Previously, my only character with map completion was Cor. Since I've been back, I've decided to try for map completion on all of my characters. The first, was Meso.

After a couple of days, I got map completion for her. My last item was the vista in the center of the Grand Piazza in Lions Arch. This vista has you climbing a stack of crates to get to it on the top. I got map completion, was pleased, and logged, leaving Meso standing on the vista.

When I next logged back in, I found myself floating in nothingness underneath the Piazza. I had glitched through the map and was far beneath the zone.

Looking in any direction was a void, and strange graphical artifacts of things never meant to be seen could be found everywhere. I could see through the sea floor and view what you'd normally find there, for example this vista, but could not swim out to escape. Looking up at the Forge was bizarre as the forge was not rendered, yet people could be seen using it.

I couldn't escape, as I said, so I filed a bug and then waypointed to end my adventures under the map.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. Back in FFXI, I enjoyed doing their Halloween events, and in GW2 I have enjoyed them as well.

In GW2, the Halloween events center around Mad King Thorn, who once ruled Kryta. They generally include the following things:

The Mad King's Labyrinth, where you run around a maze, opening doors, mining candy corn, carving pumpkins, and killing many mobs.

Mad King Says, which is basically Simon Says, but with pain.

(At the end of Mad King Says, you're deposited into the Mystic Forge, where you're transformed into a creature and can enter Costume Brawl. Unfortunately, this aspect was bugged this year and you, usually, just found yourself stuck in the cauldron.)

The Mad King's Clocktower, an insidious jumping puzzle which I hate and have no pictures of. And finally, Ascent to Madness, which is a mini-dungeon where you fight the Mad King himself.

The Halloween events do vary a bit year to year, for example, we previously had a variation called "Blood and Madness" which included a special PvP event in the Labyrinth (which was fucking fun as hell) and doors out in Tyria you could "Trick or Treat" at to spawn and kill enemies. Additionally, we hadn't seen Ascent to Madness since the game's launch in 2012.

All in all, it was a pretty fun event, and I came away with some cool items which I either sold (to make immediate money) or am saving (to make money later on).

I already posted about this before, so this isn't really news, but a certain serendipitous event happening during the Halloween event (I got the batwing potion required to make the wings) gave me money to stockpile some things to sell later. Couple this with the lowered prices of many things during Halloween, and it meant I was really able to bank some investments.

One investment was in the various Poly-luminescent Undulating Refractors. See, these things are pretty cool. When applied to a trinket, they make your entire character glow with the color of the refactor. They are obtained from an item that only drops during Halloween. This means that during Halloween their price tanks as the supply goes up. However, fast forward 6 months and their price goes through the roof. If you look at the history of the green one, you see that back in May 2015 it reached its peak at 500g. Meanwhile, during the Halloween event, they were only going for about 60g! So I picked up a bunch of them, and plan on sitting on them until April or May of 2016.

With them being as cheap as they were, I decided to use one of the orange ones on my Warrior. I feel it looks really cool coupled with the Ambrite sword and torch.

Went with [SAND] to do some guild missions. 'Twas fun.

But I've been spending most of my time in the new HoT areas doing the various things related to the expansion. Managed to go and get some of the new pets with my ranger (though, I'm still missing a few at the time of this writing). I also spent a lot of time as my Warrior, a fact which really surprised me.

See, previously my Warrior was very neglected. I just wasn't that enthused about it. But the Berserker elite spec changed the job in some pretty awesome ways making it now one of my favorite classes. I spent a lot of time taking on Hero Points in the new zones, so I could max my Berserker out. This wasn't without significant peril, as certain mobs could cream an entire alliance.

The mob in that picture is the "Champion Avatar of Balthazar", who, periodically will fill the room he's in with flames killing everyone inside. The group I was with had to have been among the first groups to fight this guy as there was zero information online about how to kill him. We must have spent a good 30-40 minutes before a few of us realized you could climb up to a wall where the flames wouldn't reach and just range-attack the boss down.

But the group I was with was pretty good, and we managed to make our way around to many Hero Challenges to gain us those sweet and salty Hero Points needed to fully unlock our elite specs.

Been doing quite a few of the world bosses in the new HoT zones lately. In the new zones, rather than having one big-boss per zone, you usually wind up having several. This can lead to massive, epic battles... or it can lead to great disappointment when you lack the numbers :-)

Here you can see Moose battling Diarmid, a boss that spawns (usually multiple times) during the Dragon Stand chain. Here I am with a big "NOPE" regarding fighting a Legendary Wyvern solo. And here is Meso fighting Anwir, who is a boss that spawns during the night sequence in Verdant Brink.

The Dragon Stand chain of events is pretty fokking epic. For those who don't know, the basic premise is this:

• Pact Arrival and Camp Setup
  The Pact arrives in the zone from the north (after having pushed through the jungle). There, they set up camp.
• Pact Gathers Strength
  Three pact commanders move to forward camps and start to gather soldiers for a final, big push against the dragon.
• Pact Moves to the Towers
  The three commanders move forward towards three towers on the map. During this phase, many events spawn, as the pact moves troops and resources towards the towers.
• Pact Assaults the Towers
  The three commanders simultaneously attacks each tower. At the center of each tower, a boss can be found which must be defeated.
• Pact Attacks the Dragon!
  Once the tower champions are down, the pact moves to the final area, a sequence of floating islands, where they battle the dragon.

I'm grossly simplifying this, of course. But you get the idea. The assaults up the lanes to the towers can be completely, and totally, epic. But they are nothing compared to the final battle with the dragon!

In this battle, the massive dragon attacks the various islands. Sometimes he bites big holes out of the islands, sending people plummeting to their death. Other times he head-butts an island, smashing large groups of people underneath.

All-in-all, the battle is epic, awesome, and undeniably the most intense experience I've ever had in an MMO.

Finally, wrapped things up by fighting Teq and getting a comically big head on Moose.