Adventures in Tyria, A Look at Guild Wars 2 And Legendary Weapons

By Grease Coakes

When I bought Guild Wars 2 a few years ago I was pulled in by the immense world that’s Tyria. Being a steady player staying up to 3 or 4am some nights playing pvp or doing dungeons has brought me a long way.

I highly recommend this game as now you just have to pay for the heart of thorns expansion as the base game is free. However the way Guild Wars 2 makes it’s money is with gems and people buying the expansion. Another name for GW2 is fashion wars as you can buy outfits or accessories with gems you purchase with real money. Or you could buy gems with gold earned in game.

The classes you can play as such as Mesmer,Elementist,Necromancer who wear light armor. The medium armor classes are Engineer,Ranger,Thief. The Heavy armor classes are Guardian,Warrior and now with the expansion Reverant which is a mystic warrior which can use the mists to bring him power.

Mesmer can make mirror images as his images attack for you and confuse foes. Elementlists harness the four elements to attack or heal with water. Necromancers use death as magic to bring foes to an early grave.

Engineers use gadgets and guns to blast enemies. Rangers like hunters in wow hunt with bow and arrow and have an animal companion to hunt along with them. Thieves have low hit points but can attack with stealth and do heavy damage with daggers and pistols.

The Heavy classes are Guardian which is like a Paladin smiting with holy powers. The Warrior is the tough mace swinging solider.

Each class can use different weapons such as pistol or sword. Every weapon gives different attacks 1-5 on your keyboard. If you decide to give Guild Wars 2 a try, play around and see what character and weapons work best for you.

Also for the new expansion there are elite classes you have to get hero points to unlock. Chronomancer for Mesmer and Tempest for Elementlist. You have to gain hero points to unlock the elite classes.

In the game there are crafting professions such as Chef, Huntsman, Artficing, Weaponsmithing and more. They can make goods, such as food and dyes for chefs, melee weapons for weaponsmiths. But crafting professions were also needed to help make something which has been a tremendous source of pride for me.

If you've met me in Second Life lately, you might have seen my fliptitle which says “I have Rodgort the Legendary Torch.” You might of wondered what that means. There are legendary weapons you can attain which isn’t just soulbound to one character. However it takes a long time and lots of the in-game gold. There’s a list of them here on the bottom of the page https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rodgort. One of them Rodgort happens to be the one I have that Cat Mage now has (my Mesmer).

When you forge a legendary it’s useable by ANY of your account characters. So long as your character can use whatever legendary weapon. For example my Mesmer can use it, but also so can my human ranger.

Another bonus to having a legendary weapon on top of having wonderful visual effects is the fact that so long as you’re out of combat you can change the stats to whatever you choose. If you want more hit points pick solider. If you want more condition damage and precision pick viper. Equipment such as armor and weapons have stat combos. If you want to change stats you have to unequip your legendary weapon and click select stats. It’s fun to experiment to see how Viper or Assassin will change your damage or boost your armor.

You might be asking “Grease how do you get a legendary weapon?” Well it took a LOT of work. And a lot of gold. When you first start the game you might want to start exploring and practice playing at one class or try another class and like that better. One of the things you need for any legendary weapon is the gift of exploration. You get that when you explore all the maps of Tyria. The new legendary weapons such as Nevermore you need to explore the new areas in the Heart of thorns expansion.

 Also dungeons and PvP. You can get free weapons and armor through dungeon tracks. The eight dungeons offer weapons and armor and specific to each dungeon. The weapons and armor have stat combos. So it very possible before you even hit 80 which is the max level to have exotic or orange gear.

PvP is very harsh. Overwatch is a fairy tale compared to how hard and intense Guild Wars 2 PvP can be. HOWEVER. You can get clovers and weapons and armor for free if you stick to it. Mystic clovers you also need for legendary weapons. It’s easier to get them through PvP but slower and cheaper then taking chances with the mystic forge. You also receive tomes of knowledge through PvP.

But don’t throw all your time into PvP though. Once you hit 80 you can do dungeons and get gold along with lots of low level weapons and armor to salvage for magic find. Over time magic find gets higher so you find better armor and weapons and also materials such as vicious claws that you also need for legendary weapons. Dungeons are easy once you get the hang of them.

In order to PvP on the dungeon tracks you have to complete the story mode of whatever dungeon. For example the first dungeon story mode I unlocked was Honor of the waves. When you first start Citadel of Flame is already playable. That offers berserker gear which has power precision and Ferocity. Most players use this gear for the highest damage but it makes your character fragile as well.

Also something you can complete is a title called dungeoneer which offers you ascended (pink) accessories for free. Each dungeon has the weapons and armor sets you can unlock through completing the dungeons giving you tokens for whatever dungeon. When you unlock ALL of them you receive an accessory on the house. Two of them have healing stats. Two of them have assanin’s stats for high damage. The other two are solider’s for tanking. The last two are carrion for condition damage. Such as fire burning an enemy or a sword cutting someone making him/her bleed.
When you finally grunt and get all the dungeons you not only have those eight accessories for free. You also get the title of dungeoneer AND a large treasure chest.

While you get these armor and weapons you might not be using you can salvage them into ectos which (surprise) you need for a legendary weapon AND sell for decent gold. When you get dungeoneer you can keep using tokens for gear just salvage on top anything else you find in dungeons.

Also to get legendries, you have to get gifts from professions. For example for Rodgort I need Chef and Huntsman to create gifts to combine in the mystic forge for your weapon. Not only that it was costly in gold to get the materials for the gifts. You also had to spend gold to bring your crafting profession to a high enough level to create the gift. Sound expensive? Yes it was but worth it as my Mesmer walks around with fire foot prints now.

I hope this helps anyone looking for a new game to play to suck you in to goof off and play on your days off. Also once you pay for the expansion THERE’S NO MONTHLY FEE. Whether you play around for free with limited options or buy the expansion Heart of Thorns of HOT for short. Arena Net doesn’t charge you a subscription fee. Feel free if you see something you like to buy  with gems (from real money) or gold within game traded for gems.

Bring yourself to Tyria for a grand adventure I know I have. There’s also guilds to join to share your adventure with others who might share in your interests and you might get lucky as you might also talk with people also from Second life. In fact I’m working on a second legendary called the Bifrost a rainbow staff. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Bifrost Who knows you might run into me in this fantasy/steampunk massive RPG.

Grease Coakes

Gaming News: Steam Suddenly Ending Modder Payment System, WoW Numbers Drop, A Cheater's Public End

By Bixyl Shuftan

There were a couple notable stories this week in the world of Massive Multiplayer Games. The  news about World of Warcraft's numbers revealed that the boost provided by their latest expansion is now over. When "Warlords of Draenor" came out, the response was electric, subscriptions going from less than 7 million in June 2014 to more than ten in November. The latest statistics released show that by March 2015, numbers had plummeted as fast as they had risen, down to 7.1 million.

So why the plunge? Different players will give different answers. One heard more than once was that once a player reached Level 100, maxed out the Garrison, and witnessed Garosh Hellscream's end, there wasn't that much to do. But even with this drop, World of Warcraft remains the top MMO.

Links: MMO Champion, Gamespot, Nasdaq, IGN, 

In another MMO, a cheater was delt with in a very public way. Over a few weeks, players gathered evidence of a JT Darkside using exploits  to dominate other characters in Player versus player combat, teleporting away, dealing massive damage, etc., "with these programs running, the character could travel around the map at extraordinary speeds, teleport inside structures to take them from opposing factions, and apparently both hit hard as well as be hard to kill."

As youtube videos were the big evidence against him, in a fitting end to Darkside, his fate was shown in a youtube video on a post by security cheif Chris Cleary in the Guildwars forum. The video showed Darkside being stripped of his clothes down to his underwear, giving the viewer a friendly wave, then plummeting off a ledge to his death. The character, and one other belonging to the player, were deleted. When someone asked about his account, Clearly posted, "We don't need to see it (evidence) in-game. Sometimes good video evidence is good enough for me to track down who it was. In this case, the video was enough for me to findout who it was and take action. Thanks for the video, and to accompany your video, I give you this video of his account's last moments. Oh yah, he's also banned."

The response was a number of cheers from gamers, "Perfect way to embarrass these idiots who seem to find it fun cheating."

Links: Guild Wars 2 Forums, Eurogamer, BBC News, Massively OP,

Late last month was a move by Steam that got quite a bit of attention. They announced a new system that would allow the makers of game mods to sell them on Steam Workshop, starting with Skyrim, which has among the most mods of any game on the market. While the move excited some people whom felt this would encourage new content, others reacted badly, feeling they'd have to pay for what they were getting for free.

The system didn't remain up for long. After only four days, Steam announced the system was being taken down. In a statement, Steam explained than in the past their efforts to allow "community creators to receive a share of the rewards" had been "in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different." They had been taken off guard by the numbers of those complaining.

There was one other issue, though it didn't get as much buzz as people having to pay for mods. The question was also raised about how much the modders themselves would make. Only a 25% would go to the modder. The rest was split with Steam's owner Valve and Skyrim's owner Bethesda, 30-45 respectively. Hamlet Au blasted this decision to give modders such a small percentage, "it suggests that Bethesda looked at it's sales data, noticed the financial success of it's most talented, dedicated, grassroots developer fans, and decided that was a bad thing. I'm not even finished with how bad this is: It suggests that talented independent gamers do not deserve great success, despite countless hours of free work, risked on the great likelihood that they would earn little or no revenue for their plans. It suggests that only professional game developers deserve to be reasonable compensated for game development. It suggests that Bethesda thinks it puts more value into Skyrim than the hundreds of thousands of it's most passionate fans who make and use Skyrim mods."

Hamlet Au compared Bethesda's apparent attitude to modders to Linden Lab's feelings to content creators making more money than the Lindens themselves, "They brag about it." He brought up a speech by then CTO Cory Ondrejka in which he mentioned one businesswoman, " 'She makes more money than me,' said Cory. And he was proud of that."

Both Bethesda's attitude and the sudden removal of the mod sale system "has deeply hurt the long term value of Skyrim," Hamlet Au thought. He felt the game, now four years old, could have "easily thrived for a decade or more."

In the meantime, those modders hoping to get at least some money for Skyrim mods will have to look elsewhere. Perhaps some will hear about the successes of Second Life's content creators and come here.

Links: New World Notes, Steam Community,  Ars Technia, Kotaku, Bethblog, Steamed,

Bixyl Shuftan

Game Review: Guild Wars 2

By Grease Coakes

Most gamers are familiar with WOW, aka World Of Warcraft, as the best selling online roleplaying game, rich with lore and many things to do and quests to accomplish. Guild Wars 2, available to buy online for a fair price of $50, follows the same vein. The world of Tyria is rich in adventure with incredible realistic graphics and easy to get into playability. For example in WOW if you wanted to go from one place to another for a low cost in gold you hired a wyvern or a griffin to fly you there on a fixed flying route which took some time. In GW2 you merely press M for map and click on a waypoint or WP for short. For a small cost in silver or copper you see a load screen appears for a brief time and you're where you want to go.

As you create your character you can pick from four races: the Asura a goblin race which is small but extremely intelligent, Humans, a larger human-like race called the Norn, and a furry race called the Charr which is a cat/lion furry. Including the sex of your character, you have a wide variety of options to choose from. Options include skin and hair, color, height and physical physique of your character. Last names are accepted for your character. For example my Charr warrior is Dusty Coakes. You can also pick colors for your armor or clothes. Don't worry the colors you pick aren't permanent. One of the many options is dyes so you can always change the colors of the clothes or armor you wear.

In addition to those options you also have a set of questions. Like when your character was growing up who was your trainer and were you born from a noble family or was your father a traitor? Another question when I made my elementlist was what element do you feel most connected to? Arena Net, the game company behind Guild Wars 2, put a lot of time and thought into this game. There's also eight classes or what the game calls professions to pick from as your character. There's also a story mode you can play through with rewards and sometimes you earn a Black Lion Key. You use these keys to open Black Lion chests which has treasures you can only earn from these chests.

Warriors are the tough guys along with guardians. Both of them can wear heavy armor as the guardian is like the paladin from WOW. An engineer creates guns and turrets to attack and heal. The ranger is akin to the hunter from WOW. The thief is sneaky and has lots of tricks to play keep away and do heavy damage. The Engineer Thief and Ranger can wear medium armor hence leather armors.

Necromancers use spooky and death related spells to hurt and drain health from baddies. Mesmers create duplicates of him or herself to confuse foes and slowly wear down and kill whomever. Elementlists use the four elements of fire water earth and air to attack or heal. These three professions let your character wear cloth armor.

Not only does the game have fabulous graphics you also hear superb voice acting. You'll hear voice emotes like “Go ahead hit me!” or “I can outrun a centaur!” My Elemtlist says things like “Air!” or “My power will drown you!” when I switch him to water. Cut scenes in dungeons or in story mode also have excellent voice acting and excellent graphics.

WOW to get to the maximum level took a while. As you went from area to area getting herbs or metals you finished quests to speed up your leveling. GW2 is in the same way but different. As you travel around you'll see an empty heart pop up on your screen. There's a text read out explaining what the NPCs want you to do in the area. When the heart fills up you receive experience karma and a low gold reward. Filling hearts in an area helps you level quicker. In fact just completing hearts in areas will level your character at a very fast pace. Or if you PVP you earn tomes of knowledge. Each tome of knowledge gives you a level.

Like in WOW you gather materials for your crafts like tailoring, cooking, amrorsmithing, weaponsmithing, etc. However to gather materials like wood metals or carrots you don't have to use a trade slot to gather those materials or mats for short to create items or sell. So long as you have mining picks sickles and axes equipped you can always gain these items from various nodes in the game. So instead of mining and armorsmithing like in WOW you can have cooking and weaponsmithing as your trade skills instead. And you can still gather other materials to sell off.

Akin to WOW you can sell your goods and shop around on the Black Lion Trading Company. However let's say your bags filled up and you're in no mood to go back to town to unload your goodies to sell. And GW2 isn't stingy with gear dropping you'll see gear drop now and again as you kill baddies in your way.

You could right click over an item you want to sell and the item is taken from your bags to be sold on the BL Trading company. Taking a few minutes to right click everything up for sale takes a lot less time then going back to town and going to a BL Trading company NPC to sell in person.

In each area there are vistas, points of interest, waypoints, hearts, and skill points. Vistas give you a wonderful scrolling view of an area but aren't always easy to reach or find. Skill points you have to earn either by your character absorbing the skill point or fighting an NPC for it. Skill points purchase traits and abilities for your character. Every time you level up you also receive a skill point. Points of interest you just find and it pops up as completed.

There's a downscaling system as you explore Tryia. For example if your character is level 50 and you're in a level 35 area you'll be downscaled down to a level 35. However your gear will still give you high stats. You should have an easier time killing mobs but don't get lazy you can still die if you're not careful.

When you complete an area for example when you start a Charr your first area is Ashford Plains so you might complete that first. You receive a blue chest which has goodies for your character. The higher level the area the better loot you receive. GW2's motto is treasure as the game rewards you in various ways.

One thing you can do with random loot you find is use a salvage kit to break apart items to get ore pieces of leather and essences of luck. Essences of luck will boost your magic find and you use the materials salvaged from items to sell or for crafting.

After a while you may try your hand at PvP or player vs player. However your level doesn't make any difference as your character is given a PvP necklace and runes that makes it possible for any level 1 character to be able to fight a level 80 character on equal ground.

There's various games that pop up and in fact you don't have to wait very long for a PvP game to join. Click the PvP icon and you're taken to a Player versus Player waiting area. Talk to the Norn and you're good to go. There's a capture the flag game similar to WOW's Warsong Gulch and other games where controlling points is the key to victory. If possible like the buddy system in swimming swim with a buddy for safety reasons.

The buddy system in PvP is a good idea. With at least two people taking a point it's much easier to defend instead by all your lonesome. The other team may zerg around and knock the stuffing out of you quickly. Each team is up to 5 people is a color blue or red and you can take your pick. The main goal isn't just to chase down and kill the other team but to get 500 points through controlling points.

Fair warning though PvP is not for the faint of heart. It goes at a very fast pace and once in a while some players might say mean things. However playing in PvP can be worth your time and effort if you put the hard work into it and take your bad games with your good games.

For example my Elementlist wanted a whole dungeon set before he hit level 80. So when I did story mode in a dungeon called “Honor of the waves.” It unlocked a PvP track for me permanently. Usually PvP tracks might be locked until a certain time when it's unlocked again.

So all I did for a while was just PvPing and ever so slowly I earned Kodan tokens and weapon boxes along the way and treasure boxes. Not only that I can earn scrolls and tomes of knowledge to level up my character and skill points. When I got what I wanted out of PvP my character hit 80 (which is the max level). So with that character he already had a full armor and weapons set for a lot of blood sweat and tears. After that I stopped PvP and went to dungeons instead. However with PvP you can only do so much PvP before you hit a PvP limit and you stop receiving points on your PvP track. When you see a red ! Stop playing in PvP and find something else to do and try PvP again later. Over time the red! Will go away and you can start again. GW2 must of put that there so you don't earn treasure from PvP too fast.

As you level up you also earn traits to make your character better. For example my elementlist is traited fire and water. And two points in arcane. There's 5 choices for each profession or class whichever noun you wish to use. When you hit max level at 80 you have 14 trait points to spend. Each choice or trait line is a maximum of six. So I have six points in fire and water and 2 in arcana. Traits also give you bonuses to your stats. Water grants me vitality and healing power. Fire gives me power.

Each weapon gives you options as well. There's weapon choices for each character. For example 3 on my warrior depending if he has an axe or mace equipped has two different attacks. If a thief is attacking me in pvp and I’m smart enough to have a one handed mace equipped I can click counterblow by clicking 3 which is very handy. If the thief attacks me his attack is blocked and I thwack him with my mace for very high damage. The 4 and 5 keys are my shield. Where I can block attacks for a short time or rush a short distance and stun a bad guy.

Or if I have an axe equipped and someone I want kill in PvP is running away from me I can mouse click 3 and throw an axe at whoever. It adds what's called a condition (something bad on your character.) the condition is a cripple which cuts down the character's speed in half The opposite is called a boon which is something good for your character like a speed or might boon.

As your character levels up there's also abilities and or spells you can buy with skill points and the traits you also have to purchase with skill points. But don't worry the game isn't stingy with skill points as you earn them in areas or through PvP.

As you progress through the game there are also skins for armor and weapons that you earn from the game. My elementlist walks around in a full kodan armor set and also kodan weapons and my warrior Dusty is in a flame legion armor set. With transmutation points you can change your character's clothing or armor appearance from other skins you have unlocked. As an example I didn't like how my necromancer's hat was covering her face. So I used transmutation point to change her hat into a different skin. Transmutation points are earned through pvp or through daily rewards. My necromancer as a joke is colored pink as her name is Freehugsofdeath. She always offers free hugs but oddly no one wants a free hug. Amazingly I do very well with in PvP with her and she seems to give out lots of free hugs

Like WOW there's also guilds to join. Chit chat with guildies and also find a group to go defeat a dungeon. And GW2's dungeons aren't time eaters. A dungeon like sorrow's embrace could be knocked out in a short time like 20-30 mins.

There's also a world vs world option which is PvP on a grander scale. I haven't played much of that nor have I done much with crafting items. However what I was told is with weapon smithing you could create your own end game weapons.

With excellent graphics and easy to get into game play GW2 is an excellent game to buy for a mere $50. Oh, and the best part of all there is NO MONTHLY FEE. Once the $50 is ponied up. That's it the game is yours. Keep playing until the cows come home or until you fall asleep. You could purchase gems with real money or gold in game for skins or boosters but to play the game it's not required to use or purchase gems.

If you're looking for something to play and you enjoy playing with others go use up a birthday present or buy it yourself and have a great time burning or bashing bad guys in pvp or in a dungeon. Guild Wars 2 is the Porsche of online role playing games.

Grease Coakes