldn't live for 30 minutes 2 nights ago while trying out dual-axes, but last night I was murdering groups of 3 mobs that were at least 2-3 levels higher than me with the same weapons.

Either way - I love the big zone events and I LOVED that the Dragon was circling overhead as I was playing for about 2 hours before the event actually kicked off.

Disappointed with because they are on a timer and people just stand around waiting to bust open the dragon pinata.  Funny how usually the event is delayed because no bothers to do the preceding event.  You'd think with something as awesome as a dragon, they make him a bit dangerous have a big quest chain. Maybe if a lava shaman was riding on his back he might be tough. Awesome art on very lame boss and its jacking economy.

The best was all the people asking in chat where the Dragon spawns and someone replying with the link to the Waypoint in the middle of Destiny's Reach which, judging by the complaints, a few people took.  :awesome_for_real:

In my experience, Shatterer is really really easy, Tequatl is a bit harder since it requires dps to switch (bone walls, exploding big adds) but eventually the asura megalazer takes him down by itself if you don't screw up too badly. Claw of Jormag, otoh, is a pain if you don't have good damage - people need to split into two groups, the adds hit hard, and there's a small vulnerability window where the boss can be damaged in phase 1. In his phase 2 people again need to split up (some keep the adds busy, some keep the immortal elementals busy, rest clear the path for the bomb golems and nuke the boss when he's stunned). I've seen that fight last for over 50 minutes  :ye_gods:

Holy shit, people are still linking my infograph?

It's a cool chart.  I have no idea what it's trying to tell me, but it looks really cool.

When I was done with it I was so proud of myself.  Then I realized it was confusing as fuck.

This page has links to all the stats.  http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute The individual stat page has the info on the gain per point.

Edited to ad the link I forgot to paste in.

Am i missing something here?

only the link http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute

On that topic... boons are incredibly confusing, probably only to me though. I think what gets me is when I play my warrior, I hear her call out gaining adrenaline, which I get what that is and allows me to do, but when she starts on about fury, I completely blank out.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon

Is that accurate? I thought stability was countered by fear.

I haven't checked in a while though.

In my experience the thing that always nails me when I've got stability is an immobilize, QQ.

On my warrior, this is backwards. She says gaining adrenaline when she starts losing it. Shades of TOR's backwards companion talk.

Stability used to be countered by fear. Now that it's a boon, it can be stripped like everything else (it corrupts into fear actually), but blocks fear too.

Yeah that happens too when my bars start dropping and it ticks into the next lesser bar. I meant it more as in-combat than running around to the next place/heart/DE.

Is it actually related to Adrenaline? My Guardian says it sometimes when he gains the Vigor boon.

OK- this might not be simple enough for the Simple Questions thread, but does +Magic Find affect stuff like dyes, random food, crafting mats, etc? Or just blue or better weapons and armor?

I haven't noticed any benefit from magic find at all quite frankly, my drops don't seem to double when I stack my weapon proc magic find thing to +100%.

I seemed to do pretty well with magic find on everything and 25% from runes. I'm not sure how much it would do in the low/mid levels due to the far lower chances or rare rune types dropping. And that's really what determines item color from the random drop system as far as I've seen.

I've also noticed a decent difference in high tier materials from salvage when I switched to using the 2-8 silver/kit salvagers at 80. Mostly because finding the highest tier cloth is a pain in the ass.

Are you reading that proc right?

Increases magic find by 4% per stack, stacks up to 25. So yes.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Major_Sigil_of_Luck

This thing?

Ah, would have been nice of them to include the 0 before the decimal in the in-game tooltip.

Still without knowing the base magic find chance, it is hard to know if it is working right or not.

At least my original question is answered (I think)....Wiki says MF helps with rare loot, which is blue+ and includes dyes and mats in the loot definition. So that is good news.

I wouldn't trust the wiki on stats at all. It gives incorrect information regarding vitality and health, which is such an obvious issue the odds of magicfindbeingright seem low!

(the wiki ya that every class gets 10 health per point of vitality, which is not true at all. Warriors and Necros only get around 38% of the benefit, mesmers / ranges / engineers get 53% or so and thieves / guardians / elementalists gets 70% or so).

LOL, what?  No, I have a thief and I have extensively tested that 1 point of vitality = 10 points of health.

What that page doesn't tell you is most of those attributes do.

"1 point of Power increases attack by 1 point" -> "attack determines damage delt"  Well, duh?  How much damage?

"1 point of Toughness increases armor by 1 point" -> "armor determines how much incoming damage will be reduced."  Again, duh?  How much does it reduce.

Yeah, my mesmer gets 10/vit. Warriors getting 38% seems silly, since they will pretty much always have higher HP pools than anyone else. And elementalists will have the lowest pools I've seen, so 70% seems.. wonky.

Trying to decide upgrade char slots (just $10/1 and get shared bank) vs. 2nd account ($60/5 and more bank but no shared.)

So: how many extra char slots can you buy?

Also related: can you start a guild with only 2 chars?

You can start a guild with 1 character.

From a different forum:


Hey, look!  Useful information.  Bleeding does low damage but stacks with itself.  Bleeding explains why Caltrops & 3xDeathblossom pretty much kills everything.  14 seconds of stacking 3s bleeds with 9 stacks of 10s of bleed.

I've been traiting +condition damage but maybe +condition duration would be more effective (as long as I can keep the target in the AOE)?  +100 condition damage = 5 points of damage per tick but +100 condition duration = +100% duration.  Certainly worth experimenting with.

Some things I'm still trying to figure out:

Guild influence...is there somewhere in the tabs and charts that shows what your personal contribution is?  And is there some kind of message or record of any kind that tells you at the time you're contributing? 

Alts...is it just a rumor that I heard or do your alts start at level 20 if you have an 80?

I don't think you can see you contribution to a particular guild anywhere but there is a section in the achievement for your total influence.

And the level 20 alts is just a rumour, started two more after I reached 80 with my Elementalist and they both begun as level 1's.

World Event in Asura starting zone: Recover the stolen LUM0009 golems

Has anyone participated in and completed this? Encountered this yesterday and was stuck on 5/6 golems returned. I don't know if it was bugged or all 40 people there were doing it wrong. It seemed every so often the correct type of golem would spawn but it was red and attacked and killed instantly rather than 'escorted' out. The event was already at 5/6 mark when we arrived, but this carried on for a half hour before we gave up.

Lots of events bug out like that. I've seen 2-3 in almost every zone that have one issue or another.

In sparkfly fen I ran into a few events glitched because mobs got stuck in tree branches or on the tops of pillars. Once stuck, they go invulnerable and you're just screwed. I file a bug report, but who knows where the priority is.

Yeah last night in Lornar's Pass the skritt attacking the mining settlement in the north western part of the map was stuck at 7/8. Apparently, a mob was glitched and fell through the world. Annoying as I responded to some NPC yelling for help and when I accepted it, it put the quest on my list and there it stayed... FOREVER.

Well that's a load off.  The rate I'm going I'll ding 80 all 6 slots on the same week  :uhrr:

I've had that one succeed as recently as 2-3 days ago.

There's a few different ones bug out in various zones.  Many seem to be "protect the skritt as they steal shit".  It seems to bug out a lot if one of the mobs you're supposed to be protecting dies and then the enemy boss mob spawns.  There's also a lot of escort quests that just won't start or get stuck when the npc you're escorting attacks a stuck mob.

Happens in every zone.  Then there's the lovely "impossible" quest, like the group mob in the Asura reactor.  I've never even seen that fucking thing get dented.  AE one shotting + tons of aggro minions makes it rough for low hp newbies.

The guy in the thermothingy reactor? People just need to move past the bridge. Grouping up on a natural choke-point doesn't lead to success.

That. Though there's a lot of imps and they're relatively tough at the level you find the event. But if you get out of the doorway and clear a space you can deliver a lot of damage.

Imps suck at any level. Least favorite mob type by a mile, for me.

I think you're forgetting about barracuda. 

Anything which stealths during combat

The worms that burrow are my never ending source of rage.

I am fairly sure Anet held many brainstorming sessions and employed external consultants to make mobs in Orr (esp. Cursed Shore) as stabby as possible. Off the top of my head:
- some dudes deathgrip you (plaguesomethings)
- some dudes knock you down and stun you (peasants)
- some dudes root you (acolytes)
- some dudes snare you (gorillas)
- some dudes chain daze you (spectral bows)

They're also all level 82+ in the last Orr zone, so the aggro range is pretty big. It's not THAT bad if you're killing them for loot in your magic find set, but if you're just trying to harvest some nodes... fffuuuu.

I harvest in my magic find set, so they come to me!  (I just made the set and got to the final zone last night though, so it hasn't had a chance to get old.)

"I can't pronounce bacaruda" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZSR0qUg1zo)

Simple question: Is there any way to get new town clothes other than the RMT marketplace?

So, I tried to mail an item to another character I created, and it said I can't send to myself.  Uh, is that really true?  Is there no way for me to transfer my items from one char to another?

Your bank is shared, use that.

Is there a way to pick up individual items after buying them on the TP instead of clicking the "take all" button? I go on TP shopping sprees for all my characters at once and when I visit a trader I can't just pick up a sword while leaving a pistol for another character, so I press take all and then transfer items through the bank.

The existence of the take all button implies there's a way to just take single items but I can't see how.

My only guess would be double clicking, but I've never tried it.

TP is not linked for all your characters though so not sure how you would be able to do that. I am running 4 characters semi-seriously and sell shit daily, which means any coin I get I have to pick up on that specific character. It is a small pet peeve of mine now.

You can deposit in bank for other chars to withdraw. But yeah, I never understood why the game cannot adopt a universal wallet system. It doesn't make a lick of difference.

Pretty sure you can pick up the cash from other characters sell orders. I did that to seed my new characters with some money for weapons/armor.

Yeah, unless it changed in the last week or so any character can pickup cash from the AH.  Haven't tried with items since I usually do my shopping from the character I'm buying for since I can never remember what each one needs.

Simple question: why does the login server keep crashing during the hour I want to play?

Well, in my case, I think it wants me to get in a little Borderlands 2.

Meh. I stand corrected. I never gave it a full test and having 3 characters in the 50s, I hardly recall who is selling what. I do know that I sell all my overflow crafting items from my lvl 2 mesmer mule but always assumed the money I got on her was from her own sales. Live and learn.  :awesome_for_real:

I'm at the point now where I really want to see some data on what stats are useful for the profs in pvp and pve.  Anyone know of a good site for this?  I must not be putting the right search terms in or something, because I keep coming up wth outdated or otherwise irrelevant data.

Edit:  the biggest question I seek an answer for is whether or not toughness is a viable stat for wvw, especially as a Necro

Honestly I haven't seen a huge point in toughness for wvw, as long as you aren't doing small-group roaming stuff. If you're soloing (or in a zerg) and get under attack by an enemy group of any size, toughness won't save you - invulnerabilities, dodge, and kiting abilities (combined with a 1200+ range weapon) will, though. My elementalist is in full glass cannon gear, and I do fine.
*Maybe* if you're melee so you aren't gibbed when fighting the veteran guard NPCs?

OTOH toughness and vitality are huge for spvp, both have their upsides/downsides (toughness is better against direct damage burst builds, vitality is better against condition builds)

I see.  Basically I'm enticed by the concept of toughness because I like to do a lot of pve wandering, and since I don't want to respec between pve and wvw I'm wondering how viable it would be to have a universal spec for both.  Maybe this is just me being lazy  :grin:

I like Toughness myself.  I always take the Trait line and I try to make sure all my gear has it.  Although my Traveler's set was a huge upgrade, I did notice the loss in Toughness, and I look forward to making my Exotic Knight's set.

I noticed this weekend while WvWing that my equipment is vastly underpowered.

How did I find this out?  Because even at level 80 all of my attributes are being upscaled.

It was a change of pace last night on my Guardian (23) doing the same content my Warrior (25) was doing (both downleveled to 18). The warrior is a lot more fun with longbow/greatsword mixed, but it was funny just sitting and taking shots with my vitality/toughness build guardian.

Oh, nice, I'm glad they do that. I wasn't sure if that was going to happen as I haven't been to WvW since I hit 80 - was trying to get my gear in shape before I went thinking they wouldn't upscale based on stats alone.

Don't know if it's linked elsewhere, but I found a combo tool today that's rather well done.

http://mastodonte.fr/outils/tool-combo#en

The upscaling at 80 in wvw is quite mysterious to me. Definitely not sure what they are trying to do. I have half my stuff exotic 80 (top stats) and the rest is yellow 80, and I still get upscaled. But don't make the mistake of thinking the upscaling makes everyone "full exotic" (a la spvp); I have been destroyed by some classes for days, quite obviously due to gear difference, and now that I'm close to the top I can really feel the improvement in both my damage output and my survivability.

So, I don't know.

Are you sure it is gear difference? If it is the same classes every time that sort of argues against that.

I believe the upscaling tries to keep your gearing (if you're crit/power geared, your crit/power is upscaled), so it may just be different builds of the same class. My damage output in different gear sets varies a ton.

Let's put it differently:

I haven't run tests at all, so my perception is all I have and it is known to not be always that fair.

But, do you all really think gear is not gonna make a difference in WvW? I am not saying it does, I just want to wait until I gathered more data, and I agree with everyone else that even at level 2 you can be very effective (which is weird since you don't have traits), but do you honestly think gear doesn't make a difference?

For example, thieves backstabbing for 12k or Elementalists meteor-showering for 6k, do you think it could be pulled off by a level 80 in full green gear?

It's not a rhetorical question, more like wanting to know your experience with this.

I've noticed something makes a difference. I remember my iBerserker hitting for ~1k damage at level 40. Now at fresh level 80 it hits for ~2.5k in green/blue gear. I still get instantly destroyed by some classes, but it happens quite rarely. Mainly by warriors, thieves, and rangers. I noticed the mean warriors almost always wear a spiky armor. Not sure where that is from but they can basically one-shot me with some charge/stun crap that does 20k+ damage in few seconds.

Isn't that Charr cultural armor?

The exotic heavy karma armor is pretty spiky, too.

Yes, if they trait and glass cannon it up a ton. I hit like a ton of bricks (60% crit, 5-6k berzerker crits) if I wear my pure dps no toughness/vit gear out to WvW. I hit for about 3-4k with my actual Knight gear. I'd hit even lower if I went for something crazy defensive. What you're probably running into are people who trait the ever living shit out of a specific high burst attack, and glass cannon their gear for it. It's not the scaling as much as it's what they're gearing towards. The actual difference stat wise between level 80 green and level 80 orange is pretty minor, pure numbers wise.

Be careful, there's a common underestimation of gear differences going on in pvp games since forever. Most recent that comes to mind is SWTOR, where supposedly the difference between the top two tiers of PvP gear was about 2% but it was absolutely major on the battlefield.

I am not saying you are wrong, but if you sum up all the stats and bonus of a full set of, say, berserker yellow (let alone green or blue) armor and jewels and weapon (it's about 14 pieces), and a full set of orange berserker armor and jewels and weapon, the total difference is noticeable, especially when it gets multiplied by critical damage multipliers and stuff...

Yeah I think both those things are possible - especially because the guy in greens is getting upscaled still. What we have here is a DAOC-like situation where everyone is sitting more or less at the gear cap in WvW. This isn't like a SWTOR or WoW where you can realistically outgear your opponents. Now, there might very well be a big difference between players in a random pile of max level gear and those with a coherent stat build and matching runes.

EDIT: I expect a nerf to thief dagger button #2. Having that available with the cooldown so backloaded is a bit nuts.

You mean again?  Because it was just nerfed last week.  Oh, and they broke it when they nerfed it because now you get 'missed' like 25% of the time (anecdotal) even when using it on a stationary target standing literally right next to you.  And no, my thief isn't constantly blinded.

Not necessarily again, I haven't played much the last week or so.

Have they said anything lately about the bugged skill point challenges?  It's really starting to get on my nerves that this kind of crap is holding up zone completions.  They either need to have these dumb things reset themselves periodically or give you zone completes at like 95% (pray you don't have multiple skill points bugged).

Every time they put a patch out it says "fixed a bunch of bugged skill points!" I'm not seeing a tremendous amount of evidence of this however.

I was able to get a few skill points last week.  Will be trying some others that are holding me up tonight.  THREE in Cursed Shore.

Maybe their "fixed a bunch of bugged skill points!" just means they reset the server  :why_so_serious:

They fixed that with today's patch, making thieves even more supermega lethal again.

Well given that some of those skill points are target NPC based, and said NPC is stuck under the map or in the geometry... Server reset should reset the NPC locations. I know the one mob at the end of the bridge in the plant-people starting zone was bugged forever till they did a reset.

I went into a new zone last night and the first two events I saw were bugged due to NPC waves never reaching their intended destination.

Most of these bugged skill point challenges seem to be "kill boss mob + 2 underlings".  Seems like one underling gets stuck in the geometry or de-aggros and thus permafucks the challenge.

Thing is, this has been happening since at least BWE2 (thorn wolf in caledon forest). I suspect the high-level zones have a lot of geometry / pathing bugs that haven't been found yet, and the higher player density is a better way to flush these bugs out than the QA processes anet is using. The other option, of course, is that they actually broke some of this stuff in the frenzy of the last few weeks' patches  :why_so_serious:

I'm feeling extra-lucky that I did these events and got my 100% early, now...

I'd just be lazy and put in a "if 60 minutes have passed with no interaction then respawn." Condition on EVERYTHING.

Anyone in an active guild? GW2 has its hooks in me and I'd like to be amongst active friendly folks who don't require scheduling or Vent. BAT seems quiet and my guild is pretty much back to WoW for Mists it seems like. No problems switching servers (still free right)?

Slap is active-ish? There's usually someone else on when I am, but maybe someone else would like to pipe up about it. :P

We seem to always have folks around during the usual hours.


We're not very chatty, but we are there.  :why_so_serious:

My guild is a very active heavy WvW guild (vent required) on IoJ that does nightly small group (5-15) operations.

My guild's fairly active, though almost everyone except for the catasses (ie. me  :why_so_serious:) is on a super-casual "2-3 hours a week" schedule. It's like that for every game we play though, so yeah.

I'm active in BC! A full half-hour per day! Sometimes an hour! Level 25, bitches! I might have dinged 26 last night, I don't really pay attention.

I am on in the evenings and weekends... rotating through my lvl 40s and 50s still. Because I am a glutton for punishment.

Which guild if I may ask?

Each time I've been on, I've been alone in my guild, and maybe 2-3 other BATs were on (lots more actually logged in but few representing and the game still doesn't have custom chat channels!). I'll keep plugging away. It's funny too, in Bloodtide, /map chat isn't nearly as embarassinf as the sub-30 zone maps :)

Extreme Team

Do I have to pickup acrafting skill to make what i want or can i just gather the mats and pass it to a friend to craft?

Yes.

You only need crafting skills if you think you'll want to craft a Legendary Weapon at some point.  Otherwise, just give the mats to someone.  I'm at 400 Weaponsmithing if anyone needs any melee weapons.  Just mail me the mats and I'll mail you back your weapon!  (Drevik Syx)

But you should pick up a crafting skill so you can access the bank at crafting stations in the field. And just processing the first tier material till it goes grey should give you an XP boost.

I found out this morning that you can get town clothes pieces (at least a different hat anyway) from NPCs out in the world.  I found a tank in Lamprey Grotto, in Iron Marches, that you could interact with.  I talked to the Charr standing next to it and after a few responses he said I could join the 632nd if I could fix the tank.  Fixing the tank involved making choices in a dialog tree, when I fixed it he gave me a 632nd bandanna.  It's not the most awesome thing in the world but it sure beats the mall cop hat they gave out for launch.  I was really hoping I could drive the tank for some kind of quest thing, but the hat wasn't a terrible reward.

I enjoy the little things like that. They definitely reward paying attention to the world. Did one of those little escort quests last night and of course everyone took off as soon as they medaled. I followed the merchant to his destination, because he becomes a merchant, duh. Picked up a couple recipes off him. Heck, my warrior is still using her Charr-recipe greatsword because it's better than the equivalent-tier discovery recipes.

I don't get the Mystic Forge.

I played around with it last night, combined some stuff - got some stuff that never showed up in my inventory. Bug or I just don't know wtf to do?

Me neither. I don't even look at it. I fear putting shit into it and not getting something back of equal or greater value. Besides, I don't really like crafting discovery - I never know what to put in there. I put some stuff and it accepts one thing and says there are OVER 9000!! things I can make with combining this ingredient with other things. What those other things are, I can't be bothered with guess at. I could look it up, but meh... I get to that when I have my trio of 80s.

I just put in 4 random greens and see if I get a green I would want.

This thing seems useful  http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Salvage_Kit

Yeah what are people actually salvaging? I can understand it at lvl cap (maybe this is indeed where this conversation is couched) but I burn through equip rapidly thus far. I salvaged some items and got basic mats, but only did it for the monthly achieve bar. I vendor pretty much everything.

My rule has been, salvage whites, vendor blues, save greens for gambling in the forge and AH yellows I can't use.  I sell the non-jewel and cooking mats on the AH and buy my armor and weapons on it when I'm ready for upgrade.  Probably not the ultimate key to in game financial success but it works for me.

I salvage all white/blue cloth and leather armor since you can't harvest cloth/leather. Other than that I salvage level 80 white/blue metal weapons (chance to salvage into orichalcum) and sell everything else.. I do all this with the cheapest possible salvage kit. Level 74+ yellows I break up with black lion salvage kits, exotics are for the mystic forge gamblin'. I do this with my full magic-find set, not sure if it affects salvages or not - but better to be safe than sorry, eh?

I used to gamble greens in the mystic forge, but lately I've just started to vendor them instead. Salvaging them is not worthwhile (they don't really give more mats than a blue/white), and trying to sell them on the TP is pointless since it's flooded with people selling green items at vendor price + 1c (which is a loss compared to vendor when you take the cut into account).

Science sez no (http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10ibqg/salvaging_analysis_magic_find/).

Not sure if you are serious, but it is REALLY REALLY REALLY not complicated. (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAhfgAyOliPDvBT_LF4YIhGvibjuqQSqJ&feature=plcp)

Well for jewelry... I plop a gem in the discovery window. Ok I can make 50 odd things with it. Only I need to add more stuff in the window, which I have to make before I even start the discovery part...so I have to predict what I should make in terms of pieces of jewelry before I start out on the discovery thing. Instead of say plopping a gem in the window and having it present me with a menu of the items that can be created with that gem and the other items needed to make a wearable piece. Logically I could figure out that I'd need settings and the piece along with the gem, but me having a few lumps of copper on day one and a few gems - I may not be aware that the lumps have to be made into bars then into the components - or sometimes not even into bars. Then there is the issue of not being able to discover anything because my crafting level is too low for the gems I am looking at doing stuff with, but my crafting list is mostly greyed out now and I have a few yellow recipes left - only have no mats for those.

I say this as someone who has abhorred crafting in every game save EQ2 so I don't have any basic knowledge of how crafting has played out since then.

Crafting in this game is pretty far from the mental gymnastics you're complaining about.  Giving you the base recipes combined with your ability to analyze the list and look through the required ingredients, you should have had the rudimentary formula of how crafting in this game was going to progress.  After copper, you should have clued in when Silver Ingot popped in your list what was up.  No craft is 100% pure discovery; I just don't get the whining.

First have a look your crafting mats in the bank. Mouse over a few gems and you will see that there is a logical order in how they are arranged by skill requirement.

Except for cooking, all crafts are tiered (by crafting material). And each tier has 3 stages. 75 levels per tier, with 3 stages of 25 levels each.

You can get past the first tier with refinement (ore->ingots) and a few components (settings/ bands/hooks). Bang! You got JC Level 25 and a shit load of XP. Gratz!

Second stage you start putting things together for discoveries. Usually there are 3 or 4 types of jewels you can use for 26-50 and 3 or 4 to use for levels 51-75.
First you get access to rings and earrings, then chains for amulets and then "filigrees".

I usually create one setting, switch to the discovery plane, put the setting in and now, all gems I can NOT make a discovery with are greyed out.
Lets say I can experiment with 4 gem types.
For rings I need: Band + setting + gem
For earrings I need: Hook + setting + gem
For chains I need: Chain + setting + gem
After 25 levels I get to stage 3 and I can use the rest of the gems of tier 1. I can now also create filigrees, which upgrade gems so I can experiment with them one more time for "masterwork" level items. This should be enough to get to tier 2, silver ore.

If you don't want to grind out useless components it is very important that you get as much levels  out of refinements as possible. I also suggest using the black lion salvage kits or the salvage kits from the forge to recover as much gems as possible.

Happy crafting. :)

Tier 1

I stopped slavaging anything but salvage specific loot.  Level 70+ whites sell for 30 copper, which is about double of the cost of mats from the trading post.

Even for the monthly achievement it is much cheaper to buy low level items in bulk of the trader and salvage those, after selling the results back you get back like 80-90% of what they cost.

I focus mostly on discovery, and then mostly on things i'll be able to directly use. I generally don't grind it out anymore because when I did, I probably spend 2g on the Trading Post for those few extra Fine drops  :-P Every five levels I bring Tailoring up to level appropriate gear. I've stalled on Artificing though, because either I've already gotten better from drops, or I've gotten way better from Karma purchases.

Which, separately, I kinda regret. Was looking at the Tier 2 Cultural gear last night. Shoulda been hoarding Karma...

Doesn't cultural gear cost gold? like shit tons of it?

The only craft where there's any intuition needed at all for discovery is cooking. Everything else is literally combine item A + item B with stat-boosting item C, and you auto learn all the recipes you need for that.

Yeah. Cultural weapons are karma, but there is no reason to ever buy them unless you want to transmute the looks onto something else, because they're only rare quality.

I bought the Norn warrior Tier 1 set and have been using my map completion stones to transmute stuff into it as I find better drops.  I'm going to skip the tier 2 set but will save up for towards the tier 3 set since the I really like the look of the stag's horn helmet.

I've got a bunch of those Transmute stones. They're just for transferring the aesthetic between the same armor or weapon type right? So the Karma-armor is really only worth it if you like the look because by the time you can afford it you've probably gotten better from drops?

Yeah, they swap weapon and armor skins so you can keep the look of something if you like it.  The map completion ones are good up to level 79 items.  To transmute higher than that you need the ones you get through the gem store.

It takes 2 items of the same type.  You pick the look you want, the stats you want, and the rune you want.  There's one set of stones for 1-79 and another for 80.

Ah. Hmm, no way to sell them right? Never really much cared for how I look, though being able to change colors is a nice touch.

The transmutation stones are also the only other (than the black lion salvage kit) 100% sure way to transfer sigils/runes from your old equipment piece to a new one (and the only way in case of some gear that can't be salvaged like the invader's equipment in wvw).

You can change color on your gear anytime for free, using the eyedropper icon on your equipment tab.

So is it a bug or intended, that you can't ever remove gems from gear purchased from Karma vendors (because they can't be deconstructed by any kits)?

As implemented now? Intended.

Anyone know where to find Coriander Seeds? I've read they come from harvesting mature herbs, but I've never gotten a single one.

You can use transmutation stones to transfer sigils/runes/gems from equipment you can't deconstruct

I believe I got most mine for cooking from the northern part of Bloodtide Coast area.

Wuuuh? How does that work? I've got a stockpile of the things.

double-click the transmutation stone and then choose 2 (same type) items which to transmute.
You can then choose any combination of appearance, stats and enchantment from those items into the new item produced (both old ones are destroyed)

Yeah, did this yesterday, works great!  Only found two of those transmutes in 70 levels so...

It's very handy for those sigils that can be more than you'd like to pay for over and over.

Ok, my question:  Does story mode dungeons mean I 'unlock' these dungeons during my story quests?  Do I go in alone or do I have NPC's or do I have to invite other players?

I'm not too far in my story; it's pretty derptastic, although I LOVE my Whispers faction with special dialogue and stuff.

Wow. I thought transmutation was just for aesthetics. Maybe I should like read up on stuff. Thanks Satael!

I told you about this around 10 posts up.  :awesome_for_real:

I totally blew right past the part where you said "the stats you want".  :oh_i_see:

For the level 79 and under you get some every time from zone completions (at least all the sub 30 zones anyway) for the level 80 ones I have had some come from Black Lion chests. Both kinds are also purchasable with gems.

I've got this same question, haven't hit a dungeon yet. From what I've put together it seems like you still want a full group the first time in but 1 or 2 NPCs will join you as a guide. Again, haven't actually gone through one yet myself so ymmv.

The NPCs are pretty much useless and mostly there to provide a story backgorund.
You do need a full group for storymode dungeons

Story mode: Takes bout 2 hours.  Have a good group that can work well together.  Being defensive spec'd to endure fights helps a TON; glass cannons won't do well in any dungeon UNLESS they're with a well-oiled group, and even that's risky.  Some of the boss fights are pretty tough, but you have to pay attention to tells of the mob to figure out mechanics.  Most bosses' damage can be avoided or mitigated pretty easily and can be done without anyone going downed, but that takes practice which is something you're not likely going to find in story mode as most people only run a story mode on a dungeon once.  There are usually wp's along the way to save long runs.

EasyExplore Mode: Unlocked to an individual after they run story mode successfully once.  Takes 20-30 mins.  There are three paths to choose from, completely different from the story mode.  Each path has mini bosses and a final boss.  There are three chests on each path.  For running a path, you get 60 tokens and 26s.  I usually clear >50s for one path run of Ascalon's Catacombs, vendoring all blues and greens and salvaging whites.  After you run one path in a day, the next run on the same path will yield only 20 tokens, but still 26s.  Running three different paths in a day will give you 180 tokens, often enough for a piece of armor from the vendor in Lion's Arch.  The tokens, weapons and armors are dungeon specific and are level 80 exotics with good stats and runes/sigils (each dungeon has 3 flavors of exotic stats, so look them ALL over), but there are also story-mode level rares you can buy much cheaper (most people do this for looks).  

Now, the big difference in Story and Explore: experience.  Many of the pug's you'll find running explore dungeons will have at least 3 80's in it, meaning they're traited and typically geared decently.  That gives them a sizable advantage over many of the story runs with appropriately leveled people running them.  Also, the majority of the people will have run these paths before, so they know the mechanics, what traps to avoid and where to stand and what to pull.  These dungeons are cake walks because they are geared and know what they're doing to run them quickly to farm tokens/money, so don't be afraid of pick-up groups.  The hard part can be getting them to slow down or explain the mechanics.  I try to be as instructive as possible because someone on their butt in combat is useless to the group, and I don't like dying and repair bills.  Expect to die once or twice as some events are cheesed, but if you make 60s in 30 minutes, what's 4s in repairs?  This is probably the most efficient way I've found of making money, but with the recent changes in orichalcum nodes, expect those farmers to raking in the big bucks. Oh, and the most important thing in dungeons: your number one priority is making sure the downed get ressed ASAP, so do keep an eye on the health bars.  Much of the time, bosses will continue to tank a downed tank, beating them to death.  That means if you are squishy, even if you run up, you're not the target and can res safely; just watch out for signature moves or ae's.

Also, you don't need story done to run a dungeon's explore mode; only the person walking in the dungeon needs story done, so at least one in five.

I've been thinking about doing a few explorables, actually (it can't be any worse than the 5-phase golem fight in SE storymode)... the main problem is that the game REALLY REALLY needs some sort of LFD tool.

Level 80 and (rare/exotic) gear also matters a TON, along with (I assume) the benefits of full trait lines. When I ran AC storymode at level 40ish with a group of 30-40s, it was a horrible slog that ended in a wipefest and the group breaking up (even though it was a 4-man guild group with me being the only pugger). When I did AC story mode at 80 with a group of three 80s and two mid-levels, it went insanely smoothly - I think the lower levels may have gotten downed once or twice, but nobody came close to actually dying. And the second group was a full pug assembled in Lion's Arch /map chat, with barely any communication in partychat (other than pointing out the gimmick for the lovers fight).

e: and one of the biggest things that is holding me off from doing explorables is that the one I'm most interested in doing (Arah tokens - remote possibility of getting the legendary staff in the next few hundred years) takes way too long and is said to have quite a few pugbreaker elements.

Yeah, an inter-server dungeon finder would be a godsend.

Even if you're wearing greens at 80, spec'ing into your toughness/vitality lines will help a ton.  Spec to endure and survive, and it'll go smoothly.  I like the AC Power/Toughness/Vitality armor (or any flavor of PTV for that matter) because it's a great building block for whatever.  Find a set of runes to complement your spec and match jewelry to enhance what you've got or fill in gaps where you're deficient.  In a week (1.5 hours/day), you can earn a full set of exotic armor from AC, and enough money to buy whatever runes (and some weapons) you want.

I need to go back to AC story and try it again at 80 (finished it at 3x).  I want a rematch with that Adelbern sonuvabitch after I walked out last time in my boxers.

edit reply: I haven't tried Arah.  The shitty part is with Arah armor: there are no runes in it, but it costs the same amount of tokens.  1/2 the reason to pick up exo armor from a dungeon are the runes.  I need Arah tokens as well for the staff, but at least I won't be tempted to buy stupid, unslotted armor with them. :/

Oh, one other thing about explore modes: great way to level.  One path at level 46 was getting Fordel about a level per path.

Yea, I got nearly 3 levels in total from the 3 'path' runs we did or whatever. A crap load of money too, went from maybe 70-80 silver to nearly 3 gold total.



It's a different dynamic, that's for sure. The mechanics are not forgiving, but death and failure actually are. I can definitively see how all those "rez people better/faster" traits make sense now. There also seem to be a lot of "avoid this with precise timing or die instantly EXCEPT if you have X ability, then it's trivial."

Like the ghost sword boss man, that would suck everyone in with his big attack. You either had to learn the timing on when to dodge the suck in projectile thing OR you just applied stability in that window.



-edit-

The big thing is, like Sach said before, make sure everyone is on the same page on the run. Everyone following a crappy plan is superior to 5 people all executing their own 'good but different' plans. The amount of heads up required isn't much at all, but you do need that heads up on the gimmick for the fight.

I've been thinking of crafting a suit of 'cleric' armor with power/+healing/toughness (yeah I know that there are no 'healers', but with my 30 arcane 30 water staff elementalist build I'm probably pretty support-y) with a full set of Dwayna runes and using that for dungeoning*. The lack of vit may be a problem with one-shot moves (though toughness should help with that), but otherwise the build does a pretty good job of refusing to die even in my glass cannon magic find set. I figure conditions are a non-issue with the dwayna 6-set bonus + regen/cond removal from water attunement + healing rain + cleansing wave on dodge. Or are one-shots so prevalent that you need at least one of your gear stats to be +vit?

* well... in a few months anyway. Right now is panda time, and in a few days it'll be muton time.  :awesome_for_real:

No vit is going to get you flattened I suspect. My plan is similar to yours except instead of Dwayna runes I'm going to use Dolyak or Melandru, and probably mix in a couple pow/vit/tough pieces as well. Whatever I do has to double for PVE and WvW stuff because I'm not going to spend the money to make a bunch of different suits, though.

I'm a guardian though, of course, so have an armor/blocking advantage (no health advantage QQ).

I ran a mismash of knights, zerker, clerics and valks slotted with random, mostly sapphire, jewels and a set of ruby ori jewelry.  My spec is 10 air, 10 earth, 20 water, 30 arc with a staff, so very supporty.  I'm tanky enough, healy enough and put out enough damage to make myself feel useful.  I'm getting a set of Ascalon PTV armor, and for the moment, leaving the Monk in it that comes with it for the +healing power.  I noticed a NICE difference with 10 in earth and the earth shield that pops at 50% health when I respec'd 10 points out of air.  I use glyphs (healing, elemental attun, renewal and elementals), so was using quick glyphs and boon on glyphs.  Still have quick, but damn that toughness and shield is awesome.  In dungeons, toughness is amazing, and no, most things don't oneshot you, especially if you push toughness up in traits and armor.  Warriors in full zerkers try to tank three mobs and get dropped, but my wife's warrior spec'd hard in toughness and vitality with a shield and regen can still facetank 3-4 serious mobs a time in there.  Toughness and regen are king.

I think dungeons were a PR disaster with AC being the hardest story dungeon, the first people encounter and those being only poorly geared and traited level 30's.  They tuned it for 80's; what a goddamn mistake that was, hoping that deleveling would correct, but it can't account for traiting and the skills and stats you get from it.  It's pretty much the same story with upleveling for WVW, sure you look 80, but you don't have the stats from traits, the traits themselves and exo gear pushing your level limit, and those on the other ends of the swords can tell when you're just an upleveled squib.

One note about dungeons: if a level 45 goes to AC wearing level 30 gear, this person will be worse off than a level 30 wearing level 30 gear.  The way scaling works is it acts as a penalty to higher level players wearing lower level gear. So make sure you are wearing level appropriate stuff.

You get 3 with every map completion, including the cities.

Black Lion chests have a chance of giving the level 80 stones.

Stopped reading right there.  :ye_gods:

Anyone know what the pve version of the default pvp armor is?

It's the guild armorer armor.  You can get it off the guild armorer guy to the right of the lion's arch bank, if your guild has it unlocked.

I'm considering purchasing this, but I was wondering a few things (this is from someone very familiar with MMORPG's but for one reason or another never got around to playing GW:1).

1.  Is the bat country guild active/still looking for members if I joined the server? Do F13 folks do organized PvP?
2.  Is there a more "RvR/PvP" oriented server where folks are?
3.  I tend to enjoy playing healers/support characters, what are the options available?

Thanks!

I'm sorry, you have too many posts to ask this question.

for some reason I keep hoping....

1. Not that I can tell. It was doomed from get go when we chose large pop servers to start on.  Hard get people to RvR together with a 3 hour queue.
2. SBI, JQ, IoJ, BG, CD, SoS are were most of the RVR action is.  Top guilds are stacking these servers because the current meta of 24/7 coverage > battlefield organization.  This can change week to week since free transfer allow people to move en mass.
3. Shouting warriors are great support chars.  Warriors are just plain great so if you change your mind you can just respec latter.

I am on IoJ which an awesome RvR server.  The queues are only bad on Fridays.

There isn't in the sense of pure healers/buffers.  You can focus any character class for healing/support but it's more along the lines of short term aoe buffs and heals than it is targeted healing.  You still have to fight but on the plus side you and don't become magically more squishy or move up the target chain because you are healing/buffing.  Group content is completed by the random people who show up and contribution is measured by damage delivered so playing support might help some folks live through an event but won't get you beyond the lowest level of contribution.

They have done a pretty good job of removing the trinity, so much so that I never see people spamming LFG with anything more than the number of people they need and the dungeon path they are running.  Speaking of groups, since the entire server is effectively in your group as far as sharing xp/loot/healing/rezzing goes the only time a group is necessary is for dungeon runs.  Other times being in a group comes in handy for WvW stuff and earning influence points (there's a bonus for guild members grouping and playing) for whatever guild you are representing but they aren't required.  

Thanks for the quick and detailed answer guys!

I figure my question is simple so it should go here. My in-laws sent me a copy of this for my birthday. Is it possible to play effectively without ever using the in game store or what ever micro-transactions there might be? I haven't cracked the box open yet so I can still resell if I'm going to have to spend a bunch of cash on nickel and dime quality of life crap.

You don't need to spend a cent to play the game.  And if you ever did you can easily change in game gold to cash store currency at very reasonable rates.

I haven't spent a dime. I have max level character and a few moderately leveled alts.  I haven't even felt the need to spend any money.

Well, OK, that additional bag and bank slot would help.  But, I've managed so far.

Bank space is incredibly constricting if you don't buy gems one way or another, and if you want one of every class, that's another chunk of gems.

I'm confused by your statement, are you saying that class selection is limited unless you unlock more via micro-transactions? Do you mean character slots?

I'm still doing fine with the default bank space and the only reason i bought more bag slots was because it was actually cheaper in game currency terms than buying bigger bags.

Eight total classes, five character slots.

Character slots - you get 5, but there are 8 classes. Note you can buy gems with in-game gold but the exchange rate for that has been steadily trending upwards lately.


You must not have a cook.

The only place I feel constricted is also the bank/inventory. Especially the bank, but during DE chains, the inventory gets clogged quickly and then it's distracting to fiddle with that rather than DESTROY. Probably doesn't help that I AE the shit out of everything and then charge through with a greatsword, so I have a dozen lootable corpses with each wave of a defense DE.

+1 for warriors. I just love longbow/greatsword and find it difficult to try any other setups.

Re: grouping. This game is amazing at non-grouping cooperative play. I'm constantly playing alongside others and I've never seen so many helpful players because the game encourages it. If a player is around, you'll probably get a rez, and if they get there in time you might only be downed. No kill stealing, it's just awesome. Really nailed how to do an mmo, I can forgive them hardcore dungeons because it's so much fun just running around checking stuff out.

If you plan on making a chef, you'll need an extra bank slot at least. Those sub-components (and sometimes finished food that also acts as a subcomponent) add up.

That said, you really don't need to spend $$$ for that, exchanging gold for gems is good enough. For reference, I also have a 80 with some alts (none of them above level 50ish), have maxed four craft skills among my main+alts (which was actually a bit of a gold sink at times - and yeah, those craft skills include chef+tailor), haven't made any profit via the trading post, and I'm hovering around a comfortable ~25 gold after having bought 3400 gems' worth of bank and character slots. No farming or dungeoning either.

How are you making all that money? The only way I can see to do it other than AH shenanigans is dungeon grinding. Nothing else I do makes me much gold.

That's the thing, I don't remember anything special (other than trying to do DEs whenever possible). All I did was 100% each zone, run through the personal story, run each story mode dungeon once, and gather materials whenever possible... also some wvw, but only as a zergling or an occasional keep defender / supply camp attacker. I -did- sell some things on the TP that I didn't want (like the exotic cloth pants that I got from combining the 100% reward level 71-76 exotics with a mystic forge stone that I got from a daily completion), but that's rare. I also do a lot of salvaging, but I don't actually sell the output, so yeah.

e: there was a time when I was trying to hit each of the world dragons at least once a day, but at that point I already had about 10-13 gold with all of the bank/char slot purchases behind me
e2: it goes without saying that I was pretty frugal while levelling - haven't bought anything from vendors except for some really rare pieces (rebreather), and even then only from karma vendors. I also tried to minimize stuff I bought from the TP (buying two more small claws to get to the next tier was OK, but buying 30 was not OK). I upgraded my armor from the stuff I crafted and random drops, and crafted two green/yellow sets for myself at 80: a magic find set with 5/6 pirate 1/6 explorer runes that I also crafted myself for the most part, and a mismatched power+two-of-vit/tough/heal/precision set. I also used low-end harvesting tools when possible and tried to avoid repairing until stuff started breaking, but I don't think that's a huge difference.

That sounds like pretty much exactly what I do, minus the dungeon runs. I haven't finished the personal story yet quite, and I have ~4 zones to my 100% but they're all level 25 and lower.

I am quite sure you know this, but you can send all your crafting mats to the bank with just a single click. I've never filled my inventory (I have 10 slot bags and didn't buy any extra slots) and I carry around pretty much a full set of various weapons in the last bag. I've never "filled" my inventory.

4 dungeons will net you a gold. More for ac I believe. If I don't have DR going I can net about 5 yellows every few hours in cursed shore. At 15 silver each or more if I get lucky with ectos.

I clear 1.5-2 gp after 3 paths of AC explore mode at level 80 that takes me about 2 hours.  The end reward is 26s and 60 dungeon tokens, but that doesn't factor in mob money drops and vendoring all the greens/blues from each run, and I'd guess I have about 15 things to vendor per run and many whites to salvage.  

Zetor: craft your exotic set(s) already and join the 3 gold 4 lyfe club.  The cost jump from rare -> exotic 80 gear is steep (but worth it).

These gold/hour rates you guys get are depressingly low in the context of how much stuff costs on the TP.

I guess, but also factor the tokens?  Both Selma and I are wearing and using AC farmed armor (full set PVT) and weapons (her: axe, sword, shield, longbow / me: dagger, dagger).  The gold I made I used to craft the jewelry between us and buy runes/sigils for the weapons.  I feel like we're comfortable and don't feel like it was an excruciating grind for what I see as "finished" gear.  I don't feel the need to change/upgrade anything on either of our characters.  My next step would be to craft power/prec/crit jewelry for situational swapping for each character or just fuck around on gearing alts.  Yeah, I guess getting a second job to pay-to-win would be more sensible, but I enjoyed the "grind."

{EDIT} Let's say you could buy PVT armor on the TP, and it costs 2.1 gp which is what berserker lvl 80 exotic is at right now.  After those 3 AC runs, you can afford a pair of gloves, so tack that onto the converted gp total.

The gold is basically the only thing keeping me from even going for a legendary atm, it just takes too long to get anywhere.

You've put how many dozens of hours into dungeon runs, though?

When you compare the cost of capping your gear for WvW to say the cost of capping your important stats for DAOC RVR at 50, which is how I tend to think about it, they're not remotely comparable, the grind here is far worse. A couple nights in Darkness Falls and sell your seals to a hinger and you could get your 99% SC suit and go. (The leveling part is much better though obviously.)

Many runs, lol.

DAOC was a non-factor though with your epic armor being pretty well handed to you when you dinged 50 if you did the pre-reqs while leveling.  And yes, the level grind in daoc is incomparable, and something I factored into when dungeoning in GW2.  Hitting 80 was cake, so if I have to grind a bit to finish my armor, I had no problems with it.  Time spent in game is probably pretty equivalent at that point.

I do know that. I finally ditched my extra set of weapons and I have a couple ten and a 12 slot box. Just looting through a DE chain will come close filling my entire inventory. Then I have to stop during the DE and break down the cloth/leather stuff, and right now I'm even breaking down the metals because steel is pita tier. And even that's after giving up on leveling anyone but my armor guy and my cook (but that's more a bank thing). Anyway. It fills up quick, and it's total nonsense once I run our of salvage kits (I carry three).

The grind for one set of gear is not really all that bad.  Full exotics should not cost you over 20 gold or so, maybe more than a couple nights of farming but not very much so.

Last I checked I was at ~15 gold just for the rune set I want.

Ouch, mine were like a gold each.

My secret to raising money while skipping dungeons  is to not craft.  I tried cook for a while but it got old and the damn sub components were killing my bank.  So now I gather everything I see and on Friday evening I sell everything on the TP that I can, if it isn't going for at least triple the vendor price I sit on it till it is or I vendor it when I get a full stack.  I'm not rich, but I always have cash on hand for the stuff I want and I've bought a couple thousand gems with the excess.

You dismiss the chests? Blues, Greens, Yellows.
I usually sell off the blues, then combine the 4 green for a chance to yellow at Mystic Forge.

Eh, last night I got home and was planning to level my Engineer, only to get sidetracked by 5 Citadel of Flame runs, and Circle of Eternity.
When I'm done with all that, it's past midnight.

Shit.  :uhrr: I'm never going to get my alts going at this rate. But the daily tokens earned by your primary can still be used for your alts too. So yeah, it's worth it imo.

The food buffs are good. And the amount of gold spent to level it to 350ish is pretty low when I followed a guide(I recall I spent around less than 5g to do that by using what I have and going TP for lacking stuff) but yes, other crafting seems excessive in comparison.

And I'm not planning for Legendary. It's a stupid moneysink.

I buy food off the tp, most folks are selling it at or below cost of materials.

I blew a lot of gold early on in crafting. But I ditched that for awhile because the drops were good enough for my playstyle (largely PvE solo/story unless I'm near a DE or happen to hear about a dragon). I haven't spent a dime in real world money, though I'm tempted just to help keep them funded.

Once I only crafted until I ran out of rares, money started picking up again. But I kinda don't care. I never feel like I'm competing with anyone, in the typical gear arms race, being able to re-color has gone a long way to helping me not care about what my armor looks like. And while I did move to JQ to link up with folks and in the hope of someday WvW'ing, I just haven't finished the dozen other things I want to do first  :grin:

Stalling crafting also did help with inventory issues. I am comfortable. Got enough 18 slotters going I never run, I can very quickly salvage stuff, and while I gather all the wood and ore I find, I AH about half of it, and don't plants.

But then, like with so many other MMOs, I play like an addict but really only think like a casual.  :wink:

I'm going to blow some money for the gem store halloween shit.  I'm loving this.

I bought a five key pack and opened up 5 of my stockpiled black lion chests and lucked into a greatsaw skin.  I'm going to TP it tonight, it should fund a few more gem store purchases.

I'd hang onto that bad boy until at least the end of the event when they're no longer available.

Fuck, The Crossing is at least 10g in wine and who knows what else.

Also don't buy gems with gold right now.  The exchange rate keeps getting worse and worse.

As it should!

You are assuming the rate will get better, i don't see how.  Gems have been dirt cheap until now.

The cost of just the buyable-on-the-TP bits of a legendary weapon were hovering around $1000 USD with the prior exchange rate. There's just no way that was going to be sustained.

Given the massive difference between A.net price and the gold sellers price plus the complete opac natural of the a.net system, I have no confidence in the fairness of the gem price. I have no intention of using it. I want to but I can't trust it.  If it was like PLEX, I would be buying gold.

I doubt gem prices are ever coming down, if you have any interest in them at all you should be buying as much as possible before they go any higher.

Is there anywhere that keeps track of the zones you have 100% on or do you need to keep notes? I'm kind of disappointed the world map doesn't allow a better focus in on zones to get that info.

Gem prices will go down after the holiday events.  They may not reach 250 gems : 1 gp, but they will go down.

They're still going to trend upward. It will approach sanity when it hits 1g:100 someday.

Wasn't worth its own thread:

Timer on the 3 Dragons (http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/isle-of-janthir/)

xmas time will get worse.. guildies are buying gold every week to WvW and equip 'shinies'
i'm not sure if this is arena.net's intent... but really, no one is going to buy legit gold at this rate.

Gem prices are down to approx 1/2 what they were at peak last week.

As of last night they were at like 60s with a past week peak of 79 or so, unless I am very much mistaken. They dropped that far overnight?

Question: What should I expect from these developers in terms of new weapons or weapon mechanics fixes/changes?  I don't know how to explain it, but I'm getting frustrated by weapon kits that sort of work, but sort of don't.  If I can expect regular weapon ability sweeps, I could live with that, or if I can expect an influx of new weapons to cover the ones that don't work so well, I could live with that too.  What was the MO for GW1?

With only 5 buttons to push per set, it bugs me that one ability is a dog or doesn't mesh with the class or role or flow of play -- much more so than a traditional MMO where I have more abilities than I can manage.

GW1 didn't really use the same system so I don't think we can draw any conclusions from that. They might add new weapons in an expansion or something I guess.

Well, with two weapon sets, you can swap during combat and use up to 15 skills.  That said, there are Thief skills I hardly use; skill #5 of the dual daggers set for one.   

Seriously? how do you stealth?  That skill is the bread and butter of double daggers.

Last week it peaked at 1g20/gem. Today it is 58s. http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

time to buy bank slots and char slots!  :awesome_for_real:

Ya though it looks like it's still trending down. I'm glad I bought mine when it was 38s/gem

Are folks looking at opposite sides of the arbitrage?

At this moment, it costs 82 silver to buy 100 gems, but 100 Gems will yield 58 silver.  There's some big fat asura with HFT software making a killing on this.

Something wierd recently. I launh the launcher around 8pm so it can patch if it needs to before I get on around 9. But then at 9 I log in to character select, and the game quits and then downloads a patch if there is one.

Are they releasing patches during that window and I'm just unlucky? Or did they change how patches work?

They just pushed one then yes.

Tazel, I joined IOJ and have been leveling a few different characters and testing them out, I think I have settled on an Engy (just like the mobility).   What's the guild scene like?  Are there any decent guilds on the server who are looking for new folks for RvR?  Honestly I will probably be putzing around in PvE for a good while still but I like the game enough that I would like to check out the more organized side.

I don't have a good answer since I am looking for a new guild myself.

If I'm not wearing my full MF gear, even in pvp, i really feel like i am not playing efficiently.  It's annoying, i wish at least in pvp MF didn't work, but you even get 30% MF as part of the over matched buff.

Trophies.  Am I missing something?  You can salvage some and junk some, but some are just there.  Can't salvage them and they don't sell with the junk option.  Like flowers.  Maybe you're meant to decorate your home instance with them?  Oh wait....   :oh_i_see:

If they can't be sold or salvaged, they're probably turn-ins for the nearby heart.  If colored gold, then they're rare crafting materials.

Thanks!  I was going to find info on their forums but official game forums cause me to lose the will to live.

If it is a turn in item it will say something like, "xxxx near y would be interested in this" when you hover over it.

I just upgraded my bags at level 30 and figured out half of what I was carrying around was junk. I just trashed it.

Try typing "/wiki xx" where xx is the item in question.  Avoids the forums and takes you right to info on what you want to know.

Oh good.  Thanks!  Yay!   :heart:

How do servers work in this game?

I read all sorts of confused contradictory stuff about cross server play, transfers, bullshit regional restrictions.

Trying to work out wtf as I want to give this a go in the new year.

I'm not aware of any regional restrictions.  Server transfers are free for the moment, but it's best to choose the server you think you'll want at the start, as that may change later.

If you are in an overflow, or a dungeon, you can join people from other servers.  In the future they intend to have guesting, but with how long it's taking those plans may change.

Influence (guild point thingy) is per server.  So Bat Country on Gates of Madness has a different pool than Bat Country on Jade Quarry.  So if you want any guild perks, play on the same server as the guild you'll be representing the most.

The regional restrictions are NA/EU.  Those restrictions don't count for server transfers and don't count for grouping up, but do count for that entire group being able to enter a fractal as you won't be able to join the same Lion's Arch Overflow server.  I think it also matter for entering the same dungeon. 

So you can group cross region but can't then enter an instance together?

That would explain the apparently contradictory nonsense while being utterly bizarre. Just bizarre enough to be true I guess.

Yes, you can use gw2lfg.com and join in a group with a EU player and have fun party chat time.  They will be a blackbox on your group panel.  They won't have the option to "Join in Lion's Arch (Overflow)" on their panel.  That's the restriction for fractals as you all have to be in the same shard when the first person enters the fractal dungeon.  For regular dungeons, you can cross-server group, and when the first person in the zone, regardless of server, enters the dungeon, the other people on different servers will get a popup "Would you like to join your group in <Insert Dungeon Here> Explore Mode?" popup and you'll be whisked into the dungeon with your group.  I'm pretty sure that is NA/EU restricted as well, but not 100%.

Weird.

I"d assumed there was a technical restriction that anet had decided wasn't worth the effort. But that sounds like a (weird) design choice.

Can anyone point me at a simple 'build your character like this' guide. Everything I read says class is more about how than about what you can do? But then singularly fails to explain how what your guy can do is actually determined.

Or just tell me what to play if aiming for control/support/heals, which is what I always end up on in the end.

Er, you don't really have dedicated roles like you're used to.  The closest would be some builds for Guardians, water Elementalists, and maybe some Mesmer or Necro set-ups.

Mesmer is a highly active class though.  I find it isn't so much about control as it is organized chaos.

Guardian = melee with magic - think paladin
Warrior = non squishy melee dps
Thief = squishy melee dps with stealth
Elementalist = nukes , aoe has heals
Necro = dots, debuffs
Engineer = Beta Class
Ranger = hunters
Mesmer = Kinda oddball class - patient players only. Takes time to get better.

That makes mesmers sound bad, they are the best class for pvp atm.

you will not faceroll with this class without effort, i feel.
even pve takes time to figure out.

It is unfortunately linked to technical restrictions they are working on (and will be fixed in January). The long and short foot is that fractals use the personal story quest system rather than the dungeon system, so currently they have a whole host of annoying issues with the,. The main one is that if someone DCs in a fractal they cannot rejoin the group at all, which obviously ruins your run. The stuff about NA/Euro entry is linked to that (although obvious less of a problem).

The fix for DCs in fractals should also fix this issue.

They're really hard to get used to, and not something that will click for most people.  That also makes them tough for others to counter.

I won't claim to be good at PvP, but it's rare I die in PvE.  Even in dungeons I'm usually the last standing.

My mesmer is still wee, and I am pretty fragile and trying to figure out how it works when I mess around with him, but when I'm on my high level warrior and something is going poorly (i.e., I attacked some champion because I am dumb), and some random mesmer shows up, I am a happy camper because 9/10 times we are going to win due to clones/phantasms running around like maniacs and dying for me, a stranger.   :awesome_for_real:

I've played each class to about level 15 or so, and axe-axe / misc warrior, the first one I tried, is still my favorite.  Longbow / axe-horn ranger is a surprising second.  Elementalist/mesmer/thief in a three-way tie for third, the rest are down in the meh lands.  All ranking purely on 'fun' of skills, though the warrior and ranger have been more survivable they are much higher level than everyone else so those comparisons aren't really fair yet.

Survivability depends a lot more on build (gear stat choices + traits) than class, though obviously some classes have better tricks than others. In general pve (against normal / veteran / silver elite mobs) the most important thing is to make the mobs not hit you. This can be done through AOE blinds (directly or via combo finishers in a smoke field), block/invulnerability/projectile reflect skills, AOE crowd control (knockdowns, slows, roots, dazes), and aggro splitting (pets/clones, just like GW1). If all else fails, dodge. Against champion mobs, blind and most of the CCs become a lot less useful, but the value of pets and debuffs (especially chill/weakness) goes up; think of it as fighting an elite boss or AV in COH, where you had to overcome a lot of innate CC protection to get anything to stick - and if you did, it'd only hold or disable the mob for a second or two. Just as in COH, the way to beat tough baddies like that is to debuff them to crap while buffing yourself to crap.

FWIW I play an elementalist (both staff and dagger/dagger for range/melee) using a 'tanky' build and gear, and I barely ever die in pve and wvw unless I get massive aggro from 2+ veteran mobs that both have CC skills / stand in fire during a boss fight / encounter a zerg of at least 4 people in wvw (me being solo) ... and even then I have at least two ohcrap buttons to deal with the problem. Haven't played enough spvp to tell whether that holds true there as well... I'm also pretty sure that if I went 30 points into fire/air and switched out my gear for berserker's, I'd go splat fairly quick.  :grin:

Mesmers of any stripe basically go from "okay and confusing" to "holy shit this class will not die" with the post-60 traits. It's a bit of a slog to that point at times, because your time to kill is low as shit. Good if you have a duo to level with.

They do turn champs into wimps, which is awesome. Feedback is also hilarious on certain painful mobs.

Mesmers are bullshit. That is their class identity. Just like in the original GuildWars.


Good bullshit, Bad bullshit, they have it covered. There is like, almost no moment when I play with or against a Mesmer, that I am not going "what a load of bullshit!" :why_so_serious:

pretty much sums it up.  I do pretty good against Mesmers, but I have to say it is the one class I am really tired of fighting.  Every time I find myself in a 1v1 vs one I find myself going "Great, hear we go again."

If you want to play a class that will have the enemy absolutely frothing at the mouth, play a mesmer.  That or play a thief and take advantage of the rendering issues.

I posted somewhere on here sometime in October my experience with Mesmer. It was my second toon I got to 80(I now have four 80's-Thief, Mesmer, Warrior, Guardian) and PvPing on it was a joke.  Ok, here was what I posted and this stands true today:

 "Ive been doing a lot of PvP and have made a conclusion.  Mesmer kicks everyones ass, period.  After playing Spvp mostly on my Thief and a number of other classes I rolled Mesmer.  Within 2 hours of not knowing wtf I was doing really I was ...and I shit you not...raping people.  I just specd max crit, max power...didnt change any gear, found which abilities make illusions I can explode and went crazy batshit on not just solo players but groups of them.  My best was killing 3 players at one contested point...again I shit you not...after less then 2 hours played this was what I was capable of on Mesmer."

Anyone have a good link or able to explain portal bombing into keeps?  I get portals and portal bombs themselves, but there is a non-exploitive (afaik) way to get into some of the keeps.  Been looking for info on this before I bring my mesmer back into wvw.   All of the vids on YouTube are "awesome portal bomb" demos that are more about the end result than the process.

Also, lol @ the forum titles  :drill:

The legit non exploitative way of getting into a keep is hiding inside one while the enemy captures it.  That's it as far as i know.  We usually do mesmer sweeps after taking a keep.

Aaaah.  I've heard people say "check for mesmers" after captures.  Thanks.

I made a necro on the f13 server. How do I connect with the f13 people - assuming any of them are still playing?

I would have rolled on Jade Quarry but it was full.

What is your Name.Number?  Any one of us can invite you if we have that.

If you really want JQ, keep trying to transfer.  You should be able to eventually get it.

I want to play where active people are playing.

Xanthippe.9538

You know this is f13, months after release of a game, right? ;D

I sent you and invite.  Once you accept, make sure you click "Represent" on all your characters to make BC active on them.

What? no guesting yet? :evil:

Yes. That's why I first looked to see where you (in particular) were playing, since your posts are the ones that enticed me into wanting this game. (Explorer crack, I think you called it, and you called it right). But Jade Quarry is full.


Thank you. How could you invite me? I thought you play on Jade Quarry? Can you be in a guild across servers?

I'll answer that: Yes you can. You can also belong to multiple guilds at the same time. You just only represent one at a time and whatever guild that is gets whatever bonuses from you doing stuff.

Unfortunately, that guild only gets bonuses on that server, too.

For example, I'm in BAT, SLAP, and Star.  As I'm almost always representing Star, my points go to Star on Jade Quarry.  I can switch to the others to use their guild chat across servers, but any influence only goes to them on Jade Quarry.  BAT regulars are mostly on other servers, so it's barely acquired enough points to get a guild stash on JQ.  BAT on Gates of Madness probably has a much better pool of resources.

It actually is possible to meet up in overflow instances despite being on different servers.  This is mainly useful for dungeons at the moment.

Ah. Didn't realize that. Thanks.

Well, that explains why guild chat is so quiet! Hahaha.

To me, the whole appeal of multiple guilds was the ability to chat with all of them at once. Without that, there's not really a whole lot of point.

Yeah, it's my biggest gripe.  Let me choose to be in multiple guild chats if I want.  Yes, making some kind of alias system requires a bit of work, but /g1 /g2 /g3 isn't that hard if I want it.

Absolutely agreed. I only belong to two guilds, but this would be extremely useful even to me.

Ya, defeats half the purpose of multi-guilds by only having one guild chat. Lack of guesting defeats the other half.

EDIT: Not sharing guild influence across servers defeats another half. Classic example of a great idea with no follow through.

What is "culling"? I see reference to it in the WvW forum.

Culling refers to a method of selectively drawing objects in a 3d environment. This is done to reduce the polygon count to a manageable level when large crowds of player models are onscreen at once. With GW2 it's a bit buggy and pllayers can be on your screeen but invisible because the game is slow to tell the player's computer to render the closer players or npc's.

(http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/marcopolo2.png)

all those "polos" are players that haven't been drawn due to culling. Luckily it's not that bad anymore but the number or players drawn is still pretty limited

It is specially problematic with regards to thieves, who pop in and out of stealth often making them invisible the entire time as their shitty culling can't keep up with them appearing and disappearing over and over.

Is it worthwhile to completely gimp my defense stats to go full MF gear or will I notice a difference in drops going partway? I currently run around in mostly Cleric gear on my Guardian, and I'm a little wary of making every piece MF because I'll end up with almost no defense stats. If I use 5/6 Pirate + 1/6 Traveler and keep omnomberry buffs up, that should put me at like 80% or 90% MF. Is that going to be enough? Will the additional 50-ish percent MF I get from using Explorer weapons/armor/jewelry make that much of a difference? How much MF is "enough" ?

Edit: Realized I should clarify that my intended plan is to run around level 70+ zones killing things and participating in dynamic events.

I don't know about the full vs partway issue but I know mf appearantly is the most noticable on fine crafting drops. I've heard from people who did a mf set to farm for powerful blood and they report an almost doubling of the drop rate. I never got around to doing a MF set myself so it's all second hand info.

MF helps and if you run dynamic events in a large group you won't really need any defensive stats as it's more about actually getting enough hits on the mobs to be eligible for loot before they die  :oh_i_see:

Thanks for the responses!

I didn't realize that MF had an effect on crafting drops, that makes MF gear even more appealing. As for running around in groups - currently I'm making my way through Malachor's Leap and other people are few and far between for the most part. I suspect that will change once I make my way into Orr. I think what I'll do is get a MF set ready and once I run into a big group of people doing events I'll use it. 

Even solo, you can survive in a MF set.  I tend to make a level 80 rare set for each character that's Explorer's (one with runes of the Pirate/Travellers), then as I get exotics start swapping pieces out for my dungeon set.

I feel like I'm wasting my time when I'm not wearing full MF gear, i hate the shit out of that stat.  Even in WvWvW it has a noticeable effect, hell the outmanned buff they give you when your side has low pop has 30% MF.

How do I talk in red on the wvw map? When I use /map it's orangey red and everyone else is red.

I think red is /team

In dungeons it's pretty worthless. MF has no effect on chest drops.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/necromouse.gif)

So, what's the best thing to spend vast amounts of karma on?  Exotic armor from Orr?

Unrelated, what stat combo is going to give me the most bang for my buck with a thief?  I currently run sword/pistol and shortbow.

Berserker for thief.  Not sure on karma, besides exotic armor and jewelry.

As my alts have hit 80 my first stop is Eternal Battlegrounds, where I get a full set of rare armor and weapons.  Grab a set depending on the stats you need/want.

Orr exotic armor is cool and you can go for that, but it has always been my second choice as even on a busy server it's a pain to navigate around Orr and find open temples. 

If you have a ton to burn, I say get yourself flush with 80 rare gear in EB and then go from there at your leisure.  Also, for skins, don't sleep on the mid level zones, as there are some amazing looking skins hidden at the heart vendors.   

There are websites that track what temples are open on every server, it is trivial to guest into one and buy armor.  The temples get done regularly during the server reset world boss zerg also.

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

Isn't pretty but seems to be more or less accurate.

Or you can try http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/

Is there a gear vendor outside the pavillion?  Looks like I won't get back in there due to my severe time restrictions and the clusterfuckativity of this invasion event. 

I'm not mad at the game, it's my time issue and I accept it.  I'd just like to spend this pile of gears on something. 

They aren't, but if you know someone who has the Funhouse unlocked, you can go through it with them and the Pavilion will be back to normal without doing all the invasion crap. I've done that for a couple of friends and it worked. Doesn't take long to go through it.

 :drill:

Thanks!

Afk your way to finishing the event.  The game doesn't kick you out before the 45 min event is over, if you got one minute to login on the hour just teleport to wherever the event is happening and go about your day.  Absolutely nothing requires actually beating the event, which is why most people farm it rather than trying to beat it.  Ok, there is one achievement for beating scarlet, but that is bound to happen at least once by default if you sit in on enough of them.

I would, but it's a bit challenging to even get into the events on my server (Tarnished Coast).  Most of the time I'm sent to an overflow where no event ends up happening.  Which is weird, because I thought I read that overflows were supposed to spawn events within 45 minutes of the real server's start time.

Within 10 minutes, after that the event won't kick off on overflow instances.

The entire event running time is 45 mins, if you make it to the zone in the first 10 you will be in an overflow that has it running.

You can also piggyback into running events if you know anyone in an active overflow. Just join a party with them and right click their portrait to try and move to their overflow.

Magic Find info for the patch:

Magic Find Items:
Weapons, armor and trinkets with magic find will become account bound, lose their current stats and will gain the ability to be double-clicked to select one of several stat options depending on the item.

All existing drops and crafting recipes that have created Magic Find gear will be replaced with three new combos:
Explorer’s recipes will be replaced with the Assassin’s stat combo (Precision, Power, Critical Damage)
Traveler’s drops will be replaced with the Dire Stat Combo (Condition Damage, Toughness, Vitality)
Pillagers recipes will be replaced with the Hunter’s stat combo (Precision, Power)
Upgrade Components that currently give Magic Find bonuses will be updated with new functionality:
Copper, silver, gold and platinum doubloons will give boon duration.
Rune of the Pirate will grant power instead of magic find.
Rune of the Traveler will grant all stats, condition damage, boon duration and movement speed.
Rune of the Noble will grant condition damage and might.
Rune of the Scavenger will grant condition damage and life steal.
Sigil of Luck will grant a random boon on kill.


https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/economy-report-brace-yourself-disequilibrium-is-coming/ Also contains how tier 7 mats will work for ascended crafting.

People who gambled on traveler runes made thousands of gold.

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-September-3-2013

Notes are up.

edit:

Drips of Liquid Karma from champion loot bags have been replaced with Piles of Bloodstone Dust. <-- hope you saved your champ bags from the events.

Event failure no longer rewards karma in order to encourage players to succeed at events. <-- also seems to imply Karma may be harder to come by.

Dungeons, minidungeons, jumping puzzles, WvW camps, and towers now drop Empyreal Fragments in addition to their regular loot, which can only be earned once per day per location. <-- Best change imo. Discourages camping and provides a reason to roam.


Ranger Spirit changes:
Storm Spirit, Frost Spirit, Sun Spirit, Stone Spirit, and Spirit of Nature will now begin their recharge when the spirit dies instead of when the spirit is summoned.
Storm Spirit, Frost Spirit, Sun Spirit, and Stone Spirit: Recharge has been reduced from 60 seconds to 25 seconds.


This patch is.. really tiny? I think all the time and effort went into the ascended crafting tier.

Spirit Rangers are SUPER DUPER Happy now.  :oh_i_see:

Aw, they made a mode just for me!  :awesome_for_real:

MOTHERFUCKERS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I don't think they thought the dust through. I currently have around 1700 bloodstone dust.

I have over 10k.

This Super Adventure Box thing is a big pile of shit isn't it?

I can't say my first impressions are favorable.

Seemed kinda Gimmicky last time they went with it. Any change from last time or is the the first recycled event?

I thoroughly enjoyed SAB last time other than the lets jump in puzzles that are green on green.

In fact, it got me hooked on jumping puzzles in the main game. It's gimmicky but fun and I got a full set of 8 bit gear out of it.

Not a fan of the once a day to get a reward shit though. Last time I ran all my alts through it.

Then again, with 14 alts, I think I'd top myself running it once a day on each :D

Right?  "Patch notes:  Keep gambling!  Did you open your bags or save them?  This patch reveals the lucky winners!"

Although I must say, I profited from the outgoing method of Karma gain.  Almost a million in the wallet simply for existing.

If it makes you feel better, I may have developed a wrist injury from double clicking all those 10 luck items all night.

I told guildmates to hang onto their loot bags and then didn't follow my own advice, so only myself to blame.

I really like SAB - it doesn't really further my character any, but I think it's pretty fun.

If you have an artificer (even just level 1), you can upgrade them (5x10 -> 50, 2x50 -> 100, 2x100 -> 200)... results in a lot less clicking, but probably only worth it if you have a shit-ton of the 10 luck ones (e.g. by opening a kazillion boxes you saved up from the last event).

Oh hey, I figured it was sigil related when I saw artificer on the crafting list.

I think I still have another 90 or so boxes left to open on one character or another. But I went dragon hunting instead. Ascended longbow so pretty, MUST HAVE.

Just a FYI - don't go into SAB with the Birthday Buff. It strips it from you.

Anyone got a decent ele staff wvw build?   Looking for more of a sturdy support build, but I'm not sure how viable healing gear is.

What is an 'activity'?

They took some of the cutesy mini-games they've created along the way and put them under the header of Activity.  They're now on a daily rotation accessible from an NPC in Lion's Arch (near the statue).  Sanctum Sprint, Crab Toss, Southsun Survival, and Keg Brawl are the ones available.

The individual activities are actually a ton of fun (sanctum sprint, crab toss and south sun survival). Keg brawl can suck my ass.

Will I ever get used to the way charr move?  I tried the easiest vista yesterday and it took me like 5 minutes.  Guardian, I'm getting the hang of a little, but this charr running and jumping is pain.

Is it really that different? I made a char and played for all of 3 levels but it didn't feel too different from a human for that limited time frame.  Granted, I wasn't doing running/ jumping puzzles but you typically get a sense if it's wildly different.

My current main is an Asuran.  My other 80 alts are a small Nord and Human.  (necro, ele, thief)

The charr feels like I'm controlling a forklift that can jump. Also, it's a Guardian, so no passive 25% movement signet/trait.  Extra clunky.  

Well the animations are slower since you are much bigger and it makes you feel very very slow.  Also every race has the same exact hit box, that of a human, so doing jumping puzzles with a Charr or Norm is a lot harder because your body is not actually completely solid so you miss jumps that you saw as landing.  The asura are the complete opposite, you land jumps that look like you completely missed.

Most of my characters are huge ass Norns, except for my Necro who is a tiny human female and she is the one I take into pretty much every jump puzzle.

My main is a max-size Charr male and now I seem to only be able to do jumping puzzles with him. Mind you, I nearly threw my monitor out the window until I get used to it. I miss things on my Asura and human that I would have got on my Charr

On the flip side I hate taking my ranger - store pet, take damage pet pops out and then proceeds to get in your line of sight.

Or it jumps to the point you are aiming at and laughs when you miss it.

Damn pets.

I have a simple question: are there any pugs running dungeons in this game anymore? I've tried a couple of times with my 30something dude to run the Ascalon catacombs, but it's been all crazy people or someone selling (!) runs.

Ever since they revamped the dungeons and made them harder, I know my regular group quit trying.  But then most of us have quit logging into the game at all.

I imagine all that are left wanting to try are the super-hardcore.

They made the dungeons HARDER?  :ye_gods:

Oh wow, that explains things. It's like they chose stagnation through pandering exclusively to the hardcore.

fake edit: I mean seriously, players selling dungeon clears?  :uhrr:

To be fair, players have been selling raid/dungeon/etc runs since WOW vanilla (probably even earlier than that).

That said -- dungeons aren't GW2's strongest point, and that's putting it mildly. The living story dungeons (fire cave thing, aetherblade retreat) were decent, but almost everything else is blah.

The weak classes also make the dungeons dull. The mobs have a lot of HP and the combat has little tactical variation and party synergy so it becomes repetitive.

But getting rid of the trinity was going to make the game so much more exciting and involving!

 :why_so_serious:

It's perfectly fine for open-world stuff.  GW2 still has several great classes that I found fun.  It just doesn't work so well against bosses that are more or less tank-and-spank without the 'tank'.  I can't recall a single interesting boss fight with the exception of the skulk rush in Ascalon Catacombs (and that one could be seriously painful).

My understanding is that the sales of runs is tied to legendary weapons and power leveling.  Certain legendaries require currency that is dropped as part of the instance's end loot.  A vast amount of this is needed.  As for power leveling, I believe you can receive a large amount of experience if you join an instance underleveled and just stand around for the last kill. 

The instances are not popular and anyone who does them wants them done fast. So, you're forced into certain classes with certain builds or people aren't going to want you around.  You need friends that also want to do this content or you just won't get it done.  The pug scene is not healthy.  So, there's your market. 

You need 500 dungeon tokens for a legendary, each run gives you 66.  It is about the least troublesome part of a legendary, plus it makes you money which need a metric fuck ton off.  People who buy runs do it because they have gold and hate running dungeons like any normal not crazy person but still want the dungeon armor.

You can get about 240 dungeon tokens from completing the sPvP track for that dungeon, too. That's how I have gotten all of mine.

I PUG AC all the time for whatever its worth. And yeah I bought the end of Arah path 4 becasue fuck that shit. I think that TA and SE are better for pugs though.

Ledgendaries are baslicly ascended weapons with a fancy skin. I'd rather just craft an ascended (or get them from a fractal) with another skin tbh. becasue what you have to do to get them is insane

Which is sort of the point. They're a very visible "catass" badge without actually being mandatory in power terms.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44058/Game%20stuff/Screenshot%202014-06-01%2022.57.27.png) (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44058/Game%20stuff/Screenshot%202014-06-01%2022.57.27.png)

 CATASS+++ :drill:

The amount that those swords poop on the ground is incredibly annoying.  At least the light poop is less annoying than the dark poop.

That's impressive considering you have twins.  There's usually a skin I'll like that isn't legendary (or super hard to get), so they haven't even been a consideration for me.

I find the dark swinging "paintbrush' effect to be way more annoying than the footsteps.


I can't seem to sleep much more than 3 hours a night, so I catass a lot during that time.

Once you have a good stream of gold coming in you can just start shitting out legendaries, as long as you sell one for each one you keep they almost pay for themselves.

As long as you don't put a value on your time.

But I was fine with legendaries because it provides a goal you can work towards, in a variety of ways, that gives you a reason to keep playing. Same for achievement hunting and I would have hoped they'd add more along these lines. But they've let the idea decay in exchange for cosmetics and achievements tied to events. Which means when the event is not running the goal is locked away,

Time is money, friend!

Recently logged back in after two years or so (I quit in the first month).

What happened to the "in town" outfit? I can't find how to access it.

If you go to some vendor you can have it "upgraded" to the new town system.

As to what vendor I dunno. they are in cities though.

"edit" Quick check of wiki

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Town_clothes

Oh, thanks. :)

I was quite fond of the old default town outfit for my rogue. I need to figure out how to find it again...

All the town clothes get converted into infinite-use tonics.  Of course you can't dye them or mix-and-match.  Things like the four-piece Mad King's outfit are now a single piece.  (I used the wraith hood with it for an awesome effect.  No more.  Also no choosing to dye the individual pieces.)

The armor system with that update was amazing.  The wardrobe system that doesn't use it, however, is stupid.

I've been blocked in story progress until I join an Order. Brief Googling suggests it's a big decision. (I never got this far last time I played.)

Is it as obvious as mages should always go Priory, rogues Whispers, and Warriors Vigil?

Is there a good one-page summary of the choices? The official wiki is directing me in a dozen different directions at once.

The direction you go means nothing because your order means nothing because Treesus completely replaces everything you have done.

Go whispers because Tybalt is awesome as a mentor. The other 2 are good but Tybalt rocks.

The difference your order makes is not much once you go into the generic story later on. You get to do an order specific storyline for a few missions, then a race specific research mission with the mentor from your order after that, and later on you do an order specific defense mission. Later on you can buy your order specific weapons and experiment which had unique skins and are Rare quality. That's essentially it.

If you are running more than one character you can do all 3 orders. But basically go for the one that appeals to you for now. And no its not "Warriors - order etc" you can join whichever one you want.

I'm kind of partial to the Order mentor myself, but yeah Tybalt is great too.

*edit* oh yeah there's one or two areas in their headquarters that are order exclusive but none of them are very interesting and you probably wont visit them again.

I would just look up the Order-specific armor skins and see if there are any of those you like for your character. If not just pick whatever.

This was my highly scientific way of choosing.

Also the story gets way less interesting once you finish joining an order, just to warn you. The joining process can be fun, though.

Thanks for the advice, guys. :)

If I remember correctly the personal story line requires a dungeon run for completion.  Between that and the way the story goes down hill after you join an order I haven't gotten around to completing it nor felt much interest in doing so.

The dungeon is the very end event of the personal story.

You'd have better luck getting people's credit card and social security numbers than getting them to do Arah story mode.

Has it gotten that bad? I did it on 5 of my chars in completely random pugs, and I could find a group on gw2lfg instantly in each case*. Sure, some took more time than others (euphemism), but all of them completed the run in less time than it took to do, say, a Maraudon run back in vanilla WOW. I realize that's not a particularly good measuring stick.  :awesome_for_real:

* all 5 of my runs were before the ingame LFG tool, if that counts

edit: words

I'd say it only really gets uninteresting when the Marty Stu salad turns up - before that they're still good.

"Give me a run and I'll shred your CCN and SSN." :awesome_for_real:

That's actually a lie. Just advertise on the LFG tool on the Arah Dungeon for "Story Mode" and you will have a group together in 10 minutes tops. And I know because I was doing an insomniac fueled all nighter last night and Someone asked in Mapchat for someone to do it, I said why not, advertised in the LFG at 2 in the morning UK time and we had a full group in 5 minutes even in that late hour. It's actually a pretty fun story dungeon, much as people here like to hate on GW2 dungeons.

And the group got through it pretty well with a few instructions on some of the fights from yours truly. If you want to run Arah sometime let me know and I'll run it with you. It will take half an hour to 45 minutes of your time.

Yeah, I've run Arah story on 12 toons because I must be fucking nuts to satrisfy my OCD and complete the story on all characters. LFG works but goddamn, for all the amazing detail on Zhaitan - the dungeon is painfully boring.

It's a fun dungeon, just... Logan.

Oh, I've never actually tried the LFG for story mode stuff.  By the time it had come out, I had basically given up on doing it. 

I was in possibly one of the largest and most active guilds on Jade Quarry and no one wanted to do that thing.  No one was ever looking to do it.   Only reason I'd care at this point is for the achievement points, and it's kind of pointless if I don't have any desire to play.

PUGing... nothing you can say will get me to pug anything in that game ever again outside of stupid zerg events.  I still bear the scars.

I'm just not a fan of dungeons, for whatever reason I can't stay oriented and get lost in even simple dungeons.  I also am surprisingly bad at mmo style fights and can't seem to break the habit of pointing and clicking with my mouse instead of using the keyboard so long complicated fights are not something I actively look for.

Some simple questions:

Is it worth it to unlock the first two storylines?  I have the 2 Dragon's Reach ones open but I was away for the first 2, the Maguuma ones.  By worth it, I mean can you get some interesting rewards and be entertained?

What are some good ways to get transmute charges?  Gem store, check.  Completing zones, check.  What else?

Nope you hit on the only way to get transmute charges.

The first episode is pretty missable to be honest. The second one is where people sat up and paid attention and said "woah, this is for real"

Ah ok.  So if I skip Gates of Maguuma and just do Entanglement, I won't be missing a first necessary step?

Gates of Maguuma basically brings you to and introduces you to Dry Top, a few characters that are important later in the story,  and supplies some of the backstory (such as why the Zepherites crashed), and ends with a fairly tough boss battle. Its starts the buildup to the main event that starts with entanglement so you might miss a little pacing. I really dont know what the deal is if you skip it and haven't go right to Entanglement, butI doubt its essential. There's a few achievements you can't get if you haven't done the missions as well.

Really the missions are fine, just marred with some REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING companions and dialogue.

PVP

Didn't we used to be able to get gear?  Maybe it's still there, but as of now all I can see is the ability to choose rune/sigil and weapons.  I remember a pvp locker and such, with level 1's being able to enter the mist and get fully geared for pvp. 

It just uses your regular gear but with the only stats coming from the pvp runes/sigil/medallions you pick.  Level 1's just need to buy their own level 1 weapons now though which is a very slight inconvenience.