Guild Wars 2: New Janthir Wilds Convergence, New Legendary, Raid Chat & Wrap Up!

[@ShawnMurphyMusic]

Just wanted to add that the Homestead system is doing an excellent job of pushing you to old content, as many decorations use map currency. I wanted a large forest, so I played a lot of Drizzlewood. I liked the paintings I could put on my walls, so I needed to play Lake Doric for a while. Some trees require petrified wood, so I've been doing daily Ember Bay hearts. The Kodan Fish Tank requires fish only available in the Shiverpeaks, so I have been fishing in Frostgorge Sound. I've done more raiding recently so I could add the boss statues. And while I'd play the new convergence regardless of rewards, the thing I wanted the most was rare essence for weapon display cases for all my legendary weapons. None of these are legendary level grinds that keep you doing it for months, but it's only been 2 decoration patches so far, and I've already spent time in 4 old maps and 2 end game modes for an extended period of time. If they keep adding decorations consistently and in a way that requires specific content, I think it'll have people spending bits of time in all different areas of the game going for what interests them. And unlike legendary grinds, I'm not sick of playing the same metas 30 times like I was with Obsidian Armor. It's a nice middle ground reward system.

[@coridulou]

*Timestamps:* 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:17 - Discussing the Raid 00:04:00 - Chatting 00:34:11 - Gnashblade's Birthday 00:39:05 - Chatting 00:43:51 - Convergence (Reading Breeze Weaver Dialogue) 00:48:30 - Convergence: Mount Balrior (Public) 01:15:03 - Discussion / Thoughts on Convergence 01:22:15 - Gnashblade's Birthday Cont. 01:26:13 - QnA 02:28:38 - Final Thoughts 02:31:01 - Upcoming Plans 02:34:02 - Wrapping It Up

[@kakaochen]

Regarding Isgarren this patch, I also liked his presentation more. He reminded me of my late grandfather. Somewhat abrasive and you can see his patience working in real time. I've always felt Isgarren was torn between knowing best and allowing Tyria to make its own mistakes. I felt he saw the shorter lived races as somewhat like herding cats, so the worst we get from him is mild exasperation. Whereas with Sorrow he gets angrier because he gave her the chance to live and experience so much of life and she still makes these emotional choices which he sees as somewhat... juvenile? He forgives us for not always seeing the bigger picture, but he thinks she should know better.

[@pablopancho]

Regarding Kryptis, I doubt they are devolved Mursaat, but my pet theory is that they are a by-product of ascension. Ascending mean losing some memories and perhaps emotions associated with them, and who knows, maybe these emotions are what the Kryptis are made of.

[@relifed]

I find the soto convergence pretty fun to do if you don't focus on just doing one thing. It's a much better experience when you hop between killing enemies in the middle, destroying the trebuchets, killing bosses, running essences back and forth, etc. You also get a lot more essences that way since you're completing all the repeatable achievements at the same time.

[@wolfdarkwave]

Nobody has mentioned about the eye of janthir since we last saw it in SotO ending, I really hope we find out what it is, why it was watching us/eparch. I hope the eye wasnnt just an easter egg since it has "Janthir" in the name

[@HamiltonNguyen]

Re: the time skip - I will say when I played this patch the first time my interpretation was that it had only been a few days since the end of the base expansion and Isgarren and Waiting Sorrow were still in the middle of their argument from the ending of Chapter 10. Dagda had a comment that they had “been arguing for literal days” which I think hits harder if you interpret it to be a continuation of the same argument. It was only until your video that I realized that people were interpreting Godspawn to be taking place 3 months after the end of the base expansion 🤷‍♂️

[@egomaniacXFR]

Ohhhh! The skill system of PoE2 reminds me a liiiittle bit of GW1. And I think the devs even said that GW1 was an inspiration for it. Btw have you ever played Divinity 2: Original Sin? It's from the Baldurs Gate 3 developers and the closest thing to the GW1 build and skill system. It's also an incredible game itself. Imo better than BG3.

[@WoodenPotatoes]

Yep played both divinities, bg3 and poe1!

[@Daudran]

Your spicy pillow laptop story gave me stress, haha. Those things are dangerous!

[@CatarinaStone]

having guild missions around stuff like squad convergences and that type of content would be cool

[@martynkal.1248]

PSA that if you see your phone or laptop swelling that's really dangerous cause it can explode

[@SabineDark]

Samsung had a problem with that a few years ago, right?

[@raquetdude]

On PoE2 remember one of the devs saying that GW1 was an inspiration for it / PoE.

[@Sangria713]

I was first interested in PoE when WP mentioned something similar. I still have yet to try it but maybe I’ll come around on the sequel. Sounds cool!

[@CatarinaStone]

ura does mention the foundry specifically. I guess it might not be the foundry of failed creations, but... I don't remember who I saw say that the new fractal might be about the foundry

[@Ehsk_]

One thing that I think gets overlooked in the patch map discussion is that we were told we're getting two maps *very* late into the day, like, literally the day of the expansion launch if memory serves. I think we might've even been given a roadmap suggesting one map in the run-up to launch too? If so, that suggests to me that whatever happened behind the scenes it's very likely that we're getting what was once one map split into two, because I just can't see Janet tripping over and finding the resources for an entirely separate map at the minute - that'd be quite literally double the work. I don't think they did it cynically and I expect it'll work out better for players regardless of their reasoning though. Whether they felt the story needed the split or they were able to allocate another chunk of work to fleshing out the two "halves" more, perhaps. I also seperately think that the world map names of "Janthir Gravis" and the "Highland Shore" are somewhat red herrings. I feel like they were more likely placed to flesh out the world map rather than to imply the location of the maps, like Dzalana was for example. If I had to guess the city-map of Bava Nisos was the original idea and so we'll get a split based around it. Maybe an "East Nisos" that has us making landfall around the greener parts to push into the city, etc.

[@naryktaryk225]

Could be that cadecusis mantle opened the mist door? Probably imagined there is something interesting closed behind it (and probably get killed by titans after (maybe even used to make more titans from their souls)). Both mursaat strongholds had mist portal in them could they be a result of their experiments to get home? From the mursaat lore tablets it could be that mursaat presence at Ring of fire predate the DoA foundry so technicaly they could created the door of komalie. Or alternativly use it for their research before Fury escaped and made foundry on the other side (most interesting plot twist would be that Fury escaped because mursaat acidentaly created portal in the prison as part of their home return project).

[@broomemike1]

At 1:18:00, I think this sums up so much of gw2 's resource management. Let's spend so much time, money and effort on assets that no one will see or voice acting that no one will hear. I really think that a few filler lines of NPC dialogue would be sufficient for so many meta events. " By the tree, look at the size of that thing!" Works for Sylvari in a boss fight.

[@WoodenPotatoes]

To be fair I think anything put in a convergence is good value since it's such a repeatable format!

[@Sangria713]

I’ve largely seen this expac update as a success. I initially thought people would have complained that it was just story content paired with a convergence/raid, but as I’ve been actively playing, I’ve not seen that even once from the in-game community. It just seems as though people are quietly and diligently working towards their goals or whatever(the new spear presumably being the focus of attention). The playerbase just seems very active as of late and I think despite not hearing overwhelming praise for the release, no news is good news, in a sense. In other words, if people aren’t bitching and moaning, then they’ve probably done something right with it lol

[@CainOrdamoth]

I initially posted a massive wall of text about how I would've handled the story in these two xpacs. But I deleted it because it grew too long and is ultimately pointless. But the main takeaways I think: Nayos was a damp squib for me, too. In my opinion, the overarching stories of these two mini xpacs should've been reversed. First, we meet the wizard's court, we explore the seers and the mursaat (as well as the other elder races a bit), and we go to Janthir to combat another mursaat/neo-white mantle uprising, maybe with some titan stuff thrown in for good measure. This may be too much mursaat, given season 3, but part of me also resents season 3 and its mishandling of the mursaat situation (my opinion, the mursaat and white mantle should've been left alone until they got their own xpac). The first mini xpac could've been called Secrets of the Unseen or something. Plus, it makes sense for the mursaat to return to Tyria after their greatest foe, the elder dragons, have all been slain. The second xpac would deal with the kryptis, only this time nearly the entire xpac takes place in Nayos. Imo, we needed to spend more time there, and the characters needed to be more fleshed out an interesting, maybe with some different biomes and unique places to explore instead of it being all blue-grey and blood red. Of course I think a lot of people agree with that, I'm not breaking new ground there, lol. Then they could've tied Nayos into the mursaat story, as a lot of stuff could've been set up in Secrets of the Unseen, and I think it would've paid off a lot better. But who knows, it might yet in our reality - we're only halfway through xpac 2, everything might tie back into itself really nicely (though I kinda have my doubts, for some reason :P). Of course, all of this is pointless hindsighting, but I get kicks out of speculating about how the game could've been, lol.

[@march638]

I wish Kryptis were more Daedra-like with their personalities. As far as JW is concerned - i am excited to go to Bava Nissos but what do you think the final map would be? Likely someplace in the mists? The foundry or some other realm?

[@CryHeroCZ]

I thought that maybe first map will be outskirts of bava nisos and second map will be center city map.

[@raquetdude]

2:06:20 two immortal beings arguing for three months sounds normal to me. That would be expected honestly especially given how long they have lived. They have all the time in reality to argue, agree it does seem a bit cartoonish. Agree it doesn’t flow well, maybe if it was shown that some of the Wizards have argued for centuries it could work better maybe?

[@trippingbears1016]

Commenting before I actually finish watching, so it may be answered already, but regarding doing a show review without face cam - Vinesauce does these once in a while on Vinny's fullsauce channel. I think his most recent one was on Beetlejuice. I'm totally for WP branching out - all here for podcast style commentary.

[@WoodenPotatoes]

Awesome thanks so much I'll have a look at the format!

[@trippingbears1016]

@@WoodenPotatoes hoping what you see doesn't reflect too poorly on the content I watch. =I

[@jacobm69]

No update to the planned big hiest at the Black Lion Trading Company Vaults? I guess all the animals didnt go through with the plan considering the patch had Evons big sale going on with no mention of it.

[@WoodenPotatoes]

Omg you're right what happened to this!

[@JorikPar]

I basically had the same story for my Dell XPS (keyboard, battery, …) without the steamy bathroom. However, insurance gave me an Alienware back then because they didnt have the same modell anymore 😬

[@WoodenPotatoes]

Oh this is SUPER cool to hear! Means I don't have to blame myself for breaking it, hah! It's a shame, the XPS series seemed so high quality but I'm definitely glad I'm not buying another, build quality for the long term just doesn't seem to be there.

[@Narcemus]

I find it interesting that you have such a negative outlook on the raids. Everyone I have talked to and the talking heads that I have heard all seem to be incredibly positive about them. Especially since they are only the Normal Mode versions. And my own incredibly limited experience has been great, though I have not cleared them all.

[@LLPTV]

Mabon never forget

[@ianclarke4945]

I don't know why they keep pushing us to do these instances, only reason to do it for me was the Relic collection achieve and it was the wizard tower weekly and special so 3 reasons - wow was it just so uninteresting basically it's do this/press this and now do this and listen to this and so on (is that really something that people will chose to repeat do?)... Rather like the new story part which is mostly click on NPC wait wait wait till they finish saying whatever now click on next rinse repeat half a dozen times. And I'm not the only one whose finding the move from open world content to instanced "must do" content uninspiring. At least the nightly meta runs are still popular and enjoyable to repeatedly do, so much more nuance.

[@valakasss]

u used to be agreat utuber man, iloved watching ur passion, this game is just not it anymore