Pumping Irony

The past few weeks the citizens of Tyria and Elona have been preparing for Wintersday. Lion’s Arch and Kamadan are decorated and NPC’s offer holiday games and quests. Ascalon City and Droknar’s Forge are decorated too but the only event is delivering presents to children while grentches try to steal them; that event also plays in Lion’s Arch and Kamadan. This year, however, marks the Wintersday celebration at the Eye of the North outpost in the Far Shiverpeaks which has been decorated and offers four brand-new quests and a new 8v8 PvP snowball tournaments.

Completing all four quests makes the Jingle Bear, found outside the outpost in Gwen’s Garden, charmable by characters with a Ranger profession.

Today is the actual Wintersday celebration where every three hours the avatars of Dwayna and Grenth appeal to players for their support. Grenth wants to continue winter’s cycle of death while Dwayna is ready to thaw and bring new life. This year’s reward hats are Rudi’s Mask (Dwayna) and a Grentch Cap (Grenth).

Finally, the popular Secret Lair of the Snowmen dungeon from last year is back! I never did manage to complete that one last year and since today is the final day of Wintersday I doubt I will get a chance to give it another shot this time either.

Yesterday’s patch was primarily a massive overhaul to the Title Track system, which for many Guild Wars players takes up much of their “end game” focus and time.

The update provides several new ways to earn most of the faction-based tracks, such as Luxon and Kurzick from Factions, Lightbringer and Sunspear from Nightfall, and all of the Eye of the North title tracks, as well as making them less of a grind. with new ways to get points for Vanquishing, Challenge Missions, Dungeons, and more.

Additionally, each campaign gets a Storybook which functions similar to the Hero’s Handbook and Master Dungeon Guide from the Eye of the North expansion, where having the book with you as you complete a Mission from that campaign will check off pages in the book’s story. Players can hand in completed books for gold, XP or title track points.

Players who own all three campaigns get an additional Hard Mode-only storybook which covers events of the three campaign missions for additional rewards.

Read the massive full patch notes! And enjoy!

It’s that time of year again in Tyria when the maniacal Mad King Thorn brings his unique brand of sadistic humor to the peoples of Lion’s Arch and Kamadan for Guild Wars’ Halloween 2008 event.

This year unfortunately I did not play Guild Wars at all during the event, which lasts ten days, ending 12:01 am Pacific on November 2nd; tonight. So no Halloween treats for Benjeth this year to contribute to his Sweet Tooth title track.

I did login last night in time for the midnight (Eastern time zone) event where the Mad King Thorn paid a visit to Lion’s Arch and awarded us with the Zombie Face Paint mask. I would have liked to stay up for the final event in Kamadan at 3am Eastern to get the Lupine mask but it wasn’t happening. Oh well, yet another mask in the growing collection of masks Benjeth doesn’t have…

Screen shots after the break!

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Van Hemlock decided within the past few weeks to alternate PvE and PvP each week. Last week was PvP and I just wasn’t feeling it, so I bowed out. This week, I was up for some quality PvE and the rest of the Tuesday N00b Club was as well. They’d decided before I arrived to head into the Frostmaw’s Burrows dungeon way up in Jaga Moraine. We had a full group of players, so no heroes tonight. Most of the characters I more or less recognized, though the new one (to me) to the group was Sente from A Ding World. 3 of the 8 are bloggers, this could be heading into dangerous territory, though much less so than Casualties of WAR!

None of us bothered to check either the official or unofficial Guild Wars wikis — a rare thing indeed for GW players — so right off the bat was our first mistake: we chose Frostmaw’s Burrows under the assumption that it was a 4-level dungeon. Turns out it has 5 levels, so it will take even longer to get through. No problem for me, being here in the US, but most of the TNC is from the UK and it’s later in the evening for them. One of them in particular is always limited to a certain time, which was the case tonight, so at times it felt a little on the rushed side.

I played my monk, Benjeth, who was running his new favorite build based around the Healer’s Boon elite skill which allows all Healing Prayers skills to cast 50% faster and heal 50% more health. Van Hemlock played his mesmer, though not using the assassin secondary profession for his (in)famous shadow-tank-mage build, choosing elementalist instead. Sente was playing a necromancer/elementalist who tended to get aggro a lot so apparently he was using a pretty high-damage build that the mobs didn’t appreciate. The rest of the group consisted of another mesmer, a ranger, warrior, ritualist, and another monk. At the entrance to the dungeon, a Master difficulty quest is available which brings along an additional four NPC allies, three warriors and a paragon. Unfortunately, GW does not consider allies to be “part of the group” so any monk spells I’d cast that would affect on the entire group did not apply to them. This particular group of NPC’s were of the “Leeroy Jenkins” school of AI so were more annoyances than useful.

We blitzed through the first two levels with no issues at all, which led us to get a bit careless and over-confident. The third level of the dungeon is where we ran into our first snag, losing five of the group in a nasty battle. Frost wurms and siege wurms occur more often and usually along with a group of elementals or chromatic drakes, which can be problem enough on their own. That mix of enemies combined proved too much and Benjeth (and two others) had to use a tactic I haven’t used in quite awhile: turn tail and run like hell, abandoning the rest of the group to their fate. After all, the ones with the ability to resurrect need to be alive to use it, right? It was after this first near-wipe that I discovered what would ultimately prove to be the group’s fatal mistake: Benjeth was the only character in the group who could resurrect! I don’t usually call people out, and I’m not naming names so I don’t feel quite as bad doing this… The ritualist seemed to be using a dps build with little to no heals, but that’s fine since we had two monks. Or did we? It turns out the other monk was using a protection build. Now, Benjeth’s HB build actually works fantastic when paired with a protection monk. However, this monk had a PvP protection build loaded with only a single light heal! That build was nearly useless to the group other than removing conditions, did not synergize with Benjeth’s HB whatsoever, and to top it off: no resurrection! PvP monks typically do not resurrect, so that’s a perfectly normal approach but in PvE that doesn’t fly. So basically I’m doing all the work healing, and if I go down, no one’s getting back up without a complete party wipe.

Speaking of which, later in that third level we had our first wipe! When I first hooked up with the TNC it was a running joke that they spent most of their time with maximum (-60%) Death Penalty, but I was their first “real” monk and until now had kept them mostly alive and certainly nowhere near full DP. So, tonight was my very first wipe with TNC! Unfortunately, tonight was also my second, third, and fourth wipe with TNC! Yeah… later still in the third level we went down again. The fourth level was even worse, we went down twice in fairly rapid-fire succession. We nearly had a fifth wipe but I ran away into a safe area and was able to get a few of the group resurrected but everyone else went down close to a group of mobs who kept spamming Frozen Soil which prevents resurrection.

At that point, it was getting too late for one of the players to continue and there was no way to keep going without wiping the group again and continuing with a high death penalty. Benjeth had already removed some of our DP by using a four-leaf clover he’d gotten last year in one of the game’s “lucky weekends.” Of course, the xp in dungeons is pretty high and we would have been rid of the DP eventually. Most, if not all, of us dinged a new skill point during the run, and Benjeth walked away with some loot to sell and a black dye to add to his valuable collection! No gold drops to help his Wisdom title track, though…

Next Tuesday is PvP again, so I may or may not participate depending on my mood and availability. I’ll look forward to TNC’s next PvE adventure, though, whether we end up trying to tackle this dungeon again or something else.

A new hero was added to the stable yesterday in Guild Wars and is playable as of today. M.O.X. is an Asuran golem whose primary profession is a dervish and is available to players who own all three Guild Wars campaigns. I found it strange that the Eye of the North expansion is not required, yet that is where Asurans and their Golems were formally introduced to the game.

From Lion’s Arch simply walk outside into North Kryta Province where M.O.X. is waiting with a quest icon. He hands your character a Golem User Manual which is laid out exactly like the Dungeon Master Guide and Hero’s Handbook from the Eye of the North expansion, or any of the character’s books from the Bonus Mission Pack. Once inside any outpost, add M.O.X. to your group then double-click the Golem User Manual to enter five missions, which is a great way to add some short episodic content to the game in addition to the new hero.

M.O.X. is by far the largest hero in the game, and rather than changing physical forms when using any of the dervish Avatar of… skills he changes his appearance slightly, usually a different color depending which Avatar he becomes, so the player can tell without checking M.O.X. skill bar if the Avatar skill is active or not.

Also added to the mix is a new “leveling companion,” the Fire Imp. The Imp is only available to characters who have not yet reached level cap, and can only be summoned for up to one hour. Also only one Fire Imp can be summoned per party which acts as a balance compared to Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support which all human players can bring but the assassins only exist for 12-29 seconds at a time, depending on the race of the opponent. I don’t have any characters under level cap and didn’t feel like creating one just to get a screen shot, sorry.

Anyone want to start taking bets if Asurans will have Golem combat pets in Guild Wars 2?

Arena.net updated their Guild Wars 2 FAQ a few days ago. One particular item was of interest — and concern — to me:

How will character progression work? Will you be raising the level cap

Guild Wars 2 will have the kind of extensive character advancement appropriate to a persistent world RPG. It is our priority to avoid forcing players into the grind-based gameplay that too often accompanies a high level cap.

Also, to allow players the freedom to play together even if their friends are at a much higher (or lower) level, we are planning to implement a strong sidekicking system, similar to that used in City of Heroes.

We’re applying this same philosophy to competitive play. Players will be able to engage in organized, balanced PvP (similar to GvG in the original Guild Wars) without needing to first level up characters, find equipment, or unlock skills. While inside the organized PvP area, all characters will be the same power level and will have access to the same equipment.

/sigh

I’ve always felt one of the sources of confusion many players had in their attempts to adapt to Guild Wars was having levels at all. It’s a skills-based game, and the majority of the game takes place at level cap. The leveling phase is fairly quick and serves only to introduce you to the basic concepts of the game, nothing more. If you come into Guild Wars with the levels-and-gear-based mentality that most MMO’s have, you’re doing it “wrong” and will only walk away in disappointment.

When Arena.net originally announced Guild Wars 2 would be raising the level cap, or possibly have no level cap at all, I was immediately concerned. This takes away from everything Guild Wars stands for and lowers it to the sewer standards of a typical MMO. Having no level cap raised questions of balancing with mobs and other characters, then I thought of Asheron’s Call. AC is also a skills-based game, but it does have levels. However, your level is not an indication of your power like it would be in other MMO’s, but merely an indication of the total xp you’ve accrued on that character. Vanity abounds in Guild Wars, from elite armors, to green weapons, to title tracks, to mini-pets, and even Collector’s Edition emotes. Guild Wars also keeps track of your total xp (since you still “ding” repeatedly after reaching “level cap”) but it’s only available to you, no one else can see it. Within that context, a limitless level cap would actually make sense in the Guild Wars universe.

However, with this recent FAQ update, and the mere mention of a CoX-like sidekick system, I am very concerned that in GW2 levels, and all their associated problems, will suddenly matter. I think part of me just died inside…

Ok, I spent entirely too much time in June working up my monk’s Norn reputation mostly for the Ursan Blessing skill to cheat power my way through the Norn Fighting Tournament. Currently at Rank 8, which is probably enough, I thought I’d give it one last shot “for real” before turning in despair to Ursan. Someone suggested I modify one of my 55 builds to cut down on the enchantments since I’m only fighting one opponent at a time (well, usually) and use a few other skills to let my opponents kill themselves. My primary weapon of choice would be Spoil Victor, followed by Necrosis and Reversal of Damage. The remaining skills were more or less typical of a 55 Monk designed to minimize damage and keep a positive health regeneration.

In one time through the tournament with the new 55 build, I not only went every round to win the tournament and gain the Bison Cup item, I also gained Zehtuka’s Horn and unlocked the final Hero, Kahmu!

Such a weight off my shoulder, finally getting the last Hero in the game, not to mention two new items some of my Heroes can possibly put to good use and the satisfaction of winning the Tournament with a legitimate build rather than resorting to the cheesy, über-powerful Ursan Blessing.

However, one final task remains: I did not fight Zho to win her Journal, which is one of the steps required to eventually gain the much sought-after Black Moa Chick…

In a perfect example of my short attention span, I specifically stated I was intending to actively pursue my Asuran reputation to get Benjeth his first-ever set of elite armor. Somehow I wound up repeatedly trying (and repeatedly failing, badly) to compete in the Norn Fighting Tournament to unlock the final hero, Kahmu. The Bison Cup too, just for the hell of it, but Kahmu is my primary motivation. Next I ended up in Elona working on my Lightbringer points to achieve rank 3 to get the final skill, an elite signet. Farming points got me curious once more about the ever-vaunted “55 Monk.” I’d gotten all the requisite gear for the build last year, but had never actually practiced 55-ing. No time like the present, eh?

Experienced Guild Wars players are probably shaking their heads that it’s taken me this long to do it, but I figure better late than never, right? For the rest of you, I’ll give an explanation of the 55 Monk concept, which is essentially one of the most effective ways to solo farm with a monk in PvE. In this case, “solo” specifically means your monk is the only character out there; not grouped with anyone else. Non-Guild Wars players often consider the notion of having a full group of AI Heroes and Henchmen to be soloing, but to a GW player, that’s still a full group. The number of human-played characters is irrelevant; solo means only one character.

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