The Vault, The Whale, and Some GW2

I’ve slowed down a bit, but I’m still making progress in Heavensward. I made it to level 57 and got through The Vault after putting it off for half a week. The last boss with all the chess pieces (or robot horse-men as I call them) was actually kind of fun. The post-dungeon cut scenes were less fun.

Sad kitty is sad.

After The Vault I was sent back to another part of the Sea of Clouds, and shortly thereafter I was asked to fight a big whale in The Limitless Blue. Thankfully 8-man trials are less intimidating than 4-man dungeons. I was going to do it Monday but of course FFXIV was down for maintenance, so I ended up completing it tonight. The first time through everybody kept dying for some reason and people dropped from the group (I don’t think it my fault), but the second time we got through it on the first try.

In other news, I logged into Guild Wars 2 again to grab the Living Story Season 3, Episode 2. I thought about starting season 3 but I want to finish the Heart of Thorns personal story first, so I pushed ahead into Chapter 8, the point where I last left off. For my own future reference, Chapter 8 involved Glint’s Egg and three puzzles. As usual, I felt like I was playing a foreign game that bore no resemblance to the GW2 I bought back in 2012, but I finished it without too much trouble. In another six months, perhaps I’ll get to Chapter 9.

The great city of over-saturated color, somewhere in Heart of Thorns.

I then noticed that I had a Level 80 character boost sitting in my inventory. I have no idea when or why I got that, but it’s pretty cool. It’s the best implementation of a level boost I’ve ever seen. (Of the, um, two that I’ve actually seen in action.) You can try out every class at Level 80 before committing to the one you want.

I already have Necromancer, Ranger, Guardian, and Revenant at 80, so I tried out Engineer, Elementalist, Warrior, Mesmer, and Thief. They all play pretty much exactly the same at 80 as they do at 20-something, so I didn’t learn much about the classes. I figured I would decide which one I least liked to play, and boost that one. Unfortunately I couldn’t decide. It’s a tie between Engineer, Elementalist, and Thief for least fun class, so the boost remains unused.

In the meantime I started playing Mesmer again. In trying it at level 80, I remembered that I’ve always liked it. I used one of those Birthday XP Boosters which lasts for 24 hours, then roamed around low-level areas doing events and world bosses and unlocking hero points. It was fun. I thought about using a level 40 boost to speed things up, but leveling is the best part of GW2. It’s slower than I remember, though. I only made it up to 30, even with the XP boost.