My Impressions:
I have these moments during the beta weekends where, after I have just finished a few Events or Hearts in a small area, I stop to look around and ponder what to do. I am mindful of the idea that if I talked to more scouts in the world, I’d have somewhere marked out on my map as a next destination, but I have avoided scouts for my own reason. I like to explore. The times where I’ve filled up my tasks and think I have nothing left to do tend to lead to my favorite moments.
At a certain point in the beta, I turned off the UI and began fighting moa birds without the UI to assist me, taking screenshots of the combat without the combat text or UI to explain what I was doing or what was being done to me. I did this to have some clean combat shots for this blog, but I also did it to become better at reading combat and using my skills. This was a moment where I was not pursuing a quest-like goal, but doing whatever I wanted. It just so happened that I was fighting Moas by the lake in Kessex hills. This is where a fishing village had been repeatedly attacked by Krait slavers. I knew I needed to learn more underwater skills, so I took my blind combat into the lake.
I quickly found that I actually liked the Mesmer’s trident weapon skills more than most of the Mesmer’s land-based skills. The Trident is about the only thing in game that makes the Confusion condition matter. I noticed that the lake had an opening on the far end, at the opposite shore from where I was fighting the moa birds. I swam off in that direction, picking off krait slavers along the way, and learning my trident skills.
At the lake opening, I found a shallow tributary with some fish and crab, along with those kraits. I swam my way through this watery avenue until I came upon an even greater lake than the previous one from which I had came. I turned my UI back on, and saw that a heart had opened up somewhere near me, along with a skill point challenge. I tried to find a way back up on land, finally locating a low ledge to my left. When I got onto the ledge, I noticed a watery cavern was just below me. I hopped down into the cavern and found a Hylek waiting for me.
What I had come across was the “pig quest”, a heart in which the Hylek shaman turns you into a pig and you forage the cavern for truffles. I had seen youtubes of this event before, but had no idea where it actually was. I was excited to find it, and found the heart a nice bit of fun. While doing my little piggy truffle shuffle, I heard some Hyleks talking in the water. I hopped into the water, found an underwater passage and followed it all the way down and around, until I came up into a hidden cavern that was home to a tiny Hylek encampment.
After finishing the heart, I found my way back out and tried to find the skill challenge nearby. It took some climbing, but I did run across a stinky Asuran engineer who had some weird stink bomb contraption. He challenged me to see if I could handle his invention and we proceeded to battle. His “stinky” contraption lobbed poison all over the ground and the fight was rather challenging. I did manage to take him down and receive my reward. Looking over my shoulder, I saw what looked like an Asuran outpost on the beach.
I swam over to this outpost and found that it was full of strange races, some new and some from the first game. There were Asurans, but there were also Caromi, Sylvari and Quaggans. The Quaggan seemed to be the locals of the area, and a rather annoying one kept begging me to do something about the Sea Witch. I finally said yes, and a boss Dynamic Event popped up in the middle of the lake.
After selling off my junk items, I dived back into the lake in search of this Sea Witch.
Inside the lake was another heart, and another Quaggan. This task consisted of checking crabbing traps and fighting crabs, krait and the rest of the things that probably scare Quaggan. Given their perosnalities, I think everything scares the Quaggan. While i could handle the previous lake’s Krait warriors, this lake was decidedly more reinforced with Krait militia. As I tried to complete the heart and find the Sea Witch, I kept running into more and more foes. Once I finally found the mouth of the Sea Witch’s cave, I saw that it was guarded by veteran Krait that proceeded to run me out of town. A nearby player helped me escape, but I decided to put the Sea Witch on hold.
After I went back to the crabbing work, I found another opening in the underwater geology. Wandering in, I came to a new dynamic event. I had found a Quaggan town underwater that was being attacked by slavers. This was one of my favorite events, but also one of the more vile events, and for the same reason. First, I was doing it alone, and I was doing it all for the Quaggan. I fought off wave after wave of Krait, stopping to free the Quaggan that had been shackled by the slavers. This event allowed me to use all the underwater skills I had just learned, and my reward for completing it was hearing a chorus of Quaggan conversation.
The Quaggan look like manatees and talk like rejects from a really bad children’s show. When I had run off the Krait, the town mayor remarked “Stwoopid Kwait!” The villagers looked to blame someone and rambled on about recovering something. They celebrated and discussed what next to do. I felt like I had, by myself, saved these poor Quaggan townsfolk, but then again, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hang around and hear them talk like babbies.
http://themoletariat.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/crystal-blue-aggression-beta-weekend-event-2-impressions/More at link + more screens. Don't want to copy the whole thing to here.
Screens: