It still seems strange that we are already coming to the end of another Guild Wars 2 expansion cycle, and yet here we are. It’s like I always say, time flies when you’re playing a Chronomancer. ArenaNet’s new yearly expansion cadence is starting to feel comfortable, and it’s starting to seem like the team is really hitting its stride, learning from missteps in Secrets of the Obscure and iterating on what worked well.
Play Guild Wars 2This release, dubbed Absolution, brings with it the conclusion of the Janthir Wilds story, a new full-sized map with meta event, and a new fractal. And if that isn’t enough for you, it also brings with it a number of quality-of-life improvements, new relics, additional housing mastery tier, and new cosmetic skins that I don’t even have time to talk about today! Let me give you an overview of what to expect based on my own preview during the press event last week.
The city of Bava Nisos, a long-abandoned site of a battle between the Mursaat and the Titans, has – over a long period of time – fused with the remains of a massive Titan. As you press into the city, you will be greeted with a creepy mix of ornate architecture with disturbing organic structures winding themselves throughout. Be prepared to fight a lot of Titanspawn as well as Titanic Macrophages – that is, monsters formed by the leftover immune system of the beast. The atmosphere of the zone pulses between cool and warm tones, and if you listen closely in some areas, you can hear what sounds like breathing or a beating heart in time with it. It is all tinged with body horror, but as someone who doesn’t like horror, I will say it didn’t make me any more uncomfortable than, say, Inner Nayos or Orr. That said, I wasn’t able to make it all the way through the story, so maybe it gets worse further in, and of course your personal tolerances may be different from mine.
The devs gave us a taste of part one of the zone’s meta event. Every two hours, Livia (whose voiceover, along with Countess Anise’s, will be added at a later date as a side effect of the ongoing voice actors strike) will have enough of waiting for the Tyrian Alliance to act. She’ll decide to use Legavo, aka the Scepter of Orr, to push the lingering Titanspawn back into the mists. Why did we have that big meeting to decide not to use the scepter if she was just going to use it anyway? I don’t know, but that’s neither here nor there.
If you are a raider, you will recognize the model of the first boss of this meta as resembling Gorseval the Multifarious, the amalgamation of a bunch of ghosts into one giant, creepy undead monster. Apparently the White Mantle who lived here tried the same trick again and created another ghost amalgamation here in Bava Nisos, this one named Lextalion the Merciless. ArenaNet’s meta designer explained that he created the Lextalion fight to be a modified version of the Gorseval boss, with some mechanics that should be familiar to raiders, but this is certainly not a copy-paste of the same boss; Lextalion is much more mobile, with several distinct mechanics, and it is, of course, tuned for a lot more players, being an open world boss. I’m sure some players will grouse about the asset reuse here, but in my experience, there are a lot of Guild Wars 2 players out there who have no interest in raiding, so why not let them experience a version of this boss?
I think it should be noted here that at first glance, it seems like there is a magical barrier closing off most of the map when the meta is not running, but don’t worry, players can take a Mursaat Mirror to the other side. The devs also pointed out that while the entire story and almost everything else on the map can be completed without engaging in the meta event, for 100% map completion you will need to follow a meta group, as certain parts of the map are closed off until the event progresses.
If you’ve been collecting the various backpacks from the other three quarterly releases of Janthir Wilds, your hard work is finally about to pay off! After finishing the story of Absolution, players can start a series of achievements that take players through a story about a wizard who has accidentally contacted an entity from the Mists called Orrax, who wants to use you to manifest its way into Tyria. He seems like a helpful little guy who simply wants to give you stats and give you gliding piggyback rides. Certainly not an evil demon who has nefarious plans for Tyria or its citizens, nope.
The first half of the collection will unlock the Orrax Contained backpiece, which allows you to carry Orrax around safely(?) trapped in a stone backpack, like General Zod in Superman II, later upgrading to the Orrax Manifested backpiece and the Orrax Manifested Glider. Both the backpiece and the glider have four dye channels, so the custom colors on your character’s new spooky tail can match your new spooky flying death worm! Or mix it up if you want; I’m not your mom.
Here’s something I don’t get to say often: The backpiece looks particularly cool on Charr, as it not only blends well into the hair on the back of their head/neck but also integrates neatly into their Charr tail.
This release also brings with it a new fractal, called Kinfall. In it, players will take on the role of some Lowland Kodan who have entered the Icebrood-infested lair of the Whisper of Jormag in an attempt to rescue a member of their tribe. It features a unique mechanic called Life-Fire, a buff that protects anyone within a circle around its holder from the Deathly Rime debuff – think Snowblind, but with portable bonfires. The catch is that as your group goes along, you must sacrifice one of the Life-Fires to progress. By the end, only two of your party will hold the all-important buff — or one if you are on challenge mode — so everyone will need to stack near them. The higher the scale of the fractal, the smaller the circle projected by Life-Fire.
Worse, the fractal’s final boss, The Whisper of Jormag, has a phase during which it attempts to steal your Life-Fires until its defiance bar is broken. The devs pointed out that this process takes some time – it’s quicker at higher tiers, of course – so organized groups might choose to delay their CC to focus instead on a big burst of DPS before their Life-Fires are stolen. Don’t worry: Even if they are stolen, they will return to the two remaining players that were holding them when they entered the room as soon as the CC bar is broken.
I asked if this mechanic precludes the possibility of running this fractal with a smaller group, as I know some players enjoy that kind of challenge. The devs responded thus: “This fractal can be run with two or more players. Think of there being five [Life-Fire] charges in total. If you enter the fractal with fewer than five players, the remaining charges are simply unassigned. When someone sacrifices a charge at one of the frozen gates, a new one is immediately applied to them.” Thanks for thinking of the outside-the-box players, ANet!
If you pay attention to fractals, you have doubtless noticed the trend of their becoming increasingly lengthy and complex. If you yearn for the days when fractals were simple and quick, you may want to give Kinfall a try, as the devs promised a much shorter, easier experience, comparing the length and difficulty to Volcanic. I asked the devs what prompted this change of heart:
“We’re players too, so we understand that longer doesn’t always mean more fun. With this fractal (which also includes a CM), we wanted to create something enjoyable that doesn’t take as long to complete as the other recent fractals we’ve added. It’s refreshing to have a new fractal that doesn’t take 15–20 minutes to run. That said, we’re not suggesting there’s no place for longer fractals—it’s just that we’ve released several longer ones recently, so we wanted to mix things up with a shorter experience this time.”
Absolution is a solid wrap-up of the Janthir Wilds expansion cycle. The map definitely feels different from anything we’ve gotten in the past, and I can’t wait to play the meta event all the way through. I’m also happy to see a return to a more classic design for fractals, as I’ve always thought they kind of lost their identity when they started getting longer and more difficult. And of course, it’s always nice to have new options for legendaries. Add in the various quality of life changes, and there isn’t a lot more I could ask for.
Flameseeker Chronicles is one of Massively OP’s longest-running columns, covering the Guild Wars franchise since before there was a Guild Wars 2. Now penned by Tina Lauro and Colin Henry, it arrives on Tuesdays to report everything from GW2 guides and news to opinion pieces and dev diary breakdowns. If there’s a GW2 topic you’d love to see explored, drop ’em a comment!
