Category: Guild Wars 2

Island Sanctuary – End Game Only

In a few days we are going to get a new feature in Final Fantasy XIV – Island Sanctuaries. These are “Instanced Housing” in the form of a large island for every player. Here’s the FFXIV official page and here’s an article with some details.

How disappointing. I had assumed that they would be available at, oh say, 30 or 50. So I could take my friends who are new to the game and show them my Island Sanctuaries. Or as an alternative activity for my 2 dozen alts. But no. The Island Sanctuaries are locked behind a tall, tall ladder of level 90 and Endwalker. Current housing is locked behind scarcity and high cost in Gil and Island Sanctuaries are “End Game Content” at least now. In a couple of years it won’t seem like End Game any more.

And of course the other obvious question would be why can’t the whole account share the same Island? All the alts could work to progress the same island.

All of my Alts are 50+ and about half have completed Heavenward that’s 3.0. And my friend started more recently and of their half dozen alts they only have a couple beyond Heavensward and one at Endwalker which is 6.0. Are you seeing a theme here?

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FFXIV Event is Boring

This Moogle event is supposed to keep us busy while we get ready for the next patch. But it is so boring that I can’t stand doing it.

I’d like the gorilla mount for my Lalafel characters. Nothing is cuter than a Lalafel carried around by a gorilla. BUT.

It’s too boring to get these rewards. It requires 7 RUNS of Praetorium, which takes about 40 minutes each, and a run of something else. After running this dungeon dozens of times it is Soooooo Boring. I can’t stand it. I have several Lalafel characters, but I guess they will have to do without their mounts.

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What Wow Gets Wrong with Dragon Mounts

World of Warcraft has been accused of copying Guild Wars 2 mounts for the upcoming Dragonflight expansion. Let’s review Guild Wars 2 mounts for those who don’t know. Mounts were added to Guild Wars 2 in Path of Fire. Before that travel was limited to Teleporting to Waypoints, and Gliding. There were some other things like mushrooms and lava tubes in some limited zones.

Guild Wars 2 Mounts

There are a few mounts in Guild Wars 2 and they each have their special abilities that are increased with Masteries in the game. All mounts and mount skins are account wide in GW2, just like Wow.

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Dress up for Role Play

I just found some outfits from a vendor in Rata Sum. There are other vendors like this around I’m sure, but I tripped across this one and was looking through his wares. Outfits. And they cost “Endless Tonics”. Endless Tonics are “dress up” novelties that last only a limited time and not in combat. But this vendor will upgrade those Tonics to “Outfits” which work all the time, in combat or not. Here is the vendor and the outfit. And outfits are account wide so here it is on one of my girls. Not fancy. But more “Comfortable” than the armor.

Here’s the skinny on these items. Check out the trivia section at the bottom for the history of these items.

The thing is that most of these “Endless Tonics” are very expensive on the market board. But one of them is very cheap. 10 SILVER. Search for “Endless Common” on the market board. It’s only 10 silver as I’m looking. Others are very expensive as you can see. Then swap the “Endless Tonic” at the vendor for the “Outfit”, which you can wear on all your characters all the time if you like.

Enjoy,
:ww

Protect Your Eyes From the Sand

While doing some events in a Sand Storm in Dry Top, I was opening some Buried Lost Chests, I found an Adventurer’s Spectacles. When I looked them up I found that they can be used to craft a better looking Adventurer’s Mantle. I was afraid I would have to grind more chests in Sand Storms or pay a lot of gold to get them, but nope. They are cheap on the Market Board.

As you can see, a set of 3 Specs, and Scarfs doesn’t really cost that much. I guess the drop rate is pretty high from the chests. Also there are the pictures of the Light and Heavy versions. They all look the same actually. These parts are all dye-able.

So you can craft the mantles if you have Tailor, Leatherworker, or Armorsmith at about level 400. Follow the links in the Wiki for crafting instructions and use Discovery for the Recipes.

:ww

Ghost Ship in the Cursed Shore

There was an old forum post, but the ship looks different and I don’t see the disturbed water in this post.

Old GW2 Forum Post

Not sure what’s going on. The ship stays around for a few seconds and then disappears, but appears later. Not sure the schedule or how long it really lasts.

Here’s a segment of video I took of the ship:

Ship is at 3:30 in this video

:ww

Mounts in Different Games

I recently ran across a Youtube video where someone was complaining about the long effort to get a Griffon in Guild Wars 2. Griffon is the first flying mount in GW2. I won’t link the video as I’m sure he’s moved on and is now struggling with the many times longer process to get a Skyscale mount. I starting working on getting Skyscale in November 2020 and finally got it in January 2021.

As we know, different MMOs have different requirements for the use of Mounts. Let’s review:

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FFXIV Sage vs GW2 Virtuoso

I’m not saying that they copied each other. But it’s odd don’t you think? Shadowlands vs Shadowbringers? End Walker vs End of Dragons? All the game companies are listening to their competitors’ leaks?

Two New Jobs In New Expansions

And FFXIV Sage Barrier Healer vs GW2 Mesmer Elite Spec Virtuoso. Both with daggers and ranged attacks. Links to the video reveals on the next page, but let’s look at some images first:

GW2 Virtuoso Elite Spec for Mesmer

I wonder if the GW2 folks are going to change their virtuoso icon the same way that FFXIV needed to change the Sage Icon? The video reveal of the Virtuoso shows all the skills and animations. Compared with Sage, the Virtuoso daggers are transparent and glowy. But there’s more work to do, maybe the graphics will change before release.

FFXIV Sage Barrier Healer

Here are some pictures of the Sage Job.

We’ve seen nothing so detailed for Sage as we have for GW2 Virtuoso. But FFXIV does not tend to reveal that kind of detail before release. And there are no public beta’s. We’ll just have to wait until November 2021 for the release of End Walker. So far all we have is a visual overview with no detailed commentary.

Check out the videos below:

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Roller Beetle Achieved

Wheew. Not as bad as either Griffon or certainly Skyscale, the Roller Beetle is still a full two day process. Assuming you have all the maps required.

There are a few events that you have to wait on. Notably:

  • Kourna meta event to storm the Gandara Fortress. But this is on a schedule. You’ll need this for the Plague Scarab Egg for the feed.
  • Anomaly Spark requires the Ley-Line Anomaly, which I caught in Iron Marches on the schedule.
  • The Inquest Golem Mark II is on a schedule too in Mount Maelstrom.
  • The longest wait was in Far Silverwastes to get the Hearty Beetle Slime dropped by the Alpha Beetle event.
  • I lucked out in Bjora Marches by doing a couple of meta events there that gave me enough Eternal Ice to purchase the rest of the Inscribed Shards needed for the Desert Luciferin.

This is all much easier than even the Griffon or the Skyscale, so take heart and power through. And it’s all much easier if you have a flying mount. I saved lots of time by having the Skyscale before I did the Roller Beetle.

:ww

Skyscale Achieved

At long last I have a Skyscale Mount in GW2. It has been a long and punishing journey. The longest effort by far has been to get the various parts of the “Saddle”.

After the first few steps, there is the long grind for 250 of each of 6 different materials. This is a punishing grind for a couple of reasons:

(1) There is a throttle on each one of these materials so that only so many of them can be gathered each day. They are account bound when acquired so it’s not possible to purchase them on the market board. If they are gathered, then after so many are gathered, then then the nodes where they are gathered just dry up.

(2) Also, the areas where most of the materials are gathered are very dangerous for solo players. Thunderhead Peaks, and Kourna are so dangerous that solo farming is essentially impossible. I was able to farm Eternal Ice in Bjora Marches and with that material, you can purchase each of the other materials. But Eternal Ice gathering, or collecting from Events or Chests is throttled as well. I was only able to purchase 10 or 20 of the other materials per day since each 10 materials required 75 Eternal Ice. I was able to do chains of Meta Events in both zones of the BJora Marches map once or twice a day to get quite a few Eternal Ice to purchase other materials. It is reasonable to farm Diflourite in the Sandswept Isles as a Solo player and this is quite an interesting zone. I was able to get about 100 Mistborn Motes in a day with gathering and doing events in Dragonfall. I had another 150 or so of those from previous events and gathering from working Dragonfall during the Skyscale Achievements.

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