All posts by sethmoonshadow

About sethmoonshadow

An avid table top fantasy, computer based and online roll playing gamer got his start with Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition with a character Uthar Dragonbane. Uthar was an axe wielding Barbarian Cleric in the classic RPG and survived long enough to reach 2nd Edition. From there Uthar let RL take it's place until getting into computers and Diablo (from Blizzard). Uthar Dragonbane made his way through Diablo and Diablo II enjoying his victories over the minions of evil. Diablo III was a long way off and so Uthar sought adventures elsewhere. Making the journey to NeverWinterNights Uthar found a new friend in Seth Moonshadow. Seth was a Wizard who wore no cone hat, but carried a big stick into battle :D And so, Uthar and Seth having vanquished the foes from NeverWinterNights took thier talents online. Uthar having enjoyed Blizzard games in the past tried the 30 day free WoW experience. Alas, the coin was too high a price for Uthar & Seth. But a new adventure awaited in a recently released world of Tyria! While Seth Moonshadow was unhindered in his teleportation to Tyria, Uthar was not so lucky. Uthar it seemed had an unknown brother who writ into history Uthars change in names. Uthar Dragonbane was no more and Uthar Dragonbain was reborn. Seth Moonshadow is currently the Guild Leader for Dungeons Adventures and has four other personal guilds used for bank storage. Along with Crystal Virgo they help create a family based friendly guild with a focus on PvE and also enjoy Living World, Achievements, personal Story, Story Journal, World Completion and other areas of Guild Wars 2.

It’s the Final Countdown | GuildWars2.com

Hey, folks,

We’re down to just eight days now until the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™! This is an extremely exciting time for everyone. We know you’re all ramping up to get ready for the release of the expansion—and all of us here at ArenaNet have been working like crazy to try and provide the best possible experience we can.

Our journey is nearly over—very soon, you will be gliding through the jungle canopy, battling to level 100 in fractals, building a guild hall with your friends, overcoming challenges in the jungle to unlock your elite specialization, competing with your friends and guildmates to get to the top of our new minigame adventure leaderboards, battling in the epic new World vs. World Borderlands map and waging war against enemy guilds with guild claiming, competing in Stronghold to kill enemy teams’ lords, joining with a party of ten to go on incredibly challenging raid runs, setting off on epic legendary journeys to build legendary gear, competing in Player vs. Player leagues for awesome rewards and prizes, and reading epic run-on sentences! And those are just some highlights of the countless new adventures that await you inGuild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns!

In the time leading up to the launch of the expansion, we’ll be counting down each day by putting a spotlight on a part of the expansion. Each spotlight will provide a summary of links and videos to basically every detail about that feature we’ve revealed up until now—so you can get a full, handy-dandy recap of all the info about each of our major features. That carries us up until October 23. So when exactly will you be able to play Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns for the first time?

On October 23 at 12:01 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7), Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will go live! In the hours leading up to the launch of the expansion, members of the Guild Wars 2 dev team will be coming by to visit and chat about the expansion on our official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. In the final minutes of the countdown to launch, we’d like to invite all of you to join us live on the stream for a champagne toast with our dev team as we “press the button” and launchGuild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns live.

As developers, this is the most exciting time for all of us: to finally have something we’ve spent over a year of our lives pouring our hearts into get released to all of you. We cannot wait to putGuild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns live and to get out there and play the game with all of you. We hope you enjoy the expansion as much as we’ve enjoyed making it, and a special thanks goes to all of you who have helped make the game through beta testing in our BWE weekends and giving amazing feedback. Without you, this expansion wouldn’t be near the game it will end up being. For the final time before we launch, we’ll see you soon in Tyria—an epic journey awaits!

~ by Colin Johanson on October 15, 2015

   

The countdown begins to the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns!

Source: It’s the Final Countdown | GuildWars2.com

 

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader

Halloween Is Coming!

Beginning on October 23, the Shadow of the Mad King event returns for nearly two weeks of ghoulish capers, spooky fights, and holiday fun! Get ready for another year of tricks, treats, and terrible jokes as the pumpkin-headed former ruler of the Thorn dynasty graces Lion’s Arch with his presence. Check out the release page for all of the details.

Halloween returns to Tyria

We’ll be airing an episode of Community Showcase Live on October 28 on the officialGuild Wars 2 Twitch channel, and we’d love to share your Halloween-themed fan works! You can submit your pieces through the official Guild Wars 2 Tumblr or on the official Community Creations subforum.

We’re looking forward to celebrating Halloween with the community, so keep an eye out—you may see ArenaNet employees hopping into the game on October 30 to haunt the festivities!

Tasty treats and ghastly tricks await you!
New Halloween Skins

~ by The Guild Wars 2 Team on October 13, 2015

The veil between worlds grows thin, and Halloween is almost here…

Source: Halloween Is Coming! | GuildWars2.com

   

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader

Bobble Head Fun

So a while back I bought the Bobblehead Laboratory for a fun thing to do while waiting at world bosses or or events. While playing with some guildy’s I made the mistake of consuming some at what I thought would be a really fun time to use it. We had fun with Shatterer, and then again during FoeFire Cleansing with Duke Barradin. So I figured why not use it with World Summit we were about to do.

 

Photo
Big Head Shatterer
BH_Baradin
Big Head Barradin
BH_Shadow
Big Head Shadow Dragon

Well, that turned out to be a huge mistake! The Shadow Dragon’s head took up the whole screen and I could barely see anything to play. It was fun alright, and added another difficulty challenge to the achievement.

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Content

Many have felt that purchasing the expansion Heart of Thorns is not worth it. I would disagree. Many of those reason I would disagree below are listed below. These items are collection of reveals from multiple sources. Taken individually may not seem like much, once you see them together however, you see there is a lot of new content & systems that are improving our experiences.

  1. 4 maps, some containing 3 “biomes” – all containing many new events
  2. New races of npcs and monsters
  3. Repeatable adventures with leaderboards
  4. Map bonus reward system
  5. 1 profession
  6. 9 specializations
  7. New Personal Story
  8. Living World releases including Living Story Season 3
  9. 2 new armor sets per weight (from the open world) 5 weapon sets
  10. Legendary armor
  11. Legendary weapon set
  12. Legendary back pieces
  13. 60 new item skins, miniatures and more
  14. 7 mastery tracks
  15. Precursor crafting
  16. RAIDs, 1 raid with 3 wings
  17. 2 Guild Halls with 6 core buildings and over 175 decorations including a customizable PvP arena
  18. 2 New guild armor and weapon sets
  19. New PvP gamemode with new map
  20. Guild teams and leaderboards
  21. PvP leagues
  22. 10 New PvP reward tracks
  23. New WvW borderland
  24. New fractal system, rewards and 50 more levels
  25. Commander & Squad UI improvements
  26. More unmetioned or smaller features and updates……

These additions really create the “complete package” feeling that finally Guild Wars 2 has everything and more from Guild Wars and SO much more! A game that has taken us on a long 3 year journey and intends to continue that trek deeper into………..FUN!

 or 

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader

The Final Beta Weekend Event Begins October 2!

We’re excited to announce that our third and final Beta Weekend Event will be taking place starting at noon Pacific Time (UTC-7) on Friday, October 2, and running until midnight Pacific Time (UTC-7) on Sunday, October 4.

These Beta Weekend Events are your opportunity to help shape the development process and the experience you’ll have when Guild Wars 2 is completed. These are real beta tests, and you have a real opportunity to make our expansion better with your feedback.

As a reminder, we’re not going to show everything from the expansion in beta weekends. We want to keep a strong sense of discovery and not spoil huge parts of the story ahead of time. We’re going to test enough to help us broadly understand how everything works and apply those lessons to the parts of the game we won’t be showing during beta weekends as well. For example, we’ll only ever be showing the first story chapter and parts of the first map of the expansion during beta weekends to ensure an entire world of discovery and excitement awaits you on launch day when you venture deeper into the jungle. After all, Guild Wars 2 is the game where the journey is the goal!

BWE3—Content Experience

Players who have pre-purchased the expansion will see a new button appear on the character-creation screen that allows them to create and play a fully geared, level 80 beta character of any race for the duration of the weekend. You’ll have access to four beta character slots to use. Due to large back-end changes to core systems that have corrupted some of the beta data, your characters from previous beta weekends will not be available for BWE3—everyone will be starting with fresh beta characters.

Players who have pre-purchased will be able to use their beta character slots to create our new profession, the revenant, using the full selection of core specializations, weapons, and legends. You’ll also be able to play with our new elite specialization system that grows your character professions into new elite specs. You’ll be able to try out all nine of the elite specializations:chronomancer, dragonhunter, reaper, tempest, berserker, daredevil, and herald, as well as the newly announced scrapper and our final elite specialization, the druid.

Beta characters will begin by playing through a brief shared battle in the Silverwastes that leads into the expansion jungle region, followed by the intro story step of the expansion. From there, they’ll land in Verdant Brink, the first map of the expansion. For our third beta weekend test, you’ll be landing in the same location that the second beta weekend took place in. We’ve expanded the nighttime events a bit to allow you to explore both the floor and jungle canopy in this part of Verdant Brink—and you’ll encounter new bosses who await you high above the jungle at night. You’ll be able to train your masteries in the jungle region as you play through the story and event content available in Verdant Brink.

We’ll also be opening up raiding in Guild Wars 2 for the very first time. You’ll find a brand-new portal in Verdant Brink right next to where you arrive in the map; this portal is a temporary entrance to our first raid! You’ll be able to form parties of 10 and enter the first raid wing, Spirit Vale, where you’ll go in search of a missing squad of Pact soldiers who disappeared while scouting an area north of the jungle. Here you’ll be able to take on the first encounter of our first raid wing as you search for the missing soldiers. This is the first of four total encounters in Spirit Vale—we’ll save the other three for when we activate the first wing in the live game so we don’t give away too many surprises.

Not only will you be able to take your characters to the jungle, but you can take them into the existing game world as well! Player vs. Player, PvE, or WvW—feel free to try out the new profession or elite specializations in Central Tyria with all your friends and guildies. To go along with this, we’ll have our map bonus reward system on for beta characters only to help players get a feel for how we’ll be helping keep the core game world relevant and rewarding with the release of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

We’ll also be turning on our new Stronghold PvP game mode for all players for the duration of the weekend, along with the new Mist Champion selection system. Players who pre-purchaseGuild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will have all the currently revealed Mist Champions automatically unlocked for them to use for the duration of the weekend.

BWE3—Feedback

So what kind of feedback are we looking for?

We’d love to get your thoughts on the revenant and all the elite specializations. We’d like your comments on the two new elite specializations, as well as the balance changes and updates we’ve made to the ones we’ve shown before. Were they fun to play? Did they change the way you play your profession in a meaningful way?

Did you enjoy the amount of vertical space available to play in for this part of the map? Are the new bosses fun to fight against? Do they add more to the night experience? Did you enjoy your time in general in Verdant Brink?

We want your feedback on what it feels like to play raids. Does raiding prove to be the true PvE challenge you were hoping for? Did you have to refine your build, discuss with your friends what builds they were running, and together define a strategy to overcome our first raid encounter? Did you fail the encounter multiple times until you eventually devised a strategy to learn how to overcome it? And most importantly, did you have fun?

We’re continuing to look for feedback on what it’s like to progress and earn Masteries over the course of multiple days of gameplay in the jungle and how it feels to use those Mastery abilities in the area provided. We’ve sped up the rate at which you earn Masteries deeper into the Mastery lines. Does the Mastery system feel like a system that works to provide meaningful progression? Does it make you care about experience points and Mastery points? Does it provide a framework you think we could add to regularly in live updates?

See You Soon!

Beta Weekend Events are a large milestone in the development of our expansion, and we can’t wait to play the game with you over the weekend and to continue down the path that bringsGuild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns to release. After this beta weekend has completed, we’ll be just 19 days from the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns!

I want to extend a huge thank-you to everyone who has helped us beta test so far; the entire expansion (including the huge volume of stuff you haven’t seen!) is infinitely better because of it. This final beta weekend will help us identify the last refinements we need to address to make the experience even better, so thank you ahead of time to all of you who make it in. And remember—please make sure to share your feedback; it’s incredibly important to us!

We’ll see you in-game and streaming live on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel this weekend at TwitchCon!

~by Colin Johanson on September 25, 2015

Learn more about what we’ll be testing in the third and final Beta Weekend Event for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

Source: The Final Beta Weekend Event Begins October 2! | GuildWars2.com

 

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader
Black Lion Key

Black Lion Key Drop

 

Since the patch on Sept. 15, 2015 there were quite a lot of posts concerning the state of Black Lion Key Farming. I new key farming was a popular past time for some. I never realized it was THAT popular though. It was a favorite pass time for me to do in the mornings with a fresh cup of coffee before waking munchkin up for the day. It allowed me to play Guild Wars 2 with out advancing my characters beyond my wife’s ( we like to advance in the game together).

Now that it is gone I found myself pondering what to do the following morning.  If your like me you are disappointed (to say the least) that this was done. There is, however unlikely , the off chance they might include them as part of a RAID Chest reward? It was suggested that they be added to a Black Lion Trading Company PvP Track. I suggested that Black Lion Keys be added to a 4th & 5th dungeon path. Those additional dungeon paths would have ALL existing dungeon paths active at the same time and the party wold need to clear | vanquish | defeat all the foes to have a Black Lion Key added as the completion reward. There were a few other suggestions as well. Time will only tell if any of them will be heard or implemented. But I digress :/

I created this post  to get a general idea of how often the keys are actually dropping. Popular opinion is that they are as elusive as precursor or more so, since they cannot be coaxed from the Mystic Forge. Below I have created a spreed sheet to hopefully get a better idea of the drop rate frequency.
Black Lion Key Drop Research

 

black-flag

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader

The Mordrem Are Coming

 

by The Guild Wars 2 Team on September 2, 2015

Mordremoth is rallying its forces, sending armies of Mordrem out of the Maguuma Jungle to test Central Tyria’s defenses. Drive back the invasion, and stop the jungle dragon from sinking its teeth into vulnerable territory! The Battle Begins From 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) on September 10 through 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) on September 14, Mordrem will be staging periodic incursions into Brisban Wildlands, Kessex Hills, and Diessa Plateau. Keep an eye on the world event UI, which will let you know when Mordremoth is launching its assault.

Coordinate with other players to stop the Mordrem in their tracks, and you’ll earn Mordrem Blooms. Mordrem Blooms are the research samples the Durmand Priory seek. In exchange for the research samples, the Durmand Priory is offering concessions as a reward.

This event is recommended for players level 18 and up. If you’re just starting your journey into Tyria, you can prepare by exploring the game world, completing maps, learning your character’s abilities, and making friends to join forces with during the invasion. Guilds will be
seeking new members, so be on the lookout for one that’s right for you! In addition to all the perks of guild membership, you’ll have allies on your side during this tumultuous time.

ArenaNet developers will be joining players in the game throughout the invasion, so look for the red ArenaNet logo, and be sure to say hello. We’d also love to see your screenshots of the event, so tweet us your favorites @GuildWars2 or submit them to the official Guild Wars 2 Tumblr! Our team will be sharing the best of the best through our social-media channels through the week of September 13.

Source: The Mordrem Are Coming | GuildWars2.com

 

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader

Raids in Guild Wars 2

by Steven Waller on August 29, 2015

You asked for the ultimate challenging content in Guild Wars 2—challenges that would put your skills to the test and push you and your friends to the edge to achieve victory. Now the answer is here. Today at PAX Prime, we announced that the “challenging group content” that we said would arrive with Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ is Raids! Built on top of our ground-breaking combat and dynamic event systems, the ultimate challenge is coming.

Players who purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will get access to our first raid, with the first of the three associated raid wings to be activated shortly after launch. During this window, we’ll be looking at balance with our new profession and elite specializations as well as giving players some time to train the Heart of Maguuma Masteries that will be used in the first raid wing. The remaining two raid wings will follow in sequence soon after.

ArenaNet has always challenged conventions and looked to innovate, and Raids in Guild Wars 2 will be no different. But for those of you that weren’t able to see our presentation at PAX, you might be asking yourselves…

What Are Raids in Guild Wars 2?

Raids are 10-player, instanced content that will introduce very challenging bosses, epic encounters, and more! And we’re building them on top of our amazing combat and dynamic event systems to create a variety of difficult challenges that will require your raiding team to bring a high level of skill, strategy, and coordination in order to succeed.

Expecting to be able to just watch the UI to beat a boss? Guess again! Raiding in Guild Wars 2 is an action-oriented, engaging experience. You’ll have to actively manage your position, dodge, coordinate on objectives, and much more. You’ll have moments of anticipation where your next action could spell victory or death. And with a diverse range of difficult challenges, being able to customize your build will really pay off. You’ll be dependent on keeping yourself alive and helping support your team while playing your profession. Everyone will be expected to pitch in and execute at a high level to ensure success.

Raids will also tie into our new, advanced Mastery system of progression. We’ll be introducing new Mastery tracks and abilities that will be closely tied to progressing though raids, which our designers will be talking about in an upcoming blog. We’ll also be introducing new rewards. Which rewards, you ask? We’ll talk about that in more detail a little later, but let’s just say they’re legendary…

Pylon-Minions

A Fresh Take On Raiding

Raids in Guild Wars 2 are not about waiting to have fun. You don’t need to wait for your healer to get online. Our build-customization and weapon-swapping systems allow anyone to change their build to meet a particular challenge. And while a warrior might support a group differently than an elementalist would in terms of playstyle, our systems allow you to adjust your team’s composition and strategy to overcome any challenge.

Raids are not about an endless gear grind to get tiers of gear to go tackle the next raid. Raids won’t become easier because a new tier of gear or a level-cap raise made them irrelevant. We think beating a raid encounter should be a big deal—not just when you beat it, but for the life of the game. It takes away the meaning of your victory when suddenly new tiers of gear or more powerful experience levels are introduced that leave a wasteland of raids in their wake. If you beat a raid in Guild Wars 2, it means something and always will.

Bandit-Boss-Flame

The First Raid

In the first Raid wing, players will face three awesome, diverse, and very challenging bosses as well as an epic event that will leave players literally running for their lives. Each encounter will introduce different mechanics that require unique strategies to overcome and will be a big accomplishment if defeated. For each encounter, our goal is that you’ll need to face it many times to learn how to defeat it, continuing to develop your strategies, refining your communication and honing your tactics through practice, in order to execute to a high degree with the hope of eventually conquering it and moving on to the next encounter in the wing.

Altogether, players can expect to face big challenges in all three wings that will stretch the abilities of even our most battle-hardened adventurers. Raids will also become a key part of our live strategy for Guild Wars 2 in the future, but we’ll discuss that more down the road.

As players embark on this new adventure, they’ll start their journey in search of a Pact recon squad that vanished while on assignment. Following their trail, you’ll fight your way deeper into forgotten territory, encounter dangerous new enemies, and witness mystifying events. So join up with your friends, family, guild, or just a group of heroes from our friendly MMO community.

Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to launch.

I’ll see you in game!

Source: Raids in Guild Wars 2 | GuildWars2.com

 

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader

Play For Free Today | GuildWars2.com

by Mike O’Brien on August 29, 2015

Today we’re happy to announce that the Guild Wars 2 core game is available for everyone to play for free. With Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ launching soon, there’s no better time to introduce the game to your friends.

Our Business Model

Guild Wars 2 has the simplest of business models: buy the game and play it as long as you want with no monthly fees. We’ve been championing this as a great business model for MMOs since launching the first Guild Wars® a decade ago. We continue to believe in buy-to-play. It’s good for gamers and good for developers.

This business model has been fantastic for Guild Wars 2 and our fans. Since launching three years ago—almost to the day, today—we’ve sold more than 5 million copies of the game. And we’ve delivered more than 40 major content releases, with world-changing events, Living World episodes, and feature packs, all free of charge.

Expansions are the one place where the buy-to-play model gets a little tricky. When you’re coming in as a new player to a game that has a bunch of expansions, what exactly should you buy in order to play with your friends? The base game and also every single expansion? We’ve seen examples in the industry where that kind of thing has gotten out of control. It doesn’t seem right, and we want to do better. As we get ready to ship our first expansion for Guild Wars 2, we want to ensure that we keep the business model friendly and simple. So let’s be clear that when we say Guild Wars 2 is buy-to-play, we’re only asking you to buy one thing: the current release, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

To accomplish that, we’ve already included the core game as a free bundle for anyone who buys Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. And today we’ll go a step further: we’re making the core game free for everyone. For anyone who’s been curious about Guild Wars 2, now you can just go to guildwars2.com, download the game, and start playing.
If anyone can play Guild Wars 2 for free now, does that mean we’re switching business models to free-to-play? Are we going to be one of those games that aggressively monetizes free players through microtransactions? Absolutely not. Guild Wars 2 remains the same game it always has been. We’re making the core game experience free because we’re confident that anyone who loves Guild Wars 2 will buy Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

Getting the Details Right

A game like Guild Wars 2 lives and dies by its community. Our goal is to protect our current community but also to make it as easy as possible for you to introduce the game to your friends, to recruit new players into your guilds, to challenge new players to Player vs. Player matches, and so on.

It’s trickier than you’d think to accomplish both objectives. We have to ensure that free accounts can’t be used to abuse the game or its current players (through botting, cheating, spamming, or RMT) while still making sure that free accounts get the authentic Guild Wars 2 experience.

Here are the changes we made for free accounts.

First, free accounts start with fewer character slots and bag slots than the paid version of the game. But they still get the full complement of slots as soon as they buy Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

Second, free accounts have some chat restrictions and economy restrictions so that they can’t be used to disrupt the game for other players. Free accounts can use local chat and whispers, but not map chat. With whispers, they can both start new conversations and reply to existing conversations but are limited to starting new conversations no more than once every 30 seconds. Free accounts can buy and sell common goods on the trading post. They can’t mail gold or items directly to other players, trade gold for gems, or access guild vaults.

Third, free accounts have some restrictions to prevent them from skipping ahead to places where they could be used to disrupt the game. They must play to level 10 before leaving the starter zones, to level 30 before using LFG, and to level 60 before using World vs. World. They can play PvP immediately but must get to rank 20 before using custom and unranked arenas.

We’ve found in testing that it’s hard to read a list like this and know how it’s going to feel in action. All these changes are live today, so we invite you to see for yourself. Test with a free account and see that it’s the same Guild Wars 2 you know and love; test with a veteran account and confirm that the community is protected.

We have an exhaustive FAQ covering these changes and other topics related to the free game, so check it out if you have additional questions.

royal guard outfit

A Call to Action

Guild Wars 2 is famous for having the friendliest community in online gaming, and that community continues to grow. With Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns on the horizon, of course the game was going to have an influx of new players. And now, with this change, it will have a larger one. I ask you, the game’s veterans, to be the friendly faces that will welcome all these new players to the game.

To celebrate this special three-year anniversary of Guild Wars 2, we’re giving current players an all-new Royal Guard Outfit. Wear it with pride whenever you want to show that you were there early on, and that you’re someone that new players can go to for help.

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is full of end-game content, including Masteries, Fractals, Stronghold, and our newly announced challenging group content, raids. It’s coming on October 23, just 55 days from now! This is the perfect time to bring new players into your guild, to help them level up and master their professions, to practice coordinating as a team, and to prepare for all the challenges that the jungle will bring.

Mike O’Brien

 

Source: Play For Free Today | GuildWars2.com

 

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader