Goal:

• Take a look at what the average player might expect in terms of play hours and effort
• Dig into the numbers to see what each element contributes to the total percentage
• Use the data gathered to reflect upon how this goal can be more easily achieved next time around

Purpose:

The Gift of Exploration is most commonly used for the creation of legendary weapons (1st generation). As these are the fashion-engame of GW2 they fetch quite the price on the trading post, which is usually what motivates players to undertake this tremendous task.

Preparation:

• Pick a profession you like
• Use tomes to get it to lvl 80
• Gear it in cheap zerker exotics (mercy runes and sigil of speed recommended)

Execution:

• Do everything but the hearts on all the maps first runthrough
• Use Proof of Heroics for skillpoints so these can also skipped
• Have the Jackal (land, raptor works too), Skimmer (water) and Springer (obstacles/vistas) on speed dial, and only dismount when grabbing vistas for maximum efficiency.
• If you're having trouble finding that last point of interest, stop wasting time and do another map
• Don't waste time looking for a hidden heart, locate the nearest scout immediately
• Round up to the nearest half hour when counting playtime for good measure

Findings:

Completion from 0-100 took me about 29,5 hours. I started late saturday last week and ended early thursday morning this one, averaging at ~5 hours a day of concentrated effort. As for the math:

Hearts: 16%Waypoints: 26%Vistas: 12,1%PoI's: 34,9%Hero points: 11%

Everything but the hearts took 14 hoursThe hearts took 15,5 hoursThis equals to about a 10% difference in time

Completion before doing the hearts was 73%.

Thoughts:

As was mentioned during my run, it would be more efficient doing the hearts as I went instead of saving them then backtrack. The reason I chose this approach was that it gave me numbers and percentages I could further use, plus the benefit of comparing the time spent.

The hearts were by far where my motivation dropped, as there's simply too much repetitive action with way too little tangible reward. Everything else went like a breeze tbh. My main method was to group up enemies and then blast in one place, also to ress npcs wherever I could for easy participation.

I'm a little surprised by how long it actually took, as on my second day I felt like the wind having 73% completion, but what did I know.. Still feel it went fairly quickly, although not going to make a run for another while as it was enough to deter me from going through the ordeal again.

How to improve:

If you are planning on doing this yourself, there are a few things I would advice you to do.

• Do 3 maps at a time, only one of them with hearts. And ALWAYS do hearts in the starter zones as then you will have done 1/3rd of them. This allows you to see good progress while not leaving too much of the workload until the end.
• Pace yourself, take some time off to do other things. If you feel the chore coming, then finish that map and take a break. Set off a period of 2 weeks or so as this allows for plenty of time to work towards it without burning yourself out.
• Find a way to motivate yourself, real life rewards help alot.

Further reading:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Map_completion#World_completion

Special thanks:

@Loosmaster.8263@Haleydawn.3764@Ayrilana.1396@crepuscular.9047@Steve The Cynic.3217@Cyninja.2954@VanWilder.6923@ButcherofMalakir.4067and my dog for not interrupting too much

For feedback and discussion on the topic, also for swinging by the thread :)Wish you all a pleasant summer and good luck with future acquisitions of the GoE's, may they be swift!

And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

Honestly, it would be so much quicker had you done the hearts as you went around. Just IMO. Near enough all of them have a super quick way of completing them, saving them for last just means you'll have to double back over what you've done already.(I’ve done map completion 10 times, I have my own knowledge of maps to know how quick I can blow it out, skipping hearts was not it)

As stated above, you waste time by skipping hearts initially as you have to spend time going back to them.

If you want to complete them quickly, there are maps out there with routes. I haven’t personally seen if they have been updated to account for gliding and mounts though.

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

Haha yep.. the difference is huge, although it does require you to actively spend time in the gamemode in order to get it, blocking progress in others during. This is why being able to get skillpoints from WvW was a huge timesaver, bringing the time investment closer. Might have to try and casually progress my GoB track next..

@Haleydawn.3764 said:Honestly, it would be so much quicker had you done the hearts as you went around. Just IMO. Near enough all of them have a super quick way of completing them, saving them for last just means you'll have to double back over what you've done already.(I’ve done map completion 10 times, I have my own knowledge of maps to know how quick I can blow it out, skipping hearts was not it)

That is very true, I will lose some there even though being able to waypoint heart to heart now. The reason why I'm saving them for last though is twofold - one because it allows for very fast progression so I can see the % increase, the other so I can compare the time hearts take against the rest (as I assume they will chug most of my time, will see tomorrow). Need to keep that motivation up haha ;)

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:As stated above, you waste time by skipping hearts initially as you have to spend time going back to them.

If you want to complete them quickly, there are maps out there with routes. I haven’t personally seen if they have been updated to account for gliding and mounts though.

Yeah I'm not that updated either, which is why I decided to do it casually yet rather effective based on logical decisions. I'm sure there are faster methods for those wanting to race, but figured I'd do a more "relaxed" take on it and what the average player might expect when they decide to go for it. The hearts done last still being the risky factor, so looking forward to see how it goes!

Another thing about saving the hearts is that whatever you do to progress a heart will dismount you, and doing alot of them will keep you in combat quite a bit. I'm pretty sure I shaved off quite a few minutes this way, as I was racing at 40% speed the whole time. Can't wait to use my engage skill in the low level areas to 0-100 hearts :o

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

when you need to stay on for the entire 8 hours escorting dolyaks to keep at max participation, you'll start to lose your sanity

@crepuscular.9047 said:

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

Steve The Cynic is ... confused. Why would you have to stay on for any amount of time escorting dolyaks? I can sustain T6 without doing anything to dolyaks except killing enemy ones in camps. To be sure, it's still tedious, but...

It's the 300+ hearts which keep most people from finishing map completion. It certainly is for me even though I have 7 characters with 100% world completion.

The running around and getting vistas, poi and skill points is actually the fun part. :/

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@crepuscular.9047 said:

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

when there's a group of roamers just camp there waiting for naive fresh meat to wander into their trap

@crepuscular.9047 said:

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

Always thought people did the dailies there (for the WvW reward potion) instead - this way you would only have to do that for 27 days. 20 if you do all 4 dailies everyday, and considering they are easy and fast + you often build participation hunting them anyway earning you extra progress.

@Cyninja.2954 said:It's the 300+ hearts which keep most people from finishing map completion. It certainly is for me even though I have 7 characters with 100% world completion.

The running around and getting vistas, poi and skill points is actually the fun part. :/

Yeah I definitely notice the impending workload, as doing the rest went rather smoothly and not one time did I get overly bored. Hopefully only having hearts to do will allow me to race 5-6 maps in a sitting, but not sure as of yet. Will try to find a way to make it more fun and easy though :)

The benefit of GoB really is that you can get it done by playing only 15 min WvW everyday, allowing you to play what you enjoy the rest of the time. It can take as little as a total of 6,75 hours without boosters. This simply cannot be matched when it comes to map completion, as I was only at ~30% after the same interval, rushing as fast as I could.

That being said you only receive 1 GoB and 2 GoE, so essentially you need to double the time in WvW. And even with my pace I'm about where you would be if you played WvW for 16 hours straight at t6 participation.

Now imagine for a moment you are on an empty server with no WvW action whatsoever - it will be an incredibly slow grind even when doing the dailies meaning you will have to wait say a minimum of 5 days. Now for that same playtime you can finish the renown hearts easily, as PvE doesn't have this time/activity gate. This is the reason I believe for GoE taking longer to complete. Also if you play mostly in the respective gamemode you can easily boost your own progress, and since the main playerbase is in PvE it stands to reason they finish this piece by piece just doing achievements, events or travel to specific maps.

I guess we should all just praise ourselves lucky though that they don't require 8 hours of mandatory PvP hehe..

I really admire players who did the world completion more than one time. I can not and not willing to do it second time, its just too borng for me.

@crepuscular.9047 said:

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@crepuscular.9047 said:

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

I dunno. I haven't seen much of that problem, and I generally solo-roam. On a GS/LB power-trapper DH in full zerk(1). I believe the conventional wisdom is that this is close to the worst possible combination for solo-roaming, but it works OK for me, and it's the class I've played the most of. Needless to say, what with it being full glass, I run away a lot.

(1) Exotic armour with Superior Runes of the Traveler for speed, ascended other gear. For non-WvW, I switch the armour to Ascended zerk with Scholar runes.

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

You dont need gift of exploration for second generation

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

He also didn't mention anything about making Legendarys. I just chimed in about the time requirements. He is also doing the core maps which is required for the first generation and the GoB.

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:

@Loosmaster.8263 said:And people scream about the 8 hours required for Gift of Battle...

I will add details about this for my upcoming review, as to better clarify what I went for and why I do it. Atm it's mostly a time measuring angle, but also % wise what each element counts up to. And yup, this is only for 1st gen weapons to keep or sell (since the 1st gen legends still sell for a few coins on the tp). Appreciate the feedback :)

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:I really admire players who did the world completion more than one time. I can not and not willing to do it second time, its just too borng for me.

the time required to get it pretty much been cut down more than 50% thanks to mounts and power creep

I do plan to get all first gen Legendaries plus Twice Told Legend achieve, so need 20 GoEgot it done one time for every class before PoF, so 11 more to go during content drought