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!
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