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What day do you normally do key runs?


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For those who aren't aware a key run is the process of creating a tempoary character, getting them to level 10 and then doing the first part of the personal story for a free black lion key, then deleting the character ready to start over. It can be done once a week and resets on Monday.

The reason I'm asking is that the issue of name availability has come up a few times recently, and because I was using my recent tempoary characters as examples of available names it got me thinking that it would be a real shame if the name someone really wanted for one of their characters was taken by a tempoary character and if they'd tried just a day before or after it would be available. Which got me thinking about key runners, probably the most common example of tempoary characters. I suspect most people do key runs on a Monday (just after it resets) or Saturday (first day most people have more free time), so it could be that if you're trying to make a character and you're worried about name availability it would be best to try on a Friday. But I don't know. It could be there is no pattern, or it's entirely different to what I expect, so I thought I'd ask.

It probably won't come to much, but I'm just curious to see if there is a pattern of certain days when it's more common and therefore there are more characters in GW2 than usual.

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I don't plan it out by day, can do it any day of the week depending on when I feel like doing it.

It also depends on whether I have a spare character slot to do it, I don't actively keep one open purely for key runs.It also depends on my stockpiled inventory of level scrolls and Tomes.. when I do key runs I go all the way to Battle at Claw Island for 3 keys a week not just the level 10 key.

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I don't delete the character until just before recreating anyway.

The actual choices depends on the situation.Monday if there is a thing I want in the current chest and there will be a change on TuesdayOn or after Tuesday if there is nothing I am interested in the current chestAny day if there is no obvious updates pending for the BLC

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Sunday evening it is for me, which appears to be quite frequented by other players as well (EU). At least that is what I notice whenever I do a key-run.

The name availability also came to my mind a few times. I usually try to name my key-farm characters in a fun or entertaining way, opposite to some of my guildmates who just put the word "key" into one of their more famous names or numbering them. Most of my names succeed on first try. A few weeks later I try that one again and it is still free. Which means that I have a really weird idea of good names.

Same as with the original problem, using double- or tripple-names lowers the risk of stealing/blocking a good name for another person. In my guild, some always use the same name and delete the old one right before creating the next. There is this save-time where the name-rights still belong to us.

I recently had a break with key-collecting, as I had to re-organize my character structure. I'll probably start this Sunday again.

As those characters only have a short life and will be never used in group-activities anyway, I am thinking about using stuff that contains an overkill of '``^ and those other strange looking letters. There is no need to pm them, no need to invite them = no need to type them.

One of my youth neighborhood friends loved to join new MMORPGs upon launch and save a couple of valuable names. He once boasted about reserving a Legolas, Gandalf, Zelda, Link, Sephiroth and a few other names in a brand new game. Did he ever play them? Not really.

It is definitely worth to think about it once in a while. But we should not bother too much, as our impact to this situation is rather small. The game is almost 8 years old and shares the same name-database for both NA and EU.

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I once had an officer in a guild I'd recently joined actually tell me my key runners had to use the same name as another of my characters, with the word key in it, so they were easy to recognise in the roster. Apparently it was something to do with keeping tabs on what we were all doing. That was one of many reasons I didn't stay in that guild. Even when my tempoary characters are intended to be key runners I like using them to try out names and appearences. At least 3 of my permanent characters started out as tempoary ones I kept re-making and eventually decided to keep (and there's a 4th where I suspect it's only a matter of time). So I would hate to restrict myself to just one name, but I can definitely see why other people would want to do that. Especially if it saves thinking up new ones.

I doubt key runners do make a big difference to the total pool of available names, since I suspect people who do key runs are a minority of GW2 players anyway. But if someone was really desperate to get a specific name and they're convinced it wouldn't mean that much to anyone else (which is always an underlying assumption in these topics - it's ok to take the name away from whoever has it because they don't care as much) it couldn't hurt to know that trying on a Thursday or whatever gives them a slightly greater chance of getting it because that's when there will be the fewest tempoary characters in the game.

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I don't have a specific day and I rarely run key farms. I really should do them again though. In the past I would do them on Mondays or Tuesdays. I have an available character slot specifically for if I want to do this though. Usually I would just name them something with the word Key in it as I'd delete them later that day once I finished.

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  • 3 weeks later...

BLC rewards are so poor that I think it's not worth it. I decided to give up at running every week to get another another dye pack/miniature claim ticket/toy egg or (if I'm lucky) random gemstore utility item like revive orb/teleport to friend + 2 guaranteed bags of garbage. Average value: 2g.

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@Antycypator.9874 said:BLC rewards are so poor that I think it's not worth it. I decided to give up at running every week to get another another dye pack/miniature claim ticket/toy egg or (if I'm lucky) random gemstore utility item like revive orb/teleport to friend + 2 guaranteed bags of garbage. Average value: 2g.

I don't do it to make gold. I save the keys until I want one of the 2-3 account bound items and then use them to try for it. Doesn't always work of course, but wasting free keys is better than wasting ones I paid for and every so often I have enough statuettes to get something I wasn't able to get as a drop.

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I usually occupy a key-farmer name for the whole week, especially if I happen to like the character a bit too much for a temp. I also usually give them a specific key-farmer-ish name so I don't block names from others (wow, sounds so altruistic). And (mainly) for the fun I have when trying to come up with a good "key" including name. And to prevent me from keeping the toon and needing yet another character slot.

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I do key runs when I remember to do them. Usually like Monday/Tuesday.

I don't insta-delete the character, there's no point especially if I'm saving that character slot for key farm characters, so I just use the same name over and over due to deleting it right before making a new one.

BLC come with guaranteed statuettes which makes it worthwhile for me to farm, since I can spend those on some neat things when I stockpile enough. Especially useful if I get lucky and open bonus statuettes.

Though, the past couple of weeks I've been running characters to level 40 for 2 keys, since I was also missing a few achievements for doing some races level 30 PS quests. I still have to do the Human one, but this week I leveled an actual Guardian and did the PS on them and thus got my weekly keys that way.

If I was really bothered, I could theoretically level up to 60 for the 3 keys, but man is that a slog (I also don't want to waste exp boosters just to get keys...)

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  • 4 weeks later...

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