Patch Notes & other game changes

Seeing as how I bent myself over selling chests at 5c not 30c by being ignorant of Halloween & what it meant in game I've spent a very little time reading patch notes & found some potentially interesting things.

Daily's & monthly achievements give Jugs of Liquid Karma which apparently grant 4500 Karma each woot! The daily awards 1 jug & the monthly 10 so if you've been skipping dailies make the effort because over the course of a whole month that about 180k karma ?!

There's an official post here stating that Dungeon runs now give karma rewards & explains the calculation behind how much you will receive - as someone that has not run a single dungeon (shock horror!) I'm looking at running a few to see what the fuss is about & take advantage of the Karma changes.

Patch Notes from 22/10 covers what goodies may be looted from chests, tonics & outfits are available to buy in the gem store for the halloween period & how some ingredients may become harder to farm & so may become a little more valuable listed a few here:

• Butter and chocolate no longer drop from loot bags of level 50 and above.

• Butter and chocolate no longer drop from Supply Bags dropped by centaurs, Stolen Supplies dropped by ettins, Ritual Bags dropped by Flame Legion, or Materials Bags dropped by Inquest.

• Increased the chance to get vanilla beans from herb nodes in the Tarnished Coast and Steamspur Mountains.

• Increased the respawn timers for omnomberries, black crocus, ghost pepper, lotus, and Orrian truffles to 5 hours.

• Reduced amount of cinnamon dropped from nodes from 3,5 to 1,2. Cinnamon now only comes from green wood nodes.

• Reduced amount of walnuts dropped from nodes from 3,5 to 1,2. Walnuts now only come from soft wood nodes.

• Removed parsley and thyme from herb nodes in the Tarnished Coast and Steamspur Mountains.

• Rune of the Noble (Superior): Updated drakehounds summoned by these runes to die after 60 seconds (presume this is to fix the bug that allowed players to spawn packs of the things that would take down elites & players almost instantly...)

Dulfy has a Shadow of the Mad King Scavenger Hunt guide if you're interested but be quick the end date is now 28th October no the 31st which was advertised.

We've made an update to our newest patch notes–the finale is October 28th, not the 31st: ow.ly/eHUxJ ~RB2
— Guild Wars 2 (@GuildWars2) October 23, 2012

There's another post on Reddit which states the way to access going to the Mists which you can use to quick travel has changed, you now access this feature through the PvP icon on the top left of the screen with the other short cut icons.

Further to my point above about Karma a post from Reddit states to use a Karma Booster before using the new Jug of Liquid Karma the 4500 Karma reward from the jugs will be 'boosted' yaaarrrr.

Also in this post is clarification on why the monthly achievement has those ??? marks in place:

No, they changed the last achievement to be Holloween themed. It's "Eat 150 Candy Corn." It just didn't get added for awhile. They announced it was for the holiday on the forums awhile back

 Apparently they are tradeable because Spidy has then worth about 24c each so getting your monthly is eezy peezy.

Nothing much doing

As the title suggests there's nothing much of note happening of late in the game or on forums I visit so this is more of a journal entry that I can look back on.

Finally found my way into Orr with some buddies from our guild & completed the map getting a nice map completion reward and surprisingly saw only a handful of bots - on that note - do you seriously think that because your bot is in a guild we're fooled ?!

It's been a rough time on the trading post also with my normal favourite items being bombarded by cheap sales which reduces my profit margin to the point it's not worth selling them right now, particularly when I visit http://www.gw2spidy.com/ & can see there is a trend in place that gives me confidence the price will rebound unless there's a few new crafters out there.

A little pissed I fell behind in my reading the last week or so which meant I had no idea what halloween meant to in game items, specifically the Black Lion Chest (Locked) of which I had sold around 2,000 a few days before because I was short on room in my bank & bags /facepalm

Those buddies I mentioned have almost completed their characters in game personal story while I have ignored mine because it bores the hell out of me and annoys me to the point I want to punch myself in the face.

IT'S SO FRICKING BOOOOORING !!!

On top of which, every time you make a decision, win a battle or meet someone they want you to travel & meet a friend of theirs whom just happens to live on the other side of the fricking world and I am a PvPer by nature so my map completion & exploration is minimal to say the least so I have to physically RUN everywhere.

ASSHOLES !!!

I really can't express in a clear & concise manner how much I detest this personal storyline it's utter shite imo & I would happily ignore the damn thing except I want to help my mates & I'm not sure if because we're all rangers we can tick the box together at the same time in the one instance?

Maybe it's the general increased aggression levels created by this retarded personal story but World V World this week has been miserable I am yet to meet more than a handful of players with a brain online this week so as soon as we manage to claim the top half of the map & put some pressure on Garrison they fall apart & gripe & want to run off & attack DB or Bluevale or something equally stupid.

Anyway, if you know any good WvW focused guilds on Sorrows Furnace with a healthy number of players in the Oceanic region - pretty please shoot me a message / email / post otherwise I will consider buying a 2nd account & join an established Oceanic WvW server (considering buying a 2nd copy of the game for a lot of reasons).

So yea, that's me in a nutshell (  8-(  )

Finding karma armor sets & other items for level 80 toons

So this morning a good mate of mine mentioned he had purchased an exotic armor piece from a Karma vendor & given my focus in game has been making a few copper in the TP and when not hunting down enemies in the WvW battleground this news was very interesting to me.

To date I have been saving every silver coin that comes my way resulting in my toons largely running around in green set items or maybe the odd rare item for slightly better stat's so I'm a fish out of water when it comes to knowing what armor is available from who or what & where.

That said in googling the topic there are several ways of obtaining rare & exotic armor:

• Loot from drops from beasties killed
• Trading Post - make sure you visit spidy / gw2db / tpcalc first etc
• Instances or Dungeons which issues tokens upon completion
• WvW where you obtain Badges of Honor
• Craft your own!
• Obtain Order sets meaning the Priory, Whisper or Vigil
• Karma via a vendor

Dulfy.net has a post up that addresses this topic, I've mentioned these guys have good info before so I really should have used my own links to visit their site first ...

The TLDR version is:

1. There are 6 locations / vendors / PvE sets available
2. The vendors only 'spawn' or are available after an event has been completed & the area is shown on your map as uncontested
3. The cost in karma is typically around 42k for the large items

If using karma to buy items is not your thing you can visit gw2db.com & using their search tools you can find your armor type super quick & work out where to pick them up from or what mats you need to create.

If your character uses medium armor like my toon is & you like to have magic find then something like the Divinity Council set could be of interest, or a bit of everything then the Aidan's set might be to your flavour then there's the Aurora set which is quite nice.

So, have a think about how you play your character, where you play so you know how many tokens or how much karma you need, how many gold pieces are required, if you favour a balanced approach or want moar DPS as these will all impact the armor that you eventually decide upon.

Personally, if you have the coin I'd probably lean toward suggesting buying the pieces you like on the TP and saving your karma for that Legendary item later on.

Food type & Ingredient Lists

Following on from previous posts pointing out magic find items and farming & karma vendor locations I've come across a few truly epic lists covering off Food types and the boons or buffs they provide players, a Recipe list and also a list containing all the ingredients chefs require in the course of leveling their cooking.

The first being the food types can be found on the Guild Wars 2 Wiki here provided by user Dacromir (now known as a demi god for his efforts) and being an epic compilation it contains far too many entries to list them all here, but, here's a peek at what you'll find.

Level	Item	Effect
20	Cheese Pizza	+8% Condition duration
25	Veggie Pizza	+16% Condition duration
35	Mushroom Pizza	+24% Condition duration +50 Condition damage
50	Fancy Veggie Pizza	+28% Condition duration +60 Condition damage
70	Super Veggie Pizza	+36% Condition duration +60 Condition damage
80	Rare Veggie Pizza	+40% Condition duration +70 Condition damage

Level	Item	Effect
10	Spicy Meat Kabob	+40 Power for 30s on kill
25	Pepper Steak Dinner	+60 Power for 30s on kill
40	Sesame Roasted Dinner	+100 Power for 30s on kill +4% Critical damage
55	Plate of Coriander Crusted Meat Dinner	+120 Power for 30s on kill +6% Critical damage
80	Plate of Truffle Steak Dinner	+200 Power for 30s on kill +10% Critical damage

Using the wiki you can now determine which food item will complement your current spec instead of buying what's recommended by a guildy or is the cheapest on the TP.

The 2nd list covers the various Ingredients found in GW2 found here.

Lastly, a List of Recipes if found here so all you need to do is quick search for the item you want to make & the ingredients are clearly detailed - sounds simple but quick and easy solutions like these are not so quick or easy to find.

Tips for playing WvW & Emotes FTW!

So I've had the thought rattling around the back of my head that I really should write down somewhere all the things I forget & wish I didn't in game like how to:

Hide your UI by pressing Control + Shift + H
Take a screen shot hiding your UI = Shift + Print Screen

Then I came across a post on Reddit.com called What are some things you wish more people knew about WvW which gave me the inspiration to make my own lists of stuff & paraphrase some of the reddit post. I am making the assumption you have played WvW and have some basic understanding of how it works and know how to acquire siege blueprints etc.

• Build siege weapons when they're thrown down by your team, if no one has supply then go get it from the nearest supply depot, the siege item will knock down the wall / gate much faster than you ever will

• Now that you have siege in place make damn sure you heal the players operating the siege weapons, if you're not aware in order to use a siege weapon you cannot access your skill bar so cannot heal / shield yourself so these guys need your help

• When building arrow carts DON'T put them in the middle of a wall (like in the pic below) or on the outside edge, yes you will have a better field of vision & be able to target enemies better but you will be taken out by enemy AOE in 5 seconds. Run around & find a spot that is right on the inside edge that you can just target the gate but can also target some of the field & you're golden

• You CAN create trebuchets in Garrison that hit DB and you SHOULD create at least 3 & you SHOULD ask another player to act as a spotter to let you know where & what you are hitting

• You DO NOT need to stay within the circle to control a point after killing a scout / taking a tower to get a successful event notification, too many times I see 10 people standing there doing nothing when they could be porting back to base to move on to the next location

• Only skirmishes or battles involving more than 5 players will show up on the world or mini map so a 2 v 2 fight will go un-noticed by a zerg just like a 5 man party running around a map capping scouts etc will be invisible unless visually sighted

• If you keep or tower is being attacked don't use the supply to repair it unless you are positive you are going to lose it, use your own & other player supply to build arrow carts etc to kill the enemy. If you repair the wall they will only damage it again so put it another way siege defeats an attack while repair slows the defeat

• Quaggans are not useless! Their camps in the borderlands only require 15 pearls (which you can find in the lake keep & stockpile to use whenever you like) or Krait kills to gain allegiance which is only a few minutes effort then the camps can cause weather events in their vicinity which can heal allies or damage enemies. Another good thing about this is not many players like fighting underwater so you tend to be left alone, and, because the Krait are not killed very often you tend to receive the max bonus xp from each kill

• You can join your Commander's squad by opening your map & clicking on the Commander's blue arrow & Join squad message should pop up. Communication is huge in PvP so every little bit helps

• You can 'link' locations in chat like you can weapons or mats the benefit there is if someone is new to PvP and do not know where events or locations are clicking your link in chat automatically opens their map & shows them where they need to go / where you are

• On the point of being new, don't be hesitant to call out in chat if you see enemy moving to or from somewhere but do add which server they're from & the number you see


• If you are not going to defend a Supply Camp you should drain it's supply & an easy way of doing this is to drop a ram or 2 & build it using the camps supply. Why do this? Because if the camp has no supply the nearby keep or tower that your team is attacking will shortly be in shitzen!.

Now for the most important content - Emotes!

/beckon          /bow                  /cheer              /cower            /cry               /dance          /kneel

/laugh             /no                    /point               /ponder          /salute          /shrug           /sit

/sleep             /surprised          /threaten         /wave             /yes

Magic Find in Guild Wars 2

There's an abundance of information on this topic on every blog imaginable but not alot of pieces of information is in the one spot so  ...

Food Item	Boons / Stats
Omnomberry Bar	30% Magic Find 40% Gold from Monster
Omnomberry Tart	30% Magic Find +70 power
Peach Tart	26% Magic Find +60 power
Ginger Pear Tart	22% Magic Find +50 Power
Orange Coconut Bar	22% Magic Find +20% Gold
Ginger Pear Tart	22% Magic Find +50 power
Cherry Tart	18% Magic Find +40 power
Strawberry Tart	10% Magic Find

Rune = Armor / Glyph = Weapons	Stats
Superior Rune of the Pirate	(1): +10% Magic Find (2): +20% Might Duration (3): +15% Magic Find (4): 5% chance to shout Yarr and grant Might to nearby allies when hit (cooldown: 10s) (5): +25% Magic Find (6): +5% chance to summon a Parrot (Cooldown: 60s)
Superior Rune of the Noble	(1): +10% Magic Find (2): +15 Power (3): +15% Magic Find (4): +35 Power (5): +25% Magic Find (6): +5% chance to summon a Drakehound when hit
Superior Rune of the Traveler	(1): +10% Magic Find (2): +15 Vitality (3): +15% Magic Find (4): +35 Vitality (5): +25% Magic Find (6): +5% Movement speed
Superior Rune of the Scavenging	(1): +28 Condition Damage (2): +7% Magic Find (3): +55 Condition Damage (4): +13% Magic Find (5): +100 Condition Damage (6): +15% Magic Find; Increased Gold from monsters
Superior Sigil of Luck	+0.6% Magic Find each time you kill a foe. (max 25 stacks and ends on downed)

I've found finding armor pieces something of a crap shoot on my server, only finding 1 decent piece at a time so I have little experience in 'sets' which allow you to benefit from bonuses the more pieces you have & the more runes you have applied.

I will update the post as more information becomes available & as time permits.

Edit:

Came across a post by Sardu at guildwars2hub.com called The Pirates Guide to Magic Find Gear which is a good read as is most of the site so go check it out, below is a picture I've lifted from their site.

Botters & botting - is it exploding?

It's a topic that comes up regularly in every game I've played since D1 some what 15 years ago players who cannot be bothered grinding their characters or farming  for items and perhaps more prevalent of them all the professional botter who kills beasties for profit.

Of late there's been some chatter in the official forums & various websites that botting was increasing this was met with a response, which I've attached to this blog as a link from Arenanet saying they're aware & working hard.

Woohoo, except within the space of an hours playtime I ran into perhaps 5 botters running teams of bots in a party running a circuit around 1 section of a map which shockingly were right next to areas that had regular events which specifically involved killing a crap load of npc's.

The result is if you want to kill the beasties here to complete a heart you won't get any bonus experience and in fact depending on the skills the botter has selected the team of bots might move so fast & kill so fast that you might not be able to gather enough renown in a set period of time to make it worth your time competing with them.

In this respect the bots are making some areas of the game unplayable in addition there are bots i've seen that stop to loot items presumably to onsell those items at stupidly cheap prices messing with peoples chosen markets & economies. Maybe you don't care about the economy but the point is these 'people'  are impacting players gaming experience & I'm blaming Arenanet for not pulling enough of their head out of their ass to notice the full extent of the problem.

Alright I get it but why write this post we've heard it all before?

Exactly because we have heard it all before - why is this type of activity still happening when there's post after forum post when players are submitting report after report and like I am doing posting on private blogs? There is the risk that people are simply becoming used to seeing bots, accepting the view that the problem is simply part of playing an online game - I think that's BS.

I personally view botters as 1 step away from hackers, phishers & other scum bags engaging in activities designed to profit only themselves at the expense of legitimate gamers & they need to be banned, the credit card used to purchase the game needs to be banned, any account that they sent mail to needs to be banned, any character & account that bought their items for too cheaply or for too much in the TP needs to be banned & my list goes on.

There is the chance some innocent player could get caught up in the whole banning process but I guarantee they would be in the minority & an investigation by Anet will see them unbanned pretty easily. But seeing as how little action is being witnessed in game, even if Anet could be fighting the good fight behind the scenes but some things need to be seen to be done particularly when there are websites openly advertising bots & here & here & here & I could go on & on & on ...

I'm not the only one pissed off at the sheer number of bots, check out this hilarious video posted by danteswar1 taking on the bots in WvW called Guild Wars 2 WvW Bot Farmer Farming and here find the official forum post on GuildWars 2.com re botting that Anet had to close before reply's & posts got out of control.

If you see the below toons report them, hell even write their names down and send an email or petition to Anet directly. I messaged each of these guys in game & followed them for a few minutes long enough to satisfy myself they are botting so don't come back with the whole maybe they're not botters maybe they're just anti social arguement ....

Aomesneheaben              Baoengamebe              Blsowa              Dawoemhenmai

Kashmir Grrr [ARG]

Mykeic                                                 Workyou

Sorryes          Kiliyv          Poiuyc

Baxianlinb          Bajiewu

Cjoin              Gjoin              Hjoin              Hveriodf

Dingdingmao              Lkibhg              Bshuihg              Cat With Mrsli

That said, I'm hoping to add some more links to some sites & programs today which are not as well known as I would like.

Guild Wars 2 Guru & UnbeatableGW & the Unbeatable's Legendary Guide

I had every intention of writing a useful hints type post today so I don't forget little things that I've come across or seen that makes life a bit easier in game, until a quick trip to http://www.guildwars2guru.com/ put me in a very pissed off mood.

You see there is a GW2 player who on those forums is known as UnbeatableGW and you can review his forum profile here: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/user/56026-unbeatablegw/ any how he had the audacity to create & post a Guide explaining how he came to obtain a legendary item.

Why audacity? That sounds like a pretty good deal right, a guide explaining how another player obtained a legendary is something every guild wars 2 player would be interested in yea? Audacity I say because it didn't take long before some ignorant tight assed wanker and poor excuse for a human being complained to GW2 guru that the guide was promoting exploiting.

You see the TLDR version is a portion of the guide is to locate a high level section of the world with several events within close location to each other & to "TAG" them, by tag I mean you contribute to the completion of the quest or event but do not hang around for the entire time the event is up.

There are a few scrubs out there with no imagination or any IQ of note that insist that if you do not hang around until the event has been completed, if you leave even a few seconds before the end, you are exploiting ... the game ... other players ... who knows really because when challenged they whinge & whine so much they cannot present a clearly defined position.

But it's not just the scrubs I am pissed off with, it's the moderator Khalija of the GW2 Guru site who took the guide off the front page of their site without warning because "I don't condone that behaviour" leading to 3 pages of comments from their site's members asking WTF ?! This after he / she / it admits they only performed a "quick study" of the guide and "completely failed to see" the purportedly offensive material (in their opinion ).

WTH are you a moderator for if you do not proof review the material you put on FRONT PAGE of your site? Then you offer up same lame ass quick study like it's not my fault I'm like really busy man doing stuff I can't be held responsible!

Given my stated purpose of providing a location where I and who knows maybe others can source links directing them to useful information, news, guides, helpful tips because there are not enough high profile sites out there doing so - to then have one of the few major hubs of information flippantly remove a great guide blows my mind.

Who gets to decide what is an exploit or not other than Arena net? Did this moderator email or contact AN? Did they tweet them asking for feedback? Did they consult other site owners?

No just remove the content from front page & bury the data.

Apologise all you like in hindsight after the members asked why - you've revealed yourself to be a tool of the highest calibre.

Wai 2 fail Guru Ya Rly.

Farming & Karma Vendor Locations in GW2

The latest compendium of locations where you can bag yourself a bunch of cooking ingredients foraging everything from grapes to strawberries is being provided by Dulfy.net.

Here's a screen shot but I recommend you pop over to their site & poke around there's some good stuff like a list of Karma Vendors where you can select the region you want and the site will provide you with the Renown Heart quest title and what goodies are available upon completion.

Material (links to GW2db)	Zone
Artichoke	Mount Maelstrom
Artichoke	Straits of Devastation
Butternut Squash	Fireheart Rise
Butternut Squash	Frostgorge Sound
Cabbage	Blazeridge Steppes
Cabbage	Dredgehaunt Cliffs
Cabbage	Harathi Hinterlands
Cauliflower	Timberline Falls
Cauliflower	Sparkfly Fen
Grape	Fields of Ruin
Grape	Lornar’s Pass
Lettuce	Caledon Forest
Lettuce	Queensdale
Potato	Metrica Province
Potato	Plains of Ashford
Potato	Wayfarer Foothills
Spinach	Brisbane Wildlands
Spinach	Gendarran Fields
Strawberry	Kessex Hills
Strawberry	Snowden Drifts
Strawberry	Diessa Plateau
Sugar Pumpkin	Bloodtide Coast
Sugar Pumpkin	Iron Marches

Geez learning this html stuff is not my cup of tea so I hope this is worth it lolz.