The Holy Trinity of 'Entanglement'

Last week’s update was a doozy and it needs a week or so to really sink in and think about what happened in the Living Story. The story shifted in fifth gear by throwing Mordemoth on our plate as the main villain. Not to mention we lost some characters in the process like Belinda and Drooburt, although Drooburt’s death might have had more impact. To top it off we took a magical journey through the Eternal Alchemy and saw the inner workings of Tyria that answered some of our questions but posed so many more in its place. With all that excitement we almost forget we got a massive addition to the Dry Top map. And if that wasn’t enough, we have new rewards, achievements, lots of events as well as skill point’s vistas and new enemies. Let me share with you my personal top three I take away from ‘Entanglement’.

Just like last update, number one and two were set in stone pretty quickly. Number three required some more thought. The music was masterful yet again and I also enjoyed the new enemies and events like the big sand giant. In the end my choice fell on the new weapon skins and more precise the fossil skins. I’m really an esthetic enthousiast. I love exciting skins that not only look flashy and cool but also fit together and give your character ‘character’ (hmmmm, sounds weird but anyways). Alas, we skin-fanatics haven’t been spoiled up and until now. The only skins we got were gem store skins that, although not hard to farm the necessary gold, felt unrewarding and were given in one piece and not 6 separate armor pieces. Of course the wardrobe function was a gift from the gods for skin-fans but there was still that lack of new skins. With ‘Entanglement’ Arenanet decided to answer our call and added two new weapon skins sets.

The first one is the ley line weapon skins, the visually cooler set of the two. Naturally, it’s based on the ley lines we’ve gotten to know so well recently. All the weapons look awesome and most of them have a unique sound upon wielding them. The downside however is how to get them. You get them with Black Lion tickets which are not that easy to get as you will probably know. It’s also kind of the reason why I decided not to go for one of these weapon skins. Even though it’s great you can’t only get them through the gem store, black lion tickets don’t feel rewarding enough to go for one.

Luckily there’s an alternative that doesn’t require black lion tickets: fossil skins. Just like the ley line skins there are two sides to the coin. On the one hand they look really nice as well with each different weapon having a unique fossil worked into it. On the other hand, the way to get them is long, complicating and requires A LOT of farming (unless you’re extremely lucky). For these you have to craft with the following ingredients. First, get a nomad weapon inscription (5 sheets of ambrite, 5 ecto, 5 ori plated dowel) you can get from a Dry Top Zephyrite meta-event merchant. Next, get the two necessary weapon pieces.

That’s the easy part but you need two more ingredients. One, you need a recipe. These recipes you can get with a meta-event merchant in Dry Top but they are only accessible in tier 4 and 5 and cost receptively 400 and 350 geodes. So that means that you will be farming a lot of Dry Top events to get the necessary geodes and get to at least tier 4. Experience has taught me that getting to tier 4 is not always guaranteed and tier 5 is a rarity. I also think this will get increasingly more difficult as time goes on. The final ingredient you need is a fossil, which, trust me, will give you headache. You will have to search buried treasure chests to find an unidentified fossil. You will be able to exchange this with Ghentt, an Asura merchant in Restoration Refuge, for a specific fossil for each weapon. Now, the frustrating part is that this is completely RNG. You can get a fossil from opening 1 chest or 100 chests. As of this writing I still haven’t found one and I have opened 20-30 chests. So to get one of these fossil skins will require patience, a lot of farming and A LOT of luck.

So in conclusion, I love how the new skins look and love the fact that they’re not only accessible through the gem store and that they’re permanent. Sadly, the way to get them still needs some work. I guess the ley line set is fine with the black lion tickets if you consider them as high-quality and rare skins. But the fossil set should be freed from the RNG. It’s very frustrating to not get a fossil after more than 100 chests, while someone else finds it in their first chest. That’s not rewarding but just frustrating. And if you do decide to make it RNG, then at least make it sellable through the Trading Post. Also, it would be better if the recipes are accessible over all tiers but exponentially increase the required geodes. Do that and the skins will feel truly rewarding and you will have a satisfied community, for the most part anyways. I’m also hoping that next to weapon sets, we’ll finally get a new armor set as well. Here’s hoping the future updates will provide this.

Number two this time around are the new zones added to the Dry Top map. Now, I know last time they were my number one but that doesn’t mean the new zones are less impressive. On the contrary actually, the new zones look stunning. From the impressive Raptor Prowl, Tyria’s own Grand Canyon, to the breathtaking lush and green Upland Oasis. From the dry desert in the unswept uplands to the moonlike caves in the Cavern of the Shining Lights.

If you compare this addition to what we got in ‘Gates of Maguuma’, it’s almost double the amount. Also the verticality that set Prospect Valley apart from previous GW2 maps is back. You can almost climb and jump on every cliff in Raptor Prowl.

If you have watched the third episode of POI, the show talking about the most recent update, you will have seen Josh Foreman and Tami Foote, who are two people responsible for all the beauty we’ve gotten over the past month. It’s always interesting to hear these people talk about their work. Tami, for example was basically given a carte blanche designing and making Tangle Root.

The Dry Top map looks nearly complete only missing a small section in the West. The map breakers among us will probably have already seen how that missing zone looks. But it does look, however, like we won’t be getting that zone next patch. Considering the amount of beautiful zones we’ve gotten so far, its fine with me if we don’t get a new zone next update.  I believe we’ll be seeing Dry Top completed by the time we get to the mid-season break in a 2-3 weeks’ time. After that I’m hoping we’ll be getting at least one more new map in the second part of the second season with the same beauty Dry Top has.

To beat the beauty of new Dry Top zones, number one sure has to be something amazing, right? As my number one I have chosen the Eternal Alchemy, the epic conclusion of ‘Entanglement’. The Eternal Alchemy has shook the GW2 community at its foundations and spurred a stream of speculation across all the forums, making this game look like it’s never been more alive. To me, it’s the first step to bringing this game, story wise, to its full potential. Now, it’s difficult to say new things about the Eternal Alchemy by now, as many have speculated in length about it already.

The Eternal Alchemy explains the workings of Tyria where the big orb is Tyria and the small orbs represent the different elements that keep Tyria turning. These elements can take on many forms such as Dragons (as confirmed by the journal in game), Gods… These godlike entities goal is to keep everything in balance. I’ll be trying to give a status questionis of the speculation about the Eternal Alchemy the GW2 community has offered up and until now.

Occam’s razor

With the kind of scene like the Eternal Alchemy, which such a heavy impact on the world of Tyria, there is always the danger of overinterpretating things. Therefore allow me to try to sound smart and mention a theory everybody knows. Occam’s razor states that the simplest explanation is usually the right explanation.

So in this theory you have the red (fire, Primordus, Balthazar), blue (water, Bubbles, Abaddon/Kormir), purple (crystal, Kralkatorrik, Lyssa), black (life, Zhaitan, Dwayna), white (ice, Jormag, Dhuum/Grenth) and the green (nature, Mordremoth, Melandru) element. The big element in the middle is Tyria, which explains why the green element attacks the big one and corrupts it. That green element would then presumably be Mordremoth attacking Tyria as it’s currently doing. This is the theory that seems most straightforward and it’s also the theory I’m advocating unless I’m seeing real evidence that suggest otherwise.

The green - dark green, Modremoth – Zhaitan Kerfuffle

Making the bridge to the next theory, where the orb attacking Tyria is not Mordremoth but is Zhaitan. We see the green orb colliding into the center. While the thought was that this is Mordy (in the thought green is Mordy) corrupting the center/Tyria itself like crazy. But what if that’s not the case and this is meant to confuse us. What if the collision of green into the center is in fact Zhaitan’s Death? Scarlet saw this just like we did, and she saw that this destroys the whole balance of forces. It’s an “insurmountable challenge” as she says in the blog-post “What Scarlet Saw”. We can either die by dragons – or by their magic tearing Tyria apart once we defeated them all. Her bloody and probably flawed solution was to empower the dragon opposing Zhaitan – Mordy, so he would eat the excess magic Zhaitan’s Death pumped into the ley lines. This could also be the explanation why Tequatl got stronger – excess magic. Lastly, it would fit with what Scarlet said too about how she now knows how to play these forces against each other.

If that is really the case, we do have a problem. We can’t kill dragons – we can’t live with them. If it’s true, we have to dig into the background of bloodstones soon, using them to sponge up the dragons’ excess magic after we kill them, maybe? And how is the Pale Tree linked to this center of Tyria? Is it the force of balance behind it? If so, why does it appear the Tree is encouraging to fight dragons? (source)

The Order Conundrum

The vision of the Eternal Alchemy seen in Omadd’s machine does not represent the ED’s true awakening as would be observable by us, but rather their stirring. As we’ve seen, their rise is inevitable, but delay is a possibility. Primordus, followed by the DSD, followed by Jormag stirred and awoke in the order we see with the aid of their respective minions and champions. Mordremoth stirred next, with no champion and minions, he did not fully awaken. Kralkatorrik stirred next, but as he is also without a champion, his full awakening is delayed. Finally Zhaitan stirred. As he happened to be sleeping on top of exactly what he needed to gain power (and possibly further aided by his own champion), leading to him awakening fully before Kralkatorrik and Mordremoth. After this Kralkatorrik becomes observably active (perhaps somewhat more empowered than Mordremoth by that whole Searing thing slathering the nearby area in magic), creating the Dragon brand and hunting down his errant alarm clock. Finally Mordremoth awakens fully with the aid of Scarlet’s ley line tap in a rather spectacular case of better late than never. (source)

If you now of another theory about the Eternal Alchemy, don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll add it. Thx for reading and I’ll see you next week for Dragon’s Reach Part 1!