A skiff is "What lies within" for me in Guild Wars 2

Yesterday was a big day for Guild Wars 2! The announcement came across Twitter just before noon that a new story quest was available to play titled "What Lies Within." If you owned the End of Dragons expansion, that meant this new content was available to you as a bonus.

For me it's been several years since I played any Guild Wars 2 content right as it released, and so I decided that I most definitely wanted to check it out. I purchased End of Dragons back when a sale was going on, but I still haven't finished my Icebrood Saga content, so it's just been kind of sitting there waiting for me to catch up.

I logged on and teleported to the far away content of Cantha and opened up my very first waypoint in the continent! 

Cantha is pretty. I spent a little bit of time in the original Cantha in the original Guild Wars, so I wasn't surprised when I saw the eastern world, but I was still struck by its digital beauty.

The beautiful views of New Kaineng City

As for the story content itself, it was pretty interesting. I was lost on who a few of the characters were, obviously, since I hadn't even played all the way through a couple of the story quests, but I got the gist. I love that Guild Wars lets you skip chapters and entire books in their story if you want to. Its freeform nature is a refreshing pleasure. 

Lots of people crowding the quest NPCs for What Lies Within

About halfway into the quests asking me to review my past in the game I got stuck because I hadn't unlocked fishing yet, so I spent an hour yesterday going back to the first part of End of Dragons to learn how to fish, and then I just kept going a bit.

Hmm . . . how to fish? Me no know!

My friend John also let me know that the Skiff mount was available from a heart faction vendor there on the first island as well, so I instead made that my goal for my play session instead of going back to What Lies Within and finishing the current content. I was giddy.

The Skiff was surprisingly easy to obtain. Basically you just finish the two heart faction unlocks on the island, buy a Writ of Seitung Province from both vendors and then use those and 700 karma to purchase a Skiff mount. Easy!

Peacefully floating around in Cantha on my new Skiff

The Skiff mount is great! You get a whole freakin' boat that you and your party can ride on together. It also allows you to go out to fishing spots far from the beach and cast your line.

The fishing game found in Guild Wars is not bad. Basically you cast your line, and when it sinks under water, you hook your fish. After this you use your 2 and 3 keys to move a tension bar left and right as a smaller fish bar moves back and forth. The objective is to keep the green fish bar within the tension bar until you've caught your fish.

My first fish!

I'm happy I got a chance to run around and see the crowds taking on the new content en masse. Any time I can play new content in a game and feel the excitement of the players simultaneously, it's just a unique kind of fun.

Happy Dueling!

Time to ROLL OUT with the Roller Beetle in GW2

After my last ordeal with getting the Skyscale, I have to tell you how nice it was to earn this mount. In comparison, getting the Roller Beetle Mount is super easy. In fact, it was fun! 

Rolling out with the Roller Beetle!

No nested achievements hidden inside of achievements here, the Roller Beetle is just straightforward and not bad to earn at all.

Basically, you just need to complete the second mission in the third episode of your Season 4 story to begin. Gorrik and Blish are stationed at the Northern end of the Allied Encampment in the Domain of Kourna, and they'll be your quest givers as you make your way toward beetledom.

Basically you need to grab 9 types of beetle juice, gather 7 components for a beetle saddle, and then feed your beetle 7 treats from around the world. Done and done.

I gave Petey a nice greenish Yellow paint job.

I mean, yeah . . . some of the components involve defeating group content, but, I have to say, shouting in the Map channel always seemed to gather support. Probably the suckiest of them all was the Alpha Beetle in Far Silverwastes.  I shouted for help, and all I managed to get was one other person.  On the other hand, we managed to take care of it just with the two of us. 

Look at all these crazy people. What are they even doing here?

The great thing about the Roller Beetle is that crazy speed you can get from it. I was reading through a few of the tricks people had found to get max speed with their beetle and it seems pretty fun to ride and race.

So now that I've earned the Roller Beetle, all that's left to earn (as far as mounts go) are the Siege Turtle and the Skiff. To get those, I need to move on to End of Dragons content, which I haven't done yet. 

It's a long list of mounts!

There's definitely more left to do for me in Guild Wars 2! At least for now I can get from point A to point B just a little bit faster.

Happy Dueling!

Skyscale, the litmus test for GW2 Insanity

Well, I guess I should post about this since it was a long MMO project that kind of consumed a lot of free time this last couple weeks in Guild Wars 2. BEHOLD! THE SKYSCALE!

Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap.

The quest to obtain a Skyscale mount isn't an easy one. I'm reminded of the feeling I got from completing the epic weapon quests back in Everquest in a way, but Guild Wars 2 does such a good job at making content more accessible that it doesn't really compare. On the other hand, the complexity of the Skyscale quests in Guild Wars 2 is on another level. So, it kind of balances out.

Props to those that came before me who wrote down and documented instructions on the Guild Wars Wiki. Those are the true time-saving heroes in this world. It's such a noble task. Those crazy wiki people are saints. You know who else is a saint? My friend John, who completely saved me hours and hours of farming by letting me know map currencies are available through the Seasons of Dragons Achievements. THE BEST!

Ok, lemme just break this down for you a bit in case you don't know how the Skyscale quest works.

Step 1- Play through the entire Living Season World 4 content. It's a long story with some absolutely epic story moments. Really great content, and this part of the skyscale quest is just enjoyment of some PvE content. At that point, then you can start wondering about your Skyscale.

Yes, I flew down an elder dragon's throat and punched its heart until it died.

Now, if you look at the Wiki page for the Skyscale quest, you're like . . . hey! not bad! Just five achievements to get this thing. I can do that! But then and you click deeper, you realize that each achievement has nested achievements inside of it and suddenly that five step quest is now much, much more complicated.

Step 2 - Enter the world of Dragonfall. The first Achievement has you circling the world of dragonfall three separate times. Once looking for 21 scales. Once giving medicine to 14 sick skyscales. and Once looking for 21 skyscale eggs. It's not horrible, just time consuming, but all locations are well documented. You'll probably make a lot of money in Dragonfall while you're at it.

Grabbing an egg in Dragonfall

Step 3- Travel the entire Guild Wars 2 map while charging up 12 eggs with 4 sources of energy each. So you'll be making 48 stops around the world. Some are more difficult than others, but most are cake . . . touch some lava, touch some water, blah blah blah.  You gotta follow the guide though!  Otherwise you'll be backtracking a bunch. The most complicated part was solving the Rune-Locked Doors puzzle.

I love the Rune Back Piece you have during this puzzle! I need a perma version!

Step 4- Hatch that dragon and do some nurturing quests. You'll be spending some gold in this step as if you're like me, you weren't charging up quartz crystals for a couple weeks in advance.  I mean, I had a few, but it's not like I log on and charge a crystal each day . . . (but I probably should as a Blackmarket side hustle). That Crystal is a component for a Mystic Forge recipe to make Skyscale food. That quest is throttled in that you can only feed your dragon four pieces of food each real world day. You'll be stuck here for at least a few days.

Baby dragon loves me!

Outside of this you'll be needing to buy your baby skyscale some expensive toys and hunting down 12 of it's favorite treats from random enemies around the world.  Not bad, just another hoop in the series of hoops.

Step 5- Congrats! Your dragon is now a terrible toddler and its flown away to 21 different locations around the Guild Wars 2 map. The only problem is that most of those locations are at the top of jumping puzzles. It's a pain, but you got this!  You're too deep in there now to give up!

My dude, why do you pick the hardest places to hide!

After that you actually get to play with your dragon. After a fun game of catch and hide and seek, you'll be done with this step.  This dragon play part of the quest felt more fun than challenging. I liked it.

Step 6- Now you have to make your saddle. All you need is 250 of the unique map currencies found in 7 zones and 35 gold and 1,750 volatile magic.  The gold and volatile magic are the easy things to come by.  The map currency on the other hand . . . whew . . . it's a bit soul crushing at first when you realize it could take DAYS maybe WEEKS to collect all that currency.

But my buddy John saved me here. There's a beautiful mega achievement called Seasons of the Dragons, and nested inside this mega achievement are all of the 250 unique map currencies that you desire. All you gotta do is complete "Tier 3" steps for the Crystal Desert, Domain of Istan, Sandswept Isles, Domain of Kourna, Jahai Bluffs, Thunderhead Peaks, and Dragonfall. To do that you'll be harvesting nodes, completing bounties, completing events, completing Adventures, etc. in each of those zones.  It's much faster than the alternative, don't worry.

Awesome Boss Events await you!

Step 7- To cap it all off, once you get your saddle made, you need to do a short test flight with "rental skyscales" in 28 different zones.

Most of these tears in reality are just a few feet away from the rental spot. Not bad, just time consuming

And there you go, after 900 million sub-steps tucked away in the above seven steps, you're done and have an epic mount that can get you to the highest points in the game. 

Really cool to have finished up that mount. Now all I have to think about is if I want the two-rider turtle mount, the skiff, and the roller beetle. (At least I think that's all the rest of the mounts in GW2.) I've got plenty of content still to complete, but I can now join the masses of those who have the skyscale. It's not an exclusive club, but this quest definitely feels like a litmus test for GW2 insanity.

Happy Dueling!

Falling with Style - The Guild Wars 2 Griffon

Hey! Well, it's been a fun couple of days in Guild Wars 2 over the weekend! I spent a bunch of time today finishing up world map completion and also earning the infamous Griffon mount. That's right, I earned one of the HARD ones. *flex*

Time to Fall . . . with style!

For the most part, the somewhat arduous quest chain to get the Griffon is a solo effort, but there are a handful of group events that absolutely cannot be soloed. That said, I think I was lucky yesterday. There seemed to be plenty of people out and about doing the group events. And when there wasn't, the clouds would part, the universe aligned, and suddenly a stranger would pass by and help me with a more difficult boss as if pre-destined to happen . . . aka, the luck o' the necromancer.

So, yeah, I actually had a really fun time hunting down all the bits and pieces needed to learn how to tame and ride a griffon, and that final battle to obtain your griffon was epic!

I'm helping preserve the species . . . not just get myself a cool mount

To boil it all down, in each of the five zones of Path of Fire, you need to buy two 25gp items from faction vendors, collect 3 to 5 eggs from griffon perches, and complete 2-3 events.  Once you do this, you travel to the Dark Library, defeat 11 elites to gather 11 keys, and open 11 hidden chests for books. THEN, you do an amazing battle with the Champion Mordant Crescent Hierarch (whomever that is) and badda bing badda boom, you got yourself a griffon.

Death to all Champion mordant Crescent Hierarchs who oppose me!

Just have to say . . . it is a little weird that you have to pay 250 gold along with completing the quest steps to get your griffon. I mean, isn't just buying the expansion and doing all the quests enough?  It's fine though, I'll jump through your hoops ArenaNet. It's fine.

And it's all worth it for the ability to swoop underneath bridges with my cool new mount!

You better believe I'm flying under ALL the bridges in GW2!

Because I had done so much exploring while getting the griffon mount, it wasn't too bad just finishing everything up with map exploration and getting that achievement for expansion completion as well. Done and done.

So, it appears that my next objectives will be finishing up Living World Season 4 content so that I can get the other difficult to get mounts.  LET'S DO THIS!

Happy Dueling!

Earning Mounts-a-Plenty in Guild Wars 2

I've been going back through the zones of Path of Fire and earning as much Mastery Experience as I can. That and unlocking Mastery Points are pretty essential for acquiring and leveling the myriad of mounts that are available to you in this expansion. 

What?!?! I own the PVP mount?!?! That's so unlike me.

Can we just marvel for a second at how impressive the mounts are in Guild Wars 2? Each mount type has its own function, mastery track, movement style, and more skins than you can shake your wallet at. 

Skimming around with my old buddy Clever Clara

To explain it briefly, most mounts are unlocked from a vendor by completing a faction quest. Once you can purchase your mount, you buy its base model for in game gold.  This unlocks 5 levels of mastery that improve the mount with each level of mastery.  If you obtain the last level of mastery, a trait of the mount is applied to all your mounts.  It's kind of genius.

Thank you Jackal Mount for this hidden mastery point in the sky

So now I own the raptor, the skimmer, the springer, the jackal, and the pvp mount known as the warclaw. I still need to earn the griffon, the roller beetle, the skyscale, and the siege turtle. In other words, I have the easy ones.

That all said, I'm having the most fun with this jackal mount!  I love all the custom puzzles they've built in the game for this mount and magically blinking around on it is an absolute blast.

This view brought you courtesy of the jackal mount . . .

Don't you worry, reader . . . the challenge of the more difficult mounts means only one thing for The Friendly Necromancer . . . BRING IT ON!  I love a good challenge.

Happy Dueling!

Sunrise, the Legendary Weapon, is mine!

Hello my friends! It is a good morning for me, as after years of first wanting a legendary weapon, this happened just this morning.

Here comes the sun, dee da doo da!

That's right . . . after years of wanting a legendary weapon, I own the Sunrise!  Here's how it went down for me.

Waaaaay back when Guild Wars 2 launched, I was all onboard. I was one of those that played the Vanilla game to the ground and during that time I crafted my Gift of Mastery.

So excited I'm leaving behind pee puddles everywhere I run

To earn this you need to combine a Bloodstone Shard, 250 Obsidian Shards, the Gift of Exploration and the Gift of Battle in the Mystic Forge.  The big one out of those four is the Gift of Exploration. It's something you only receive upon World Completion -- that's filling every heart, conquering every hero point, finding every waypoint, viewing every vista, and chugging past every point of interest in the original world. 

I felt pretty good about that when I put it into my bank a decade ago, and it planted a seed in my mind that someday . . . someday I would return to it and craft the other, seemingly insurmountable tasks. That's why it feels so good to now come back to Guild Wars 2 and finally finish this thing up.

As for the other three parts . . . well it all went pretty quickly once I bought the precursor weapon and put my mind to it.  I spent a lot of time in the past hoping that a precursor would drop from one of the World Bosses and started hitting the world boss tour over and over and over.  It became "the thing to do" and really kind of burnt me out. Just outright buying that was about a billion times easier.

I must give a shout out to my guildmates and especially John and Clara from Team Spode. When they heard that I was make a push for a legendary, they dropped a bunch of stuff in the guild bank for me to help cut costs.  My Gift of Fortune was as much theirs as it was mine. They also spent a night helping me get reacquainted with World vs World PvP so I could get some dungeon tokens that I needed for one of the recipes.

Thank you Zommoros! I declare this a fair trade

The Gift of Sunrise requires another sheer show of fortune in that you have to buy 100 icy runestones for a total of 100 gold. The real bears in that formula for making the Gift of Sunrise are the Gift of Metal and the Gift of Light.  One requires a 400 weaponsmith rating to craft. The other takes a 400 armorsmith to craft.  I had the weaponsmith already thanks to my earlier efforts.  The 400 armorsmith required an afternoon of grinding recipes on my alt, which I finally finished up last night.

When you finally craft the legendary weapon, the game plays fanfare music for you for a good while as you beam to yourself.  What a fantastic moment it is!

A light in the darkness!

I really love how bright this sword looks as you run around the now darkened-for-Halloween version of Lion's Arch. I spent a good 15 minutes just running around, stashing the weapon, pulling it back out, trying skills with it . . . good times!

Don't mind me, just admiring my glowy blur

Now that THAT'S finally done, I think I can concentrate on all the myriad of other things there are to think about in this game.

Happy Dueling!

Finishing Path of Fire -- Onward to . . . Legendary?

 And just like that, I finished up the story quests for Path of Fire in Guild Wars 2!

No need for praise, just throw money . . . thank you thank you

That's right! Five years after its release date, I'm here to save the day! Praise me, commoners! 

It's a fun story that all starts with you encountering the Herald of the God Balthazar. Balthazar is one of the six gods in the Guild Wars 2 pantheon and looks over the affairs of war . . . um, and fire . . . and uh, challenge. So I guess he's the god of PvP and Gene Simmons basically.

No need for forgiveness, just throw money . . . thank you thank you

I skipped Living World Season 3. As I understand it, if I hadn't done that I'd have more of a reason to hate Balthazar since that's where he's first introduced as an antagonist in your story. Jumping to Path of Fire wasn't too bad though as I was caught up to speed pretty quickly with what's going on. Old Balthy has been pretty busy turning the souls of the dead into a kind of automaton known as The Forged . . . basically his own personal army.

Since your journey is all about bringing balance back to Tyria, you ain't having none of Balthazar's nonsense and take down his herald . . . and then get the smack down by the god himself. OUCH.

No need for my destruction, just throw money . . . thank you thank you

It's cool though . . . he doesn't outright kill you . . . yet.  That's reserved for your second encounter with Balthazar. Instead Vlast, one of Glint's good guy dragon kids, jumps between you and Balthazar and sacrifices itself for you.  Old Balthy is super hyped about that cruel twist of fate.

When Vlast sacrifices itself for you, it explodes into a bunch of crystals that contain its memory, and you go on a pretty neat quest following all the clues and hearing all about Vlast's history and thoughts.  It's a lot like reading Vlast's personal diary, but instead of pages, they're crystals that talk.  

No need for warnings, just throw money . . . thank you thank you

Balthazar's end goal here is to create a Warbeast and power it up by using Aurene, the other good guy dragon kid of Glint, as a kind of Double A battery. As he sees it, once he's got the Warbeast, then he can lay the smack down on Kralkatorrick! Who's Kralkatorrick (Is it just me or does that name sound like a halitosis condition for a kraken)? It's ANOTHER Elder Dragon that's, I don't know, also pretty bad? (More to come in some follow on post in a few weeks I'm sure)

Anyway . . . Balthazar kills you to draw out Aurene. In fact, he kills you so badly that you completely forget who the heck you even are.  

What's money?

After undergoing a couple quests in the underworld, you finally figure out who you are and what you're doing.  It's a pretty cool sequence where you run into Palawa Joko, who's a legit proper necromancer that commands an army of undead and is basically the King of a little rectangle of Tyria known as the Domain of Vabbi. He's . . . not a nice person . . . which makes it feel even better when you steal his army of undead soldiers.

Can I have these guys follow me around all the time?

Legit jealous of this army of undead as a necromancer player in Guild Wars 2.  I WISH I could command my army of summons as good as this crew. 

At the end of Path of Fire, you find yourself commanding Palawa Joko's army of undead, and your old charr buddy Rytlock Brimstone hands over his uber weapon for you to take on Balthazar a third time . . . and hopefully not die a miserable death this time. 

Whoops . . . Um . . . wonder what consequences that's going to have *big wink*

Spoilers . . . you win.

That final battle with Balthazar and his Warbeast was pretty epic. I had a lot of fun with that, and overall I might even say this was my favorite story arc in Guild Wars 2 yet!

. . . and that leaves the question, what's next?

Woot!  

Spoilers . . . I bought the precursor Dawn at the auction house.

So until next time I'll be gathering the billion things you need to craft the legendary sword Sunrise and finally check off "get a legendary weapon in Guild Wars 2" from my MMO list of things to do.

Happy Dueling!

Finishing Heart of Thorns -- Onward to Path of Fire

I just finished up the storyline content for Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns last night. It was an epic battle to defeat the dragon Mordremoth from the inside out by attacking it within its mind.

Press F for Delivering the Death Blow AND Respects

I am, of course, seven years late on this content since Heart of Thorns released way back in 2015. I went back on my timeline and decided to look and see what had my attention instead of this expansion, and it looks like Team Spode had just made the decision to jump into DCUO again after our stint in Guild Wars 2.

Really, it's Team Spode that has brought me back in to Guild Wars 2 all these years later! It's where we're playing on Sunday nights these days. Last Sunday we were checking out the re-released Living World Season 1 content. It was a huge flashback to those old days. I did all that content back in the day, but apparently they've brought it back (it was limited time previously) and attached new rewards to it.

Guild Wars 2 -- it gives me that old Taimi Feeling

I gotta say, most "rewards" are a bit meaningless to me all these years later. My bank is chock full of trinkets and things I'll never use but earned as a reward sometime in the past. It's that very thing that makes me look at the achievement list for Heart of Thorns and think . . . yeah . . . do I care about that anymore? I mean, it might be cool to earn an exclusive back item for completing all the hard to do story achievements, but it'll just end up as another meaningless trinket in my bank.

Now that I've finished up the story in Heart of Thorns proper, next up is Living World Season 3 content and Path of Fire. I'd decided to skip Living World Season 3 for the time being and just jump into the Path of Fire. I want to get that hopping mount and the skimmer mount from working through the story. Now THOSE I want.  Not the billions of toilet paper rolls and skeleton illusion potions I'm getting in game for Halloween. That stuff is just bank fodder.

Setting sail to Path of Fire -- Man that makes me pine for Eberron and DDO

Anyway, just thought I'd do a quick post to say, yes, I'm still alive and look at me, I'm playing Guild Wars 2! LOL. 

Happy Dueling!

Blaugust Journaling -- How about some Guild Wars 2 and Tower of Fantasy?

I got nothin this morning, so I'm just going to do a little quick journaling about a couple of games I played yesterday.

1- Guild Wars 2.

So Team Spode is playing Guild Wars 2 together . . . again . . . and I'm there for the ride! Except last night . . . I wasn't! Why? Because the mic on my headphone decided to not work and I spent way too long fighting it instead of just playing muted. After 40 minutes of troubleshooting and uninstalling Oculus thinking that there was a conflict between the Oculus headphone mic and my actual headphone mic, I organized my terribly messy desk and found the cable I needed to hook in my podcasting mic that I never use. At that point, I was like . . . I'm done, and didn't even log in.

I love going super necro in Guild Wars

That said, I got in a couple hours of play on Guild Wars 2 last night and this morning, so it's not like I feel like I'm "behind" or anything. Our buddies John and Clara have been playing tour guide to Team Spode in the Heart of Thorns expansion, and as it turns out, there's lots to do there . . . waypoints, points of interest, vistas, challenge points, etc.

Standing in a council of angels?

For me personally I've just been going through the story in Heart of Thorns and getting a bit road blocked by the need to grind enemies. Sounds like an MMO, doesn't it? It sure does!

2- Tower of Fantasy

I logged in a bit this morning and man . . . I don't want to like this game, but I'm really liking it. Every time I log in, something cool happens that's like, dang, this is really freaking good.  Case in point, there was a battle with this lady named Frigg and it was friggin' intense. She gave me an amazing butt kicking with a super cool cut scene.

About to get my butt kicked

My brain keeps telling me, please don't let me like a game with the name Tower of Fantasy, but there's this troll inside of me that's like . . . YES, YOU LIKE GAME! YOU PLAY GAME! TOWER! FANTASY! ALL THE THING YOU LIKE! PLAY GAME, DUMMY!

Me . . . it's me. I'm not a crybaby.

That's all I got time for this morning! Thanks for the quick read, and I'll catch you tomorrow.

Happy Dueling!

GW2: It's such a pretty (confounding) game

About a week ago I was talking with a few of my old friends from Team Spode. We have our own Discord channel, and I drop by to say hello once in a while to see how their adventures in DCUO and otherwise have been going.

It was there that I started chatting with my old gaming pal, Ellie aka Clever Clara, who has been thoroughly enjoying the World vs. World PvP in GW2 for several years now. Lord Spode of Team Spode also mentioned that he still drops in daily to collect his rewards in GW2 . . . and he's been doing this for 3 or 4 years.  He logs in, he grabs his stuff, he logs off.  Amazing, the dedication on that one.

The Heart of Thorns beckons you deeper into this tangled web of a blogpost.

This got me to thinking about my Necromancer in Guild Wars 2, so I loaded up the game and logged in. It immediately struck me all over again just how pretty this game is . . . especially after playing the visual mess known as Project Gorgon for so long.

Here it's as if I'm constantly running and jumping through a concept artist's portfolio, leaping from one page to the next. It's such a pretty game.

The level of detail in Lion's Arch is staggering.

It was also then that I remembered I haven't picked up the Heart of Thorns or Path of Fire expansions, and lo and behold a THIRD expansion is now in development!

That's a perfect storm: friends still playing, tons of content I haven't explored, a visual feast after a season of starving, and promises of a bright future. SOLD!

So after picking up the HoT/PoF expansion bundle, I jumped into the new content only to remember . . . oh crap, combat in this game is lengthy, I don't remember anything, and there's a bunch of "things" now like wings and mounts. Oh man, what have I done?

In fact, I spent a few days just logging on, playing 15-20 minutes, and logging back off in frustration thinking perhaps I made a mistake . . . until last night.

  I'm in blue and that's my crew!

Clara gathered the troops yesterday, and soon I was playing GW2 with my old podcasting friends of Ravenwood Radio and Spiral Radio fame. Yup, Steve, Icy, and John . . . all in one group!

I can't even explain what a relief it was to get on a Discord call and have John talk us through the UI, new features, and the world event in the Verdant Brink. A little handholding and laughs between old friends goes a long way to establishing some hope.

We played around for a couple hours and broke the group for dinner, but I logged on later and did just a bit more of my story quest, just enough to take on this wicked vine beast.

Scary vine wyrm thingys are scary!

So there you have it . . . I'm back in GW2 for a bit to explore new content, hang with some old friends, and learn new tidbits of information: things like, Friendly Necromancers can now wield giant two-handed swords! Looks like it's the season of the Reaper for me in Guild Wars 2.

Yup, that's about the size of it.

Happy Dueling!