WiK Bounties have not been 'balanced'

Having Dunham with his PB helps, but remember that he doesn't have infused armour and so is usually the first to drop when a jade slaps spectral agony on him (followed by Alesia). The key is to know when they will appear (i.e. keep an eye on the dialogue), make sure you have your spirits and minions ready, and slap PI on it straight away when it appears. Doesn't always work, mind you.

I suspect the reason why we haven't had the weapons released yet (rewards for medals) is because of delays caused by dealing with the bot problem. If that's the case, I have no problem with waiting a bit longer.

Also, the thing that I just experienced. Puting mursaat there with Spectral Agony wasn't the smartest idea, my paragon got wiped. Should I now complete whole Tyria campaign just to get my armor infused? Tried to use Protective Spirit, but degen is too hard, and they can recast it on hench as well as me..

Today's bounty is 10 + 5. Looks like last week's update was a little shy.

Shield of Absorption might work well against it, but nothing beats a good ol' fashioned infusion.

Yeah, I never was informed that we were supposed to complete EotN AND Prophecies to be able to do war in kryta on each character. Just either or. The infusion requirement did kinda suck, as I had no desires to go through Prophecies for the 5th time on my Ritualist, which is not a proph character and so has no reason to go through it until the jades started appearing in Kryta. Even when I had reason to, I didn't enjoy it simply because it was the 5th time and those missions are now stale. The not being fun part was driven home by the inability to find a quick way to do it. No Droks runners to be found, no desert tour runners either, nobody running from Droknar's to Iron Mines (or even Copperhammer), and not even any people running infusion for the Iron Mines mission when it was the Zaishen Mission, everyone wanted to do hard mode only, and took the other route that skipped getting infused.

So.. what'd I have to do? Walk there slowly killing every annoying waste of time trash mob on the way wanting to punch someone in the mouth the whole way there, from Sanctum Cay all the way to Iron Mines. It was tedious, boring, and frankly made me angry to waste so much time on (ritualists don't exactly make good runners). Closest thing I can do to running is use a pve skill speed boost and lay spirits as distractions while I try to get away. Doesn't always work though.

Anyway.. it does make more story impact for WM to start bringing jade with them, but it definately made for some not very fun moments in game, getting non proph characters prepared for that content.

if you are level 20 you can run your self to dorks...just change your 2ndary and you wont have to fight all of the mobs....though most of my canthans and elonians have at least made it to iron mines (not fire islands yet, but thats another story).

AND heroes are pretty good meat shield for s agony....I have done many of the southern shiverpeak missions WITHOUT having my characters infused by just flagging my heroes (mm and sos) in front of me....spectural agony away the minions and spirts---np.

but back on subject....yes they are still a bit out of wack....really wish they would tell us what those dumb medals are for so I can decide whether to trade for them or for more royal scrolls (as I have only gotten 2 other items besides scrolls from them).

Well it makes sense that you have to have infused armor - there are going to be a few Mursaat still around helping the White Mantle at some point in the WiK story line.

Forcing people to get to the end of Prophecies to get infused armor is a bit much though. Maybe they should add a new quest some where near LA to infuse armor.

That would be good.

Also good would be letting henchies in Kryta be infused, and maybe the courier/SB allies rather than have them be one-shot bait. If playing through before clearing proph, it won't make a difference (no Mursaat/Jades).

And if it's the "lore" they're worried about, it's established that WiK comes after the events of Hell's Precipice so it's not hard to assume that either the PCs or the "Heroes of Ascalon" have shared the secret of infusion with their Shining Blade buddies.

I feel like the least they could do is infuse the courier. Maybe have the courier be Zinn/Blimm's first guinea pig for their seer experiments :P

Makes you wonder if those experiments that the Asura are running on that Seer in that hidden lab are going to enable them to figure out how to infuse armors themselves? Seems like just the kind of thing that would be up an Asuran's alley. Plus they're supposed to be trying to devise means to combat the Mursaat anyways, aren't they? Isn't that why Livia went to gain the Asurans' help?

But aren't you supposed to be infused by this point anyway? In any case I really don't think getting infused is that difficult...but it is one of those things that isn't all that important unless you don't have it so I guess putting it in LA wouldn't be a big deal. Maybe charging for it in LA and giving it to you for free in Iron Mines (and the other places you can get infused).

People have been infused for five years, basically all players should be infused by now. I don't have a problem with anet infusing the hench or courier that seems fair enough, but people need to play the game and get their toons to iron mines if they wanna use them to fight mursaat.

I went and beat the last 5 missions in prophecies on my char in a little under 7 hours. Go get infused, get back to the war in kryta soldier.

BTW, 2 accounts and 6 discords rolls keyboard faces on these chumps.

You just have to be good enough to play 2 characters simultaneously. <-- Holy cow i spelled that right on the first try.

Unless its a non-prophecies character that you never payed through prophecies on. May also be some people who changed armor and never went back to get the new one infused. At least that second group only has to re-do Iron Mines (30 minutes maybe?), but those in the first group have a lot to go through to get infused.

This doesn't really effect me since all but two of my characters are infused, but I can still see how this would annoy people and it would be nice to have some other way to get infused.

"infusion runs" are quite fast: 10 minutes per infusion, just run to cutcene and kill easy mobs for esence.

getting to mission is harder if you never progressed through prophecies, but it is self-runable, and unlocked outposts are lasting benefit if you ever need to visit southern shiverpeaks again.

A) Many armors are unifused for the simple reason that the player has had them crafted after he had already finished the prophecies campaign and never bothered to get them infused. I've personally had it happen several times - my character in nice new Norn/Monument/Ancient/... armor enters a zaishen mission... and I keep looking stupid at "why am I dieing?". Of course, once you realize what's going on, it's just a matter of putting on the old infused armor in the pack.

B) not being infused is a minor matter. Infusion is an easy, quick thing to do, and doesn't even require HM.

C) if infusion is a problem because the player finished Prophecies by getting runs... I'd say sentencing the guy to 15 minutes of infusion runs sounds like a good punishment

In that case shouldn't they be examining an eidolon instead of a seer, seen that it's from them you get the essence for infusion? Or maybe they already have it and want to know how seers use it...but if so, they could simply ask the seers the secret, as they could make good allies in such a cause.

Remember that infusion requires the use of spectral essence from an Eidolon. There may be seers in Kryta now to do the infusing, but lore-wise, what's the chances of an eidolon showing up in the middle of Kryta?

It wouldn't be so strange if, back when we were camped in north shiverpeaks/ring of fire the shining blade did some provisions. Well, that would imply a large number of Eidolons being around, but still it's not impossible.
Take into account Seers themselves cannot infuse without the essence, so studying them for that purpose would be pointless.

It occurs to me, that if you look at War Supplies AS A CONSUMABLE, the time it takes to acquire them IS somewhat balanced, or even balanced in our favour - compared to the time it takes to get Bowls of Skalefin Soup and Drake Kabobs.

2 War Supplies is equivelent to 1 Bowl of Skalefin Soup + 1 Drake Kabob.

Possibly pretty good. Maybe eidolons are drawn to the emanations of spectral agony, which is why you mostly find them hanging around areas where mursaat and jade are concentrated. Now that jades are becoming active in Kryta, perhaps the eidolons will follow. Or maybe eidolons follow seers for some reason, and the eidolons will show up in Kryta because there is now a seer in Kryta.

Seriously there aren't any difficult missions to do before iron mines and the actual infusion run takes about 5-10 mins. It's easy. Go do it.

It's not hard at all. Back when ONLY proph was out I didn't think it was that hard and it has only been getting easier since. Making it any easier would make it just a minute inconvenience and not really worth having.

It's kind of a big deal for people who don't want to do prophecies.

There'd be more cause for people not ascalon born to do prophecies if:

1. Deldrimmor Crafted weapons could be put in HoM
2. Dropped loot was inscribible (this goes for factions too, it's kinda worthless to farm anywhere in factions or proph because it's all uninscribible)
3. There was a title or faction connected to it.

Well, it's nice that they're still at least adding something to the game. But these bounty missions aren't enough to keep me interested, and they're too much effort/tedium without enough pay off.

Protector and Guardian?

cartographer?

I agree, putting a NPC to infuse your armor in L.A. would make life a lot easier.

I've done all Guardian/Cartographer/Vanquisher titles on my warrior, and there is absolutely no way I am going to do them again, so re-doing all those missions just to get infused is very boring and complete waste of time.

They could add a quest giver for a new infusion quest to the LA Keep area, or something like that. Surely the Spectral Agony problem should pop-up in the story somehow, considering how it walks all over everyone and everything except the player characters and their heroes.

lol wut

It's a big deal to hop on over to dorks. Get to an outpost that's 2 minutes away. Complete a mission then do half of another mission?

It's not like the missions are HUNDREDS OF LINES OF TEXT like the crap you have to do to get to the WiK. In my opinion that is infinitely worse than doing some missions that have plenty of action in them.

Plus you don't even NEED to do this stuff because you're going against what...a couple mursaat at a time? You NEED infusion (And even here not REALLY) when you're going up against sizable mobs of mursaat constantly.

Also last time I checked uber rare awesome uninsc proph and factions loot still sold for plenty. Also there are a few titles tied to completing proph.


But all this is completely off topic. The WiK bounties are still teh suck..

no I mean a real title track, one that has some effect on pve gameplay, or some pve skills.

Going just for titles that do nothing but extend epeen really only gets a minority of players.

By "hop on over" you mean slowly run your way from LA to an empty beacons and hope someone is running to droks and then end up giving up because nobody's doing it, and then your options are either A: slowly walk to Drok's having to kill everything in your path, or B: (which is what I ended up doing, at least it opened up ToPK as well) do sanctum's cay, do the desert missions, beat doppleganger, beat dragon's lair, and THEN go from Drok's to Iron Mines. Then have to slowly kill your way up to infusion, because nobody is there to run it for you, and not every class is capable of just running it solo (I did try, but SoJ spam killed me in the end).

Some people need to get it through their thick skulls that just because it's not hard, doesn't make it fun, engaging, and feel worthwhile doing. It can be easy and still be time consuming, boring/tedious, and frustrating seeing how far you still have to go for such a "simple thing".

It's easy for me to spam spirits and kill everything, that doesn't make it fun or engaging, or worthwhile. Sometimes you just wanna get where you're going and not have to trudge through the mud on the way.

A couple of mursaat that will single handedly kill off your henchmen, and then you, in about 5s, leaving your heroes as the only things standing.

If you're counting core content as prophecies, maybe, but if it's truely prophecies content there's pretty much only 1 thing and that's Mursaat Hammers, maybe magmas shields, but your shots at one of those with the right noninsc bonus is a slim shot at best.

The titles connected are useless titles that are only used for the GWAMM title, which is just an epeen title. By title I meant like Sunspear/Lightbringer/Deldrimmor/Asuran/Norn/Ebon Vanguard.

Maybe some shining blade title track, with shining blade pve skills.

Mmmmm yea OK that's a good idea.

I agree, the problem is the poor exchange rate for gifts

War in Kryta is kinda of meant for people who have already finished Prophecies. You need to finish it to even start WiK content.

Well not really, EotN is enough for that. But storywise I think yes, it doesn't make much sense going through this events without having partecipated in prophecies events.

Really? I thought you had to have finished both.

Well for an ascalon born character, completing the campaign makes more sense because (5 year old spoilers, sorry) the white mantle appear to be good, they grant a new home to you and your ascalon refugees after having to flee your homeland due to the searing and ongoing charr invasion. It's the white mantle that prevented Kryta from being overrun like Ascalon. You go through the first few missions thinking the White Mantle are the good guys. Your first impressions of the Shining Blade are that they ambush the chosen and kidnap them, probably to be killed. Then you learn the filthy truth about them and their unseen gods.

It is only then that you can really trust the Shining Blade and want to support them, and want to raise Princess Salma to the throne.


But for a non ascalonian character, that did not experience the searing, that wasn't droven into exile, and taken in by the white mantle, you're never given that benevolent opinion of the White Mantle. Your first encounter with the Shining Blade may be perhaps in your search for Gadd, they help you find him, and help you against the destroyers. So you start out with them as your allies, and they tell you of the White Mantle's tyrannical rule, and their plans to restore the monarchy to the throne. There's no need storywise to go through prophecies then, especially if you did EotN first, as that'd be confusing, suddenly siding with White Mantle for a few missions again and thinking of the people that helped you beat the destroyers as enemies?

Am I alone in thinking that we already have far to many PvE skills in the game?

yeah kinda strange huh. never bothered myself to finish prophecies with my warrior, and not looking forward to it either. But still I did finish EOTN and can do the WiK just fine. Thank god/Anet.

Because adding more PvE skills would really help the game

I'm not sure why this thought bothers ppl soo much. It's not like they have to be the dominate PvE skills. When was the last time anyone used Club of a Thousand Bears or Winds? Does having these decrease the enjoyment of the game? The more skills the marrier as far as I'm concerned.

Same here, but I am finding that some parts are ... tougher than others since I don't have anything infused. Wondering if it is worth the effort to finish Proph with the one character I have who is remotely close to the end. I spend a lot of my time in EotN until lately when WiK came around... but I only have 1 character who can access it. That's what I get for coming late to this party (and being a very casual gamer).