Well folks it is that time again. April Fools Day is upon us or as it is also colloquially known among my friends “Liars Day” I believe in part to this Penny Arcade comic. I know this is a thing yet this year I managed to allow myself to get caught up in it. Yesterday a news story began circulating that the Tulsa metro was finally getting an IKEA, only to be retracted several hours later and confirmed that it was an early April Fool’s joke. This cycle of excitement and crushing defeat is why April Fool’s day is actually pretty awful when you think about it. I get that it is basically one day each year when you should not trust anything you read… but also REAL things happen at the same time. Is the Final Fantasy XIV 6.1 patch just a giant April Fools Joke or will I actually be able to download it shortly? It creates this pitfall where for plus or minus a few days of the actual event… you have to approach every revelation with a healthy degree of side-eye.

A younger version of me legitimately looked forward to this day, because it meant a bounty of whacky tech news stories. I think the problem there is that the line between reality and fiction has sufficiently blurred to the point where it is extremely hard to tell the difference. I mean for years I thought “Flat Earthers” were an internet joke, but it turns out that no there are people who legitimately are committed to that nonsense. In this climate, the last thing we really need is a full day where anything goes and you are left to try and sweep up the pieces of reality left on the table. Even though Pandarens were a really fun April Fools Joke back in the day that eventually became reality, I think we are probably just better off without the practice. Besides it also seems deeply cruel to keep trying to dunk on your supposed friends.

What isn’t a lie however is that in Guild Wars 2 they have started the Dogs Day festival in Lion’s Arch where you just get to pet a lot of peppers and talk to one that is sage beyond their years. There are a few achievements associated with doing a handful of things including petting a lot of dogs, and taking a nap among them. There are also “dog” and dog vendors that sell a few items, including some that trade items you get from karma hearts for “doggy bags” that can include all sorts of random stuff. I opened up 9 of these in total to get the achievement and I got stuff from the Halloween event, Christmas event, loot boxes from world bosses, and a handful of random materials. Nothing terribly exciting but there does appear to be a pattern to it of a sort. You get a Fool’s Dog Treat, some sort of a loot box, some sort of currency from a past event, or a luck item.

Other than that I chipped away at the first part of the Twilight Legendary achievement. I get that the wisdom is to just save the money and buy the damned precursor, but I want to at least craft one of these through the full process. I am working on the Greatsword in part because more than any other weapon in the game it seems to be the one I more or less universally enjoy across many classes. Once I craft a single Legendary weapon, all of my characters will be able to use it so that seems like a good thing. I’ve reached the point where I can no longer progress on my own and have knocked out pretty much everything that I could reasonably solo. What is left is four specific fractals, which I am hoping I can wrangle folks this weekend to go and do. The ones I need are as follows:

• Thaumanova Reactor Fractal – Number 15/34/55/64
• Captain Mai Trin Fractal – Number 18/42/72/95
• Molten Boss Fractal – Number 10/40/70/90

From there I will be able to start on the way more egregious second achievement. Again I know that I should probably just BUY Dusk, but I want to go through this process at least once on my own by crafting the precursor. There is a pretty hefty list of materials required for that second part, but I think honestly I have most of it already on hand save for some of the mithril… even though I have 1000 ingots in my material storage and close to 1000 raw ore as well. I mean these are the long-tailed grinds in this game, and honestly, I am here for it. Unlike a Relic weapon, I end up getting something that can be used as eternal end game gear for every single one of my characters. If in the process of all of this nonsense Dusk happens to drop… well then we will rethink this whole plan heh.

Good Morning Friends! One of the things about me that I find odd is for as much as I claim to enjoy spontaneous events in games… I find myself falling into a large number of routines. For example I have begun this lunch time routine of working on whatever the World vs World dailies are for the previous reset. The server reset happens at 7 pm my time, and often times I chew through the PVE requirements and use those as a guide to determine what I am doing in a given evening. However that leaves some valuable dailies still on the table and I have realized that I can usually do at least two of them solo. Each daily done is direct rewards track progress via the potion you get, so this gives me a fairly casual way of getting my Gift of Battle progress. Admittedly I could do the thing that folks talk about and just grind out eight hours worth of solid progress on a weekend… but I would far rather spend thirty minutes to an hour each day and get incremental progress. I am however close enough that I might finish it up this week.

I am still progressing my way through the Path of Fire story. I now have my skimmer and I am guessing next comes the Jackal. I’ve arrived at the Domain of Vabbi through questing and honestly I like that area quite a bit. The Desolation is a zone I need to revisit but it seemed to be a bit painful to navigate. Vabbi on the other hand seems completely reasonable and I have had a lot of fun doing content in it. It does not hurt that last nights PVE event completion daily took place in the same zone I have spent quite a bit of time lately chipping away at.

Prior to the reset I even seem to have lucked into part of the meta, or at least a series of events that reward a Hero’s Choice chest. I honestly damned near solo’d this event because for the first phases I had an Engineer with me, but when the two legendary hounds started attacking they kept dying in a place that I found it extremely hard to resurrect them. I solo burned them down through the first several phases of the encounter, because every 25% health they swap places and one hound becomes invulnerable and the other becomes the main target. Once they get below 25% health in total however they both start attacking and I had whittled them both down to around 15% when a group of players showed up to help me finish out the event. Most of that time though I was solo kiting while waiting on my Flesh Golem to cooldown.

Once reset happened though, this sleepy hamlet of a zone become hopping. I think that is one of the cooler things about the Daily quests is how they focus the player base on a specific segment of the game. If you are able to be on at the time the daily reset happens, you can guarantee a massive amount of players trying to complete the same content at the same time. One thing that I have noticed that is pretty great is that for the jumping puzzles, there is almost always someone in the looking for group tool with an open party that you can use “teleport to friend” on and get completion. After having it suggested to me many times I am starting to pay a bit more attention to the tool and have joined a few groups through it.

The timing landed just right and I happened into a run of Dragon’s Stand later in the evening. I poked my other guild members and Ash and Tam happened to get slots in the southern group with me. This went exceptionally smoothly and I arrived in zone just before the last attempt failed, so we had a critical mass of players ready to go immediately. I think for the next run I am going to need to go mid so I can finish my mastery points for completing the event on a specific lane. I also probably need to focus on the bosses a bit because I noticed there were achievements for those as well. I don’t really have any speed boost abilities so I am better suited for the boss burn party rather than the folks running around in a ring killing the dudes who regenerate the towers.

I closed out my evening with a daily dungeon run, and I am super happy the timing landed in a way as to be able to do it. Granted I got to bed a little later than normal, but it was worth it. We only did the story mode version, but picked up a random player who was outside the instance asking for a group. The person seemed nice enough so I friended them for later shenanigans. I need to work on building out my friends list in Guild Wars 2, because this absolutely seems like a game where having a deep list could be beneficial. This game lives in this weird place where most grouping is inconsequential to your enjoyment… but then there are other modes of play with STRICT grouping and no auto matching tool to act as a bridge. I want to be able to explore more of the game and I know in order to do so I am going to have to reach out a bit. I have access to a large multi-game guild and I have contemplated joining up on one of my guild slots. I need to see what their rules are regarding representation because really I still plan on spending most of my time in Greysky chat.

All told though another great night in Guild Was 2 doing a staggering variety of different things. I think more than anything that is the thing that I am enjoying. So often I get into situations in MMORPGs where every night feels pretty much the same, because I end up doing the same things. Between slowly chewing through the story, allowing myself to get caught up in events, and occasionally doing more structured group activities… it all seems fresh. Granted in several years of doing all of this I am sure it would start to feel stale. Prior to this resurgence I had put in around 200 hours in the game, but it was spread out over the course of the decade it has been in operation. Belgraven my Necromancer is a character that I created when I returned… and it already has 240 hours worth of playtime associated with it according to GW2 Efficiency.

So for years I have heard about Super Adventure Box from the Guild Wars 2 playing folks, and I have to admit I was looking forward to it quite a bit. Yesterday the patch landed and for the next twenty days we are able to get into this Mario 64 feeling world and farm Baubles which can be used to buy things that last beyond the festival. The weird part about this however is as much as I thought I would enjoy it… I am not really feeling it. Like sure it is cute but also I am too used to the way things feel when doing events out in the world and as a result this game mode doesn’t feel terribly rewarding. Now I am trying to decide how much effort I want to put into it, and what I actually want to get from it if anything.

Looking for information about the entire experience, I came across this “Super Casual Bubble Farm” video from Tekkit. In theory I could probably go this route if I wanted to just accumulate large amounts of bubbles efficiently. However that sort of goes counter intuitive to the types of things I am enjoying doing in this game. Instead I spent some time running world bosses, metas, and moving the Path of Fire story forward a bit. I need to get my way through the Super Adventure Box just to have completed it once. I will probably do it on “infantile mode” first but then follow up with a normal run. There is no way in hell I have any real interest in doing the torment run or whatever they call it.

I remember doing some sort of Super Adventure Box themed jumping puzzle once, but past that I never really interacted with this event. As a result I am also having to buy my way into being useful, so it is going to take awhile just to buy all the necessary bits. I have the baubles farmed up to buy my bomb now, and I guess the next step will be to farm up the baubles to upgrade my wallet. The limited nature of this event though really makes it so that I feel like I need to make a conscious decision of whether or not I want to participate and set forth to farming now for the things I actually care about. I did pick up one of the weapons associated with the event yesterday in a random box, and I chose to get the Hammer since of the three available it is the one I am most likely to use. I might throw it on my Guardian actually since I can see an Asura using that weapon.

The other problem that I am having a bit with the items from SAB is that none of it really fits the theme of the game. This came up in a conversation last night regarding a cross over between Rainbow Six Siege and Rick and Morty, and how this property really does not fit the nature of that game. The items and appearances from Super Adventure Box, really don’t feel like they should exist in the Guild Wars 2 universe and even if I earn some of them… I am not entirely certain I would use any of them. I get that the Guild Wars 2 players seem to really like flashy/glowy/blingy stuff… but if you can’t tell by the fact that I am dressed mostly in black that it isn’t really my jam. So SAB thus far has been this interesting and cute nostalgic experience, but I think the main thing that I want to earn is the thing for my home instance. Past that I might be interested in some of the minis because they are cute but the weapon skins are way less of my thing.

I think it is very neat that something like the Super Adventure Box exists. It was very obviously a labor of love and is extremely well crafted. I just am uncertain how much time I am going to spend engaging with it. I will probably farm up enough baubles to buy the home instance doodad and then call it good. Then again if I don’t care about the appearances… why am I even farming up enough for that? I mostly feel like I want more things in my home instance to give me a reason to go there. I have I think six intractables currently so I am just seeking more things to put in there. I know pretty much every one of these events is going to have something along these lines.