Good Morning Friends! While I think it is sort of cute, I don’t really love the springer mount. I mean it has its uses but unlike the raptor or warclaw (the other two mounts I have so far) it is just harder to use “on the go” when running away from a pack of mobs. It’s gimmick is that it can leap up super high, but you have to stop what you are doing and hold down the space bar to make it do this trick. That means you sorta have to have already cleared an area so you can attempt to execute some precision maneuvers. I super dislike jumping puzzles that require the springer, and I just had to do one as part of the Path of Fire main story mission. It made me want to punch puppies, but I suffered through it. Mostly the way this mount works feels way less precise than the raptor is for horizontal jumps. I am working on unlocking more mastery points and hoping it improves over time.
My core focus right now is largely pushing the Path of Fire story forward. Mostly I find myself in a position where I want to unlock more mounts and also at the same time unlock more zones to roam around in. Part of the reason for this forward momentum is that I want to unlock the Icebrood Saga zones so that I can have access to strikes, which are sort of mini “puggable” raids. At some point I hope to be doing the current content in Canta, but my obsession with doing things in the order they were released means that I am enjoying Elona at the moment. Nightfall is the campaign in Guild Wars 1 that I spent the most time in, so it has been interesting seeing the areas again.
One thing that happened last night however is that I needed a break from questing and decided to work on my dailies. One of them was doing events in Dragon’s Stand which is the final region of the Heart of Thorns story area. What happened instead is that I got caught up in the meta progress and instead of bailing after getting my few events completed, I stuck around and attempted to finish the meta. We failed, I think in part because folks were popping in, getting their handful of events completed and then popping out. However towards the very end of the meta we got super serious about trying to complete it. This led us to fail and then immediately restart the timer with most of the folks sticking around for a second go.
I had learned enough during the failed attempt that I mostly knew what was happening and as a result was way more effective at moving things forward. Essentially the entire Dragon’s Stand map is a giant MOBA arena, but we the players play the role of keeping the lanes clear. Essentially the map involves a few phases but most involve escorting a payload to a specific destination, and then holding that location until all three teams have completed their push to that destination as well. There are giant wurm minibosses, a fight with one of three tower guardians, and then eventually it culminates in a giant cinematic fight against the “Mouth of Mordremoth”. During this phase you have to guard a number of platforms and use wind currents to travel between them… that is if you are a scrub like me that does not have a skyscale mount.
I mostly rode one platform until a burn phase happened because each platform had to be protected from a number of events. Flowers would spawn or roots would take hold, and someone on that platform has to destroy that objective to keep the way clear. Every so often the mouth will destroy a platform, which requires everyone to shift quickly… and hope you can get into a wind current in time to pop over to another platform. Like all big meta events the “on death” reset time is pretty quick so when I failed to transfer platforms I was able to get back into the action extremely quickly. The sheer amount of loot that I walked away with was staggering from a failed attempt and a completed attempt. Granted most of it ended up getting salvaged, but I view that as just a mad influx of materials and not as a loss.
I have no frame of reference for how long it takes to drop the Mouth of Mordremoth, but apparently I got an achievement for doing it quickly. This rewarded me an inventory item called Ley-Energy Matter Converter which opens up a vendor screen and gives me access to purchase one item each day. The first tab just contains a bunch of the keys for zone activities, but the other tabs can apparently be unlocked by spending 100 of a given zone currency to open new things that I could purchase. I had a freaking blast and would absolutely do this event again, pending I happen to notice it is firing up. I’ve done Auric Basic a number of times and have done I believe Verdant Brink once. I need to sort out what the other Heart of Thorns metas are and try them as well. Metas are easily one of the coolest ideas that Guild Wars 2 has come up with, and ultimately I get why folks will spend their entire evening popping from one meta to another.
It was a great night. I think the sheer variety of things I could be doing is what is giving this game life for me. I spent a very small amount of time playing around on my Mesmer and putting on a few levels as well. I am hoping at some point I can try some of the more serious group activities and see if I can hang with them. I would love to explore more of the dungeons, do some of the deeper fractals, and maybe even try a raid. In order to do some of these things I would probably need to branch out and add a much larger guild to my repertoire, or at least one with more folks available on my time frame.
Here’s a weird tip: if you map “mount special action” to something (I think it’s V by default?), you can get the springer’s high jump without having to come to a complete stop first. Amusingly, this can be incredibly useful if you have the jackal mastery that lets mounts evade while using their abilities, since you then have an evade that lasts for the entire duration you are “charging” the jump. Sadly it does not last for the actual jump.
I still haven’t done any raids, or most of the actual strikes other than the strike-like things you have to do as part of the Icebrood Saga story.
Ugh. Either I wasn’t looking properly or the messaging is not clear at all. I did the first 4-5? parts of the meta, also for the daily, (until you slay the semi-big Worm that’s not attackable at first) and then I had no other event pop up so I missed the interesting part you described :/
That might be a timing issue – if your lane completes its events first, you often have to wait for the players in the other lanes to catch up. If they take long enough you might end up having to survive a defence event.
Yeah this precisely is what happened to me on the failed attempt. My lane was ahead of the other lanes and I had to either go help or fight off a defense wave or in truth both.
The springer’s usage is very situational; though I find myself bounding around on mine with some frequency. Honestly, the most rarely needed one is the jackal. I hardly ever use mine, even though I lucked out on a chest long ago and got the Temple Guardian Kitsune skin.
It sounds like the only Heart of Thorns meta you haven’t experienced is the Chak Gerent in Tangled Depths, which is my favorite of the bunch. There are four lanes each with a giant bug trying to make it to the end; if any bug makes it you lose. To attack the bug you have to fill a bar via a method unique to the lane within a time limit to force it out of the ground, you can fil the bar multiple times for a bonus to damage while attacking.
Unlocking the other tabs on that convertor is well worth it, there can be things like bags of obsidian (up to 10 pieces), WvW supplies, crafting material bags, and so on available for 25 zone currency.
I think Dragon’s Stand is still my favorite meta. When it goes well it’s extrmely satisfying. The pacing is excellent. When it doesn’t, though, it’s a lot of time committed to a disaster.
I love the Octovine, too, although it’s a long time since I last did it. I ought to look for an LFG for it. You do know about the LFG for metas, by the way? And indeed for all kinds of other things. Not everyone likes the way it works but I think it’s the best hybrid of automated/manual LFG I’ve seen.
There’s theoretically a meta in pretty much every map that was added to the game since Dry Top although I’m not sure how often some of them get done these days. Silverwastes is eternally popular, though. I do dailies there very frequently and there’s almost always an organised squad doing it. People even still do Orr Temple runs, which is ten year old content. If there’s one thing above all others that ANet have worked out how to do right it’s keeping older content permanently in play.
I technically know about the group finder tool but have never actually used it. I tend to largely just spontaneously happen onto the metas and join in by clicking on a commander tag and joining a squad that way. Generally speaking I have some other mission that I am working on, and if a meta is going on awesome, I shift my plans. I think at some point I will probably focus on doing them more frequently. This goes for other things as well, if I happen to notice that Tequatl is about to start I will pop over and do that for example. I think for me more than anything the spontaneity and ease of group content is what is keeping me going. I have so many different things that I could be working on and it feels like anything I do at least gets me something useful.
There’s a device you can purchase that will both let you know when the metas are starting and bop you straight there. I got one each for me and Scooter a while back. I’ll need to look it up this evening.
The organic nature of new players walking into map metas and having them stare around in awe is exactly why I love the open world stuff over closed exclusive instances. Can’t count the number of newbies I’ve seen who have walked into a Tequatl or Triple Trouble gathering and go, “whoa, what’s happening?” It’s how you get ‘em hooked.
Conversely, it’s often difficult to convince new players that the events are the real purpose of the game/zone, not interruptions. Map completion is what you do between events.