The World & Races of Guild Wars 2

The Continent of Tyria

Back to Tyria; thus the continent where we will spend most of our gaming time in the near future. In addition to the five playable races is this location also home to several other breeds. Each playable race has its own territory and its capital city.

Kryta

The Humans are living in Kryta. It is a lush land of green forests, green fields and hills and flowing streams. From being a nation wide area to live on, has the humans had been pushed back from the rest of the continent which makes Kryta to the humans only refuge.

Lion's Arch was once the capital, but after a tsunami knocked out the town it was rebuilt by the pirates who made the city a haven, hence the emergence of the new capital city, Divinity's Reach. It is a massive city situated in the north of Kryta with lots of people from different cultures. People used to even stay in Ascalon, past Shiverpeak Mountains. However, this place is now a home for the Charr, a race that has been at war with the people for hundreds of years.

Ascalon

Charr is a industrialised people who have through their stubbornness and magic polluted this beautiful landscape called Ascalon. Remains of human defeat can be seen from east to west where the Great Wall once stretched to keep Charr away from the country. From being a country far more beautiful than in Kryta the nature struggles to take root in these tarnished lands. Charr built their capital, The Black Citadel, on top of an overthrown human city, Rin, as an exemplification of his victory over man.

Shiverpeaks

Shiverpeaks is a mountain range that separates Ascalon from the rest of Tyria. This is where the Norns live. They have fled from Far Shiverpeaks north. Shiverpeaks snowy landscape is a enormous heights and steep cliffs that are very similar to the Nordic winter climate. Despite their nomadic lifestyle, they have a capital, Hoelbrak, which is intended as a place to return to in order to share stories of their own deeds.

Tarnished Coast

Tarnished Coast is home to two of our last playable races. It is a lush jungle area with scattered ruins left behind by an unknown civilization.

Sylvari was born, or rather woke up from the dream 25 years ago by a tree called the Pale Tree. This tree is located on the east coast. Although many Sylvari now travels to gain personal experience in the world it is this place that is their home. The lowest situated parts of the tree is called the Grove and is sylvarins capital.

In the western part of the Tarnished Coast is where the Asura call their home. They have built a floating pyramid in the middle of the jungle called Rata Sum, who acts as their capital. Here asuran spend their time with magic golems and other inventions with little awareness of how the environment is affected by their ingenuity. From the beginning they kept to the underworld but was driven away from this place.

A changing world

The years have worn on Tyria. While the plants cover the scorched lands of Ascalon and the water has retreated from Lion's Arch, awaits new adventure around every crest. Ancient places beneath the surface pushed back and opens doors to hidden secrets.

 

Quick Guide About Crafting in Guild Wars 2

I have spent a few days of crafting now and I learnt me a few things, I thought I'd write a short guide for those who are interested in doing some crafting in Guild Wars 2

I got to around 100 in tailoring and 95 in jewelling, so I'm no genius when it comes to crafting, this is just me sharing my experience and thought when I started to craft in GW2.  

A warning to anyone who's interested in crafting is that you should be prepared that you are going to have to spend coins in order to level up your crafting. Although I used everything I came across and saved everything that could be use in crafting, I found myself often needed to buy things on the auction house to get further in my crafting professions.

Short guide to crafting in Guild Wars 2.

In the beginning crafting in GW2 looked like in any other MMORPG. It has a base material (e.g. copper) that can be refined into ingots, that you can later craft something with.
To create a dagger for example you then need to create a blade and a handle, and then assemble them.
However, you notice pretty quickly that something more is required in order to continue to gain crafting levels, when around crafting level 30 it starts to require extremely high numbers of material to increase the level.

Experimental Mode 

Instead of putting together the blade and handle of a dagger directly you go into experimental mode, add the handle, the blade, and then an optional crafting materials (often stuff that drops from mobs, such as chlorine, bits of gems, vials of blood, etc. etc.).
In doing so, we add a magical component and gives its item a bonus. First time to test a certain combination you get extra exp and can often jump 3-4 level up if it is a little more complicated item you created.

When you have created a combination will the recipe be unlocked and added to, among the other recipes, but it will not longer give as much exp.
Therefore it is recommended to start using the experimental feature as soon as possible (often requires level 25 and then 50 for many combinations) to avoid having to spend hundreds of coins for a few levels.
If you have 100 of the base material (eg copper) it is usually enough to refine those to get to approximately level 20-25 so start with that, especially when you stop getting exp pretty quickly for easy recipes (such as copper ingots).
It works very similar for all the different crafting professions, only materials differ between the various crafts.

It is worth to consider is also that you always get exp when you craft, but you can however do sort of like critical hits in crafting that gives you bonus exp. So it's a bit of a gamble, but you can not fail to craft anything and thus wasting material, so you always get something out of crafting.
Things you create in crafting is also quite usable, when I was at level 28 (normal level), I could at level 90 (crafting level) create gear that was better than any I've had in rewards / drops until then.

The Problems Guild Wars 2 has at the moment (Not Gem Related)

This post isn't Gem related but it's more about the bugs and flaws that Guild Wars 2 is experiencing right now. 

There is no doubt that ArenaNet has released an incredibly polished and awesome MMO but it couldn't live up to the hype it had gotten before the release, but the game still manages to to be one of the best MMORPG that has been released in a very very long time. The game has obviously some problems, and here's a small list of them:

The camera
I actually think this is one of the biggest problem with the game right now, and it's the very annoying camera that constantly get stuck in the environment and just zooms in sometimes. This problem is growing dramatically if you are a large Norn in the jumping puzzles and the camera constantly zooms in when you jump up. It is also a very big problem in the dungeons where the boss fights in the small room leading to a fight against the camera instead of the boss.

Small features that are needed in Guild Wars 2
The small things makes a good & polished game and Arena Net have put in lot of great things in the game but they have left out a few that should have been included in the release. Just to mention a few:

Item Inspect
A basic functionality that everyone expects out of a mmo nowadays but for some reason not in Guild Wars 2. What do you do if you see someone with really nice gear and you want to know what it's called? You inspectar course so you can see every detail but the function has been omitted and can be easily deployed.

Extremely hard dungeons

This is just something I experienced myself with some explorable mode dungeons. You may have a different opinion but that is how I feel. I discovered that most of Cathedral of Flame where we chose the way to destroy a superweapon where we arrived at what was a large Charr Effigy. This spawned crystals in a large room that healed him, if not destroyed, if one was not very far away so it was burning constantly, and every spell he did knocked us down. This boss fight just did not seem fair when you were constantly knocked down by un-dodgeable spells and once you managed to get down enough crystals to hurt him then new ones were spawned , and his health went straight up again.
However, a boss I know was something wrong was in araH explorable mode dungeon where one chose Mursaat path. The boss was not particularly difficult, but he took at least 20 minutes to get down health on. We thought we were doing something wrong, but no, he just took a long time and it was a ridiculously boring boss fight that must be fixed. 

Previewing the Trading Post

Another gear issue where a function that should have been there. It's probably easy to become distracted when making such a big game but why is this feature not there? If you buy an Exotic sword from TP maybe you want to know how it looks first. Another thing that can very easily be provided and I hope ArenaNet does.

PVP Duels
To perfect your skills with your class you have always been able to duel with your friends and thus practicing together, but also this has been overseen by ArenaNet. Once again, can easily be added.

Guild Wars 2 Quick & Easy Elementalist Guide

Here comes a quick and easy guide for the Guild Wars 2 elementalist, I will talk about my thought about the class and what you should think about when playing this fantastic class. This is another guide not related to gems in Guild Wars 2, but I think you guys will like it anyway.

I Saw fairly early in PvE that the elementalist is an extremely fragile class and it's very important to be able to avoid damage Mobs which is a few lvls higher than you can easily take 30-50% of your health in one strike. When you have relatively few control skills (eg chill, cripple, blind, etc.) so it will be a lot kiting and you can almost never stand still as a elemntalist. Ranged mobs are something you should watch out for and see that you buff your defence with for example armor of earth, otherwise you will die in just a few seconds.

However, it is lack in armor and health is compensated by the rather extreme damage you can dish out, both AOE and single target. Playing along with a more robust class is definitely recommended then you can kill mobs extremely well.
Armor of earth is almost a must have skill when the boons it gives really helps against ranged mobs and when someone happens to come a little too close.

PvPing as Elementalist

In PvP the tactic is very much of a not to be attacked nature, and to avoid damage to any cost. Even if you specc for defense, you will always be the softest class in the game which inevitably leads to a lot of painfull attention.
The damage you do in PvP is just fantastic, it's not at all unusual to do critical hits up 6-7k with a defense spec. If specced only damage you can certainly without difficulty reach 10k critsbut then you will also go down in a few seconds.
Strongly recommend changing the default runes from armor to something more defensive. I myself used the Melandru set that gives + HP and reduced condition / stun duration, but there are certainly others that work just as well.

World Vs World & the Elementalist

In WVW the elementalist really comes into its proper element with its many AoE's and its high damage. However, one must keep in mind that AoE has a maximum limit of five targets (both buffs and damage) so do not assume that everyone in a pile of 30 players die because you throw the meteor shower.
Something I did a lot in PvE which is dual daggers. Mostly because of the incredibly good skills . The downside is of course that you have to be extremely close, and that the damage will not be significantly better than with staff / scepter. I hope that they somehow make daggers more useful in the future, or provides more defensive skills on them.  

The most important advice if you're going to play the Elementalist in Guild Wars 2

One thing I discovered early on is the core of the elementalist is to not get stuck in one or two attunements instead trying to use all the skills you have available all the time. In PvP, this becomes even more important. Let's say you are at range and use some fire aoe on a small group. A Thief dislike this and shadowstepps until you are ready to unleash a mad combo.
Instead of continuing to blast damage with fire, you can either change to the water and lay a snare, switching to air and run blind or switch to earth and buff armor (such as obsidian flesh of immortality until the thief's combo is complete).
The ideal would be obviously a mix, such as for earth - obsidian flesh (now assume that we are running scepter + focus), switch to water for freezing gust (chill), a step back, shatterstone of vulnerability, switch to the air, blinding flash (blind), then deal a bit of damage, and then gale for the kill.. 

All skills must be used, it is also important not to use all your trait points on one specific attunements but rather focus on general bonuses so you don't loose your trait bonuses when you keep switching from attunment to another.

Overall I think the elementalist is a incredibly fun to play, but also by far the hardest class I've tested so far There's so many skills to keep track of and possible if played right to do insane amount of damage! The big drawback is that you have access to relatively few avoidance skills (unlike the thief and the Mesmer with invisibility and clones for the mesmer for example) which makes mobility for the elementalist so much more important. 

 

How to get Free GW2 Gem Cards

Finally the ArenaNet have released the guild wars 2 gem card. The gem card works similar as Game Time Cards work with other MMO's that got a monthly cost (like World of Warcraft for example) but instead of game time the card is filled up with gems instead, 2000 fantastic gems. That's a lot of gems if you ask me and you can buy a lot of fun stuff in the store with that much gems.

The gems on the card is redeemed easy by using a code that's on the card, there's both electronic versions and real life cards that can be bought in game stores all over the world, so you won't need a credit card in order to buy one of these.

2000 Gems - What can you buy that many Gems?

• You can get 10 Ringmaster's Hat (make your whole guild look fancy!)
• 10 x Evon Gnashblade's Box o' Fun (get ready for some fun fun fun)
• 6 Minis 3-Pack and get a whole army of mini pets! (each pack cost 300 gems)
• or you can exchange all the gems and get a huge pile of gold!

How to get free GuildWars 2 Gems For Free?

As you might have realised that these gem cards are rather expensive, they're totally worth it if you ask me because you can get so much fun with all these gems. But why pay when you can get them for free, if you follow this guide you will learn a easy yet very efficient way of gett Guild Wars 2 Gem Cards for free. Anyone can do it and the guide is of coures 100% free. You can check out the guide over here:
Guide: How to Get Guild Wars 2 Gem Cards For Free

The GW2 Gem Store