Get Lucky : GW2

Today's update in GW2 took me somewhat by surprise. I was expecting the much-heralded Balance changes but I thought we still had a couple of weeks to go before Lunar New Year, since the Chinese New Year on which it's modeled doesn't end until until February 15th.

Apparently Chinese and Lunar years are more than a year long. The last one started on January 28th 2017 and it's still going strong. We seem to have a bit of overlap.

As I think I've commented a few times before, holidays in Tyria can be underwhelming. There aren't all that many of them and they tend not to change very much. Lunar New Year is a slight exception in that we're at least guaranteed to get a different animal every time. This time it's the Dog's turn.

Lunar New Year might be my favorite Tyrian holiday although that phrase could go into the dictionary under "damning with faint praise". Still, it does at least manage a couple of features that I look forward to more than anything we get at Halloween or Wintersday.

For a start, there's Dragon Ball. I'm a small-time fan of instanced battleground PvP in other MMOs but GW2's standard offering takes itself far too seriously for my taste. Dragon Ball is cheerfully anarchic by comparison and I always enjoy its short visit.

Unfortunately, at my advancing age it gives me a lot of shoulder pain from the sudden changes of direction and the general tension. If I do the two-match daily on all three accounts that's about enough for me.

Then there's the financial element. Every day you can buy 16 Lucky Envelopes per account from the vendor in Divinity's Reach. They cost a gold each and you're guaranteed to get at least 88 silver of that back in every one you open. If you're lucky you can get something worth ten times as much.

There are other things in there that sell for a fair few silver too. On a good day I make 8-16g per account. On a bad day I just about break even. It's like gambling without the risk. I always enjoy it.

This year, as there was for Wintersday, there's also a race. It seems that now we have mounts ANet are determined we're going to use them. It's not particularly original but at least it is something new so I'm not complaining. Plus I really like races.

So, it seems, do a lot of other people, at least they do when they haven't got the achievements yet. There were over seventy riders in the race I did an hour ago.

It's a harder course than the Wintersday one and longer. Nevertheless, I was able to get the Mini Gourdog (don't ask) that comes with finishing in under three and a half minutes, even though on one run I was using the base model rented raptor that's your only choice if you haven't bought Path of Fire.

Speaking of minis, there's a great one for sale on the vendor for just under nine gold. It's a "horse" with a skritt rider. Tyria famously has no horses so I imagine the ANet devs responsible for holiday planning must have come out in a cold sweat when someone told them next year is The Year of the Horse. If this is the dry run for 2019 I foresee strong sales of tar and feathers in China.

There's also a new "adventure". Adventures in GW2 are one of the most inaccurately named additions to the game in five years. They came with Heart of Thorns, they were hated by almost everyone and they were conspicuously absent from Path of Fire.

I thought we'd seen the last of them but apparently I was counting my chickens to soon (and roosters were so last year). I haven't tried the new one yet but I probably will at some point. Can't say i'm looking forward to it.

Anyway, there's stuff to do that we haven't done to death yet, which is nice. Also, since you can't fight anything there, Divinity's Reach doesn't crash every five minutes like the rest of the game does right now. To no-one's surprise the vast raft of changes to skills and systems that came with today's patch have introduced some bugs that make all three modes, PvE, WvW and sPvP largely unplayable until they find out what they broke and get it fixed.

With a bit of luck that'll all be sorted out by the time I wake up tomorrow. I'll probably find out after I've bought my Lucky Envelopes and lost another few games of Dragon Ball.

Oh, wait - they fixed it while I was writing this. I guess my luck's in!

Stay lucky!