GW2: Being Restless is Dangerous to One’s Wallet

I suddenly got it in my head at work today that I might have been feeling aimless because I was missing a sense of prolonged accomplishment in GW2, that slow grindy build up to something that one wanted.

For months after all, there hadn’t been anything I wanted, just logging in to chill out, do a couple social events, tick off some dailies for the feeling of easy accomplishment, log out.

Equally insanely, another thought popped into my head that I had two Venoms sitting in the bank – the first being the /only/ precursor that ever fell into my inventory (in WvW, a long long time ago, in a roundabout way) and the second an impulse purchase under the logic that it was the absolute cheapest precursor ever and I might want a “Twice-Told Legend” title some day. (Yes, on some days I am plainly not in possession of my mind.)

Just how much did Kraitkin cost to make anyway?

I had accumulated about 700g in the bank, which is by far the highest sum I’ve ever accrued, and only speaks of how unactively I’d been doing anything lately besides earning a gold or two every day.

I’d been banking all my T6 materials as per normal, and Rodgort the T6 vacuum cleaner had been a while back.

(Apparently 1.5 years, give or take a few months, is my average for casually accumulating sufficient mats for a legendary, or at least enough that I can stomach the last push/focused expenditure for the rest.)

Turns out, the ingredient list wasn’t -too- horrible.

The dungeon required was Sorrow’s Furnace tokens, and while I was suspecting that I might have to set a goal to purposefully run a few to get the 500 tokens, when I logged in to check my in-game wallet, I had 900 already accumulated, just from super-irregularly running path 1 and 3 every time a friend asked.

Orichalcum ingots, cured hardened leather squares, all fairly normal. The only thing that would really damage the bank was amassing T6 materials, especially since the thing needed 500 Armored Scales (which were currently in the 35-40 silver range) and a bunch of crystalline dust.

The bank, fortunately, already had a pretty decent stock of T6 and ectos from salvaging rares.

Had to get 77 Mystic Clovers, so I cheerfully spent a whole bunch of the 900 skill points on my main for Philosopher’s Stones (and a bloodstone shard. He still has some 600 points remaining, and probably 3 stacks of skill scrolls in the bank) and knocked off 800k of the 7 million karma in the wallet for Obsidian Shards. Did the one at a time recipe methodically and that yielded up a little extra T6 as a consolation prize for eating some 120 ectos.

After that, it was filling in the gaps by virtue of taking out large sums of gold from the bank and throwing it at the Trading Post (plus buying Icy Runestones for 100g, and 20g for the two gift recipes.)

Some 300g poorer, I was all set.

I decided I wanted to “roleplay” the making of this second legendary in a similar vein to someone I read about on Reddit going to the heart of Mount Maelstrom to forge a fire-based legendary.

Kraitkin, of course, needed an underwater location.

I was making a beeline for the Temple of Abaddon when it hit me that I should really look for a krait-infested location instead.

Since my necromancer’s map of Timberline Falls was a giant blank fog of war with no waypoints, I settled for the Kessex Hills krait instead. Well, they’re kinda special too, being all toxic after Scarlet’s influence, and that fallen tower was no doubt the site of some powerful magic.

Right underneath it, naturally, is the Lair of the Blood Witch.

As expected, she was up, and I got massacred a few times while assuming I could power through and kill her with UI hidden and trying to take screenshots to document the adventure.

Turns out, she has a very constant and nasty hitting attack that is almost like an auto-attack in its consistency, very hard to pre-emptively dodge and too frequent to dodge reliably.

I had to bring my UI back up and waypoint rez for a second “serious-face” try, carefully alternating a Shadow Fiend and a Bone Fiend to tank the attack and desperately scrabbling around with death shroud and dodges during the downtime.

Fortunately, her shrinking healthbar brought in one or two lowbies to add on a little extra damage, reducing the amount of time required to hold out, and she died just as I was starting to panic with most skills on cooldown, having already been downed once and forced to rez by killing a nearby minion.

Taking over as the new Blood Witch.

Brought up the mystic forge, slid the four expensive components inside and hit the button. Badabing badaboom.

Probably one of the more expensive ways to get 5 AP.

It’s a pretty understated legendary, which possibly explains its lack of desirability, even among underwater weapons.

It adds on a white misty aura, which isn’t too different from the one that a Wintersday aquabreather gives you, and you get a school of tiny eel-like fish that spiral around you in a small cloud when you draw the trident or weapon swap.

The rest of it is small but tasteful motion, the three eel heads twisting and flexing and breathing poisonous fumes and two streams of water spiralling around the shaft.

According to the wiki, it apparently has a night/day cycle, which changes the motion of the water streams slightly and gives the eel heads a faintly green glow, but I can’t really see that much of the difference myself.

If any, its bioluminescence is as understated as that of my sylvari’s.

Day

Night

I do like it, though. It matches really well with my necro’s color scheme.

Now I just need a non-pathetic spear. *gulp*

And I’m down to just one Venom taunting me about Twice-Told Legend.

Since I’m back to hitting the poverty line again crafting mats-wise and wiped out half my gold stash, neither is likely to happen pre-Heart of Thorns, and then there will probably be something else shinier to catch my attention for a while.

Was fun though, and at least, I now have a mild “gotta restock and hoard stuff again” impetus for playing GW2 a touch more seriously… whenever I get around to it.

GW2: Tower of Nightmares – First Thoughts

Scarlet?

Again?

*sigh*

And Toxic Alliance? Really?

Could no one have come up with a better name for them? The Venomous Court, fer example.

Toxic this, toxic that, anti-toxin everywhere… I need a round of detoxification by the time I’m done with this update.

—

Well, so now that the hope of getting some pure krait and some Bubbles-related non-Scarlet contaminated stuff is no longer a reality, we are at least on track with the thorns/evil nightmare/Scarlet-related themes and continuing the storyline of 1001 Alternate Alliance Nights.

The biggest vibe I get from this is a Molten Alliance do-over. How Flame and Frost should have started.

• Foreshadowing.

• A noticeable change in the landscape.

• Two relatively likeable characters to follow the story with. (So how many people are shipping Marjory and Kasmeer by now?)

• Obvious dynamic events across the zones involved, not just repairing signs. Putting the bulk of activity back into the open world where it should belong.

• Decently achievable achievements.

The new faction, besides the puke-inducing name, looks well-built.

The new krait models look good (I’m always partial to glows) and the coiling animations are sweet.

The nightmare court offshoot follows the twisted clockwork pattern of having a downed state and requiring a finisher, which kills a number of birds with the same stone – PvE folks get to show off pretty gem store finishers if they want, it ups the sophistication level of the PvE fight to something a bit more PvP-like and increases the theoretical difficulty of the faction somewhat (though with the amount of enthusiastic zerging on, it’s hard to tell as yet. We await the dungeons.)

The dreamthistle weapons are pretty sweet as well. I’m glad I’m still sitting on a Black Lion ticket, though I still have the issue of who to put it on and what weapon to upgrade. If not for being broke from regearing my thief, I’d consider upgrading my sylvari necro beyond functional althood. Oh well, always another month of accumulating more gold.

—

With everything so smooth and comfortable, why is it that I can’t seem to work up the enthusiasm to care very much this week?

I log in, try and get a little bit of the way towards some achievement or other, do a few Toxic Alliance DEs in Kessex, log right back out again while still telling myself that I’m not done with all the doable dailies yet and that I’ll do them… later.

Perhaps it’s having too many goals spreading my attention.

• I’m not done with the WvW season 1 achievements, and I really hate them hanging over my head like that. I logically know they are supposed to last for 7 weeks and that I can take my time with them, but but…

• There’s one more Mad King Says achievement that should thankfully be checked off by tonight.

• I still haven’t decided if I should give up on the Bloody Prince mini or not. Not would mean that I should direct my attention more towards dungeon-running and gold-making, which would also conveniently increase my familiarity with more dungeons – something I do want to do and expand my repetoire beyond the CoF comfort zone.

• There’s still Tequatl. There’s ALWAYS going to be Tequatl. Goddamn, I want that mini so fucking much. (On the bright side, I did get -one- rare aquabreather once that is for heavy armor users, which is awesome. Except I have two guardians and a warrior and I haven’t decided who to put it on yet. It’s decent gold and rares every day, regardless, for someone who can’t be arsed to use timers and chase world boss spawns.)

Maybe it’s just the other things going on in my life occupying my leisure time attention.

Playing Terraria requires a good bit of goals-planning and wiki-reading, not to mention actual building and adventuring time that would distract from GW2.

I’ve also been working on a semi-secret project that is still a work-in-progress that I hope to be able to share soon. It’s sort of GW2-related, but involves more work with the hands and time away from a computer. As it takes shape, I keep wanting to sit down with it more than grind out the next 5 pristine toxic spores.

Oh well, all in good time. I need more patience with this sort of gradual progress. I keep wanting to have everything done and finished, rather than left open and steadily worked on.

GW2: The Krait and the Kessex Hills

Wahey! The Halloween patch is here!

And I’m super-excited and majorly hyped!

Ironically, I haven’t even touched ANYTHING Halloween-related besides one or two random carving pumpkins and the beginning story instance (which I must happily note is apparently soloable and groupable.)

Why?

The Living Story takes another measured step!

Heading to the GW2 Reddit is always one of the initial things I do after a new patch hits, in between reading official patch notes, downloading it, scanning Dulfy’s new skin galleries and logging-in to scrutinize new changes in the Achievements tab.

The reddit threads tend to be the source of “unofficial” changes – glitches or exploits that got nerfed, inadvertent changes or screw-ups, and most interestingly to this explorer soul, the purposefully dropped but unannounced breadcrumbs left for players to discover and discuss on their own.

Someone sharp-eyed spotted a new camp with our favorite intrepid duo Marjory and Kasmeer in the Kessex Hills.

Invisible wall? Krait?

This I had got to see.

I briefly debated which waypoint to pick in Kessex Hills and eventually settled for visiting the quaggans at Moogooloo.

And promptly ran facefirst into said invisible wall.

Piles of logs were strewn everywhere under and above the water.

What used to be forest, was now denuded.

Rising above it all, a mysterious shadowy object

that extended into the clouds.

Talking with the NPCs reveal some intriguing teasers. They suspect it’s a mesmer illusion of some kind. An asura named Mistress Kari has gone to investigate but is overdue and hasn’t returned, leaving her golem AUX-1 to wait and occupy itself by setting up the camp. Kasmeer being a mesmer has been called in as well, Marjory’s come along for whatever reason and they’re sitting around trying to figure out how to dispell the illusion and reveal what the krait are doing beneath it…

…to be continued next patch….?

In between dancing around with glee with the thought that we might be seeing more hints of Bubbles the as-yet-unexplored-in-the-lore Elder Dragon and the prospect of possibly more underwater combat sophistication and skills and new underwater zones (I’m weird, I know!)

“Self,” said I, “I have a pretty good inkling of what that shadowy structure is.”

I did, after all, engage in some elaborate reading of the wiki while speculating on the Colossus and any possible relation to the Labyrinthine Cliffs and/or Abaddon and/or the Unending Ocean and managed to make a brief sidetrek regarding krait, who also happen to all be somewhat interconnected – what with the only known instance of a Temple to Abaddon being now sunken into the Straits of Devastation as the Cathedral of Hidden Depths and infested with the reptilians.

I mentioned there was a surprising amount of lore regarding them, and was intrigued but did not cut and paste the section on their religion at the time:

Religion is at the heart of krait society, and in turn, the obelisks are at the heart of krait religion. The obelisks are rare, eerily smooth stones made from a unique material found on the ocean floor. According to the Oratuss, the priesthood of the krait, the obelisks mark the sites of the “ascension” of ancient krait prophets to some higher realm, but land-based scholars speculate that they are simply ancient krait monuments whose purpose have been long-forgotten due to the oral nature of the krait’s religious texts.

Krait doctrine fortells the return of the obelisks’ prophets, bringing with them massive armies to flood the surface of the world and destroy other species. It is to these prophets that the krait sacrifice their slaves, believing that they will serve the prophets as they expand their otherworldly armies. The krait regularly use magical and mathematical means to attempt to predict the time of the prophets’ return, but have yet to be successful.

Like their obelisks, all krait are steadfast and immobile in their beliefs. Their legends say those on land were driven out of the sea by the prophets and forbidden to return. This regarded with a degree of scepticism by other races but the krait refuse to listen such things and are happy to kill to ensure that the krait religion is not defamed. All krait are willing to die for the continuity of their species and for the cause of their prophets.

The religion of the krait is what allows the Oratuss to control the entire race. Religious “texts” followed by the krait are passed down verbally through these priests and priestesses. The vast length of the texts allows the priests, who have dedicated their lives to the texts, to make subtle changes to the wording and manipulate the interpretation of their legends to serve their purposes and support their power.

I suspected we would be seeing the krait again eventually, since a decent amount of work seems to have gone into developing their backstory and culture from the beginning of the game, but had no idea it was going to be this soon.

Which is utterly, utterly cool.

That shadowy structure, you ask?

I give you the concept art by Kekai Kotaki.

(Images from GW2 wiki)

(Images from GW2 wiki)

Krait obelisks.

They make me swoon. I am utterly in love.

I cannot wait.

Coincidentally, there are references to krait prophets somehow ‘ascending’ to higher realms and here we have Scarlet having touched the Eternal Alchemy and all that thematic ‘gods’ and ‘mists’ jazz.

And we already have invasion technology in place – a very popular activity at that. (Calling it here, armored scale prices will plunge when the krait invasions start, just as ancient bones are plummeting from Halloween now…)

I guess Tequatl might be dropping rare aquabreathers for a reason, after all.

Hindsight, unfortunately, while 20/20, is still hindsight.

I’m rather miffed that I did not make the link of the beach and tree silhouettes and sky in the background of the first picture with the Kessex Hills, which would have hinted at a planned creeping krait invasion as a potential Living Story development some day.

I can only make the excuse that I don’t play human characters very often and thus spend very little time in that zone.

This also unfortunately means that I don’t have any ‘before’ screenshots of Kessex Hills unless I took one or two by pure chance, and do not feel like trawling through thousands of them on the off chance that I did.

Luckily, the wisdom of crowds being what it is, -somebody- else must have and Google Image search and the GW2 wiki come to the rescue yet again.

Little did he know that the background would be more important than his new set of leather armor.

Fortunately for our purposes, he left his minimap in the screenshot, and it was easy enough to figure out the spot where he stopped.

Fairly drastic clear-cutting has taken place around the same area.

I miss the flowers the most.

As for the old Auld Red Wharf?

Image from GW2 wiki

Yeah.

As usual, I’m kinda torn again between sorrowfully missing the old stuff and kinda gleeful that things are changing.

I guess it’s easier to swallow this time around because all we’re missing for now is a couple of forests that looked all the same anyway and a ruined village that just got even more flattened.

But you know, I’d get those last looks at the view clear across the lake while you still can.