This expansion has been a rollercoaster. Good, annoying, interesting, ugh, …oh my goodness. That fucked me up.
Like I said, I’m glad heart quests have returned. And a few of them are linked to the mounts (the only way to get your hands on them). However at one time in the story, I reached a snag where I felt I was genuinely fucked. Got to a point where I require
the next mount in the expansion; the Springer. However, I’m required to unlock another mastery for my Raptor, in order to jump over a huge gap to get to the area where I can get said mount. …Only problem is, I’m completely OUT of Mastery Points!! I require three!
This wasn’t one of those situations that I require XP grinding in order to unlock. Ohhhh no. I have the XP…, but it’s going to waste because I cannot unlock the Mastery!
I asked Nappie (who was asleep at the time and was for most of the day until I really didn’t need him anymore because I had already got moving way before he responded) thinking I required his help (or Shiro’s help as he has a Turtle flying mount that would work in my
favor) to guide me to some (unknown to me at the time) Mastery points, just enough to get the ball rolling again.
I got desperate enough that I asked the GW2 Discord, thinking they aren’t really going to be much help (especially when asking that I’m looking for “easy to acquire” Mastery points). Instead they give me a map to four Mastery Points that are obtainable with
the Raptor. …The first one being the Sous Chef. And they got an earful how much I loathe that NPC. They all agree that Mastery challenge is hard.. but they all did it. I explained why it’s.. just simply impossible, as I get stressed under pressure. It’s not something I can control. But, I do not have to do it, as there are three remaining Mastery Points I can acquire.
Following the map, 2 of the 3 Mastery points are easy to acquire. The last one, involves being challenged. However said challenge isn’t really that impossible for me. It’s a super simple memory game with six nodes that light up in a certain (random) sequence, and you only have to do it right three times to get the Mastery Point. To make it a bit more easy for me, I attempted to put the sequence on a notebook. It took quite a lot of tries, but finally I got my 3rd Mastery Point, and was able to unlock it.
Back to the spot I go, and was able to jump over the large gap. In this new area I didn’t know how to get to the spot for the Springer, but eventually found it.. only to learn I have to complete their damn Heart quest just to buy a saddle. It took a long time, but I finally got it. And I wanted to tear the quest giver a new one for the hell they put me through. But it’s whatever, I can finally bu– wait WHAT?! You want fucking TRADE CONTRACTS on top of wanting 1 Gold piece?!?! WHY?!?! …UGH!!! Was forced to ask, how do I get
them “quickly”, and was told, to do events back in the main hub. And my whiny spoiled brat voice came out. “I DON’T WANNA!!!!”
Especially how they give you so little (5 or 3 contracts, even for winning the damn race they have there), and I needed 9 more to get the damn mount. Thankfully, this would be the only time I’d ever come up on this problem, as somehow I have hundreds of trade contracts now.
But now I have the Springer, and I noticed something pretty quick with the mount system in this game. I get it, ArenaNet. I get you.. I still don’t like you, though (for doing this). You’ve taken WoW’s idea of mounts, and made them “feel more rewarding”. While
also, reminding me of the Avatars from BONELAB: each of these mounts having their own strengths and weaknesses. However, unlike that game, you can’t easy switch on the fly.
You have to dismount (if you’re on a mount), click the small bar above the mount
icon, pick the mount you want, then click on the mount icon. It won’t re-mount you on the mount you’ve chosen.
That extra step should not be required. But I do see why they did that, as there would be a lot of “I didn’t want to mount up!” or “I missclicked!” complaints from the community.
Still annoying though, when my mindset is stuck on the way BONELAB does it. But they want to make it “fair and balanced”.. BAH!! Humbug!
Moving on from that, I needed to find a good dragon. Yes, you heard me right. This game isn’t just about the Elder Dragons. But when I got there, the dragon was being chained down by the expansion’s main boss, who’s the God of War.
No.. not that God of War!
THIS God of War!!
And he is TOUGH. Tougher than Mordremoth. He overwhelmed all of us. And he was about to kill me.. as in, permadeath. As in, Game Over. But the dragon saved my life at the last second, by giving his own life. Wow.
I wanted to learn all about the dragon who saved me. And I was able to, and then some. But since I’m already in spoiler territory I cannot mention what I’ve learned.
All of that eventually lead up to.. an actual solo battle against the God of War. And this guy was literally toying with my emotions. I swear he could had shattered my ego by
saying “pathetic. This is the mighty Elder Dragon slayer, the one everyone says
solo’d Zhaitan and Mordremoth. Yet you are nothing against me. Why’s that?
Ohh, because you had friends! You are NOT a soloer!!”
I fought hard, very hard. I had him at (what I feel) was 20% health before he overwhelmed me. But I believe the fight was rigged to make you fail, to make you feel pathetic. And there was no dragon that could save me this time. He killed me, and all I could do is watch in horror as everything went black. ..Especially when it happened in first person.
…That fucked me up. I can’t stop thinking about it. Yeah I did manage to come back to life but I had to do a lot, still.. I had to quit early, because even as I write this I dunno. It.. it doesn’t give me hope. Yet at the same time, gotta remember.. there is more gameplay past this. But I still remember one NPC saying “be careful Commander. The next time you
die, might be your last”. ..What if that means for now on, I will never be able to respawn using a waypoint if I get defeated?
*shudders* Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. Then again, that would be stupid to do to your playerbase after this point. You know? Having your character suddenly
disappear (aka die) from your character list because you suck at the game, would be causing a lot of people to leave.