Day one of Janthir

We're a day in to Janthir Wilds. I'm not done with the story yet, but I've got some initial reactions. So while I drink my coffee, I'll write some of that down for posterity.

⚠️⚠️⚠️ This post contains spoilers for Janthir Wilds. Proceed at your own risk! ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Janthir

My initial reaction is: this place is pretty good! I have not gotten any of the warclaw masteries yet, but it's really zippy and can sniff for burried treasure, so I'm having a good time running along the ground. I'm usually all skyscale all the time, so this is a good change of pace. I bet it'll be even better with the double-jump.

I was initially a little irked about changing the warclaw controls -- the leap is on the dodge key now, whereas it used to be on space bar. But they had to free up spacebar for the double jump. I'm a WvW main, so I expected it to take aaaaaaages for my muscle memory to adjust, but nope, I'm pretty much acclimated to that change now.

The environment has big Grizzly Hills vibes. There are some specific areas that are gnarly and rotting, but the isle is largely a pleasant environment with a variety of enemies.

One thought I am having as I continue through this: why'd they bother with the Inner Nayos crap at all? JW feels like the other half of SotO's launch story. This is way more in-tune with the yer a wizard, Commander vibes from the first couple chapters. I'll probably have more to say on this later ... but damn, JW is the rest of SotO's plot.

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Charr & Titans

The other day, I said:

The "shadow from the charr race's past" is interesting. Does that refer to titans? I'm not aware of them interacting in the past, but it's a big Tyria, so who knows?

Somehow, nobody ripped me apart for saying something so dumb!

After Malice reacted to the titan's presence, I vaguely remembered "hey wait maybe flame legion had some titan stuff", went and re-read their wiki page, and realized that I am an idiot. The searing was titan magic. The shaman's rule over the charr was because of their titan gods. Whoopsies.

In my defense: I play norn!

Politics

There's a big focus on politics this time around: Jennah got the factions of the world together into a League of Nations-type thing. The Astral Ward has joined too, and is allowing this council to vote on how we should handle the titan situation.

It's nice to see everybody coming together, including folks from the smaller factions like the Dry Top skritt¹. But I would enjoy playing a game about zoom meetings, so maybe I'm a weird minority.

One thing that's really sticking out to me is the contrast between Imperators Malice and Crecia. Crecia is the main representative of the charr, and Malice is with her at the alliance meetings as an adviser.

Crecia behaves like you'd expect the commander of a charr legion: she's got her shit together, she knows what she's doing & why she's doing it, she's delegating, and generally has her shit together. She is a Professional Legion Officer Cat.

Malice, by contrast, acts like a small child at all times: she blows up at Crecia in an alliance meeting, inexplicably joins us -- solo, despite having the entire Ash Legion at her command -- on the Janthir expedition, and loses her cool the first time we spot a titan. Caithe has to suggest that maybe we should medivac the dying bearkin scout instead of charging blindly into the titan's home base.

I am really not sure how Malice got to be a sergeant, much less the imperator of an entire legion. It's baffling why an imperator would even be out here with us on their own, acting like a lone legionnaire.

The alliance gave us explicit instructions to gather intel on the titans. You'd think we could cover the isles in Ash Legion scouts and spy gear. But ... nope, hasn't occurred to her.

Malice is learning and getting her shit a little more together as we progress through Janthir. She's not a liability anymore, at least, and she's presumably patched things up with Crecia. But it's a real head-scratcher. Did everyone else in Ash Legion just ... not want the job?

There have been references to appointing² a new khan-ur after Bangar Ruinbringer's trial. I'm votin' for Crecia³.

Wailing Sorrow

We found Wailing Sorrow. She has still not explained the deal with the Heart of the Obscure.

Her backstory is pretty cool: she was a kodan Voice that got overwhelmed by Koda's power. Isgarren met her while she was coming apart at the seams, felt bad, and casually turned her into an immortal wizard so she'd be able to shake the overwhelming power of Koda before it made her explode (or whatever).

I thought that was hilarious. Isgarren just ... did that. Some random afternoon, he just saw a kodan and was like ah yes, I can fix all your problems by making you an immortal god-like being. So he did, and then went to Ben & Seer's for ice cream with Sidony afterwards.

Obviously that blew up in his face. I guess it explains why he moves slowly these days.

There's more to come for Wailing Sorrow before I finish JW. I'm excited to see what happens when we finish with the titans. Will she go back to Isgarren and Dadga? Or will she find a way to continue living quietly with her bearkin?

Assuming she doesn't get mabon'd. I'll be irritated if she gets mabon'd.

Homestead

I have not spent much time with my homestead yet. I placed an owl statue. The controls for decorating seem good, but I've gotta spend some time looking at the options and trying to make some Nice Things.

I did rush to the last homestead mastery so I could unlock the three harvest boxes. I have a full home instance -- thus, it takes absolutely goddamn forever to clear it out every day. At least a few mintues of wandering through and pressing F on two dozen things, which is not exactly Engaging Action Gameplay.

It's important to clear it out every day: I have Glyphs of Volatility on Svenn. Harvesting everything generates a ton of volatile magic every week, which I can turn around and get T6 mats for legendary crafting with at about 1/3rd their market price.

But: the three boxes to auto-harvest your nodes don't use the glyph on your gathering tools. You need to commit a glyph to each box -- meaning, if you only had bought one set of volatile tools at 2,700 gems⁴, you either need to buy a second set, or give up the glyphs you use on all the other nodes.

I thought that was pretty shitty. "We made it more convenient, if you pay us another $35 bux on top of the expansion". Gee, thanks.

Twitch Drops

If you're reading this post contemporaneously: there are some pretty sweet things available as twitch drops! I got the /sipcoffee emote -- as seen at the top of the post -- just from leaving a tab open and muted.

Just make sure to check the tab every hour or so. If the streamer ends their broadcast, they'll usually redirect you to somebody else participating in the drop campaign -- but the redirect doesn't process until I go back to the tab, so progress ends up paused.