It feels like less than a year ago that Guild Wars 2 was launching its last expansion… oh wait, it was! Love it or hate it, ArenaNet is delivering on its promise of a new expansion per year, with the upcoming release of Janthir Wilds. This expansion brings us to Tyria’s far north, to the Isles of Janthir, home of the Grizzly Bear-like Lowland Kodan.
ArenaNet recently invited us to tour this expansion’s beautiful new zones, bouncy new mount, and exciting new player housing!
We started our tour with a taste of the story. While it took me a while to warm up to Secrets of the Obscure’s different direction, I was much more quickly drawn in to Janthir Wilds’ story. SOTO introduced an almost entirely new cast of characters (except for Zojja, whom we hadn’t seen in years); in contrast, Janthir Wilds brings us back to more familiar and beloved characters like Caithe and Countess Anise and other familiar members of the newly formed Tyrian Alliance, and while we have never set foot upon the Isles of Janthir in either Guild Wars game, it is a place that has been much talked about, so it feels a lot more connected to the rest of the world and lore. Being whisked off to the Wizard Tower and Nayos for a single expansion was a fun departure, but any more than that would have been too much, so good job, ArenaNet story team, for picking something more grounded.
If you’re a fan of the Wizard’s Court established in SOTO, fear not, as we will be bringing them along with us into the broader world of Tyria. The numerous Kryptis invasions all around the world have been hard to cover up, and so Isgarren has decided to bring the shadowy organization out of hiding. It feels like a good payoff for last year’s story, and I can’t wait to see how our old friends interact with our new friends!
One of the tentpole features of this expansion is the newly-revamped-for-PvE Warclaw. I was skeptical at first, since, as it stands, the Warclaw is basically just a worse raptor that happens to work in WvW, but in practice, the new Warclaw is a lot of fun to ride. In some ways it feels like the three terrestrial mounts rolled into one. When you jump, it goes up (but not as much as a springer) and also forward (but not as much as a raptor), and its energy bar is separated into three smaller chunks and it can jump while in the air (like the jackal).
The Warclaw’s final mastery tier ups energy regen by 20% for all mounts, and between that buff and Bond of Vigor, the Warclaw can actually multijump for quite a distance without touching the ground. Admittedly, it looks a bit silly – the Commander/Wayfinder, savior of the world countless times over, slayer of all six Elder Dragons, and champion of Aurene, astride a giant kitty cat that’s bounding through the sky – but it’s so much fun to use that I’m OK with it. And hey, there are sillier things in this game.
Another nice feature of the Warclaw is that, with the first mastery, it doesn’t take any fall damage. Fall damage hasn’t been much of a concern for a while now, between gliders, two flying mounts, and terrestrial mounts that simply dismount you for a moment if they fall from a great height, so this just makes sense.
The Warclaw also follows in the Skyscale’s footsteps (clawsteps?) by adding some light damage abilities that don’t dismount you, separate from the standard engage skill. Like the Skyscale’s fireball, you won’t be downing any bosses while mounted with it, but it’s nice for those situations where you want to poke at something while on the move.
Whenever a new mount is introduced, one question always arises: Why would I use this if I already have all of the existing mounts? Or perhaps worse, does this obsolete any of the previous mounts? The answer to both is that it depends on you. Sure, there is going to be nothing (short of contrived events and adventures) that this mount can do that the Skyscale and Raptor can’t do. But if you’re one of those weirdos who don’t like the Skyscale, the Warclaw’s multiple air jumps will get you to a lot of the same airborne locations without all of the flapping about, and I could see a lot of those people never using their lizard friend again.
Now let’s talk about the feature that has been generating the most buzz: Homesteading, the new player housing system. No longer will we have to sit through endless debates about whether home instances or guild halls count as housing. We can now all agree: Guild Wars 2 definitely has housing, and it’s good.
Hearth’s Glow, the homestead instance, has a prefabricated house in its center, but plenty of land around it to make your own. The zone is about the size of a guild hall; the devs compared it to End of Dragons’ Isle of Reflection.
Furnishing items can be placed freely anywhere, and placement tools are similar to what you would see in a 3-D modeling program, with arrows that come on to slide furnishing along three axes, rotate on three axes, and scale up and down. If you did much housing in RIFTÂ or Wildstar you will be right at home here. Furnishings are free to defy gravity or clip through solid objects, so creative players will doubtless come up with all kinds of clever tricks.
One such trick that the team showed us was a character sitting on a log next to a camp fire. There is no sittable log in the game, but there is a sittable stool, which can be hidden just under the log to make it appear that the player is sitting on it. It’s a simple and very old trick, but I’m glad to see that the system has that flexibility.
My favorite placement feature had to be Bee Mode, which allows the player to transform into a giant bee (bees are kind of a thing for the Bear People in this expansion) and hover around, similar to the Jade Bot, so you can build up high without the need to build awkward scaffolding for your character to stand on.
One mount of each type can be shown off at the mount stable, and you can lead them around or even give your hard-working mounts some much-deserved pets. Another fun touch is that any of your alts that you log out in your house will show up for whatever character you are playing now, so you can finally organize that group shot with your entire roster without resorting to Photoshop!
I have seen some grumping online about the fact that some of Homesteading’s features are locked mastery levels, but I don’t think it will be too bad. First of all, the house itself is unlocked naturally through the story, no grind required. In order to unlock the new Handiworker crafting station and starter recipes, you will need to fill the XP bar once and spend one point. Each tier in Homesteading Mastery from there on unlocks additional recipes. Most crafted furniture is tradeable, however, so if you want to deck out your pad without the work of leveling, your friends at the Black Lion Trading Company are there for you. EDIT: My mistake, furniture is NOT tradeable. Many of the new Handiworker-specific materials (such as Honey Flowers and Lowland Pine Logs) are tradeable, but the products are not.
Each mastery tier also ranks up your house’s resting bonus, similar to what you get for logging out in Arborstone or the Wizard’s Tower. The designers pointed out that at the maximum tier, it is actually the highest rest XP buff available in the game.
One point of good news: All of the gathering nodes you’ve unlocked for your home instance – both those from the cash shop and from various in-game unlocks – will follow you to your new homestead! Unfortunately, unless I missed something, it doesn’t look as if any of them are moveable. On the one hand, this is frustrating because it would be cool to integrate them into the landscape a little more naturally, but on the other hand, there is also no pressure to build an ugly-but-efficient gathering area, and if you visit a friend’s homestead, you won’t have to hunt around for where they keep their nodes.
I asked if there were any plans for further homesteads beyond the one we were shown. The devs were non-committal, saying that they weren’t “talking about” that at this time but that the system is designed such that it is possible. Take that as you will.
The test accounts we were given were loaded up to with every kind of furnishing goodies imaginable, and I was impressed by the variety of options available. Of course, the first thing I had to do was test the boundaries of the system, so I built this giant ramp to the top of the mountain out of wall pieces, and what do you know, it actually worked!
If GW2 doesn’t win Massively OP’s Best MMO Housing award this year, then the voting is rigged.
My time previewing Janthir Wilds has me really excited to play the real thing! The story is interesting, the new mount is fun — not strictly necessary, but more options is always good — and the housing system is something I could easily lose many, many hours in. I didn’t even touch here on the new meta events we saw, which look to be fun, and the new spear skills, which seem like they will add some fun variety to a number of builds. There is a lot rolled into this expansion, and I can’t wait to play it with everyone in just a week, on August 20th!
Flameseeker Chronicles is one of Massively OP’s longest-running columns, covering the Guild Wars franchise since before there was a Guild Wars 2. Now penned by Tina Lauro and Colin Henry, it arrives on Tuesdays to report everything from GW2 guides and news to opinion pieces and dev diary breakdowns. If there’s a GW2 topic you’d love to see explored, drop ’em a comment!
