(Spoiler) The magic sword problem

Okay, our Deus Ex Machina for PoF was the sword, we technicaly had all along. Sohothin.

Here is the problem: "How or why did it work?"

Rytlock was wielding the sword for years now (and we still don't know where he got it, btw. ) and never displayed that kind of power. Furthermore there was no indication that we were the one special person that can unleash it's full potential.As a Mesmer I was able to conjour up multiple clones instantly for shatter and rain down fire from above. Without any explanation.

So what stopps us from doing it again in the future? I kinda believe they missed something along the line. Something like a temporary unlock or something.I mean, all we got was Rytlock saying that he had the key all this time and suddenly, without any indication we are the God of War ourself. It kinda comes out of left field.

Furthermore, the swords are said to release their power if they are together. They are powerful magical artifacts createdin Orr and given to the Ascalonians. However we don't know where they came from. They are older than the Exodus of the Gods, but I doubt they were wielded there.

So how come we have god killer weapons with us? Sure Balthazar wasn't at his high point, but still very powerful.

Overall I believe this part does need some explaination. I would have liked if the sudden powerspike was an unlock by litteral divine intervention. A parting gift from Kormir, to show us a future power if we finally get the two swords together, or so. Like one of her handmaiden (or all of them) coming down and help us. I mean, with their wings they can go as Valkyries and I bet they could be great "angels" as they were surely paragons.

I dunno. Maybe I am just annoyed by the closing of one question by opening several others again.

To me it seems like it's all a game mechanics issue. The player wielding Sohothin probably doesn't make it super powerful. Rytlock lore-wise is probably very powerful with it but because the game would be dull with him insta-killing all of the mobs for us, Anet makes him act like a normal NPC (killing nothing and then dying).

That would be my explanation as well. We never see Rytlock use its full potential.

However in LW Season 2 we see Rytlock trying to cleanse ascalon from the foefire. There you see a bit of the power it has. Don't remember what happened exactly but the blast is so powerfull that a chasm opens with a portal to the mists.

The pieces of Magdear are still at the blacksmith were Eir Stagalkin brought them after we recover it in the Ascalonian Catacombs (Story mode), i'm wondering if that sword will get restored eventually.

As for why we get so powerfull. Kormir hints that we need the sword against Balthazar. Magdear and Sohothin were given to humans by the gods (iirc). That is why they are so powerfull. Game/Mechanic wise we can't have Rytlock oneshotting al the mobs for us.

What people tend to forget is that Balthazar is no longer a "god" when we encouter him. The other 5 gods stripped his powers, Balthazar even states it himself. "They dimmed my light" He absorbed a lot of power/magic so he is very powerfull but not god level. In the instance with Kormir we get slowly blinded. But when near Balthazar nothing like that happens.

Same goes for Dhuum, he is still alive (well were not exactly sure of his current state) but no longer the god of death.

The problem with using the sword to do this and explain away how we manage to fight and defeat Balthazar is that - well - what's stopping us from doing it again with every threat? We have the recipe now don't we?Get sword - kill baddie.

One important thing to note here is that Balthazar himself reignited sohothan when Rytlock was traveling through the mist. So it might have gotten the ability to do significant damage to him sort of like a "fight fire with fire" scenario. It like how they explained the elder dragons weakness we just used Balthazars own magic against him.

First of all Rytlock probably won't give the sword away every fight. That it is effective against Balthazer/his minions doens't mean it will be effective against other treats. As Konig stated in another thread, using it against destroyers made them stronger (stated in one of the pre gw2 lore books).For this particular fight. Balthazar using a lot of fire magic made Sohothin stronger. I think it will be explained that way. However Balthazar reactivated Sohothin so it being effective against him doesn't make sense. You fight fire with fire. However there are other example's, using Modremoths mind against him, and the spear we destroy in the story is made from a spine of Kralkatorrik and said to be effective against him.

Edit: Wrong choice of words

@"supa suop.8026" said:One important thing to note here is that Balthazar himself reignited sohothan when Rytlock was traveling through the mist. So it might have gotten the ability to do significant damage to him sort of like a "fight fire with fire" scenario. It like how they explained the elder dragons weakness we just used Balthazars own magic against him.

I think this is what the devs had in mind but people can't put 2 and 2 together and have to have every little detail explained

Or there is another similar explanation. Sohothin is an orgainaly an orrian weapon that pre date the exodus of the God. Perhaps it's a weapon of the gods themselves. Although this does leave 1 thing to question. Sohothin is a very famous and powerful weapon epically among the humans. Balthazar would have to have been well aware of its power so why wouldn't he have done something to get rid of the weapon? Or perhaps he wasn't fully aware of its power but I doubt that as if it's a weapon of the gods it sure seams to fit Balthazar more so than any other.

@Valik Shin.9027 said:Or there is another similar explanation. Sohothin is an orgainaly an orrian weapon that pre date the exodus of the God. Perhaps it's a weapon of the gods themselves. Although this does leave 1 thing to question. Sohothin is a very famous and powerful weapon epically among the humans. Balthazar would have to have been well aware of its power so why wouldn't he have done something to get rid of the weapon? Or perhaps he wasn't fully aware of its power but I doubt that as if it's a weapon of the gods it sure seams to fit Balthazar more so than any other.

For Balthazar it was a simple deal. He was trapped in the mists until Rytlock met him. He offered to restore Sohothin if Rytlock would set him free. In all his actions Balthazar shows he is not afraid of anyone or anything.

Remember that Sohothin has a twin, Magdaer, which was wielded by King Adelbern.

He caused the Foefire with that sword, killing charr over whole Ascalon, and killing his own men and turned them into ghosts. So yes, these weapons have some ridiculous power in them.

Why Rytlock hasn't been able to use the sword the way we used it I don't know. We saw Balthazar return its flame, but whether that was the reason or not, we don't know. We can guess it is, since Kormir herself said that we already have the answer in our own hands on how to defeat Balthazar.

I would think it would be because we mastered the one thing in the previous Living Story Rytlock has never been able to master...Ancient Magics. That gives us the advantage because we can draw out the power Rytlock is unable to with the Sword.

@Valik Shin.9027 said:

@"supa suop.8026" said:One important thing to note here is that Balthazar himself reignited sohothan when Rytlock was traveling through the mist. So it might have gotten the ability to do significant damage to him sort of like a "fight fire with fire" scenario. It like how they explained the elder dragons weakness we just used Balthazars own magic against him.

This has nothing to do with 2 and 2 together.Why would you expect someone who is wielding fire to be vulnerable to the same fire?While there are physcial explanation to fight fire with fire it has often to do with a blowout or a lack of energy on one side.However we are talking about magic, so we can scratch that, I guess.

The whole sequence of the disempowered Balthazar and the sword is already sketchy.First of, he was supposed to have no godly power anymore.So he reignites Sohothin with his own magical capabilities, which might still be stronger than a human, but since he was only snapping his fingers nonchalantly, it might be not much he needed to give off (easily growing back into his armor, as he wanders through the portal, though that could have been an artistic choice)Secondly if this sword is as powerful, even seeing how he is grateful to Ryrlock later, why would he let that sword get away?He would try to be nice and sneaky and get it. I mean, he went through all the trouble to get other sources of magical energy to power up again.

Let's say the sword is a magic tool and needed a jumpstart. It only works with humans (which would explain why Rytlock can't unleash it really), because it was created by them (Orrians)/given to them (by the gods? I can't find a citation).Then again, if your PC is no human, you would also go wild, so that theory is out of the wind anyway.

Balthazar is the God of War. He should be familiar with weapons. More so with mystical weapons that have god killing capabilities.If I was about to go out and do stuff that might destory the whole world and certainly will people get mad at me, why would I let something out of my sight or even used against me?

He could reignited it, but not to full potential to claim it later and be safe.However it seems like he didn't as he was clearly vulnerable to it.At that point he should have been wary of everythingI don't believe Balthazar would be that thoughless.

So no. It's no 2 and 2 situation, as we were given no reason to believe that we are fighting fire with fire here. Kormirs offhand comment was the only reason we have to even think of the blade.Nothing else points us in that direction and it clearly feels like there is a chunk of story missing (it's not like the endfight was sudden and had any buildup. I mean, we wandered around to gather troops and then all of a sudden know where Balthazar will be, so yeah... )

I don't want to take credit for it as I've seen this brought up in another thread, but if Sohothin and Magdaer really contained such power, Rurik and Adelbern should've two-men farmed the charr invasion force outside the Wall in pre-Searing Ascalon until they got to Bonfaaz Burntfur and ended him - just the two of them. Or at the very least Rurik could've melted himself out of the avalanche and killed Dagnar Stonepate and the Stone Summit who wanted to execute him. Or he should've solo'd the heroes of Prophecies in the Hell's Precipice mission.

I thought these swords - or at least Magdaer - were enchanted to be somewhat powerful and work as a last-stand weapons when the wielder was about to be overrun by the enemy's of humanity, but not powerful enough to just solo battalions after battalions of enchanted armor forged for the single purpose of war. I just don't see a chained, abated and severely weakened Balthazar giving enough juice to the sword to make it that powerful.

@Farzo.8410 , the Foefire killed the charr only in Ascalon City and its immediate environs. And for some reason that makes no sense to me it went beyond the City and spread across the entire kingdom and killed humans, turning them into ghosts, while Ebonhawke was spared.

Furthermore, he sacrificed himself and his people by unleashing the forefire and binding them forever on that land.

The reason we didn't see Rytlock using the sword's super power all that often was because of one simple reason--the overlong recharge time. lol

I really could have used that skill to be a lot more often. At the end, I was naked fighting a God. Showed him.

I don't quite understand why the sword did what it did in our hands and not Rytlock, but maybe the sword was made for human hands and not charr?

@etsubmariner.4690 said:The reason we didn't see Rytlock using the sword's super power all that often was because of one simple reason--the overlong recharge time. lol

I really could have used that skill to be a lot more often. At the end, I was naked fighting a God. Showed him.

I don't quite understand why the sword did what it did in our hands and not Rytlock, but maybe the sword was made for human hands and not charr?

As others have pointed out, that logic wouldn't work if the PC is a Charr, Asura, Norn or Cabbage, so we need a better explanation than "just works for humans". Now if I had to put my best guess forward, it'd be to do with unbound magic we've absorbed. We were there first-hand at the death of Zhaitan and Mordremoth and (somewhat) the explosion of the bloodstone, not to mention all the unbound magic we've collected in the new maps from various sources. The player character is basically doing the same thing as Balthazar, just on a smaller scale and this powers up the sword's abilities.

@Boysenberry.1869 said:To me it seems like it's all a game mechanics issue. The player wielding Sohothin probably doesn't make it super powerful. Rytlock lore-wise is probably very powerful with it but because the game would be dull with him insta-killing all of the mobs for us, Anet makes him act like a normal NPC (killing nothing and then dying).

This is probably the best explanation aside from us supercharging Sohothin somehow. Keep note that when we wield Sohothin, the flames become a lot brighter than when Rytlock wields it. Whether he did something to it before handing it over or we are "the one" and unlocks its full potential is unclear.

It would have been better, IMO, if Marjory had showed up before the final battle with Magdaer in hand, given to her by Logan for the Pact Commander / Rytlock to use against the god, and dual wielding the twin blades had unlocked their potential.

@Thalador.4218 said:I don't want to take credit for it as I've seen this brought up in another thread, but if Sohothin and Magdaer really contained such power, Rurik and Adelbern should've two-men farmed the charr invasion force outside the Wall in pre-Searing Ascalon until they got to Bonfaaz Burntfur and ended him - just the two of them. Or at the very least Rurik could've melted himself out of the avalanche and killed Dagnar Stonepate and the Stone Summit who wanted to execute him. Or he should've solo'd the heroes of Prophecies in the kitten's Precipice mission.

To be fair on the avalanche part, Rurik was trapped under a tree not snow.

And powerful Sohothin may have been, it applied next to no burning. ;D

Aside from us being immense Lovecraftian Mary Sues (Balthazar is a breeze next to defeating the world sized mind of Mordremoth from inside out), the second best explanation is that the PC has a lot of added benefits to ignite the sword further than the previous wielders.

You could claim for example the sword is powered by one's soul (and then Sylvari confirmed for having souls and not being Dreamstuff!). Or you could say the PC has canonically eaten all the unbound magic we have been farming @LS3 all day long, thus undergoing a surge of sugar leyline through the veins and fueling the sword. We could also claim that being a champion of Aurene comes with perks such as this (wait, did we corrupt the sword with Mordremoth's magic flowing to Aurene's champion? still better than Kormir ). Last but not least, the PC might have fueled the sword with his relentless power of love (or dignity or ferocity!).

Whatever it was I do hope they explain it out or give it some background in the form of future LS collections/achievements. They are great at giving context to things by having us explore nooks and crannies of maps and I hope they use this strength to answer some of the many questions they have opened with PoF's main story.

@Jaken.6801 said:He could reignited it, but not to full potential to claim it later and be safe.However it seems like he didn't as he was clearly vulnerable to it.At that point he should have been wary of everythingI don't believe Balthazar would be that thoughless.

It's possible that he needed it to be that powered up to break his chains in the first place, and after doing so he wasn't feeling confident about being able to beat Rytlock when Rytlock had Sohothin.

Some people also raised the question of how a depowered Balthazar could have ignited the sword, to which I raise the question: Why was the sword doused in the first place? A likely explanation could be that when the sword landed near Balthazar, he drained it, either simply to see how much power he could get out of it, or actively thinking of using the ability to reignite the sword as a bargaining chip to get someone to use the sword to cut him out. So he was merely returning what he took from it in the first place.

@SpeedFiend.4521 said:

@etsubmariner.4690 said:The reason we didn't see Rytlock using the sword's super power all that often was because of one simple reason--the overlong recharge time. lol

I really could have used that skill to be a lot more often. At the end, I was naked fighting a God. Showed him.

I don't quite understand why the sword did what it did in our hands and not Rytlock, but maybe the sword was made for human hands and not charr?

This does make for an interesting potential explanation.