Guild Wars 2 – Page 45

Saltines and Weaponcraft

August 22, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday was a weird one, namely because everyone seemed to have eclipse fever for lack of a better term. As a group we had largely made a plan to go over to the roof of the parking garage next door, and by the time the festivities actually started there were between fifty and a hundred people that had the same idea. The positive is that everyone was more than willing to share their assorted ways of viewing the eclipse. In Oklahoma we only actually had about 90% occlusion, which made the world feel like a storm front was just about to blow in. The sky darkened, the temperature dropped a very small bit… but for the most part you could have easily not noticed anything going on unless you happened to look up. I took the first image with the selfie cam on my old phone and that was just about the peak of occlusion… and as you can see the day star still seemed pretty formidable. The second shot is the idea of using a saltine cracker to project the shadow, and the third shot is this awesome box that the same coworkers husband had rigged. The last shot is the eclipse through the filter of a pair of those shades… but unfortunately it was hell to get the focus to latch onto it at all. There were so many sets of shades that people were passing them around pretty freely, and I got to take more than a few peeks at the spectacle. The only problem is… my eyes felt really funny afterwards. Like in part they felt like they were strained… or like I had been driving into the sun’s glare for too long. It took about 2 hours for the effect to fully wear off, so I was concerned for a bit that maybe we ended up with some cheap knock off shades and I had done some actual damage. My eyes are super sensitive to light in the best of conditions… so forcing myself to be out and looking up… probably just caused them to strain a bit.

When I made it home for the evening I was still feeling a little off though. So my evening activities ended up leaning towards the chill side of things. Other than doing my daily completion bonus I largely focused on crafting and pushing up my weaponsmithing. I had this weird sequence of events happen where I saw my character hit 402… then somehow was back at 392. Guild Wars 2 has this problem where the UI sometimes freaks the hell out, and in order to fix it I sometimes have to log out and back in. In doing this I went from the 402 I was supposedly sitting at before I logged back to the 392, which is a bit frustrating. However since for some reason I didn’t have the pattern to Orichalcum Ingots… I am leaning to the side of this just being a presentation bug since the UI was acting up anyways. I still had the materials though to push my way through to the 400s and now everything I craft seems to take a ton of time and materials. I need to do a heck of a lot more farming of the level 80 zones because I only had the materials for I believe 64 ingots of Orichalcum. I was in even worse shape in the Ancient Wood department, so I know I will be spending a lot of time in the end game zones doing content. I am largely going down this path because I want to be able to craft my own ascended gear, and be able to craft my own exotics for the purpose of trying to gamble and get that precursor. I realize I should just focus on making a lot of money and buying the damned thing… but I have a long ways to go until I will be able to do that.

Merry Eclipsemas

August 21, 2017 by Belghast

Friday I was apparently smoking something and I decided to attempt to participate in one of those internet meme quiz things. I was planning on doing it my own way where I just made a giant blog post about it. However thankfully I did not get enough likes to actually trigger me to release the post. Side note… I did actually write it and it is sitting in my saved drafts bin but I am somewhat relieved that I didn’t hit the threshold needed in my mind to make that post. In other news today is in fact the Eclipse and while I am not anywhere near the totality… it should still be interesting. There is a big of a gathering happening on the roof of the parking garage next to work in order to celebrate it, but my meeting schedule will ultimately determine if I can attend. The only negative is that I don’t have any way to view it safely. I remember watching one as a kid, that had to be the one that happened in 1979 and my grandfather who was a welder by trade had me wear his welding hood. I have no clue how best to really watch this one… I mean I guess in theory I could do the pinhole camera thing. The awesome big is that this time we have the internet and live streams… and in theory can get a much better view sitting at the computer than we can outside. It is extremely unique though to have the feeling that it was daytime minutes before and now you are standing in darkness. There have been many warnings about not pointing your camera directly at the eclipse, but I was going to attempt this using my old phone’s front facing camera as a sort of way to know when it is safe to look at not safe to look. Dealing with the eclipse always sort of reminds me of Perseus and Medusa, and trying to use a shiny surface to get a glimpse without turning to stone… or in this case completely wrecking my eyes.

I spent most of my weekend playing Guild Wars 2 and attempted to make further progress in the Living Story Season 2 content. Before I get into that however I want to make another side note about just how damned active people are in this game. It is really hard to get the scale from a single screenshot given how much people in general move around avoiding mechanics… but I was needing to do an event in Frostgorge sound for one of the steps in the quest chain. While waiting for it to kick off I noticed a significant number of people gathering… and by the time we actually started there were a good fifty plus players participating. Over the weekend I discovered Dulfy’s boss timer thanks to my friend Solaria…. and I spent a good deal of time bouncing around and doing world boss fights. The weird thing about the Frostgorge Sound event though is that this isn’t on the timer… it is just something that happens occasionally and apparently there are enough players out there wanting to complete it that we end up with the numbers that we had each time it runs. When I first got to the zone I caught the tail end of the event and did not participate enough to be able to get credit. However during that running there were still a significant number of players participating in the content. It just floors me that there are enough players in the game that you can pretty much show up at any single event timer… and know without a doubt that it is going to happen. Now maybe during the wee hours of the morning this might not be the case but over the course of the weekend I kept hitting various encounters and each time we had more than enough to make sure it was a success.

Another big happening of the weekend is that I managed to get my Ranger to level 80. I managed to get him pretty close through the use of a bunch of Tome’s of Knowledge but I still needed to pour on the last five levels the old fashioned way. Right now I think I am pretty happy with the combo of Greatsword and Longbow for this character, and have tweaked my spec to emphasize both of these weapon selections. I cobbled together a set of gear once I dinged and am now out doing a secondary mission with the character… and that is popping between zones and taming animals. For the most part I seem to have the best luck with my traditional Arctodus and River Drake combo… but the longer I play the Drake seems to keep pulling ahead in most departments. They just seem to be universally good… reasonable dps and excellent survival. All of that said it does nothing to stop my desire to tame all of the things and have a completely filled out pet window. I’m extremely torn as to which character I should be spending most of my time on… and this is one of those moments when I wish the map progress was shared. On my warrior I managed to 100% a few new areas and am continuing down that path that I will ultimately need for the Legendary weapon madness. As far as gambling for weapons… I’ve decide more or less to stop that nonsense until I can actually craft the weapons myself. On that front though I am now in Mithril territory as far as leveling goes and considering how much of that I have in my vault it should go pretty quickly. I am however going to have to focus any of the zones that mine Orichalcum because I am severely lacking in my reserves of that metal.

The other big take away from the weekend is that I am pretty sure the designers of this game intended you to be grouping up for the Living World content. I say this because I just finished the second part of Chapter 4 and towards the end of that mission I had died so many times my character was completely naked. The thing is… it hasn’t just been that one encounter because the last few major fights have taken a significant amount of time and put me up against some extremely hitpoint spongey bosses. I am not going to go into specifics for the sake of spoilers… though I guess the above image is in its own way a little spoilery. I should in theory be grouping with friends to complete this content, but on some level I am getting a sense of pride in being able to do it all solo. Sure sometimes it hurts, and I always have to repair afterwards but it is also forcing me to actually deal with the mechanics which I am hoping will make adjusting to the later fractals all that much easier. I also in truth really need to spend some time optimizing my gear on the Warrior because right now other than the few ascended items I have… it is a little all over the place. I am hoping to push up my weaponsmithing and armorsmithing in part to help fill out some of these gaps as I am already sitting on quite a few patterns that would be useful. Long story short… still having an awful lot of fun in Guild Wars 2 and still finding tons of casual activities to accomplish.

Active World

August 16, 2017 by Belghast

As you know from the last several posts I have made on the subject… I have been playing a shocking amount of Guild Wars 2. I am still a little surprised myself considering how many years I just did not like this game at all. Something clicked in my brain and I am honestly happy that I stuck around long enough for that moment to happen. It’s weird just how much of what we like and dislike happens is related to the experiences we are ultimately comparing it to, and our present frame of mind. One of the things that I am finding shocking right now is just how damned active the game actually is. My frame of reference there has been mostly World of Warcraft, where not too long ago I spent some time on low level characters namely in the Ashenvale area. When pushing up my Orc Warrior I could go the entire night without seeing another single player. It legitimately felt like I was the only person in zone most of the time, and even if I made a trip to the Crossroads… it was a bit of a rarity that I actually encountered anyone there either. The weird part about this is the fact that I play on Argent Dawn and for the most part have every other role-playing server blended together… including the extremely high horde population Emerald Dawn server thanks to Alea Iacta Est and their presence.

Conversely while running around in Guild Wars 2 there is rarely a moment when I don’t have another player on screen. Last night I spent a good deal of time in Snowden Drifts which is a third tier zone in the Norn area, so not exactly a hub of the game. However each and every time I started to engage with an event or a hero challenge… moments after starting there were a slew of other players hanging out and doing the content as well. Now I gave the WoW reference not to somehow prove that game is dead… but just to highlight how vastly different the two games feel right now. Admittedly with World of Warcraft… the vast majority of the players are simply not leveling characters because if they are like me they have a stable full of post 100 characters in various states of completion. Guild Wars 2 has something else going for it though in that it serves to make every bit of content relevant by allowing the world to scale. Why this becomes interesting is the fact that if you do any major event… you have droves of players that show up to participate. The above event screenshot is from a random Ley-Line Anomaly from Gendarran Fields a level 25-35 area. By the time I saw the server message… and ported over there were already hundreds of players fighting the Anomaly. What makes this encounter so interesting is the fact that every so often it straight up kills a handful of players, and like clockwork there is always a chunk of players that stick around and rez the fallen before catching up. Thankfully in the case of this fight the mob drops these beacons that will allow you to leap ahead significant distances to try and keep from penalizing those community minded players.

One of the cool parts about Guild Wars 2 as well is the fact that at some point in the recent past they decided to open up the base game to everyone. Now you can pick up the “Standard Collection” for $49.99 which includes the base game, Heart of Thorns expansion and the as yet to be released Path of Fire expansion as well as 2 level 80 character boosts. That is pretty cool but if you are just wanting to dip your toes in to test the water, you can play the game for free with this registration link. In truth I suggest that option first given that it has legitimately taken me five years to reach a point where I am finding that I really truly do love this game. Now that free account has a bunch of restrictions on it, which thankfully they outline in a support article. Namely it seems like this is the standard protecting the environment MMO fare of limiting communication options. However there are a couple that are going to be annoying… namely the limit of 2 character slots and only 3 bag slots given that the game I feel has too small of bags in the first place. You are also limited to only the starter zones until level 10… but given you were probably going to stay there regardless that is not a big deal. Unlocking of Lion’s Arch around 35 is I believe about when you would normally go there through the story quests. Regardless if you decide you like the game you are probably going to at least pay the $50 to unlock the two expansions. The biggest annoyance to me would be Living Story Season 2 and 3 which are treated as separate purchases if you were not around to unlock the content when it was initially available. Now they go on sale periodically, however to purchase them outright would be around $16 per season. That said I have yet to complete Season 2 or in truth really get started in earnest on it, so that isn’t that big of a deal. The seasonal content helps you understand the lore of the world and the events that are going on around you. If you just want to smash things in the face with a hammer like I often do… this becomes optional content.

Breached Wall

August 14, 2017 by Belghast

This weekend was largely one about me playing quite a bit of Guild Wars 2 while doing other things. We’ve been binging a few Netflix series, and GW2 is just about the perfect sort of game for that activity. First we went on a tear of watching through all thirty episodes of The Ranch, a comedy helmed by Ashton Kutcher and a whole slew of other That 70’s show alums like Danny Masterson and Wilmer Valderrama. There are currently the two “seasons” of the show and that is in quotes because the show has one of the most jacked up naming conventions I have seen yet. Whatever the case its funny, and reminds me so much of the people I great up with. While I did not grow up on a ranch… I grew up knowing someone that pretty much was the same as a character on the show. From there we finally started watching Orange is the New Black and have barely made a dent in it, but it gives us another thing to watch whenever we are in the mood to watch something. So far I am digging it. Again it is another show that pairs nicely with Guild Wars 2 because it is a largely verbal show… and far less about what is happening on screen. This is ultimately why I don’t watch nearly as much Anime as I would like, because I have reached this point where I cannot bring myself to “only” watch television. I need to be doing something else at the same time, and I cannot play a game and “read” television at the same time. How I managed to watch Train to Busan is a bit of a miracle… because it held my attention enough to keep me from wandering back to playing something at the same time.

As far as game time goes, I have been slowly working on world completion. In theory I know I should be spending my time catching up to the story… but I find myself instead preferring the slow pace of working on knocking out various objectives on the map. At this point I have 64% zone completion, and am slowly focusing the early zones to get them out of the way. Over the weekend I wrapped up all of the capitol cities and have been doing the first few zones in each area of the map. I posted the above screenshot not necessarily because it is majestic, but represents what felt like a significant achievement. Side note… even to this day I cannot keep myself from snapping a screenshot when I am viewing a vista for the first time. This vista in particular is in Diessa Plateau at the Breached Wall, and it is a fairly contorted jumping puzzle. I wound up spending about an hour working on getting things just right so that I could get up there and score some hero points and the vista. One of the things that floors me is just how damned many people are still active in this game, because during that hour of working on the Vista… I encountered a couple dozen other players trying to do the same thing. When a group of us finally made it across there was much spontaneous cheering. The other weird thing about this game is the way that players will seemingly beeline out of their way just to rez someone. I’ve found myself doing the same thing, and I think largely it is because the game messages it to players that maybe it is something that they might want to do.

I remember in 2015 at Pax South when they were unveiling Heart of Thorns… the speakers talked about it being one of the friendliest communities in MMO gaming. At the time I thought this was a weird boast, because I had never really encountered anyone striking up a conversation with me. However this time… coming back to the game… I am finally grasping what they meant by this. The Guild Wars 2 community is not one of words but instead one of actions. I cannot count the number of times someone has veered off course to come resurrect me, or seemingly stopped what they were doing to participate in some random event that just happened to be passing their way. I myself have done both of these and if you allow yourself to just sort of ride along in the current of the game is is an extremely rich experience. My problem previously was that I kept trying to play Guild Wars 2 like I played other MMOs, where I focused in on a very finite series of goals and expectations and at the same time closed myself to the random happenings. In some way I have started playing GW2 much the same as how I play Elder Scrolls or Fallout games… where I allow myself to wander aimlessly and participate in whatever happens to cross my path… or catch my eye. As a result the game finally makes sense and finally seems as fun as everyone has made it out to be. I still marvel that it took five years to reach this point of realization… but I never claimed to be particularly swift.