jade quarry

another one to file under - things i love about guild wars. I'm getting into things i've never done before, and I'm loving it. Here's how it happened...

I was looking to buy jadeite shards for the luxon armor i'm trying to get, and found out that yo

u can trade faction (5,000) for one shard. Well... the Jade Quarry competitive mission is a great way to earn faction. If you play kurzick, you can trade faction for amber chunks at a kurzick

beaurocrat (the shards are from a luxon scavenger).

so here's what i suggest

step 1

pick the armor - kurzick need amber, luxon need jade... which ever side you choose you start the jq mission from their outpost.

luxon warrior - jadeite shards

kurzick warrior - amber chunks

luxon ranger (jadeite shards)

kurzick ranger (amber chunks)

step 2

pick a build

there's a couple of ranger one's in the meta category - burning arrows and crippling shot

there's lots of warrior builds... gale axe, a strong heals build (info in spanish i think), devastating hammer and earth shaker

step 3

head on over to the Jade Quarry (on the side that suit the faction you are after), enter the mission and go crazy...

i find that it takes between 1 and 2 runs to get the 5,00 faction needed.

The 5,000 faction will also contribute to your friend of the... title.

and it doesnt matter if its not the same as our alliance (kurzick).

step 4

save up all the materials you need, and of course a heap of gold... get your armor and throw it into you're hall of monuments! 2 points!!

shweet?

let me me know how you go.

say goodbye to henchies for good

there is going to be a game update soon with a couple of new additions.

the first is a new area in the battle isles - embark beach. the whole point of this area is to be able to meet up with others wanting to do missions. I dont really get it yet, but it sounds ok.

the other big one, that will impact us is that they are introducing the ability to have 7 heroes in your party. i imagine there will be some ripping builds on pvx to work from!

Xyla - progress in hall of monuments

2 weeks ago our worlds were shaken by the hall of monuments reward calculator announcement.

Since then, we've all been up to some unusual guild wars behaviour. Buying mini-pets, farming for gold again, challenge missions for hero armor and getting new pets. I'm pretty happy with my progress. The announcement was made, and I was on 18 points. My first step was to get a black-moa and progress to 19 points, then i posted this... with the hope to get to 26 before GW2 came out.

That day I also gained the tyrian skill hunter title, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Since then... I had some luck in the shadow nexus and dakjah inlet to gain an extra point with hero armor goodness! Then... today... after having to buy onyx gemstones from randoms as all the collectors had sold out... look at a ridiculous 600g for 10 granite slabs, and keep farming to get all that (plus diamonds might i add) and 5k... I got everything I needed for a destroyer staff - and now I'm sitting on a pretty 22 points in my hall!! wooo!

So... I need one more max title, some more armor and maybe more weapons to get where i want... good luck with that... no quick ones from here... just a hard slog

thinking i might spend some time on the war in kryta content and try to get a confessor weapon... more gold (for armor) and then more gold for some caps to max another one of those...

wooo... how good is guild wars!

character names for GW2

I have started an idea list for names... I just want cool names, none of this throw together stuff...

You know my bowie related one...

Was thinking something like "Flehmm Forestcough" for a Charr (as it kinda like some of the charr names).

My idea for a norn name is based around their scandanavian-ness... And that would be to come up with a name entirely from names of Ikea furniture!!

other than that... I was thinking about plants that i love and sylvaria, and as for asura... not sure... they all have names like Blimm and Rojj... Actually I think i just came up with an idea based on the word "Klink" hmmm....

return of the PUG

read something the other day that confirmed that most storyline missions will require groups of 5.

No heroes or henchies available... means pugging boys!

Not sure how i feel about this one. Maybe we could look at getting a 5th, what's Dave Eagles do on Tuesday nights...

Actually i think Copland is right, and we should just stick to 4, unless the right person shows up...

Call me Old Skool....

Call me old skool, but i decided to finally finish off the skill capping.

so here it is:

chase this

i met some random today at kodash... very helpful indeed. we started talking about vabbian armor and somehow led to him giving me advice on how to do the shadow nexus challenge mission. Well... after I got a build together, I got a mysterious armour piece, put in on zenmai and snap - she's in my hall...

the guy told me to go for a build w 2 good healers and 2 good damage dealers. Remembering that lightbringers gaze worked, and adding a could of cool mes skills i was gtg. I put a sweet w/d scyth build on goren, a n/rt healer build on olias and finished it off with an e/mo ether renewal protector build on sousuke. i got about 100 points in the challenege, and one of these bad boys!!

So... I think glint's challenge is one we can do together, but shadow nexus might have to be a go it alone sorta thing. Or maybe in a pair, as we dont have the healers.

oh... try this page for the builds i used. I added weapon of remedy and weapon of warding to this one. heres the ele, and here's goren (which i added sprint to). I'd stick to those healers, but think about eles for damage maybe?

materials and crafting

they are worth a bomb, so i imagine what i'm saying here is a little null and void... but there's a few things i'm looking for over the coming months, that i imagine you guys will all be after too.

amber chunks

jadeite shards

sapphires

rubys

globs of ectoplasm (yeah right)

obsidian shards

diamonds

onyx gemstones

i'm trying to farm some of these bad boys, but it aint easy. these are all the stuff needed for some of the elite armor and destroyer weapons (well the hard stuff anyways). Having just a few of these bad boys could save you a fair bit of coin in the scheme of things.

One more note of armor - if you are aiming for elite armor you dont need to buy all 5 pieces to be able to display it - you only need the bottom 4 (shoes, pants, body, gloves), not the headgear. It's not huge, but will save you a few materials and possibly 15 plat (again depends on the armor). I imagine particularly for you warrior types the helmets are cool as, so it might be worth doing it just so you look awesome.

Last thing to note, that is somewhat related is some info that had been popping up in a few articles. Each character in guild wars 2 will also pick a crafting ability. So, instead of going to weapons makers (for example) you will possibly be able to do it yourself. I reckon a blog article will come out in the coming months about this. I think it would be the sort of thing that we should talk about before choosing so we can have a few bases covered. I have no idea how it will work, but it might be good to be able to spread the love.

things we should work on

3 challenge missions that we should be able to get some drops to upgrade our hero's armor

Dajkah Inlet (which we've done a few times, so may be less drops)

Glint's Challenge

Shadow Nexus

check em out and we'll get stuck in this week.

some help for hall of monuments

throughout my over the top research on guild wars 2, i've found a couple of particularly in depth and useful sites that focus a fair bit of energy to gw2... namely ten ton hammer and massively.

massively has a blog called the flameseeker chronicles... as part of that they have written a series of articles called "the road to fifty" - which is all about getting the full 50 in your hall... now... i'm not saying we do that, but the articles are helpful... and i think 30 may be within reach.

the one I thought was most interesting was the guide to mini-pets. goes on about which ones can be found in drops, worked towards etc

the other articles are on heroes and pets, titles, armor and weapons. check em...

some thoughts on... you guessed it... gw2

So, I was talking to Mick the other day, and it looks like I was just making stuff up, or something.

There are 5 starter cities - one for each race. You only have access to your own city at first. Once you get to somewhere around level 30, all races meet at another city. "Lion's Arch" - it better not be a pain in the butt this time!! From there you travel north and into the lost city of Orr, and into the end game.

Once you get to Lion's Arch, you can travel through the other lands into the home cities of other races.

I guess the main thing this highlights is that if we want to play together, we will need to all be the same race. I'm not sure yet what I want to be, but I'm happy to have two characters going at once. I was thinking it might be cool to have us all have one type (say human) and then all have different types that we can join together later, so I might be asura, copland - charr, caine - norn and mick - rollerbeetle. roflcopter.

the new's / blog has been silent since releasing the hall of monuments info. i was hoping that there would have been another profession announced by now. Oh well, you'll hear from me when it happens. I'm guessing tomorrow, but who knows.

The good thing about hall of monuments rewards is that you can add them after gw2 comes out. So... in particular to mini pets... once you get more... you will still be rewarded for them.

Last thing...

Release date? I'm thinking just before the big school holidays in the states. Mind you... they seem to have put the breaks on... 7 weeks between prof announcements - if that continues... then... they wont have announced them all til April!! gee!! Then who knows...

anyways... that's a random rant...

ummm... yeah....

so, this is a teaser post

i just got 3 gold items, and sold all my loot (including gold items)... including gold i picked up...

3.1 plat

25 minutes!

will fill you in on my next 2 runs and then spill the beans!

Before GW2 - The Stamp

With the help of the Rewards Calculator The Stamp is sitting on 16 points.

I'm doing ok when it comes to devotion (mini pets) though the prices have gone insane since the HoM info came out.

Fellowship I'm2/8, but that could be bumped up a bit by doing a few basic hero type quests, which is something I'm keen to do.

Honor is 9/18, my highest score but also the one with the most possibilities. There are others I'd rather work on than this one to be honest.

As for Resilience and Valor - 0! Possibly some easy work to be done on these ones.

I don't have any specific ideas about what I want to do, but I have put a bit of time into trading mini pets and working on building that up, as you can see...

happy birthday to me

Xyla Nu - what i want before GW2

Here's my to do list - get me up to about 26 points i reckon, currently on 19.

Devotion (5 points currently)

4 extra companions ( a couple of rare pets, a couple of hero upgrades) - for 1 extra point

Fellowship (5 points currently)

9 more mini pets - will wait and see on this, but may buy a few if i have cash - 1 extra point

Honor (8 points currently)

2 more maxed titles for 1 extra point

Resilience (1 point currently)

1 more elite armor - a really good one that'll cost about 140k - 2 extra points

Valor

1 or 2 special weapons. Probably Tormented and Oppressor Weapons - oppressor is a lot of work, tormented is about 40k i think. - 2 or 3 extra points.

sell everything!!!

In a desperate search for coin to try and get the caps to get the skill hunter title sorted i resorted to cleaning out some old characters.

As long as they have one weapon left I could do something with I'm happy. So, I sold a few golds...

The other thing i did was use some of the things like monastary credits and battle commendations that i had lying around. Got me a couple of plat!

Desperate time = desperate measures

Rethinking the coming months. Titles vs Rewards

As you would know the rewards calculator for GW2 from your hall of monuments has been revealed.

It's making me think about where I put my effort.

I can get 1 extra point by slogging my guts out to get to 10 maxed titles. Or... I can work on more armour, weapons and hero items, and possibly get 5 or 6 more points.

I really dig what i can get for 17 points - the seathunder pistol. Also, I think a rainbow jellyfish would be off the hook for a ranger... I'm sure some of the swords / maces / bows interest you guys!

So... where to from here... What are our priorities??

Powerstones of PWNAGE

He peeps,

I bought 17 powerstones of Courage for 19plat today.

Thought i would let you know....

We got a few for the kitty now :)

I PWNed those sellers!

ch ch ch changes?

if you cast your eyes to the right of this post you will notice a couple of things i've added. 2 news feeds (GW2 and ArenaNet blog) as well as a few extra links.

they are easy to get rid of if you hate them, so let me know.

Also... I was thinking of re-doing the design. My options are either to change the colour scheme and picture on this blog, or... to have a dotcom that i could build with wordpress and have our own site... i think i could come up with whatever we want, so let me know what you think.

the third option is just to leave it looking how it is.

thoughts?

Guild Wars: Beyond

Last night I started a series of quests called "the war in kryta". It's part of guild wars beyond, which is... Any material that links the original guild wars with the gw2. EotN and that golem hero MOX are also part of it... Figure that I'm going to move xyla all the way, so I should do the quests.
Check it...