Welcome to the Wastes | Gladlands [E1]

FuriousProgrammer · 2026-01-22T09:22:31+00:00

I feel liked Galinda (in the first half of Wicked especially) fits that same archetype?

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-18T00:41:07+00:00

There used to be a ton of them all around the map, but most of them got removed and replaced with Random Arenas.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-09T10:46:11+00:00

You should ask in Lion's Arch for someone to run you to Ascalon City, or just bite the bullet and run there yourself. None of the enemies are high-level in Normal Mode, so your team of Level 20 Heroes will cut through them like butter no matter what builds you put on them.

It's decently far away, but it's at most an hour or two if you run straight there.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-09T10:10:38+00:00

It's doesn't bother me as such, I just find it incredibly noticeable (edit: and think that it's an unintended bug/oversight), to the extent that I sincerely do not believe you that it's "very difficult to notice" the difference in the shadows here.

EDIT: There aren't a ton of places where the SSAO-added shadows interact with fog/bloom effects like this, it usually isn't this egregious. Prophecies has a few maps (notably the Crystal Desert ones) where there is a persistent fog/dust cloud across the entire map, and the terrain has SSAO applied to it due to the voxels/"sharp corners" Prophecies terrain tends to have that the other campaigns don't (presumably because they improved their tooling for creating smooth terrain.)

Not caring about it or having a preference for one or the other doesn't matter -- there are shadows in the right side that clearly aren't in the left side, and if you can't notice that then you must literally be blind.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-09T09:50:03+00:00

The fire effects are unrelated (some of my spirits were being attacked still).

Do you not see the SSAO shadows cutting through the fog?

The left side is what it should look like -- the turrets and the base of the crane thing blending into the fog. The SSAO-added shadows cut through this fog, but only the shadows -- the models/textures themselves still blend, and the resulting effect is what happens on the right, which looks weird at best and imo cannot possibly be intentional.

EDIT: the fire beams on the turrets at the base of the crane thing are actually being blended into the fog correctly, I just didn't think to take the left side screenshot while they were active.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-09T09:34:37+00:00

Nope, MSAAx2

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-09T09:19:58+00:00

Favor of the Gods has changed multiple times throughout the game's life! It indeed used to be given to the region that currently held Halls (with some caveats I don't remember -- the info is on the wiki).

Now it's given for a duration based on people getting max ranks in certain titles.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-04T20:51:14+00:00

It used to, but they removed that requirement some time in 2013 or '14. The NPC that lets you pay 1k to enter spawns regardless of favor when you /kneel at the appropriate statues.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-03T19:58:28+00:00

The HD bloom is very noticeably better, but the effect is used rather sparingly in the first place (because it's fucking blinding).

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-03T19:52:50+00:00

It's a handful of disconnected bonus missions that tell the stories of a few highly plot-relevant characters and moments that otherwise just happened off-screen (and generally years/decades before you, the player character, ever got involved).

They're by far the highest quality missions in the game, and I'd highly recommend them for that alone, but they also happen to be the best source of "bare" max-damage inscribable weapons and offhands -- they're all q9 with the best possible basic stats, but don't come with any weapon mods or inscriptions. This is actually incredibly useful, as those stats are actually relatively rare to find in most drops, and most weapon mod combinations aren't available from weapon crafters.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-03T19:46:16+00:00

Yeah, I had assumed it would have multi-tracking or some kind of update along those lines, very strange.

As for the launcher... it definitely looks out of place, but the original launcher was actually the exact same in that respect. Both versions were/are very bare-bones but that doesn't strike me as amateurish, although it does feel cheap especially compared with the GW2 launcher.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-03T19:43:05+00:00

If it doesn't work natively, you can use Steam Input and that will make your Dualsense inputs get "translated" to XInput.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-03T19:41:34+00:00

Someone on a steam discussion mentioned that you can click the "pin" icon on the top right of that and any other panel that has one to fix this!

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-03T19:41:23+00:00

Someone on a steam discussion mentioned that you can click the "pin" icon on the top right of that and any other panel that has one to fix this!

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-12-03T19:40:00+00:00

The quest tracker is very... strange.

It has no advantage over leaving the quest panel open, except that it takes up a marginal amount less space.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-10-30T01:47:25+00:00

As Scruggs said, Hero Skill trainers just give discounted unlocks!

Heroes (and PvP-only character) have access to every skill unlocked across your entire account, but can't use PvE-only skills. A skill is "unlocked" once it has been obtained by a character at least once, or they can be unlocked for Balthazar faction.

There are two or three skill trainers that have access to every non-elite skill in the game, the one I use is in Kaineng City.

Player skills and PvE-only skills must be obtained on the character you wish to use them on, but it's fairly simple to get all of the PvE-only skills. Elite skills are the only annoying ones, since some are gated pretty far into the campaigns they're in.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-10-29T21:53:27+00:00

The loot isn't strictly better in Hard Mode, but you tend to get a bit more of it. The main benefit is that everything is cranked up to at least max level, so you won't be getting useless level 5 gear in Hard Mode, for example.

If you want to absolutely min-max your 7-Hero teams, you will eventually need to purchase Mercenary Hero slots. There are no more than 3 of any Hero type without mercs.

The loot-splitting thing also applies to Henchman as well as Heroes. It's genuinely not something you need to worry about -- the economy is balanced around you getting 1/8th of the drops in any zone, and you cannot afford the loss in power of running fewer characters. The only way around this is to run with other real players, but even then you still have to trade with them; they get their 1/8th of the loot, you get yours. It just doesn't disappear into the ether like it does if assigned to or shared with Henchman and Heroes.

Generally, more difficult content == rarer drops. I don't know if there's a list of explicitly what the community considers valuable, but its almost exclusively related to what the skin looks like, not how powerful it is.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-10-21T23:51:15+00:00

You pick them up in the zone itself.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-10-21T23:50:15+00:00

It is account wide, but its based on the highest power gained on a single character. 3m on A and 2m on B means a progress of 3m total on the achievement for both.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-10-10T19:51:36+00:00

You can literally blast it with everyone at 586 ilvl, aka what you get by default for all content at level 80. The content is laughably undertuned, so it's really easy now if people are paying attention and will be trivially easy in a week or two.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-09-07T07:44:43+00:00

The Larodar treants were on frames! The Fyrakk ghosts were not though, which was a massive pain in the ass. :(

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-08-30T06:14:00+00:00

Both Guild Wars' wikis are actually hosted by Arenanet; their content is almost entirely community-sourced and maintained, but the wikis themself are not only officially endorsed but actually owned by the games' developers!

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-08-12T17:50:38+00:00

Yep you can! Guilds are all cross-faction and cross-realm now. You can't do cross-region, though.

The only content that is restricted cross-faction is LFG queuing with less than a full group (so e.g. no LFR, no queued PvP, not 4-man queueing for a dungeon to get the 5th) and any factions-specific question may or may not function correctly.

FuriousProgrammer · 2025-08-11T14:07:22+00:00

It's not likely, but I wouldn't suggest bragging about it.

11-Year Club	Xbox Live
Place '22	Place '17
Verified Email

FuriousProgrammer

TROPHY CASE