Doghouse.1562

I ran the Kournan supply caches yesterday (early evening), looking for shards for my skyscale collection. This morning (i.e. new game day) I ran about half of Tekkit's route, and found exactly ONE "supply cache". "Kournan chests" were OK. I confirmed, by logging in a second account and multiboxing, that there were supply caches present where my first account saw nothing. I have to presume that the caches are either on individual timers or on something rather longer - they're certainly not all resetting at end of day.

> @"Schimmi.6872" said:

> Sadly it's an old bug that hasn't been fixed till now, it happens mostly on crowded maps or maps with performance-problems. There is a "solution", but it's an expensive one, because it normally doesn't happen, if you use gem-shop mountskins, as they load the default one asap before they completely load.

That's interesting - if expensive, as you say. I'm not _quite_ entirely convinced that this isn't more specific, mind. I'm beginning to see that it's only (and frequently) happening, to me personally, in one place. I run all over DR doing the Wintersday orphan run, following Tekkit's route on TacO, hopping on and off my mount everywhere - and the only place I see it (and that almost every time) is right at the end, in the Upper City just north of the bank. I come out of one of the vertical TPs, turn into the corridor leading to the final orphan (adjacent to the room with the BL traders), hop onto my mount - and sink into the floor for a couple of seconds. I guess it's possible that there are invariably lots of people in that area close to me - as I said, it's near the DR bank, after all - and presumably the game is rendering all of them, even though they're visually behind walls...

> @"Autumnmane.3574" said:

> It tends to be a lag issue, when my computer is chugging from a big zerg I find it happens more frequently. It's likely noticeable in DR because of the extra snow effects and the high number of people all in that small area at the moment.

You're probably right. Although it's happening in parts of the city where the extra Wintersday effects are less noticable, plus my machine and card have plenty of spare "oomph", and it's the only lag issue I've been actively noticing. I'll maybe try turning a few settings down and see whether that makes a difference.

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> For the foot race one, you pretty much need perma swiftness (or the mastery). Classes with movement skills, such a shortbow on thief, are useful. Dodges forward also help you cover more distance. I got it with like 15 seconds to spare.

I did it on two accounts, in both cases with an SB thief with full Pact Commander trait line, Signet of Shadows and a speed buff. On both runs I discovered as soon as I dodged that I'd traited to something other than a standard dodge, and retraited as I was running along. Both times I was between the final checkpoint and the finish at 4 minutes - oodles of time to spare.

This seems to have started with the Wintersday patch. I've been doing the Orphan run and mount races (sometimes swapping mounts), and every so often, when i attempt to mount, there's a lag of about 2 seconds, during which time my character is buried up to its shoulders or deeper in the "floor". That then clears and I'm properly mounted. However it's annoying, it breaks immersion, and it gets in the way of my successfully doing anything that I'm doing under time pressure.

> @"Vavume.8065" said:

> > @"Randulf.7614" said:

>

> > The biggest issue seems to me that the instances do not appear to scale which means group based story content.

>

> I solo'ed one and then I did the rest in groups, the bosses seemed to take longer in groups so I think the bosses scale at least, could be wrong though.

Sure as heck didn't for me (assuming that "solo" also means "private"). It took me forever to take the first one down on my own in private mode.

Did it on one account on a Reaper, just dodged, spammed attacks and skills and so on as I normally do, got the whole thing first time. Did it on a second account (again on a Reaper), got everything but the double dodge first time. I have mostly no idea what I did on either occasion to trigger successes. Just keep mobile, work on his break bar, and try to dodge stuff (maybe in multiple directions?) when you can, basically.

Holding down C works, if you can engage it before (a) the spurious reset panel pops up, and (b) you touch the first ring. I've done it successfully on two different accounts this morning. There's a video showing how (not mine) at [https://youtube.com/watch?v=bG0A24i39lI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG0A24i39lI)

I found getting started a bit hit-and-miss, but the second or third bubble is deep enough in the water for the skimmer to be able to dive (and confirm that the skill is working, even though it's not showing on your bar). Clear the spurious window with _Esc_ - but don't let go of that C key until your skimmer dives after you get the "use skill 3" pop-up.

Just make sure you have plenty of speed buffs (although there will likely be a banner or two at the start, and there's a villager up by the WP will give you the "get about town" 5 minute buff as well).

> @"YtseJam.9784" said:

> yeah it just bugged for me. i gathered 2 Encrypted Messages and tried to give them to the Ash Legion NPC, but he was stealth chilling there ignoring me and didn't want to talk to me or take them, so the event failed :(

Yes, had that a couple of times as well. Annoying when you're waiting on a follow-up event.

> @"Aerinndis.2730" said:

> It would be nice to... ...at least make it clearer when the event is actually going on.

Well, to be fair to ANet it appears in your UI Event list when it's available, and there's a big cog icon on the minimap showing the event location. But, yes, it doesn't last remotely long enough to get there with confidence if you're not effectively already there and waiting - and by the time you notice that it's in your Event list, it's probably already too late.

I think the real problem is that the tower is simply too fragile.

Anyone else seeing this?

Not a problem yet, but could be one later in the year: Character birthdays seem to be occurring early.

I'm an altoholic. I have just under 60 characters spread over two accounts, so I keep careful track of lots of things about them in a speadsheet (including the date on which they were created, and the date on which they last collected a birthday gift). And I've noticed that, since the rollback a few weeks back, at least two of my characters have had their "birthdays" a little early - likely a day. Latest example is a character created on 29th May 2015, who received their 5th gift notification today (28th May 2020).

Now - GW2 Efficiency agrees with my record. So either (1) GW2 Efficiency is doing something wrong in displaying the data it's retrieving, AND at some point I've "corrected" parts of my records to match it (possible - my first pass on my earlier characters was based on calculation from their age, rather than a record made at the time of creation), or (2) something's out of whack with the internal game clock/calculation.

This SHOULDN't be a problem (it may be slightly annoying, but who ultimately really cares if a present arrives a day early?) Except that there's an opportunity for things to go somewhat wrong at the year roll-over, when we hit the day on which the game launches, and characters created on the first day SHOULD be getting their presents - because the game will be trying to give them their new gift early, and it may not be available. And I wouldn't like to speculate on what problems that will cause.

(More than anything, I'm likely suggesting that this simply needs checking out to make sure it won't cause a bigger problem. It's one of those small things that could be tricky and costly to fix, and where the fix itself could cause problems - in which case it's safest to leave well alone. But the small element of OCD in me is really annoyed that the dates seem to be wrong...)

I realised I was just playing with whatever the Hub was configured for (must have been distracted when I swapped ISPs). I set up port triggering on the GW2 ports as well, and things look a lot better so far.

Edit: Spoke too soon

> @"dace.8019" said:

> I'm in the UK with VM too and the same thing happens to me. I haven't tried the IP Flood Detection toggle so I will give that a shot.

>

> What definitely works is placing your PC's local IP (192.168.0.x) into the VM Hub's DMZ and enabling the DMZ, which is not ideal and for most users should only be done in the short term.

Indeed. Can't see me doing that on my main machine. I spend most of my config time trying to make myself utterly invisible to the wider internet, not freely accessible.

Out of interest, do you also see sync problems in open world? For the last few days I've been seeing the classic problem of mobs suddenly not being where my client was showing them. And when I grouped with a couple of friends last night, on several occasions (specifically after we changed zones) they weren't initially seeing my character in the correct location (as seen by my client). Unfortunately that's with flood detection toggled, so - whilst I haven't yet seen the end-of-instance disconnect again - that clearly isn't the fix for all my problems (or sole fix, at any rate).

> @"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:

> You can read through the 'official' Dev-posted 'Storyline Disconnects' thread for tips and tricks.

>

> Good luck.

Hadn't spotted that thread. Thanks. There're a number of people with Virgin Media (which I moved to around the time this seemed to start) reporting similar problems, and a possible fix, so I'm going to give it a go. (For anyone who reads this thread and sees this, [the relevant posts in that thread start on page 8.](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/28354/storyline-disconnects-merged/p8) Look for DannyBoy's post on October 18.)

> @"DannyBoy.9601" said:

> So, i've had the same issue getting disconnected in story instances, keep trying and eventually sometimes manage to get through it, however i've been stuck on Hearts and Minds for a while now (only attempted it around 5 times) always disconnected after beating mordremoth in the dreamscape. I went through everything with Anet tech support, (stopped services and startups, flushed dns, changed in game settings etc, eventually i stumbled across a setting in my router i never knew existed "IP flood detection".

>

> Turned that off and bingo, no more disconnects (well, not tonight anyway) finished hearts and minds, even got cocky and halfway through went to make something to eat! i'm not sure which routers have this setting other than my own, but, if you are on Virgin Media with a hub 3.0, login to your router, advanced settings, security, firewall, uncheck ip flood detection and apply changes. i went from numerous dropped packets on every hop to basically no dropped packets other then to unreachable hosts.

>

> I hope it works for some of you.

My own story disconnects have only been happening noticeably to me since I swapped to Virgin around Christmas, so I'm going to give this a go as well. It certainly sounds promising. I'll come back and update this if it doesnt' seem to solve the problem.

Edit:

I wasn't convinced I was totally sorted (seeing a lot of client graphics sync issues as well), so I also set up port triggering on the GW2 ports (I'd normally have done that or similar, but when I swapped ISPs things were somewhat hectic and it seems to have fallen though the cracks). Whatever - so far things seem better. But this was always an intermittent problem for me, and after a career testing software I know only too well not to relax too early...

Edit 2:

Nope. Didn't fix it. I just "finished" the "Darkrime Delves" story within "Visions of the Past: Steel and Fire". And got the "character watching cutscene" icon on my head, followed by a disconnect. And I'm right back at the start of the story. Damn.

Anyone else seeing disconnects at the very end of instances?

I have quite a number of alts, not all of whom have completed their PS, and i've been slowly working my way through them correcting that. And I'm hitting a problem, in that, maybe one story in three, I get to the very end of the instance, the final cut scene ends, and... ..connection lost. The cut scene ends and the instance is redisplayed, but my character is standing there with the "movie reel" graphic over their head, and I can't do anything. Shortly after, I get the actual "connection lost" message. When I come back in, I've lost credit for any instance progress, so it's start again or give up. (I've never actually done this yet in an instance that has checkpoints, so I don't know what will happen for sure. I presume I'll find myself back at my last checkpoint, rather than lose full credit.)

It's a mild annoyance in short instances; I can just go back and do them again, and so far I've been lucky enough not to have it happen twice in a row.

BUT. I'm reluctant to throw characters into longer, older stories without obvious checkpoints (such as the final one of the original PS), simply because of the obvious time investment I'd lose in the event of it happening.

Personally i've only noticed it hapening for the last couple of weeks. Nor Am I seeing it in other cutscenes within the instance. And I'm not getting other, random disconnects, either - just at the end of my PS. Although I AM getting an unusually high number of BLTC-type "unable to connect to the login server at this time" messages.

> @"Dragon Priestess.9760" said:

> Human needs more long hair! Long hair like the Norn long hair! Pretty, flowy long hair!!

I'd simply like to see more cross-polination of the different hairstyles between Human and Norn. It can't be much of a technical issue, given that they're pretty much identical apart from scale, so I presume it's some sort of "artistic design" choice about what the races do or do not look like, and frankly it seems like a pretty arbitrary restriction.

It came home to me recently when I rolled a new female Norn character and tweaked body and facial detail to look very much like someone in particular. But I couldn't find the right hairstyle, or even anything close. I picked one that vaguely worked after a fashion, but it wasn't ideal. A few hours later I decided to have a look at what was available via the Self-style Hair Kit - and found several that would have done much better. Except - I'd swapped characters to a Human female in between. Naturally, the ones I wanted weren't available when I swapped back to my Norn. Wretched annoying.

> @"Strider Pj.2193" said:

> So, you’re saying this is something that can be completed with smaller numbers then? (Melts like ice)

>

> Well then, I guess my plan of waiting a few weeks is the right one.

What I've seen so far have been "champs" (like some of the ones in Bjorna) that a couple of players could wear down with time, and 3 or 4 will likely take down with reasonable ease. The challenge is getting people to tag them for the achievement and and then stop, so that it lasts long enough for others to arrive. As always, some people listen, some don't. Luck of the draw which you get each event.

> @"aspirine.6852" said:

>

> You can do lots of things in the meantime, I think the problem of the champ taken down in seconds is the fault of kitten players that insist on nuking it down, and not giving others a chance to get there. It's not Anets fault.

I'd like to. Only - what I want to do is not in Grothmar. And - sorry - but I completely disagree with you that this isn't down to ANet. Players in large numbers are entirely predictable, and by consequence so was the "challenge" this currently poses. It does ANet no credit that they didn't anticipate the flaws in their bad design.

[moderator: content edited]

So. To get the MP for the achievement, you've got to kill every one of 5 champs.

But

1. only one spawns at a time,

2. the spawn is only every 40-45 minutes,

3. which one spawns is random,

4. the spawn locations are spread out, and

5. the champs melt like ice in the sun when they're attacked.

I'd just like to politely suggest that the combination of all five of the above is... ...not ideal. Especially the combination of numbers 3 and 5 - we need at least a decent chance to get to the right place in time to kill the champ.

Multiboxing. When it's useful, be your own group. Double-headed screens, one account running on each. Mostly I play PvE, solo or with a regular group of friends. And for most of that I play a single account - but surprisingly often it's really useful to be able to bring in the second "right" character (like a mesmer or an "easy-mode" necro) to group with and help out, or to leave one somewhere where a mesmer portal or a TP to Friend will come in useful later (especially for those group sessions). Plus a couple of my regular group are very much casuals, so it's nice to be able to both scratch my own itch by playing new content as it becomes available AND go through it "for the first time" with them. Then, at a purely mercenary level, I can farm my home and guild instances, run the Matriarch and the like and do dailies on both almost as fast and as well as on one, for double rewards. And when I want to craft, I can crank out time-gated mats at twice the rate, which I find makes the whole process way less arduous. I wouldn't want a third account, but two running on screen at once can work very well. If none of that pushes your hot buttons, fair enough. Works well for me.

> @"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:

> If you teleport to Mistlock from an instance (say, guild hall or home instance or story) and then try to use the Return to Previous Map portal choice, or double-click the MS key, you will get that response. Or at least I do. I just assumed it doesn't work with instances at all, just regular maps.

Just adding to this conversation for the record; it looks a bug, pure and simple. It happened to me just now with a character I'd had on the Matriarch's platform in VB. Used my MS Passkey to get into Mistlock; tried to use the portal to take me back to the platform and got the message. In between the two I'd been playing on a different character, and had logged in to the first character a couple of times without taking it out of Mistlock - but I have lots of characters, I regularly swap between them during sessions, and I normally leave them parked in Mistlock (sometimes for weeks). I suspect that it had simply lost track of my correct "previous location" - I've seen that before once or twice, when I've used "too many" portals, scrolls and the like in quick succession. Although it's only happened once or twice, and I regularly use the following complex sequence without problem: Start in Rata Sum; Enter Home instance and loot; Enter Guild Hall (without first exiting Home Instance) and loot; Use Mistlock Sanctuary Passkey (without first exiting Guild Hall) and manage my inventory; Swap to other characters and play some more; Log out; Log in after reset on my first character again; Use portal to Tyria (ending up back at the correct location in Rata Sum).

> @"Vlad Morbius.1759" said:

> > @"ParadoX.3124" said:

> > No, can we have a single book for every portal to every season ?

> > We have too much junk into our inventory and some qol changes would be appreciated

>

> This a thousand times this, a large binder holding all the books in one slot. I'm tired of using up so many shared inventory slots on these, thanks.

Not just scrolls; scrolls are simply one apsect of a bigger problem. Equivalent function is delivered by a number of other objects as well (such as, but not limited to, e.g.): Recharging Teleport to Friend; Spearmarshal's Plea; Mistlock Sanctuary Passkey (and several equivalents); Home Portal Stone. And like you, those I have sit in my shared inventory slots because that's where they're needed, and I begrudge the fact. We need a solution that doesn't actively penalise us for playing the game.

Even with Portal Tomes, portal devices are getting out of hand. I (for example) currently have, that I reasonably regularly use:

1. _Season 3 Portal Tome_,

2. _Season 4 Portal Tome_ ,

3. _Grothmar Valley Portal Scroll_,

4. _Bjora Marches Portal Scroll_,

5. _Spearmarshal's Plea_,

6. _Mistlock Sanctuary Passkey_,

7. _Teleport to Friend_ (1 stack) and

8. _Recharging Teleport to Friend_

And, as we all know, that's by no means the end of the list - it's simply the ones that **I** use. All in no less than 8 of my precious Shared Inventory slots - because I play quite a lot of characters in PvE, and that's the only place it makes any sense for me to put them.

OK - I can be reasonably confidently we'll see a _Season 5 Portal Tome_ at some point (frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't already been made available) - but things are getting silly, and a new, general solution is needed. Any thought/ideas/rumours/announcements I've missed?

_Edit: I'd missed the Portal Scroll thread._

This discussion has been merged.