Guild Wars 2: Strike Missions Introduce Players To Raids

Guild Wars 2 has released the first Strike Mission a few weeks ago. It belongs to a collection of instances, which are supposed to introduce players who have never done them before into raids.

Having seen this first instance, I'm a bit skeptical.

What Does The Strike Mission Provide?

Screenshot of Guild Wars 2
Preparing for the
Icebrood Construct Boss

The strike mission features the area that was played during the story. Lore wise it happens after the story without spoiling more than why you're in the area again in the presence. After the NPCs talking a cave entrance opens that lets you go through a tunnel. This tunnel features icy ground that lets you slide and a snowball rolling down as an obstacle. Past this tunnel, there is a jumping puzzle with a few chests. The ice physics from before are reused here. (and they do interact weirdly with gliding.)

Past the JP lies the boss.

The boss is also quite simple. It requires no tank and technically no healer. His attacks happen random and consist of impacts and ice waves that can be dodged or jumped. Additionally, he has an attack that fills 180 degrees of the arena with a swipe and a ground effect that deals damage over time. Another attack of his is the ice mines. Once he spawns them, they rotate around him. He often casts a wind that moves players along with it. Due to the opposite direction of the player and bomb rotation dodging them is usually required. Something easy to miss is an icicle attack he sometimes casts at a player position.

At 50% of health, the boss will go into phase two. In this phase, he uses two new abilities. Now he creates two to three (later on probably four) ice patches. These shoot out small bubbles that deal damage on hit. The way they spawn and move is very familiar for bullet hell games. After the projectiles stop spawning, tiny arrows highlight the ice to tell the player to get on. The boss will hit the one in front of him, producing a big wave that cannot be jumped over and is hard to dodge. The players need to stay on the higher patches and jump over it. The fight continues until the boss dies.

Reviewing The First Instance

Looking at the first strike missions already gives me a glimpse of where ArenaNet wants to start. The boss can be done with only damage dealers and features aside from dodging damage just one specific mechanic. This means it's planned for people who have at most killed a world boss or done a dungeon. If it were planned for people who run high tier Fractals of the Mists, it would have required a healer.

One of the biggest worries I have with this guy is, that people have so much damage in the group that mechanics are skipped. If the boss reappears later and the mechanic kills people instead of downing them if at all they will leave the mission with a bad taste. Overall, there is no incentive to learn all of the mechanics, which are thrown at the player.

The Complex Nature Of Raids

Raids are complex. Aside from requiring the player to figure out how to defeat the boss, there are mechanics layered upon mechanics. Each of these needs the raiders to react to and act on certain triggers. These can be...

• visual: a telegraph, an animation, effect
• auditory: a sound
• or combined (using visual and auditory)

Additionally, raids are a multiplayer experience. This means players need to decide on how they will handle communication. (This does not require speech, though it simplifies communication by removing the requirement of typing.)

And then there are roles. Since bosses deal a lot of damage, some players need to switch to healers and tanks. More of them need to be given, depending on the mechanics and advantages of some classes (for example, supporters).

Raids are often seen as end-game content as they provide the player with challenges, where they can use everything they have learned during their MMORPG experience.

What Makes We Worry About Strike Missions

In game-design, you usually give the player one mechanic or system after the other. These are separated before being found layered. This is the best way to have the player learn these systems. This is actually done by ArenaNet at one or the other encounter. (for example, the guardians before vale guardian or the earth mini-boss before Adina) All of this is irrelevant if the players ignore mechanics. This means we need to teach figuring out the mechanics without frustrating or demotivating the player too much.

Giving invulnerability to the boss while the mechanic plays would be a good idea. However, this means the player stops what they're doing: Playing their class. Instead, it would make more sense to decrease the incoming damage the boss gets if a mechanic fails. (Keep in mind we don't wanna kill the player instantly for fails as this discourages too much). Now we just need to make sure, the boss performs the mechanic before dying.

Wrapping Things Up

I feel like this post has reached a decent size. I'm gonna write another one once the next Strike mission comes out until then I hope they will read this post or know what they're doing. Players need to learn that...

• How do I heal?
• What is tanking?
• What is kiting?
• What kind of things can I expect in raids?

And most importantly. Raids aren't hard, and they aren't just for hardcore players. With a decent difficulty curve, (nearly) anyone can learn to raid.

With that good night!

Guild Wars 2: Unlocking Ascended Cooking - Shopping List

In 41 minutes I'll be cook 500. So, in the meantime, I can write a post on what you need to unlock it yourself. I'm not gonna go into the details on how to level up to 500 the fastest or the cheapest, but this should help you get started and get an overview of what you need.

Divide And Conquer The Quest

Reaching a cooking level of 500 requires you to first reach level 425. After this Seimur - the cook who loves to add bloodstone dust to literally anything - will want to try your cooking at your home instance. This requires you to craft a specific item for him. This item will probably get you to level 435 or so. Next up, we have five quest lines for each race: Human, Norn, Charr, Asura, and Sylvari. For each of these, you need to craft three typical foods from each of those. After doing that you need to do stuff to improve your cooking. The human questline will have you improve your oven. This requires 3x Heat Stones and 5x Bloodstone Bricks. The Norn quest requires you to create cook utensils, which costs 5x Deldrimor Steel Ingots, 5x Dragonite Ingots and 1x Spiritwood Plank. The Charr one will unlock new meat drops to improve the quality of your meat by learning a new technique. This requires an event to be done and killing the corresponding enemies. For the Asura's, you will need to buy items that in total cost 15 gold. You will need to have done the Charr's before or buy the respective meat in the trading post. Lastly, through the Sylvari's, you will unlock the seed drops that are required to craft the ascended herbs. All you have to do here is gathering herbs until you get the varietal herb seeds, then craft a portable composter using 4x Spiritwood Plank and 1x Elonian Leather Square. Completing all these quest lines adds another 50 levels (10 levels for each) to your cook. With cooking 485 the last recipes, specifically the Bottle of Simple Syrup (1x Bag of Sugar and 1x Jug of Water), gives about one level per craft.

Summing The Materials Up

Here's the sum of what you will need:

• Craft at maximum 25 dishes which reward experience and you have the most materials off.
• Craft a Chef's Tasting Platter
• Craft a Bowl of Snow Truffle Soup
• Craft a Sesame-Roasted Dinner
• Craft a Sage-Stuffed Poultry
• Craft a Filet of Rosemary-Roasted Meat
• Craft a Bowl of Artichoke Soup
• Craft a Bowl of Poultry Tarragon Pasta
• Craft a Bowl of Spicy Meat Chili
• Craft a Plate of Lemongrass Poultry
• Craft a Plate of Fire Flank Steak
• Craft a Bowl of Roasted Lotus Root
• Craft a Flatbread
• Craft a Chocolate Omnomberry Cake
• Craft a Bowl of Tropical Mousse
• Craft a Bowl of Truffle Sautee
• Craft an Omnomberry Ghost
• 5x Deldrimor Steel Ingots
• 5x Dragonite Ingot
• 5x Spiritwood Plank
• 1x Elonian Leather Square
• 15 Gold
• Items that are worth 15 more levels

Splitting each dish down into its ingredients we get this list:

1x Artichoke 1x Asparagus Spear 8x Bags of Flour 1x Bag of Starch 6x Bags of Sugar 4x Bay Leaves 1x Bell Pepper 5x Black Peppercorns 1x Bottle of Rice Wine 3x Bottles of Soy Sauce 1x Bowl of Sour Cream 1x Butternut Squash 12x Carrots 10x Cassava Roots 2x Cayenne Peppers 2x Celery Stalks 1x Cheese Wedge 3x Chili Peppers 2x Chocolate Bars 1x Coconut 1x Cumin 4x Eggs

1x Eggplant 2x Ghost Peppers 3x Ginger Root 6x Glasses of Buttermilk 9x Heads of Garlic 3x Jars of Vegetable Oil 11x Jugs of Water 2x Lemongrass 1x Lime 1x Lotus Root 1x Mango 1x Milling Basin 5x Milling Stones 1x Mushroom 5x Omnomberries 18x Onions 1x Orange 2x Orrian Truffles 2x Packets of Baking Powder 11x Packets of Salt 2x Packets of Yeast

1x Passion Fruit 5x Pieces of Candy Corn 1x Portobello Mushroom 1x Potato 1x Rice Ball 4x Rosemary Sprigs 4x Sage Leaves 1x Sesame Seed 2x Shallots 8x Slabs of Poultry Meat 5x Slabs of Red Meat 4x Snow Truffles 10x Sticks of Butter 1x Tarragon Leaf 5x Thyme Leaves 4x Vanilla Bean 1x Yam 5x Deldrimor Steel Ingots 5x Dragonite Ingot 5x Spiritwood Plank 1x Elonian Leather Square 15 Gold

That concludes unlocking ascended cooking as well as reaching cooking 500.

Ascended Seeds

While I did mention that Bottle of Simple Syrup is a cheap way to get the last 15 levels. I would advise you to actually salvage foods you have crafted as well as lower-level food to get the Extracts of Nourishment. Use these to craft the Exquisite Extract of Nourishment. This can be used to craft the seeds for your home instance, which will also increase your crafting potentially.

Guild Wars 2: Mount Speed

Which is the fastest mount? Well quite simple. The beetle when you move on the ground and the griffon if you can use it. Well, if you use the abilities. I've always wondered which is faster if you don't use your abilities. Also, some mount engage abilities have quite an insane forward motion. Lastly, to crown it all I already did a calculation on the movement speed and it would be interesting to compare that to the mount speed.

Procedure

Screenshot of the Gilded Hollow bridge in Guild Wars 2

To find these things out, as with most things we will need to find a place that fits our experiments and is measurable. You can compare this to the DPS benchmarks done by Guilds like Snowcrows, except that we're doing speed benchmarks instead of DPS. The velocity is calculated via the distance laid back in a certain time frame. The only way for us to measure the distance is by using the skills and abilities that have a radius given. To have accurate values we need a straight flat track with a clear start and a clear end. This turns out to be harder than one would expect. Back in the old post, I used the World vs World bridge, that's found south of the alpine borderlands. Unfortunately, it's not possible to use mounts aside from the Warclaw, so we need to find another one. The bridge in Lornar's Pass near Durmand Priory one of my ideas. It reaches a total of  4890 units. Another idea I had is the Guild Hall. If I could get the rights to build I could make myself a bridge that's as long as I want. That's when I saw that there was a bridge already in the Gilded Hollow. I went there first to measure the width and it turns out that from the stairs the entrance of the building is 7905 units. I couldn't come up with a longer bridge without building myself - which again would require the rights to build in a Guild Hall, which I don't have.

Screenshot showing the
small bumps on the Gilded Hollow
bridge in Guild Wars 2

Unfortunately, the bridge in the Gilded Hollow Guild Hall is not perfect. It does have a long-distance, it is straight there's a clear beginning and a clear end to use and it's flat. Well mostly, since it does have three small bumps in it. While these do not stop your movement directly they do have a tiny slow effect. Given this, our calculations do have a small inaccuracy. Testing this with walking results in hardly if any change of speed. Thus I'm gonna ignore it for these test cases. Another issue is the dive/flying ability of the griffon. I tried to use the high buildings near the bridge beginning pointing towards the middle of the Guild Hall and used Commander with markers on the map to determine the track and try to fly as accurately as possible. This turned out to be harder than expected so I would take the griffon results with a grain of salt. They may be accurate enough but there could be deviations of up to 0.50 seconds I would say.

The Actual Experiments

The actual experiments aside from those issues are quite simple. We move from point A to point B and whenever we move over point A or point B we respectively start and stop the timer. For the timer, I use my smartphone app again. keep in mind having to manually start and stop the timer results in a short delay due to the reaction time. I did not calculate in my own or the average human reaction time into the calculation so again values may vary by ~0.6 seconds or so. I performed this experiment on each of the eight mounts there are. Experiments were run on normal walk speed meaning not using the ability of the mount, Spamming or repeatedly mounting and using the engage ability and lastly using the mount ability and testing a few mechanics respective to it, such as double dive or the roller beetle speed after the boost.

The Result

I will represent the result in a table again. The table is sorted by time. Each mount has it's own color per row to allow an easy distinction which behaviors time belongs to which mount. The type of behavior is explained by the note. The time is given in seconds and milliseconds where one second is equal to 100 milliseconds. Calculation of the units per second is done by taking the bridge's length in units (7905 units) and dividing it through the measured time (e.g.4''21''') which will then yield the result (e.g. 7905u / 4.21s = 1877.67u/s). The m/s use the conversion of units to meters which is units multiplied by 2.52cm / 100 = 0.0252m. (e.g. 1877.67u/s * 0.0252m = 47.32m/s). I've omitted the conversion from u/s to feet/s to mph. I have also recalculated the walking speed with the mount name being "None" to be able to compare the mounts to the normal walking speed without boons.

Mount Name	Note	Time	u/s	m/s	km/h	mph
Griffon	Ability (One boost)	4''21'''	1877.67	47.32	170.34	106.26
Griffon	Ability (Double boost)	4''03'''	1961.54	49.43	177.95	111.01
Rollerbeetle	Ability	4''72'''	1517.27	38.24	137.65	85.86
Rollerbeetle	Rolling (After Ability)	5''75'''	1374.78	34.64	124.72	77.80
Griffon	Ability (flight)	6''47'''	1221.79	30.79	110.84	69.14
Raptor	Ability	8''60'''	919.19	23.16	83.39	52.02
Jackal	Ability	9''41'''	840.06	21.17	76.21	47.54
Rollerbeetle	Engage Spam	10''06'''	785.79	19.80	71.29	44.47
Skyscale	Ability (Charge)	10''31'''	766.73	19.32	69.56	43.39
Skimmer	Engage Spam	11''20'''	705.8	17.79	64.03	39.94
Jackal	Walking	12''65'''	624.9	15.75	56.69	35.36
Warclaw	Ability	12''80'''	617.58	15.56	56.03	34.95
Griffon	Ability (Flutter)	13''11'''	602.97	15.19	54.70	34.12
Raptor	Walking	13''18'''	599.77	15.11	54.41	33.94
Skyscale	Ability (Flight)	13''27'''	595.7	15.01	54.04	33.71
Rollerbeetle	Rolling	13''41'''	589.48	14.85	53.48	33.36
Bunny	Walking	13''72'''	576.17	14.52	52.27	32.61
Skimmer	Ability	14''00'''	564.64	14.23	51.22	31.95
Skimmer	Walking	14''37'''	550.1	13.86	49.91	31.13
Warclaw	Engage Spam	14''37'''	550.1	13.86	49.91	31.13
Warclaw	Walking	14''44'''	547.44	13.80	49.66	30.98
Jackal	Engage Spam	14''71'''	537.39	13.54	48.75	30.41
Raptor	Engage Spam	15''33'''	515.66	12.99	46.78	29.18
Griffon	Walking	15''82'''	499.68	12.59	45.33	28.28
Skyscale	Walking	15''87'''	498.11	12.55	45.19	28.19
Griffon	Enage Spam	16''37'''	482.9	12.17	43.81	27.33
Bunny	Engage Spam	16''88'''	468.31	11.80	42.49	26.50
None	Walking	20''11'''	393.09	9.91	35.66	22.25
Skyscale	Enage Spam	20''15'''	392.31	9.89	35.59	22.20
Bunny	Ability	22''15'''	356.89	8.99	32.38	20.20

Conclusion

#1 Majestic Griffon

So, as you can see the griffon seems to be the fastest way of traveling if you can get one or two dive boosts in.

#2 Roadorolla-Beetle Da

The roller beetle is the fastest if you can't use the griffon and even after only one boost you have a decent constant movement. 

#3 Rapping Raptor

If both of these do not apply, the raptor is next on his third place. Though it comes short when you have to move uphill.

#4 Jackal with it's Portal

 Moving uphill I'd probably advise the jackal as it's ability is more dependable in an uphill scenario.

It's really awesome to see that using the roller beetle you could basically roll around the streets of some countries such as Germany. even though cities only allow 50km/h at maximum and the highway often has a limit of 100 or 120km/h. Then again if you had the mounts from Guild Wars 2 aside from some people sexting Asura's or whatever we would have portals and waypoints. I would definitely pay 1€ to teleport to university or work to port back for 1€. Worth it!

Oh, by the way. I heard there is actually 3rd party software that shows the current speed and you could basically take that. The thing is that from talking to someone who uses it the values might vary depending on the direction. Like for example a griffon with a downward motion has a faster vertical movement that gliding straight and some ground tracks you roll with your roller beetle aren't even or maybe you're in a curve or not moving straight. All these aspects can have an effect as you travel more distance in a zigzag than a straight line.

Guild Wars 2: Dragon Bash Without Procrastination

I only realized it now. This has become a little series of my blog. Even though I skipped some of the in-game events of Guild Wars 2 here and there most of them have a "Without Procrastination" post already. This is the 4th one, so without further ado, let's get to it.

Dragon Bash, It's Been A While

Dragon Bash is a festival event in Guild Wars 2. While it is not completely new as it has existed in 2013, it seems to have gotten a major overhaul. We have four new attractions and three are not available. With this overhaul came a new bunch of achievements and a lot to do.^[1]

As with previous posts I'm gonna go into the achievements that need you to do things multiple times or a lot. The idea behind this is to instead of farming them, do a little every day to prevent unnecessary farming or to not be able to complete the event. This is similar to the way you prevent procrastination in real life by working a little on it even if it's just a tiny bit, as it still provides progress and in the long term you have less to do at the end and have an easier time hitting the deadline.

What Is There To Do?

Before we can get into how much we need to do every day we need to select the relevant achievements. For me, relevant achievements are those that give achievement points, as they provide a limited reward that is relatively unique. Additionally one-time achievements like "complete this adventure on gold" boil down to.. *ahem* "JUST DO IT!". With that out of the way, here's the first draft of the list of achievements I deem relevant, broken down into the annual category and an "others" category:

Annual

These can be repeated every year to get Annual Feats achievement rewards 50 achievement points each up to 1000.

• (Annual) Zhaitasty - Eat 1000 Zhaitaffy
• (Annual) Paper Dragon - Bash 150 pinatas
• (Annual) Going the Distance - Finish 15 laps of the race
• (Annual) Color the Sky - Launch 100 fireworks
• (Annual) Hologram Herder - Participate 5 times
• (Annual) Masters of the Arena - Defeat all 5 bosses
• (Annual) So Lifelike - Defeat 300 holographic minions
• (Annual) Winner's Circle - Win the moa bet 5 times

Others

These can be completed only once in a lifetime.

• Color the Sky - Use 150 fireworks
• So lifelike - Kill 500 holographs
• Hologram Herder - Participate in 10 Stampede events
• Winner's Circle - Win the moa race 10 times
• Paper Dragon - Break 300 paper dragon pinata's
• Zhaitasty - Eat 5000 Zhaitaffy
• Cheerful Ingester - Consume 3000 foods
• Burn Them All - Burn 3 effigies
• Masters of the Arena - Defeat all 5 bosses
• Help a Quaggan Out - Give 1000 Zhaitaffy to the Quaggan
• Stampede Survivor - Complete the third round of the Stampede 3 times
• Arena Slayer - Defeat all 5 bosses
• Party Commander - Do your dailies
• Annual Feats - Finish 7 annual achievements

Repetitive Achievements

It's also important that some of these achievements are repeatable giving more and more achievement points. We need to calculate that into the amount we have to do.

Achievement	AP1 per Repetition	AP1 Limit	Resulting Repetitions
Help a Quaggan Out	5	25	25 / 5 = 5
Stampede Survivor	5	25	25 / 5 = 5
Arena Slayer	5	25	25 / 5 = 5
Party Commander	10	100	100 / 10 = 10
Annual Feats	50	1000	1000 / 50 = 20

¹AP: Achievement Points

Every Day a Little: Annual Part

Let's right to it. We just need one more thing though. The duration of the event. This can also be found on the Guild Wars 2 wiki as well as on the official post. The event goes from the 25th of June to the 16th of July.^[2] That is equal to 21 days ±1 day (depending on your work or playtime). So for the following calculation, I'm gonna use 20 days, you can use replace the 20 in the following calculation with the number of days the event still has.
Small tip: If you subtract the current day from the days in the month and add one to it (= counting the rest of the days in the month) e.g. 30 - 27 = 3, then you can add the next months days to it to get how many days it is e.g. 3 + 16 = 19 => 19±1 days until the end of the event from the 27th of June.

Let's go down the list.

• (Annual) Zhaitasty: We need to eat 1000 / 20 = 50 Zhaitaffy a day.
• (Annual) Paper Dragon: We need to bash 150 / 20 = 7.5 or 7 to 8 pinatas a day  
• (Annual) Going the Distance: For this, we need to finish 15 / 21 = 0.75 laps a day. However, this is quite inefficient as we can just do 3 laps in one race because that's less annoying. That means we only need 15 / 3 = 5 races in 21 days which is 5 / 20 = 0.25. That's about one race every four days.
• (Annual) Color the Sky: This requires 100 / 20 = 5; So, 5 fireworks launched per day
• (Annual) Hologram Herder: This needs 5 / 20 = 0.25, just like the races one participation every four days.
• (Annual) Masters of the Arena: Four days like the previous one. I would recommend doing it in one go though as you may end up with bosses you don't wanna do.
• (Annual) So Lifelike: The recommended amount is at least 300 / 20.0 = 15 a day.
• (Annual) Winner's Circle: Win one bet every four days.

This is the yearly to-do list. Thus I'm gonna write it down again nice and clear. To complete Dragon Bash yearly/annual stuff you need to

• Eat 50 Zhaitaffy a day.
• Bash 7 to 8 pinatas a day.
• Complete one whole race every four days or one lap every three out of four days.
• Launch 5 fireworks per day.
• Participate in the Hologram Stampede event every four days.
• Finish all bosses in the arena once.
• Defeat 15 holograms a day.
• and win one moa race bet every four days.

Every Day a Little: The Rest

Now if you would like to finish all of the achievements this year it looks different. Let's see what the normal achievements need.

• Color the Sky: 150 / 20 = 7.5, meaning 7 to 8 fireworks need to be launched a day.
• So lifelike: 500  / 20 = 25, holograms need to be killed in a day.
• Hologram Herder: 10 / 20 = 0.5 participations a day, which is equivalent to every two days.
• Winner's Circle: Just like the Hologram Herder, every two days.
• Paper Dragon: This requires 300 / 20 = 15 pinatas to be bashed per day.
• Zhaitasty: A freaking 5000 / 20 = 250 Zhaitaffy per day needs to be consumed.
• Cheerful Ingester: As well as 3000 / 20 = 150 Dragon Bash food items.
• Burn Them All: 3 / 20 = 0.15 effigies to be burnt. That's every 6 to 7 days, but it makes more sense to do it in one go.
• Masters of the Arena:  Same as the annual. Four days like Hologram Herder (5 / 20 = 0.25). I would recommend doing it in one go though as you may end up with bosses you don't wanna do.
• Help a Quaggan Out: This requires 5 repetitions each needing 1000 Zhaitaffy. That's 5 * 1000 = 5000. So 5000 / 20 = 250 per day. Additionally to the 250 you need to eat yourself.
• Stampede Survivor: This requires 5 repetitions as well. So, 5 * 3 = 15 rounds. That's 15 / 20 = 0.75 a day. That's once every 1 to 2 days.
• Arena Slayer:  With 5 repetitions this takes 5 * 5 = 25 bosses. That's one boss every 25 / 20 = 1.25 days. So every 1 to 2 days. I advise doing this in one go as you might not get the bosses you are missing. It takes 5 / 20 = 0.25 rounds a day then. So every 4th day.
• Party Commander: Well. Just do your dailies every day. It can be repeated 10 times but requires 5 days to complete. That's 10 * 5 = 50 days. That's equivalent to 2 to 3 years.
• Annual Feats: When will Guild Wars 3 come one? Let's see. You have to repeat this 20 times and you can only do it once a year... hmmm... in 20 years? We'll see.

Since these are one time achievements and probably only hardcore achievement hunters or players will aim to complete these this year I'm not gonna summarize these. Especially since the blog post is already long enough. Which means. I'm out. Cya! :D

^[1] https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon_Bash

^[2] https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/dragon-bash-returns-next-week/

Guild Wars 2: Ultra Shiny Like a Skritt - What Did It Cost?

The perfect title for every Skritt fan. Okay for collectors, achievement hunters and completionists too, or people who want animated weapons that were made out of litter shinies. However, as the popular Thanos meme quotes so well: "What did it cost?"

Not Everything

Luckily for us, it doesn't cost everything, but what does it cost exactly? Well, there are five weapons. The recipes follow a pretty simple schematic. First, you craft the shiny weapon and then you craft the ultra shiny weapon. Both recipes work through the mystic forge. For the shiny weapons you will need:

• 3x Elder Wood Log
• 1x Quartz Crystal
• 3x Condensed Ley-Line Essence of one certain color
• 3x Condensed Ley-Line Essence of a different certain color

The color of the Condensed Ley-Line Essences defines which type of weapon you get. More about that later. First, this is what you need for the ultra shiny weapon:

• 1x The specific shiny weapon
• 1x Charged Core
• 3x Condensed Ley-Line Essence of one certain color
• 3x Condensed Ley-Line Essence of a different certain color

As you can see from a material cost point aside from the Condensed Ley-Line Essence and the Charged Core these are standard materials. Maybe you need to farm a little bit of Quartz Crystals depending on whether you get them through your home instance or occasionally mined them on one of the specific maps that have these (e.g. Dry Top).

We can fuse these two recipes, build the union or inherit the one from the other. Whichever you prefer in the end the result should be:

• 3x Elder Wood Log
• 1x Quartz Crystal
• 1x Charged Core
• 6x Condensed Ley-Line Essence of one certain color
• 6x Condensed Ley-Line Essence of a different certain color

This is needed five times for each weapon but before we do that, let's see which Condensed Ley-Line Essences we need.

Condensed Ley-Line Essences

Looking through the Guild Wars 2 official wiki^[1] gives us a quick breakdown on which Condensed Ley-Line Essence is needed for which weapon (demonstrated by the following table).

Weapon/Essence	Crimson	Saffron	Azure	Emerald
Rifle	X			X
Pistol		X	X
Short Bow			X	X
Staff	X	X
Torch	X		X

It's every permutation except Saffron and Emerald. (either they got bored, ran out of time, the artists were striking or they can't do math :P) By looking at the amount of X's vertically we can multiply that number with how many we need per weapon to get the total amount we need.

• Crimson: 3 * 6 = 18
• Saffron: 2 * 6 = 12
• Azure: 3 * 6 = 18
• Emerald: 2 * 6 = 12

Before the 25th of June, you had to kill at least 60 bosses for these. Unfortunately, the exact drop rate on every single boss could not be found out even though there was noticeably a pattern since certain bosses favored or some probably guaranteed a certain color.

Screenshot of the Preview of a Djinn Energy Cluster
 In-Game

Now they no longer drop since the Destabilizing Magic event ended. They're still available in the game though. There are primarily two ways to get them. One way is to buy the Djinn Energy Cluster from the Trading Post. At the time of writing this post, they're worth 51 silver and 56 copper. Unfortunately, their price will most likely increase. These used to drop from the world bosses additionally to the Condensed Ley-Line Essences which could've been mined. They can still be bought from the raiding vendor by using the Condensed Ley-Line Essences. The Condensed Ley-Line Essences are in the Uncommon tier of the Djinn Energy Cluster, which is even less efficient (could be worse though). 

The alternative would be to buy it from the raid vendor.

at the raid vendor, it costs 10 Gaeting Crystals and 20 silver. Aside from the Gaeting Crystals, which are capped at 150 per week. It's a lot cheaper than the Djinn Energy Cluster, which does not guarantee a drop.

For Such A Shiny Title...

Summing everything up we need the following to finish the collection.

• 3 * 5 = 15; 15x Elder Wood Log
• 1 * 5 = 5; 5x Quartz Crystal
• 1 * 5 = 5; 5x Charged Core
• 18x Crimson Condensed Ley-Line Essences
• 12x Saffron Condensed Ley-Line Essences
• 18x Azure Condensed Ley-Line Essences
• 12x Emerald Condensed Ley-Line Essences

If you decide to buy these Ley-Line Essences from the raid vendor. It would cost 10 * 60 = 600 Gaeting crystals (600 / 150 = 4 weeks of raiding) and 20 * 60 = 1200 silver, a.k.a. 12 gold.

At this point, it's also interesting whether you can make money out of the Djinn Energy Cluster. 

Well, I'll leave that up to you. Anyways that's it for this post. The Dragon Bash Festival post will come tomorrow or on Friday, depending on whether or not I hit the project deadline for the university project. Happy farming.. or.. something!

^[1] https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shiny_weapons