Lion's Arch: A Work In Progress? : GW2

Halloween in Tyria is almost over. Tomorrow the Lionguard will pack up all the hay bales and pumpkins and ship them off of to the Ascalonian farmlands for the Charr farmers to use as winter cattle-feed. They'll unhook the bat bunting from the streetlights and pack it away for next year. You didn't think those were real bats did you? Mad King Thorn and his emo offspring Prince "Don't Call Me Eddie" Edrick will return to the Mad Realm by whatever wormhole in the space-time continuum they arrived and that will be that until Tixx's airship drones into view towing Wintersday behind it.

Between holidays we'll all just have to make do with that old chestnut, the life or death battle with the dragons, as Meldromoth makes his bid for floral world domination. Ho hum.

I've enjoyed this year's Halloween. Better than the first, back in 2012, which inconveniently arrived just as we were about to go on holiday and upset me with its needless vandalism. Better than last year's on which I didn't even bother to report. No, this year we've both done our Halloween dailies every day, enjoyed the odd zerg around The Mad Lab, acquired kittens with bows, 20 slot pails and candy by the barrow-load and its all been jolly good fun. Even Mad King Thorn seems to have acquired a new gag writer. We can only hope the old one suffered a similar fate to the hapless Estrella, who he put in a coffin filled with rats and dumped into the sea.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the whole holiday has been the way it brought Lion's Arch back to life. Well, I say that. It may well be that L.A. has been a bustling hive of happy activity for months. I wouldn't know. I've barely been there since we drove out Scarlet's armies and left a smoking ruin in place of the magical, piratical, wooden wonderland we all loved or at least loved to stand around in.

So, what progress has been made on the repairs and refurbishment of the city and the re-housing of the refugees towards which we all contributed so generously during Queen Jenna's last Pavilion bash? It's your money they're spending after all. Here's a pictorial progress report.

The Financial Center 

The Vault. One bored, irritable guard. Guarding an empty building. Progress: zero.

The Trading Post. One skritt of dubious fiscal probity running a grey-market lottery out of a derelict shell. Progress: Zero.

Infrastructure

Bridges and walkways. Workers still hammering away. Roads still full of holes. Progress: Zero.

Facilities

The Lighthouse. Fully rebuilt and looking great. Shame that project dates back to the Karka invasion. Progress: None required.

Emergency Services

Fires and debris. Still raging and/or lying there. Delete as appropriate. Progress: zero.

Rehousing

Private residency. Looting rampant. Corrupt Lionguard observed in the act of accepting a bribe of Krait wine. Progress: uncertain.

Recreation and Entertainment

Tigg's Moa Races. Asura entrepreneur getting back on his feet thanks to family backing. No evidence of any help or assistance from the authorities. Progress: encouraging but independent.

And there you have it. A damning indictment of the inadequate and incompetent response of the Lion's Arch authorities. That's what you get for voting in Kiel. Evon would have had the trains running on time by now. If we had trains.

I Didn't See That In The Patch Notes : GW2

It seems a very long time ago indeed since we were all voting early and often for Evon Gnashblade or Ellen Kiel. Well, as we all know, Kiel won and yesterday she finally got around to fulfilling that election promise, the one about looking into the Thaumonova Reactor disaster.

Things have been a tad busy on Yak's Bend this week and anyway it's fractals, so I haven't had a chance to investigate yet. Jeromai and Ravious have and they bring mixed reports. I think I might just read Dulfy and watch YouTube for this one.

My time continues to be spent almost exclusively in WvW. Hoping to get a full match report up at the weekend following this intense and thrilling week - that is if the pressure eases long enough as we enter the final round. In the meantime, something strange has been sighted in the Mists...

That wasn't here before. I'd have noticed.

Some kind of sneaky SBI trick, I'll be bound

Can't see anyone...let's just give it a poke...

"Ow" indeed.

All very mysterious. Apparently there was something similar in GW1 and it spawned monsters or treasure or some such. All this one does is knock you backwards and tell you off. Color me intrigued.

The Cat's In The Bag! : GW2

Passing grade on the current Guild Wars 2 assignment is sixty per cent. A couple of the papers are gimmes. Pop a support token in the voting basket, that's one.  Finish your dailies three times with the colors of your candidate flying, that's two. Peasy. Did those ages ago.

Then there are a couple almost as simple that just take a bit longer; twenty events in your candidate's homeland with the button up and fifteen rounds of Southsun Survival.

Ooh, that second one sounds scary! It does, doesn't it? Well it's not, because you don't need to win, or even try. Doesn't matter if you come dead last every time. You just have to be there at the end, fifteen times. Anyone can do that, even if they hate PvP.

Four down. Need two more. If you like Dungeons there's another gimme. Finish any one dungeon with the button on. If you like Fractals, same thing, except it has to be the Jade Maw. (Don't look at me, I never even heard of it).

I don't like dungeons or fractals. What does that leave? I need two more

Master Marksman for one. Shoot ten people in the head. That's another Southsun Survival one. Surprisingly easy so long as you don't mind PvP. I did that. Enjoyed it too. Shot a few more people than I probably needed to, as it happens. Don't judge me.

That's seven. Three left. The hard ones. There's one that's hard 'cos it takes ages and two that are hard 'cos they're hard. The slow one is getting two and a half thousand points at Southsun Survival. I could do that but I reckon it would take me about 70-75 rounds, which, even if no-one tries to win by hiding, is something like ten hours.

I got 530 points from fifteen goes. Best score was 60. Came second that time, using my secret strategy (that I adapted from  Jeromai's. Alright, it's basically same as his only with more Karka). After the first couple of runs, when I was still trying to win and came last or thereabouts with two points if I was lucky, I changed to that tactic and from then on I averaged forty to sixty points a go. Still going to take way too long to get 2500, though, so forget that one.

Okay, so I ruled out dungeons, fractals and point accumulation and ruled in headshots. Got five. Need one more.

Not much choice. None, in fact. The last two are Direct Support and Advanced Support and you can't do Advanced until you've done Direct, so Direct Support it is. And what is it? It's stopping a lot of filthy pirates stealing Gnasher's hard-stolen-won plunder, that's what it is. Jeromai (yes, him again) has masses of detail about how it works. He could also do it. And the Advanced. Probably while whistling "Yes We Have No Bananas" in two-part harmony. I couldn't.

I could do part one alright. Did it first time, never even knew what I was doing. Just followed Gnasher's lackey to the piles of loot we were protecting and killed everything that ran at us. Didn't even realize they were trying to steal the treasure - I thought they were trying to kill us. Which they were, although only incidentally. Got silver on that, first time: Direct Support 1/2.

So we "upped it a notch" That what the woman called it. More like twenty notches. Tried it with a ranger. Died. Tried it with the other ranger, the one that uses traps. Lived, but lost. Snares, roots, knockbacks, spikes, no good. Same thing every time. Too many plunderers, too few of me. I need someone who can be in two places at once.

Enter the Engineer. He gave it a great shot. Turrets at both plunderer spawns and him playing catcher inbetween. Best run, 500 plunder left and 3 seconds to go, but by then I swear there were four plunderers in play (for a fact, three) and one got home.

Only one class left on this account. Cometh the hour, cometh the necromancer. First run's close, but all the runs are close. Close does not get you the cigar. Or the Achievement. If this doesn't work it'll be time to drag Mrs Bhagpuss away from Tinkerfest. No, come on, you can do it.

Yes I can, too! Maybe it's a slight change of tactic. - kill more things. Maybe it's just luck. Maybe necros are just badass. Five hundred in the pot as the clock ticks the last few seconds and look! Not a plunderer alive! The little necro scrapes home and Gnasher's so happy he breaks off a bit of himself and gives it to her. That's how she sees it anyway. Necros are like that.

All that for an Evon Gnashblade mini. It's the biggest mini I've ever seen, mind you. It's literally taller than she is. Still, I don't collect minis. I can't keep them in the bag five minutes before I've sent them back to the bank by mistake so what's the point? Why did I start this in the first place?

Syp's joined the doubters. He's not having fun. I am, though and that's the problem. I'm doing things I don't want to do for reasons I can't explain to get rewards I don't want to have and I'm enjoying it.

I think I need an Intervention.

Vote Early, Vote Often! : GW2

Were there Election monitors observing the current shenanigans in Labyrinthine Cliffs they'd probably all have given up in despair and gone home by now. Or possibly they'd just be standing around wondering what the heck they were doing there in the first place.

Real election to follow. Possibly.

It's not even clear to me whether this is an election, let alone the election. Oh, sure, we know there's a vacant place on the council and there are only two candidates, the passive-aggressive, submissive yet authoritarian "Captain" Ellen Kiel and the sneaky, smug libertarian fat-cat Evon Gnashblade, but what's going on right now seems to be a popularity contest to decide who gets to sign a trade deal with the Zephyrites, not any kind of binding election to the Captain's Council.

What passes for logic among the Zephyrites doesn't bear thinking about. Their whole society seems to be modeled on some kind of 1960s hippy commune, albeit one that really could have levitated The Pentagon.  Their guiding principle might as well be "it seemed like a good idea at the time" and their version of the Great Society certainly doesn't cleave to any ideal of "one man, one vote" (make that "one sentient, any gender, one vote").

Hah! Good luck with that, whiskers!

Voting slips turn up all over the place. Stuff your pockets then stuff the ballot. Every vote counts so make sure you use them all. If you can't find enough, just buy some! There's a guy standing right next to the voting boxes hawking them for fourteen silver pieces each or ten for a gold and he has an unlimited supply.

This Rotten Borough Recreation Event runs a couple of weeks. Just think how many hundreds, no, thousands of votes you could cast! Then one of the candidates is going to sign a trade agreement with this bunch of mystical folksingers just as they wave goodbye for some new Woodstock Nation of the Sky, leaving us with no-one to trade with. How does that work again?

I'm confused, although no more than I have been throughout the entire Living Story. Oh what the hell, let's just go with it.

Vote Gnasher!

You know it makes no sense!