WvW

Voltron Sword

by

Good Morning folks. Yesterday was the beginning of the WvW Rush event in Guild Wars 2, but first I feel like you all need to stop an appreciate how amazing this Skeletor themed Charr is that I saw last night. I admit I was mostly not feeling like playing Guild Wars 2 yesterday, but I decided to pop in for a few minutes and see how much progress I could make in WvW after knocking out my dailies. I have been trying to farm down my dailies every single day and at least make some modicum of progress towards the weeklies so that I am not stuck doing all of them on Saturday and Sunday. Last night was a comedy of errors because I forgot to turn off my monitors upstairs before going downstairs to play from my laptop… which meant that I was playing at 1440p on a 1080p screen… so all of the text was super tiny. This also meant that when I got into World vs World I could not read a single thing that the commander was saying. Thankfully you can mostly just follow the tag and everything will be just fine.

I played for less than an hour and just happened to time it perfectly as the squad was making a push for Stonemist Castle. For anyone who does not understand how WvW works in Guild Wars 2… there are essentially 3 zones that surround a central zone called the Eternal Battleground. The three zones belong to each of the three factions and the Eternal Battleground is at least in theory this important objective that all three are fighting for. At the center of this zone is Stonemist Castle, and it is effectively the thing you capture for bragging rights and try and hold it for as long as possible. There was a 30 player queue for the Eternal Battegrounds, and I was able to knock out all of my daily quests while waiting to get in. I was not sure how the WvW Rush event worked… but when we captured Stonemist I was flooded with loot boxes and effectively had my Gift of Battle track completed two and a half times. Everything that is highlighted in my inventory came from that single capture event.

It also instantly completed the WvW Rush Champion achievement that also comes with its own reward track. Basically what I am saying is… if you need anything from World vs World, now is the time to farm it. You are going to need a Gift of Battle for every single Legendary you might want to craft, so in theory this is a good time to bank these up as they stack in your inventory. Awhile back I had purchased the starter kit for Sunrise, and pretty much only needed another Gift of Battle in order to craft it as I had a Gift of Exploration banked from the last time I did a world completion. I guess that also now means that I need to choose another character as tribute and start working on another world completion so I am ready for the next time I want to craft a legendary. This is the thing that I enjoy about Guild Wars 2 is that it gives me these broad overarching things to be working towards. So much of the endgame centers around legendary items that there is always something I can be doing to work towards my next one.

So essentially I jumped through a bunch of hoops this morning before sitting down to write this blog post. I did not have both gifts for the Gift of Fortune, but I did have one of the tokens that comes from the starter kit that allows me to choose one. So I popped open my handy GW2 Efficiency to see which one was cheaper for me to craft at that moment, and crafted a Gift of Might. This allowed me to consume the token for a Gift of Magic, but that left me short on Mystic Clovers meaning I had to use the crappy recipe to try and craft the last seven that I needed. I had already bought the weekly clovers that I could as well as the ones from the wizards vault. It cost quite the chunk of gold but I was able to complete Sunrise without much issue this morning adding sixth legendary to my armory.

Then because I had crafted Twilight already… the entire reason why I picked up the Sunrise starter kit was to be able to make Eternity. Essentially when you craft either of the great swords you get a memory that you can use in lieu of the weapon to craft Eternity, a sword that combines the visual effects of both weapons based on the day/night cycle. I could have sold the finished Eternity for roughly 3300 gold on the trading post… but alas cosmetics are the true end game and I wanted it for myself. Thankfully once you have gone this far down the rabbit hole… finishing the craft is pretty damned easy because it requires the Memory of Sunrise, Memory of Twilight, 5 piles of Crystalline Dust, and 10 Philosopher’s Stones. Now I own the fanciest of fancy greatswords… and as soon as I stop being lazy and swap all of the crap over from Twilight I will be wielding this on all of my characters that care about such things.

I am not sure how much I am going to be doing the WvW Rush event, but honestly I would like to grind my rank up as high as I can because that also seems to be greatly increased. I got eight ranks from that one Stonemist Castle capture in addition to all of the other rewards I got. At some point I would really like to make Warbringer the legendary WVW backpack but it requires Rank 350 to buy some of the components. I get that there are other options available that are probably easier… but I like the look of Warbringer.

Wilds is Cursed

by

Hey Folks! Last night instead of our usual Guild Wars 2 nonsense on Thursday nights… I attempted to do some Monster Hunter Wilds again with Ammo and Sita. We have tried to do this a few times… but something always ends up causing problems. The first time Ammo chain crashed until I lost power… and then when the power came back… I lost internet. Last night the entire time we were playing Sita sounded like a robot… and every time we engaged anything one or more of us would get dropped from the linked party. Dealing with Capcom multiplayer is a very specific realm of hell. Then we realized the thing we were trying to unlock and group up for… is a Solo Arena quest. So we had a lot of us all hanging out on voice and being frustrated together as we attempted to “Akuma”. But hey… Barrel bowling is still fun as heck.

Over in Guild Wars 2… I am back on that World vs World grind and so is Sita. Specifically we both bought Legendary Weapon Kits and I am chasing the very dumb goal of making Sunrise. This however is only a means to an end, because it will in turn allow me to make the Voltron of Guild Wars 2 weapons… Eternity. We even managed to drag Ammo along for this nonsense… but in truth… grouping with friends in WvW is pretty much pointless because it is not like you can actually see each other in the giant “Zerg” huddle. The key trait that you need to learn to succeed in this game mode is find the tag and stand on the tag… and then move only when the tag moves. We had a good commander that was flanked by some really freaking phenomenal healers and were able to “OutZerg” the other teams as we captured their stuff.

We were exceptionally successful and in a single average I managed to do half of a Gift of Battle reward track. I believe Sita who had started this grind before me came within a fraction of finishing his up. I am really looking for the WvW Rush event in July and will probably just bank a bunch of Gift of Battles because they are always useful… and also the track in general is a decent way to get Mystic Clovers. More importantly… I passed rank 100 in World Vs World and got the new title of Veteran… which seems weird that this is higher than General was. Why do I care about WvW ranks? Well I kind of want to make the backpack… which itself will require that I have rank 350. Only 248 left to go. I am hoping I can make a massive dent in this during the WvW Rush and hopefully finish that off… and will absolutely probably just be living in WvW during that time. Thankfully I find that whole nonsense shockingly enjoyable… for someone who is traditionally a massive CareBear.

Dune is out… or at least the headstart is out and I played a bit of it last night. Enough to get through the very beginning of the tutorial and out into Hagga Basin which is the first real zone. I watched a video about how limited the Trooper ends up being and how I should probably just play a Mentat which has a turret… so I did that thing. It really probably is the correct decision because very early you can get a bunch of “makes guns better” abilities. The turret unfortunately is kind of shit. I expected something more akin to the pop up turrets in The Division. What it is instead is a grenade that you throw… and then when you “detonate” it, it turns into a turret that maybe fires off three bolts before exploding and if you are standing near it… you take damage. I am not extremely sold on this game yet. I like the vibe and I am a massive Dune geek… but also the gameplay feels more extreme than I like my survival games. Dealing with lack of water is a massive problem… but I have a thing that lets me drain my victims of blood and convert that to water so hopefully that will make things easier. What I really need though is a Literjon so that I can carry water with me.

I am very much in the bumblefucking my way around the desert mode right now, but at least I have a crappy shelter. I strategically set up my shelter in a valley that stays almost entirely in shade no matter what time of day it is, that happens to be right beside one of the vacuum sealed caves. Given that things respawn in the world pretty regularly, this gives me a pretty decent source of scrap metal as well as some lootable chests that have a few materials that I do not have any use for right now… but are flagged as orange in color which makes me think at some point they will be useful. For the moment I am stumbling up the tech tree and the entire game will probably feel much better once I have a way to carry around water, and a way to traverse between the assorted rock outcroppings more easily. I have “walked without rhythm” my way to another outcropping… found a much larger scavenger camp than I am used to…and died without remembering to set down a respawn beacon. Tonight I will probably make my way back over there and try and retrieve whatever I dropped in my backpack.

The other huge benefit of where I decided to set up my base is that on the other side of the sealed cave… is a small scavenger camp. Essentially when it respawns… I can set down my turret, unseal the cave door… and let the turret kill the two Scavengers without me having to lift a finger. This gives me a somewhat reasonable renewable source of blood to then convert into water with my purification machine. There are various lootables around the camp as well, but I am not sure how much value a handful of Solari will have in the grand scheme of things. I have a contract to deliver scrap metal to someone, but it is also way across another open stretch of desert which terrifies me at the moment. I will probably wait until nightfall to cross so that I won’t have to also worry about the impact of direct sunlight. I am in this weird state of equilibrium with the game where I don’t love it and I don’t hate it… I just feel like I need to push through the awkward first steps that any survival game has.

Yesterday was also the content reveal stream for the Secrets of the Atlas expansion for Path of Exile and it looks amazing. However if I were to sit down and start talking about it… it would be a whole other blog post. I will probably save that for Monday. I hope you all have a phenomenal weekend and if you too are venturing forth into Arrakis, drop me a line and let me know what you are thinking about the game so far.

Look at that Turtle Go… Bro

by

Good Morning Folks. I decided that I needed to rename my turtle pet in Guild Wars 2. I remember being a big fan of the song Yertle the Turtle from the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Middle School, which of course turned me on to the Dr. Seuss book of the same name. Which of course is a much more obvious name than what I had originally called him aka Thumper because of the big canon on his back. I’ve had a bunch of folks ask me recently about this pet when I am using it, because apparently a lot of people do not know you can tame one. I’ve been using it in Soul Beast form because most of the attacks are ranged based, which flow nicely with being a Longbow main. In WVW it was extra nice because I could run it as a pet beside me instead of merged and pop up occasional shields for the “zerg huddle” when we were being shelled by siege equipment.

I did not write a blog post yesterday, because I get into these phases where I second guess myself. Essentially paying a game like Guild Wars 2 with long tailed objectives… and in which I end up doing a lot of the same things over and over… feels like I am not really generating anything worth talking about. The same is true as I reach the tail end of an ARPG league, and I am no longer making big leaps in progress or getting really exciting drops. Basically… I think to myself… who wants to listen to me talk about maintenance gaming? I guess I ask you my readers… do you care at all in the least about what I am doing on a daily basis if I am not doing exciting things? Each night I am moving the needle towards a goal… but said goal is a really long ways off.

I did however finish up my most recent Gift of Battle since the last time I wrote a blog post. I found a really good group and hung out for a few hours on Tuesday night, taking down objectives and defending others. I have to admit, that I think I enjoy defending WVW objectives more than taking them. The big zergs rolling around are generally all about rapid objective completion, and if you put up any resistance… they tend to flow like water around the obstacles. However lately we’ve had some pretty dedicated groups from the red team and it was a lot of fun to bait them into trying to take various objectives and then slaughter them as they rushed in. I could legitimately see myself playing WVW a lot more if I found the right group. It is also one of the better ways to earn various requirements for crafting legendary gear, and has a few specific items that you can only get there.

After finishing up the Gift of Battle, I renewed my efforts for getting a Gift of Exploration. I believe all that I have left in Ascalon is Fields of Ruin, and last night I suffered through the worst renown heart in the entire game… the one where you are forced to stealth around a Char camp. This is a big part about why I did not really feel like blogging yesterday… is does moving the needle from 81% to 88% really amount to enough to talk about it? I am having fun and in my element right now… but I am also not really doing much that is terribly exciting. Quite honestly I get a bigger kick out of swooping down and helping people with events when they are overwhelmed. I helped someone in Cantha last night who was trying to solo a rather tanky Champion encounter, and we managed to duo it… all the while dodging all sorts of nonsense without either of us getting downed. That felt really good… helping others… feels really good. That is legitimately the best aspect of Guild Wars 2 that other players are always a net positive.

I am also still trying to hit up events when I think about them. Doing the daily reset Tequatl for example continues to be my prime activity in the game. I am not entirely certain WHY this event is so important to me on an emotional level. I think maybe it was the first time I really understood why this game is special. This is the first world boss that really impressed me, and back in the day I just happened to stumble upon it without realizing what I was signing up for. Just like I have all of the lines from Izaro in the Lord’s Labyrinth memorized… I am pretty sure I have all of the lines that the Hylek say during this event. “There’s something in the water” will always be the most iconic however. I also just really like how key of an event it still feels… even though no one really needs anything from it. I mean the community running joke is that we are going there every day to get a spoon.

So I guess I am asking you. Do you give a shit about the dumb things that I do? Would you rather me just not blog until I have something meaningful to talk about? I get into spirals of doubting myself and it has been a few weeks since I have not missed at least one post. So I am opening the idea up for discussion.

Hakuna Matata

by

There are so many little things in Guild Wars 2 that you just sort of forget about half of them until you happen upon them again. For example there is a spot in the Crystal Desert where a Meerkat, Warthog, and Lion Cub just happen to cross the path in front of you. Last night one of the daily quests was to do an event in the Crystal Desert, and I roamed around until I found an escort that was about to start. It just so happened that while I was guarding a bunch of refugees the Lion King themed random encounter happened in front of me. I’ve always greatly preferred this style of easter egg as compared to the World of Warcraft slapstick style that just sort of beats you over the head with it. I remember these sort of minor easter eggs in Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot as well… and they always felt like a sly nod more than a big sign screaming… “Get it? Get it?”.

In other happenings, Mistlock Sanctuary is sort of where the fancy folk go… because for years it was the best of the VIP clubs because it granted you access to way more stuff. Still to this day it is sort of the place where the folks with wild outfits go to dance and be silly. I had never seen the bow that shoots rainbow unicorns until yesterday… and then I happened upon four of them out in the wild with another one here in Mistlock. I had to look it up because at first I thought it was something new… but no it turns out it is a Generation One Legendary Weapon called The Dreamer. It’s a short bow instead of a long bow, which is in part why it has never really been my focus. At least with Ranger… I am not a big proponent of Short Bows because its a Condition damage weapon and I tend to mostly focus on Power builds. Still really cool… but the sound effect would drive me nuts quickly.

Yesterday I completed several more zones and now have brought my total world completion up to 81% over yesterday’s 72%. The needle moves rather slowly considering I finished I think four zones in total… but in all of those cases I was taking them from roughly 60% all the way to 100% which isn’t as big of a leap as it seems. Mostly I just have to keep my head down and let myself get caught up in the zones themselves… and not really think about how much further I have to go. That is sort of the key to completing anything in a game… allowing yourself to lose focus on the goal and just have fun with the individual objectives. It is wild revisiting all of these zones because each time I do it… I am consistently amazed by just how large they are and how much minute detail there is in each of them. The whole Hylek city that is entirely underwater and hidden in a cave system that you would never find… if you did not specifically go looking for it is pretty wild. However when you are just trying to pick up points of interest, it can be a bit frustrating trying to figure how to get to the dot you see on your map… but see no real path towards.

I made significant progress in World vs World last night and pushed my progress from 13/40 to 30/40 or from roughly 30% to 75%. I could probably AFK in zone and grind out the next pip before I ran out of contribution juice, but I would rather wait until this evening and find a group and do some objectives. On one hand I feel like I should probably seek out a WvW specific guild for my final slot. That said… I have not exactly been super active, nor do I want to switch to a specific build. I like my Longbow/Greatsword Power Soulbeast thing that I am doing now, and I don’t really care how optimal that is. Right now I am using Greysky as my WvW guild, in case someone else from the guild wants to tag along. We are part of Throne of Balthazaar which seems reasonable enough. There are a few pretty decent guilds, but they are all the sort that want you to join discord and run invite only squads. This always feels counter productive, because wouldn’t it be better to just sort of have EVERYONE in the squad?

That is the only real complaint I have about returning to the game, is that the WvW folks seem way more bitter than I remember them being. Seen a lot more folks yelling in map chat and blaming others for letting objectives fall. I’ve also seen a lot of folks baiting others into leaving the Eternal Battleground which seems like a dick move. There is a thing you can do called an Emergency Waypoint, which is intended to get reinforcements into an objective when you are just about to be sieged. At several points last night I saw folks firing these off and spamming chat, trying to get reinforcements… at a node that did not have any activity going on. They were effectively just trying to get folks to leave the battlegrounds that had queues… so that they could get into them. This might just be a problem with my own battle group and not more widespread… but it does seem like a kind of cruel trick to pull. The biggest problem is that we seemed to have no commanders… and while I could tag up… I have no clue what the hell I am doing really. My WvW tends to be to hang out on the periphery and apply pressure to zergs to get them to run into the main force… not actually standing in our own zerg and pushing where the commander should be.

For any annoyances there are with the WvW community… the Open World community still seems pure and genuine. I logged in this morning to get some screenshots and saw someone asking for help with a T3 Rift in Bloodtide Coast. Within a few minutes there were a handful of us over there helping out, and another person threw up a tag to make it easier for folks to find the objective. This feels like the community working as intended, and it always makes me happy when I see it in action. This happens so often as folks ask for help and get it regularly. I helped a random level 7 character out the other day with a Hero Point because they rolled up just as I was finishing it… and asked if they got credit. They did not, so I fired it off again to make sure they could take down the Veteran that spawned. There is just a nurturing aspect to the way the game has been designed and I love it so much.

So I have been allowing myself to think that the Gift of Battle and Gift of Exploration were the only real challenges that I was dealing with. That is very much NOT the case. The problem with crafting four legendaries after going years without crafting any… is that I have effectively decimated my crafting material reserves. I am pretty close to the required 250 Globs of Ectoplasm because I religiously salvage my rares. I am back up to 46 Mystic Clovers… but need 77 so that is going to be a challenge. I can buy 10 per week… but that recipe takes Mystic Coins… which I am completely out of but at least those can be bought on the market. Obsidian Shards are not that big of a deal since you can get them after a specific event with Karma in the Straits of Devastation. I have almost 4 million Karma and will probably convert most of that when I am working on zone completion there. Basically there are things I can do to fix all of these problems but it will be a much slower burn than knocking out these two big components that feel way more satisfying. Really I need to get better about doing a daily Ley-Line Anomaly to bank up some coins.

Guild Wars 2 is a game about long grinds, and the most effective way about doing this… is to do a little bit of a lot of things every single day. GW2 Efficiency is a phenomenal site that shows you roughly how much something would cost to craft, and according to it… with the items that I currently have it is going to take me 224 Gold to finish up Kudzu today. That is the Legendary that I am working towards so that I will have both a Longbow and Greatsword for my Ranger, or honestly any other class that will use them. I am probably going to buy the mystic coins… keep farming the ectos, and then convert karma for the obsidian which will lower the total costs by a bit. The worst part of a Legendary is the Gift of Magic and Gift of Might and you get one of those from each Legendary Weapon kit, so every two kits you buy from the Wizard store… you just don’t have to worry about the Gift of Fortune that much.

Anyways… this is the long game and I am deep into it since I have crafted Frostfang, Bolt, Twilight, and Juggernaut… and am now working towards Kudzu. I also have a starter for Frenzy… but since I stole one of the gifts from it to cobble together Kudzu it will be a bit before I am willing to fund another Gift of Fortune.