Unconditional Weapons

the difference between my "theory" and the others, is mine isnt speculation.
most people havent been around long enough to remember when unconds could drop, i have. most of the old-school traders had been as well, and the facts of unconds were pretty much universally known. this is why it was common place to only trade for unconds you knew had existed for ages previously, in order to prevent getting a hacked one; and when you did trade for it it was common policy to NEVER trade for one bearing a vampiric or zealous mod, just in case they were fake (more than once i made the seller change the mods multiple times before trading for one just to be sure). however, since then most people whove been around since day 1 or before (like myself and other beta players) have since quit; and the facts of how and why unconds exist have been replaced with outlandish ideas and explanations based only on a persons' guesses and or misinformation.
most people still think unconds are "hacked" weapons...and thats why they've been known to dissappear. what they dont consider is that there are real unconds, fake unconds and formerly the bugged/hacked unconds (which have all been removed), they just dont know to seperate them into their propper categories. but considering that the fake uncond bug, and the method used to hack/bug them BOTH came out SIGNIFICANTLY AFTER true unconds were unable to drop any longer; its pretty obvious to anyone who knows that they are talking about that true unconds have absolutly nothing to do with hacks or chest spawn bugs or any other ridiculous, half-baked theory on why they exist. they exist because, for a very brief period, they were legitimate items on the drop-code list...and had there been any reason other than this for their creation, anet would have taken the nerf-bat them years ago along with the others that were game-exploits, just like anything else that even approaches their definition of "illigitimate" or "game-breaking".
you should know me well enough to know i wouldnt post something without knowing it first ^^.

I've also been there since the very beginning and I remember that pretty well. I'm sure there were never any legit unconditionals that were intended drops. They all existed because of a bug and were rare enough to slip through betas undetected. But there were 2 different bugs connected to them.

The first original real ones that dropped during the first ~2 weeks were weapons that got generated with both:
+DMG/-health regen AND Vampiric upgrade, or
+DMG/-energy regen AND Zealous upgrade.
The bug caused the 2 identical -1 regen modifiers to overlap and one erased the other so the weapon had only one regen. Putting a different upgrade to replace the Vampiric or Zealous mod was also removing that one degen mod and what that left was the DMG mod with no negative.

They fixed those drops pretty fast but not fixed them completely - there was another bug which lasted much longer, also connected to weapons having both +DMG/-degen and matching Zealous or Vamp upgrade, it caused the mods to overlap so the weapon looked just like the proper unconditional weapon - (had just one -regen line) but after putting another mod they turned into a normal +dmg/-regen weapon.

I don't remember hearing of disappearing unconditionals, only remember cries of people buying the fake ones. But if people want to do research, there's still some information available from these days as the major existing GW forums have saved posts from over 5 years ago.

you couldnt be more wrong.
this is the type of misinformation spewed by people who dont have a clue of what they are speaking about that clouds the judgement of the rest of the (quite honestly) highly impressionable GW community.
A: not only have i been around before the beta; but i also PERSONALLY KNEW 3 people who had uncunditionals drop FOR THEM during the first few weeks of the beta. 4 unconds dropped between these 3 players, and NOT ONE OF THEM spawned with a zealous OR vampiric mod as the origional modification.
B: again; the bug to which you are referring, the "masking" bug, which was the source of fake (note i said FAKE and not HACKED) unconditionals did not come into fruition untill a few months after GWs release...well after unconds were able to drop. and unlike true unconds, they were IMMIDIATLY reverted to their true stats the moment their masking mod was altered.
C: the fact that you havent heared about peoples unconds disappearing merely proves that you simply arent privvy to the accurate information at hand. many, many peoples "unconditionals" disappeared.
in fact, however, these were NOT unconditional weapons, but weapons created through a particular game exploit; and as such, they were removed by anet. all of them. quickly.
D: do you have any idea how the mods of an item are altered by the game designers?
in order for anet to remove every single unconditional in the game anet would not have to manually search through every gw item in existence account by account, player by player and go "hrmph, an unconditional?!? I SHALL NERF THEE!"
instead, they spend a few days...maybee a week or two, changing the game code that would simply strip them of their existence in their entirety and make them vanish like a fart in the wind.
the fact that in over 5 years of GW anet has not done so is evidence to the fact that unconds exist because anet allows them too...heck, i once had gaile grey compliment me on one of my unconds back when she made in-game appearances, so dont give me the "anet wasnt able to find them and remove them" B.S. line thats founded in nothing but ignorance.
please, for the love of the children, know what you are talking about before you post.

edit: you also mentioned unconds "slipping through betas" unconds werent transferred fromt he beta...they dropped from day 1 to 2 weeks after the primary GW release.
gw removed their drop code because they felt that it made other items pointless. if they had wanted to remove them at that time, it would have been very, very easy to do so given the very small size of the GW community at the time, yet they did not...in fact not 1 person complained of their uncond disappearing at the time that they were removed from dropcode...these complaints only came much later (i think it was 1-2 years or so later) after the very brief time that it was possible to use a game exploit to create them.
so...even if you are even close to being right (which you're about as close to being right as columbus was to landing on eastern india) why would anet remove unconds in column A but not in column B?
logical explanation?
you dont have one.
well...other than mine, that is.

IS not Unconditional but i still have this bow i was keep it , never sold and still some people willing to pay more then 30 ecto for this item . If i remember i got this bow like 1,5 year ago ( mayby more i really can't remember) .

@Akhilleus:

Wow. You're putting a lot of words to my mouth I've never said. And I got logical explanations.

By "slipping throught betas" I mean not being noticed by the devs and not fixed during the betas. Ofcourse I didn't mean any item that dropped during beta to made it to the release and I've said I know the originals dropped during first 2 weeks after release.

Where did I say Anet wasn't able to find them? IMHO they just fixed the bug and didn't consider the existing ones to be harmful enough to go through the trouble and develop a way to hunt them down. THAT'S why they let them stay, not because they were ever intended legit drops. Just like max req.7s (or post-nerf max req.8s) weren't intended drops.

Because that would be a truly gargantuan task - given the way all the players' inventories data is stored - it's not a database where you could run a query or script to search among different random items with matching parameters. The data is stored in BLOBs which make any searching waaaay harder and that's probably the reason they NEVER automatically altered or removed any existing randomly generated items. The only existing items that were nerfed were all "fixed" items - quest reward (like SoA axe), crafter (HoD axe/bow), collector (15%FFS), green (20/20Rockmolders, WiK greens), none of them were random drops. Automated search and altering of existing randomly generated drops is far far harder if possible at all, that's why they never touched uncons or certain low reqs that pvp'ers qq'ed about for ages.

So if there really was another wave of unconditionals 1-2 years after, generated by an exploit, I suspect those would have to be removed manually, based on server logs of the exploit happening (the same way they've dealt with duped armbraces & stuff, yes, manually).

But still I'm in doubt because if any weapons (and especially weapons that special) just disappeared there would surely be someone qq'ing about it on at least one GW forum or someone later referring to that occurence and I would surely knew about it by now. If there were any then the posts should still exist as a proof (can't think of a better way to prove it). I'd really like to hear more about the wave of "hacked" unconds, when and how were they made and were they just like the old ones (weapons with +DMG no negative) or different. Would really appreciate any info, sources, screenshots, etc.


While I've always respected you as one of the absolute top sources of information about the unconditionals, I have to disagree with you in some points.

If you say you're absolutely sure some of the real unconditionals didn't drop with zealous or vampiric then you know even more about them than you said in any other post, you should then know what dmg mod they had upon dropping and what caused them to become what they are.

Based on what other witnesses say, if they really dropped with another prefix then they still must have been +DMG/-Regen inherent that were modded with matching zealous or vampiric to cause the -regen lines to overlap. If the modding was done before the first fix then the weapon created was a true unconditional, one that would survive any remodding. Ones created after the first fix but before the second one could become the "fakes" (a display bug not showing double -regen despite it still being there).

even if you're right, that anet would have to manually go through and remove the origional unconds which again...all they'd have to do is spend a few weeks changing code (heck...it would probably be easy to remove every gold 15>50 weapon in the game, if they wanted too). consider this. if you were around when GW started like i was, you know how few people were playing in those first few weeks. not only that...how few items were actually generated in those first two weeks. if anet wanted to manually remove all the unconds in existence at that time it would NOT have taken too terribly long.
and again, i was once complimented on one of my unconds by a game dev. she could have taken the nerf bat to it instantly.
as for the mods on the 4 unconds; 2 dropped without a prefix, 1 was 9/10 sundering (i remember that because back then 9/10 sundering was a BIG deal) and the last i confess i dont recall, but i remember it wasnt zealous or vampiric because when i traded for it over a year later i had to add a vampiric mod to it as a request by the player i resold it too.

as for the disappearing hacked unconds, i dont know if there are still any posts about it...there might be, but there are still for sure enough people who remember the griping to be able to know im not making it up.

I was there from the very beginning and I remember huge masses of players playing... but the vast majority of them didn't make it to Lion's Arch by the time unconditionals stopped dropping. I well remember how stupidly low were the chances to get any gold weapon drop at all then, except specific locations, that's why so many unconds come from the bugged Arid Sea barrels that dropped golds enmasse before nerf - likely half of the golds in game at that time came from there.

I think it would a really major trouble or even close to impossible for Anet to find the existing unconditionals to nerf them. They're not fixed items like a green, but every one is different, they don't share an id, and their stats aren't recorded in a way that would be searchable (they explained that also as a reason for not making an auction house). If they were a result of a recent exploit they could go by server logs tracking the occurences of that exploit to know the accounts used, then track those accounts' trade history from that point. Logs are searchable, but I doubt they keep logs from over 5 years ago, and that there are item stats logged anyway.

If you showed one of them to Gaile it should be obvious that nothing bad could have happened. They don't have a goal of fixing any unusual item on sight, any serious action from them would require a stronger consideration and a formal procedure. No individual dev is to make that kind of decision on spot, especially when it's about something that has existed for all eternity and was tolerated, yes, they are aware some very few weapons like like this exist but they're simply tolerating their existance as they don't cause any harm or imbalance at all.

Now If you remember so well what mods some of the unconds had when dropped, you should remember the most important thing - what inherent mod they had when dropped? Were they all +DMG/-HP or Ene Regen as most common reports and the most logical explanations I believe in say? Or something else? And they had to be modded with a matching Zealous or Sundering to become the real uncons, right? Because that's the logical explanation which is believed in by others who also were there and dealt with them. If you know more than anyone else about them, share the truth, bust the myths.

And as for the wave of hacked unconds that disappeared, I was completely unable to find any info at all, could you at least hint at when it was or were there any known characteristics of the process of making them or of the results? Has anyone made any screenshots of what was created then before going poof?

exactly my point here...
the VAST majority of gold items dropped in the first two weeks were dropped to the few players able to get to the areas necissary to drop such weapons...anets search would not have been overwhelmingly long at this time.
i dont know how quickly you progressed through the game on your first char (i progressed very fast) but if you progressed quickly then you should remember that GWs population, in fact, wasnt that large...it was just concentrated. the majority of players were locked up in lower level areas, with only a few people making it to later area regions, specifially the farming ones. i mean, i honestly havent a clue, but if i had to pull a number out of my ass, i would guess there were fewer than 1,000 players capable of being able to farm chests that had a high enough drop level to even spawn unconds. so as i said earlier, i dont imagine the search would have been much if they had truly wanted them gone.

already addressed this one several times. stick&horse.

gaile isnt the only dev to know of more than 1 specific player who possessed unconds. heck...at one point i had 8 of them, at the same time, mostly for trading up for other, better, unconds. see the thing is, anet wouldnt even have to find hundreds of players to remove the vast majority of the unconds in the game...but just a handfull of the players who made a habbit of collecting them.
now, if you're right and anet just didnt deem it worth the time and effort to remove an item category that, frankly, doesnt truly ruin the game; isnt condoning their existence the same thing as accepting it and isnt accepting it the same thing as endorsing it?
look at it this way; if anet really thought uncunds broke the game they would either go through the effort of removing them, or simply make them able to drop again (or perhaps make weapons with 20>50 max, thus making them far below standard dmg output and thus useless); putting them on even par with current drop-able weapons. the fact that anet has never lifted a finger to "correct" them in some way shape or form means 1 thing.
in 1 form or another anet wants unconds to be around.

honestly, this part of your post makes no sense.
are you asking me if they dropped with -1 energy degen or -1 hp degen mods as an inherent condition? if so; then as i previoudly stated; no.
and the mods on the early unconds did not need to be changed in order to display their unconditional status, ever. it was only after the fake uncond bug that this became an issue.
and as i said; there was zero way to make a fake uncond a true uncond...only to make them look like one. but as soon as the mod changed, so did the posted stats.
the true unconds always displayed their stats from the begining.
if it had been possible to "make" unconds simply by adding/removing zealous or vampiric mods then there would be FAR more of them. and believe you me, its not like i didnt try


honestly...since the hacked uncond ordeal i have...gone through 3 relationships including my current fiancee of over 3 years, had my fiancee go through a miscarriage after which she had my daughter, my parents' divorce after 32 years of marriage; moved 4 times had 2 job changes, expierienced the loss of my fiancee's mother to a fatal form of brain cancer and countless other actual life events.
so...you'll have to pardon me if i dont exactly recall when...but i believe it was shortly before the HoD sword nerf. but again, there are enough people to remember.
as for the screenshots...most of the unconds forged using the method designed to bug them were promptly marketed as true unconds, and sold. so when anet removed them in many cases it was simply honest players who got hurt. im sure some of the screens are in the old trade-posts, but i honestly wouldnt know where to look. your best chance of confirmation of this is just to ask the old school traders who still play to see if they remember. im sure some do, im sure some dont. but i do very specifically remember that for a period of appx a month or 2 i did not buy or sell any unconds in any way shape or form, in order to utterly avoid this disasterous period. note; it did not even take that long for anet to fix the bug...i just allowed myself some time for the mess to clear up before i resumed pursuing them.
its important to note though that the whole mess with bugged unconds is when most people stopped seeing unconds as a thing of beauty and started lumping all unconds into the "OMG HAXX0R WEAPONS!" category.

I think I had that. I gave it away though. R8 13% if I remember correctly. I dont own any uncon now as gave them all away. Still have a HOD hammer i think.

I had a list of every verified uncon known to exist. It may have been missing a few but was pretty complete. It should be on here somewhere.

O and there were uncons far from max damage which apparently dropped in that jungle area of guild wars near that place everyone used to trade. Saw a bow I think it was which was like really low damage.

Whoru? Some random nub? Eh?!








Keke, joking. I love you herb! What brings you back to the guru sauce? And I know your list. Actually the list on the first post is based on your list and I edited and added the stuffs I found out

I'm quite sure I know who owns your unconds now, it's a mate of mine. If you want the nick of him, pm me, I'll tell you

greetings,

Todie

It was captain krompdowns brother. Cant remember his ign though.

Thought I would take a look on here and see when GW2 was coming out. Screenshots look amazing.

Is gw still the same as it was 3 years ago?

Oh, I didn't know they were brothers :O

And no, gw is for sure not the same as it was 3 years ago. It's even worse imho. Actually I didn't look at any gw2 screenshots so far. Don't plan on getting addicted a second time, eh. By the way, you'll have a look ingame the next days around? Would be nice for sure

i still have 'em Herb. They're yours if you want them back.

Might cost you that HOD hammer tho

Feel free to log on and partake of gentlemanly leisure.

Hehe - totally off topic, but I'm just loving this reunion of ancient GW megatraders.

You guys rock(ed)!

Snograt in guru its teh green empire now! atleast on here and Development, all old guys showing back to say Heya

Lol. You are welcome to the hammer too. At least it will go to a good home. I should be popping back in the next week or so as I have yet to complete either of the GW expansions. Am I still in your guild?

=(

That is a shame it is worse.

Lol. Yeah, I remember getting way too worked up about GW and its economy. Now I get way too worked up about real life and the economy lol.

I should be reinstalling GW in the next week or so. Need to finish the expansions as I have never properly played them.

You're still a man of gentlemanly leisure, yes. Since we're so leisurely our max inactive time is somewhere between 2 and 3 years, after which you will be booted when we get around to it, if we get around to it.

It will be strange to have someone in the guild actually playing the game. All that clashing steel and splattering blood should be done far from the guild hall so as to not disturb the leisure.

Lol. Sounds like my kind of guild. Nothing like sitting around doing nothing. It is amusing to think that I managed to spend 3000 hours + playing GW yet did not know the first thing about combat in GW, Lol.

Read Through The whole topic made me think of a new dream get my hands on one of these mighty weapons or atleast see one for a ss.

- I Farm Char Solo

Ah even Herb joins the party Maybe I will catch u online during one of my random log-ins before you quit again buddy, it's been a while.

Kabong, your guild of leisure is far too active! Stop playing so much- you may go blind

Oh lawd, I am pleased by the agglomeration of trading tycoons in this thread. Although no longer part of the gentlemanly guild of lethargic and idle couch potatoes I am proud to say I still retain their qualities Hope to catch you inactive noobs online soon, although the chances of that are in all likelihood astronomical given the frequency with which you make an appearance.

@ Jason
If you had the impetus to leave I fear leisure may not be your strong suit. That having been said if you muster up the spunk to leave your burdensomely active group of go-getters you're always welcome back when the leisure strikes you.

@Chaos
You confuse playing for my tendency to leave my laptop sitting next to my toilet and logged onto guildwars for days at a time so that it's ready for the next mudbutt moment.
/age ftw.

Yea I must say you are afk indecently often. And I feel obliged to point out that your mudbutt episodes are quite rare since you're afk for "days on end" which calls for some concern regarding your gastronomical functionality.
As for rejoining, I still have two sneaky alt accounts in there, so you might say the majority of my GW identity is still in the leisure industry To be fair my current cohesive collection of cunning market connoisseurs is almost equally leisurely of late so a merger may be in order. Expand the confines of our cigar-smoked, ecto-filled leisure centre to new horizons no?
/offtopicrant

Ah so the leisurely mudbutt strikes again! Well done good sir!

Jason, I am wondering when I will catch your leisurely self online. I log in about once a week, how come I ain't seen you dawg??!

He's the busy noob with his leet university he's attending.

Eh, still he's online every one or the other day. Despite to everyone else in the guild :/

Oh, anyone wanna go back to topic?

Leisure is more than a topic, gentlemen. It's a lifestyle.

I would suggest that leisure is, in fact, the most unconditional and powerful weapon a gentleman can aspire to wield.

I say that being a Pleikki is more then being leasure gentlemen!

wow.

Closest I have is once titled "Indigestion".

I did not give you permission to post that screen shot of my bow Plekki :P

I did not give you permission to post in my thread, NoobG :P

Oh lol, how are you? Are you still in that T-Shirt printing business? I'd love to talk to you once again, but last time I saw you the talk went like "Hallo" /noreply/ "Hallo?" "Hi" -S. Nubcake is offline.-

I can if I want to

Right now I am doing ok, back is messed up so in pain :P Yep still printing shirts, we printed over 3,000 this week.

And sorry been having computer probs - it decided to stop working on me again :/ Stupid HP crap....

So I haven't played in forever, and look what I forgot I had sitting in my stash.



What is this thing worth?

Well. uhm.. Such things are impossible to value., Not sure how much deman there would be nowadays. but im sure 2000-3000ectos++

On such things the seller pretty much can say the price, nowadays theres not too much rich collectors left in game tho..

If i was u, id just customize and keep for ever

Nice to see some old faces reappear

As for the bow, customize if you don't need cash. If you do, stick it for sell.

lol, completely agree, also nice to see some awsome weapons, personally i customised my longsword just before i quit Guildwars. came back a year later to a hacked account. but luckily my titles helped me out for once. salvaged the mods off of it, but didnt break the weapon! so, back to Guildwars now with just old faithful

Might be in the market for some, there seem to be very few left around that are un customised though. but who can turn down the exta 14% and then the extra 20%

Well, I've just put mine up for sale if you, or anyone else is looking for one. I'm only playing again to get my HoM up to 30, so here's hoping it'll net enough to get there.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/w...t10454738.html

It should pay for 30 a few times over.

This is seriously an old folks home for traders. Hai guise.

This bow now is a +33% uncond.