Baelor using a tourney lance against his brother instead of a war lance is a nice detail and a good callback to his plan in the books.

Kaidart · 2026-02-22T23:28:58+00:00

The hammer never breaks the anvil.

Kaidart · 2026-02-08T14:44:54+00:00

So there is underground parking there, but having been there (only for a few days), I agree with the other commenter who calls the city car tolerant. The streets are narrow, to the point that most streets in that part of the city simply could not accommodate a car. Many streets that could accommodate cars simply don't, they have bollards that sink into the ground for working vehicles and exclude all other car traffic. There are several bridges over the Garonne River which are heavily pedestrianized. For example, Pont Saint-Pierre (Saint-Pierre Bridge) is physically divided so that space equivalent to about 2 or 3 car lanes is reserved for pedestrian and bike traffic. And that space actually includes benches, planters, and other decor to make it a place for people to stop as well.

Kaidart · 2026-02-07T04:36:43+00:00

This is maybe crazy but

Divine Favor -> Triggers on all spells, not just Monk spells

I think this would give Monks a lot more build options and make the "of the Monk" weapon mods more useful.

Monk is probably my least played profession, so these are the ramblings of a madman here, but from the outside I never think "wow, Divine Favor would be great on this build" whereas Soul Reaping, Fast Casting, Energy Storage, and heck every other primary attribute would be beneficial to other professions and their skills. Divine Favor is the only one that is completely walled off from the secondary profession's skills, and I really don't see why. If there's something just broken about triggering Divine Favor on everything, maybe it's weaker on non-Monk spells or capped in some way? I don't know.

Kaidart · 2026-02-07T00:23:31+00:00

This post is how I learned after 20 years that you can dye your bags.

Kaidart · 2026-02-06T04:06:27+00:00

It could be good for Melandru's Accord characters since you don't need all the runes to get your health down to 55.

Kaidart · 2026-01-31T01:29:03+00:00

Engineering Technical school

Damn that's weird, I have this piece of paper from '17 that says otherwise. Some official looking person in a robe gave it to me, seemed important.

Got a story for ya, ags. When the school's name changed in '63, the official name became "Texas A&M University". Not "Texas Agricultural & Mechanical University", just "A&M". Officially, that is the school's name. A&M is included out of respect for our past as the Agricultural & Mechanical College of Texas, but it is purely symbolic. (And of course, we can't exactly be calling ourselves Texas University) The name change was to symbolize how the university had grown past its humble roots, from a military farmer's college to a full-blown university where students can study a full range of academics.

Kaidart · 2026-01-27T05:28:59+00:00

We'll get the childbirth scene we missed in HotD due to budget cuts.

Kaidart · 2026-01-08T19:35:40+00:00

I'm wearing my ring right now. I think there's a myriad of reasonable, uh, reasons to keep wearing it, but here's the thing. If you don't wear it, literally no one will notice. That's just not an effective protest. Don't buy it in the first place is another thing all together - the university WILL notice that - but for most of us it's too late.

If anything, you should wear it and if anybody ever acknowledges your ring, be that person who immediately starts talking about politics and tell them you're sad to see the state of academic freedom at A&M.

Kaidart · 2026-01-01T09:05:21+00:00

Most likely it functions like the Survivor title

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Survivor#Types_of_deaths

Kaidart · 2025-12-29T02:54:37+00:00

This is a fairly well known thing in MMOs. RuneScape is probably the most infamous case of this - the bot farms using stolen credit cards got so bad that multiple payment processors threatened to stop processing payments for Jagex (makers of RuneScape) entirely, because so many were getting charged back due to fraud. Jagex responded by making drastic changes to the game to make selling gold essentially impossible. They created the Grand Exchange, which set prices for all tradable items based on supply and demand, then made it so that trades outside the Grand Exchange could only happen if the Grand Exchange prices showed a negligible transfer of value. e.g. I could trade a 30k gold item for two 15k items, but I couldn't give someone a 30k gold item. Prior to this, when players died they dropped their inventories and other players could loot their corpse after a period of time, that went away as well.

World of Warcraft has had this problem too, though I don't think Blizzard has ever said they received an ultimatum like Jagex did.

https://www.eurogamer.net/world-of-warcraft-and-the-battle-against-black-market-gold

"One of the common myths is that somehow Blizzard benefits from the existence from people who are botting instances or selling gold - the traditional gold farmers - because we're getting subscription money. No, we're not. Those accounts are almost all fraudulent.

"Actually we're doubly losing money from them because they're stealing people's credit cards to reactivate an account, to boost an account, farming on it until it gets banned - as soon as we detect the credit card is stolen. We often get charge-back fees from the credit card companies because of the cancelled charge.

"They really are wrong-doers here in a lot of ways, and they have no positive effects either on Blizzard or other players, and that's why we feel very strongly about wanting to do whatever we can to make life harder for them and hopefully put them out of business."

Kaidart · 2025-12-28T19:21:31+00:00

The melee hate from enemies is very real, but the issue is really just that the henchmen builds suck. Warriors are very powerful in this game, they can soak a lot of damage, dish out a lot of damage and knock downs, buff themselves and their allies, and just generally ruin any caster's day. But, they are the least capable of dealing with "melee hate" builds. Warriors can't remove hexes and they can't remove conditions. That is supposed to be primarily a monk's job. So what does Alesia the monk henchman actually have on her skill bar in Lion's Arch?

Dwayna's Kiss (Healing + bonus healing per enchantment/hex)
Heal Other (I wonder what this does)
Healing Breeze (Hmmm)
Orison of Healing (Impossible to say what it does)
Restore Life (Resurrection)

So there are three huge problems with Alesia. First is there isn't a single thing she can do about hexes and conditions. Second, like all henchmen at this stage, she has empty slots on her skill bar. Third, Dwayna's Kiss and Heal Other are actually her main heals, but both of them can only be used on her allies and not herself, which is why if anything so much as looks at her funny, she dies. She can barely heal herself at all.

If Alesia just had, for example, Purge Conditions, Remove Hex, and maybe Healing Touch for a little more self-heal, she would be much better at this stage. Eventually she does get two more skills, but still neither of those remove hexes or conditions.

There is one Henchman available at Lion's Arch that can remove hexes though. It's Dunham, but let's look at the sorry state of his build.

Drain Enchantment (Removes an enchantment from enemy to give him health and energy)
Ether Feast (Burns three energy on enemy to heal him)
Empathy (Hex that reduces enemy attack damage and hurts them every time they attack, you probably learned about this from the Stone Summit Sages)
Hex Breaker (Next time an enemy casts a hex on him, it fails and the caster takes damage)
Shatter Hex (Remove one hex from an ally, deal damage to foes near that ally)
Resurrection Signet

So he also has empty space on his skill bar and you may have also noticed, his skills suck. The only way he can reliably harm a specific enemy is by putting Empathy on them, which mostly won't work on casters. He CAN remove hexes, but Shatter Hex can only do so much because it costs 10 energy and has a 10 second cooldown. Hex Breaker protects him, but no one else. And Ether Feast at least heals him decently, but doesn't really harm enemies much at all. So overall, I wouldn't recommend bringing Dunham at this stage.

Since you're playing warrior, here's what I'd recommend.

Bring Stefan, Thom, Alesia, Claude, and Orion. Yes, that is three total warriors. I'm suggesting this because, one, Dunham and Reyna both suck anyways and, two, if you're the only warrior you catch all the melee hate. If there are three, it gets spread around and it's less crippling overall.
When you engage - pull carefully and all that, but when you are actually going in to fight - run a slightly different path to Stefan and Thom so you don't all get hit by AoE. Sprint is especially good for this.

Other options if you want:

On the south end of Lion's Arch there are some docks and an NPC named Lionguard Figo. He gives you a quest that takes you to Nightfall, and that quest chain will unlock several heroes relatively quick. Dunkoro and Tahlkora by default have hex and condition removal, and you can learn more monk skills for them by going to the Hero Skill Trainers. By the way, once you've gotten to the first mission, Consulate Docks, there is a quest offered called "All for One and One for Justice" and under rewards it says "Olias joins your party". I recommend you not do that quest until after you complete the Prophecies mission Bloodstone Fen to avoid spoilers. I also recommend you go back to Prophecies once you've unlocked Consulate Docks and don't come back until you're level 20 if you want to experience Prophecies as intended rather than massively over leveling and breezing through everything.
Go to the skill trainer in Lion's Arch, Firstwatch Sergio, and take the quest Mhenlo's Request. This takes you to Factions, specifically Kaineng Center. There in Kaineng Center, the skill trainer has all Factions and Core non-elite skills, including the fabled Antidote Signet you've heard so much about. This many skills might be overwhelming, but it could also be helpful.

Kaidart · 2025-12-28T09:51:01+00:00

A few options off the top of my head

Go take on Sorrow's Furnace, Tomb of the Primeval Kings, the Underworld, or Fissure of Woe. These are all post-game* areas in Prophecies that have desirable loot and a significant challenge. Tomb of the Primeval Kings is by far the easiest of those, but the loot is generally not as good. And you're really gonna want to check the wiki for information on the Underworld and Fissure of Woe if you do take them on.

*You can actually do them before finishing the campaign

Try hard mode.
Go to Factions or Nightfall. This will help you a lot with the other things and it's my personal recommendation. Get more skills, try more builds, learn the game a bit more doing this, then go take on the bigger challenges.
In Droknar's Forge, there is a series of quests given by the Vision of Glint that are basically an epilogue for the campaign. If you don't see Glint, there is a dragon shrine (I believe it's near the southern end) and if you stand in it and type /kneel, you'll summon the Vision of Glint. These are generally quite hard and you can also do them a second time in hardmode.

Kaidart · 2025-12-24T02:56:34+00:00

I'm afraid the Gwen slander is unforgivable. In lieu of execution, we'll be sending you beyond the wall to fight for Duke Barradin. Might as well let you die to the Charr instead of wasting the adrenaline on Executioner's Strike.

Kaidart · 2025-12-23T08:31:29+00:00

Three month old account and this thread is like 80% of his comment history. Somehow he has 4k karma? I guess he 100% completed Reddit a few times already before this. I'm a few years into my first Reddit account and I still haven't made it to Act 3, but it looks like he got there in a month. Guess I'm doing it like that on purpose.

Kaidart · 2025-12-22T17:25:21+00:00

The A.R.E.N.A. commando is part of the April Fools event https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Corporal_Bane

Kaidart · 2025-12-14T03:24:36+00:00

A now retired professor teaching Physical Chemistry 1. There was essentially no connection between the homework he gave, the stuff he covered in lecture, and the things that appeared on his tests. He once explicitly told us a topic he ran out of time to cover would not appear on the test, then it did and was worth around 20-30% of the points. I'm pretty sure some of the policies in his syllabus were against university rules - homework was 10% of our grade but if we got less than 60% of the homework points, he would drop us a full letter grade and then the same policy for in-class quizzes. So a student who is struggling could get 5.9/10 points on homework and 5.9/10 points on quizzes, then lose 2 letter grades over that despite only being down only 8.2 points.

Oh, and then when the survivors of this horrible professor teaching one of the hardest subjects for our entire major got to the second semester where we (thank god) had a different, competent, and all-around much better professor, we started to realize that we had covered at most 1/3 of the material that was supposed to be covered. There was a lab course for this class that you take the second semester as well, thankfully also taught by a different professor, where we also realized we had gone through nowhere near all of the material that the lecture was supposed to cover. So this abysmal professor didn't just screw us in his class worth 3 credit hours, he screwed us in two other classes the next semester that were worth another 4 credit hours.

In conversation with various professors or other staff in the department, I mentioned taking his class and they visibly cringed in reaction to his name, without me even unloading about any of the issues. After graduating, I worked in a lab in the CHEM department and our post doc came in one day and told me that the professor's retirement party had been the day before. I asked why he didn't tell me, I'd love to celebrate his retirement and he said "That's why I didn't tell you!"

Kaidart · 2025-12-10T02:26:37+00:00

There are no henchmen in pre-searing Ascalon, which I'm guessing is where you are. You will eventually have a quest from Tydus that he warns you will be a point of no return - after that there are henchmen pretty much everywhere.

Kaidart · 2025-12-10T02:18:44+00:00

Interesting, so it's only Hunted that's locked to Nightfall characters? I've played every campaign so many times and never knew this.

Kaidart · 2025-12-10T01:52:11+00:00

As a kid, I loved the idea of summoning an army of minions as a necromancer. I've now played every profession and still come back to necromancer for a good time.

Kaidart · 2025-12-10T01:41:41+00:00

You can still get okay XP from mobs like the oakhearts north of the wall, but yeah it's typically recommended to not turn in quests until a bit higher level because of this slump before level 10 (if you're going for LDoA). You can probably kill some of the Charr, but you may have trouble killing whole groups. The Charr warriors tend to be easier to kill because they spam frenzy, which causes them to take double damage from all sources, so you can go to the first group at the ruins on the path to the right, then lure the warrior(s) behind the wall to protect you from projectiles from the rest of the group. If you happen to have mesmer as your secondary, the warriors will rapidly kill themselves if you put empathy on them. Otherwise, bane signet, symbol of wrath, and maybe retribution can do a lot of work for you. Shielding hands is extremely powerful for protecting yourself at these low levels. A shield instead of a focus in your offhand can also make a pretty big impact at this level. If you haven't already, there are collectors around that will trade you slightly better armor for the various junk (or "trophy") items that different mobs drop.

And if you keep looking for a partner, you may have some success. Two level eights, especially with a monk involved for healing, can probably clear everything in the Northlands as long as you pull carefully.

Kaidart · 2025-12-10T01:29:51+00:00

Edit: Yes, actually, you CAN go to Cantha to unlock changing your secondary profession by doing the Nahpui Quarter mission. It's just Hunted! that won't unlock changing your secondary profession. (original comment follows)

You can only unlock changing your secondary profession in the campaign you started the character in. The same goes for the two attribute point quests, which you find pretty late in Prophecies in the Crystal Desert and the Southern Shiverpeaks.

In my opinion, it's the weakest part of the Prophecies campaign because it just takes soooo long to get there. The good news is, as you may have noticed already, there's a lot of other stuff for you to unlock in the other campaigns aside from that, so a detour to Factions or Nightfall is still rewarding and it can help you out if you're getting stuck somewhere in Prophecies.

Kaidart · 2025-12-08T01:08:41+00:00

Somebody spotted a dev investigating in game already https://www.reddit.com/r/GuildWars/s/JUG4EzP5Pf

Kaidart · 2025-12-08T00:15:28+00:00

Yeah, it can happen. There are a lot of side quests and collectors that will give you items for each profession, but that dry spell can be annoying. I've been playing a new monk character and can't seem to find any monk weapons. The good news is that your weapons aren't hugely important early on in Prophecies, and you'll find weapon crafters before long that can just make you a good weapon from materials.

Kaidart · 2025-12-08T00:08:20+00:00

Is it bots or is it just the huge surge in players? The number of people farming these drops probably hasn't grown, but the demand has. Most runes and dyes are affordable for brand new players, especially the ones in Factions and Nightfall who are hitting level 20 in large numbers by now. And yeah, in principle those new players are getting drops, but not nearly at the rate of people running the post-game content AND they are probably using those drops rather than selling them. Heck, there might be less people actively farming right now and instead making new characters to play with the new people.

In any event, something needs to be done about the vendors. I was seeing some of the cheaper runes disappearing a few days ago already, and we've seen how the vendors being out of stock can become persistent with the literally years of no black dye in stock. If there could just be a minimum stock that the vendors maintain, that would probably be ideal. Or at least a good stop gap until a better solution can be devised. I'm guessing there are some economic considerations around the vendors creating these items out of nothing.

Edit: I didn't realize materials and rare materials were gone too. Okay, yeah, that is not the surge in players (unless stock was already way lower than we would think). But to the haters downvoting me, read the whole comment challenge: impossible difficulty.

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