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.

Leveling in GW2 = WvW ?

I've found there are large numbers of blogs & posts offering their opinions on how best to level a character in Guild Wars 2, the one's you may find value in depends on what you like about the game.

For myself I've never been a crafter, in WOW I crafted items as a result of researching how I could deal more damage or saw others with items which I could apply to my inventory or gear, such as engineering & making bombs or mines or rocket boots etc so while it is viable to boost a character in GW2 20 levels by levelling 2 disciplines in GW2 I cannot be bothered.

Grinding or farming is always a viable option in almost every game where you go out & kill off beasty after beasty then checking out all the different items that you've looted, working out which items can be salvaged into what base material and in the process gaining XP and a bit of currency from what you vendor / trade / auction off. 

Problem with this scenario in GW2 is if you repeatedly kill the same mobs in the same area you will quickly receive ZERO bonus XP so you can't go to your favourite hidey hole off the beaten track to safely & mindlessly turn the countryside into a graveyard, instead you must constantly move from location to location hoping that someone else isn't doing the same thing just over the horizon in front of you.

I could list a few other ways but I'll jump straight to what I do which is World Vs World PvP or WvW which depending on the group of players you are mixing with can net you big XP, Karma & Coin.

The key is completing events by taking key locations within the battleground, assaulting an enemy scout will result in one of those event notification messages popping up (like the one above) likewise taking a tower / supply depot and also defending a tower / supply depot etc will net you more notifications & goodies.

I played this morning for an hour which went by in the blink of an eye picking up 2 levels, dying twice so cost me 2s in repairs or so but picked up some nice karma & a fistful of badges from those nasty enemies. WvW is THE easiest way to gain your monthly achievement in my book.

I'm not saying this is the best approach or that it will even appeal to you, perhaps you'll try it & react like I did to crafting & run away but you should at least try it out & if worse comes to worst you can still forage like in PvE which might be an attraction to you.