Are you ready for the Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons expansion? There a number of tasks you can complete before entering Cantha. Don’t worry, these are not tasks you MUST do but tasks that can make it easier for you. For example, getting materials can be useful whenever you want to craft a new weapon or a legendary. Check out my video about it or continue reading!
Finish (older) achievements
The first thing you want to do is finish (older) achievements. This is because you can obtain exclusive skins when you complete a set of achievements. Also, with more recent Living World episodes in the Icebrood Saga, you can even unlock emotes. Take for example the ‘Play Dead‘ Emote. You can also obtain these through PvP but not everyone favors this method.
Having these skins or armor sets allow you to mix and match with the new skins you can unlock in the End of Dragons expansion. Of course, you want to mix and match your armor to have the most awesome look.
Why would you want to complete these achievements now?
This is because people are currently doing or re-doing these pieces of content. When the new expansion hits most people will shift their attention to End of Dragons and Cantha. The population on these older maps will significantly drop. Over time, more people will return to these maps but for the first months people will sit in Cantha most of the time!
If you are a real completionist and need to get an achievement from a world boss, it’s best to do that now when a lot of people are around. So, make sure to complete as many achievements as possible in older Living World maps and the Icebrood Saga. This will ensure that you have the most opportunities to mix and match when the expansion releases.
Unlock skins
Make sure to unlock the armor sets you can craft as a Tailor, Weaponsmith and Leatherworker.
Same goes for the weapons skins that you can unlock as an Artisan, Weaponsmith or Huntsman.
Weapon and armor skins that you can get from Karma or from collections are also worth checking out.
To get a nice overview of the skins you have not unlocked, you can check out GW2 efficiency. By creating an API key in your ArenaNet account and link that to Guild Wars 2 Efficiency you get a good idea of the skins you need. It even comes with a preview option, a link to the wiki and prices on the trading post.
So, if you see a piece of armor that you haven’t unlocked yet, you can easily see its name and buy it from the trading post. Or even better, you could go out there and collect them yourself!
And as you might have guessed, you also want to level your crafting professions. End of Dragons will most likely have a ton of new recipes to craft new items with. It would be nice to craft those items right away!
Try to get level 400 for each crafting discipline. This ensures that you can craft the majority of recipes that will unlock. There might be things that require you to have 500 crafting but that will only affect a small amount of recipes.
When you start leveling up your crafting discipline, make sure to use a crafting booster.
This will give you more experience when you successfully craft an item. This does not only make crafting faster. It does also make it cheaper since you need less materials to reach level 400.
For an efficient and a cheap way to get your levels up, I would refer to GW2 crafts. This website shows exactly what materials you need to efficiently level up.
Stack Materials
You want to stack up on enough materials after you are done crafting. You want to be sure to stack up on materials of every tier. End of Dragons most likely introduces more materials. We’ve seen a similar introduction with Flax in Heart of Thorns and the Eyes of Kormir in Path of Fire. Most of the time, you use these new materials with older materials to craft items.
Meta Events
Now, how should you collect these materials? A great way of collecting tier 6 materials is by doing meta events like Dragonfall. The currency you collect, Volatile Magic, can be exchanged for Tier 6 materials.
Tier 6 materials like the Vials of Powerful Blood are usually very pricey on the trading post. You want to buy as little as possible and avoid sinking all your gold into these materials when you want to craft something new.
A good way to obtain lower tier materials is by doing Drizzlewood Coast and Dragon Response Missions.
These can also be somewhat pricey if you need them in bulk. Take for example a Silk Scrap, a tier 5 material, which currently goes for a bit of copper on the Trading Post. Linen Scraps, a tier 4 material, goes for about 1 silver right now. And Wool Scraps? That goes for about 2 silver. So, yeah, you might want to stack up on those in case you need them. Drizzlewood Coast gives you these materials by participating in the main meta event, opening chests and Supply Caches. It’s pretty straight forward!
Dragon Response Missions
Dragon Response Missions are also a great source of getting extra lower tier materials. After you complete Dragon Response Missions, you get Tyrian Defense Seals.
You can exchange these Seals at a vendor in eye of the North. The vendor sells various Caches which contain these lower tier materials.
In Eye of the North you can also participate in Strike Missions which give you Eternal Ice Shards.
These shards can also be exchanged for a crafting material in Eye of the North. By consuming this crafting material you can get more Volatile Magic. And you can exchange Volatile Magic for crafting materials at the vendor next to that one. I dedicated a complete video of collecting materials and earning gold this way.
Catch up with the current story
And of course, you want to catch up on the current story. The Icebrood Saga has recently concluded and will be the foundation for the next bit of story that leads up to End of Dragons. But what about the older Living World Stories?
Last year, the older Living World Stories were re-released on a weekly basis. Right now, you’ll have to purchase these older episodes from the gem store.
Keep in mind that Season 1 and 2 don’t require the expansions. But from Season 3 and onwards you need the expansions to play the stories. These stories are also a great way to obtain new skins and achievements. A few months ago I saw a friend and guildie get a 7 year old achievement!
So, make sure to catch up on the story before the End of Dragons Expansion releases.
Secondary Armor Set
The last thing I want to suggest is to get a second set of armor. Or even better, get legendary armor.
The reason you want to have a second set of armor is that you can adapt to a specific situation.
We don’t really know what new modes the expansion brings to the table. But what if you have a new mode where you have a tank and the rest of the group is DPS? Then it’s good to have either a set with Berserker stats for power damage or a Viper’s set for Condition damage. What about healing? Make sure you have a set for that as well! Create for example a set with Harrier’s stats.
Don’t go all out on creating new armor sets just yet. End of Dragons might introduce new armor sets and stats that might be better than the ones we currently have. Don’t waste all your materials on all kinds of different sets. Just make sure that you have a set ready for different situations. Or have the materials in your storage to create them right away!
I would suggest having materials for Exotic gear on hand. These materials are significantly cheaper than the materials you need for Ascended gear. And this while the difference in stats isn’t that big! If you want to know more about Ascended Gear, you can check out my video about the subject.
Anyway, if you are a wacko like me and have Legendary Armor and Weapons, you can easily switch the stats of your entire armor around in just a few clicks.
I would suggest creating Legendary Armor and weapons anyway. In the summer of 2021, the Legendary Armory will make its appearance in Guild Wars 2. Once you craft a Legendary piece of equipment, it will be unlocked in your Legendary Armory. Items in the Legendary Armory will be unlocked across all characters. This means that you can use your Legendaries on every character you own. So, I have Light Legendary Armor on my Elementalist now and once the Legendary Armory releases, I can also use the same Legendary Armor on my Necromancer and Mesmer since they are both light armor professions as well. So, there is no need to swap Legendaries across other characters anymore.
So, get your armor ready for the expansion!
And that is all that I have for you guys right now. Do you have any other suggestions to prepare yourself for the next expansion? Make sure to leave them in the comments!
