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Hi all, I know this is a little late, but if you haven't seen it yet Derior has a guide up for the Twilight Oasis Fractal. (Thanks to Pyro and his friends I will now always think of it as toilet oasis. Now you will too.) This one is still at the pug killer stage as far as I'm concerned. even though I've done it several times, I still learned a lot from the video. I promise to use my smoke scale much more liberally in the future Enjoy!

Since the WvW rewards update, I've returned to playing WvW a good amount of time per week. It is undeniable that my server Tarnished Coast is struggling right now. The server that I remember from 2 years ago that was full of commanders, guilds, and militia in almost all of the time zones (frequently queueing multiple maps) is gone, and TC is a very different place today. Luckily, I'm also a very different player than I was 2 years ago, and the combination of the two has allowed me to find new ways to enjoy WvW. In my previous WvW life, I was a zergling. I ran the build that I was told, I fulfilled the role I was assigned, and I stuck to the commander like white on rice. That was fun and it is one way you can play WvW (I still do this for around half of my WvW time). However, this time around, I'm getting a lot of satisfaction out of sentrying, defending, and havocing. A perfect example is yesterday afternoon. I zoned into TCBL and a commander and small group (not really Zerg size) was running around capping stuff. I joined them just as they took Hills, and I decided to make it my new home. I told the commander my intention (as a side note a sentry/defender who is in TS with a commander is worth at least 5 who aren't) and he told me "I haven't bothered to siege or defend Hills this afternoon because they keep flipping it." I said to him, "I understand, but that stops now." Over the next 2.5 hours I proceeded to siege the entire Keep, add useful improvement and tactics, and defend from enemy attacks. I'm especially proud of one of my counter attacks that slowed the enemy long enough allow reinforcements, including the commander and our Zerg, to arrive, saving Hills from certain disaster. Turns out one door trebuchet at an outer gate is worth at least 3 arrowcarts, especially when the enemy commander is too stupid to keep his Zerg away from your supply draining putrid cows. (For those who are interested we still own Hills and it's been 17 hours since I was there.) Over the past few weeks, I've noticed that if I make a tower or keep my new "home" help starts to materialize. As Hills started to upgrade, I got visits from roamers who captured the camps that send supplies to Hills, escorted yaks, and helped me refresh the boatload of siege weapons I had build for Hills's defense. Yes, when TC was strong I would never have taken on this role, mostly because it was already being done by others. However the new state of affairs has given me incentive to learn how to siege and defend towers and keeps, how to efficiently capture camps by myself or with just a few other people, how to keep myself alive when a thief tries to gank me (when will thieves learn that not all eles are squishy?!?!), and more. I really feel like my personal actions contribute to our score (a keep or even a tower saved from the enemy contributes a significant amount of points to the skirmish score). Yes, my former WvW commanders have contacted me and asked me if I'd like to transfer. Some have even offered to pay my transfer fee. But I'm torn. Server loyalty is a relic now with server linking and the large changes many servers including TC have undergone, and it would be nice to be on a "winning" server for those extra pips. On the other hand, I'm learning a ton and it feels like I'm making an actual impact. It's the classic struggle of intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards, and I'm not sure whats going to win in the end. See you in the Mists! PS I'm going to get together the resources I've been using to learn about WvW life outside of the Zerg. I'll hopefully post them in the next entry.

I found this article interesting (and affirming of my life choices) so I though I'd share. http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/06/20/533617105/why-you-should-play-video-games

I appreciate it when our meta overlords make an accessible, easy to understand video. Recently, Nike posted a video that actually explains the build in detail. I found his slow motion explanation of the rotation especially useful. Hopefully, this will start a new trend.

I wanted to put this out there as a PSA for those of you who don't know yet. The new guaranteed item in the Black Lion chests is the Zaishen War Paint Kit. This kit contains 2-5 unidentified dyes. It's basically crashing the dye market. However it does mean you can pick up some pricey dies for relatively cheap. Here are some examples: Abyss Last week (sell/buy): 23.75/19.19 This week: 13.18/10.5 Celestial Last week 60.92/48.01 This week: 32.96/25.2 I wouldn't be surprised if the prices went down even further because the chests just changed and they usually keep the same contents for 6-8 weeks. If you have extra gold sitting around you could fill out your unlocked dyes, which is awesome for those guaranteed wardrobe unlocks (you don't want to end up with a 20 silver dye from one of those if you can avoid it). You could even invest in the dye market. I'd caution you it would be a loooong term investment though because no doubts tons of people are doing exactly that. Good luck, have fun, and don't spend all your gold!

I'm so hyped over our victory last night! I want to thank everyone for their tenacity and creativity in putting together our winning strat. As most of you know, I've been lusting after the Eye of Janthir mini for a while now, and here it is: I've also uploaded my PoV to Youtube if anyone wants to relive our victory from another angle: On to Samarog!

I used to do "key runs" semi regularly before the nerf limited them to once a week and the Black Lion Chests were redesigned. Recently (a couple of months ago), I decided to give them another try. My new key farming strategy is this: 1. Collect as many keys as possible through personal story-aka key runs (there are a couple other methods too). 2. Optimize your wardrobe for the Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlocks (you probably only have to do this once) 3. Open your chests. I've decided to do this on the first day the chest rewards change. I'm happy to report the first cycle of my plan ended yesterday in success. I had 14 keys collected. The new once a week key farm is way more relaxed and feels like less of a chore. Of course, it's a experiment in extreme delayed gratification, but I did enjoy watching my collection of keys grow over the weeks. Here's what I got from my orgy of chest opening: I made my husband do this with me (that n = 2 experiment) and he got two elemental swords. Overall, I concluded that it's definitely possible to get all trash, but you will most likely get at least one uncommon or rare reward (it might even be something you want). I'll be starting the cycle again next week. I plan on doing some blog posts and a video about my key run strategies and wardrobe optimization as a refresher for interested vets and to help newer players who haven't had the time to think about this stuff yet. Stay tuned! SPOILER ALERT: Let me know in game if anyone wants to come visit my jackpot. My home instance is now missing only two nodes

I'm either exceedingly cheap or old fashioned (or masochistic), but I hate purchasing things off the trading post that I can make or harvest myself. Recent case in point: pristine toxic spore samples. Those babies are 18 silver EACH! Now that wouldn't be a problem for me if you didn't need 10 of them to make the raid meta utility consumable for power and condi dps classes. Why are they so expensive? Oh I don't know, probably because you can only get them on a low level map no one goes to for any other reason. Not to mention they are scattered around that map so you can't efficiently run between nodes, and you have to harvest several nodes that give junk before you finally get a single pristine toxic spore.(If you're outrageously lucky you may get 5, but don't hold your breath. We wouldn't want you to die.) This sort of thing leads to some interesting player behavior. I recently read on Reddit (and saw this at every node when I was harvesting myself) players are standing at the nodes while semi-afking for hours in order to harvest them easily and make money. Turns out they re spawn every approximately 10 minutes so maybe it's not too bad, but it's not what I'd call "engaging game play" either. I've gone back to my old standby: bring out the alts in full force. I used to do this for lemongrass when I was the chef in my old WvW guild. Simply park all of your less used alts in the map (don't forget to pile on the gathering boosts first-guild hall and boosters) and log in every once in a while and harvest with everyone. Sounds reasonable, until I calculated I have enough gold to purchase enough of these to raid 9 hours per week for 10 years. That's assuming I actually play a class that needs these all the time--and I don't. Most people would stop doing it now that they know that. It won't stop me. Here's my feeble attempt to crash the market. If you're interested, this is a map of toxic seedling spawns: