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.
Scooter and I drop everything to do the yearly festivals like Lunar New Year and Dragon Bash. Other than a short run through the beginning of some jumping puzzle we did once, we have completely ignored SAB every year.
There’s always been a bit of a cult aspect to SAB. The people who like it REALLY like it and they make a very great deal of noise about how great it is. That can easily lead you to think all GW2 players love it but that has never been the case. There was quite a lot of pushback about it when it first appeared, with the usual “why are the devs wasting time on this nonsense when xyz needs fixing?” complaints. Those didn’t really get much traction because the whole thing was pretty much put together by one dev in his spare time. A lot of other players agreed with you that it didn’t fit the look and feel of the world but again that’s hard to argue when you look at some of the stuff coming out of the Gem store.
Nowadays I think it’s just generally seen as another holiday event. I used to do some of it every year for fun but the last few times I haven’t really bothered. I do have the boom box, which I sometimes drag out, but other than that i can’t really see using any of the weapons or minis. It’s easy enough to ignore if you aren’t interested, fortunately.
SAB might have been one of those you-had-to-be-there things – it was fantastic when it came out of the blue as a surprise, and I spent a LOT of time in the early stages of the box. When it came back for a round two and much more difficult/annoying stages (IMHO), that’s when I sorta just beat it to beat it and let it be after that.
I got the skins I wanted from the original release year – I don’t even recall what those were since it’s been so long – but I do have good memories of the surprise announcement of SAB that April Fools.
Even if you don’t like the skins you can use the baubles for other stuff. The Super Adventure Box Weekly Trader sells some usefull stuff if you want to craft a generation two legendary. I always get the Box of Legendary Shards for instance. Amalgamated Draconic Lodestones are also nice.
There is such a trader for all the festivals.
The home instance node is nice to stock up on baubles for the festival. And if you stick some nice harvesting glyphs into your harvesting tools you get something extra for every node you have in your home instance. So every node is nice to have. Currently i’m using a mix of Glyph of the Watchknight and Volatility for harvesting.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Super_Adventure_Box_Weekly_Trader