Good Morning Folks. I am writing this morning largely to make sure everyone is aware that a Fractal Incursion event is going on right now in Guild Wars 2… and it is phenomenal. Not only do you get starter gear sets for new characters from a vendor in the area, but you can essentially run most of the t1 fractals instantly through a really cool group finder functionality. This event started on September 9th and is going to be running for almost a full month ending on October 7th. During this time there are a few things happening. Firstly there is a new quest chain that starts from the Fractal portal in Lion’s Arch where just talking to the Mist Stranger NPC gets you a free 20 slot bag. In addition to this there is a new beta group finder tool for Fractals where essentially you get instant queued with a bunch of strangers and they have specifically narrowed the category down to only the fractals with a high chance of success with no prior knowledge.
They are bribing the hell out of us to get into game and run a lot of fractals. My guess is that they are using this to beta test a brand new group finder functionality, and I am fully on board with this. I want to see this same thing make its way to other parts of the game… specifically strikes. If I had a group finder like this for the easy Icebrood Saga strikes, I would run them every single day without question. The bribes though… are really strong because just by chain running fractals you are going to get access to unlock a set of legendary gloves. I’ve heard rumor that there is going to be a way to unlock multiple armor types during this event, but even if it is only a single armor weight… you are saving countless resources to make this happen. Additionally Fractals themselves are hyper lucrative. I really started participating on Sunday and in the few hours I spent running fractals I easily made around 50 gold.
All of the progress towards this event is tracked in the Incursive Investigation and Fractal Incursion achievement categories. Mostly this involves chain running fractals through the new group finder, or with your own fixed groups. You are collecting this substance called Fractalline Dust and you get this through either running quick play fractals, doing fractal incursions in the world at the top of every hour, or by completing achievements. It seems like you end up with 3 to 5 per fractal and in order to complete the three long grindy achievements you need to gather up a total of 450. In a single afternoon of running a bunch of these I pretty quickly ground out around 200, and that was with frequent stops to clear out by bags and do other things. In theory over the coming nights I should finish grinding out the 450 without much issue. What is awesome though is not only are you given a bag for starting down this path, but when you hit rank 9 you are given an extra bag slot. Additionally you are given tokens along the way that you can turn in for pieces of exotic gear, so this becomes quite possibly the best way to gear out an alt character.
There is zero doubt that this has been wildly popular. That first shot is folks hanging out in Lion’s Arch before 8 am on a North American week day. The above image is folks gathered for the Fractal Incursion boss that appears in Diessa Plateau that was going to spawn at 8 am. Folks are amped about this particular brand of nonsense and it makes me exceptionally happy. Even if you are only a casual Guild Wars 2 player, now is a great time to get in an experience fractals. For World of Warcraft players… think of Fractals as Mythic plus dungeons… but way more chill. Players are likely not going to speak a ton during them, because they are very much solved problems… but just follow the crowd and you will do fine. If nothing else it is going to give you a level of familiarity with the content so that even after the event ends… you will probably feel way more comfortable joining fractal groups. We’ve been doing this as a weekly thing on Thursday nights for awhile and having a lot of fun slowly raising our fractal levels.
I am so on board with this update. If you want to get into the game and need help getting adjusted… feel free to ping me. I should be in most evenings grinding Fractals and am more than happy to have you tag along. My Guild Wars 2 account is belghast.5496, so feel free to friend me up.
The post Instant Fractal Groups appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tam and Thalen Discuss a ton of games we largely left on good terms.
Tonight we talk about a bunch of stuff… starting off with our most recent trip into Guild Wars 2. Since the launch of this game a few of us have been searching trying to figure out exactly why people were so engaged with this game. Finally after seeing Fractals and the updated version of dungeons we get it. Additionally we talk about the Rise of Iron changes to Iron Banner, and a general sense of getting much better rewards in game. Then we talk about the games we left on good terms including a bunch of blasts from the past.
