Farmer's Handbook: Kessex Hills - Basic Crafting Materials

The Farmer's Handbook is a column dedicated to guide you to drop locations of crafting materials that can be obtained across the world of Guild Wars 2.

     Welcome back to another edition of Farmer's Handbook! This time we take a look at the centaur-contested land, Kessex Hills. As usual, this will be split into two parts. One for basic crafting materials and another for fine crafting materials.

     In this article, we'll be focusing on the basic crafting materials you can find in Kessex Hills. This map is primarily populated by centaurs due to several areas in the map that are constantly under attack by them as well as a large underwater area of krait, a mining site for bandits as well as a dreary swamp of the undead.

Guild Wars 2 Beta for Mac OS X out now!

     For those Apple Guild Wars fans that have been locked out of the game since it is only for the PC. Good news, the beta is now up for OS X for those that have purchased the game. According to the post all you need is an active account and you can hop right in. Here are the minimum and recommended specifications to run it.

Talking Tyria: Redefining the Endgame

Talking Tyria is our editorial column that discusses the varying opinions around Guild Wars 2.

     One of the more controversial topics in Guild Wars 2 is how Arena Net handles the endgame. To give a quick definition for those not too versed in MMO lingo, the endgame is defined as progression once you hit the level cap. This is the point where you no longer improve your character stats/skills based on gaining experience and levels from quests or killing mobs. What you do once you reach this point defines what the endgame is for a particular game. Some typical endgame content that we have been accustomed with MMO's are either PVE-oriented item progression (which means we have to group up and tackle dungeons or raids to kill bosses that drop these items) or PVP-oriented (where there are several modes where we can fight against other players). Arena Net seems to be choosing a different design strategy at approaching this, like many of the game's other features, and it is causing quite a divide between players as to whether or not it is the correct decision. Basically, this one statement defines the endgame of Guild Wars 2. The endgame starts at level one.

Krytan Cartographer: Queensdale Treasure Chest Locations

Krytan Cartographer showcases articles dedicated to showing unique and interesting locations in the world of Guild Wars 2. This will cover map completion, challenging vistas, treasure chest locations and much more.

     Treasure chests are handled slightly differently in Guild Wars 2. Instead of random spawns, chests are found in a specific spot and just has a daily timer attached to it. These chests are also usually guarded by a veteran mob. In this case, think of these like public dungeons where everyone can band together if you happen to be in the same area.

That said, let get started with the human starting area. Queensdale has three treasure chest spawn locations.

Farmer's Handbook: Queensdale - Fine Crafting Materials

The Farmer's Handbook is a column dedicated to guide you to drop locations of crafting materials that can be obtained across the world of Guild Wars 2.

     This is the second part to the Farmer's Handbook for Queensdale. In this article, we'll be focusing on good farming locations for fine crafting materials. To quickly define this, these are the items with a blue text that are used in various crafting recipes and are usually tied to a particular statistic e.g. blood is used for power, claws for precision, etc. So without further ado, here are the locations.

Digital sales for Guild Wars 2 is now available (again)

     The digital edition was previously brought down in a statement from Arena Net to preserve the experience of the current playerbase. However, in today's news, it seems that the company is now quite confident in expanding the population once again. Digital sales for Guild Wars 2 is now back on sale at their official website. This is true for both the regular and digital deluxe edition and are priced at $59.99 and $79.99 respectively. So if you still have any friends that missed this the first time around, it's time to remind them to get out their credit cards before this goes down again.

     Arena Net has also released the official launch trailer for the game entitled Our Time Is Now. Check out  the video and links after the break.

Talking Tyria: How dynamic should events be?

Talking Tyria is our editorial column that discusses the varying opinions around Guild Wars 2.

     One of the main draws of Guild Wars 2 is the dynamic event system. This was put in place to replace the more traditional talk to NPC quest mechanic. There has been a lot of previews before the game was released and the developers promised a system where in what you do or don't do affects the world around you. There has been quite some speculation and skepticism before and now that the game is finally here, it seems that there are two different points of view about the implementation of the system.

State of the Game Update for September 7

     There are some significant changes incoming as found in the recent state of the game update released by Arena Net. The company now shows which areas they are targeting next and it seems that some of the main issues since the launch will be addressed tonight. Check past the break as we see what we can expect in tonight's update.

Self-Help Site for Guild Wars 2 is up; Account Password Reset also Available

     Following the release of the technical support forums, the development team has recently opened the self-help section in their website. Here everyone would find a list of questions, answers and guides that tackle common problems regarding accessing the game. The site also includes a section for general announcements. Here are some highlights to the announcement for today:

• The Trading Post is currently down for maintenance
• Guild invites may only be received intermittently. Additionally, some players who were in guilds have been kicked and cannot be reinvited. We're investigating. 

     While problems regarding the trading post is nothing new at this point, people being kicked from guilds is a particularly new issue. Let's hope this gets resolved over the next few days.

     In other somewhat related news, everyone can now reset their password by following a link in the self-help site. This feature was previously disabled to prevent hackers from obtaining login information from leaked email addresses for various Guild Wars 2 fansites.

Source: Guild Wars 2 Support Site

Farmer's Handbook: Queensdale - Basic Crafting Materials

The Farmer's Handbook is a column dedicated to guide you to drop locations of crafting materials that can be obtained across the world of Guild Wars 2.

     Welcome to the first post of the Farmer's Handbook. As mentioned in the introduction post, we'll be splitting the guide into two main sections for each map. This section will be covering the basic crafting materials namely ores, wood, cloth, leather and crops.

     In this article, we'll be focusing on the Human starting area Queensdale. This map is populated by a good variety of enemies though you'd find that bandits and centaurs are quite common.