Tixx! Toxx! What's In The Box? : GW2

The arrival of Tixx Toymaker's vast golemic airship turned out to be a massive anti-climax. No, that's over-stating it. For an anti-climax something needs to to happen. This was a non-event.

For a brief second I thought I caught sight of a vague shadowy shape in the sky above The Grove but no, it was just a cloud. As the appointed time passed the mass of adventurers clustered in the cabbage capital ceased watching the skies and gave voice to their traditional cry - "LfP!" The toyship had landed and I never saw a thing.

See anything? Me neither.

Really, could we not at least have had a cut-scene? I couldn't even find the entrance to the dungeon. The entirety of our three-person guild was there and grouped and the first I saw of Tixx's Infinirarium was when the window popped inviting me in. Luckily someone has keener eyes than I do and worked out where the entrance was or I'd probably still be looking for it now.

After hours at the Museum

Inside Tixx's ship things improved. Like all GW2 maps, with the arguable exception of Orr, this one was fascinating, detailed and gorgeous. I found that out at the end, after all the mobs despawned. Not much chance to sightsee before then. That's the trouble with dungeons - someone's always trying to kill you, which makes it hard to admire the soft furnishings.

The battle came in several parts. First we had to fix two malfunctioning machines on opposite sides of the room. Naturally we couldn't use normal tools. No, we had to kill tar elementals and stuff their juices into the pipes while skritt ran around dementedly being skritt so we had to kill them too. It would have been fine had one of the machines not had a leaky pipe. The faster we poured tar in, the faster it flooded out again.

Don't Let The Skritt Drive The Airship

I'm still not sure if this was intended or a bug. Only one of the machines did it and nothing in the explanatory notes mentioned it. Either way it meant the first phase took as long to complete as the rest of the dungeon put together. We got it done eventually and moved on to phase two, kicking skritt off the flight deck, which only took a couple of minutes. Skritt kick easily.

Next came collecting plants. I have no idea why. There was some spurious justification which I missed. After five minutes of random running about in the midst of yet more gibbering skritt, the sharpest of us (it wasn't me!) finally noticed that the locations of the plants we wanted were all marked by dirty great orange splodges on the mini-map. Things went faster after that.

I could get inside that church!

Phase four was knocking down turrets. Not tinkered turrets like engineers have but things that looked like tall flowers. We had to kill 18 of those and I believe I personally killed the lot. While the other two fought crazed toys and the endless skritt I concentrated on turrets and ignored all damage I was taking. Took me four deaths but I got them all! Being a necro, I laugh at death, although not so much at repair bills...

Does no-one ever think to add an emergency override?

Finally we had to defeat Tixx's demented assistant Toxx, who was either a golem or an Asura in a suit. If there's a difference. The fight went smoothly. Well, it went smoothly once two of the three of us had teleported back from the Bridge, where we mistakenly thought Toxx lived, to join our smart friend, who'd learned from experience and found the big orange "Toxx is here" marker on the map.

If Toxx had any special tricks I didn't spot them. Our group was all casters - Necro, Elementalist and Mesmer. My Flesh Golem tanked and we all stood at maximum range.

Think how we feel!

The fight lasted a few minutes then Toxx fell over and two things happened. A loot window with a confusing number of choices in the form of an equation opened and a large chest popped a hundred feet away. It would have been easy to miss the chest altogether while figuring out what the heck the loot window wanted.

It wanted us to choose a toy. Being the first of the five dungeons, there was a choice of one, so I chose that. I now have about a third of the components to craft a Ventari Mini-Pet in the Mystic Forge. Whoop-de-do! The chest contained three Masterwork weapons, which I vendored.

Which way to the beach?

The other two vanished sharpish and I stayed to explore and take photos. As you can see, I was down to my fetching all-in-one hot pink swimsuit by then. The coin reward covered repairs but that doesn't seem to be a service Tixx provides in-ship.

All in all it was fun for a given value of fun but I can't see myself doing all five.

Much, much more fun are the giant presents that drop all over Tyria. We spent a good deal of time tracking those down and unwrapping them. When the paper comes off everyone falls over and out burst either half a dozen skritt or a pack of Ventari toys.

Mine! Mine!

This is the one time in your life you'll be praying for skritt. Six skritt is clearly nowhere near enough for the hive-mind to kick in. They handily clump up and can be AoE'd to death in very short order. The Ventari, on the other hoof, rapidly spread out and lay down intersecting rings of withering arrow-fire. They also have an insane retribution buff. There's a bitter thread about them on the forum and they are indeed a nightmare to solo. Even in a duo it's touch-and-go. They drop socks, though, so you can't just grab the present and run.

I'm collecting socks and jumpers for...well I don't know what for. There's not actually anything on the swap list that I want. I might get a pair of hand bells. Mrs Bhagpuss has been much luckier than I, getting several recipes, a potion and the hand bells inside her dropped presents. I just get more socks. It's a lot of fun trying, though, and it's early days yet.

Tonight Tixx visits Divinity's Reach. I'll probably skip. Ehmry Bay are kicking up rough in the Borders and all leave's been cancelled. I'll catch up later when the carnival rolls into Lion's Arch. By then everyone should have all the strats down pat and I can just leech. It's the Necro way!