任是无情也动人

Man, I didn't even remember to look at the Nicholas thing from last week and it was an easy one. Oh well.

In other news, there was a skill update.

Assassins got buffed (much to the surprise of anti-Shadow Form guru folks, I'm sure). Several skills got recharge decreased and now there are two more AoE attacks aside from death blossom. In other news, I bet Golden Phoenix + DB/MS is the new bomb in PvE.

Dervs are... 0_o sand shards.

Eles got slightly buffed. The afflicted elementalists and margonite sorcerors are going to be more annoying, I can see. Mind blast was untouched so I'm happy.

Mesmers got nerfed. *rolleyes*

Monks got buffed... I wasn't aware that shielding hands was underpowered before but whatever.

Nec - masochism got changed and that's the only relevant change.

Ranger - BEASTMASTERY BUFFED IN PVE!! ZOMG THEY FINALLY MUSHED COMFORT & CHARM TOGETHER!! *cough*

Paragons - got ignored
Rits - Nothing nerfed from the previous buffs, and completely left off the list this time :p
Warrior - no changes, surprisingly.

*****

Still no drive to go back to it recently though. Maybe I'll give it some more time. And why has Warband of Brothers still not come up yet on the Zaishen mission bounty? Gr.

AKA. How to farm the 4 quests on a new character in about ~1:30 hours. (Initial attempts may be around 1:45 or 2 hours, but time should go down as you get used to the order of things.

1. Character selection. You'll want a character with AoE and lots of quick, hard-hitting damage at low levels. Generally I pick ele for this because I know the class well. I suppose a rit or any caster as secondary ele or rit could work too.

1a. Pick a damage oriented skill line to invest everything in: Fire for flare/firestorm, Channeling for spirit rift. As many available skill points should be devoted to this as you level. Only leftover points are assigned to other branches. (Note for the actual festival missions, it's best to switch to a single target damaging line - mesmer/domination as a primary or secondary works well.)

2. Skip the intro, beam into Monastery, hit /bonus. Wear the luminous scepter (+5e; it's not like you'll meet any reqs anyway) and the serrated shield. (Switch to hourglass staff later after you pass lvl 7.) Keep the igneous summoner around. Delete everything else.

3. Do the first few quests for the primary class as usual. On the way out, make sure to collect the henchie quest from Ludo. Make sure to unlock Tsumei. Pick up Pest Control from Zinhao while in Panjiang.

4. Collect the secondary quests for every other secondary class. (Pick a secondary to keep the skills of while talking to the profession headmasters. I prefer mesmer because empathy/energy tap/ether feast are all useful.) Also collect the side quest for belt pouch and update Pest Control.

5. Zone to Tsumei (for lvl 6 hench), exit into Sunqua. Do Sujun's quest (ranger) first, which will finish near Gai. Then head to Gai (or Ronsu) and to the rit/ele quest. Then head north and hit Reng Ku (nec) -> Jinzo (sin) -> Talon (war), then circle back sound to Tai (monk) -> Meiling (Mes). The mesmer quest will clear the way to Kinya.

6. After zoning into Kinya, head away from the Crimson Skull that approach and go around to collect Pe Wan's (monk) quest. Head north to get the berries (do not aggro the mantid boss), then hit Zho on the way back and complete her ranger quest before turning in the monk quest. Then hit Panaku (sin) followed by Lo Sha (mes). It is possible to avoid aggroing the Crimson Skull near Lo Sha to talk to him if you are quick. Or, just wait til the 3 groups separate, bring out the igneous imp, and kill them.

7. Jump to Tsumei, head out to Panjiang. Take Weng Gha's quest (war) and kill the mobs. Then keep going east and complete the side quest for belt pouch. Swing south and hit Zinhao to turn in Pest Control. Then back north to collect Weng Gha's reward. Now head south to complete Su's quest (nec). And north again to complete Ang's quest (rit).

8. Jump back to Shing Jea. Collect the belt pouch quest reward. Collect all rewards from Togo. Choose a secondary. Hit the headmaster/Ludo for the insignia quests - but just take the skills offered and don't do the quests themselves unless you need the xp. You should be lvl 10 at this point. If not, do the dojo quests or A Formal Intro.

9. First festival quest: Zone to Tsumei. Exit into Sunqua, head north toward the Shrine of Maat. If you are careful, you should be able to avoid aggroing anything on the way (scape the passage wall when passing by Wulk Cragfist). Once past Wulk, the way to Kinya should be clear. Head over and south to kill the yeti. Make sure to only aggro one at a time. Then head north to kill the Grasp.

10. Second festival quest: Again, head out from Tsumei, run all the way to the front of Shing Jea Monastery to talk to the NPC. Then head over to the Shrine of Maat to complete the quest.

11. Third festival quest: Again, head out from Tsumei, north into Kinya, and then down to kill the mob.

12. Fourth festival quest: Hardest one of the lot. Once you get into the naga caves, be careful about aggroing and always wait for regen between fights. Note that it's possible to lure the "group" of two grasps that stand next to each other one by one using a flatbow. Shoot the closer one from the edge of flatbow range, then back away slightly while the arrow is in the air.

(Also, I seem to notice that the grasps that pop out of the portal later on aren't counted toward the quest completion. If you can kill the original grasp before you are wiped, the quest will count as complete, and you do not have to go back and kill the last popped grasp.)

I have to admit though, it's much easier to run this with a second account... -_-

Decided to work on the ele today cuz her bounty list was full.

( Sepulchre on ele )

( Vloxen on ele )

Dungeons remaining: Oola and CoF on ranger; Bogroot and CoF on ele.

Oh... note to cashew: I picked up the Nicholas stuff for this week on Aoki. Most of it was party stuff which got used up immediately. Got 5 mysterious summoning stones which I swiped. Also some alcohol which got dumped on your mule. Also picked up today's zquests (Tihark, CoF) on Aoki. Had to complete Chabek (on HM) and turn in the award to free up room. Dumped the resulting 50 zcoins in your storage on top of your existing stacks.

EDIT: Blah... just noticed that some time in the past, my time zone settings on IJ got reset. Who knows how many posts now have their timestamps about 20+hours off. o_O

Completed Vloxen on the ranger... wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Only 1 death on Menhlo near the end because I missed BHA on a carven effigy.

( Vloxen analysis )

Ranger armor

Afterwards, finally broke down and bought some elite armor. Got the entire norn set for ele (pics are up on wiki so no need to show it again). And the deldrimor chest/leggings for ranger. Dying the ranger set was rather hard since I couldn't get the lighter shades of my canthan gloves/boots to match. Finally got that to work, but ended up switching to the sunspear gloves/boots cuz they were easier to dye to match. Thinking about maybe getting the elite sunspear version of those gloves/boots... or maybe the dragon gloves... hrm...

( pics of armor )

In other news, my 3.9 stacks of tanned hide is now down to a measly 1.5 stacks. T_T

EDIT (Sat.): Cross Sepulchre of Dragrimmar from the ranger's list.

( Sepulchre analysis )

EDIT 2: Finished Bogroots...

( Bogroot analysis )

Still Oola left on the ranger. Vloxen, Bogroot, and Sepulchre on the ele.

Testing...
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/4683/ele1u.jpg
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/2188/ele2y.jpg
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/7025/ele3u.jpg
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/4628/ele4.jpg

Final cut:

After much playing around, I finally found a dye mix that sort of works with the pink hair on the ele. The top is a blue + orange + silver mix, the sleeves/dress are blue + orange + red + silver, and the shoes are blue + orange + red. Yes, apparently blue + orange is the magic base for pink... don't ask. -_-

( Ele pics )

Still need a name for her. Aurora sounds good, but still need a second part / surname to go with it. Couple of possibilities...

Aurora Rosea (Latin for rose-colored)? Rubra (Latin for red tinged)
Aurora Solaris? Solis? Serenatis? (cue Sailor Moon)
Aurorae Chaos? Aurorae Iani?
Arcadia Planitia
Phaedra? Pyrene?
Aurora Ardere? Skyfire?
Dawn Icefire?

ADD: Decision made - Dawn Skyfire is the new name.


Ranger:

( pics )

Changed the hairstyle mainly to reflect my current hairstyle. Also changed the skin tone to be a little lighter (since I've not been getting that much sun since graduating :P). I think I might've changed the face to fit the hair better. Changed the hair to Elonian black instead of Canthan black, since the Canthan black had more brown in it.


Also, for laughs, here's what my characters looked like when put through the scrambler that was the 4th anniversary update (before I logged in). ( clicky ) The funny part is of course the fact that the assassin looks exactly like she did before, while everything else got makeovers.

With the April update for GW, there's so much new possibilities opened up! But, I don't want to jump in without first taking a moment to consider things...

* Zaishen Menagerie unlock ($10) - Yes, I know that technically I can get all this stuff for free if I take some time to run around and death level some pets. But death leveling takes hours per pet. So the question is, is the time I would spend doing so worth just dumping money down for the unlock?

* Makeover pack (5 changes/$10) - I've no plans to make any male characters so I don't need the extreme pack. But after skimming through some of the options available from the normal makeover stylist, I am really tempted to get one of these. I can update my ranger (who's supposed to look like me) to have my current hair style! And I'm getting kind of sick of looking at the same hair style on my ele anyway...

* Name Change ($15) - Eh, I've always been ambivalent about the name of my ele. Too freaking long. The only problem is that I've not decided on a new name. I'm actually leaning on maybe a non-Asian name. I mean, it's not like with her red hair my ele looked Asian to begin with. :P Or, maybe a mix? How does "Liuxing Skyfire" or something like that sound?

* Xunlai storage ($10 each, 4 max) - Yeah I know that you get more with additional character slots. This just saves on switching around characters to micromanage, and maybe I could clear off a mule or two to play again... then again, I don't even play with all of my mains. :P (EDIT: Though, I am tempted to buy just to spite the whiners out there...)

BTW, I can't log onto the game from work right now. Anyone can tell me how much in zcoins or balthazar faction would it take to unlock the first tier of white moa?

I seem to have way too many screenshots in my GW screenshot folder... which means I need to share them. :P

This series was taken while mapping in Kryta. You can tell the hours of border scraping made me a lil...bored.
( Ele bathing shots )

Various god shrines around Prophecies
( shrines )

Random spots throughout Kryta/Maguuma
( kryta )

And other random spots in Tyria while mapping on the ele
( random )

My ranger and ele had their 2nd bdays - got aataxe and windrider respectively, which is not bad (not ugly, at least)

Got about 48 zkeys out of both accounts combined. Sold 44 for 200k. Left 5 keys in my xunlai chest (including the leftover from last month) for next time as easier to sell in bulk. Dumped about 125 k on your account. My storage hit the gold cap... which means I should splurge some of it. Buy some estorage/soul reaping/divine favor minor runes or something. Maybe I'll go for afk lucky rank 1 & 2 when Canthan New Years rolls around.

Dropped some leftover Wintersday tonic/summoners on Aoki and used them up. Dropped some leftover alcohol on your mule too. Liberated half your rainbow candy canes ^^ for my ele. Also noticed that you forgot to exchange your 2.5 stacks of candy cane shards before the wintersday NPCs were removed, so I guess those will need to stay on a mule until next Xmas. :P

So with the update and the mission books, I figured I'd dust my assassin off and run her through Factions. So I started from Dragon's Throat and did the primary quests to get to Nahpui, and some random gold item dropped. I thought, "yay lucky!". Then, in the middle of Nahpui quarter, got a gold Celestial Shield drop. I thought, "now this is getting ridiculous".

Ridiculous, in light of the fact that my ele did not get a single gold drop throughout all of Factions. In fact, not a single gold until she was halfway through Nightfall! aghdafjk

And of course this makes me recall that Aoki has had sup vigors and black dye drop for her. Never had a single drop of either of those on any of my chars, except about a week ago when a black dye dropped for the ele for the first time. *sigh* That's in two years of playing (Ranger hits her second bday at the end of the month).

*grumbles*

In lighter news, Ele finally finished up Elona cartography yesterday. Took about five hours of doing the Sahjarlah competitive mission over and over again. But, I finally don't have to look at the ugly desert in Elona again... Now I just have to look at the ugly desert in Prophecies. -_-

( Some pics taken during the long process of mapping Elona )

http://www.gwchars.de/stats.php

Interesting site. I know it's not representative of the entire GW playerbase, but the numbers sampled here are at least significant for the slight more narrow category of European(German?) players of GW who also frequent GW fansites...

Some interesting things I noticed...

Warrior is the only class for which there's larger number of male characters than female. (Gary Stu vs. Blow-up doll?)

Monk is probably the most numerous farming class (it's only third place as most popular primary char but first place under most played class).

More people have the grind/PvE skills titles maxed (Sunspear/Lightbringer/Rep) than they have finished campaigns (Eternal Hero of X)... which makes me fear that GW2 will cater more to these pro-grind-for-perks type people.

HM titles are rare (Vanquisher, Guardian)... so it's not just me who don't like playin' in HM. Do many people actually use it for it's intended purpose (to offer fun challenge) rather than for farming? I guess not...

(Note - took me a while to realize, but 1.000 on there actually means 1,000 and not referring to some wierding scaling scheme.)

Well I finished up Protector of Tyria. That just leaves the two cartography titles that's within reach (free) to complete.

Also, created the mesmer for the month of the snake. Since I wanted to name her the name that was assigned to my rit, I went ahead a deleted the rit. That means all the mule stuff the rit was carrying are temporarily moved over to the assassin. Just temporarily until I get the mezzie through the Imperial Commendation runs anyway.

WTB recommendation on what armor (combo) to get the mez once she hits mulehood... something available in either Kaineng or Consulate Docks cuz I'm not buying a Droks run for a mule. Sunspear's pretty for dresses, but also looks like it has severe clipping issues. Ascalon and Tyrian are decent, I think.

Other stuff... Still only 4 missions away from finishing my ele's current hero book, so that's another item I should work on sometime. Also, when I feel like playing the paragon (now imbagon due to the Luxon skills) I should finish grabbing her heroes in EotN. Though, still might need to go spirit spammer for the Magni thing. ><

Oh, btw, made about 20k gold from the presents at the end of Dragon's Festival. I eventually decided to just turn in all the victory tokens I farmed into creme brulee's instead of selling them (though they were selling pretty hot). *pokes cashew* Your ele mule should have one and a little over stacks of creme brulee's on her. Unfortunately you need, like, 12 stacks to max the titles.

Well I didn't get a chance to test out Darkroot last night cuz I was trying to finish up my Protector of Tyria title (2 more to go!). But this morning I glanced through the forums again and it looks like the thread's turned a 180.

Several new builds are up on wiki and youtube for farming UW on perma-SF that is only slightly less efficient than the pre-nerf build.

Meanwhile, QQing is rampant of the E/A raptor and A/E/A boss farms.

So now the elitists who were praising ANet for doing a good job nerfing the SF UW farm are cursing them for not knowing how to balance. And the PvE'ers who were using SF for other farms are now threatening to farm UW til ecto prices crash even further below how it was before the nerf in revenge for nerfing their other non-UW farms (and also because that's the only profitable farm left to their assassins).

Man, ANet shot themselves in the foot on that one. Wonder if they're going to slap another bandaid on the problem come next skill update or if they're going to do the sensible thing (HA!) and just make more comprehensive changes to UW.

EDIT: In other news, I wonder if there's actually a chance now they're going to "nerf" UB and what that "nerf" is going to look like.
Of course, there is always a small chance they will change SF to it's pre-buff form... Hoping that's not going to be the case or else there's gonna be another storm of QQing from the entire PvE side of the game.

Finally got 100%.

Also figured out the way to not party wipe in the Echovald forest: song of purification/motivation hero, illusion mesmer hero, curses necro hero, 2 monk hench, domination mesmer hench, knockdown warrior hench. My ele went earth with ward melee, unsteady ground, sliver armor. Also threw in radiation field for kicks.

Tada! (Also pushed Norn rank to 6 while farming in EotN...)



That's a salvage bonus of +12% and a lockpick bonus of +6%. ^^

Not sure I have enough drive to work for rank 3 tomorrow though... =_=

EDIT: Got rank 3 treasure by the end of Sunday. Also kind of o_O how much the norn rank went up as I farmed. I think I'm all farmed out for now...

Some more screenshots since they decorated Kamadan and Lion's Arch this year.

( Kamadan )

( Lion's Arch )

Also, the zodiac signs for my chars...
Dog - Ranger
Pig - Ele & Necro
Rat - Rit (will probably remake her later, maybe into snake or something)
Tiger - Monk
Rabbit - Paragon
Rooster - Assassin
Dragon - Warrior
Snake - Mesmer

On the other account...
Horse - Necro
Sheep - Ranger, Warrior, Paragon
(didn't have a chance to check the rest of them...)

Firstly, shots of the "Tripitaka staff" for my ele...

( Going west... )

Also, cashew wanted to know how the ele pants looked (and whether they made the butt look fat like necro pants did). So, here it is.

( Ele pants )

Just clearing up the harddrive. Images are of Halloween and Wintersday/Xmas last year.

( Read more... )

EDIT:

I see GJ has disabled all icons period... ah well. =_=

Probably should focus on tagging old entries before making new ones but it's just too tedious, even when I'm skipping a lot of the entries.

Anyway, some good stuff happened recently so I'm in the mood to share. Firstly, my elementalist and the necro both had their first birthday on GW, which means - presents! Unlike the fugly troll my ranger got (ironic considering that's the character most like me -_-), I got good mini's this time. My ele got a seige turtle, which was one of the mini's I'd actually considered buying when I first got the game. The necro got a hydra, which was one of the other first bday mini's I preferred over the others. The only nicer option would have been a bone dragon, both for the looks and for the rarity (ie. sell for $$).

( turtle screenies! )

Second nice thing is I pass my certification exam yesterday, which means I can spare some time off to relax before I start getting badgered by the management again. Oh yes, the bonu$ I get for it is nice too. XD

Thirdly, still on the topic of $$$, I got a raise today! 'Nuff said, I think. ^_^


(Side note: Hrm... interesting. IJ seems to have the same "quirk" GJ does in that I don't have the option to set my post icon when I create a new post, only when I edit it. Is that just me?)

The Holiday festival's started for Guild Wars and will last til 1/1/08. I hear the decorations for Kamadan and Lion's Arch are pretty spectacular. There's also holiday stuff to collect for. I want a candy shield for kicks. XD

Also, I think my Ranger's bday is coming up. I think I bought GW somewhere around end of Dec. last year. Yay presents!

I was reading the GWGuru forms and came across a post (from apparently a non-native English speaker) that started off with the following:

"Even when your armor is impregnated...the sheer sum of Mursaat and jade Armors in places like the Frost Forest or how its called in English...is somewhat of overwhelming..there helps your impregnated armor nothing..."

Me: *spittake*

Impregnated armor. LOL. XD