The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
[GW2] Third Expansion Announced - End of Dragons! We're going to Cantha!
Geod
swim, swim, hungryRegistered User regular
swim, swim, hungryRegistered User regular
Welcome to the Penny Arcade Guild Wars 2 Community Thread!
- New to GW2? Check out the FAQ or the official Guild Wars 2 site for more information on the game.
- New to Heart of Thorns (the first expansion)? Check out GW2 Wiki for more information.
- New to Path of Fire (the second expansion)? Check out GW2 Wiki for more information.
- Play for Free? Go here: https://welcome.guildwars2.com/en/play-for-free
- Returning player? The Guild Wars 2 Official Wiki has both a summary of the Living Story plot and the features from each release. There’s also a list of permanent changes since launch.
- Where to buy Heart of Thorns or Path of Fire? Official Site
Path of Fire Expansion - Released September 22, 2017
End of Dragons Expansion - Release Date TBD - https://www.guildwars2.com/en/end-of-dragons/
- Cost: $29.99 (Standard), $54.99 (Deluxe), $79.99 (Ultimate)
- New Zones: The Crystal Desert five huge new zones
- Mounts: There are 4 added mounts, each with movement abilities.
- Bounties: Take on bounties tasks related to defeating various enemies
- New Adventures!
- New Guild Hall!
- New Specializations:
Ranger - Soulbeast Elite Specialization (dagger mainhand, become one with pet, stances)
Necromancer - Scourge Elite Specialization (torch, shades replacing death shroud, punishments)
Mesmer - Mirage Elite Specialization (axe, replaces dodge, deceptions)
Engineer - Holosmith Elite Specialization (sword, photon forge replaces belt, exceed skills)
Guardian - Firebrand Elite Specialization (axe, tomes replacing virtues, mantras)
Elementalist - Weaver Elite Specialization (sword, attune to two elements, stances)
Thief - Deadeye Elite Specialization (rifle, deadeye's marks, cantrips)
Warrior - Spellbreaker Elite Specialization (dagger, full counter, meditations)
Revenant - Renegade Elite Specialization (shortbow, citadel orders, Kalla Scorchrazor)
What A Nice Guild [NICE]
The Penny Arcade Community guild in Guild Wars 2 is called What A Nice Guild [NICE]. We play on the Fort Aspenwood server, although guilds are cross-server and we have members who play on other servers. It is easiest to participate in guild activities if FA is your home server, but you can join in most activities (with the exception of World vs World pvp). To permanently switch servers, you have to pay for a transfer or delete all your characters. Fort Aspenwood is a North American server, but we have plenty of people from other regions including Australia and Europe playing with us on FA, so don’t let that dissuade you if you’re located in another region.
Commanders:
@Leandriell (kalzana.3192, Leandriell)
@Ky13 (kyonethree.9814, Teldra)
Officers:
@CorriganX (CorriganX.9685, Corrigan)
@Draygo (Draygo.9473, Delarme)
@Enig (Ansatz.6498, Ansatz Coppertooth)
@mojojoeo (MojoGroove.8253, Mojojoeo)
@ShadowApple (ShadowApple.6480)
Rear Admirals:
@Geod (Geod.5024, Geod)
To join the guild:
You can ask for an invite by posting your account name (<name>.####) in this thread, and one of the officers will invite you. Alternately, you’re welcome to whisper in game one of the leaders or officers above. Anyone from the PA community may join the guild, along with any friends and family. Being active on the forums is encouraged but not required. Guild policies are loosely based on the PA forum rules – don’t be a dick. If you have any issues with anyone, please contact a guild officer.
Guilds are limited to 500 members, so occasionally we have to cull inactive members. If you find yourself removed, just ask for an invite again.
Teamspeak 3 Server
The guild has a Teamspeak 3 server, thanks to Draygo. Download TS at http://www.teamspeak.com. Hop on for guild events or just to hang out! Even if you don’t have a mic, just listening will help greatly for coordination.
Server IP: ldn-52.tca.node.nitrous.it:9999
Password: pa
Admins: Draygo, Enig, Geod, Teldra, Sage Persephone, Mojojoeo, Leandriell, Lagnar, Corrigan
The below spoiler contains the Penny Arcade Guild Wars 2 Teamspeak FAQ, written by Draygo for everyone's convenience. Please refer to it for any queries regarding the GW2 PA TS3 setup. Server seats 100+ people and everything you want to know about it can be found below or by asking Draygo, as he put it together and has been hosting these servers for years.
Q) Where do I get it:
Download teamspeak here: http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads
You can get teamspeak for windows, mac, and linux. As well as your Ithing and your android, if you so prefer.
Q) Cool, I installed it, now what?
Now you must connect to our totally awesome server. In order to do that you must first run teamspeak. Then hit Connections at the top. Select Connect.
Now you must enter the server details:
Server Address: 66.135.59.185:9999
Nickname: Your forum or In Game Name
Password: pa
Q) What does the banner in the top right do?
The community thread banner when clicked on will open the most recent guild wars 2 thread on penny arcade.
Q) How do I add a class or race icon next to my name?
You do this by right clicking yourself, put your mouse over server group, then left click any of the categories named with the race or class you want to choose. You can uncheck them at any time to remove the icon.
Q) So is there a skin/theme for this?
Yes and you can download it from our lobby. Right click the lobby, and select open file browser. You will see the installer file at the top. Download and run that file to skin your client.
In order to activate the theme/skin you need to go to settings->options, and click design on the left.
Then select Theme and change it to PA Guild Wars 2.
Q) Who made the theme?
Draygo did.
Q) How do I change my name?
Right click yourself and select change nickname. You can do this at any time. Do not change your name to impersonate an admin.
Q) What rules can I expect?
Don't be a dick. No personal attacks except 'silly goose', forum rules apply. If it is not appropriate on the forums, it is also not appropriate in teamspeak.
Q) Someone is breaking the rules, or is being disruptive, but no server admins are online. How do I complain.
First, I hope you can all be nice and resolve disputes by yourselves. If someone is being a dick, you can fill out a complaint. Right click someone and click make a complaint. Do not abuse this feature. If 5 people complain about one person in a short amount time, that person will be temp banned from the server. Do not abuse this. Admins will see the complaints that lead to the temp banning and will be unhappy to fix it.
Q) Can I make my own channels?
Yes!
Teamspeak is setup that you can make your own channels in any of the major channels (Except Admin HQ, Lobby, and Afk, for obvious reasons) First enter the channel you want to make the sub-channel in. Right click the parent channel and select, create sub channel. You can enter a name, even a password, as well as set any description you want. After you create the channel, make sure the Audio Codec selected is high enough audio quality.
Right click the channel you created and click edit channel. Click the audio tab and increase the Quality slider. Also decrease the latency slider to reduce lag time. Quality 7, latency 1 are the recommended settings.
These channels are temp only, when the last person leaves them they are automatically cleaned up.
The person who created the channel is the op of the channel and can kick people from the channel (not server). So if you created your own channel and want to remove someone, you can password protect it and remove the troublesome individual.
Q) Is there an overlay plugin?
Yes. There is a built in overlay plugin. To enable it, select tools and then Install Overwolf. inimal mode only displays the one person who is talking, the other mode displays everyone in your channel even those that are talking.
Q) Does teamspeak work with my G15 keyboard.
Yes. There is a plugin for that. Pretty easy to configure again settings->plugins, and enable the G15 keyboard.
Q) I’m seeing graphical glitches when I use the overlay. How do I fix that?
Here's how to get the overlay working without graphical glitches:
1. Go to Settings->Plugins in TS3.
2. Select GW2.exe in the Profile dropdown.
3. Uncheck all the Direct3D options, except for Direct3D 9 (which is what GW2 uses).
4. Switch to Input tab
5. Check "Enable Mouse Poll" and "Use in-game" cursor
6. Switch to extended, and check "Used ID3DDevice:Present hook..." (This is what fixes the animations not showing in GW2)
Guild Schedule
Guild Google Calendar
The guild runs various activities together on a regular basis. A schedule can be seen below, and is also in the Guild Message of the Day (MOTD). All times are Pacific.
Guild Missions
Sunday 19:00 Server, 20:00 UK, Noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern
Guild Wars 2 has activities designed for large groups called Guild Missions. PvE Missions include Bounty, Trek, Puzzle, Challenge, and Race. There are also WvW Missions such as capturing objective and PvP Missions such as winning matches or points. Rewards for participation include commendations, rares, gold and chances at a precursor or other exotic items.
At Sunday Missions, we’ll attempt at each PvE mission possible with the with the number of people who attend that week. If there’s an easy WvW mission, we’ll follow with that for those on Fort Aspenwood. We’ll explain what’s going on as we go along, so please hop on Teamspeak! You can also earn the dubious honour of the pungeon master rank and to choose a piece of music to challenge Lea to play in game the next week.
PvP missions require a coordinated group of 5, so if you have one let an officer know and we’ll kick one off for you.
You can earn personal credit (rewards) for each mission once a week. Credit resets every week on Sunday night, so Monday starts a new week for guild missions.
Guild Competition Events
Occasionally, the guild will also host a guild competition for prizes. These events are scheduled by officers at various times, and have included jumping puzzle races, or scavenger hunts.
Guild Hall
[NICE] has a Guild Hall! You can get there by opening your guild interface and hitting the Guild Hall button in the upper right corner. You do not need to own HoT or be a certain level to go there. Our current home is in the Gilded Hollows, one of the two Guild Hall areas available in HoT.
Guild Hall amenities include:
- Tavern Buffs - Free 24 hour buffs you can get from the bartender
- Guild Portal - Free travel to Lion’s Arch and any of this week’s guild mission waypoints
- Guild Arena - Battle your friends!
- Guild Bank Access - by the central waypoint
- Personal Bank Access - via the Scribing Station
- Harvesting Nodes - Once a day gathering nodes that can sometimes drop rare materials needed to craft guild armor
How Can I Help Build the Guild Hall?
The Guild Hall requires a lot of resources. Building and upgrading the guild hall is meant to be a massive, guild-wide effort and everyone’s contributions are both needed and appreciated. Every time we upgrade something or earn a new buff, it costs both guild currency (that we earn from guild missions and over time) and various crafting materials.
To see what we need right now, go to the Guild Hall and talk to the NPC by the waypoint to see the Guild Treasury. The Guild Treasury is NOT the same as the Guild Bank! It is a deposit-only store of materials that we have collectively contributed to the upgrades we’re working on for the guild. You can mouse over each item listed to see how many we need, how many we have, and what upgrades the materials are for. Materials needed range from potatoes to spiritwood planks, so anyone’s contributions can be useful. Especially hard to get items include: Potions of PvP Reward from PvP dailies, Ley-Line Infused Tools, and mystic coins.
[NICE] Guild Resources
Guild Tumblr Blog
We use this thread for most of our coordination, but we also have a Tumblr site that Vivixenne created to post guild information, builds, and other guides. http://gw2nice.tumblr.com/
Guild Bank
Sage manages the guild bank, and has the following rules for using it. Check them out below!
- What the Guild Bank Is -
The guild bank is storagefor useful items that people have generously donated to the Guild Bank instead of selling them. It’s also the place to donate things to the guild itself, like scribing materials and siege blueprints.
What the Guild Bank Isn’t
The guild bank is not a trash can, please don’t dump stuff there just because you don’t want it!
We will cull stuff that is not meant to be there, keep the Bank tidy, and generally keep an eye on things. If you are abusing the guild bank you will probably get a sternly-worded letter from Sage. Sage knows a lot of very large, very stern words, so probably just use your common sense before you take out a massive pile of stuff or dump a massive pile of stuff. In general, please take what you’ll use and deposit what other people might like to use. If you’re too much of a butt then you will probably lose your bank privileges, so don’t be a butt.
- What to Deposit -
Useful items like the following:
- Withdrawing -
You are free to withdraw from the bottom two sections of the Guild Bank (Deep Cave, Treasure Trove). The top section of the guild bank is accessible only by officers and Veteran Novices. It contains a communal pile of siege blueprints, scribing materials, and prizes for guild missions. Feel free to donate items to this category, they are appreciated!
Also note that in order to prevent compromised accounts from raiding the guild bank, anyone who has been gone from the game for an extended period will have their status set to “Inactive”. If you find yourself set to Inactive and you would like to be set back to Comrade, just ask an officer.
The guild bank is storagefor useful items that people have generously donated to the Guild Bank instead of selling them. It’s also the place to donate things to the guild itself, like scribing materials and siege blueprints.
What the Guild Bank Isn’t
The guild bank is not a trash can, please don’t dump stuff there just because you don’t want it!
We will cull stuff that is not meant to be there, keep the Bank tidy, and generally keep an eye on things. If you are abusing the guild bank you will probably get a sternly-worded letter from Sage. Sage knows a lot of very large, very stern words, so probably just use your common sense before you take out a massive pile of stuff or dump a massive pile of stuff. In general, please take what you’ll use and deposit what other people might like to use. If you’re too much of a butt then you will probably lose your bank privileges, so don’t be a butt.
- What to Deposit -
Useful items like the following:
- crafting materials
- superior runes and sigils
- high quality buff items
- dyes
- stuff that’s needed for a collection/event that you have extras of (let people know you did this)
- Withdrawing -
You are free to withdraw from the bottom two sections of the Guild Bank (Deep Cave, Treasure Trove). The top section of the guild bank is accessible only by officers and Veteran Novices. It contains a communal pile of siege blueprints, scribing materials, and prizes for guild missions. Feel free to donate items to this category, they are appreciated!
Also note that in order to prevent compromised accounts from raiding the guild bank, anyone who has been gone from the game for an extended period will have their status set to “Inactive”. If you find yourself set to Inactive and you would like to be set back to Comrade, just ask an officer.
Scribing
Scribing is a different from other crafting disciplines because it is intertwined with the guild hall and guild resources. It is also fairly expensive, and not really intended for personal use. If you want to be a scribe so you can help decorate the guild or make group WvW consumables, you’ll need special permissions.
There are two special ranks in the guild for scribes: Scribe, and Veteran Novice. Scribe is the basic rank you’ll need to do decorations. Veteran Novice adds the additional privilege of being able to access the top portion of the guild bank (where we keep the expensive stuff and also scribing materials). If you want one of these ranks, you’ll need to talk to an officer, who will let you know all the various rules and complications involved in scribing. If you want the bank access in addition to the decoration permission, you’ll need to have two-factor authentication on your account for security reasons.
Guild Wars 2 Resources
General
Guild Wars 2 Official Site
Guild Wars 2 Wiki
Patch Notes
Dulfy Guides
GW2 Subreddit
NICE Guild Links
NICE Tumblr
Guild Bounty Spreadsheet
Guides
Guild Mission Guide by Vivixenne
WvW Guide by Yougottawanna
Combo Field and Finishers by Vivixenne
Primer on Leveling Up by Vivixenne
Other Resources
GW2Efficiency (Search your account, find best ways of crafting things, TP info and more)
Event timers and more!
Gw2spidy (Trading Post Data)
Dynamic Crafting Guide
Dungeon Guide
WvW Matchups
MetaBattle (Builds)
Armor Gallery
Geod on
+3
Posts
What should I salvage and what should I sell?
Salvage most white, blues, and greens. Blues and greens give you luck, which can be consumed to increase your account magic find. Salvage any rares above lvl 68 for ecto with a master/mystic salvage kit, except for high-value weapons like greatswords and staves. Sell exotics on the TP, unless the sigil/rune on them is worth a lot of money, in which case you’d use a black lion salvage kit to remove the upgrade and sell it.
What is the Living Story?
The Living Story is the primary way in which GW2 does content updates between expansions. Season 1 was introduced prior to the advent of the Story Journal and is not currently playable, but Season 2 can be played via the Story Journal if you missed it. Season 2 was available for free if you logged in during each chapter’s introductory weeks, but if you missed it you can buy it in the gem store, and the cost will be prorated depending on how many chapters you are missing. They sometimes have sales, so be on the lookout for those. You can experience Season 2 Story for free if a friend who owns it takes you through, but you can’t get any of the achievements and rewards from the Story unless you purchase the content. However, the open world zones and events introduced alongside the Story are available to everyone for free!
In the future, you can make sure to get each new story chapter for free by logging in during the weeks following its introduction.
What should I do after I get to level 80?
I see a lot of people in the guild with "Von Kraken" or "Copper" in their names. What's up with that?
We decided near launch of the game for some of our characters to be in the same "family." So Human Nobles will have their names with a von Kraken tag, like '<player name> Von Kraken.' Similarly, with Charr characters we've decided to form the Copper warband (cause copper, like in a penny. Get it?). Your Charr character can be named with Copper as the prefix or suffix of your name. For instance, 'Geod Copperstone' or 'Rysk Coppercrusher' or whatever you like. Feel free to join in with the naming fun if you'd like!
I wonder if I should finish up LS3 on my rev, or just skip it and jump to PoF
Also, the jealous side of me is curious how the servers handled the HoT release. Was it smooth or a hot mess?
Law and Order ≠ Justice
pretty smooth, there was server crashes but no downtime that I can remember?
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
GW2: Tavalisk.9463
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
OOO
Favourite non-PoF bits:
Reading the patch notes- didn't realize there's a new guild hall as well.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
*edit* I might still log in just to do daily gathering so I can slowly build up a stock of Mystic Coins, though.
Kitten is the new meta
Good call! I hadn't thought of doing that. The new spec weapons are super purdy.
GW2: Tavalisk.9463
And my key doesn't work, dammit ! Email sent to the support on the site I bought it from...
Left-clicking on achievements and similar notifications will take you to the appropriate page in the Hero panel. Right-clicking will dismiss the notification without opening it. YAY!!!!
Entire stacks of consumable containers can be opened with the right-click context menu. Opening will stop if the stack is exhausted, the inventory fills up, or the inventory screen is closed. DOUBLE YAY!!!!!
First, I'm so used to the holy trinity in MMOs that GW2 not having them throws me off completely. It's probably my biggest hurdle, with having to dodge stuff to stay alive a close second. I can't figure out how to train myself to cope with either.
Second, this game is complex, what with the buffing, debuffing, and monstrous amounts of button presses, weapon swapping and combo effects. I feel like it's too much and I quickly get overwhelmed.
Lastly, my stepdad played this game and introduced me to it. I think the idea was that he thought I'd like it and play with him. He was a truck driver so our schedules almost never coincided, unfortunately. When he died last December, I felt like I needed to keep playing as a tribute to him. Every so often when I'm at my mom's house, I'll log into his account (thank goodness for the save password option -- we don't have access to his gmail account to recover the password) and look at all the cool stuff he acquired on a billion different characters. He was definitely dedicated to this game.
I still have the game installed, and every once in awhile I'll log in and collect whatever the daily reward is, but I can't bring myself to actually play. This game is so pretty, and I finally have a computer powerful enough to play it at max settings (I've actually had the computer for awhile now, but still...) and I just can't get into it.
I know GW2 isn't for everyone, of course, and there's a good chance I fit into that category. Perhaps it's just not my type of game. But god damn if I can't bring myself to either just play it or uninstall the game for good. Hell, I even bought some gems for the unlimited gathering tools thinking it would make me play more -- and it did, but it didn't last.
I find myself playing for a chunk of time, getting a decently-leveled character and then stopping. When I return, I have forgotten how to play the character(s) and find it's easier to just delete them and learn it all over again from level 1. I actually enjoy doing that, anyway. I'm the type of player that likes the grind rather than the game at max level. I'd rather level a bunch of alts and craft (which is another thing I take issue with -- availability of crafting materials) than max out a character and do endgame stuff. I have a ton of tomes in my bank that I just don't use and my free level 80 token will probably remain unused forever.
I guess I just wish I could figure out how to like this game.
Sorry for the long post.
Guardians make a good started class, too.
I would have thought they'd have reversed the achievement thing. I've grown used to left clicking them when they appear to make them go away, so now I find myself opening windows when I don't want to. I think it should be left click to dismiss, right click to open the details.
Invite sent
Law and Order ≠ Justice
I sword and board my way across the zones already. 2 and 4, signet of rage active, zoom zoom.
I'm hoping this means I can swap out my Centaur armor.
The PoF expansion is completely separate from the HoT stuff, so it won't matter if you've completed HoT. You'll gain mounts, the new zones, and the new specializations.
Owning Heart of Thorns isn’t required to access Path of Fire content. However, some content is exclusive to Heart of Thorns.
You must purchase Heart of Thorns to unlock and use the gliding mastery, as well as all other masteries introduced in and exclusive to that expansion. You will be able to complete all of the content in Path of Fire without the use of any Heart of Thorns-exclusive masteries.
If mounts are for 80+, then I probably won't get it. If I get mounts on my lowbie characters for increased movement and such, then I might consider picking it up.
If you're trying to put off touching the story of PoF until you get through HoT's story and Living Story 3, then the expansion mostly just gets you the new class specializations. I don't think you can unlock mounts until you do the first PoF story mission, same with getting to the new zones (unless you use a teleport to friend, I guess). And I have no idea how the new guild hall would work for a member with PoF, but I doubt they'd be completely barred access after it's claimed.
Mounts are account bound and unlocked for all characters. My 31 warrior is riding her raptor through Kessex Hills. It's pretty sweet.
I think you can use mounts on any of your characters, so long as you unlock the mastery for it with one of your characters first. It should work the same as gliding in that respect. If you don't care about story spoilers, then it's fairly quick to jump into the PoF story stuff and unlock that mastery.