Celeste is back! She and Allona delve in to the newest teaser trailer, The Dragon’s Reach: Part 1, its potential impact on the game, and just generally yammer about all things GW2.

Audio Version

What We Did This Week

 

Allona

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• Finished the Gates of Maguuma cheevos… mostly with Hunter… patient, patient Hunter.
  
• Got a good chunk of the Entanglement cheevos as well
  
• Guild missions with WoD
  
• Used a hairstyle kit on my warrior, which changed her enough that I completely changed her armour, weapons, skills, and traits … for the first time basically ever.
  
• Got all the Upland lost coins without the help of an online guide! Yay!
  
• Horseshoe was in full effect
  
  • 
    
  • Accidentally got a portal to the 2nd Legendary Llama
    
  • Got two adventurer masks, ones set of goggles, and two fossilized insects.
    
  
  
  
• Bought the lumber thingie for my home instance
  
• Got my 11k chest, like, today.
  
• Note: I have no life… and also a very messy house.
  

Celeste

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• Catching up on the living story (omg i wish i had more time :( )
  

 

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Report from Lion’s Arch

 

The Dragon’s Reach: Part 1 (July 29)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDpzAUWmklA

• 
  
• When corruption spreads
  
• And Alliances are tested
  
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  • Taimi trying to work with the other asura to convince them to come and help with Mordremoth
    
  • Rox and Rytlock arguing
    
  • Braham approaching his mother, Eir
    
  
  
  
• Only the strong will survive
  
  • 
    
  • Rytlock enters Duke Barradin’s tomb
    
  • Icebrood and mordrem are together (or at the very least seem to be reacting to the same thing?)
    
  • Rytlock slams Sohothin into the ground of Ascalon/Duke Barradin’s vault saying “Ascalon, I free you from this curse.â€
    
  
  
  
• “As the adventure of Season 2 continues, the whole of Tyria is threatened by the peril of the Elder Dragon Mordremoth. Attacks by its minions have stretched ever-farther afield, from the arid Maguuma wastes to the Timberline Falls and the heart of Kryta. All of Tyria must come to understand this dire threat.â€
  

 

In which Celeste’s crazy wish of having the Mursaat become Allies isn’t so crazy anymore…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sxgwsq_G3g&index=4&list=UUYUY9_i44IDNOs_Ja815mlA

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• http://youtu.be/6sxgwsq_G3g?t=25m22s For the final theory of how the Mursaat may not have been the real bad guys
  

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• From the 2012 New Year Prediction show “Maguuma Wastes added leading to the still surviving Mursaat at the Isle of Janthir as a mini paid dlc (20$USD)†Kinda correct so far, Maguuma has been added as Dry Top, we’ll see if we’re going to the Isle of Janthir later on!
  
• From the 2013 New Year Prediction show “To replace Scarlet, we’ll finally get to see the Mursaat come into the Human territories. Spoilers: They’re still pissed that we opened the Door of Komalie and let the Titans through.â€
  
• From Episode 99 “I want to go to their city. I want them to be EPIC not just a sidestory. I have the feeling that Mursaat have gone the way of the Seers. Seers were at war with the mursaat and ended up having their society whittled away over time. Eventually to fall into insignificance, much like the dwarves have in the current era.â€
  
• From Episode 112 “Wild Speculation, instead of going further south we’ll go further west and then North to the Isle of Janthir to completely wipe out the Mursaat. Even though I think it would be a pretty awesome race to add for players. HINT HINT. Maybe they retreated and rebuilt and have been in cahoots with the White Mantle.â€
  

 

Ask An Asura

 

Allona’s Tip: Buy Cultural armour when you hit lvl 35. They’re ‘rare’ and so will last you a lot longer before you will need to upgrade again.

 

***

Dear Celeste and Allona

It is with a heavy heart that I write this email but I really must get this off my chest.  If it softens the blow read it in an angry charr voice.

You don’t save money by farming materials to craft with.

The starting point for understanding and overcoming this fundamental misconception is a real world example:

If I quit my $50k a year job to grow my own food would it make sense for me to claim I was saving money on vegetables?

No. It’s the same in Tyria.  Whatever your level you should “work” at whatever earns the most money and buy what you need.

This applies to all “goods” in-game but the mistake is compounded when it comes to crafting.

So let’s be a bit more specific: let’s say you’ve collected a bunch of crafting mats while doing your daily; salvage, gathering, w/e.  You know they are worth 50s because that’s what you could sell them for on the TP.

If you now use those mats to craft an item worth 30s, you haven’t saved 50s on mats, you’ve lost 20s by not just selling the mats and buying the item.

If you craft an item worth 70s, you’ve made an extra 20s; you could have bought the mats for 50s, crafted them and still made 20s.  “Farming” the mats has made no difference to your profit.

So, please, for the love of Grenth, stop talking about saving money by farming mats on the show.

Much love,

dibs

 

• 
  
• A: Thanks Dibs! Dibsy … I want to call you Dibsy. This is a very good point about harvesting/farming mats to craft vs to sell. I would say that for players new to the game it’s still probably more worthwhile to gather mats if they are also looking to craft. The only other exception might be if you are farming mats to craft ascended items. Those items are account-bound and can’t be bought on the Trading Post, and most of the mats needed for them are hella expensive to just out and out buy.
  
• C: I understand the principles behind what you’re saying but I feel like I’d need to still have money to buy materials, this still goes towards the idea that the only currency you need is gold. Earning that gold seems to be the only focus for players if you’re working towards a goal (that isn’t attainable by tokens/etc).
  
• From M in the chat room: Also there is sacrifice capitol put down where you DO waste the 50s to build the things worth only 30s in order to get the XP to make better things.
  

 

***

 

Salutations amazing Celeste and outstanding Allona,

I wanted to share a bit of silliness the new episode allows. On the last step of Episode 2 “The Machine”, players can use tonics to do the cut scene leading to many odd and silly results. It does break the mood, so not recommended for your first time/character through.

Here is my silly bit, proving motivated scritt can be hero!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtv-7v2CpXU

One of your many fans on Tarnish Coast,

Particle Shift

 

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• A: Because of this email, I went through using the princess doll tonic! Also, For the Toast!
  

 

Game Immersion from Tilion of Dragon Season

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2b1dnd/does_anybody_else_care_about_immersion/

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• I’m deeply pleased with the quality of Season 2 so far. Everybody at ArenaNet has really stepped it up: The sound, the landscapes, but most of all, the story. Everything, everything is astonishing!
  
  • 
    
  • C: We certainly agree as well but this post isn’t all sunshine and rainbows…
    
  
  
  
• it’s about those systems that are not currently in place and all they do is overshadow the great work that has gone into these last few releases. And here I am wondering: “Does anybody else care about immersion anymore, in a game that is so story-driven?â€
  
  • 
    
  • C: I do!
    
  • A: Me too!
    
  
  
  
• A friend of mine bought the game a couple of days ago. He seemed to be delighted with how the story progresses and how the world constantly changes around him. I was pleased to talk with him about the lore of the world and all that stuff that he had missed, only to realize that there are remnants of the future’s past that affect his present (Personal Story). Lion’s Arch is destroyed by Scarlet in an era that Zhaitan hasn’t gone down yet. Concordia and Salma are entangled by Mordremoth during the personal story’s events and so the list goes on.
  
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  • C: We already knew this was happening but I still find it extremely troubling.
    
  
  
  
• I decided to investigate the matter further so I played through “Gates of Maguuma†after the release of “Entanglementâ€. To my surprise, even Prosperity was altered in the first episode’s instances. In other words, the experience that those players that played “Gates of Maguuma†in the first two weeks was different than that of those that played the same content weeks later. When I mentioned so on twitter the official reply I had was that this is the intended behavior.
  
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  • C: So they are replayable but you still need to play them in the first two weeks to get the intended experience. That’s good to know /sigh
    
  
  
  
• Now, I can remember the devs mentioning that they are technically limited on how they approach instances but this should really be their number one priority if they want to further evolve the way they are telling stories… The timelines are currently a total mess.
  
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  • C: It is, in the very least, jarring to see these new maps when going “back in time.†A good example of this is why the Asura’s lab in Lion’s Arch had some sort of protective net around it during the attack from Scarlet. Otherwise players wouldn’t have been able to get in to do their personal story. But why this building isn’t destroyed in the new map wouldn’t make any sense to new players.
    
  • A: Side note: I noticed that the year 1395 has been added to the Personal Story in the journal (or has that always been there, and I’m just noticing it…)
    
  
  
  
• What audience does Guild Wars 2 cater for these days? Is it just the current playerbase? Should we rely on external sources to keep the newcomers or those that had been away informed?
  
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  • C: A very fair point to remember! The thing is with ArenaNet’s mission to avoid fracturing and dividing the playerbase into different map instances this sort of experience and confusion among new players will surely continue. It also leads to the revelation that we will likely not see a “healed†orr and thus while Trahearne may think his Wyld Hunt is complete, the players will shake their head mockingly at the poor lettuce head.
    
  
  
  
• Reply From Matthew Medina in the official forums: “Hey guys – I can tell you that we have certainly looked at this issue, even as far back as Lost Shores, and it did come down to technical and logistical problems we are, at this time, unable to solve. Jia Shen is correct that our instances do not use separate maps from the open world, so if those maps change because of a larger world story event, like Lion’s Arch being laid to waste for example, then the story instances that take place in those maps will reflect whatever the current state of the world is. We do have some limited ability to do phased instancing of certain elements within those maps, but not the kind of sweeping large scale terrain changes that result from the major changes we want to make to the world.â€
  
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  • C: In the same thread several other players wondered if they could have a map that would contain only the immediate areas of the story instances, within the red lines of the instance and no more. Considering that Matthew had cited that the .dat would have to be much larger to accomodate the story instances.
    
  • A: I completely understand how tricky it is trying to retrofit code, but I would be totally okay with a larger .dat file if past instances retained their place in history.
    
  
  
  

 

Tales of Tyria

 

What Allona Saw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3d9hp5sJWk&feature=youtu.be

• 
  
• A: My husband, Cal, made this because he said it was the first thing he thought when he saw the cinematic.
  

 

Call of Cantha: Vasburg’s Artwork

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2bftw1/call_of_cantha/

• 
  
• A: Holy schnikes!
  

 

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Celeste: @celeookie

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