The real reason they didnt want airships is because they have seen them blow up every time and do nothing. They just didnt have the heart to tell the commander.
I feel like its a stone soup scenario. The commander could literally solo everything, they just like to make the commander think they have his/her back.
On the topic of the MC sounding tired, the female sylvari voice did it really well too. It was a really obvious tone shift, cuz she usually sounds very peppy and high-energy even when she's upset or mad. It felt like someone dimmed a bright lamp way down, it really felt meaningful.
6:00 I'm glad to hear this. What I really missed about GW1 is how starting a new character in an expansion actually made you feel like you were doing a brand new story with no reference to beating a prior campaign. I can only take being called commander so many times.
Amnytas is the best argument we have yet for a 'disable mount skins'-toggle in graphics settings. With a little luck we can toss in 'disable infusions' and 'disable back items' too.
On the matter of the "fleet of airships" bit being dropped, if you read the journal you kinda get that covered. Your com device when Uenno adjusts it to work with the the Astral Ward's system she does it in a way that also cuts-off the Commander from anyone outside. (edit to add: I highly recommend reading the journal entries once you're done with the story. The Commander's thoughts there add so much context. It's in the journal that the Commander comments about being cut-off from outside contact) Spoilers below: In the epilogue where Zojja asks for the com to make a call to Taimi, it's fair to say she'd know how to re-enable the outbound contact to make that call.
I love reading the journal entries, I’m so glad someone else out there does too. The commander has SUCH a way with words you really miss out on if you aren’t reading it. My favourite new set of words being “…meat wings…” Absolute chefs kiss
Well, the device itself also just doesn't work when you try to use it, so it's clearly broken somewhat. I thought it kinda strange that this device introduced at the start of the expansion went completely unused, contrary to frequent comm calls during PoF or EoD stories.
My main's story ended with the Epilogue. He has a job at Xunlai as an assistant to Taimi and Yao. He's got a nice rooftop apartment in Kaineng with some illegally imported jungle plants that he shares with Canach and two cats, Tybalt and Demmi, who entertain the old retired Fern Hound. He spends the whole SotO adventure happy to see Zojja but wondering, why oh why, can't he be on the med team, or the logistics team, or the recon team, or any team that isn't the Vigil's Marching Orders all over. All that Whispers training for nothing! Maybe he'll be able to put it to use in his revenge plan against Mi-Rae....
6:15 Steve Staley is a GOAT. Seriously, his voice work doesn't get enough praise. I LOVE the male Asura Commander. Any time I play the story on a different character or see someone else playing the story, I'm like "Nah, Steve did it better." The freaking range on this character is so strong. And I love how he sound so much like a world-weary leader who has to put up with so much but still does his best to get the job done.
Weaponmastery: so.... you just equip that weapon.... but but but but... the specialization...? no no, you just grab that weapon with your hand b..b..but won't hurt? no won't hurt, you just put in your hand.... I HAVE THE POWER OF BROKEN CLASS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Great video! Always nice to hear other people's opinions on the expansions. Personally I really enjoyed the expansion and I'm looking forward to seeing where the next updates go. It feels really refreshing to have a non-dragon storyline again and it makes me excited for the future of the game to know that they still had this cool of a story prepared to tell so quickly after EoD. One thing I have to add about the pricing is that there is a minimum they have to charge in order to cover their expenses. GW2 expansions are pretty cheap compared to other games (who are more than happy to charge you 60 bucks for them), so people have been spoiled by that. Just because they've priced their expansions cheaply in the past does not mean we can use that as a point of comparison and say "hey, this expansion has less content than that one, so it should be X amount cheaper". There is a floor for the price at release, they still have to pay everyone working for their studio after all. And I agree with you that all things considered, 25 bucks is a very fair price for this expansion.
They DO have a few NPCs talking around the Wizards Tower about how they can't hide things much longer, and might need to reach out soon, so you MIGHT get a new pact fleet coming in at some point.
I've enjoyed the expansion a lot. The fantasy theme with the tall white towers are an aesthetic that I always enjoy. Also, the Music! I love that the music changes, in the Archipelago, according to the area you're in; so, I've enjoyed the HoT, PoF, and EoD music themes in one map! I think of Anet's goal for the joy of movement (or freedom?), anyway, you get what I mean. It really shines in this map. It's a great place for using the Griffon and zooming around the maps, and once you learn the masteries, the Skyscale takes on a whole new aspect of movement. The story has kept my interest, adding new characters while not forgetting all of our old adventuring team. I'm looking forward to the next part! The events support the story in many cases. I didn't expect the darker elements, but I like it - adds some weight to the story.
For me the best narrative so far. No boring characters, all believable and very well written within the story, each having something that reminds a different spectrum of each commander's emotion, so to speak. Two things: 1 - Please protect R'tchikk at all costs. 2 - Rytlock being himself in the interview for the Cantha newspaper reporter made me laugh more than I should have. :) A great start for Soto for sure.
The Supernatural point you had in the story part is kinda implied I think. If the Commander brings in a few thousand soldiers unprepared to fight back against emotion sucking demons it probably would have made things worse, right? At least that's how I understood it... I guess they should have done a better job at explaining it.
About that plot hole with declining help of a fleet: I like to think that Wizard's declining help to uphold a tradition is more about honoring Isgarren than actually caring about tradition itself. The point was to rescue the dude and as we learn about how he isn't some fairy tale hero, he could be pretty pissed about blowing a secret he upheld for possibly thousands of years just because he got 'napped that one time. I'm also pretty sure Commander themselves would actually ignore any protests and step up to get shit done their own way once the Wizard's way of doing things stopped working. I like how Commander behaves in this expac - they need to actively fit in their new role as just a subordinate and not a person in charge and are honestly trying to be polite towards people that Zojja cares about. So in the end I don't think this is a plot hole. It would be if Commander's military resources were actually needed and the story would still go on without it (which would probably end up with forcing Taimi back into story to have her create new Deus Ex Taimi device). Zojja's absense was also handled quite neatly (I actually wanted to read her journal entries). All in all, I liked the way story progressed and how it dealt with threads from previous arcs. BTW I'm hyped for next story part that deals with helping our new demon waifu friend fight Eparch. Wing 4 is my favorite raid wing especially because of aesthetics and Cerys' fight is right up my alley (it helps that cutscenes in Soto story are realy good - I was actually kinda touched when Dagda comforted Zojja). I'd love to get a whole expansion in that world but even a just an LW episode worth of content with it will be great. I can almost forgive anet for stealing my legendary rune functionality (well, significant part of it at least) with their new Relic system.
* Amytas is almost a perfect map, it just needs a few more giant white marble walls * The wizards are sociopaths, experimenting on living beings, and need to be Nurenberg'd
Personally I have been having a great time with the new expansion. Weapon master training has made me enjoy alot of my favourite builds in a fun new way. Absolutely love the flying masteries! As a griffon enjoyer both maps are incredibly fun to explore! Haven't finished the story yet but it seems to be some of GW2 better narritives. Thanks for the content and take care everyone!
I don't mind the login reward being worse, but I do wish we had more dailies. In the old system i had to do 3 things out of 12. We had 4 of each wvw, pve and pvp dailies. So when i logged into gw2 to play i could in the moment decide what i wanted out of my play time that day, and even within a game mode skip one of the tasks. Sometimes the tasks are things I don't like doing (like you touched on with having to get so many of the available mastery points). The way it is now, I have to decide the day before what content i will feel like doing tomorrow, and then do 100% of the list they give me. This simply makes dailies less fun to do.
the fact that anet made the commander point out the "airships" was quite amazing, i would never even have thought that myself, but maybe that was a foreshadowing in the living world for soto.. i still wanna ride those in ebg when bombing
Thoughts on "the plothole": I think your idea around 8:40 was what they were trying to do but they did it hamfisted. I mean we are talking about demons that feed on emotions and such. This is like a Mordremoth situation but every race could be affected. So the Magical MIB/SCP/Control crew here just wanted to sterilize and contain the situation. They even referenced the mines in Cantha we were at and how the demons were pretty much that breed. We saw what a mess that was in just the small area we had.
Loved the story .... however its annoying that ya have farm rifts multiple times in order to progress ( I just don't like to grind while doing story ).... also most ppl were confused about how to unlock wizard tower , they should mention the meta imo ..... overall loved it !
My fear is that, ANet has always been good as setting up stories but falls on their face near the end due to rushing devlopment or other real world related reasons. HoT, EoD and IBS suffered from this. I THINK PoF worked out the best cause they clearly had a plan and followed it for a while with LW season 4. Also my major complaint is AGAIN, they have REALLY good post story side quests buried in the achivements. These have tons of text and many are fully voiced, deal with the characters you meet and expand the lore... BURIED IN THE ACHIVEMENTS. I can't imagine a lot of people even know they are there. They did a bit with mail and whispers, but those still don't show you where they are! Gah it's frustrating! lol Overall I'm happy with the story. The writers clearing used the look books to make things fit in well and the pacing was well enough. Rifts are meh, but I knew they would be so my expectations for them were low, new strikes are cool but they need to stop with the strike portals not giving you access to ALL strikes. Also a bit disappointed with the bugs this time round. Some of those good side quests have bugs that stop progression which is a shame. I was excited to see more dwarves I think then boom... Bug to stop progression. lol
Yeah not having one simple spot for strikes confuses me too. All raids are accessible from Lion's Arch, so all the strikes should be accessible from one spot, eye of the north is a good location, even if the game needs multiple portals that lead to Icebrood, EoD, and Soto strikes then that's a small price to pay for convenience
I wouldn't add IBS in there. Mainly because it sucked all the way through. The maps, the story, the rewards, the metas, the mastery. Everything in IBS sucks.
I keep forgetting the Joko storyline wasn't part of the original Path of Fire story line. I thought it was pretty well done truthfully. Path of Fire in general I enjoyed.
@@eurasiacentertutorials9518 Yep, PoF storyline is the best by far, not only the main story but Joko + Kralkatorik living worlds were awesome. On the other hand the original maps were beautiful and thats all, the maps are boring and not replayable at all while HoT meta events, from dragon's stand and auric basin to tangled depths or silverwastes are way more entertaining
on the airship part: it was not tradition. They said it was the tradition isagaren set up. basically they are telling you that our leader wanted secrecy and although he was not available they followed his rules
I could be wrong about this but, pretty sure they confirmed that the expansion model is: SOTO, Patch 1, 2, 3, Next Expansion. Could be wrong on this but thought i would just mention. Good review as always Muk!
The lament about being the commander vs being a competent member of a team struck a chord with me because that's exactly what I feel like when I'm playing. I don't feel like a commander, though throughout the story, I'm referred to as such. For example, Traherne was a commander...he was commanding fleet movements, strategy, etc. Rytlock could be a more competent commander than I would be. I'm fine with being the chosen one, but as to my playing a role of such...it never really gels for me that I'm leading anything, really. I'm a facilitator of narrative for my own story, and I'm along for the ride. At least 'wayfarer' makes more sense to what I'm doing now. :D
I found the story rather boring until the end - and i hated that it felt like 2/3 of the story were: "Go find rifts and close them" - yay floating around the map following the wind particals so fun.
I can live with a headcanon of your idea that the more who know about them and fear them the more powerful they become :) Maybe it is already the truth but since you're not the chosen one, they just don't think it's important to tell you, or something. But with all the rifts opening all over Tyria I'm sure this secrecy will be hard or impossible to maintain.
The best way to get the meta cheevo for archipelago is to restart the story just before the last bit in droknars forge - do the 2 mins instance - pop out of the instance and stay on the central island.
36:22 wow that's lame... as a 20 year mmorpg player I'm absolutely toxic against several un-fun addiction systems in games; When I play gw2 and I open my inventory and have to process loot it already feels bad because it feels like work: it's time consuming with slow salvaging and getting mainly loads of low value junk materials, trade post selling is slow AF, and even limited, and now I have to manually claim all the dailies? seriously f that I'm not gonna spend any time on that, but at the same time that pisses me off because I do like the gold find increase on my accounts and Ima miss out on that now too. Also the opening chests with the same dumb baby puzzle they have re-used 100 times feels so bad man.. that's 100% artificial game play, keeping ppl play longer to make the game feel full. Basically stealing your real life time to boost player numbers and the value of the game. How many people IRL literally like to go to the baby section of a toy store and do those games? or how many people play a golden retriever IRL and fetch shit without any additional depth.... Anyway I will prob. play this at some point but for sure walk straight by all this crap. ;-)
I feel like rifts should have led to a meta event where there are hordes of enemies pouring out. And completing that would net some sweet rewards. The whole thing could be like the Dragonstorm event in Eye of the North (or is it Dragonstrike? Can't remember the name), but with the whole demon theme of the expansion
Honestly I loved the story, I like the wizards vault for the most part, I agree on the daily login part for clicking it, also I ran into people that didnt know you need to click the daily or weekly chest once completed the other stuff to get more stuff.. Theer are people that didnt know just completing the weeklies every week also nets 10 laurels and other stuff every week, completing dailies gives 1 gold, 1 essence of masterwork luck, 30 astral acclaim each day. the weekly gives 10 laurels, 1 cele booster, 1 tome of knowledge and 450 astral acclaim for the weekly being done. II havent really dont strikes yet, I love the info on it good to know. The meta worries me for those that want the leggy armor, if it dies down you would have to basically grind out the currency to just buy some of the stuff instead of getting it from heroes choice chest. Etc. There are things I love about it. TBH the things that bother me are small things to be fair but eh.
If you power through your weeklies during the weekend to gain the weekly bonus, that's 40 * 6 + 450 = 690 (nice) acclaim a week from that alone. If you also login every day, that's 7 * 5 = 35 acclaim extra. Just that alone nets you 725 acclaim a week, which would be 24 gold pieces a week from astral acclaim only, which would be 24 * 4 = 96 gold per old daily login reward cycle (28 days). If you add to that doing 1 of the daily missions a day, that's another 10 * 7 = 70 acclaim, for an extra 10 gold per cycle (~106 g) If you add another daily mission a day, that's another 70 acclaim, for an extra 9 gold per cycle (~115 g) If you add the last daily mission a day (and thus claim the daily bonus), that's 10 + 30 = 40 acclaim a day extra, or 40 * 7 = 280 extra acclaim a week, for an extra 37 gold per cycle (~152 g) If you only do the dailies and not the weeklies, then you'd get either: - 35 aa/w (~1 g/week | ~4 g/cycle) for only login in; - 105 aa/w (~3 g/w | 14 g/c) for login + 1 daily; - 175 aa/w (~5 g/w | ~23 g/c) for login+2d; or - 455 aa/w (~15 g/w | ~60 g/c) for login+3d. If you only do the weeklies and not the dailies besides the login reward (which you always get for free), then you'd get either: - 75 aa/w (~2g/w | 10g/c) for login+1w; - 115 aa/w (~3g/w | ~15g/c) for login+2w; - 155 aa/w (~5g/w | ~20g/c) for login+3w; - 195 aa/w (~6g/w | 26g/c) for login+4w; - 235 aa/w (~7g/w | ~31g/c) for login+5w; - 725 aa/w (~24g/w | ~96g/c) for login+6w; - 765 aa/w (~25g/w | 100g/c) for login+7w; or - 805 aa/w (~26g/w | ~107g/c) for login+8w. I won't list all variations, but here are a few combinations of both: - login+1d+6w (the Casual Player Plan): 795 aa/w (~26g/w | 106g/c). Alternatively, if you login+3d for 2 days you gain +100 aa/w for a total of 895 aa/w (~29g/w | ~119g/c). This would mean login in, doing a single daily and weekly mission for 5 days of the week, then do all dailies each day of the week-end while finishing the 6th weekly. In my opinion, it's the perfect plan for busy players who can't play much during work days. In theory, this is more efficient than login+8w since the 2 days of login+3d nets you an extra 2g/w or 8g/c on top of the gold gained from astral acclaim only. It also puts you really close to 1,000 aa/w, which means the equivalent of a legendary kit or one of these mount skins in less than 2 weeks even if you have a busy work week. - login+3d+6w (the Bonus Seeker Plan): 1,145aa/w (~38g/w | ~152g/c). This means completing enough dailies and weeklies to reach the bonus for both. Unless you can do these fast, this plan is reserved for players with the time to complete the bonus requirements. This is a fast way to get a legendary kit within a week, so if you have some free time, go for it! - login+3d+8w (the Completionist Plan): 1,225 aa/w (~40g/w | ~163g/c). This means, well, completing everything every day every week. This is just shy of the astral acclaim limit allowed at a time per account. This is the most you can acquire per week so far. Keep in mind that only the daily bonus will net you an extra gold piece just for completing it, so that's an extra 7g/w or 28g/c for any login+3d plans only. This means the following totals: - Casual Player Plan: ~36g/w | ~147g/c - Bonus Seeker Plan: ~45g/w | ~180g/c - Completionist Plan: ~47g/w | ~191g/c In other words, the Casual Player Plan will lose about -9g/w | -33g/c compared to a Bonus Seeker player, while a Completionist player will gain about +2g/w | +11g/c instead.
Think its strange that with The Wizard Vault that no one seems to talks about the weekly and its reward of - Laurel (10), Celebration Booster, Tome of Knowledge & Astral Acclaim (450) , like we had the log in monthly and it was super good but at least the weekly makes some differences... right?
As long as you like to do every single thing in that list. Like, if there's a single JP in there, I'm out. No chest reward for the whole week. It should be a list of X things, and you can choose to do Y of them to get the reward.
@@barrerattuOh? Thanks! I wasn't aware of that. I guess I just assumed it worked like the new dailies. Getting to select from the list was always appreciated before, and I hope they bring that back to the dailies.
@@Draelos Just to add to this. There are 2 weeklies you don't have to do, and Anet has announced they'll be adding an extra daily (so you only need to complete 4 out of 5). I think 2 extra dailies would be better, and if they're worried about the possibility of getting 20 extra acclaim per day, just make it so completing dailies after the 4th doesn't reward acclaim. That way we get choices (and ways to avoid valdhertz and friends) and keep the acclaim "economy" the same
@@imVidzzz Yeah I would be cool with the extras beyond 4 not giving a bonus. It just feels bad when you have to do a game activity you don't like just to complete the daily chest.
This expansion is basically a year-long season pass, and they're leaning heavily into the garbage that other season passes use to make you feel like you have to keep logging on and grinding. It's antithetical to the decade of GW2 that came before it.
On the essences required for crafting legendary: you only need to complete the weekly rifts (about 1.5 hours commitment) and you'll get enough for a full set after about a year. The reward chests give you enough at T1, T2 and T3 and in pretty much the right ratio of drops from the testing I've done so far. That's a legendary armour piece every 2 months. Motivations should only be used if you're a little short of T2 or T3 essences and have an excess of the lower tiers. Otherwise use them as openers for the higher tier rifts to complete the map achievements (complete one rift at each tier on each map). You don't need to spend them in the rift fight itself.
The rifts also have rotating weekly achieves that gets you a bundle that opens up into some of each tier of essence. You don't have to do anything above T1 so you can solo or duo them quickly. You can get 5 of those bundles per map per week so it'll add up even if you're not using Motivations, you just have to pace it out some.
The only masteries you need for the new maps are the Jade Bot glider boost, "Who Rescues Who?", Bond of Faith, Bond of Vigor, and all the glider masteries. Otherwise it's just a matter of getting a feel for how high your Skyscale can lift you before it needs to find somewhere to rest.
Im glad when i first played the content i ignored the heart mastery unless was needed in story and focused all in on flight mastery. I had your video muted to get the twitch rewards and a friend of mine said you was kicking yourself for not at least getting updraft lol. By the time i got through exploring first map was on part past updraft training. I eventually maxed all the masteries but my focus was flight and heart of the obscure.
Maboon was the OG for this xpac- especialy if you did the key meta with lyr. Piti we changed him for Isgaren... edit. Also Peitha was perfectly played by the voice actres>>>> props to her
There's a book in the skywatch meta side of the Tower that suggests some entity in Tyria exactly like the one you're describing in your story review. It says that even knowing about it makes you vulnerable to its presence and corruption. Might not be the Kryptis, but they are doing that with something.
When I read that book I actually thought they were maybe talking about the Harbinger of Woe. However, assuming the Commander does fractals and CMs, that would mean the Harbinger is already well aware of Tyria's existence, so it's probably not him.
All the [REDACTED] is very much an SCP inspired, the whole expansion vibe in general is fantasy MIB. Eldritch enemies , casually creating realities, etc. Potentially great stuff. Lets hope they won't drop the ball as hard as Shadowlands with raising the stakes and powerlevels
@43:41 Yeah.. Try Timed flying Race with target shooting with 9 FPS. At all your review voiced some of my concerns! Like very very extremely poor performance for anyone who doesn't have 5000 $ PC. Although you worded it differently. - Wizards Vault preview is ttttiny, the letter under the items on my huge full HD monitor are tttiiiinyyyyy Why is it so tiny? Why there is no audio or visual confirmation when something is clicked? If I made this in a web page interface in 1998 I'd have my both arms ripped off slowly for such.
Small thing that most people probably already figured out: If you only log in for two days you can buy a Mystic Coin. If you log in for 20 days you get 11. It's less than before but it's still possible to profit a bit from just logging in every day, and alt accounts can still be used for coin farming.
As much as mobility is needed in these maps, I'm confused on why the made skyscale fireballs the first thing to unlock, then wall launch as second. For people who just got into GW2 and don't have the Path of fire or Living world mounts, constanly fighting the map to get to an event when old time players are zooming past you has got to be a disatifying element. Ending up JUST short of the height you'd need then having to find another way to get to where you are going. How many new players got to events to late to participate?
At 8:30 your complaint about it needing to stay secret is explained in a few of the optional books the Kryptis quite literally do get stronger the more that people know of them, there is a couple of almost SCP like books that talk about people just being told about the Kryptis and that alone is enough for them to get possessed. It is entirely fair that you missed this tho, so much great lore hidden in books.
My 2 biggest issues with the story. (SPOILERS) First, Mabon. The dude dies too early. Aside from being a good friend to everyone and opening a door, he accomplishes virtually nothing in the story. Despite being in charge in Isgarrens absence, and being a Mursaat, I was seriously disappointed with his ending. Second, Cerus. The dude also dies too early. This disappointed me more than Mabon. Cerus is in the promo trailers for SotO and is already dead despite LITERALLY accomplishing nothing. He wasnt even the one that killed Mabon, he specifically names a different demon as being the one to make the finishing blow. Overall I think the direction of the story is fine. The problem is the pacing. We should have had more time with Mabon to really understand why he's so important to everyone, especially Zojja. We needed to see more demonly evil deeds by Cerus to justify killing him so unceremoniously, so soon.
Mabon's voice sound was a bit too muffled for my liking .. possibly because of the mask he was wearing? A lot of the voice acting seemed to be low quality audio - voice acting was fine, my gripe is with the sound quality. I'm hearing challenged and much of it was very difficult to hear .. frequency wise there were some important ones missing from Mabon in particular.
Cerus dying at the end of this first half of the exp I think is fine, though I would prefered he had more screentime. Mabon suffered the same fate as Mai Trin, interesting character with a lot lore on their back yet to be explore... dies heroically so ANet doesnt have to explain sh#t
I absolutely aggree on basically everything, but ESPECIALLY the relics. Not only are the relics lacking CRUCIAL information (just as you said), after testing some of them, some of the effects felt like... EXTREMELY underwhelming. In my case, this was "Relic of the Krait" (After using an elite skill, emit a wave of corruption that inflicts damaging conditions). I was BLOWN AWAY when i noticed, that it inflicts 1 (!) stack of bleeding, torment, poison on a 8 second duration. with the relic having a cooldown of 30 seconds. WHY DON`T YOU TELL ME WHAT IT DOES BEFORE TESTING IT? On the mastery-points: ABSOLUTELY. Another issue with the mastery points is, that a LOT of them are tied to event-chains or standalone events. The issue especially currently is, that MULTIPLE of the required events are currently bugged. And certain events (which ironically, i´ve been waiting for while writing the comment and watching the video) are based on the time of day, and CANNOT be done if it´s not currently that time (in this case: nighttime).
Btw there is a document which reads that the wizard created something with their fractals which was so strong that just the thought of it was enough to spread it. So even this document is censored to not name the thing. It could very well be that the wizards crated the kryptis and we call them kryptis and not demons because that would feed them even more
Tulpa aren't unique to Supernatural, but that's a good idea. Or the modern day equivalent would be Infohazards. To make it cannon consistent, we can say the more people who know WHY that makes the Kryptis more powerful, the more powerful they become. That's why they refuse to explain themselves to the commander.
41:50 that's my big issue with gw2 in general. It already happen with action camera, sometimes, especially with norns and charrs, you can't see where to attack because the camera, even if you customize camera position from shoulders in options, it still hard to tag things if you are too close from your character. At this point, I think that is more an engine problem than a choice. Come on, Anet, let's do a rework in camera placement.
Yes, I know that, and even with that sometimes (i'm not sayin it is always), if you try to use the camera close to the character, you can't see some targets@@denslicer6993 I only play with action camera too.
They did explain a few times that the reason the wizards don't show themselves is because it would create widespread panic across tyria to know of the fight against the Kryptis and the impending doom that awaits if they break through. They want to be silent guardians, letting people live in peace without ever knowing of the fights they fight on their behalves.
True, but his point was (if I understood correctly): when some of the previous fights put Tyria at such high risk that the world was close to be destroyed, wouldn't it have been better to provide some help even at the cost of worrying the mainland with additional problems, rather than let everyone die in their ignorance of the Kryptis? Sure, if you're dead you're not worried, but... It's quite a poor excuse. It's not easy to close all of these holes when you add a new storyline to something that wasn't supposed to have a sequel, but this is why they hire screenwriters.
my guess is that they also remembered what happened to the sylviri when they tried to attack mordremoth in that they gave in to mordremoth and turned against them it could also be that since they have lots of potentially dangerous tech etc, they dont want that to fall into the wrong hands
This map is one of my favorites to play so far.When I first got on the map, I decided just to walk around and enjoy it before I did anything else. Half hour in, I came across the guy for the weapon mastery, not knowing that when you talk to him, it open up the weapon mastery. I use the griffon just like you said, because you can just zip right there, plus its a whole lot of fun diving, then soaring and picking up speed. Fireball, Im still trying to figure that one out until you mentioned about holding down the button for the pinpoint site, which should be like the green target on some of the skill buttons.. Love the story behind the expansion, rift hunting is not too bad, trying to figure out this relic thing. The Meta battles are good. Havent reached the end yet,because I want to build up my masteries. Price is not bad, still better than the monthly subscriptions out there. Bugs, all games have bugs in them. Anet has a good team out there when it comes to solving them out there. This expansion, I give it a 8/10 . GW2 the whole, 9/10. Keep up the good work.👍
The weapons master thing is weird to me because I couldn’t find who y’all were talking about but when I talked to Frode he gave me the unlock…. So I didn’t understand why the game told me to find the Weaponsmaster and not just “go talk to Frode”….?
i love the wizards vault, i got super value out of it so far, the cream is the weeklies btw not dailies and choosing PVE only tasks makes stuff very easy
Your reasoning behind the kryptos reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where all the large corporate mascots come to life, and they only turn back into non alive mascots if you stop paying attention to them.
A big thing about the leggy starter kit is that you don't choose whether you get might or magic from it. Save your materials until after you have opened it.
The only Masteries I am short on are part of the Icebrood Saga. I'm not super into Drizzlewood Coast and the game outright requires you to grind it for months to get them. Plus, for some like 'kill all 13 of x enemy' the Drizzlewood veterans know exactly where to go and decimate them immediately after they spawn with no regard for anyone who doesn't already have credit. I've never found a commander willing to help me get that one...there was a commander who -considered- it, but the players were on autopilot and they immediately caved.
You see the next available boss pop on the map. What didnt help at first was not knowing you can clic on the section of the map to instantly be ported in the air near it. Nobody told me and i would go back to camp and take the chopper and be late for the kill. Now i know and i can follow the group just fine
I was (when I didn't have the masteries unlocked) jumping off my mount, catch an updraft or a ley line with the glider, and then jump back on my skyscale. But, hassle, I agree.
Honestly enjoyed it overall and agree its a 7 or 8/10. My biggest complaint is this relic system. Not only is it vague but its honestly created LESS build diversity instead of more. Out of the 52 relics we have I just hear everyone talk about Thief, Akeem, sometimes Fireworks, and Monk I suppose for healers. Before relics we had everyone in raids running scholar etc but we also had Runes of Tormenting and Golemancer for open world/WvW and other unique/fun effects that people enjoyed and used.
I wouldn't farm any rifts for the upcoming leggies atm since not all of the systems are implemented yet. I guarantee the latest tier of rifts and maybe masteries will catapult the amount of currency gained from them substantially.
I have to say, I didn't do the masteries until I unlocked the skyscale trek... even then, didn't do a lot with the masteries until after the story was done. I was able to get around easily with the skyscale. Guess it's because I love the skyscale and it's my primary mount. Anet has always been lacking in giving any type of explanations of how things work. Yea you can skip a few steps but, no matter what, you still need gift of battle, (WvW). To me the most irritating thing is, all they've done is added yet another map currency to the game...
Heh, when I heard my character mention bringing a fleet of airships my first thought was “have these poor people in the archipelago not suffered enough without me crashing an entire fleet of airships on their noggings?”.
I'm really surprised that people missed the weapon master training NPC. It wasn't just "some dude in a corner". It was the leader of the new NPC faction standing in the middle of the new faction's HQ. I suppose if they're a "rush to the end then start grinding stuff" kinda player who skips literally everything they can, they're gonna be a little confused. But they also kinda bring that upon themselves. I see it as akin to people who skip tutorials in games because they feel they have reached some sort of enlightenment where they don't need to be taught a thing, then they come to reddit or youtube to look it up after they fail at it. So I guess good thing they have you to show them the way lol! Otherwise I agree: it should have been something - a mastery, a collection, whatever.
There is an achievement for getting chomped on by the final boss. Last time i did the meta me and another player chilled by his mouth during the yoga part, and after it was over he bit the tower so we got it.
I dont know why people keep calling soto a expansion. Anet wont have resources or even team to finish Soto and pump living world chapters at same time. Soto is pretty much an payed living world...... Soto is pretty much ibs all over again.
even more so, if they invited an airfleet, imagine captains getting corrupted because they are unprepared to deal with the kryptis. , in hindsight wizards not wanting interference may be a good thing
Weapon Mastery should have been 'into the mind of Lord Faren' playing thru his power fantasies, something involving Faren. Would've been amazingly entertaining and perfectly relevant.
Thanks for the video, Mukluk. Do you think that the SOTO expansion is best enjoyed with higher-tiered gear? I'm in exotics for all of my toons and the ones I've tried so far in this expansion feel like they get hammered. The kryptis are no joke as far as damage goes...and I've had a hard time keeping pace with people in meta events due to down-states / deaths. Also, I would like to figure out a faster way to level masteries. It's been a slog for every x-pac.
I think exotic gear is fight as long as you have stats that compliment your build. You can go full glass cannon (berserker/vipers) as long as you can avoid enemies most of the time, if you struggle you can use celestial for example for more tankiness in the open world.
It's massive if you want to use dagger on Berserker too, at least theme-wise. The new dagger burst feels great but without Spellbreaker we don't have many ways to get the juicy 50% damage buff on it
Didn't watch this right away because I was a little late to get going and didn't want spoilers. Watched a few videos from ppl trying to get around on their skyscales without the masteries: please note that when you fly through those xp 'bubbles' you get a boost that allows you to fly higher, even before you get the masteries. I noticed the bubbles respawned quite quickly, obviously to assist people, although so many videos I watched, the player studiously avoided them every time LOL. On the first fly through there is even currency you get (not sure what that will be for, guessing its for the new legendary armor?). I didn't go out of my way to 'grind' xp for the masteries, all the metas are completely doable without them. One thing that I would not have liked to start with is no wall jump but other than that, everything was fine.
I have a permanent orange arrow on the map of the Habitation Zone from the glitched Kestrel escort. And fighting the rifts doesn't register on the progress bar - Which has left me stuck in "Chapter 4" for 2 days. I've been literally unable to progress. Outside of that, I'm pretty disappointed that Anet has decided to go so linear. Skywatch Archipelago has become like Pre-Searing in GW1 - With no available exit. For me, a major reason I to play GW is because they _didn't_ force the story down your throat, yet this is what they're doing here. I'm not far from just saying to hell with it....
The real reason they didnt want airships is because they have seen them blow up every time and do nothing. They just didnt have the heart to tell the commander.
I feel like its a stone soup scenario. The commander could literally solo everything, they just like to make the commander think they have his/her back.
Hey, the one heading to Amnoon did fine
@@HuaYunlan Aye, a pyramid collapsed as it approached, instead xD
@@AlaiaSkyhawk sounds like a pyramid's problem and not an airship problem
Just started a PoF run. The commander has a certain reputation when it comes to the safety of airships.
On the topic of the MC sounding tired, the female sylvari voice did it really well too. It was a really obvious tone shift, cuz she usually sounds very peppy and high-energy even when she's upset or mad. It felt like someone dimmed a bright lamp way down, it really felt meaningful.
6:00 I'm glad to hear this. What I really missed about GW1 is how starting a new character in an expansion actually made you feel like you were doing a brand new story with no reference to beating a prior campaign. I can only take being called commander so many times.
Amnytas is the best argument we have yet for a 'disable mount skins'-toggle in graphics settings. With a little luck we can toss in 'disable infusions' and 'disable back items' too.
I just fight Xera for the first time in awhile and maybe a disable glider skins would be great too haha
On the matter of the "fleet of airships" bit being dropped, if you read the journal you kinda get that covered. Your com device when Uenno adjusts it to work with the the Astral Ward's system she does it in a way that also cuts-off the Commander from anyone outside. (edit to add: I highly recommend reading the journal entries once you're done with the story. The Commander's thoughts there add so much context. It's in the journal that the Commander comments about being cut-off from outside contact)
Spoilers below:
In the epilogue where Zojja asks for the com to make a call to Taimi, it's fair to say she'd know how to re-enable the outbound contact to make that call.
I love reading the journal entries, I’m so glad someone else out there does too.
The commander has SUCH a way with words you really miss out on if you aren’t reading it. My favourite new set of words being “…meat wings…”
Absolute chefs kiss
@@voidface8827 Yeah, some of the thoughts are just so much dry "why do I have to deal with this crap" funny xD
where can i read the journnal entries?
@@indi-ghost Just go to your story journal tab in the hero panel, select the story/chapter you want, and the pane on the right has text in it :)
Well, the device itself also just doesn't work when you try to use it, so it's clearly broken somewhat. I thought it kinda strange that this device introduced at the start of the expansion went completely unused, contrary to frequent comm calls during PoF or EoD stories.
My main's story ended with the Epilogue. He has a job at Xunlai as an assistant to Taimi and Yao. He's got a nice rooftop apartment in Kaineng with some illegally imported jungle plants that he shares with Canach and two cats, Tybalt and Demmi, who entertain the old retired Fern Hound.
He spends the whole SotO adventure happy to see Zojja but wondering, why oh why, can't he be on the med team, or the logistics team, or the recon team, or any team that isn't the Vigil's Marching Orders all over. All that Whispers training for nothing! Maybe he'll be able to put it to use in his revenge plan against Mi-Rae....
6:15 Steve Staley is a GOAT. Seriously, his voice work doesn't get enough praise. I LOVE the male Asura Commander. Any time I play the story on a different character or see someone else playing the story, I'm like "Nah, Steve did it better." The freaking range on this character is so strong. And I love how he sound so much like a world-weary leader who has to put up with so much but still does his best to get the job done.
Weaponmastery: so.... you just equip that weapon....
but but but but... the specialization...?
no no, you just grab that weapon with your hand
b..b..but won't hurt?
no won't hurt, you just put in your hand....
I HAVE THE POWER OF BROKEN CLASS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
As a vet who hasn’t had the time to play much in a while, this is the only SOTO review I care about
Great video! Always nice to hear other people's opinions on the expansions.
Personally I really enjoyed the expansion and I'm looking forward to seeing where the next updates go. It feels really refreshing to have a non-dragon storyline again and it makes me excited for the future of the game to know that they still had this cool of a story prepared to tell so quickly after EoD.
One thing I have to add about the pricing is that there is a minimum they have to charge in order to cover their expenses. GW2 expansions are pretty cheap compared to other games (who are more than happy to charge you 60 bucks for them), so people have been spoiled by that. Just because they've priced their expansions cheaply in the past does not mean we can use that as a point of comparison and say "hey, this expansion has less content than that one, so it should be X amount cheaper". There is a floor for the price at release, they still have to pay everyone working for their studio after all. And I agree with you that all things considered, 25 bucks is a very fair price for this expansion.
They DO have a few NPCs talking around the Wizards Tower about how they can't hide things much longer, and might need to reach out soon, so you MIGHT get a new pact fleet coming in at some point.
I really wish we got an alternate fractal of a fight with Zhaitan - lets see the undead dragon at his finest.
I would have liked a "Kryta, but Mordremoth won" fractal. Then I realized that would just be heaven
YES, make a Fractal Island of Zhaitan and make it a Meta, and redeem that absolute joke of a boss, and make it grand just like the Defense of Amnytas
I've enjoyed the expansion a lot. The fantasy theme with the tall white towers are an aesthetic that I always enjoy. Also, the Music! I love that the music changes, in the Archipelago, according to the area you're in; so, I've enjoyed the HoT, PoF, and EoD music themes in one map!
I think of Anet's goal for the joy of movement (or freedom?), anyway, you get what I mean. It really shines in this map. It's a great place for using the Griffon and zooming around the maps, and once you learn the masteries, the Skyscale takes on a whole new aspect of movement.
The story has kept my interest, adding new characters while not forgetting all of our old adventuring team. I'm looking forward to the next part! The events support the story in many cases. I didn't expect the darker elements, but I like it - adds some weight to the story.
For me the best narrative so far. No boring characters, all believable and very well written within the story, each having something that reminds a different spectrum of each commander's emotion, so to speak.
Two things:
1 - Please protect R'tchikk at all costs.
2 - Rytlock being himself in the interview for the Cantha newspaper reporter made me laugh more than I should have. :)
A great start for Soto for sure.
The new masteries are a huge QOL improvement, but those maps are completely doable without them.
Re: Rift scaling, the mobs that you have to clear before you can spawn the "boss" also scale pretty well, but the boss itself is fixed it seems.
The Supernatural point you had in the story part is kinda implied I think. If the Commander brings in a few thousand soldiers unprepared to fight back against emotion sucking demons it probably would have made things worse, right? At least that's how I understood it... I guess they should have done a better job at explaining it.
The Slenderman is coming for you
Then the average burnt out human that became a hollow husk and a shadow of former self would be invincible for Kryptis? 🧐
About that plot hole with declining help of a fleet:
I like to think that Wizard's declining help to uphold a tradition is more about honoring Isgarren than actually caring about tradition itself.
The point was to rescue the dude and as we learn about how he isn't some fairy tale hero, he could be pretty pissed about blowing a secret he upheld for possibly thousands of years just because he got 'napped that one time.
I'm also pretty sure Commander themselves would actually ignore any protests and step up to get shit done their own way once the Wizard's way of doing things stopped working. I like how Commander behaves in this expac - they need to actively fit in their new role as just a subordinate and not a person in charge and are honestly trying to be polite towards people that Zojja cares about.
So in the end I don't think this is a plot hole. It would be if Commander's military resources were actually needed and the story would still go on without it (which would probably end up with forcing Taimi back into story to have her create new Deus Ex Taimi device).
Zojja's absense was also handled quite neatly (I actually wanted to read her journal entries).
All in all, I liked the way story progressed and how it dealt with threads from previous arcs.
BTW I'm hyped for next story part that deals with helping our new demon waifu friend fight Eparch. Wing 4 is my favorite raid wing especially because of aesthetics and Cerys' fight is right up my alley (it helps that cutscenes in Soto story are realy good - I was actually kinda touched when Dagda comforted Zojja). I'd love to get a whole expansion in that world but even a just an LW episode worth of content with it will be great.
I can almost forgive anet for stealing my legendary rune functionality (well, significant part of it at least) with their new Relic system.
the fact you mentioned super natural at this whole kryptis and compared it was god tier and 100% great. love it
* Amytas is almost a perfect map, it just needs a few more giant white marble walls
* The wizards are sociopaths, experimenting on living beings, and need to be Nurenberg'd
Was ist Nurenberg? Nürnberg‘d*
@@Gnipahell1r It was a trial for the nazi stuff that happened all the way back, with all the crazy experimentation done, including on people.
Personally I have been having a great time with the new expansion. Weapon master training has made me enjoy alot of my favourite builds in a fun new way. Absolutely love the flying masteries! As a griffon enjoyer both maps are incredibly fun to explore! Haven't finished the story yet but it seems to be some of GW2 better narritives. Thanks for the content and take care everyone!
I don't mind the login reward being worse, but I do wish we had more dailies. In the old system i had to do 3 things out of 12. We had 4 of each wvw, pve and pvp dailies. So when i logged into gw2 to play i could in the moment decide what i wanted out of my play time that day, and even within a game mode skip one of the tasks. Sometimes the tasks are things I don't like doing (like you touched on with having to get so many of the available mastery points). The way it is now, I have to decide the day before what content i will feel like doing tomorrow, and then do 100% of the list they give me. This simply makes dailies less fun to do.
the fact that anet made the commander point out the "airships" was quite amazing, i would never even have thought that myself, but maybe that was a foreshadowing in the living world for soto.. i still wanna ride those in ebg when bombing
Thoughts on "the plothole": I think your idea around 8:40 was what they were trying to do but they did it hamfisted.
I mean we are talking about demons that feed on emotions and such.
This is like a Mordremoth situation but every race could be affected. So the Magical MIB/SCP/Control crew here just wanted to sterilize and contain the situation. They even referenced the mines in Cantha we were at and how the demons were pretty much that breed. We saw what a mess that was in just the small area we had.
there's a lore book at one point on a [Redacted] fractal that talks about how "knowing about [redacted] may be enough for it to take hold".
Loved the story .... however its annoying that ya have farm rifts multiple times in order to progress ( I just don't like to grind while doing story ).... also most ppl were confused about how to unlock wizard tower , they should mention the meta imo ..... overall loved it !
My fear is that, ANet has always been good as setting up stories but falls on their face near the end due to rushing devlopment or other real world related reasons. HoT, EoD and IBS suffered from this. I THINK PoF worked out the best cause they clearly had a plan and followed it for a while with LW season 4.
Also my major complaint is AGAIN, they have REALLY good post story side quests buried in the achivements. These have tons of text and many are fully voiced, deal with the characters you meet and expand the lore... BURIED IN THE ACHIVEMENTS. I can't imagine a lot of people even know they are there. They did a bit with mail and whispers, but those still don't show you where they are! Gah it's frustrating! lol
Overall I'm happy with the story. The writers clearing used the look books to make things fit in well and the pacing was well enough. Rifts are meh, but I knew they would be so my expectations for them were low, new strikes are cool but they need to stop with the strike portals not giving you access to ALL strikes.
Also a bit disappointed with the bugs this time round. Some of those good side quests have bugs that stop progression which is a shame. I was excited to see more dwarves I think then boom... Bug to stop progression. lol
Yeah not having one simple spot for strikes confuses me too. All raids are accessible from Lion's Arch, so all the strikes should be accessible from one spot, eye of the north is a good location, even if the game needs multiple portals that lead to Icebrood, EoD, and Soto strikes then that's a small price to pay for convenience
I wouldn't add IBS in there. Mainly because it sucked all the way through. The maps, the story, the rewards, the metas, the mastery. Everything in IBS sucks.
I keep forgetting the Joko storyline wasn't part of the original Path of Fire story line. I thought it was pretty well done truthfully. Path of Fire in general I enjoyed.
@@eurasiacentertutorials9518 Yep, PoF storyline is the best by far, not only the main story but Joko + Kralkatorik living worlds were awesome. On the other hand the original maps were beautiful and thats all, the maps are boring and not replayable at all while HoT meta events, from dragon's stand and auric basin to tangled depths or silverwastes are way more entertaining
@@kevinwestermann1001 I hate that Icebrood Saga shares an acronym with irritable bowel syndrome.
on the airship part: it was not tradition. They said it was the tradition isagaren set up. basically they are telling you that our leader wanted secrecy and although he was not available they followed his rules
I could be wrong about this but, pretty sure they confirmed that the expansion model is: SOTO, Patch 1, 2, 3, Next Expansion. Could be wrong on this but thought i would just mention.
Good review as always Muk!
Its good to know that more is on the way. I thought the price was a bit much after completing the storyline but its not over so I'm happy.
The lament about being the commander vs being a competent member of a team struck a chord with me because that's exactly what I feel like when I'm playing. I don't feel like a commander, though throughout the story, I'm referred to as such. For example, Traherne was a commander...he was commanding fleet movements, strategy, etc. Rytlock could be a more competent commander than I would be. I'm fine with being the chosen one, but as to my playing a role of such...it never really gels for me that I'm leading anything, really. I'm a facilitator of narrative for my own story, and I'm along for the ride. At least 'wayfarer' makes more sense to what I'm doing now. :D
I can't wait to see the rest of the story in the other updates.
I found the story rather boring until the end - and i hated that it felt like 2/3 of the story were: "Go find rifts and close them" - yay floating around the map following the wind particals so fun.
Thank you for the comprehensive explanation! This helps a lot for planning out how I should farm the resources!! :)
Awesome video Muk. I think you hit up some of the weaknesses with good suggestions too.
I can live with a headcanon of your idea that the more who know about them and fear them the more powerful they become :) Maybe it is already the truth but since you're not the chosen one, they just don't think it's important to tell you, or something. But with all the rifts opening all over Tyria I'm sure this secrecy will be hard or impossible to maintain.
I've always appreciated your thoughts on the game. You always seem fair and unbiased. Also..."Unga Bunga!" LMAO
The best way to get the meta cheevo for archipelago is to restart the story just before the last bit in droknars forge - do the 2 mins instance - pop out of the instance and stay on the central island.
36:22 wow that's lame... as a 20 year mmorpg player I'm absolutely toxic against several un-fun addiction systems in games; When I play gw2 and I open my inventory and have to process loot it already feels bad because it feels like work: it's time consuming with slow salvaging and getting mainly loads of low value junk materials, trade post selling is slow AF, and even limited, and now I have to manually claim all the dailies? seriously f that I'm not gonna spend any time on that, but at the same time that pisses me off because I do like the gold find increase on my accounts and Ima miss out on that now too. Also the opening chests with the same dumb baby puzzle they have re-used 100 times feels so bad man.. that's 100% artificial game play, keeping ppl play longer to make the game feel full. Basically stealing your real life time to boost player numbers and the value of the game. How many people IRL literally like to go to the baby section of a toy store and do those games? or how many people play a golden retriever IRL and fetch shit without any additional depth.... Anyway I will prob. play this at some point but for sure walk straight by all this crap. ;-)
I feel like rifts should have led to a meta event where there are hordes of enemies pouring out. And completing that would net some sweet rewards. The whole thing could be like the Dragonstorm event in Eye of the North (or is it Dragonstrike? Can't remember the name), but with the whole demon theme of the expansion
Honestly I loved the story, I like the wizards vault for the most part, I agree on the daily login part for clicking it, also I ran into people that didnt know you need to click the daily or weekly chest once completed the other stuff to get more stuff.. Theer are people that didnt know just completing the weeklies every week also nets 10 laurels and other stuff every week, completing dailies gives 1 gold, 1 essence of masterwork luck, 30 astral acclaim each day. the weekly gives 10 laurels, 1 cele booster, 1 tome of knowledge and 450 astral acclaim for the weekly being done.
II havent really dont strikes yet, I love the info on it good to know. The meta worries me for those that want the leggy armor, if it dies down you would have to basically grind out the currency to just buy some of the stuff instead of getting it from heroes choice chest. Etc.
There are things I love about it. TBH the things that bother me are small things to be fair but eh.
If you power through your weeklies during the weekend to gain the weekly bonus, that's 40 * 6 + 450 = 690 (nice) acclaim a week from that alone. If you also login every day, that's 7 * 5 = 35 acclaim extra. Just that alone nets you 725 acclaim a week, which would be 24 gold pieces a week from astral acclaim only, which would be 24 * 4 = 96 gold per old daily login reward cycle (28 days).
If you add to that doing 1 of the daily missions a day, that's another 10 * 7 = 70 acclaim, for an extra 10 gold per cycle (~106 g)
If you add another daily mission a day, that's another 70 acclaim, for an extra 9 gold per cycle (~115 g)
If you add the last daily mission a day (and thus claim the daily bonus), that's 10 + 30 = 40 acclaim a day extra, or 40 * 7 = 280 extra acclaim a week, for an extra 37 gold per cycle (~152 g)
If you only do the dailies and not the weeklies, then you'd get either:
- 35 aa/w (~1 g/week | ~4 g/cycle) for only login in;
- 105 aa/w (~3 g/w | 14 g/c) for login + 1 daily;
- 175 aa/w (~5 g/w | ~23 g/c) for login+2d; or
- 455 aa/w (~15 g/w | ~60 g/c) for login+3d.
If you only do the weeklies and not the dailies besides the login reward (which you always get for free), then you'd get either:
- 75 aa/w (~2g/w | 10g/c) for login+1w;
- 115 aa/w (~3g/w | ~15g/c) for login+2w;
- 155 aa/w (~5g/w | ~20g/c) for login+3w;
- 195 aa/w (~6g/w | 26g/c) for login+4w;
- 235 aa/w (~7g/w | ~31g/c) for login+5w;
- 725 aa/w (~24g/w | ~96g/c) for login+6w;
- 765 aa/w (~25g/w | 100g/c) for login+7w; or
- 805 aa/w (~26g/w | ~107g/c) for login+8w.
I won't list all variations, but here are a few combinations of both:
- login+1d+6w (the Casual Player Plan): 795 aa/w (~26g/w | 106g/c). Alternatively, if you login+3d for 2 days you gain +100 aa/w for a total of 895 aa/w (~29g/w | ~119g/c). This would mean login in, doing a single daily and weekly mission for 5 days of the week, then do all dailies each day of the week-end while finishing the 6th weekly. In my opinion, it's the perfect plan for busy players who can't play much during work days. In theory, this is more efficient than login+8w since the 2 days of login+3d nets you an extra 2g/w or 8g/c on top of the gold gained from astral acclaim only. It also puts you really close to 1,000 aa/w, which means the equivalent of a legendary kit or one of these mount skins in less than 2 weeks even if you have a busy work week.
- login+3d+6w (the Bonus Seeker Plan): 1,145aa/w (~38g/w | ~152g/c). This means completing enough dailies and weeklies to reach the bonus for both. Unless you can do these fast, this plan is reserved for players with the time to complete the bonus requirements. This is a fast way to get a legendary kit within a week, so if you have some free time, go for it!
- login+3d+8w (the Completionist Plan): 1,225 aa/w (~40g/w | ~163g/c). This means, well, completing everything every day every week. This is just shy of the astral acclaim limit allowed at a time per account. This is the most you can acquire per week so far.
Keep in mind that only the daily bonus will net you an extra gold piece just for completing it, so that's an extra 7g/w or 28g/c for any login+3d plans only. This means the following totals:
- Casual Player Plan: ~36g/w | ~147g/c
- Bonus Seeker Plan: ~45g/w | ~180g/c
- Completionist Plan: ~47g/w | ~191g/c
In other words, the Casual Player Plan will lose about -9g/w | -33g/c compared to a Bonus Seeker player, while a Completionist player will gain about +2g/w | +11g/c instead.
Got my first ascended armor from the wizard's vault. Still working on my exotics.
@@ASchnacky I appreciate the suggestion but I don't have ice brood saga.
Think its strange that with The Wizard Vault that no one seems to talks about the weekly and its reward of - Laurel (10), Celebration Booster, Tome of Knowledge & Astral Acclaim (450) , like we had the log in monthly and it was super good but at least the weekly makes some differences... right?
As long as you like to do every single thing in that list. Like, if there's a single JP in there, I'm out. No chest reward for the whole week. It should be a list of X things, and you can choose to do Y of them to get the reward.
@@Draelosyou don't need to do every single objective for the weekly, just 6 out of 8. As for the daily, they are planning on adding options soon.
@@barrerattuOh? Thanks! I wasn't aware of that. I guess I just assumed it worked like the new dailies. Getting to select from the list was always appreciated before, and I hope they bring that back to the dailies.
@@Draelos Just to add to this. There are 2 weeklies you don't have to do, and Anet has announced they'll be adding an extra daily (so you only need to complete 4 out of 5). I think 2 extra dailies would be better, and if they're worried about the possibility of getting 20 extra acclaim per day, just make it so completing dailies after the 4th doesn't reward acclaim. That way we get choices (and ways to avoid valdhertz and friends) and keep the acclaim "economy" the same
@@imVidzzz Yeah I would be cool with the extras beyond 4 not giving a bonus. It just feels bad when you have to do a game activity you don't like just to complete the daily chest.
This expansion is basically a year-long season pass, and they're leaning heavily into the garbage that other season passes use to make you feel like you have to keep logging on and grinding. It's antithetical to the decade of GW2 that came before it.
On the essences required for crafting legendary: you only need to complete the weekly rifts (about 1.5 hours commitment) and you'll get enough for a full set after about a year. The reward chests give you enough at T1, T2 and T3 and in pretty much the right ratio of drops from the testing I've done so far.
That's a legendary armour piece every 2 months.
Motivations should only be used if you're a little short of T2 or T3 essences and have an excess of the lower tiers. Otherwise use them as openers for the higher tier rifts to complete the map achievements (complete one rift at each tier on each map). You don't need to spend them in the rift fight itself.
I think the yoga part should have hordes of Kryptis fighting players, like their last stand while we...do.. yoga...
The rifts also have rotating weekly achieves that gets you a bundle that opens up into some of each tier of essence. You don't have to do anything above T1 so you can solo or duo them quickly. You can get 5 of those bundles per map per week so it'll add up even if you're not using Motivations, you just have to pace it out some.
The only masteries you need for the new maps are the Jade Bot glider boost, "Who Rescues Who?", Bond of Faith, Bond of Vigor, and all the glider masteries. Otherwise it's just a matter of getting a feel for how high your Skyscale can lift you before it needs to find somewhere to rest.
Im glad when i first played the content i ignored the heart mastery unless was needed in story and focused all in on flight mastery. I had your video muted to get the twitch rewards and a friend of mine said you was kicking yourself for not at least getting updraft lol. By the time i got through exploring first map was on part past updraft training. I eventually maxed all the masteries but my focus was flight and heart of the obscure.
Maboon was the OG for this xpac- especialy if you did the key meta with lyr. Piti we changed him for Isgaren...
edit. Also Peitha was perfectly played by the voice actres>>>> props to her
There's a book in the skywatch meta side of the Tower that suggests some entity in Tyria exactly like the one you're describing in your story review. It says that even knowing about it makes you vulnerable to its presence and corruption. Might not be the Kryptis, but they are doing that with something.
When I read that book I actually thought they were maybe talking about the Harbinger of Woe. However, assuming the Commander does fractals and CMs, that would mean the Harbinger is already well aware of Tyria's existence, so it's probably not him.
All the [REDACTED] is very much an SCP inspired, the whole expansion vibe in general is fantasy MIB. Eldritch enemies , casually creating realities, etc. Potentially great stuff.
Lets hope they won't drop the ball as hard as Shadowlands with raising the stakes and powerlevels
For me
The only thing missing was...
Lord Faran
@43:41 Yeah.. Try Timed flying Race with target shooting with 9 FPS.
At all your review voiced some of my concerns! Like very very extremely poor performance for anyone who doesn't have 5000 $ PC. Although you worded it differently.
- Wizards Vault preview is ttttiny, the letter under the items on my huge full HD monitor are tttiiiinyyyyy Why is it so tiny? Why there is no audio or visual confirmation when something is clicked? If I made this in a web page interface in 1998 I'd have my both arms ripped off slowly for such.
Rifts scaling, seems the trash mob part does scale up (T3 rifts trash phase is SO long...), but the bosses die instantly.
Small thing that most people probably already figured out:
If you only log in for two days you can buy a Mystic Coin.
If you log in for 20 days you get 11.
It's less than before but it's still possible to profit a bit from just logging in every day, and alt accounts can still be used for coin farming.
As much as mobility is needed in these maps, I'm confused on why the made skyscale fireballs the first thing to unlock, then wall launch as second. For people who just got into GW2 and don't have the Path of fire or Living world mounts, constanly fighting the map to get to an event when old time players are zooming past you has got to be a disatifying element. Ending up JUST short of the height you'd need then having to find another way to get to where you are going. How many new players got to events to late to participate?
Imagine the Airships getting taken over, going from having air strikes to being airstriked
Time-of-day lock out Adventures alrdy happened in HoT, specifically Verdant Brink ones.
this expansion allowed me to turn my asura specter into a proper shadow mage with the astral ward fashion so i love it
At 8:30 your complaint about it needing to stay secret is explained in a few of the optional books the Kryptis quite literally do get stronger the more that people know of them, there is a couple of almost SCP like books that talk about people just being told about the Kryptis and that alone is enough for them to get possessed. It is entirely fair that you missed this tho, so much great lore hidden in books.
My 2 biggest issues with the story. (SPOILERS)
First, Mabon.
The dude dies too early. Aside from being a good friend to everyone and opening a door, he accomplishes virtually nothing in the story. Despite being in charge in Isgarrens absence, and being a Mursaat, I was seriously disappointed with his ending.
Second, Cerus.
The dude also dies too early. This disappointed me more than Mabon. Cerus is in the promo trailers for SotO and is already dead despite LITERALLY accomplishing nothing. He wasnt even the one that killed Mabon, he specifically names a different demon as being the one to make the finishing blow.
Overall I think the direction of the story is fine. The problem is the pacing. We should have had more time with Mabon to really understand why he's so important to everyone, especially Zojja. We needed to see more demonly evil deeds by Cerus to justify killing him so unceremoniously, so soon.
Mabon's voice sound was a bit too muffled for my liking .. possibly because of the mask he was wearing? A lot of the voice acting seemed to be low quality audio - voice acting was fine, my gripe is with the sound quality. I'm hearing challenged and much of it was very difficult to hear .. frequency wise there were some important ones missing from Mabon in particular.
Cerus dying at the end of this first half of the exp I think is fine, though I would prefered he had more screentime. Mabon suffered the same fate as Mai Trin, interesting character with a lot lore on their back yet to be explore... dies heroically so ANet doesnt have to explain sh#t
Adventures in HoT used to be locked based on outpost progress.
8:28 fantastic idea!
The filter for masterys in the achievement-tab was my #1 fact from this video... :D
Heart of Thorns had a lot of Adventures in VB that were only available during the day, because Night Meta shut them all down.
I absolutely aggree on basically everything, but ESPECIALLY the relics.
Not only are the relics lacking CRUCIAL information (just as you said), after testing some of them, some of the effects felt like... EXTREMELY underwhelming. In my case, this was "Relic of the Krait" (After using an elite skill, emit a wave of corruption that inflicts damaging conditions). I was BLOWN AWAY when i noticed, that it inflicts 1 (!) stack of bleeding, torment, poison on a 8 second duration. with the relic having a cooldown of 30 seconds. WHY DON`T YOU TELL ME WHAT IT DOES BEFORE TESTING IT?
On the mastery-points: ABSOLUTELY. Another issue with the mastery points is, that a LOT of them are tied to event-chains or standalone events. The issue especially currently is, that MULTIPLE of the required events are currently bugged. And certain events (which ironically, i´ve been waiting for while writing the comment and watching the video) are based on the time of day, and CANNOT be done if it´s not currently that time (in this case: nighttime).
Btw there is a document which reads that the wizard created something with their fractals which was so strong that just the thought of it was enough to spread it. So even this document is censored to not name the thing. It could very well be that the wizards crated the kryptis and we call them kryptis and not demons because that would feed them even more
Tulpa aren't unique to Supernatural, but that's a good idea. Or the modern day equivalent would be Infohazards. To make it cannon consistent, we can say the more people who know WHY that makes the Kryptis more powerful, the more powerful they become. That's why they refuse to explain themselves to the commander.
@8:39 Yes! That would have worked perfectly. You'd have to keep knowledge of their existence on the low.
It is a bag of laurels. You’re reaching into the bag and pulling out one laurel each time.
😊😊😊😊😊😊
41:50 that's my big issue with gw2 in general. It already happen with action camera, sometimes, especially with norns and charrs, you can't see where to attack because the camera, even if you customize camera position from shoulders in options, it still hard to tag things if you are too close from your character. At this point, I think that is more an engine problem than a choice.
Come on, Anet, let's do a rework in camera placement.
there is a setting "adjust camera to character height", Ive never had your problem and Im playing only action camera
Yes, I know that, and even with that sometimes (i'm not sayin it is always), if you try to use the camera close to the character, you can't see some targets@@denslicer6993
I only play with action camera too.
They did explain a few times that the reason the wizards don't show themselves is because it would create widespread panic across tyria to know of the fight against the Kryptis and the impending doom that awaits if they break through. They want to be silent guardians, letting people live in peace without ever knowing of the fights they fight on their behalves.
True, but his point was (if I understood correctly): when some of the previous fights put Tyria at such high risk that the world was close to be destroyed, wouldn't it have been better to provide some help even at the cost of worrying the mainland with additional problems, rather than let everyone die in their ignorance of the Kryptis? Sure, if you're dead you're not worried, but... It's quite a poor excuse.
It's not easy to close all of these holes when you add a new storyline to something that wasn't supposed to have a sequel, but this is why they hire screenwriters.
my guess is that they also remembered what happened to the sylviri when they tried to attack mordremoth
in that they gave in to mordremoth and turned against them
it could also be that since they have lots of potentially dangerous tech etc, they dont want that to fall into the wrong hands
8:40 Maybe this is exactly as you say. Have you seen redacted fractal notes in fractal research facility?
This map is one of my favorites to play so far.When I first got on the map, I decided just to walk around and enjoy it before I did anything else. Half hour in, I came across the guy for the weapon mastery, not knowing that when you talk to him, it open up the weapon mastery. I use the griffon just like you said, because you can just zip right there, plus its a whole lot of fun diving, then soaring and picking up speed. Fireball, Im still trying to figure that one out until you mentioned about holding down the button for the pinpoint site, which should be like the green target on some of the skill buttons.. Love the story behind the expansion, rift hunting is not too bad, trying to figure out this relic thing. The Meta battles are good. Havent reached the end yet,because I want to build up my masteries. Price is not bad, still better than the monthly subscriptions out there. Bugs, all games have bugs in them. Anet has a good team out there when it comes to solving them out there. This expansion, I give it a 8/10 . GW2 the whole, 9/10. Keep up the good work.👍
The weapons master thing is weird to me because I couldn’t find who y’all were talking about but when I talked to Frode he gave me the unlock…. So I didn’t understand why the game told me to find the Weaponsmaster and not just “go talk to Frode”….?
i love the wizards vault, i got super value out of it so far, the cream is the weeklies btw not dailies and choosing PVE only tasks makes stuff very easy
Until they give you a minidungeon that's next to impossible to complete as happened on Sunday. Which means missing out on 40 AA I think.
Your reasoning behind the kryptos reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where all the large corporate mascots come to life, and they only turn back into non alive mascots if you stop paying attention to them.
A big thing about the leggy starter kit is that you don't choose whether you get might or magic from it. Save your materials until after you have opened it.
You can now purchase the Gifts of blood for example from a vender, so you don't need crafting disciplines.
The only Masteries I am short on are part of the Icebrood Saga. I'm not super into Drizzlewood Coast and the game outright requires you to grind it for months to get them. Plus, for some like 'kill all 13 of x enemy' the Drizzlewood veterans know exactly where to go and decimate them immediately after they spawn with no regard for anyone who doesn't already have credit. I've never found a commander willing to help me get that one...there was a commander who -considered- it, but the players were on autopilot and they immediately caved.
You see the next available boss pop on the map. What didnt help at first was not knowing you can clic on the section of the map to instantly be ported in the air near it.
Nobody told me and i would go back to camp and take the chopper and be late for the kill. Now i know and i can follow the group just fine
I was (when I didn't have the masteries unlocked) jumping off my mount, catch an updraft or a ley line with the glider, and then jump back on my skyscale. But, hassle, I agree.
Honestly enjoyed it overall and agree its a 7 or 8/10.
My biggest complaint is this relic system. Not only is it vague but its honestly created LESS build diversity instead of more.
Out of the 52 relics we have I just hear everyone talk about Thief, Akeem, sometimes Fireworks, and Monk I suppose for healers.
Before relics we had everyone in raids running scholar etc but we also had Runes of Tormenting and Golemancer for open world/WvW and other unique/fun effects that people enjoyed and used.
as an avid book read, i just order the 3 gw books i could find... didnt even knew there was any gw book... thnx
I wouldn't farm any rifts for the upcoming leggies atm since not all of the systems are implemented yet. I guarantee the latest tier of rifts and maybe masteries will catapult the amount of currency gained from them substantially.
I have to say, I didn't do the masteries until I unlocked the skyscale trek... even then, didn't do a lot with the masteries until after the story was done. I was able to get around easily with the skyscale. Guess it's because I love the skyscale and it's my primary mount.
Anet has always been lacking in giving any type of explanations of how things work.
Yea you can skip a few steps but, no matter what, you still need gift of battle, (WvW). To me the most irritating thing is, all they've done is added yet another map currency to the game...
I want a wizard tower guild hall.
Heh, when I heard my character mention bringing a fleet of airships my first thought was “have these poor people in the archipelago not suffered enough without me crashing an entire fleet of airships on their noggings?”.
I'm really surprised that people missed the weapon master training NPC. It wasn't just "some dude in a corner". It was the leader of the new NPC faction standing in the middle of the new faction's HQ. I suppose if they're a "rush to the end then start grinding stuff" kinda player who skips literally everything they can, they're gonna be a little confused. But they also kinda bring that upon themselves. I see it as akin to people who skip tutorials in games because they feel they have reached some sort of enlightenment where they don't need to be taught a thing, then they come to reddit or youtube to look it up after they fail at it. So I guess good thing they have you to show them the way lol!
Otherwise I agree: it should have been something - a mastery, a collection, whatever.
There is an achievement for getting chomped on by the final boss. Last time i did the meta me and another player chilled by his mouth during the yoga part, and after it was over he bit the tower so we got it.
I dont know why people keep calling soto a expansion. Anet wont have resources or even team to finish Soto and pump living world chapters at same time. Soto is pretty much an payed living world...... Soto is pretty much ibs all over again.
even more so, if they invited an airfleet, imagine captains getting corrupted because they are unprepared to deal with the kryptis. , in hindsight wizards not wanting interference may be a good thing
Weapon Mastery should have been 'into the mind of Lord Faren' playing thru his power fantasies, something involving Faren. Would've been amazingly entertaining and perfectly relevant.
Thanks for the video, Mukluk. Do you think that the SOTO expansion is best enjoyed with higher-tiered gear? I'm in exotics for all of my toons and the ones I've tried so far in this expansion feel like they get hammered. The kryptis are no joke as far as damage goes...and I've had a hard time keeping pace with people in meta events due to down-states / deaths.
Also, I would like to figure out a faster way to level masteries. It's been a slog for every x-pac.
I think exotic gear is fight as long as you have stats that compliment your build.
You can go full glass cannon (berserker/vipers) as long as you can avoid enemies most of the time, if you struggle you can use celestial for example for more tankiness in the open world.
eye of cerus is what i want from relics, its so fun in pvp
It's massive if you want to use dagger on Berserker too, at least theme-wise. The new dagger burst feels great but without Spellbreaker we don't have many ways to get the juicy 50% damage buff on it
Didn't watch this right away because I was a little late to get going and didn't want spoilers. Watched a few videos from ppl trying to get around on their skyscales without the masteries: please note that when you fly through those xp 'bubbles' you get a boost that allows you to fly higher, even before you get the masteries. I noticed the bubbles respawned quite quickly, obviously to assist people, although so many videos I watched, the player studiously avoided them every time LOL. On the first fly through there is even currency you get (not sure what that will be for, guessing its for the new legendary armor?). I didn't go out of my way to 'grind' xp for the masteries, all the metas are completely doable without them. One thing that I would not have liked to start with is no wall jump but other than that, everything was fine.
I have a permanent orange arrow on the map of the Habitation Zone from the glitched Kestrel escort. And fighting the rifts doesn't register on the progress bar - Which has left me stuck in "Chapter 4" for 2 days. I've been literally unable to progress. Outside of that, I'm pretty disappointed that Anet has decided to go so linear. Skywatch Archipelago has become like Pre-Searing in GW1 - With no available exit. For me, a major reason I to play GW is because they _didn't_ force the story down your throat, yet this is what they're doing here. I'm not far from just saying to hell with it....
There is an adventure in HOT thats only open during night tyrian time. Is it similar to that?
iirc, there are quite a few adventures accessible only at certain times or when surrounding conditions are met.
Commander could bring an entire army! Everyone else is like NAW!
It is an anti-botting measure to randomize loot chest location on 3 axis.