Bitterfrost frontier

[olleandersson.1904]

So I just purchased a new account in addition to my main account. Bought both of the expansions aswell. Now, is it not possible for me to get to Bitterfrost frontier without buying the living world season 3 for gems...? If not, what a joke. I've tried with a 'teleport to friend' without any success... Please tell me there's another way to get there.

[Blocki.4931]

You need to pay 200 gems to unlock the episode it was released in.

[Cyninja.2954]

Living World Seasons are separate from expansions and are constantly released content. There is 2 ways to unlock this content:

• log in to the game while an episode is active (meaning it's the last one released)
• buy past episodes for gems (either purchased with money or gold)

Separate Episodes can be purchased individually for usually 200 gems per episode or as bundle when available with often some price reduction.

It's one of the ways to assure revenue for the constant development of content without having to rely on a subscription fee.

[phs.6089]

If you weren't here when episode was released, you need to buy it

[perilisk.1874]

It's around 50 gold, basically. Not that much, all things considered (the single winterberry node you can buy for your home instance once you get BF is 50 gold, by way of comparison). If you did nothing but dailies, you could get it in 25 or 26 days, but any semi-decent gold farming (SW, fractals, PvP, dungeons, etc.) will let you get it within a week. I mean, farming isn't fun, but if you want that map specifically, then it's probably for farming trinkets, so what's a few days more farming?

[Randulf.7614]

None of the 6 LS3 maps are accessible without buying the season. Same with LS4. Assuming you weren;t there for the release window when you get free access

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

ANet had these choices for the cost of Living World episodes:

• Free to everyone
• 200 gems for everyone
• 200 gems for everyone, but gift it to players active at the time the episode was 'live'

I hope it's easy for people to see why ANet chose the third: expansions are cheap (US$30) and they 'need' to charge something, while also acknowledging actively-playing fans of the game.

And these choices for the features:

• Charge for access to both story and map
• Charge only for story
• Charge only for map.

Similarly, I hope it's easy for folks to see why the third is impossible (can't do the stories without the map) and that the second would mean a lot of people wouldn't bother with the story (which is counter to their design philosophy).