Thanks, wonderlust.
I think I’m going to switch to the Tarnished Coast server in order to have more people in the leveling zones and so I can play with other alt-oholics. Do any of you know of a great casual guild on that server?
While Shamus Young had his analysis of the utter crap which forms most of the dungeons, I had a separate complaint: enemies with too damn much health. The cruel fact is that most of the elite/legendary enemies just take forever. It’s not a challenge - its just a pain. Worse yet, few of them have a good flow you can get into and relax a bit. It’s a constant struggle to wear down the enemy a sliver of a percent at a time while dodging the ridiculously powerful attacks. It’s simply not very fun, and if you lose a player along the way, you just have to leave and come back.
Boss difficulty is all over the map. You get piss-easy end bosses, some of which can be easily defeated by one player. You get trash mobs who obliterate your entire group. You get mid-bosses all along the entire huge curve, many of whom have abilities which are not so much “dangerous” as “pathetically cheap and guaranteed to ruin the day of some parties but useless against others”.
It doesn’t help that there’s no dungeon find feature and that they’re scattered all over the damn map. While I respect TA for trying their own thing, I do have to wonder why they didn’t include the huge improvements that WoW created for speeding dungeon play and including people. The weird thing is that some of these were included - for WvW and PvP. Just not for dungeons. 
It also doesn’t help that, unlike WoW, there’s no such thing as a "starter dungeon to help train people in WTF they’re supposed to do, so that there’s always one player with no idea what he’s doing to accompany the TA-mandated complete idiot, who must by law be included in every dungeon. Also, there’s usually an NPC or two who die against the weakest trash mobs, in addition to acting like a particualrly obnoxious emo teen. OK, the last is only in Story Mode.
Now, befoer I drop too much hate on these, there are some great ideas in the dungeons. 'Twould take too long to say everything, but I like the ideas and imagination present in a lot of them. But the execution is relentlessly tiring and erratic.
If you think dungeons are hard, try doing fractals without Vent. A couple of those dungeons (the swamp and the Dredge) are pretty much designed to chew up and spit out pugs. With the right strategy and good communication most of the dungeons are pretty easy. That said, a guild group I was in had our butts handed to us in Arah - to the point that one guildie is thinking about changing the legendary he is going after to avoid Arah.
I have been told that I can invite everyone from BDL into ZoS. It is an active guild with many members on at almost all times. There are always people looking for groups for dungeons and what not. The only thing would be that you’d have to come to our server, and some BDL members are currently on Northern Shiverpeaks already.
It is a very good guild with Anet employees on the roster. Let me know if you are interested,
**Ike Witt: ** It might be helpful if you spelled out your guild name and the server you’re on. Just a suggestion, since I’d have no clue.
Wintersday activities started last night and will last for a couple weeks. Things I’ve seen so far:
Timed Jumping Puzzle: Not as nearly as unforgiving as the Halloween one, but still may take a few times to get the hang of it.
Bell Choir: A guitar-hero-esque colored rhythm mini-game
Winter’s Mayhem: A team PvP capture-the-gift, abilities are dependant not on your toon – there are 3 types of classes you can choose at the start
Toymaker Tixx is visiting a major city each day, where there will be events. If you miss one, you can go back and repeat them once he reaches Lion’s Arch, which is about the 7th day I guess?
Xmas gifts available as random loot or as rewards for completing the special events listed above. Mostly ugly sweaters, socks, and hats that you can exchange for other things at the gift exchange, sometimes (very rare chance) a recipe or something. Also, winter-themed weapon/armor skins can be exchanged with tokens, crafted, and in the gem-store.
Happy Wintersday!
Haven’t logged in yet today - are there “Candy Cane trees,” or anything analagous to the Raw Candy Corn?
Interesting seeing this bumped now. With the latest holiday sale I decided to finally give it a try, and it is downloading now.
Guess I got some reading to do.
Have not seen anything like that so far, but I haven’t been out in the newbie areas yet. There are patches of snow where you build snowmen (analogous to the jack-o-lantern carving achievement) and special snowflakes for crafting that are randomly awarded in chests and gift boxes.
Found them - they’re “Mysterious Presents,” scattered around like gathering nodes, at least in the starting Norn zone.
I got 4 mini snowmen and turned 3 of them into the mini Quaggan…so cute.
Congratulations! I don’t have any hope of getting that baby Quaggan now. Did you get the snowmen from gem boxes or from world drops? I spent $40 on boxes, and didn’t get a single mini until the 38th box. I can’t justify spending more on boxes, but I’d be really happy if I learned I could get those minis some other way with better odds.
However, my Princess Dolly is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Her animations and giggles, not to mention her mesmer hair, are perfect!!!
I got the minis from the gem store chests. I did get lucky with them for sure. I also got a santa hat for my town clothes and 2 recipes from the 20 I opened…
I did some searches and couldn’t find this, would people mind answering a few noob questions, sorry if they are repeats?
So I created a hippy-chick elementalist, and set off in the world mostly skipping my story quest, because there was always something in the corner of the screen that looked interesting, or an event just a bit off screen etc. 
i got up to level 11 and realized…
1.I have vendor bought armor and weapons, that only seem slightly better than my starting equipment Is that normal in this game? or do you get the good stuff in your story quest…
- After getting to 11 I popped back to buy my traits book, and am pathetically poor in comparison. Is that normal, or am I weak? All my money comes from quest and event rewards, is there another source for noobs?
The armour and weapons from the vendors throughout the map are very basic (grey/white). At a minimum they represent the level your equipment should be at every 5 levels. The bare minimum. You should be able to get better quality equipment (blue/ green) just by killing stuff. Blues and greens will often have better stats (and sigils) than white items a few levels higher. Also, you should get your characters into the crafting thing. I am currently 7/8 on master crafter so I have to buy very little in the way of weapons to keep outfitted.
As far as money goes, I had an issue with the money during the beta, but I figured out what was going on. If you have not been doing story line missions you are missing out on XP, some armour and some weapons, and other goodies like salvage kits and BL chest keys. That said, you should be able to make enough money to continue playing the game just by completing hearts and doing world events. Completing maps (all the hearts, POIs, skill challenges and vistas) also gives good XP, money and random other things (including rare and exotic items at the higher levels).
Dailies (# of kills and events) give a solid payment every day and you should make sure you do it every day. The daily chest gives you good XP, money (5 silver at lvl 80), karma and mystic coins (both needed for crafting legendary weapons).
If you are still worried about your money, make sure you have been getting it. Every time you complete a heart you get an in-game email that gives you payment. Make sure you are getting that.
You can also get useful items by spending karma at your completed hearts NPCs. Lately, I’ve been buying cheap blues and greens off the trading post. You can get a lot of stuff at near vendor prices.
For making money, here’s what I do.
- Loot everything, of course.
- Gray items are vendor junk. Click the “Sell Junk” button at any vendor to cash it in.
- White items should be salvaged with crude salvage kits (the cheapest ones). This will give you resources that are generally more valuable than the vendor price of the item plus the cost of the salvage kit (which you can also buy with karma).
- Colored items (blue, green, yellow, etc) should be price-checked on the trading post. (Note that you can sell and buy stuff from anywhere, but only collect when at an NPC.) If the item sells for about 10% more than vendor price (look at the expected profit number), you should post it on the trading post. Pick a price about halfway between the highest buyer price and the lowest seller price for a quick turn-around.
- Vendor any colored items that don’t have a good price on the trading post. The vendor value is worth more than resources you’ll get from it, usually. Unless you’re willing to spend money on quality salvage kits to get a good chance of recovering sigils. I don’t bother.
- Gather resources with the cheapest tools that will work. Use the button to deposit the resources in your bank. Once your bank is maxxed out with that resource, the excess will stay in your bag. Sell that excess on the trading post. Or, if you know won’t use something, sell it anyway.
I apologize if this was discussed in the thread, I skimmed, but didn’t really see it. Are there any doper guilds out there?
I’m a relative newbie to online games but not to RPGs. I only started playing GW2 in late November, but am already an addict. Just wondering if there are any doper guilds who might want another member?
There is, but I don’t think it’s all that active.
It is pretty inactive. And so many people are all on different servers anyway.
What server are you on? Anet just implemented a fee for server transfers. If you are on Northern Shiverpeaks I can get you an invite to ZoS.