Pretty sure Anet is just grieving us at this point. No studio can be so resistant to learning.

Sigh. I'll just do Arah for Forgotten Lore.

Welcome to the Weekly Question Post on c/guildwars2!

This post is dedicated to those questions that you might not think is worth making a whole post about, but sure is worth getting an answer to ;)

Remember to also take a look at the links in the sidebar, which holds lots of great resources and information.

While ArenaNet is struggling with Alliances and WvW Restructuring they've added a new game mode ... Wiazrd's Vault's Weekly Victim [WVWV].

Though not strictly a screenshot ... this shall be my entry for September 2023.

Can't find any Rifts, neither do others.

...what the fuck do I do with my level 34 engineer?

That Fractal shit that's going on is the perfect excuse. No Mists ghosts, no echos, no memories, just a straight alternate-reality-version of the Mentor, flesh and blood and all, from a timeline where Claw Island didn't end with death and sadness.

I don't care, I just want to have a conversation with Sieran again.

Power Creep allows even Perma-Noobs like me to help two-men-capture a Guild Hall. At least when guided by someone who obviously knew what he was doing.

Screenshot shows @lulztard on Mirage (right) and Me on Harbinger (left) after our successful first attempt.

So far we have completed

• Expedition to the Gilded Hollow
• General Merchant
• Repair Anvil
• Tavern Restoration 1
• Mining Excavation 1
• Aetherium Capacity 1
• Workshop Restoration 1
• Market Restoration 1

and the Mine is slowly producing Aetherium (up to 1500 for now).

There are no immediate plans to further upgrade the hall, though Material donations for some minor upgrades like Ore Synthesizer 1 and Guild Enhancement:Karma|Experience are welcome. Maybe it's fun to also restore the War Room and the Arena at some point (seeing that ArenaNet has announced some GvG features for the Guild Halls). It would be nice, if things would grow slowly but steadily. Just like this Guild Wars 2 Lemmy Community.

Keep the Fire Smoldering ... so to say.

Of course there are more since i like my pink asura mesmer too much.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7880305

This route hits

Greater: 10 (11 with meta)
Lesser:  5 max, call it 2.5 on average
Foxes:   8 max, depends if you are fast enough for 1 of them

on average this is 10*8.5 + 2.5*5 + 8*2 = 113.5 coins per day

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7857326

This route tags: 2 Greater Arcane Chests (7-10 coins/ea) 0-1 Lesser Arcane Chests (4-6 coins/ea) 6 Fox Chests (1-3 coins/ea)

Averaging at ~30 coins per day (17-18 if you cut out the fox chests)

Additionally, there's an extra Lesser chest you can grab on the rocky hill at the beginning.

... which pretty much ruins the skin for me.

I've also pretty much finished SotO:

• Story complete.
• Wizard Tower Teleportation Stone
• Map Completion
• All Masteries unlocked
• Observatory Strike done
• Legendary Starter Kit, Ascended Armor and Weapons boxes, Cheap Gold and Griffon Skin (I like it) from Wizard Vault
• Kryptis Skyscale skin

I'm only missing a few Achievements to get both Map Masteries and the final Strike mission.

Overall impression ... Mixed Bag. Feels rushed (as always) with many bugs, oversights and terrible optimization, especially in Amnytas.

I liked the Story (but please, no more unskippable voice-over) and most of the newly introduced characters, especially Peitha. I'd very much preferred Lyhr to die instead of Mabon, if only for the Dwarven Accent of Lyhr's voice actor. If ArenaNet is smart, they'll add Peitha's Walking Animation as an emote to the gem store. 😏

For someone who already has all previous Skyscale Masteries most of the additional SotO Skyscale Masteries (which are the only ones relevant outside of SotO) feel very lackluster or rather gimmicky. The exception is obviously Updraft use and Endurance restoration when using a flying mount in a map which has lots of verticality and updrafts, e. g. HoT maps. I might actually go back and try map completion of Tangled Depth (@Fox without using Blish HuD and Markers).

Combat Launch would be more useful when it were on a shorter cooldown or at least when it were impossible to activate it by accident. I have a dedicated shortcut for the Mastery and I don't want the 3 minute CD be wasted just because I mounted my Skyscale while I still had a condition on me. It's kinda funny or rather silly that ArenaNet added those Skyscale in Combat Launchers to the (meta) maps, because they felt the need to to put a hefty cooldown on the mastery.

Rift Hunting is a complete (design) failure in my opinion. Rewards are very poor when doing hunts beyond the weekly bonus and only ever worth the time, if you still need "Essences", i. e. those rewards are only useful for SotO (achievements) and clutter your inventory, because ArenaNet ~~forgot to add them to the Material Storage or Currency Wallet.~~ ~Fixed_2023-09-12~

I highly doubt that the SotO maps will see much play in a few weeks. There are a lot of places in the game that are both more fun and more rewarding.

The Wizard Vault rewards are probably the best part of the expansion. Especially when you are still gearing up your characters with Ascended or even Legendary gear.

I also like Weapon Mastery which IMHO could have been added to the game ages ago. For me it simplifies gearing up for multiple builds (less need for equipment templates just to switch to different weapons) and it shows that some weapons are just way better than others.

I almost forgot about Relics. I wonder why? Well, they have been added to the game. That's pretty much it.

Welcome to the Weekly Question Post on c/guildwars2!

This post is dedicated to those questions that you might not think is worth making a whole post about, but sure is worth getting an answer to ;)

Remember to also take a look at the links in the sidebar, which holds lots of great resources and information.

Thank Dwayna for Blish HUD Pathing modules

You can receive 2x Astral Acclaim once if you haven't bought the new expansion yet.

Process:

1.) Finish dailies

2.) Log out

3.) Add expac to account

4.) Login

5.) Repeat dailies for more Astral Acclaim

It won't give you more AP and it only works once, so not anything too useful - but wanted to share.

First of: I am a huge fan of the wizards vault and I believe it is a very good system for the average GW2 enjoyer. However, I am quite concerned with the amount of transferable wealth, farmable via alt-accounts and the general amount of gold farmed by the player base. To demonstrate it, let us take a look at some basic currencies: Astral Acclaim (AA), Gold (G), Mystic Coins (MC) and Laurels (L). (The Legendary Weapons starter kit will be excludet here, since its not directly transferable between accounts and is only available if you own SotO.)

(Edit 3: Heavy crafting bags are also excludet since they require SotO.)

For a basic Timeframe we use 3 Months = 13 Weeks = 90 Days.

Lets look at Astral Acclaim and how much you can get (ignoring the special tab and extra tasks):

• Dailies: 65 AA + 1 G
• 7 Dailies: 455 AA +7 G
• 90 Dailies: 5850 AA +90 G
• Weeklies: 690 AA + 10 L
• 13 Weeklies: 8970 AA +130 L

Now lets look at 3 different types of alt farmers:

The 2-Klicks (login, open vault, get 5 AA, logout):

• gets 90*5 = 450 AA = 75 G
• net loss compared to old system

The Efficient Farmer (buys all 6 AA Gold, all MC and all BL Mastery Coffers (1 G sell)):

• needs 6* 90 + 9* 60 +15* 20 = 1380 AA
• 1380 AA = 2 Weeklies (or 22 Dailies)
• gets 110 G, 60 MC, 20 L via Weeklies (or 132 G, 60 MC via Dailies)

Edit 1: Buying laurels instead or in addition of BLMC might increase your overall profit but would also increases the number of Weeklies/Dailies.

The Full Clear Farmer (all Dailies + all Weeklies):

• gets 14820 AA (spends 1380 like Efficient Farmer)
• spends rest (13050) on 30 AA Gold = 448 G
• gets 648 G, 60 MC, 130 L

Edit 2: Buying laurels instead of Gold 598 G, 60 MC, 280 L

As a point of reference, the old system gave 180 G, 60 MC, 165 L and a few Materialbags + Booster for a similar amount of effort (90 days login rewards + 90 dailies).

My biggest worry here is the increased amount of gold now comming into the Economy by the general community and a few efficient Farmers, with a lot of alt-accounts. From my experience over the last few weeks: it did not take more than 2 hours to complete the Weeklies. Making it on par with the best farms in the game, with a few major differences: The reward is raw Gold, Weeklies are a lot easier, they require less coordination and it is directly scalable to the amount of alt-accounts used.

TLDR: the wizards vault drastically increased the amount of raw gold you are able to generate with the same amount of effort.

In Living World Season 3 we got the Maguuma Raid, Bastion of the Penitent. I believe that it showed us what it was like to be a soul trapped inside a bloodstone piece. The experience was told through Saul D'Alessio. (The theory goes that Saul was killed on the Maguuma stone and his soul resisted the extraction techniques of the White Mantle and their mursaat overseers. The Bastion of the Penitent is what souls trapped inside the Maguuma bloodstone refer to said stone as. I have always felt that the Bloodstone is forged from the blood of dragonkind. Hence, Samarog is a representation of the lifeforce of dragons coursing through the stone. Deimos is the tormented magic that has been strained from Saul's soul by the Maguuma bloodstone.)

​

In Living World Season 4 we flew into Kralkatorrik on Aurene's back. We were shown a little of what it's like to be inside an Elder Dragon. Later, in the Icebrood Saga, Aurene asked why Elder Dragons go mad. As she saw it, they all go mad. Kralkatorrik suffered from bouts of madness and rampage. Jormag seems to have gone crazy in other ways. Elder Dragons suffer from strange illnesses induced, presumably, by torment. Notso Aurene. But that doesn't mean that she doesn't get sick; just that her sickness is different. Also, the skyscales got sick and whilst they aren't Elder Dragons they are as close to lesser dragons as we get and remind us that creatures like this have vulnerabilities.

​

If Aurene did get sick, how would we know? What would we do to treat her? Elder Dragons don't really spend a lot of quality time with mortals - the result is that there are very few alive today, if any, who can treat the various ailments of the different species of dragon.

​

All this has got me thinking...

​

What if SoTo's strange setting, Amnytas, Nayos - the Land of Dreams - Bastions and the like are mindscapes within Aurene herself? The kryptis are part of Aurene's immune system - warding magics - reacting to some kind of bloodborne infection coursing through her veins. The characters we meet are all distorted memories of people that we've already met. Isgarren is Palawa Joko, Mabon is Balthazar ecetera ecetera. They are the spirits, souls, lifeforce or whatever that Aurene has consumed in one form or another. Notably, Aurene's consumption of Palawa has finally caught up to her. Eparch is to Aurene what Samarog is to the Maguuma Bloodstone - a reflection of draconic lifeforce coursing through her. Perhaps not Aurene's? Maybe Kralkatorrik's, or Mordremoth's? Who knows? It could be the strongest warding magic within Aurene's immune system that needs to meet Isgarren/Palawa to finally understand the nature of Aurene's ailment.

​

Which brings me to Zojja. Mabon is Palawa Joko's memory of Balthazar - or at least, the things in Balthazar that Palawa liked about him. Isgarren is how Palawa sees himself and may in fact be the true form of Joko - the all-dominating regent of Elona just one of Isgarren's numerous disguises that he used to dwell amongst mortals, the process of Awakening so powerful because it is ancient seer magic at work and no one knows how to counter it. But Zojja hasn't met Joko so far as we know. So where does she fit in? She isn't just a memory, surely? One possibility is that the version of Zojja that we meet is a part of Zojja's mind that was appropriated by first Mordremoth then Aurene when the latter absorbed the Jungle Dragon's magic. Zojja may still be Zojja, but not in corporeal form. Her body may be elsewhere; she could be having recurring out of body experiences. How this all works right now is a bit murky to me, but Zojja may be entralled to Isgarren/Palawa, manipulated to help him overthrow Eparch and kill Aurene.

​

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out.

Welcome to the Weekly Question Post on c/guildwars2!

This post is dedicated to those questions that you might not think is worth making a whole post about, but sure is worth getting an answer to ;)

Remember to also take a look at the links in the sidebar, which holds lots of great resources and information.

There are some good deals in there at the moment tho.

AMD recently announced FSR 3, which will support every dx11 game on AMD card. As Guild Wars 2 is CPU bound, those artificial frames generated by fsr 3 might be a gigantic improvement to fluidity of the game. Imagine having twice as much DPS in meta event. Doesn't it sound exciting?

For anyone out of the loop

First things first: my unsaid expectation of 30 minutes of story followed by shite has not been fulfilled. I'm not going to dismiss this expectation not being fulfilled by saying how it was a low bar, because being a cynical cunt is also a low bar. So I'll be just glad that this little devil on my shoulder wasn't just wrong, but was utterly so. Great.

Also great: amazing what they managed to do with nothing.

And that's the interesting part. Clearly there has been very little budget been involved. Mobs are all just reskins AGAIN, the only new design is the Wizard's Tower and even that has been re-used immediately, hilariously enough. I appreciate the humour in that.

Also, once again NCNet shows that they can't design a game while they're being carried by their arts devision. Rifts are a clunky, boring and repetetive low-effort gameplay loop that spawns its enemies far to much spread out, relics are an actual grown-up disrespect towards everyone with half a brain cell, getting kidnapped by ley-lines is just one of many "how the fuck did that get past design phase" moments, same with nuking dailies from orbit. "Hey", an NCNet developer said at the table with 20 others, "know what people would love? Not being able to pick and choose how they'd like to do their daily stuff!" After a short moment of stunned silent, everyone cheered and the guy got a promotion.

I could go on, but the picture is the same picture as usual. The good stuff is where it's at, actually.

No new mobs, no new mechanics, no new actual features - NOTHING. Like, actually, fucking zero new stuff. Rehashes all around. Yet they managed to do so much with it.

They stretched the story from like 30 minutes to several hours by talk and re-using maps alone without spreading it too thin. The "what if" scenarious and the morally dark-grey backstory turns the cannibalisation of old content in something close to new and paints over with how little they actually had to work with. They limited themselves to one mount and did nothing with it but make player abilities work on it as well, but managed to change quite some gameplay with that alone. Infight-mounting and fireballs have more of an effect than expected.

I could go on here as well, but as with the bad, the general picture should be clear.

It's actually a fascinating case study and I wonder what the reason behind that great work with shite materials is. Clearly NCSoft didn't just install some random scab after they ousted the old leadership. Is the NCSoft-approved lead trying to keep up the tradition with what little is left and seeing himself as some sort of guardian of the remnants? Or he use the opportunity to stab the old vision in the back and finally get his own ideas going?

In general, the seaon 4 finaly will stay the true ending of OldWars, with NuWars having started with SotO and IBS/EoD having been the symptoms of a short, tumultuous coup.

Speculations aside, the new """expansion""" cements that old heights have been reigned in and down to what NCSoft is willing to provide that low-earning title. that things will stay on that level and that there is nothing more to be expected. However, it also shows that it's still a labour of love for certain forces behind the curtain, and as tragic it all is to witness, it's also impressive how those forces managed to create so much with so little.

I wish they had the funding and freedom of ye olde days.