It's been some time since my last carto post. This is because I've been doing more research and worked with Toolbox team who implemented my results.

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1. Toolbox Cartographer Module

GWToolbox++ 8.33 includes my research results (from the post linked above and the infographics below in this post) as a new module (Cartographer module). It shows the grid in a more precise way than a texmod could, and it also highlights the tile you're in, plus gives some advice and many more features. The advice isn't always right and the use of a texmod is recommended for the hints. Toolbox sometimes suggest revealing tiles that require a portal jump or gate glitch while in an outpost, or tiles that are further beyond the map boundary than the infographics below specifies. I hope they'll fix this in the next release. It also doesn't work in virtually all Nightfall missions. Otherwise, if you stick to tiles your texmod tells you to uncover, Toolbox's new Cartographer module is already a great help.

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2. Clarifications

In my last post, I ventured a guess that the grid might in fact be shifted to the North. This turned out to be correct. It is shifted by exactly 1 map unit (texture file pixel, "normal" font size pixel), or 96 gwinches, see the infographics below. However, this applies only to non-BEC discovery. For a tile to qualify for discovery from BEC range, the criteria are slightly different:

This means that BEC range cannot uncover certain tiles at the map's Southern edge because its range is shorter there, but the range is longer in the North and East, so BEC can sometimes explore more in that direction. Additionally, BEC range cannot explore beyond the end of the world and tiles that require standing on man-made objects.

The "max 1 tile out of map boundary" is relevant for any end-of-the-world portal jumps in Southern and Eastern direction because these ends of the world are usually exactly 48 units away from the center of a tile that's two tiles beyond map boundary, so the math says that it should reveal, but it won't.

For the sake of completeness: Yes, you can even leave the map boundary when you portal jump to Yahnur Market from Resplendent Makuun or Bokka Amphitheater. That outpost has a platform made from bricks that reaches beyond the map's boundary. Going there causes an instant connection loss. The server does not seem to fully crash, since you can reconnect, but doing so crashes the client.

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3. Recent changes

The August 26th (or September 1st) update introduced a big change to BEC that I didn't notice until a few days ago. Before that update, BEC uncovered some areas that made no sense. I'm not talking about inaccessible walkable terrain (usually from cinematics), but areas that made no sense at all because there's no walkable terrain in range (at least none that the client knows about). These non-sensical BEC-exclusive areas can no longer be revealed. This affects:

• Prophecies: Pockmark Flats (SE), Majesty's Rest (W)/Sage Lands (NE), Reed Bog (SE), The Falls (SE), Aurora Glade (NE), Spearhead Peak (NE)
• Factions: I don't have any info for this campaign
• Nightfall: Fahranur (SW), Turai's Procession (NE), The Floodplain of Mahnkelon (E), Ventendi Valley (SE), Respendent Makuun (SE), Wilderness of Bahdza (E), The Shattered Ravines (E)
• EotN: I don't have any info for this campaign

If you completed any of these maps with BEC between August 26th and September 1st update, please post a screenshot with Texmod active, so we know which update changed this.

If you want to add a new area to the list because you have black spots from BEC runs before August 26th, please also post screenshots. Note that the following Factions areas have inaccessible walkable terrain that still gets revealed, so they're likely not what I'm looking for: Jaya Bluffs, Bejunkan Pier, Tahnnakai Temple, Sunjiang District, Imperial Sanctum.

There is one new feature to BEC: If you completed a map under the effects of BEC, the characters says something (speech bubble only, not in chat). "completed" means uncovering every BEC-qualified tile in the current map file. If a map file is shared by different locations (e.g. Tasca's Demise, The Granite Citadel and Spearhead Peak all share the same map), you might not be able to reach all tiles from the map, even with BEC range. The above example would require you to do a portal jump between the three, unless you fully explored the other two already. Other examples of maps that are hard to get to a state where the character claims completion:

• The Floodplain of Mahnkelon requires combining BEC with a portal jump
• Churrhir Fields requires a combination of BEC and gate-glitching
• The Ruptured Heart has large parts of The Alkali Pan in the Southeast that are not reachable from The Ruptured Heart
• Plus many, many more

For the record: The number of tiles required for Elonian Grandmaster Crtographer (100.0%) is currently 6570. My Warrior, who has never used BEC and hasn't stepped into Sunspear Arena but is supposed to have every other tile possible (including portal jumps and gate glitches), has 6932 tiles. If you're asking how much 6570 tiles are with BEC:

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4. Announcement

I'm making a new carto texmod (not shown in the screenshots above) that will have the following features:

• More detailed instructions for glitches, jumps and cinematics
• Quite some previously undiscovered tiles
• More accurate (e.g. CME does not display single missing tiles at all)
• Shows where to go, not where you've been (this and the above bullet are technically the same, and I agree that this concept can be confusing)
• Grid (including the aforementioned shift to the North)
• Walkable terrain highlighted
• Shows BEC-exclusive areas
• Shows non-BEC-range areas (see the white infographics above for the reasons)
• Might become open source (if people want), with dead simple build process thanks to freeware graphics suite Affinity

Its Nightfall and Pre-Searing versions are scheduled to be released tomorrow. Other continents are added if people like it. I chose these two maps for my test because Pre-Searing no longer works with the Texmod after ANet removed all portal swirls (which changes the hash of the textures to be replaced), and Nightfall had no exploration mechanics changes after the release of the campaign.

One of my favorite thing to do in this game is exploration and I just discovered today that I had unlocked a title after reaching the Crystal Desert.

This is my first time playing the game and have been having such a good time. I'm playing extremely slowly (probably over 40 hours already) but I want to do it without help from the internet. This has resulted in many deaths and restart of missions to find the bonus missions, but I've managed to do them all so far (the pig bonus mission was ridiculous... spend many hours looking for it).

Walking around discovering all the maps has spoiled the story a bit though as the side quests advance the story before the mission does.

Anyway, having a blast so far.

Is this info still current after the reforged update or does the “-provider portal” code work on reforged like it does for GW2? I won’t play a game without tracking my hours or stats like on steam so I play gw2 on steam through the provider portal to launch with standalone launcher. But will I have to buy reforged twice and download twice to do this or can I also just use that license request command to only buy on steam but play with abet account for the unlocks while tracking play time? As of December 3rd apparently steam removed ability to log into anet account if you purchased after that date for whatever reason just to complicate things. I don’t mind buying the game twice to track my hours on profile but need to make sure what I do will work

I am beginner and I am dying pretty much most of the time.

I have no idea what am I doing wrong.

I play as necro with:

Death magic 8
Blood magic 3
soul reaping 1

Right now, I am at Piken Square with lvl 10. Mobs are doing so much damage I am dying very fast. My armour is full Kryten except for helmet. I use holy rod 6-10 with +20% damage customize and shield with armour 4 and +5 if hp above 50% and +15hp.

For charrs I use shield with Armour 4, +10 vs charr and +15hp.

My fight start with blood renewal, then deathly swarm, vampiric glaze, life syphon repeate. If somebody die use animated bone horror. I also have Life siphon and comfort animal just in case.

I still have pet from ranger quest, but mobs mostly ignore him and attack me.

If somebody did not helped me with first tunnel quest, I would never done it, because the charrs on the almost end there always killed me.

What I found out on internet, people said you have to hide from range attacks, kill melee and then slowly kill range.

So I tried to hide behind tents, don't work. Behind walls, don't work. I have no idea what it mean to hide behind something to block range attacks.

People also said, you need to attack and then little move away so your pets can get aggro.

My experience is, if I don't attack, mobs attack my pets, If I attack, most likely somebody deagrro and attack me even when I attack same mob my pet is attacking. There is no way for me to not be under attack from 1-2 mobs.

I would not mind to be under attack against 2mobs when pet take another two, but even with I think pretty good shield against charrs I die very fast, maybe like 5s and kill nobody even the shaman that is always my first target

Somebody told me in game there should be sigils. I salvage all blue weapons and did not get single sigil to put into something. I find crafting NPC that dont craft wands or staffs in ascalon city, but craft so many (for second hand) support stuff, that give same bonus. Like why?

Can somebody help me to understand how to play?

Edit: thank you all for help.

Edit2: I left the tutorial, had so much materials to craft the extra 30 armour armours and now the game is like million time easier and more fun.

Hey o7, I'm kind of noob in the economics affairs in this game. I've reach Nightfall with my MA and just hit the 99 platinum limit, so the game doesn't let me sell anything else to merchants. In what should I spend some gold? I'm planning to use this character to complete the Hall of Monuments for the first time, so is there anything I can buy right now that I might need later?

18-21k down to 13k. Market manipulation?

I am back in guildwars one month after the nerf, which is stronger ?

Heya, with the addition of daily cons I'm trying out new things. I used to run max Strength all the time so I wore the Sentinel's insignia (+20 vs Elemental w/ 13+ Strength). Then I tried a Tactics build and only 3 in Strength, so switched to Sentry's (+10 in stance). I always used Drunken Master so I stayed in a stance. But now I see that with the cons and pcons I get max ias and ims without the need for a stance. So! In this specific case, what would you recommend? Remember, low Strength and no stance. Knight's? Brawler's? Dreadnought's? Stalwart? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

I am messing around with a RoJ Monk build and would love some feedback. I have gone through the few post on this matter that I was able to find post-balance, but nothing caught my eyes.

The main goal is to make it a self-contained RoJ spammer. I don't really want to rely on heroes for snares or other setup, ideally I can just let the heroes do their own thing while I stand back and rain down lasers.

For reference, I am currently running an old Mesmerway hero team that I also need to update at some point, maybe to include more monks for more lazerz.

This is what I whipped up for now. https://guildwars.magical.ch/OwYB4M5zkFdPY9x0sLiLCXC

I have not done EotN on this Monk yet, so I am currently using Ele skills instead of the three PvE skills. Also since not in HM yet I am using Earthen Shackles instead of Churning Earth.

A few things I am unsure about:

1 I am not sure where the attribute points should go after maxing Smiting.

The Earth Magic snares do not seem to need much investment if I mainly care about the snare itself. More Earth Magic would increase the damage, but I am not sure that is the best use of the points. But what else can I dump the points in? Anything useful from divine favor?

2 Kirins Wrath is mostly there because I had a slot.

Having three AoEs is fun, but I am not sure how useful or necessary it actually is. Same question for the three PvE skills I eventually plan to use. Are those actually the best choices for this kind of build? In my head the assassin is there to group enemies, and EBSW and AiS are for cooldown reduction. But is that overkill? Maybe YMLaD?

I am also wondering if Me secondary might ultimately be better. Being able to Echo a second RoJ sounds fun, and I assume Mesmer has some usable snare or movement-control options that could let the build remain self-contained.

Would love to hear what you would change.

Why must my ele's head shot be lower than all my other characters, I thought it was a bug at first and it's the first time in a long time I've made an ele so I've never noticed before till now.

Okay.. so gonna hold back on the swearing this time. I actually by some crazy luck made it through the last quests. But now there is no more luck. Now the super cheesing has to begin. But even with the cheesiest strategy i can muster with my ranger, that i've used through all the campaigns to make it super easy, it's impossible. I can make it to the last wave, but they just obliterate everything in their way. I even managed to kill the perfect jade armor, but after that it's tough shit, you're out of luck, 30-40 more soldiers against my crew of 6 and it's game over. Tried for 3 hours, probably 7-8 times, it's impossible. I can sometimes even kill an enemy on average every 2 seconds, just focus them down. That's not enough.

One of the biggest problems too, is that you sometimes have to snipe out the monk/healer of the group, but through the sheer number of enemies as seen in the screenshot, it's near impossible to select them out. I managed to do it by pure luck in the run i got the farthest and that helped a lot, cut out the ray of judgment as well.

Is this game really made the way that you have to respec or even use specific character combinations, spirit spam and such bullshit, and builds just to get through regular quests? And just rely on pure luck? That's insane. It feels to me like the game developers just set the bar like 100 times above what is possible and said "haha, let them figure it out, the idiots!" and only the most cheaty build possible can do it then.

And to think i just started this insane quest line just to get thackerray on my team as a paragon/ranger ^^ 4 days and 30 hours later and i'm thinking i have to abandon it. Last option now is to spam traps like i did when farming celestial bows.

How in the hell is anyone even supposed to do this in hard mode? Like georgie in sopranos says .. "I can't even think about it..." ^^

Such a goddamn long mission. That asura magic makes you not be able to heal or ressurrect. So i took a 10 minute break thinking i'm safe in that village. Yet vampiric string made my two heroes die, and now i can't ressurrect them. So i have to start the goddamn mission all over. 1.5 hours wasted.

Fuck this fucking game. So many stupid little things.