Welcome to the Penny Arcade Guild Wars 2 Community Thread!
If you’re new to GW2, check out the
official Guild Wars 2 site for more information on the game. Every two weeks the game has an update through the “Living World” events.
Current Living Story: December 10, 2013 - A Very Merry Wintersday
For returning or new players, the
GW2 Wiki has a summary for all that’s gone on so far in regards to the living story.
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 via
guesting (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:@Geod (Geod.5024, Geod)
@Ky13 (kyonethree.9814, Teldra)
Officers:@Draygo (Draygo.9473, Delarme)
@Enig (Ansatz.6498)
@Lagnar (Lagnar.9281, Lagnar)
@Kylindra (Kylindra.1794, Sage Persephone)
@mojojoeo (MojoGroove.8253, Mojojoeo)
@Mordroth (Machinazer.3628, Mordroth)
@naengwen (Sharkey.9805, Sharkey)
@Psyfer (Psyfer.1026, Psyfer)
@The Deranged Hermit (Tavalisk.9463, Tavalisk Eristoff)
@TolerantZero (TolerantZero.4305)
@Vivixenne (Vivixenne.3465, Vivixenne)
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. Even if you don’t have a mic, just listening will help greatly for coordination.
Server IP: 66.135.59.185:9999
Password: pa
Admins: Draygo, Enig, Geod, Sage Persephone, Vivixenne
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: paQ) 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 settings then plugins. Check the teamspeak overlay plugin and then click settings on the bottom to configure it. Here you can configure any color of each of the elements, as well as transparency settings. I recommend you change the input settings to enable mouse polling, and change the initialization mode to minimal. Minimal 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
The guild runs various activities together on a regular basis. A schedule and calendar can be seen below, and is also in the Guild Message of the Day (MOTD). All times are Pacific.
Guild Missions: Saturday 7pm PST; Sunday Noon PST
World versus World pvp (WvW): Monday nights, 5:30pm PST - Friday nights, 4:45pm PST
Guild Lottery: Drawing every Saturday at 7pm PST right before missions
Guild Missions
Guild Wars 2 has activities designed for large groups called Guild Missions. These missions include Bounty, Puzzle, Challenge, and Rush. Rewards for participation include commendations, rares, gold and chances at a precursor or other exotic items. Each night that we run guild missions, we’ll make one attempt at each mission type, although we don’t always win.
You can earn personal credit (rewards) for participation once a week, so you only need to show up for one of the scheduled runs each week for maximum rewards. Credit resets every week on Saturday at daily reset time, so the Saturday night run is the most popular. Here’s a
guide for missions written by Vivixenne.
World vs World PvP
Our WvW excursions are planned and lead by Mojojoeo. Matchups reset weekly on Friday a little after 6pm PST, so that night’s activities feature large crowds and huge battles. Tuesday night events are more casual and smaller scale. Yougottawanna has written a
guide to WvW that is a good read.
Guild Lottery
Each week we have a 50/50 guild lottery, with half of the gold going to the winner, and the other half going to fund guild activities such as contests and the custom sPvP arena. All lottery entries are recorded in a Google Spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj7W7InOt5dOdGRGd0ctS1V3dXBfdk5BMTdLclE5cGc
The drawing occurs every week in the forum thread, Saturday at 7pm PST, right before guild missions start. Lottery tickets are 1 gold each, and each guild member may buy a maximum of 5 tickets per week. Officers are not eligible to participate. To buy tickets, deposit the gold into the Guild Bank, specifically the Guild Stash (the top section). The bank logs will be used to record your ticket purchase and your entries will be reflected in the spreadsheet. Winners will not be eligible for the following lottery, but may enter after again.
Guild Competion 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. The guild lottery funds these prizes.
[NICE] Guild ResourcesGuild 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
Vivixenne manages the guild bank, and has the following rules for using it. If you have used, intend to use, or think you may be interested in using it, please read this section by Vivixenne all the way through.
- WHY THE GUILD BANK EXISTS -
It is basically a guild storage for hard-to-find, useful items that people have generously donated to the Guild Bank instead of selling them. It is not a place for you to stick stuff (food) you’ve made but don’t want and can’t sell.
I cull stuff that is not meant to be there, keep the Bank tidy, and keep track of how often people withdraw as opposed to how often (and what) they deposit.
I don’t keep lists or databases. But if I check the log and see that you’ve withdrawn a lot of items and have not deposited anything within a few days after that, you may receive a message from me just as a friendly note that I HAVE MY EYE ON YOU.
- WHAT TO DEPOSIT -
Stuff that is appropriate to deposit are hard-to-find or useful items.
Hard-to-find is any piece of equipment that is
- rare
- exotic
- legendary (if you are just MADE of money)
Useful is the following:
- crafting materials
- sigils (major+)
- runes (major+)
- potions (highest level potion only)
- dyes
- gold jewelry or better (for alts and just-turned 80s)
Please note that all Major Sigils or Major Runes will be stuck into the Mystic Forge to try to generate Superiors. We are no longer accepting Crests, Talismans, or Seals.
Useful is also any food containing the following buffs:
- Gold Find
- Magic Find
- Karma Boost
- Downed Health
- Critical Chance or Damage
- WITHDRAWING -
You are free to withdraw from the free-access parts of the Guild Bank (Deep Cave, Treasure Trove).
Stash items are by request only, but you will generally be able to get whatever you request from the Stash. This is purely to prevent people joining the guild and grabbing a bunch of stuff and bailing - not likely to happen, but a possibility I would like to avoid.
To withdraw something from the Stash, you will have to go through me - via /g, /w, or in-game mail. If I am not online and you absolutely NEED that item RIGHT NOW and it can’t wait until the next time I log, you may approach another officer.
Exceptions will be high-cost Superior Runes or Sigils (anything that costs more than 2g in the Trading Post). These will not just be given because you ask - you must request to buy them from the Guild at a discount. The price fluctuates every day, so when you ask for such an item I will reply letting you know how much you need to send me before I will give it to you. You are free to decline the offer.
- RULES AND PENALTIES -
If you fill the Bank with trash that I have to tidy up, you will lose access to the Bank for as long as I think is appropriate - usually scaled to how annoyed I am at you.
If you withdraw something, you HAVE to be doing so to use it yourself - not to sell or pass on to a friend that is not in the guild. If you are caught, you will lose access to the Bank. Maybe worse, like a kick from the guild. I haven’t decided because this hasn’t happened yet - it may go to a case-by-case in consultation with the other officers.
Guild Custom sPvP Server
The guild funds and runs a structured PvP server. The server is administered by Teldra and is named “
[NICE] Persephone Exists, Nothing is Sacred.” The server is used for running sPvP nights, as well as tournaments and events. It is also available at other times for dueling and casual play. We’ll likely be starting up a daily night for casual sPvP soon.
To enter the custom arena, go to the Heart of the Mists and look for the NPC marked PvP Browser (the same NPC you talk to for hot join games). In the PvP Browser interface, use the Search Owner/Name bar on the left and type in Teldra. Once you find the arena, right click to mark it as a favorite so you can find it again later more easily.
Guild Wars 2 ResourcesGeneralGuild Wars 2 Official SiteGuild Wars 2 WikiDulfy GuidesGW2 Subreddit NICE Guild LinksNICE TumblrGuild Bounty SpreadsheetGuild Lottery SpreadsheetGuidesGuild Mission Guide by VivixenneMaking money guide by Sage PersephoneWvW Guide by YougottawannaCombo Field and Finishers by VivixennePrimer on Leveling Up by VivixenneOther ResourcesGw2spidy (Trading Post Data)World Event TimersEvents and Temple StatusResource Node MapDynamic Crafting GuideWvW Matchupsgw2lfg (Find a dungeon group)Into the Mists (Build Guides)Armor GalleryKarma CalculatorFAQGuild boosts? What are those?
Every time you log on, or complete events are part of the guild, the guild gains influence. The influence is spent on guild missions, and also guild boosts. Guild boosts are guild-wide buffs that are given to everyone representing the guild and include karma boosts, magic find, reduced waypoint costs, and reduced repair costs, not to mention others. These boosts are typically run on the weekend only. If you have karma jugs or other consumables, it’s recommended you wait until the weekend to use them since that way you’ll get more karma out of them.
What should I do after I get to level 80?
- World Completion
- Build your character how you want with armor/weapons/skills
- Achievements
- Dungeons
- World Events
- Legendary Weapon
- Crafting
- Personal Story
- sPvP/WvW
- Daily and Monthly
- Jumping Puzzles
- Make up your own goals - ie, get all dyes, get all minis
- Create an alt
- Have fun!
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!
Posts
Also, the grapes in the previous thread are so sour!
So they commented on temporary content....
(I'll do the charrming pun for you.)
YOU DIRTY VICTORIAN
Explorer Achieve-aganza: Monday, 7pm at PST
There's a lot of easy explorer achievements that can be knocked out quickly in one night, but that are worth plenty of points. If you're missing any of them and want to do them in a group, then join us on Monday night next week! We're going to hit up as many of them as we can. This is going to be fun and easy stuff like Don't Touch the Shiny, Magellan's Memento, The Long Way Around, etc. If there's demand, we might hunt down some Skritt Bandits or even hit up some mini-dungeons or jumping puzzles, so come join in the fun!
Quetion about dungeons. I've done a grand total of none. I want to at least get the story dungeons done. How long do they take? I'll probably be able to inveigle guildies to help, but I rarely have more than an hour at any one time to play.
Usually the standard leveling Guardian build is putting 15 into the Radiance line and using the trait that refreshes Virtue of Justice on kills. And then also 5 into Virtues. Just keep popping Virtue of Justice.
Depends on the dungeon. But usually around an hour. Some of the harder ones might take longer, particularly if it's with a group that hasn't done it before.
aw, shit
Is there a way to buy them on a level 80 and transmute them onto armour for the lower level character, orr am I stuck looking fucking boring until 80 as a warrior?
You can then keep using transmutation stones on that piece of gear when you update your stats.
You can. The downside is that since the gear is level 80, you have to use the fine transmutation stones. Once you've got the skin on a lower level item you can use normal transmutation stones to keep the skin though. I'm not sure about the honour badge armor but depending on the gear you don't need to be level 80 to buy it, just to equip it. I bought t3 human cultural armor with my non-80 Thief and just transmuted the skins off.
I can tell by her stretch animation that she totally wants me
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
there we go. he's not spiky or anything but he has a good, clean look.
Looks like he skips leg day.
It's actually not that bad, what you see is the front part of the leg armor covering the sides of his legs.
i took this pic for you
I've also gotta disagree about looking boring until 80. I think it's mainly until about level 30 that the armors look kinda boring, particularly the crafted ones. I've got no experience with light armor so I can't comment on those, but IMO the lower level medium/heavy crafted sets look pretty lame. Like the leather jerkin/chainmail looks, they feel kinda generic fantasy lowbie and they're just so flat. Once you get to the plate-looking stuff for heavy and the trenchcoats for medium its a lot better. If you've got access to the legacy armors from GW1 you can get pretty cool looking armor from the get-go.
What I've found for a couple of my characters is that you can either get a really cool looking chestpiece as a reward or cheap off the TP and it'll make all the difference. I got the Swindler coat as a drop on my Ranger and it looked so much better than everything else I saw available so I just used that skin for ages.
Right now I'm crafting my way to gladiator armour, since I actually like that. Another option is the new armour in the gem store for warriors, which is gladiatorish and looks pretty cool.
Most of the content has not been all that good. Dungeons with one good fight and like an hour of bullshit. The hologram/kite/whatever content is just boring. The mini games have been okayish. But for example Southsun Survival is completely inferior to the similar minigame from Halloween. Repeated attempts at tower defense with no understanding of what makes tower defense fun.
SAB was great, but that's gone now.
Some of the story stuff has been interesting, but it's also been all of like one night's gameplay worth of content each time.
shrug
But yeah, I get why the temporary stuff is temporary. Most of it is passable quality at best, and only enough content for people to get through in a month. After that, most people will be gone, and people left who haven't done it will be very lonely. It's content designed for two weeks or a month of focussed attention.
Hopefully they get around to actually releasing some of this permanent content they're been working on 'in the background'.
That said, it doesn't bother me as I'm not a cheevo person. My experience with the recent living world stuff is that I briefly checked it out, thought "hey, neat", then went back to the main game. I think that's more because the living world content is aimed more at people who have already done everything else.
I hate the pane in the hero panel. it's too big, and the icons are massive. The preview when you mouseover your coins in your inventory is basically all I wanted, so I'm still happy.
Also, I got to crafting steel splint for my warrior, which looks MUCH nicer.
I've been playing since this weekend and loving it! I was trying to turn in my tickets for this event but could never figure out how to get to the ship city place... oh well, new event!
I would love to participate in the guild: Scud.3561
Thanks! See you online!
PSN: ScudMuffin
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1jswc4/data_mining_upcoming_features_and_changes_from/
Lots of other cool things too. Transmutation reversers. Perfect salvage kits (They remove the sigil and dont destroy the weapon). Random hair and attribute tonics.
New bank expanders- pay money to increase all banked stacks max sized by 250.
TREASURE MAPS?!?!?