It’s been 2-3 weeks since I’ve started playing Guild Wars 2 again. So… what am I doing?

Thus far, I have been really leaning into the current Fractal event. Which, to be fair, is primarily due to the FOMO elements. The introduction of the new Legendary gloves you can get for running Quickplay versions of the early Fractals will be sticking around, but there’s another “reward track” that grants two Bag space slots, a 20-slot bag, and a Legendary starter kit that will be going away on October 7th. Theoretically, you can still grind most/all of it by the time this post goes Live, but I have enjoyed gaining some extra progress – via Daily/Weekly achievement resets – by spacing things out.

There is probably some debate to be had as to whether adding the Quickplay feature to Fractals will lead to more players doing Fractals after the event ends. Honestly… maybe? It certainly has demystified the game mode to an extent, as my normal M.O. for this sort of group content would be to watch YouTube videos to understand all the mechanics before even stepping inside. That sort of thing is not particularly viable when Quickplay has like 10ish options randomly picked for you. Of course, everything has been toned way down for the game mode, so you get the gist after seeing the maps several times even if you aren’t reading text (since everyone is Go-Go-Go).

Another piece of “content” I have very much enjoyed is the Wizard’s Vault. This is a rework of the Daily Achievements (read: daily quests) system with a fancy new interface and currency called Astral Acclaim. It was very annoying at first, as it had a mixture of PvE and PvP objectives, but once I figured out that you can uncheck the PvP box and get all PvE-based objectives, everything was grand. You have both Daily and Weekly tabs you can work on, and then you have a large menu of rewards to choose from that eventually reset every quarter or whatever. So, for example, you can choose to spend Astral Acclaim on certain cosmetics, or a Legendary starter kit, or a bag containing 1g (x90), or your choice of an Ascended Weapon, and so on. The Weekly tab requires six objectives to get the big bonus chest, but there are eight total options so you even have some choice to skip ones you find annoying.

The one thing I haven’t done is purchase any expansion content. For one thing, Visions of Eternity is right around the corner (Oct 28). While $25 is not onerous for an MMO expansion, purchasing three of them back-to-back is another matter. Plus, you know how I am: why pay full price when the expansions were literally on sale at the beginning of the month? I missed that boat, but I’m assuming there will be another sale around launch day. Of course, waiting is always kind of risky, as I could easily come to my senses and start playing other things again.

[Fake Edit] Steam Autumn sale is on, and now those two expansions are $17.50 and $19.99. Huzzah!

The other thing I haven’t (yet) started in on are unlocking Legendaries. In pretty much every guide out there, the recommendation is for players to not do weapon or armor Legendaries first, but instead go for accessories (rings, amulet, etc). This makes some sense, as accessories apply to every character you ever make, whereas armor is broken up into weight classes (can’t use Light Armor Legendary on your Thief). Weapon Legendaries can apply to multiple characters… but not if they are off-meta or off-spec. Well, this is GW2, so meta probably doesn’t really matter all that much.

Regardless, the “problem” is that I have effectively decked out all my alts in Ascended accessories already. It’s been like seven years since this post, but farming Winterberries an unholy amount of times will get you most everything you need. Berserker stats won’t help Viper builds, but as long as you alternate what you get your alts, you can usually just shuffle the accessories around each time balance patches change the math. Grinding out Vision or Aurora or whatever may provide a little QoL bump, but it will not actually improve any stats. So, dilemma.

For now, I will continue what I’m doing for as long as it remains fun. Which it is. For now. Although, I came across this “resolution” while looking up past GW2 posts, and… yeah. We’ll see.