5 Early Tips for the Guild Wars 2 Gamer

Here's just some quick little tips which I've discovered over the past few beta weekends and stress tests. They aren't ways to become a super-all-powerful Golemancer Necrodemon, but they will help you make a little more coin, experience a little more of the game, and find your way around easier.

1. Once you’ve completed an event, stick around and listen to the NPCs. Dynamic events are fun little snippets of a much larger story which might sweep across the entire region. Often, once you’ve completed the particular part of the event which you stumbled across, the NPCs will have a bit of a natter amongst themselves before deciding what to do next - don’t just wander off at this point! Each part of the event chain leads up to an eventual crescendo – a gigantic boss battle or frantic fight for survival. Stick around and listen to what they have to say and you get to experience the whole thing.

2. Don’t merch anything. You will almost always get a better deal for your items if you sell them to a player on the marketplace, plus you’re helping them reach their own personal goal. The more you trade in the marketplace, the more you feed your efforts back into the community and encourage a healthy economic system. Even the lowliest of white items will usually find a buyer (who wants to salvage them down to their components and sell them on). The only exceptions which I’ve found so far are the trophy items – these seem to have no use whatsoever except merchant fodder. The only drawback of selling to the market, rather than a merchant, is that you don’t get your money immediately; instead you have to periodically collect the coins by visiting the Trading Post NPC.

3. The orange symbols on the map will tell you what type of dynamic event is occurring:

• An area or NPC must be protected from harm.
• An issue that must be resolved by force.
• A specific foe that must be vanquished.
• A service or assistance that needs to be provided.
• A task involving collecting or gathering.
• An area that must be held or claimed.
• An object that must be destroyed.
• A chaotic brawl.

4. Heart Givers have some pretty SWEET items in sale in exchange for Karma. Really, you could go the entire game and end up with some amazing loot without spending a single bronze coin. Every time you complete a Heart quest, head over to the quest giver (indicated on the map by the heart symbol, which should now be filled in yellow) and take a gander at what they have to offer – they will usually have level-appropriate weapons, armour, consumables or other neat items available for Karma points.

5. Keep an eye on your zone completion status on the left hand side of the World Map:

This shows you how many Point of Interest, Renown Hearts, Resurrect Shrines and Skill Points you've found on this map. If you find them all you get an absolute AVALANCHE of items, coins and experience. It's a nice little bonus to the ultimate aim of exploring the world.

And that's it for now - there will obviously be more to come. Less than two months away now, who's excited? ME.

[GW2] Lvl50 Rock Lobster Baby

One of the lesser discussed features of Guild Wars 2 is the ability to add your own music into the playlists to play at certain times – ie, you can add some death metal into the “battle music” playlist and then when you enter battle in-game this music will play (and presumably turn back to the original game music when the battle is over).

We don’t know 100% how it’s going to work. As far as I’m aware, during the Beta Weekends so far most people have been more concerned with playing the actual game rather than fiddling around with the files in the background. We aren’t sure whether there will be an in game option to “enable personal play list” and whether this will replace the original score entirely, or if it will be random whether you get the original music or your own addition at any one time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this feature recently. Undoubtedly, ArenaNet and Jeremy Soule will have worked hard to produce a score which gels nicely with the environment and situation in hand. I wonder what type of new experiences we might produce when we start throwing our own playlists in willy-nilly. A large percentage of the experience of any situation is influenced by the audio in the background (just try watching a horror movie with the sound off, or even better, with Katy Perry’s latest hit blaring in the background). I’m sure we could produce some really interesting experiences simply by fiddling with the musical accompaniment.

Sometimes significant audio/visual juxtaposition can produce interesting effects, such as the disturbing torture scene in Reservoir Dogs – where Mr Blonde sadistically dances around a gagged and bound policeman, before viciously cutting off his ear, all to the tune of “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Steelers Wheels. Or the interesting “To Zanarkand” sequence in Final Fantasy X; where your main character travels to the charred and ruined wreckage of his home city - battling terrible demons and monsters en route. The entire trip is accompanied by a haunting composition which, unlike other sequences in the game, doesn’t switch to the signature guitar-riffs when you enter a battle sequence. The effect is a melancholy and sombre experience which is somewhat at odds with the battles you face on the way.

My point is that for all of us who will be adding the LOTR soundtrack to the ambient music playlists, there are those who will fill their battle-playlist with the Vengaboys, Justin Beiber or the B52s (I’d suggest Rock Lobster and Love-Shack, I can totally imagine smashing the Shadow Behemoth to the tune of: “It’s the loooove shack, it’s a little love place where... we can get to-geth-eeerrr... love shack baaabyyyy... LOVE SHACK BABY!”)