The Maddening Grinds

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

Apparently opening sealed, magical coffin-like boxes wrapped in heavy chains that radiate evil is a bad idea. This particular one contained the vengeful son of the Mad King, and if there's anything I know about spirits it's that they can hold a grudge! Fortunately his only weakness is plentiful this time of the year, and we easily pushed him back into his prison because we're such nice guys.

Oh, how I missed thee clock tower!

 

The Mad King himself is about too, and with him returned his clock tower - still one of my favourite jumping challenges around. I did prefer racing against charrs and norns instead of wisps though but that's ok. It's all muscle memory now. The Labyrinth also has more bosses too, which alas, do not scale down and do not cater for the solo roamer. Even some areas the "regular" mobs there who can do a combination of push, pull and paralyze (in addition to just killing you) are pretty dangerous meaning it's not very productive to be there alone.

This meant that after I did what I needed to I headed back over to Neverwinter to grind up some Coins of Waukeen (a special event this week). Boring? Slightly. Just a little worse than the current living story achievement grind in GW2. Difficult? Nope, and very appealing since you can participate solo instead of relying on a zerg. Rewarding? Still very luck based, but in my case it paid off to the tune of five hundred twelve thousand astral diamonds (and a bunch of other gear)! That's worth quite a bit more than a silly pail or useless minature offered in Tyria, and for a much heavier grind I might add.

Dragon Hunter Rox

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

Met up with the charr ranger Rox at Sparkfly Fen recently. She was hunting the reincarnation of the local dragon "Tea Kettle" in the swamps to impress Tribune Brimstone. Stupid cats. Anyway I helped her out, finding numerous tracks of the beast as well as leftovers from the Shatterer and Jormag's little friend. Ironically during all of this I only encountered the last one up at Frostgorge Sound and helped the local army defeat him. Nothing really heroic about it when you have half a legion behind you combined with heavy firepower provided by the nearby stationary guns. The dragons in this land are stupid, they always seem to attack in the firing lanes of the cannons that await them. Not sure what else there was to do since none of the other beasts dared show their face while I was active (the cowards) so I moved on to other things.

I think Rox spotted a dragon.

I've since heard tell of the local militia swarming to Rox's aid, often spending many hours just waiting in anticipation for the arrival of their foe in the sticky, smelly swamp. I guess they find the waiting fun, or are they just waiting to have fun? Reports say the dragon has grown in strength - more often defeating or escaping from the angry mob than not. Commanders have taken it upon themselves to meld the troops into a well fused, fighting machine - posting tactics and requirements on the local forums. I had one look at this and rolled my eyes. I was never really one for filling a "role" like an automaton. I suppose they are keeping the ... swamp... safe? Hmm. It's not like Tea Kettle has made any move to push further North, or has ever attacked Fort Trinity to the South. Whatever - it is there. That's all that Rox needs to know. I think it will be hard for her to prove herself with an army behind her though, especially one she doesn't lead.

Maybe she'll have better luck assisting Caithe with the Scarlet(?) distubance being investigated at Twilight Arbor. Sent her a letter via carrier pigeon wishing her the best of luck while I headed back to the deep woods of Sharandar (in Neverwinter Online) to continue the campaign against Malabog's forces. I still wonder how those fomors got there. Possibly a rift between the shadow realm and the feydark? Maybe I'll yet find out.

Ellen Kieled it! Time to celebrate with the Queen!

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

Kinda glad now that my previous post with "art" incentives was overlooked as Ellen Kiel has emerged the victor in the voting for the Captain's Council seat - thrashing the hopes and desires of all of Evon Gnashblade's supporters (and hopefully their wallets too). Story-wise, unless you were playing either an evil aligned, human hating, or charr loving (beastiality much?) character then you -should- have voted for Kiel. A surprising amount of people decided to vote for Evon without RP consideration. They just wanted the fractal he offered which now will have close to zero chance of coming to fruition thanks to their collective failure. ANet did a good job getting players involved in the election so it will be interesting to see if they can keep it up in the next arc: the Queen's Jubilee.

From what I've seen so far it looks pretty fun inside the Crown Pavillion - lots of things to fight and lots of loot for the taking. Ofcourse the aetherblade pirates are still being a nuisance but aside from the opening ceremony most of their antics are with content outside the city. Haven't explored those yet mainly due to the shineys dropping inside the new zone. Also the solo arena fights, which you can watch/be watched by other players are pretty interesting. I've beaten the first three rounds so far and am hoping to make it all the way to the end!

Definitely going to be a case of this though.

Deal Breaker: Melted Alliance

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

And so with a large and quite badly planned explosion that resulted in multiple casualties of dredge, flame legion, and all of their captives, ArenaNet's "Flame & Frost" chapter of the Living Story drew to a close, leaving us with some ugly gauntlets, a few questions, and a pretty resounding "meh". The finale was a large underground weapons facility which sounds fun, except you can only go in with 5 people since it is a dungeon instance and comes complete with the trapings of numerous overpowered baddies and random traps. Also, all the trouble the molten crew took with getting captives was simply so they could mine stuff and eventually have ridiculous weapons tested on them. The silly bad guys didn't know what happens when you squish or burn someone apparently. Still it was ok, and was not as annoying as getting into and through Arah to shoot a lame (literally) dragon. My favourite bad guy was also in there - the dredge weapons tester miniboss. Why? Because he is funny, doesn't kill outright and when he showed up personally dies in one hit. In fact I think he is the only "standard" mob in the whole place with everything else being veterans or better. Kinda sad that of all the things, HE was the main highlight for me after all those months.

Though the bosses were entertaining too, in a dodge or die kinda way.

As everyone suspected there's a puppeteer pulling their strings (a female one at that), still in the shadows. We'll probably run into her later in the next story arc in Southsun Cove. Would be cool if it was Riel though. With the Super Adventure Box now closed and undergoing "upgrades" it seems I have little reason to hang around here again. Maybe I shouldn't be so negative on ANet's quest building team and try find out just how hard it is to make one on my own. Apparently that's one of the features of this other MMO called Neverwinter...

Flame, Frost and Donkey Kong

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

ArenaNet has been pushing out its Living Story the past few months with all the pace of a sun-bathing glacier. Basically the proud Norn and warlike Charr are getting their butts kicked by a Dredge and Flame Legion alliance (aka "the Molten Alliance") so badly that they are mostly withdrawing not just to their capitals, but all the way to the karka infested isle of Southsun Cove. Well, supposedly. Sure, the molten dudes are popping out from magic portals and APCs here and there but there are still lots of towns out there that haven't noticed this supposed on-coming force; Butcher's Block is still in endless party mode and that place up in Wayfarer Foothills where they cook wurm eggs and have dozens of snoozing patrons hasn't changed one bit. Maybe they're just too drunk to notice anything wrong? Seems the only people actually affected come from previously unknown areas and I suspect part of the reason they are so pathetically weak is due to their unnatural clumsiness.

Or maybe they were also just drunk?

With their meager possessions (being refugees) lots of them still manage to "misplace" them along the various routes they took to run away while defacating themselves like the cowards they are. One of the tasks given to the COMMANDER OF THE FIRE-TRUCKING PACT is to go poke the mounds of dirt and feces left behind by these losers to retrieve them. Yep. For some reason this is one of the "highlight" activities of this story arc. Shovelling shit. Thanks ANet. As for the molten alliance themselves there are hints laying about in another scavenger type quest that indicate it's not Primordus driving these two armies together but something else. Popular theory is it is the Consortium, the competitors of the Black Lion Trading group. Their previous actions included happy things like letting the karka invade the mainland and opening the irritating and unstable fractal dungeon which now requires eternal vigilance lest it destroy reality. Far as I'm concerned all these pirate scum should die. May as well wipe out the barbaric Charr and soulless Sylvari while I'm at it too.

What's that? The Asura? No I love those little goblins, especially since part of the April release was the Super Adventure Box! Personally I feel this is ANet's best content since the Mad King (I did miss Wintersday so maybe that one was good too) which is ironic given all of its 8-bit Mario-ness. There's definitely a certain charm in the nostalgia, and for someone who absolutely dislikes the dungeons in this game I find the Super Adventure box to be awesome. No idea why, but it's a strong enough reason for me to get back into GW2 for a bit. Hopefully it sticks around and doesn't vanish at the end of April like ANet has said, because if it did - they really would be April fools.

Belated Happy Easter too! :)

Week #10 - Different Roads

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

My charr warrior finished his business this week, hunting down an asura necromancer and defeating the rebel Ajax to earn me the Vigil Banner (which, comparatively speaking was the easiest path I found). After he finished on level 31 I decided to see the stories of the two remaining races, and why not - there were free achievements to do so anyway so I made a Norn engineer who was very fun to play. Obviously more fragile than the warrior but she did alright saving a minotaur spirit, repaying a debt to an Iron Legion platoon for taking one of their tanks on a drunken joyride (LOL) and defended the last remaining dwarf, Ogden Stonehealer from the Dredge. That was awesome - at least I got to see and talk to him, something even my level 80 thief hadn't managed to do. Since she didn't need to go after a banner she finished off on level 24.

Next up I made an asura ranger which I am finding super strong - stronger than the warrior in fact! Haven't done much of her story yet and instead was focusing on leveling up AND thanks to the Mad King's Clock Tower, I've decided to hunt down the jumping puzzles that I haven't yet done. Morgan's Spiral was pretty easy, unfortunately the one after it in Nightmare Court territory is proving a bit too tough for her at the moment, I'll have to come back to it later. She is currently level 14.

Gravity is not my friend.

Guildwise DL, Thaldir and my thief managed to help Trahearne cleanse the Heart of Orr so all that is left now is to wander into Arah and kill the dragon. We also attempted 3/4 man Cadecous' Manor (Story mode) with Juris which wasn't that bad despite a few deaths. Good to see that Thaldir, who came late (we were already 60% of the way through) was still able to join the instance and though he didn't get some of the chests was still rewarded for his participation. It's a very awesome mechanic indeed. :)