GW2: Using Up Lives (and Karma) at Vastly Accelerated Rates

I’d like to make a swift correction to one of the complaints I had earlier, regarding the ending chest of World 1-1 and 1-2.

It seems they do give 2 bauble bubbles as well as a continue coin. I’ll blame the slow loot scrolling and trying to do SAB at 2-3am for how I misinterpreted it.

And now to continue the litany of changes:

• Queen Bee Dogs no longer can be chain stunned with the whip. Hell, they don’t seem to be stunned at all. This cost me several lives to find out that information for you. YOU’RE WELCOME. I’M NOT BITTER.

Unfortunately, this makes the solo fight into a neverending tedium of running in circles constantly while trying to get a few licks in with the stick x 50.

Hell, the whole game world feels like I have to circle strafe all the time and the sticky camera does NOT help. World 1-2 on the boss cage with a charr, try it, my camera goes in and out and in and out ad nauseam. Literally. Motion sickness, ugh.

• Dig spots no longer work in Infantile Mode. I sorta alluded to this in my previous post but never outright said it. So yeah, normal mode for bauble farming now. And a diminished one at that.

• I do appreciate the small quality of life tweaks though.

Two that I noticed in World 1-1: a barrel gives a swiftness buff just as you need to jump a long gap with baubles in an arc, something that I could only previously achieve by attempting to dodge-jump with a 50% success rate (thanks latency.)

And a line of trees that again were only previously dodge-jumpable now have little tree outgrowths to make it more easy to get across.

Josh Foreman thinks he may have overestimated the average player’s jumping ability a little. I have to agree, his hunch was sound. I haven’t even tried world 2 on normal mode yet and I’m having to think of ways to grind lives and baubles… FOR INFANTILE MODE.

I’m not miserable and frustrated yet, but I am more than a bit grumpy.

Especially when so many previously understood rules have changed around somewhat. My digs have been diminished in effectiveness. I’m being offered an upgraded shovel which I have to grind another 325 baubles for. I can only visit dig locations once a day per account. So now I can’t farm baubles with digs.

Stuff on the to-try list: check out the secret bomb-opened places to see if I can only visit those once a day as well. If I can’t revisit it, I’m going to be very very bitter at the time-gating.

How else can I get baubles? Can I kill Queen Bee Dogs repeatedly? See above for non-chain stunnable Bee Dogs. That’s a lot of pain to go through for 10 baubles and a honeycomb. Assuming I don’t die accidentally and use up a life, which I was trying to grind baubles for.

Players don’t really react well to perceived nerfs and I’m no exception.

The fun and humor of the place has gone, replaced by what feels like a death trap.

I know it’s learnable. Even if I get my butt continually kicked by the assassins whom I can’t seem to dodge, but it’s probably just a pattern I need to learn. The dart traps are well hidden but visible when you know what to look out for. It’s just that you’ll die a few times before you know when and where to stop and check for them.

Seriously, fuck chain knockdowns. I can’t do anything once the bugger charges me. I need a walkthrough to tell me what I’m supposed to do here to avoid this. If I’m lucky, I manage to dodge his first charge and then subsequently get caught by the next. The end. I lose a good 2-3 hearts each time.

But I’m beginning to question just how much time I want to spend in here.

I’m certainly not willing to slowly comb the place like I did last time looking for hidden secrets. It’s too fatal for that and I don’t have lives and time to spare. I’m going to wait for Dulfy and other people to post all the secrets and then just robotically follow those guides. Even then, I’m kinda scared to try World 2 in normal, seeing what I floated past on my rainbow.

Which does kill off some of the earlier joy, but well, live and learn. Overtuned is overtuned.

To add insult to injury, look, 3 missing steps! Now I have to go back through Infantile Mode later with a guide in hand hoping to hit upon the three locations I didn’t stumble across.

GW2: Schooled by the Super Adventure Box Update

• Dig locations in World 1 seem to have been nerfed, yielding only chests containing 5 or 20 baubles where they used to produce 30 or 40. The ending chest of World 1-1 and 1-2 yielded only a continue coin instead of a Bauble Bubble in normal mode.

• I used up the 5 free continue coins I got in the mail, trying to get through Infantile Mode in World 2.

• Even in that mode, I got a little taste of arbitrary death, what with the accidental slips into rushing rapids (“Help, I’ve fallen and can’t get up!”) and sampling a dart trap sequence on purpose (since presumably some day I might try normal mode.)

• At 0 coins and 0 lives left, near the start of World 2-3, my rainbow ended at a frozen ice wall with an NPC telling me my candle was too weak. A shopkeeper nearby sold a torch for 400 baubles.

I logged out in disgust.

I just couldn’t face the grind tonight.

Grind baubles, grind continue coins, grind for this and that to buy such-and-such and unlock whatever. *sigh*

I lost about 100% magic find from the patch too. So that’s a lot of blues and greens to grind and salvage.

Don’t even talk to me about crafting to 500.

This whole update feels like someone just shifted the goal posts and chucked them a lot further away.

Took the words right outta my mouth.