A Piece Of Lost Dead Past

One of the featurettes included with Guild Wars 2's latest update, Visions of the Past, is the option to replay four instanced scenarios originally released during the first season of the Living World. I remembered the quartet quite well.

The North Nolan Hatchery was, I thought, the very first Living Story instance although looking back it seems Braham's retaking of Cragstead were both part of the March 2013 update, Flame and Frost: The Razing.  Back then I was quite complimentary about the Rox vignette, saying "The nursery instance was exactly the right degree of hard. I completed it without dying but I was downed a few times and it looked touch and go for a while".

That's quite instructive, isn't it? I very much doubt anyone's going to get downed in the Nolan Hatchery this time around. I did the instance yesterday and it was distinctly on the easy side. I brisked through it with only half a mind on what I was doing. We've all come along long way since 2013, not least Rox.

Before you get to relive the glory days there's some paperwork to complete. I was expecting one of ArenaNet's patented "Collects", GW2 code for quests, but it turned out to be a lot simpler than that. All you need to do is visit each of the orignal locations where the instances took place and find a "memento" of the occasion.

The hatchery and Braham's village, Cragstead, were both turned into permanent zones in the game when the Living Story moved on. You've been able to visit them, walk around and chat to NPCs there for years. I guess that dims the nostalgia a little but it makes finding the mementos very straightforward. Just go into the instance and keep heading deeper until you can't go any further. There you'll find a sparkling ground spawn with a big label atached. Can't hardly miss it.

The other two are very slightly harder to spot. The two instances in question no longer exist in the game so the mementos are just lying around outside where they used to be. I had a bit of trouble with the one for the krait tower, now lying in pieces across much of Viathan Lake in Kessex Hills, to the point that I eventually cracked and went to YouTube to watch a video made by someone with better eyesight than me.

Not only was the damn thing in pretty much the first place I'd tried, I'd actually looked right at it, seen it, wondered what it was, then left it lying there so I could spend ten minutes swimming about in toxic waste. Somehow I missed both the sparkles and the sign. Go me!

The last one is definitely the "hardest" to grab, although that's not saying much. It's pretty straightforward to find but karka are annoying even now. and it's down a coral run close to the jumping puzzle on Southsun Cove that's teeming with the infuriating little crabs..

Each pick-up completes an achievement and allows you to access the related instance from the Scrying Pool in the new Eye of the North. I did them all before I went back so I'm not sure if you can use them piecemeal or wehther you have to collect all four to make anything happen.

The four instances you receive access to are:

The only one I've done so far is North Nolan Hatchery. Cragstead I remember as being fairly dull and the toxic tower/krait tower as annoying but Canach's Lair I must have liked well enough because I wrote a guide for it. I might do that one again if I'm stuck for something to do some day.

Other than that, I'm not really all that fussed. It's nice to have the option, sure, but I can't honestly say I've thought about any of these instances even in passing these last six or seven years. Now, if it was the Marionette...

The decision to make the instances uniquely available via the Scrying Pool is very interesting. Anet could have chosen to place the zone-ins at the original locations or even through a UI element but instead they made sure we'd have to travel to the Eye of the North each time.

There's a clear intent to turn the Eye into something more than just another service hub. As well as the season one missions you can also access all the sub-raid "Strike" missions from there. It has something of the feel of one of the lobby zones from the original Guild Wars, particularly with the Xunlai storage chests lying about by the wall.

Eye of the North is described as an "upgradeable instance", which is true if what you understand by the word upgrade is "pay a one-time fee to use our services". I really can't see any point in this but I guess it's harmless enough.

Why anyone would want to access these services in this location sufficiently often to justify the effort and expense involved in setting them up beats me. I'd just hit "B" and go to the WvW hub for banking and broking, then hit "B" again to be returned to the Eye. I certainly wouldn't pay fifty gold for the privelige although I imagine some GW vets will think it's worth it just for the nostalgic frisson of banking with the Xunlai again, even if the Xunlai themselves are long gone.

As for crafting, I suppose you could just about imagine someone needing to make something urgently before a Strike mission but it's a bit far-fetched.

And that's about it for the Visions update. I quite enjoyed some of it.

Next!

Working With Fire And Steel

In the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago, about Guild Wars 2's then-upcoming Visions of the Past, I noted 
"I reserve the right to be grudgingly impressed, should the occasion arise." It arose. I am.

Late night I ran the first of two parts, Forging Steel, in which you get to play a raw recruit in the Steel Warband, as Rytlock's son Ryland Steelcatcher, newly-promoted to Centurion, leads them on what seems very much like a random treasure hunt. If there was some great, political plan behind what they're doing I confess I missed it.

This morning I followed up with part two, Darkrime Delve, where you play Ryland himself as he attempts to smarm his way to would-be charr emperor Bangar Ruinbringer's favor but ends up learning a hard lesson about climbing the greasy pole. Okay, that's not how Ryland sees it but I tend to side with his sire on this one.

As promised, this is one of those "play as someone other than yourself" deals so beloved of bored games developers. The surprise is you actually get to play as yourself playing someone else, by which I mean that, although you look and talk like some random charr in the first mission and a specific storyline NPC in the second, you retain all of your normal class abilities and the whole thing feels like playing your regular character.

In the first mission that's perfectly understandable. You're some no-rep charr looking to join a famous warband and they're trying you out. You could quite rationally be any class. In the second, where you're playing a well-established character, it's rather harder to reconcile the sudden career-swerve.

In practice, though, you'll probably end up playing "in character" for that one anyway because a very early mechanic requires you to use Ryland's fiery chainsword and once you get your paws on it you most likely won't want to give it up. The Flamesaw hacks through Icebrood like... well, like a flaming chainsaw through flesh, melting breakbars in a single hit and making the whole thing go a lot faster than if you'd used your own abilities.

Crucially, though, if you prefer to use them regardless, you can. It seems like a good solution to a problem that has tripped up many a dev over the years, not least in previous chapters of the Living Story.

As far as story here goes, we're talking background and character stuff. Both missions are retrospectives, showing you a little more about how certain things happened and quite a lot about why. Characters that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere when the Icebrood Saga began get the chance to develop a little substance. It's nothing essential but it's done quite well.

Even so, there are a few plot points I won't reveal because spoilers. There's one odd development I will mention, if only because it confused the merry heck out of me. As far as I understand it, a major element of the GW2 timeline includes the departure of all dwarves, either dead or gone underground to wage a desperate, unending batle to hold back one of the elder dragons. We've even had extended conversations with the supposed last of them.

It was a surprise, then, to find as the main opponents in the first mission a seemingly endless supply of Stone Summit dwarves. The charr warband comment on it but toffer no explanation. I note the wiki has recently been updated and now reads "It remains unclear how many dwarves survive in the present day." On this evidence, quite a few, although a lot less since I got my claws into them.

So much for the story and lore. What about the gameplay? Ah, now that's a bit of a puzzler, that is.

There's a thread on the forums, quite lively and occasionally quite heated, discussing ArenaNet's decision to make the first mission available only for group play, with no solo option. That would be a problem if it was true. Only, as I commented on the thread, "I did part one solo last night and part two solo this morning. Until I came here and read this thread I had no idea either was intended to be group content. I thought there was a problem with the in-game description."

When I got to the Scrying Pool I saw two options, one marked "Public" and the other "Squad". A footnote to both reads "Recommended Players 5-10". That certainly does suggest no solo option.

I went into the Public version first, where I spent ten minutes running around doing a couple of gathering events in the starting area while listening to confused people talking in map chat. No-one knew what to do or where to go and nothing seemed to be happening so I zoned out and tried the other option instead, hoping to be put into  squad automatically.

That didn't happen. Instead, I found myself alone in an instance which appeared to function exactly like any other Living World/Icebrood Saga solo instance. I followed the prompts, did the things, killed the mobs, helped the NPCs and everything went very smoothly and pleasantly.

All the way to the final boss. That was a bit of a nightmare but only in the same way many Living World instanced bosses have always been. It took me nearly an hour to down the boss, of which perhaps half was figuring out the mechanics and half executing them. It was tedious but I've seen worse. It did occur to me that it would probably be easier with a few more players but it was by no means out of the run of typical ANet "solo" content from previous chapters.

That was last night. This morning I did the second part, again solo. It was even easier than 90% of part one had been. Very straightforward, very well tuned for solo play. The final boss was a lot easier. Basically tank and spank. There was an awful lot of floor spam but I've learned that in the current iteration of the storyline most of that is purely for effect. I stood in the red throughout and nothing bad happened.

On exiting to the new lobby map, the refurbished Eye of the North, I found myself in a discussion in map chat over whether the chapter was or was not available solo. Since I'd just finished soloing it I was pretty certain it was but then someone said something that gave me pause.

They said, quite categorically, that they could see no private squad option. Another player said they could but they had a "pin", which is GW2 slang for the Commander tag that costs 300 gold and allows you to start your own squad.

The account on which I'd just done the missions has a pin. Maybe that's why I got the option. I would test it with another account that doesn't have one but the Catch 22 is that neither of my non-pin accounts has Path of Fire, which definitely is required to do the new missions.

Accordingly, as of now, I'm not sure if the chapter is or is not intended to be soloed. But I soloed it. So there's that.

There's a good bit more to the update, including the four replayable missions brought back from Season One. There's a quest or a collect or some such to do before those open up. I'll probably post about that when I've done it.

The old version of Eye of the North, the one that doubled as The Hall of Monuments, is now a separate instance, presumably the upgradeable one we were told was coming. Again, I have yet to look into that so maybe more later.

For now, though, I am predisposed to give Visions of the Past the thumbs up. I'd like to do the first mission as a public group to see how it goes. It looks like it could be fun. I'd certainly be a lot more willing to run other characters through these two missions than anything from the previous two seasons.

All in all I am, indeed, grudgingly impressed. The new ArenaNet seem to have a better handle on difficulty and engagement than most of the previous iterations. Or, perhaps I should say, this team has a vision that's a little closer to mine than I've been used to seeing for a while.

I am very cautiously optimistic for the third expansion but a lot could change before then. Always assuming we're here to see it and they're here to sell it to us. Probably best not to look too far ahead right now.

So Sue Me: Guild Wars and GW2

Hall of Monuments? Pfeh! Not interested. Don't care about that stuff. Can't be bothered. When I play Guild Wars 2 I'll just start from scratch. New account, nice and clean.

That's what I said or something like it on several blog threads over the past few months when people were banging on about their plans to collect this or achieve that or maximize the other. Meant it, too, at the time. Then ArenaNet had to go and make their Hall of Monuments Calculator.

One Point Walking

Yes, well, it's different when you can see it all laid out like that, isn't it? Suddenly it all gets a bit "Look at what you could have won" . And it's such a nifty little toy. You play with it for a while and cogs start whirring in your head and you google around a bit and see how you could hoover up a few points for doing next to nothing. Honestly, it would almost be rude not to, wouldn't it?

Look! I have three points already and I didn't do anything! How did that happen? Oh, that's because it can see I already have a Guild Wars account since I just typed in the name of one of my characters and it's assuming I'm going to use the same account in GW2. Well I hadn't planned on it but alright, if it makes you happy I suppose I could.

Don't do that! It's tinder dry!

Only, which account? I have two. It's that Clean Start thing again, you see. When I got the Complete Collection summer before last and thought I'd play through all the campaigns I didn't want to use the old characters so I started over. Then I got distracted by something, EQ2X probably, and last I saw of her my new ranger was Level 14 in Lion's Arch.

Quick check. Yep, that's where she still is. What's she got in her bags? A present? And inside it a little hydra. That must be one of those minis I read about. Whirr go the cogs. If she has a one-year present, what do the six-year old characters on my old account have? Bags full of presents? Yes they do! All four of them were made in the first month after launch so that means six birthday presents each!

Does he ever stop buffing himself?

Slight problem - that account doesn't have Eye of the North. Got to have that or you don't get a Hall of Monuments, can't place the minipets, don't get any credit for them in GW2. Putting the complete collection on a new account is looking like a really bad decision right now. Except, wait! People keep going on about buying these pets. That means they must be tradeable! 

Two dozen unwrapped presents, some map-clicks and a flurry of furtive exchanges in Ascalon City later, problem solved. Why Ascalon City? It's the furthest two of the four Elders ever travelled. And ever will, most likely. Warp back to Eye of the North and in we go. Talk to Gwen (what's she doing in there anyway?) hang a tapestry, place the pets.

Oh! A Kitten!

Another point! That's four!

I just need five points for a title. Traveler. That's a good title. I'd use that. And I have M.O.X. He's a free point if I can place him on his pedestal. Only to place him I have to hang another tapestry and that pool in the middle of the Hall isn't spitting out any more free ones.

Which is how I came to spend most of yesterday afternoon working through the primary quest sequence in the Eye of the North campaign. Made almost two levels. Wiped on Scorch Maulclaw about ten times. Gave up. Going back today with different tactics, if I can think of any. I'll get him in the end. Then it's on to Doomlore Shrine, rescue Pyre's warband and get my tapestry.

Because he'll get me a Tapestry, Gwen! Try to keep up!

We've got, what, three months before GW2 is likely to land? I want to finish the main questline in Eye of the North by then, learn to see the Charr as something more than the faceless monster hordes I remember from Prophecies. Meet the Asura. Those are the two races I plan on playing in GW2 so I probably should.

Not to mention I have my eye on that Orange Tabby Cat siting there waiting at nine points.