I was thoroughly underwhelmed when Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure was first teased/announced. I know the mystery around the Wizard’s Tower has been something players of both Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 have been clamoring for; it’s just never really resonated with me. I was also having trouble getting excited about some new mysterious threat we knew nothing about.
After ten years of the story revolving around my favorite thing, dragons, anything would have a hard time following. Plus, I wasn’t quite ready to leave Cantha and those characters yet. So, did spending almost two hours running around in Secrets of the Obscure content get me more excited about it?
What is Tyria Without Dragons?
End of Dragons, the most recent GW2 expansion, capped off the overall story we’ve been progressing through since 2012. The Elder Dragons represented an existential threat to all of Tyria. Thus, it was our task to deal with them. However, we learned that although we needed to “deal” with them, killing them was destabilizing the world, which was an even greater problem than the Elder Dragons were in the first place. After all, some life always survived the awakenings; if the world imploded, nothing would remain. Thankfully Aurene solved that problem for us. Yay, it’s peaceful days with no world-ending threats forever. Right? Yep, that’s totally how MMOs roll.
Outside of the story, expansions continuing the way they have has started to pose a bit of a threat to Guild Wars 2’s stability. The most apparent issue is adding nine new elite specs every expansion has played havoc with profession balance in all aspects of GW2. I’m not entirely sure we’ve reached equilibrium since the last set was added. Additionally, needing to find new and exciting niches for each profession has made some elite specs a bit of a mess. For example, Catalyst is a mess, and it isn’t at all clear what need it was trying to fill for elementalists. The best theory I’ve come up with is it’s trying to solve for “it’s difficult for an elementalist to swap between ranged and melee combat” since we can only swap weapons in combat. That feels like a weak premise for an entire elite spec, though.
Another issue expansions are running into is the number of masteries added with each and how much they have changed traversal in Guild Wars 2. Having gone a long time without either the skyscale and griffon, trying to get around without endless gliding or a springer is just, well, impossible in some cases. Maps are designed with the idea players will have these things. Even after I have obtained the griffon, I still go to those two the most because it’s just such a habit. This is also why they’ve added a way to obtain some of these things in End of Dragons and are making the skyscale easier to obtain in Secrets of the Obscure.
With all that in mind, changing how expansions are done makes a lot of sense. Some people are probably disappointed about not getting more elite specs, but it’s a good choice. Decoupling weapons from their elite specs will also open a ton of possibilities as well. For example, I’ve wanted sword/warhorn on weaver since I first played it. Hopefully, this won’t create new balance issues as well.
During the preview, Indigo Linde, Secrets of the Obscure Narrative Lead, said that the storylines for this expansion and upcoming ones will have a narrative throughline but won’t be directly connected. However, you could almost describe the previous expansions similarly, in that the throughline would be “what do we do about the dragons?” The expansion-related seasonal content usually did the heavy lifting connecting each expansion. Her calling out this more explicitly makes me wonder if each of the new smaller expansions will be much more self-contained. Will we end this one having “solved” the kryptis problem, or will that be the throughline? Maybe we’ll be working with the Astral Ward for a while, and they will be the springboard for our new adventures. It’s hard to say, but I look forward to seeing where they take us.
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This Is How Guild Wars 2's Relic System Will Work In Secrets Of The Obscure
Wizard’s Tower
The Wizard’s Tower is part of the Skywatch Archepeligo and will be the main hub for SotO. It has all the usual things players look for in a functioning central hub: all the crafting stations, bank access, trading post access, a strike mission portal, and a mystic forge. In addition, the Wizard’s Tower also has adventures, a jumping puzzle, and many other things for players to discover. It is a refuge for players to explore and discover things free from worrying about suddenly being attacked by anything.
With this expansion, one of the larger changes to Guild Wars 2 is how the general dailies will look and function. The previous expansion-specific and living story dailies will remain unchanged, but the basic dailies will be updated to give rewards through the Wizard’s Vault, which will be located in the Wizard’s Tower. In addition to daily goals, there will be weekly goals and special activities that players can choose to complete to collect rewards and astral claims. After collecting enough astral claims, they can be traded for special rewards. One of the rewards available when this expansion goes live, is the Enchanted Owl Griffon skin. This mount skin is available by just playing GW2 and requires no money to be spent outside of buying the expansion.
It’s hard not to think of these rewards and new types of tasks as much more akin to a battle pass system than the previous daily systems we have had in Guild Wars 2. However, one aspect of this system which sets it far above battle passes in other games is that rewards won’t become inaccessible. As new rewards are added, old rewards will be moved to a legacy reward tab, and players can obtain them from there the same way they obtain the new rewards. This goes a long way towards reducing fomo that battle passes tend to bring with them. Additionally, there should be enough variety of tasks available that players shouldn’t feel forced into playing game types they do not enjoy, which is perfect. Having players in PvP, WvW, or PvE content when they don’t like that content tends to end poorly for everyone involved.
Rift Hunting
Regarding repeatable content in Secrets of the Obscure, Rift Hunting is the flagship activity. These on demand hunts are short bits of content that can be completed solo or with a group of people, depending on the tier level. Tier one is aimed at solo players, and higher tiers will be designed for organized small groups through to much larger groups. In addition, these events will scale with the number of players in the event area. However, a tier one rift won’t become a tier two rift if enough players show up, so tracking the type of rift you want to do is essential.
Tracking rifts is straightforward. While playing through the Secrets of the Obscure story, players will obtain an artifact called the Heart of the Obscure. This item has a default keybind of “j” and is how players can track rifts. Tier one rifts are the default setting, and to track a higher tier rift, players must craft and use a motivation. These are crafted using materials that are gathered through doing lower-tier rifts. Unfortunately, motivations do take up a bag slot in the inventory. Higher-level rifts have a better chance to drop better loot, including unique pets and parts needed for legendary armor, which will be coming in a future release.
We did do one tier one rift during the preview. Upon using the Heart of the Obscure, a multicolored trail appeared to guide us to where the rift would be. At first, it looked like a general effect in the sky, but after looking more closely, I could see how it was more of a path to follow in the sky. The event seemed to be a general wave event where kryptis were invading and needed to be killed. At the end of the event, a boss was supposed to spawn, but unfortunately, it bugged out on us.
I did have fun with the event, but I’m not sure how much fun they’ll be when doing them on repeat. Hopefully, they won’t all follow the same event pattern (kill things until the boss spawns). On the upside, rifts will be in the two new expansion maps and will also form in core Tyria maps. At the very least, the variety in the map locations should help keep these events fresh for longer. I worry I’ll get bored of them quickly, though, which is a shame because if they’re a vector for legendary gear, I will likely need to do them a lot.
Amnytas
We spent most of our time in the Amnytas map working on the map meta event. This map is made up of various floating islands, which are arranged in a helix stretching far into the sky. The culminating fight of the map meta takes place at the top and is the highest point they have ever built in Guild Wars 2. This meta felt more reminiscent of Dragon Stand or Dragon’s End in terms of scale than some of the other map metas we’ve received in the past. However, the map didn’t close after the meta was over. Also, I won’t be going into more detail about this map’s meta event to avoid story spoilers.
Each of the floating islands in Amnytas represents a different school of magic and is geared towards that in both look and feel. We stopped by the Bastion of the Natural for a bit after the meta event, and I was surprised to see how much of it seemed dominated by marble structures. Sure, marble is a natural material, but it was definitely not in any natural state. The area felt almost opulent while trying to have the essence of nature in it. It is as if the area was built by people who like the idea of nature but find nature a bit too dirty for their tastes. It was fascinating, and I’m looking forward to spending more time exploring all of the islands, but Bastion of the Natural in particular.
It was noted during the preview that the names of the islands in Amnytas all start with “Bastion of the” which is reminiscent of the Bastion of the Penitent raid wing. Indigo Linde was quick to point out that the reason for this similarity is that the Bastion of the Penitent was originally built by the Wizard’s Court long ago. Sometime after it was built, the Mursaat moved in. A further interesting point is the boss in the new strike mission shares a striking resemblance to Deimos but dialed up to 11.
Temple of Febe
During the preview, we also tried one of the new strike missions, Temple of Febe. This location is somewhere we will return to multiple times while playing through the storyline of Secrets of the Obscure. They also mentioned that it is a location very important to the kryptis, which I’m guessing might have something to do with how new kryptis are “birthed” or created. My first impression of the area is that it is thematically one of the darkest areas I’ve ever seen in GW2. If I had seen screenshots of this area in isolation, I would have thought it was something out of a Diablo or Dark Souls game. Everywhere I looked seemed to be covered in some bloody fleshy growths. It’s pretty unsettling.
This strike mission is the capstone fight of the expansion, where we fight a Kryptis Lord named Cerus. As mentioned earlier, his design is reminiscent of Deimos but much more mutilated. He has these giant wing-like things on his back, which look like they were created from hundreds of different arms being put together and attached or grown from him. I’m hoping that through the story, we’ll learn more about Cerus’ past and understand more about him.
This is a two-phase fight, but we only saw the first phase to avoid too many spoilers, which didn’t seem too awful. A lot was going on, but it seemed mostly manageable. They said that it isn’t quite at the difficulty level of Harvest Temple, though they are working on the challenge mode, which takes things to a whole new level. I had the hardest time with an attack that quickly swung a beam around him. My natural inclination was to run from it, but dodging through it seemed like it was generally a better option. I can’t wait to see what it is like when this goes live. Of course, that would be easier if there was a public queue for the strike mission.
Final Thoughts
Overall this was a great first look at what’s coming with Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure. Even though ArenaNet is moving towards smaller expansions, they can deliver more quickly; it seems like they will still be packed with everything I love about Guild Wars 2. Both new maps seem to balance exploration and the threat of danger around every corner, with Amnytas appearing to be a bit stronger on the danger side of things. We didn’t get to meet any of the new characters we’ll spend time within this new area, but that’s probably for the best. I can’t wait to jump in and experience everything Secrets of the Obscure offers.
