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Guide to getting the Warclaw for WvW Newbies


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@"notebene.3190" said:This is great, thank you!

I got my first Skirmish Chest reward, but not sure what the best thing to take from it is, so I'm just letting it sit there. Should I take the 6 heroics? Is that the most scarce thing? I seem to have plenty of Badges of Honor, from both the old days and I still do 1-2 WvW dailies for my dailies, as I find them pretty easy to do.

If you need some coin, you can take the Dye/Superior Siege and sell them. Leave the Dye unidentified to sell it. All the other items are "Account Bound".Note: The siege case says "Account Bound" because you cannot sell the case but you can sell the contents once opened.

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@"notebene.3190" said:This is great, thank you!

I got my first Skirmish Chest reward, but not sure what the best thing to take from it is, so I'm just letting it sit there. Should I take the 6 heroics? Is that the most scarce thing? I seem to have plenty of Badges of Honor, from both the old days and I still do 1-2 WvW dailies for my dailies, as I find them pretty easy to do.There really is no one "best thing" in there, it totally depends on what's useful to you.

Personally I rarely use the heroics vendor, so I have plenty of testimonies in my wallet (above 3k at last count). I just have too much fun getting all that's available for them in pve instead ;) . One of my daughters is an almost exclusive wvw player, so she uses testimonies of heroics to unlock elite specializations on her army of asura alts, and rarely has enough of them. My other daughter plays wvw exclusively to get her hands on transmutation charges and dyes from the scrimish chests (she still treats the game a lot like barbie dress-up ;) ). A friend grabs a lot of siege decorations from those chests and has built a jumping puzzle out of those in his personal guild hall. Again others I know that rarely play wvw get unidentified dyes and superior siege to sell them on the tp.

The only thing in the skrimish chests that's (afaik) universally regarded as "not worth it" is the canned food. You can get the food you want for cheaper from the portable provisioner.

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@"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:It might be worth mentioning that when you put that first skill point on Warclaw, it does not actually unlock/give you the emblem until you enter a WvW map.

Indeed. And very confusing that is. I put the point in on one account in PvE late one evening, then couldn't work out the next day why I didn't have the emblem...

As my own basic tip, I'd add that, whilst you can do most of the stuff in EotM, IMO it's really not worth it. The Skirmish claim tickets mean that you're going to need to spend plenty of time in the Battlegrounds anyway, so you might as well cut screw your courage and go get stuck in. And if you join a squad and take part, everything else will basically simply happen somewhere along the way anyway. Also - having done it twice - I can attest that, if you complete the Warclaw reward track in the Battlegrounds and cash in the various other bits you get from the reward track, you will have enough claim tickets to buy the final item needed to complete the collection.

(Plus I find Battlegrounds are way more fun than grinding in EotM anyway. Just accept that you have no idea what's going on, and try not to be more of a nuisance to the people who do than you need to - and I'm speaking as one of the potential nuisances. If your server uses a voice server such as Teamspeak, load it up, mute your mike, join the relevant channel, ask nicely in squad chat to be verified - then listen, stick to the commander's tag like glue, and do as you're told.)

It took me about 6 hours each time, running in a squad with TS open and an active Birthday booster (plus others when i remembered). During that time I had a couple of commanders who had absolutely no idea how to cope with a squad full of inexperienced people who weren't on TS, tried to carry on as normal and were repeatedly wiping and getting really frustrated at things not working - but I also had several really good ones as well, who adapted, made allowances and in summary made the experience a pleasure.

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 6 months later...

"I estimate it will take no more than 10 hours to complete the whole thing."

I wish. I've played over 30 hours now—and have most of the achievements—but it feels as though I'll never participate in capturing a keep. Commanders and their groups go after towers aplenty, but they poke at a keep, find too much resistance, and run away.

It doesn't help, either, that every group consists almost entirely of mounted players who outdistance us poor foot soldiers in a twinkling.

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@"Kelkka.9086" said:"I estimate it will take no more than 10 hours to complete the whole thing."

I wish. I've played over 30 hours now—and have most of the achievements—but it feels as though I'll never participate in capturing a keep. Commanders and their groups go after towers aplenty, but they poke at a keep, find too much resistance, and run away.

It doesn't help, either, that every group consists almost entirely of mounted players who outdistance us poor foot soldiers in a twinkling.Just find a border with T0 keeps during off hours - most likely during daytime on weekends. If its T0, it means it keep flipping. If you just stay on EB or something, you might never see a T3 borderkeep flip unless very lucky. If the other enemy take it and its not on their side of the border, just write in chat that you will try to take it on cd. Maybe someone hear it. If its keep daily you can write it in team and I assure you, people will come like flies to poop. Just get the ball rolling by capping a nearby camp and getting a cata up.

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Then there's the mechanics of capturing a keep. I assume you set up rams to take down the gates or batter down a wall with something, but how exactly does one do that? I assume you need supplies, but do you need siege recipes? If so, how does one apply/activate them? I've googled this to death, but all the so-called tutorials assume knowledge I do not have.

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@Kelkka.9086 said:SEA [No idea what this means]South East Asia time zones

T0 [?]Tier 0. Basically no significant wall armor, minimal resistance, and minimal upgrades. Works well during Weekly Reset for WvW.

EB [Eternal Battleground?]Yes.

T3 [?]Tier 3. Fully upgraded Keep. Much more resistance and more people will defend it.

cd [?]Cool Down

cata [catapult?]Yes

keep daily [?]WvW has ‘daily achievements’ and often, Keep Capturer is one of them

write it in team [?]Typing in Team Chat. It goes to all 5 of the WvW maps along with Armistice Bastion

Now I feel a lot more ignorant than I already know I am. :(

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@Kelkka.9086 said:SEA [No idea what this means]T0 [?]EB [Eternal Battleground?]T3 [?]cd [?]cata [catapult?]keep daily [?]write it in team [?]

Now I feel a lot more ignorant than I already know I am. :(

SEA = South East Asia, in this case including Australasia. There are people who play GW2 in that part of the world, typically on NA servers and because of their time zones they're usually online when everyone in North America (the majority of players on the NA server) are asleep. If a server has a large SEA guild they have an advantage in WvW because they can run around the map capturing stuff when very few enemy players will be online, so there's almost no competion.

T0 = Tier 0. Keeps (and towers) in WvW start off at Tier 0 when they're first captured and then are gradually upgraded if one side holds them for long enough and enough supply dolyaks get through. So tier 0 keeps are easier to take over and also an indication that it hasn't been held for long, meaning players on the map you're on are capturing keeps. That means it's a good map to stay on if you want to capture a keep.

EB is Eternal Battlegrounds.

T3 = Tier 3. This is the opposite of a Tier 0 keep - it's fully upgraded and therefore highly unlikely to be worth the trouble of capturing (which will reset it to Tier 0) unless your side really has nothing else to do and there's either not enough people online to defend it or they're going to be busy fighting the 3rd side for a while.

CD = Cool Down. All objectives are invulnerable (or specifically the camp supivisor or tower/keep lord is invulnerable) for a short time after they're captured, making it impossible to capture them again immediately. This is because there's a good chance that when one side takes over an objective their enemy will be inside defending it and without the Cool Down period they could just kill the lord again and the objective would be constantly flipping sides (with everyone getting rewards each time it happened).

Cata = catapult. These are long-range siege weapons used to break down walls or doors to get into a keep. If you're in a squad you generally don't need to worry about carrying and placing siege weapons because the commander will do it. Just make sure you collect Supply from camps and use it to build siege when someone places it. If you're playing on your own or trying to start an attack on an objective placing siege and using it to wear down the defences is a good start, and catapults are a good choice because they can be placed furthest away where you're less likely to be attacked by the enemy.

Keep Daily = the achievement Daily WvW Keep Capturer. Like all daily achievements this makes it more likely other players will want to do that task on that day, so they can complete the daily and the meta-achievement for completing 3 daily achievements. What that means for you is if WvW Keep Capturer is one of today's daily achievements then it's a good day to try to find a squad who are attacking a keep.

Write it in team = Use the Team Chat channel to tell other players you want to attack a keep (or already are). This ties into the above - if it's a daily achievement there will be lots of players on the map who want to do it, so if you say "I have set up a catapult to attack [keep name], come and join me" people will come. Alternatively you can use Team chat to ask if anyone else is attacking a keep, or is going to soon, so you can make sure you're there when they do it.

@Kelkka.9086 said:Then there's the mechanics of capturing a keep. I assume you set up rams to take down the gates or batter down a wall with something, but how exactly does one do that? I assume you need supplies, but do you need siege recipes? If so, how does one apply/activate them? I've googled this to death, but all the so-called tutorials assume knowledge I do not have.

If you can find a squad to follow (and especially if Keep Capturer is one of the daily achievements) you won't need to worry about that. Most commanders actually prefer it if no one else uses siege equipment because then they can make sure it's only set up when it's actually worth using and the squad doesn't waste all their supply on useless siege.

If you want to do it yourself you can buy siege blueprints from a Siege Master NPC in any WvW base or from the Trading Post. For attacking a keep you'll need at least 2 Flame Rams or a Catapult and a Flame Ram because there are two 'layers' of defenses so you'll need to break through either 2 gates or a wall and a gate (sometimes with careful positioning you can hit the inner walls with the same catapult, but not always). Siege blueprints are cheap to buy, but you will also need Supply to build them, which comes from camps in WvW. It's free to pick up but you'll need more than one person can carry to build anything (this is by design - you're not really supposed to attack keeps and towers solo) so you'll either need to ask some people to help or you'll need to make several trips, which increases the risk that you'll be caught and your unfinished siege equipment destroyed (especially once you're inside and attacking the second gate).

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The keeps in EoTM count as well. Get two other people, guildies maybe, and you can take a keep there easily with only NPC resistance.

I think this is the best approach. Either find some friends/guild members to help you or wait until Keep Capturer is one of the daily achievements then go to the Edge of the Mists and attack one of the keeps there. Because EOTM maps don't count towards WvW progress for the world and they're created on demand you're much less likely to find upgraded or defended keeps there - so they'll be easier to take over.

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If you can indulge another question:

How do you build siege engines? I pulled up the catapult blueprint and was then holding a box. I typed 1 to place the catapult; I positioned it and clicked. The "image" of the placed catapult disappeared. I tried again, this time typing 1 again instead of clicking, in case that might work. It disappeared.

Okay—maybe it doesn't like that location. I tried another spot, positioned it, clicked.... There was a brief flash of a gold bar at the bottom of the screen, I was no longer holding the box... And there was nothing there, no build site, no catapult, no debris or anything. Mousing around gave me nothing to apply supplies to. (And the blueprint was gone from my inventory.)

Stymied again.

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@"Kelkka.9086" said:If you can indulge another question:

How do you build siege engines? I pulled up the catapult blueprint and was then holding a box. I typed 1 to place the catapult; I positioned it and clicked. The "image" of the placed catapult disappeared. I tried again, this time typing 1 again instead of clicking, in case that might work. It disappeared.

There are locations that you will have an icon on your bar that says ‘siege deployment blocked’

But there are other spots where the game will not allow it as well, though those spots are usually in secluded/hard to get to places and likely would afford too much advantage,

Okay—maybe it doesn't like that location. I tried another spot, positioned it, clicked.... There was a brief flash of a gold bar at the bottom of the screen, I was no longer holding the box... And there was nothing there, no build site, no catapult, no debris or anything. Mousing around gave me nothing to apply supplies to. (And the blueprint was gone from my inventory.)

Occasionally, the blueprint may have gone to another point either above or below where you targeted, though that is unusual.

What could help is if you ‘screenshot’ where you are having difficulty, as that may allow others to give more concrete info.

Stymied again.

It can be frustrating. Don’t let it deter you though.. ?

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