The Janthir Wilds expansion marks the next thrilling chapter in ArenaNet's innovative approach to Guild Wars 2. Embracing a new model, these expansions may be more compact, but they're packed with content and will drop yearly, promising a steady stream of adventures. After the recent preview for Janthir Wilds, I was keen to dive into everything and see if they could improve on the foundation they set with Secrets of the Obscure.
Story
When I first saw the Janthir Wilds expansion announcement, I was initially concerned we’d be moving on to an entirely new area, and everything we’d learned and discovered in SotO would be set aside. Thankfully, this was proven untrue from the story's first moments. We immediately kick off with the formation of the Tyrian Alliance, which, it turned out, was convened to reveal the true identity of the invaders who had been attacking Tyrians and to reveal the existence of the Wizards. Isgarren showed up in his typical fashion and quickly turned things on their head.
We met with the Alliance a few times, and I understand that some players find these sections tedious. When Jenna mentioned going around the room and having everyone talk about why they are there, it gave me the twitches because I hate meetings where everyone needs to talk about why they are there before the actual work can begin. That said, I recommend talking to everyone whenever the opportunity arises. There are so many fascinating updates with all the different groups we haven’t heard from in a long time. In particular, the sylvari and norn have interesting updates. It was lovely to revisit some of these story threads we hadn’t touched in years.
Something I also really enjoyed about the story's first half is its laid-back feel. There was no immediate world-ending threat that had to be dealt with right away. We were going to explore, check out some strange reports, and find Waiting Sorrow. Since there was no immediate urgent threat, spending time learning about the new kodan we met and exploring didn't feel out of place. It was refreshing, and despite not having anything too urgent at first, it also didn’t feel slow.
The biggest hiccup I ran into was during the first half of the storyline; there was a section where I needed to complete rifts to move on. However, tracking tier 1 rifts was broken. This was a huge problem very early on in the story. Fortunately for me, there was someone on my map with tier 2 motivations, and they created a squad to help people out. We quickly got it all knocked out in a few minutes for a ton of people. Thankfully, when I returned and checked on Wednesday, August 21st, the issue appeared to have been resolved. As much as this was a substantial story-blocking issue, it only persisted for about a day.
The finding of Waiting Sorrow happened much more quickly than I thought it would, and not at all how I expected it to happen. That said, it was a great moment. I won’t get too deep into all the reveals about her here; there’ll be plenty of time for that later. I am relieved to see my concern she might end up being someone we need to fight came to naught. Also, the way everything happened with her felt natural, and I was pleased with how all of that was handled. Particularly when she finally revealed herself to Isgarren. I want to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
Where the current story left off felt sudden; it was a bit of a cliffhanger and a reveal that hasn’t been explained yet. However, it is a logical stopping point. Everyone needs to reassess what is going on and come up with some new plans. The main reason it felt sudden was because I was enjoying all of the story and wasn’t ready for it to be over yet, which is a good sign.
Maps
Lowland Shore and Janthir Syntri are massive and jam-packed with things to discover. I’m not sure if they are the largest maps we’ve had to date, but they certainly are up there in terms of size. Often, when there are very large maps in games, it can feel like there is a lot of “empty” space. Not so with these two. I’ve spent almost all of my time in them over the last week and a half, and I know I haven’t come close to finding everything there is. I’ve mostly been wandering wherever events and whim take me, so I should probably start switching over to specifically looking for things.
There are fewer hearts on each map to complete, but each heart covers a much broader area in the maps than previously. This is a considerable improvement to hearts because it means there is much more variety in the activities I can participate in to complete each heart. Since I get bored with repetition quickly, this is a huge boon for me since I can switch to a different activity if I get bored with one. Or I can more easily wander and still make progress on a heart. Of course, not all activities give the same amount of heart progress, so there will likely be optimal activities for completion. Players who prioritize efficiency above everything else will probably find little advantage in the expanded range of the hearts. That is generally a downside of that kind of playstyle.
The only area where this seemed not to work well is with the heart at the entrance to Janthir Syntri. The first issue is the various events and activities around there feel like they give very little progress on the heart. Additionally, the second issue is that another heart is directly to the north of it, and the border between each heart’s range doesn’t make much sense. Together, these two factors can make completing that heart a bit of a frustrating experience. One of the most common questions I see in the Janthir Syntri map chat is how to complete that heart; people are generally frustrated with it. I’d love to see data on which hearts are most often completed by turning in the heart rewards. I’d be shocked if that one didn’t top the list.
Speaking of heart rewards, these are another brilliant addition to GW2. Now that hearts are tiered there is some incentive to complete them multiple times to gain all the rewards. There is not a whole lot of incentive since the rewards seem middling, but it’s enough to encourage repetition. I noticed right away that when I completed my first heart, I would get an item that looked like a heart, which said that heart vendors would be interested in it. However, when I checked them, none seemed to have anything to trade for them. It turned out that when the heart wasn’t completed, I could use them to earn heart completion. For the hearts where I enjoy the related activities, I’ll probably still do those normally. However, I am happy to use this new completion method for the more frustrating heats.
Janthir Syntri is also a loremaster’s haven, especially regarding the White Mantle. This area has seen a lot of White Mantle activity in two distinct waves. The first was when the mursaat were active and living in their nearby city, and Saul worked with them to keep the titans at bay. Years later, Caudecus led his band of White Mantle who were looking for the same city. There’s a treasure trove of notes, letters, and ghosts with fascinating information to share. I hope one of the story updates will take us to the mursaat city. There’s so much potential lore there, and it is currently shrouded in storms, but ever have I wanted to go where I’m told I can’t.
I need to return to some older maps and do metas because I need more amalgamated gemstones. Currently though, I can’t pull myself away from these new maps. Many of the new collections are fascinating, and there are so many fun things to do. I was hoping there would be a race similar to the Wizard’s Tower race in this expansion, and I think the salmon runs are that for me. I never expected to be turned into a fish and have to race up and down waterfalls, but it’s so much fun. I’m sure I’ll eventually buckle down and get back on task with my legendaries, but for now, those are on the back burner.
Homesteads
Homesteads are the banner feature for Janthi Wilds, and despite my general lack of enthusiasm for personal housing in MMOs, I have been loving my homestead. In fact, the homestead masteries were the first I maxed out, and I went looking for all the recipe books I could find. I probably should have been a bit reserved with it all, since now I have this giant list of things I could make. This might sound great, but it increases the difficulty of figuring out what I want to craft. All I need is unlimited crafting supplies, and I’d be set.
Since I generally forgot that the home instance existed, I never bought many nodes for it. I always figured I wouldn’t remember to use them, so there was no point. Now that the Homestead exists, I’m considering picking up more of those. The Homestead master sells many of them for Black Lion Statues, though some nodes cost 100 statues each. I’m consistently logging out there anyway, so they’ll get used. Plus, I don’t even have to go to each node and pick up things. There are collection boxes that allow you to gather everything all at once, and glyphs can be added to these boxes, so there’s no losing out on those bonuses.
My one real annoyance with the Homestead involves when it is used in the story. There were multiple times when I had to meet people at my homestead, but it was a generic version of it. Sometimes, this made sense. For example, when I had to tend to the animals I rescued and take care of the plants it made sense to have it not update to its current state. However, other times when we were standing around talking in the Homestead, it would have been nice to have it reflect how I had things.
Overall, Janthir Wilds has had a brilliant expansion launch. Some bugs have popped up, but the most urgent of those get squashed as quickly as possible. The team seems like they have learned from the feedback surrounding Secrets of the Obscure and have stepped up their game with this expansion. We still have more story, raids, and new convergences coming up later this year. Then, two more updates will bring even more story and two more maps to explore. Not bad for a $25 expansion.
