My ideas on how the rest of Living World Season 4 will continue

[Tyson.5160]

@"cptaylor.2670" said:

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"cptaylor.2670" said:I speculated that he is going to wind up moving back up north toward scavengers causeway. I still believe that honestly. Plus the causeway had some minor map changes done to the coastline and what appears to be a vertical line. It’s the only movement that makes sense from where he is now. Plus it would be interesting to have the Orr area mostly uncovered, except that middle watery area.I very highly doubt that will happen.

No company would follow a desert based expansion that ended in the (mostly) ruined area of a once highly magical nation(Vabbi) with another desert based expansion that ends in the ruined area of a once highly magical nation(Orr). Each expansion is supposed to offer a whole new landscape type to keep things fresh.-GW2 ended is the desolate and dead Orr-Heart of Thorns took us to the exxact opposite of that, with a dense jungle environment full of life-Path of Fire took us to the exact opposite of that, with a wide open desert environment.Expansion 3 will likely take us to someplace like the Far Shiverspeaks, or Cantha, giving us either a very cold environment, or a dense urban one, to serve as an opposite to PoF.

We don't need Path of Fire 2: Electric Boogaloo, and I doubt Anet is going to do it either.

I wasn’t referring to an expansion. I was referring to a living story map this season. As in he moves again after the next episode and then moves up north for some reason. I’m just skeptical they will put a map in the region he is perched at now.

I think it will an instances aerial area above the mountains with pact ships and Aurene.

[Fenom.9457]

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:My theory for Kralk's location choices is Shiny. He would no doubt have gotten powerful in the past 250 years, eating magic and the like, and Saltspray Dragons house similar physiology to wyverns. meanwhile, there's not really any wyverns native to the Crystal Desert best we can tell (a couple in the Riverlands but no adults curiously), and the Branded Wyverns came out of nowhere after Kralkatorrik moved further south.

Makes me feel like Shiny will become involved with us learning that Kralkatorrik was hunting him down, and he'll be Elder Dragon Replacer #2 alongside Aurene.

1: I fully support and hope for the story being us finding and befriending/training more dragons so we can kill the EDs and replace with friends, and an expansion into new lands to find more dragons would be absolutely amazing

2: I do hope we get a dragon or two that wasn't in GW1, a major story beat not tied to the first game.

3: Some ties are fine, Shiny being involved would make me endlessly happy.

[Fenom.9457]

@Tyson.5160 said:

@"cptaylor.2670" said:

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"cptaylor.2670" said:I speculated that he is going to wind up moving back up north toward scavengers causeway. I still believe that honestly. Plus the causeway had some minor map changes done to the coastline and what appears to be a vertical line. It’s the only movement that makes sense from where he is now. Plus it would be interesting to have the Orr area mostly uncovered, except that middle watery area.I very highly doubt that will happen.

No company would follow a desert based expansion that ended in the (mostly) ruined area of a once highly magical nation(Vabbi) with another desert based expansion that ends in the ruined area of a once highly magical nation(Orr). Each expansion is supposed to offer a whole new landscape type to keep things fresh.-GW2 ended is the desolate and dead Orr-Heart of Thorns took us to the exxact opposite of that, with a dense jungle environment full of life-Path of Fire took us to the exact opposite of that, with a wide open desert environment.Expansion 3 will likely take us to someplace like the Far Shiverspeaks, or Cantha, giving us either a very cold environment, or a dense urban one, to serve as an opposite to PoF.

We don't need Path of Fire 2: Electric Boogaloo, and I doubt Anet is going to do it either.

I wasn’t referring to an expansion. I was referring to a living story map this season. As in he moves again after the next episode and then moves up north for some reason. I’m just skeptical they will put a map in the region he is perched at now.

I think it will an instances aerial area above the mountains with pact ships and Aurene.

can easily be full map of final battle, helping forces surround him and such

[Torolan.5816]

There is something nagging on me with Kralkatorik. Why does he stay relatively stationary? With his ability to brand everything he flies over, he should have branded large areas in no time to vanquish any resistance, like a B52 dropping bombs in a line of fire without the need to resupply bombs. Right now he is basically given us time to replace him or find a method to cleanse the brand somehow. His only remaining ED challenger is the DSD right now, and those two are wide apart, there are no foes left to really take serious except for maybe Aurene.Overconfidence? He should have learned from Mordremoth, Zhaitan and the near destruction of Primordus that he can´t rest on his laurels.

[Digitix.9241]

@"Sajuuk Khar.1509" said:So, first off, this is all based on the idea that LWS4 will have 7 episodes, based on comment made b That_Shaman back when episode 1 came out.

So far we have had-Episode 1: We go to Istan, help out the Sunspears, and discover that Joko is back and looking for something-Episode 2: We go to the Sandsweapt Isles, find the Olmakhan, and help them fight off the Inquest, and discover Joko has taken the plague from them.-Episode 3: We go to Kourna, and assemble our allies to stop Joko.

From here on I predict that-Episode 4: We will go to Jahai, and the area around it, to deal with matters involving the Order of Shadows, their plans for post-Joko leadership, and the original Order of Whispers that are still active somewhere presumably in the old Chantry of Secrets.-Episodes 5 and 6 are a bit harder to pin down, but I expect one will take place in and around the old Sunspear Sanctuary in Kourna, and likely involve more centaur related lore. The other might take place in the Barbarous Shore, and deal with the Corsairs, or go into the Sulfurous Wastelands south of the Bone Palace for reasons I can't immediately think of, but this is Anet, and they can mcguffin anything.-Episode 7 will take us to the unnamed mountain region were Kralkatorik is roosting out on, and this will be where we get all of our allies from PoF and the previous 6 episodes together to take down Kralkatorik.

OFC this is just a basic summary. There will e plenty of things going on during all this like changes to Aurene after eating Joko, finding out how to make Aurene able to replace Kralkatorik, and some sort of foreshadowing to what the next expansion will be.

This is basically exactly what I thought too. 4 near Jahai, 5 in sunspear sanctuary, 6 in sulfurous wastelands and 7 on Krally's mountain :D

[Mickey Frogeater.1470]

Considering the Branded have a habit of moving to Kralkatorrik's general direction he's likely trying to use them to fill the emptiness in his being He doesn't want to conquer like Mordremoth and Zhaitan do but to bring in everything. Everyplace hit with a Brandstorm is to create more Branded for him to consume.

[Yannir.4132]

@Torolan.5816 said:There is something nagging on me with Kralkatorik. Why does he stay relatively stationary? With his ability to brand everything he flies over, he should have branded large areas in no time to vanquish any resistance, like a B52 dropping bombs in a line of fire without the need to resupply bombs. Right now he is basically given us time to replace him or find a method to cleanse the brand somehow. His only remaining ED challenger is the DSD right now, and those two are wide apart, there are no foes left to really take serious except for maybe Aurene.Overconfidence? He should have learned from Mordremoth, Zhaitan and the near destruction of Primordus that he can´t rest on his laurels.

I don't think the Elder Dragons are intelligent like that. Mordremoth was an exception in having a human-like intelligence because his domain was Mind. Zhaitan had intelligent minions that did the war planning for him. As does Jormag but I think his minions lose their minds over time.The rest of the ED's are more like predators in my mind, not thinking much of strategy or long term goals. I haven't read Edge of Destiny though, so I don't know whether Kralk communicated there in some way.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@Yannir.4132 said:

@Torolan.5816 said:There is something nagging on me with Kralkatorik. Why does he stay relatively stationary? With his ability to brand everything he flies over, he should have branded large areas in no time to vanquish any resistance, like a B52 dropping bombs in a line of fire without the need to resupply bombs. Right now he is basically given us time to replace him or find a method to cleanse the brand somehow. His only remaining ED challenger is the DSD right now, and those two are wide apart, there are no foes left to really take serious except for maybe Aurene.Overconfidence? He should have learned from Mordremoth, Zhaitan and the near destruction of Primordus that he can´t rest on his laurels.

I don't think the Elder Dragons are intelligent like that. Mordremoth was an exception in having a human-like intelligence because his domain was Mind. Zhaitan had intelligent minions that did the war planning for him. As does Jormag but I think his minions lose their minds over time.The rest of the ED's are more like predators in my mind, not thinking much of strategy or long term goals. I haven't read Edge of Destiny though, so I don't know whether Kralk communicated there in some way.

Kralk didnt communicate but the narration showed definitive intelligence and strategizing more than a mere animal.

I'd say that the very clearly different behavior patterns of the types of dragon minions also shows similar intelligence across all Elder Dragons. Zhaitan kept those who had high ranked status in those positions. Ship captains and admirals ran the risen navy of dead ships, priests corrupted the temples and supplied magic to Zhaitan, but then the kings and queens got subjected to be specialized scouts. All the while risen shouted about an eternal undead kingdom. Meanwhile, no kingdom of Kralkattorik's is ever menyioned by the very few speaking branded. Though some branded were in power both pre and post corruption.

And icebrood function entirely differently on top of both of them. Not only do we have confirmation that Jormag prefers to corrupt the willing, power and champion-status seems to be given to those who show merit rather than the position they held before enslavement.

Mordremoth seems to promote entirely differently as well as no named Mordrem Guard was someone we knew. Just Faolain. And even the clones of Destiny's Edge were rather subpar. The only Mordrem Guard Commander we know anything about is Diarmid which is just 'Pact Soldier'. No indication she was an officer or the like, and no time to show effectiveness like icebrood.

Then we get what the minions spout out, or in Kralk's and Mordy's cases, their own words/thoughts, the stated goal of the dragons seem to differ too. Risen speak of eternal kingdom through undeath and lack of loaing loved one's/reunion with them. Icebrood speak of ruling through power. Mordremoth talks about being the worls itself. Kralkatorrik thinks about endless greed and consumption. Destroyers dont speak but their actions is nothing but total genocide (an article pre-GW2 stated the Great Destroyer's purpose in heralding Primordus' return was killing all surface life).

And it should be kept in mind: minions have no will of their own. Their Dragon's will is what will they have.

Its hard to say where the strategies come from, but each sragon minion type has very specific behavior and personalities attributed to them that differ from each other and their pre-corrupted states rather drastically.

[Yannir.4132]

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:Kralk didnt communicate but the narration showed definitive intelligence and strategizing more than a mere animal.

Maybe I should've elaborated more but I didn't mean it in exactly the mere animal sort of way either. I meant that in a slightly alien way, where the predator-like instincts and the dragons natural characteristics are stronger than the intelligence they possess. Meaning they might squander a clear advantage in favor of greed whereas a human in such a position would likely put the advantage first.Do you mean strategy or do you mean tactics? Tactics means battlefield-level organizing, strategy means war effort/war plan level of organizing and distributing forces. Or atleast that's how I distinguish the two. Because tactics I could see happening, but overall strategy I've only seen Zhaitan utilize. And that I attribute to the intelligent humans, etc. that he's risen. Acting out of the will of their master but an intelligence of their own."Come to me" that I've seen Branded do isn't exactly a strategy.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Well we only see a narrative of Kralkatorrik's thoughts in one battle so using your definitions its impossible to tell if he has strategy. The while 'come to me' movements isn't all we see branded do (some defend locations like the Shatterer and Josso Essher), but as their main action that is also something that happens while Kralkatorrik was idling. As far as we know his minions may no longer be heading towards him.

Either way I would still see all these distinct behavioral differences between minion types as shows that the Elder Dragons are more than just instinct or greed.