Cragga the Eighty Third.60

Just a heads-up, if you're still watching: those Zodiac skins are back in the statuette shop!

1-8 on the Numbers pad. (Zero is mapped for Mount Ability 2, I use keyboard movement controls and it's handy to hit with my pinky when drifting my beetle, and is also mapped as 'swim down' which is really intuitive considering similar mount ability actions.)

Been a little busy this year, so I appreciated the beginner-level map event option. I was able to avoid some of the lengthier events while simultaneously ranking up my weekly key farmers, and still get my Lunar dailies in. :)

Just pointing out something. It's not as simple as 'just get it in PoF.' It's on the Season 4 maps, and can't be got until AFTER POF. For some new players, that will mean buying Season 4. (Did you need all the maps to get it, or just Kourna? Feels like a long time ago...)

So, cut the beetle renters a little slack.

I think that most shoulders start at Level 15. You can always craft your own while you wait.

Thanks everyone again! I managed to install all the upgrades without blowing anything up! :D 24 mb RAM, 500gb hard drive, MSI Graphic Cards GT 1030 2G LP OC. Second SSD drive to be added later.

@Dusanyu, sounds like the GTX 750 ti would have been a little better, but I had already bought the 1030 when you posted. And it's fine, it 'optimized' GW2 when I installed the driver, which involved cranking every setting to max, and it runs very well. Such fun to see the whole landscape rendered at once, and the reflections on the water, and everybody's fashion wars! I am used to a flock of grey people whose individual styles only become visible after I stand next to them for a while. (And can listen to stuff on Youtube in the background without the former painful slowdowns!)

Feeling good about my future in Tyria! Now I get to start moving my personal files over from my Mac, and installing other programs. ^^ I got a keyboard sharing switch and plugged both into my monitor, just need to press a few buttons to switch from one computer to the other, so the transition should be easy and I can still play any Mac games I miss. Time to read a Windows for Dummies book...

Thanks, everyone, especially Infusion for all the GPU info!

I decided to go light, with the GT 1030 GDDR5, since it fits my small budget and seems a safe choice for power needs. GW2 is my main gaming focus, and that will be plenty. Looks like I should also be able to run Alien Isolation ~~and Elite Dangerou~~s, two games I have heard a lot about. ^^ All the parts should arrive well before the MacOs Feb 18 cut-off date, just hoping I can put in RAM, NVMe and GPU all at once go without anything blowing up or refusing to work. =)

All this has been a great way of learning what to look for when I get my NEXT computer. Thank you for the tips!

You haven't wasted the time, things go in and out of the statuette shop all the time. Contents usually change when the Black Lion chest contents change. Just make sure to keep checking what's in stock, I am sure it will be back eventually!

Have you considered Paypal? The Paypal payment method opens a browser window, so you will not actually be entering any information through nvidia OR Anet, just through Paypal.

Another way might be to get a prepaid debit card with only what you plan to spend in the game. That way, even if someone gets your number, you will lose very little.

Due to the Mac abandonment and other issues, I have bid on a cheap-ish used PC on Ebay and won. Unfortunately, never having owned a PC before, I have since learned that I did not make the best possible choice. But it will do. It's an Optiplex 7060, i8500 3gz, integrated HD 630 graphics. It's a SFF which means that due to space and the wimpy power supply, it will only ever support a lower-end, low-profile graphics card (some day when I can afford it.) It comes with only a small M.2 drive, which I am planning to upgrade immediately to 500gb, maybe adding a 2.5 SSD later when I need more space. I figure less drives means more power available for the graphics card I might add later, is that right? Meanwhile, GW2 runs perfectly okay on the integrated iris 1536 MB graphics on my old Mac Mini (i5 4th gen 2.6gz) With the processor speed increase, it should be much better on the new machine in any case, I hope. Sounds like it will support AMD RX550 or GE 1650, eventually. Barely. :disappointed:

Any tips or advice? This is my first-ever PC, it should be arriving next week, and I am pretty nervous about the switch. I do use PCs at work, so I know the basic functions, but an IT guy handles all the detail work. Will adding more RAM make noticeable improvements to the game? (Comes with 8g.) Any settings I should have to monkey with tor know about o make it better? Upgrades I should prioritize? Any advice will be appreciated. I like to be prepared ahead of time.

Note to Mac Users:

Just wondering if anyone has tried running GW2 on a chromebook or chromebox running Windows. (Still considering various options for when the Mac version dies.)

Tyria has been my second home for almost four years now. I will be sad to bid it goodbye. But I am on a Mac Mini from when they were still making them with 2014 specs, and still running Yosemite, and I knew that sooner or later the game would grow beyond my computer. The iffy Mac support has always made me feel like my days were numbered, anyway.

Once I'm locked out, I will probably format my GW2-dedicated SSD and see if I can run Boot Camp off it well enough to keep playing. (Or at all) If not...maybe see you some day when I get a PC. Apple is not the Apple I fell in love with way back when, and was debating switching anyway, and considering the state of the internet, what with Google, Facebook and Amazon, I can no longer find much hate for the Microsoft Empire.

Gonna try to finish Exordium and get in as much roller beetle racing as I can meanwhile.

Do you key farm? (Needs a character slot, though!)

Once a week, you can play the Level 10 adventure on a new character and get a Black Lion chest key. If you are hardcore and want to get more than one key per week,you can rank the character up doing map completions, for a 1/4 chance of getting a key from each map fully explored, and you also can get keys from the beginning of the Level 40 story, and from the Level 60 story. Delete the character and start over for the next week.

You only have a rare chance of getting something seriously cool from the chest, but you get useful utility items and occasional wardrobe unlocks that may unlock gem store or Black Lion skins or other craftable weapons and armor for you. (Make sure you craft as much of the cheap stuff as you can, nothing less fun than using a rare wardrobe unlock and getting a steel dagger.) You also get Black Lion statuettes, which you can save up. They can be traded in for unlocks on all sorts of cool skins, unbreakable crafting tools, and many other good things. The items you can purchase in the statuette shop change pretty much whenever the contents of the Black Lion chest change.

Anyway, that's how I spend a lot of my game time. You may want to try roller beetle racing, too, at least until you unlock all the prizes.

For something like that, you need to go to https://help.guildwars2.com and click the red button that says Submit a Ticket, going directly to the support team. (The forum is more for community support than official help, you will get real results by submitting a support ticket...here on the forum you will only get player advice.)

I'm not sure what the wait time is on submitted tickets these days--good luck!

> @"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:

> Have you tried a -repair to the client?

It's okay now. I noticed one of my characters was invisible in the character select screen, too, and when I tried to load them they never appeared, just their weapons hovering in the air. They could spin in place, but not move. Weirdest bug ever, and now seemed obviously just my problem. Relogging actually fixed it, without having to go as far as a repair.

I am aware that sometimes, textures take a while to appear when the game is running slow, but today seems odd. First I was in Straits of Devastation for the daily vista view, went to the airship outside Fort Trinity...but the airship was invisible. Even in the vista. Then I went to iron Marches to kill some branded and farm dust in the northeast while waiting for Nakey the Ley Line Dude. Came across an invisible wall my character could not go through to kill the branded devourer on the other side. (My pet could, strangely. I think it was that gate that only opens for one of the local events.)

But the truly odd one that made me wonder what was going on was, in Lion's Arch, in the Black Lion Weapon showroom, the Ice Reaver and Lorekeeper weapons would not show up at all. No problem with any other weapons. I even went to the vendor and tried to preview the weapons. In the preview panel, my character stood holding totally invisible weapons. Only for Lorekeeper and Ice Reaver.

Strange things are afoot in the Land of Tyria.

It was great to get back into Central Tyria, and finally getting some time in Asura culture again. (So much charr and human for so long!) I haven't finished yet, but am enjoying it so far. The dragon response missions seem more like something I would want to replay than the strike missions were. (There almost always seems to be a lot more complaining than the product deserves. )

I adore my Skyscale, I still love my Raptor, and now that it can go underwater, I finally feel some affection for Skimmer. Sadly almost never use Griffon and Springer these days.

But as time goes on, for some reason I love roller-beetling more and more. ^^

Thanks for all the input and suggestions! Decided to change over to Condi, went from Zerker/Eagle to Viper/Thorns, and mobs are dropping a whole lot faster. Still squishy-ish, I will probably add some toughness and vitality in accessories. Getting up the nerve to change my alternate weapon from pistols to daggers.

Nothing for me this week. But I hope this thread stays alive, it's great to have a place to vent some excitement when you get an awesome surprise.

A white or black outline around most of the tags would make them more visable, and with an outline a black tag would be fine.

Here's another thought: DYEABLE tags.

> @"DeanBB.4268" said:

> @"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015"

>

> Are you already Daredevil or core thief? (said daredevil in title, but only to Orr in the text) Are you built for power or conditions? Do you have access to expansion armors? (viper, trailblazer) Ascended trinkets via Season 3, etc? In other words, are there limitations to what you could build?

Already daredevil, and no limits: I have all expansions and Living World seasons. I would have to check whether I went for power or condition, but could change.

I boosted him up and spent my proofs of heroics from my very occasional forays into WVW to get him the hero points he needed, roughly based on a meta build I looked at. My original idea was that this would be the character I used when I WVW, replacing my previous glass cannon scourge which wasn't working out for me (yeah, I know, L2P problems) but this one seems almost as vulnerable and complicated with even less power, so I'm back to doing my occasional WVW with my semi-tanky axe druid main or occasionally my GS dragonhunter. The problem with using my main is that her bags are already packed full of detritus from PVE stuff, and I would prefer to have all the WVW junk permanently on someone else. I haven't found a build I find fun and reasonably easy to play yet, though. I'm usually a roamer, so working on finding a stand-alone option.

First, I am very casual.

My little asura goblin loves his slingshot. And ALL my other thieves are P/P so far. But I am not having much luck either keeping him alive or doing significant damage: it's hard to dodge while aiming AoEs.

Can anyone suggest builds and tactics which will give this guy reasonable survivability and DPS? Not looking for raid-quality powers here, just want to PVE comfortably and have fun with him. Maybe a little WVW. He's in Orr at the moment, wondering how the heck he will ever survive the HoT or PoF mobs.


> @"TheGrimm.5624" said:

> So what do you do when not using compact?

I have one each of blue, green and yellow unidentified gear I keep in my invisible bag at the bottom. I leave those to quietly attract the new gear drops, which stack up till I have some time to kill and open&salvage them all. Almost everything else that drops is either depositable, salvageable, or disappears when I find a merchant to sell my junk to. The very few items that I want to manually bank or keep where they are, I move to the top of my bag after the consumables, leaving the middle gap to continue accumulating new stuff. Its not like most drops require much examination.

My bottom three bags are filled with stuff I use occasionally or rarely: gizmos, bounty contracts, ascended foods, bits of quests I'm working on sporadically, bank/tp access, repair canisters, teleport-to-friends, etc. I know where everything is placed. My top bag is filled with stuff I want quick access to, mostly consumables and items for whatever I am working on now. The big empty gap in the middle is where my new drops land. Donari's guild mate had a good comparison: here's mine. My inventory is like a mobile home with lights and things hanging from the ceiling, furniture on the floor, abnd odds and ends lying on tables and shelves. For me, hitting the Compact button is like turning that whole mobile home upside down so everything is 'efficiently' piled on the ceiling. Takes a very long time to put all that stuff back where I want it. If they're going to insist in having the compact button right next to the deposit button, I want an Undo button as well.