Grind and new legendaries 

or why I don't want to see HoT maps after I finish H.O.P.E.

Caution: Wall of text ahead.

Many people are not satisfied with how Anet did the precursor collections. "IT'S JUST A MONEY SINK AND GRIND! IT'S AWFUL!" - they shout. I'm at the opposite side. I didn't expect these collections to be anything unreal.

Of course the precursor collections couldn't not be a money sink, that would devalue the precursor price. Besides, only one of the 3 collections is money sink.

I'm not going to discuss here that the price for the collections is more than the price for the TP bought precursor. Devs tried to adjust the collection price according to the TP price as best as they could. If you dislike it, go grind gold. I'd rather do small steps even if it costs more.

My experience with building the new legendary has been quite positive. As I said, I don't mind the money sink that the 2. collection is. It has been fun despite that. My problem is elsewhere.

So let's explain the legendary creation process on HOPE legendary that I've been working on.

You get the precursor from the collection as mentioned.

Gift of Mists is quite easy to get. You can buy almost everything on TP and if not, you can obtain it quite quickly.

Icy Runestones and specific material gift (Gift of Wood) are basically the same as with the old legendaries, so that is ok with me. Combining these three with the Gift of Catalyst (T4 collection) will give you a Gift of HOPE. Now you have already 2 of the 4 parts. Easy, right?

Third part, the Mystic Tribute is similar to Gift of Magic. One of the bigger money sinks, for which you need T6, T5, T4 and T3 materials. Everything can be bought from the TP.

The cost of these 3 parts doesn't bother me. Legendary is not supposed to be cheap, you might have to grind some of them but they are obtainable from multiple sources.

I have the problem with the 4. part. The Gift of Maguuma Mastery. Shocking? Let me explain.
It is also created from 4 parts:

1. Gift of Maguuma is obtained for 100% exploration of 4 new maps. It may take some time, but it's nothing difficult.
2. Gift of Insights requires you to get 800 from each new map currency. It seems like a lot but it can be done quite quickly. No problem with that. Couple meta runs and you're finished.
3. Bloodstone Shard, just ridiculous. Buy it from Miyani for 200 Spirit Shards.
4. Last part is 250 Crystalline Ingots. 

CRYSTALLINE INGOTS - IMO the only bad part of the new legendary creation process. 

My reason is that it doesn't only cost A LOT, it's based on heavy rng based grind.

You can buy 250 Amalgamated Gemstones or you can create them in multiple ways. They are expensive but you have multiple ways to get them.

250 Globs of Ecto is nothing after running the new map's metas few times.

The remaining ingredients can be obtained ONLY one way each - by looting map specific "chests".

Crystalline Ore is one of them and after a big player outcry, devs patched it to be guaranteed at least 1 from each looted pod.

Why hasn't this been done with Piles of Auric Dust and Ley Line Sparks? 

Bottle of Airship Oil is OK, it can be obtained from Airship Cargo in VB during both day and night, that's why I'm ok with it being random. You can however get Pile of Auric Dust only after successful meta by looting 27 exalted chests that MAY give you 1 or 2 or 0 of it. There is a limited number of chests available for only a limited time. Why doesn't it guarantee 1 Auric Dust per chest is beyond me.

And don't even get me started on Ley Line Sparks. You need keys for the map currency like with the previous mentioned ones. However TD meta is not so fast as AB or VB metas. While I can get 300+ AB currency in one full meta, I get only about 170+ in TD. The TD "chests" appear only after successful events and I've noticed that I get 1 Ley Line Spark for 2 opened "chests". For one meta run I was able to get 17 sparks. For one 2 hour meta run.

Someone was maybe more lucky than me. I don't even count how many times I've run Gerent or Tarir or DS and to be honest, this grind made me dislike the maps. They are great, look awesome and have interesting events, however I've been there so many times that after I finish H.O.P.E. I don't plan to return there for a very long time.

And that is a thing that Anet should be aware of. Grind is not bad if it's not insane. This would be quite ok, but rng makes it bad. Again RNG.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Corvus' character

Happy birthday buddy!

What's up with that inactivity?

My (much more famous) YT friends use to do video blogs to share their plans with their audience, reflect on the progress etc. I think it’s time to at least tell you what’s new and explain my inactivity.

I know, I know, my activity has declined rapidly after the release of HoT. More than a month I have not done any new video, any new drawing, I’ve been only spamming you on Twitter but even that has declined.

It’s not because I don’t want to or because I am lazy. Oh no, no, no, no. Actually my list of possible future videos contains over 40 ideas now and drawing list is even bigger.

Of course after the release of HoT, I wanted a small break because I have finished the drawing countdown and just wanted to enjoy the expansion. And I enjoy it still, I think it’s great but that’s for another time.

The whole reason behind my inactivity is real life (Duh). To be more specific, my job. I have started working on a project that requires me to travel to Italy and spend there 2 weeks working with the customer, back home for one week and again to Italy for 2 weeks. Obviously, I can’t take my tablet with me, or my desktop pc. What I have here is a company notebook and the most crappy internet in the world. This doesn’t give me much to work with obviously.

I am travelling back home tomorrow and I can’t wait to be together with my girlfriend, my family, to sit in front of my PC, take the stylus and start drawing again. Or go ingame and record a footage for a Wintersday video.

Yeah, I definitely, want to create a Wintersday video this year. It shall be something… different. (I was inspired by another game, you’ll see ;))

Concerning the drawing, I had big plans for the next year. BIG plans. I even mentioned them in one tweet, but you probably already forgot about it. The thing is, the work project I’m working on, should end in January. Now it seems that it will last until June. This changes everything obviously. Because of it, I can’t have any plans, any social life, anything longer than one week.

 I don’t like this.

That’s why I will talk to my boss about travelling on Monday. If I will persuade him, to let me stay, I will be able to commit to the long difficult drawing project that I will tell you more about, if I will succeed. It will be something new, something that I haven’t even tried and something that I was thinking about for a couple of years.

Of course, videos will continue with the probable cadence of one video a month, maybe more ;)

For this all though, I need to fight. If I won’t be successful, I’m sad to say that everything will be done no sooner than in the summer. And we don’t want that, do we! 

I hope that everything will work for the best. I love creating content for you guys. 

Wish me luck :)