Little Known Guild Wars Facts

This is a list of facts in Guild Wars that I feel should be known, for their usefulness or for the interesting factor. If you know any new ones, or if you find that any of these are false, have any questions about them, comments, anything, please post. I will put an asterik (*) in front of the ones I belive are important/useful.

You can be level one at Ring of Fire.

*Insignias can only be attached to Elonian armor/weapons.

*Ghost-in-the-boxes and Snowman summoners can have a purpose---when they disappear after being activated, they trigger Necromancers' Soul Reaping primary attribute. If correctly timed, your Necromancer can get an energy boost when you need it for some reason. These "deaths" also count towards "I Will Avenge You!", making solo IWAY a possibility, although an expensive one.

Although most alcohols last 1 minute, some last 3 or even 5 minutes in length. There is a drunken time cap of 5 minutes, meaning that if you drink 6 minutes worth of alcohol at once, it alone will only last 5 minutes.

Nonmax (and usually low damage) Axes and Scythes occasionally break free of the max 6-28/9-41 standard... Some axes have a minimum damage of 7, while some Scythes can start at 10. 2 examples are my Sephis Axe 7-18 req 4 Precious, and the quest reward Banana Scythe, 10-10 damage.

Icy Dragon Swords are always max damage, blue, 15^50... they come from one place: Ice Imps in Mineral Springs. They are also probably the only time someone would find a blue with perfect mods, since perfect mod blue drops are very rare.

The size of your radar is about .1% of Cantha, .07% of Tyria.

For Nigthfall Collector's Edition, doing /dancenew followed by /dance or another looping emote will do the regular emote, but with the /dancenew collector's edition special effects.

With projectiles, all effects, including weapon effects, are considered when the projectile reaches the target.

Xunlai Agent is the only NPC that you can talk to, move away, and still be working with.

*An attack has the following percent chances to hit the corresponding part of your armor (if there is no armor, AL turns to 0 for that part)
12.5% head
37.5% chest
12.5% hands
25% legs
12.5% feet
Damage reduction or armor from runes, weapons, shields, offhands, and skills are global meaning they come into effect no matter where you are hit.

*Your level is calculated in damage calculation. This is to say, a level 19 and a level 20 could be in the same exact situation, with everything the same, and, chances are, the level 20 will do more dmg, unless the level 20 was unlucky and the lvl 19 was lucky.

Unidentified armors are often worth more than the rune itself...If you get an unidentified armor, ID it, check the trader price for buying that armor, compare it to the ID'd armor price, see if it is worth salvaging.

*Skills activate before skills that trigger when something happens. Example: Orison of healing will heal you before Backfire deals it's damage for casting a spell.

White items can be Identified. This not only shows their value, but also increases it. Only effectively useful on near-max items.
If you hold CTRL while doing certain actions or clicking on certain things, you will announce them in Team chat. Examples: Health, energy, death penalty, morale boost, hexes, conditions, enchantments, stances, nature rituals, etc etc., your skills in an outpost, your weapons, moving to a corpse, talking to npcs, using a skill, someone or something else using a skill, picking up items.

*Targeting someone, holding ctrl, and pressing enter sends a whisper to them.

You can whisper yourself. You can also add some in-game characters to your friends list, although you cannot whisper them.

Some skills that do 0 damage (like distracting blow) still apply for critical hits. However, 0 times 2 = 0 so nothing happens.

The green items dropped by Grognard Gravelhead all misspell his name. They all say Grognar's, but the boss is GrognarD

Also, ironically, Grognar's BLADE has the skin of a LongSWORD, while Grognar's SWORD has the skin of a Tribal BLADE.

*Holding shift to drag and drop an item opens up the ability to split the stack of that item into 2 or more seperate piles.

You forgot the baows also have different attack rates and the range and all , nice list tho

Splitting stacks of materials, dyes etc:

Open inventory, press and hold "shift" key, click on stack you want to split and drag it over to an empty slot. A window pops up asking you how many you want to move.

That was an awesome set of facts.

This isn't true. Yes, hammers have a slower attack rate than swords or axes, but their higher average damage per hit more than compensates.

Per Ensign's well-known "Why Nuking Sucks" thread -- a warrior with 16 in his weapon attribute auto-attacking with a customized weapon will do the following damage:

Sword: 25.59 damage per second
Axe: 26.66 damage per second
Hammer: 29.35 damage per second

The increased damage from a hammer is balanced by not being able to equip a shield.

Last I tried the ghosts in combat, which was a while back after last year's halloween event, I found out that they will aggro the monsters which is rather funny. But it was helpful when running away from those nasty aatxes in UW when you're the last one standing. They would keep attacking it until it vanished, giving you time to get away.

I don't know if it works anymore though. ..

too bad none of these are little known...

Just what I was thinking. Or you can refer to this calculator:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/calcula...e=1.33&crit=20

Hey, one thing, if they haven't fixed this yet, don't anthems trigger off bears giving them more versatility with their brutal mauling skill?

Dunno if they nerfed this yet.

They don't work in PVP.

It's not they're known well, it's that new players don't know these at all. Personally, most of this can be found out after 1/2 a year's play. Only thing here that should be little known is the ghost in the box bug......

I don't have exact numbers for this, but this statement seems grossly incorrect.

Consider that there are at over 100 zones in Cantha (source: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Locations_(Factions)). If your radar really displayed 1% of the total world map, each zone would be, on average, no larger than a single radar.

I suspect your estimate of the radar's size is off by several orders of magnitude.

If you click on a character in town, so that their name is highlighted, simply press Ctrl + Enter to enter their name into the whisper box. Useful for alot of stuff..

that was pretty cool facts, although the ghosts in a box are kind of unfair NERF :P

just because YOU and some ppl dont know some of these, lots of ppl dont...... this is NOT common knoledge here, of course then again neither is /dance according to the noobs in presearing lol....
and the thing about the zones is just what i read from somewhere....
as for the thing about hammers, when I worked it out it turned out to be less dps, maybe i should retry, or maybe i approached it incorrectly... i chose the max of the range and used that....
also i would like to add that not only is Oh a GW forum's comment sounds like it was intended to be rude, it is also blatantly FALSE. the main reason for this is that i have been called a lier for saying some of the things stated here.

A lot of this is completely random. Did you know that headgears were updated to have +1 energy after nf came out to counter the radiant insinga and keep all armor fair? Did you know there was a skill update January 4, 2006? etc etc

And a lot of it is wrong. Hammer DPS, map size, ghosts in the boxes in PvP, and the fact that a level 1 in RoF is actually hard, all you need is to be run to THK and do the bar miniumum quests to get their and leave presearing. All alochals, for drunkards, have the save behavior.

I use an axe warrior for troll farming and i'vedone fine......

I'm getting really tired of people bitching about not being able to farm.
I can farm with my 55. I do it all the time. Just because they run away doesnt mean you cant farm them, and yes I know you arent bitching. but please dont fuel people bitching about it because its not true, i can still farm with 55 soj and its only a bit slower thats all.

That's actually useful. Thanks!

This isn't a thread about 'little known facts', this is a thread about misinformation and commonly known facts.

The infamous and great /bow bug:

Step 1: Spin your character, holding down the A button (by default configuration.). Don't let go of the A button.

Step 2: Press Enter. With your second hand, type /bow.

Step 3: Press Enter. About 1/4 of the way through the /bow animation, release the A button.

It'll take a couple tries to get it to work right. The result is your character spins around constantly -- without you pressing a key. You can move backwards and forwards and strafe and your character will still spin. You'll have to steer with the mouse-look, because if you turn it will cancel the effect.

'Spliot!!

little known facts? most people know these..

I've been playing GW for over 15 months and while I knew that Ghosts in a Box counted to soul reaping, I didn't know they worked for IWAY.

While most of this might sound like common sense to you, I'm sure there are plenty of people who visit these forums who don't know all of this, so I think it's kind of a good idea to see a thread like this. Here's my contribution:

When you get a gold or purple item, the value of that armor after identified to the merchant is sometimes than the value of the rune itself. For example, a purple armor with a major protection rune might be worth 150ish gold to a merchant, but once you salvage that rune from the armor, the rune may only be worth 25 gold.

I diddn't know most of these, Especially the IDS trivia.

Oh frick, I can't upgrade my older weapons w/ insignias/inscriptions? Lol so much for buying that stuff...

troll farming is still easy...just takes a few minutes more :P

meh maybe i read guildwiki too much...

all if this information is either useless or already known...

The tips on Team iQ's site are better, they have heaps of things not normally known about PvP.

Give Flash a break...

He's not saying he's better than anyone else here he's just posting a few facts that aren't well known to everyone.

Of course you get the guys who have the immediate ego-trip response - yeah well I knew ALL of those!

Well make this tread useful and for the intended op purpose which is to actually POST little known facts and not give yourself pat on the back "wow I'm leet coz I know all those you noob"....

Jeesh....

Flash - this seems to be a double post thread..... seems you have 2 with the exact same topic....

A good thread and my contribution to what players should know

Imperial commendations can be traded for a sup salvage kit which can be sold to merch for 1k .. making them worth 200g each. do not sell for less! I assume there is a NF equivalent.

Collectors weapons cant be salvaged so think before you put any mod thats worth money on one. (dont know if this is still correct with new salvage options)

Only longbows and flatbows can be used for pulling effectively, some say flatbows are better because the arrow takes longer to get to target and it doesnt matter if arrow hits , giving you extra time to run away / retreat.. I have tried both and it doesnt seem to make much difference.

I think it's a superb idea. Not everyone is a GW expert. I'm still learning things all the time.

Anyhoo, here's mine.

Identifying WHITE items increases the price when selling to the merchant.

Only identify white weapons that are close to max.. otherwise, you'll be identifying weapons and only getting maybe a 5 gold increase, which is not worth using the id kit for.. but for max weapons, values can jump from 50 to 90..

If you put a mod on a collector item you can salvage it. Only what you have added. You can not salvage mods that come with the weapon.

Playing 10 months, didnt know Ghost triggered IWAY, there were different effects/durations with alcohol, or about the radar size. Not all of these things are "common knowledge", if youre one of the people(like me), who dont bother getting into any great detail about the nechanics of the game.

Yeah, good point. You have to work out whether the increase in price out-weighs the use of the ident kit. Cheers for that.

Nice thread, this should probably be collected in a long list some day.

I'm pretty sure the radarsize equals 0.1% of Cantha and a bit less of Tyria (not 1%).

There are a lot things many older players take for granted knowledge, but new players have a bit hard to find. I took me 6 months before I understood that you could only carry 100k on a char (not a big problem as long as you do not have much money). I discovered it when I tried to trade while having 90k in my inventory and could not finish the trade.


Regards,
Cloudbunny

Here's something I only recently found out. I know it's so n00bish I need a slap but I'd never bothered to check what I thought was true. Anyhoo here goes ...

Salvaging and selling the material will wield you LESS money than just selling the crafting material raw (unless the item is id'd as highly salvagable). I'd always thought that the nice new materials from an item were worth more. However, this MAY be the case with items that give you rare materials? I don't know 100% about that. Can anyone confirm?

The ghost in the box thingies don't work in PVP AFAIK

I found the point about the blue axe in the original post interesting. That's what I got out of this thread. Thanks.