Good Morning Folks! I’ve been a bit frustrated the last few days, but that is only because I was trying to rush ahead to unlock my Homestead in Guild Wars 2. Out of all of the features coming with Janthir Wilds, that was the one that I cared the most about. Unfortunately, it is behind a few grinds and I already do not love the “fill the bar” mechanic when it comes to questing in modern Guild Wars 2, and the fact that it was holding back the feature that I really wanted to play with only served to make me a little hyperbolic. For anyone curious the order of unlocks that comes into the expansion is Warclaw which happens almost immediately, next up you have to learn how to use the spear, and then there is a whole ton of faffing about and learning the new Rift system for Janthir.
Finally, you get to visit your Homestead. I wish they had shifted up this order a bit because I personally do not care about the spear or at least don’t care about it right now. However, I am sure there is someone out there who really wanted to use it and was happy to get access to it so early. Also for reference immediately following the Homestead section you are going to be asked to earn a Mastery level with the Warclaw, so you might as well start chipping away on that in the time between learning that system and learning the Spear. Thankfully thought, Homesteads are well worth the wait and basically everything that I had hoped Garrisons would be in World of Warcraft back during Warlords of Draenor. Of note… if you are like me and have a ton of stuff that you have collected in your Home Instance over the years… you will need to leave and re-enter after completing the intro quest before any of that shows up.
One of my favorite dumb features of The Homestead is the fact that all of my characters are milling around doing random things. Granted in order to make this happen, you will need to get into the practice of logging your characters out in your Homestead. However, when you do so, they all show up and hang out there. The only thing that I really wish existed was a custom keybind just for popping up the instance portal. If you have it set as your active doodad, you can use the default keybind for that but I really don’t want to sacrifice my rift finder tool for faster access to The Homestead. Even though the Rift Finder tool appears to be broken… which in itself added a lot of frustration to the step between unlocking the spear and finally getting into your Homestead. I’ve honestly not dabbled in decorating that much, because I am also focused on leveling up the Homestead mastery so I can unlock the collection chests. At the maximum rank, you will be able to hit a single chest for each item type and collect all of the resource nodes that you have in your Homestead… which will greatly simplify my daily routine of gathering all the nodes. I am hoping we get something similar for Guild Halls.
I also love that all of my mounts with my chosen skins and dye jobs are milling around at the stable. It is sort of weird when you choose to mount up, because they will do a little spin and then disappear and reappear as your mount. Another really cool feature is the crafting bench for homestead crafting… works like ANY other crafting bench and gives you full access to your bank. This means if you have the Krait Obelisk you will be able to pull out Quartz Crystals without having to go find a bank. I WISH they would wire the Obelisk up to just draw from your bank directly, but given how old that is… who knows what that would require to make it work?
By default, the Homestead will have a day/night cycle, but you can talk to the Bear Bro at your teleport location in order to permanently set this to either day or night if you like. I have mine set as of this morning to perma-night largely because it has some amazing aurora effects up in the sky. I tend to be a night person anyways and there is more than enough light to navigate by. Eventually, I am sure I will utilize some lighting effects which will make everything look a bit more dramatic than flat ambient lighting. Mostly I am working on unlocking masteries before I fiddle around with anything too deeply. Each mastery rank you gain unlocks additional crafting options, and some of the later ones unlock additional areas of your Homestead that you can start using. However, that last rank and the collection boxes are my real objective. I am sorry Bearkin… but your nonsense is going to get leveled the last because I care the least about any of it.
One of the first things that I did yesterday once I found out it was a thing… was troddle off to go tame a Juvenille Warclaw, which can be found behind all of the buildings at the Warclaw paddock in Lowland Shore. I immediately named this Warclaw Josie after one of my cats, the one that is more “mine” than shared between the two of us. I can’t say the Warclaw is anywhere near as effective as some of my other pets, but I am very much using it by choice for the time being. I still have my Sky Chalk as backup, but how could I not use a cute Warclaw as a proper Ranger with a kitty-eared hood?
In the same paddock area, you can find a Warclaw Cub/Kitten in one of the pens and you have the option of petting it. Which of course is precious as heck and I did several times. I was hoping there was the option of feeding it… and inviting it back to my home instance and thereby my Homestead like you can with other cats in the world. I need to get serious at some point and collect the rest of these because while I have a handful of them… I by no means have them all.
Unlock order frustrations aside, I am having a heck of a lot of fun playing this expansion. The zones are really well designed, and the music feels like it is taking deep notes from The Witcher 3. There are a ton of Champion monster fights out in the zones and folks are regularly taking these down. A number of the fights require you to use your Warclaw in interesting ways. There is a lich/hag sort of monster that summons maggots and you have to charge around and stomp the maggots with your Warclaw to transition her between phases. There was a corrupted Reindeer that would charge off at various times during the fight and you would have to chain them down to fill a breakbar in order to transition back to a normal battle phase. Given that you are handed your Warclaw almost immediately upon entering the zone, this feels great… unlike mechanics that are centered around Skyscales and such in other areas when there is a clear dichotomy between haves and have-nots.
I’ve made it to the second zone and taken down the first of the big bads of this expansion. I have no clue how deep this initial foray is going to go. On the 20th ANet released a roadmap for the planned drops along the way during this expansion. Essentially the launch of the expansion aka this week, and whenever Update 1 happens… I figure in three months roughly… are going to focus on the story surrounding these first two zones. When Update 2 drops we will get a third map and then Update 3 a fourth map and the conclusion of this story arc. Lowland Shore and Janthir Syntri are both pretty large zones and have good layouts which should make them fun to bip around and run events. As far as I can tell there is no Meta for Lowland Shore and the major boss is the Lich/Hag thing I was talking about earlier. I am not far enough into the second zone to really know what the lay of the land is there, but I think there is a big World Boss there from what I have heard.
For now, I am focused on getting map completion, collecting all of the mastery points, and then obviously leveling said Mastery tracks. At some point, I need to finish up another World Completion on one of my alts so I can get the Gift of Exploration that comes with it. I also need to dive back into WvW and farm up another Gift of Battle, because those are the only things between me and crafting Twilight. I guess I now have a clear focus in Guild Wars 2 for the first time in a while. I am pretty freaking happy about that.