Lyssia.4637

I thought about writing this in the thread about the cooking recipes, but this seems a better place for it. Thank you, Rivelt, for opening this thread and sharing. I hope it's all right with you if I follow in your footsteps. I'm also well into my 30s. Very long ago, now, my then-new husband got into Guild Wars at the release of Nightfall, for much the same reasons as Rivelt; I was still in college, my husband had a new job, and there was no monthly fee; getting the game for both of us was a celebration of his first paycheck. He had friends who played, and he and Guild Wars turned me into a gamer... though not a very good one. Guild Wars and Diablo were about the only games we could agree on, though; he was a StarCraft kind of guy, while I got into modding for Morrowind and followed the Elder Scrolls game. But we always played Guild Wars together. Back when it was the Canthan New Year festival in Shing Jea, we had a tradition: we'd go out for Asian food on the day the festival opened (we lived in a city where there were amazing, authentic Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese places all within a mile of our apartment), play all night, and set our characters up for AFK gambling all day. One year, things were tight, though; the Great Recession had just started, and we were both out of work. Instead of going out, I got creative and made Red Bean Buns and my own version of one of the dishes from the Celestial Feast... I don't even remember which one, now. My husband teased me about it, so I wrote a little vinaigrette, describing how one of his characters invented the recipe. We were playing World of Warcraft as well, with it's more robust cooking system than GW1 had at the time, and that became our new tradition; every new game festival, I'd make a dish from it. Wintersday Cookies and Egg Nog, Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving, Birthday Cake on GW's anniversary... And all came with stories about his characters, mine, and the game, just because it made him laugh. Fast forward to the release of GW2; it was also the year our first child was born. I was thrilled with the new crafting system, particularly cooking; especially as I could craft one-handed while nursing, rocking, or holding a sleeping infant. We timed our second daughter better; she was a year old when Heart of Thorns came out. And then, between the testing of Heart of Thorns and it's release, my 38 year old husband had a stroke, and was dead a week later. We'd pre-purchased Heart of Thrones, but I didn't play it. For a long time, I couldn't even log in to do dailies. His friends had moved on, from the game and from our lives, and I was never great at the game. But a couple of years later, after yet another move, I found the notebook where I'd collected all the recipes I'd been developing from the new crafting system. Path of Fire had come out; he would have enjoyed the mounts. For the first time since he had passed away, logging back into the game, I felt close to him again. I began to play again, slowly; and I began to cook the recipes during the festivals for my two girls, without saying anything about it. But one day, I was leveling my cooking when my then-6 year old eldest daughter wandered by. She figured she'd "help" me, and was hooked. Although terrified of actually fighting any creatures, she LOVED exploring the safer parts of the world, dressing up my characters, and crafting. (And, weirdly, PVP. Other players were just playing like her, she explained to me once, but the poor monsters weren't doing anything wrong, and it wasn't nice to wander around killing them.) After she spent a couple hundred of my gold buying mostly blueberries on the trading post, I dug up my husband's account information and let her create her first character of her own. I had no idea, then, what I was doing. Two years later, my oldest daughter is now very much the gamer her father was. She completed the main story of Guild Wars 2, is more or less carrying me along Path of Fire, and has her own account, while using the festivals to teach her little sister the basics ("dont' run over the townspeople when you are racing; they don't like it!"), and coding Minecraft. Her younger sister just received her own account for Christmas; she's ready to move on from dressing up characters to getting her first mount, but she wants to be a baker or a chef when she grows up, and has taken over the Big Book of Game Recipes; we're working on rice balls this week. When we've had a bad week, when it's hard to be without husband and father, when we just need to spend time together, when we can't take another moment in Covid quarantine... we come back to Guild Wars. Gaming was my husband's passion; but the Guild Wars series, with all it's little flaws and hiccups and problems, was the reason I became a gamer, and became one of the biggest things that still connects me and our daughters to him, even with him gone. Every time I finish an achievement or a story mission I was sure I'd never be able to do without him to help me, every time my daughter and I earn a new piece of armor together, every time we make another pot of Cold Wurm Stew or Moa Poultry Noodle Soup, I am so grateful for the Guild Wars franchise. Yes, I know for hardcore gamers, it has it's problems. But every time Lander or Violina Masma walks Tyria, my husband is still alive, just a little, and remembered; and I so grateful to all the people who worked so hard to make this game fun for that. As Rivlet said, count us in for End of Dragons; I can't wait to show my girls Cantha! Thank you so much for all you've done with this game! And Happy Valentines Day, all.

> @"Kiba.9743" said: > Cooking is my favorite craft to level up. It is really fun and it makes me want to learn to cook different recipes at home. I was expecting Arena Net to come out with a cookbook and I am surprised it has not. I remember seeing someone make a beautiful PDF of their GW2 cookbook idea on the Art forums and it looked like something I would definitely buy. I am hoping that maybe Alchemy Art Group (the makers of Tyrian Gazette and Tyrian Tarot) will partner up with Arena Net again and make something like this happen. I think they would be able to raise a lot of money, just like their previous projects. I saw that too. Chelsea Monroe-Cassel came out with lovely ESO and WoW cookbooks in 2018 and 2019, so there's certainly a market for one.

> @"Rolok.4201" said: > I was talking with a friend today and we came to the conclusion that having a chair novelty themed as a small campground would be awesome. Have a small cot on the ground that you're sitting on the edge of, a small fire in front of you or just to your side. A little pot hanging over the fire. Maybe put a small pack near you with a ton of little supply items on it like utensils, a mug, a pan, an axe to cut the firewood with, etc. Heck, maybe put a small tent nearby instead of having your character sitting on a cot. > > Thank you for taking the time to read this, if you do! I second this. I seem to remember this came up before, last summer, and it's still a good idea. As is getting the "beach towel" chair the npcs use during the Four Winds Festival.

I never understood why they didn't just add a "weapon only" checkbox to the Gemstore preview window. It's already in the game. But as said above, maybe that's somehow harder than it seems.

"Again, a few exceptions snuck past me like Winterberries..." I used cranberries to make everything but the Bowl of Winterberry Seaweed Salad. (And the steak recipe. I used Juniper berries for that one.) Though the pie and the sorbet require the addition of sugar. Honestly, when I saw the Savory Winterberry Sauce, I figured that was what they were meant to be! I've been using GW2 cooking recipes for a good two years now to get my kids to eat all kinds of things they wouldn't otherwise try. Turns out, an eight year old who won't touch ordinary beef stew can't get enough of it when it's Wurm Stew from Hoelbrak. Ever consider publishing a irl cookbook? I would LOVE to see the actual recipes the experts had in mind and compare them to my cobbled-together creations!

Any chance you might develop gemstore, all-weight, scarification and tattoo armor skins, ala the monk and necromancer outfits in GW1? Because I have a male ranger that would look a lot better in tattoos than a shirt. Also, who wouldn't want at least the option to run around in nothing but one's scars and skivvies, (without an armor penalty) especially in the middle of winter?

> @"Arana.6498" said: > Woult it also be too much to ask to have a "" Cozy Shimmer wing SkyScale wintersday "" Mount Skin > THe Skyscale is the only one that does not have a wintersday Cozy Wintersday skin. The Shimmer wing would be the best for it. > It would sell more then the other skyscale variants. There's a wintersday Skyscale: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cozy_Wintersday_Skyscale It's the Warclaw and Roller Beetle that don't yet have Cozy Wintersday skins. Any chance we can get the Warclaw this year, please?

> @"Veprovina.4876" said: > Like i said earlier in my post, "levels" in this game don't mean much when the game downlevels you in lower level areas and PvP. You gain nothing from a lvl 80 boost except convenience to skip the leveling if you don't want to. Which is mainly used for alts anyway, people who already have a main. > And even then, should you want any special items - you still need to actually play the game and get map completion, and you have to get hero points to unlock elites because a lvl 80 boost is only going to cover core traits. > And since masteries are account wide - you don't have to go through "hell" twice, so your point doesn't make sense. And that being said, it's not mastery points I'd want to buy, it's hero points. THAT gets grindy after the first alt or so.