What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love And Understanding? : GW2

Tuesday's patch brought a nice little extra to GW2. Apparently there was some kind of competition to design weapon skins and this week the winning entries were added to the game in the form of three new "collections".

I saw it in the update notes on Tuesday but it wasn't until last night that I got around to checking whether Dulfy had a guide yet. Of course she did. She's Dulfy, isn't she?

The whole thing begins in Lion's Arch,. The first time you zone in you receive an in-game mail asking you to help with some crazed Asura's experiments. This sort of thing happens a lot. Apparently killing a couple of dragons and a god or two puts you on speed-dial with every mad scientist in Rata Sum, which is to say the entire population.

First off you have to slap together some easy-to-find bits and bobs and throw them into the Mystic Toilet Forge, where Zamorros has nothing better to do than hammer them together and spit out the very thing you need - an Ectoplasm-Infused Vision Crystal.

Consuming this lets you see ghosts. Like that's hard. Something that stopped you seeing ghosts would be more like it, especially in Ascalon. Anyway, I did it, then off I went to Fields of Ruin, where I spoke to a ghost called Xeniph.

Because I'd needed to craft a Lesser Vision Crystal for the combine, and because to do that you need to be 500 skill in Leathercraft, Tailoring or Armorcrafting, I happened to be playing my Ranger. He's a max-level Weaponsmith and Leatherworker and also a Charr.

Fields of Ruin, for those who don't play GW2, or who do and don't care to clutter up their brian cells with the convoluted lore and history of Tyria, is a flashpoint for ongoing tension between Charr and Humans. Ebonhawke, the city there, is frequently beset by bomb-throwing human separatists who reject Queen Jennah's treaty with the Charr Empire.

The conversation between Xeniph, who presumably died during the Charr-Human war, and my Charr ranger referred quite particularly not just to the historical context but to the fact that the dead human was now talking to a live Charr. I was somewhat taken aback by the intimacy but it was effective in drawing me into the narrative, something it did more successfully than the Living Story has managed these last few chapters.

It was intriguing enough that I'm curious to see how different the conversations are from a human perspective. And then probably an Asura, just for a control. Lucky I have three accounts.

The collection itself didn't take very long. A lot of people were there doing it, including three people tagged up either as Commanders or Mentors. There were helpful instructions being called in map chat and a mesmer was porting to the only awkward location, a tower in the middle of the map's jumping puzzle.

The whole thing took me maybe 45 minutes You could probably do it in half that. The final reward is
an Exotic Longsword with selectable stats. It looked like all the current stat options were available, which makes it very worthwhile for any Level 80 class that uses LS and hasn't got an Ascended version already.

The skin itself is about par for the GW2 course. Ridiculously oversized, ornate to a fault and very glowy. It is a nice blue color, I'll give it that. I might use it on my Mesmer. It definitely looks more suited to a caster than a melee.

The other two weapons are a one-hand sword and a torch. I'll be getting those as well. These short collections are fun and the dialog for this one was interesting. The torch skin is quite peculiar, too. I might use it on a necro.

Once again the amuse-bouche proves more satisfying than the main course.