Gathering Storm Patch Notes Up

The patch notes for the Gathering Storm are up on the forums. Head over and check them out. The patch is now live. Currently, downloading. I was getting good speeds but now I am getting connection problems.

Some highlights from the patch notes,

Two new achievements, The Gathering Storm and Lost and Found, have been added to the Living Story category.

The refugees’ oppressors are becoming more aggressive and have shown their faces in Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. The refugees need qualified adventurers even more!

Camps in Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel have become crowded. As a result, the refugees have begun moving on to Lion’s Arch. 

Refugees arriving in Lion’s Arch have lost on the road precious objects from their homes. The objects will be difficult to find, but the refugees are more likely to tell their stories to the helpful adventurer who recovers their possessions.

Sounds like a good ramp up for the Living Story. I will have updates here when I find them in game.

You can now select the five daily achievements from a list that you will complete to receive the daily reward. 

You can now select which achievements are tracked on the right hand side of the screen through the Achievement tab on the Hero panel.

Added new rewards to the laurels vendors in all major cities.

I have been looking forward to this. The new rewards are just icing on the cake. Along with this comes an expanded selection of daily achievements such as do three jumping puzzles or score points in keg brawl.

Many of the encounters in the Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable have been revamped, including all three final boss fights.

There is more details on this in the patch notes. If we can not do Guild Missions today then I will be running AC tonight to check out the changes.

A new test version of our advanced event scaling algorithm has been applied to four high-level, regularly played events to help us monitor the feasibility of this system in the live environment. This new scaling algorithm dynamically increases the difficulty of events by using the current system of increasing the difficulty of existing creatures, while also adding a new system that substitutes creatures of lower difficulty with different creatures as the event scales up. If successful, this system will be slowly extended to other events across the game during 2013.

Firstly, I wonder which events have been changed. Hopefully they let us know instead of just leaving it to speculation. Secondly, this actually sounds awesome. I hope it works out well so events can accommodate more people.

Next are notes about item preview on the Trading Post, which is nice, but even better is the ability to preview the weapon in different states; sheathed, drawn, or by itself. Next is notes about the Guild Missions and new Guild Content. Nothing new to really note here that I didn't already mention here.

Credit for killing creatures is now easier to receive in situations when many players are attacking a single target. 

Increased the loot rewards on many world boss chests, including the chests in Orr temples and the dragon chests. 

Fixed a bug on certain world boss chests that was causing them to drop fewer rewards than intended. These chests can now only be looted once per day, to encourage players to fight multiple bosses and spread out across the world.

So, more loot, more loot, more loot less often. I will certainly take that. I have often thought that reducing the frequency of the dragons would be a good idea. My thought was to have the dragons spawn once a day at a random time. I like the above idea of only allowing players to grab the chest once per day. This lets them put better stuff in it and allows people of all time zones to enjoy their loot every day. I just worry that their won't be enough people willing to help if they have already received their chest for the day.

Daily achievement tracker now preserves expansion state.

Nice quality of life change.

Fixed most cases of a bug where players would be stuck auto-running when attempting to pick up a bundle.

I know this is a big one for a lot of people. Some guildies went nuts reading that one as did some people on twitter.

Lesser air elementals now have legs and a tail.

First thing I am doing when I get in game is checking that out. I can not even imagine what this will look like.

Black Peppercorns no longer drop from Mature Herb and Verdant Herb nodes.

Will price go up on TP? Who knows. I'll probably buy a bunch when I get in game just in case.

Increased the drop rate of Passion Flowers from Passiflora Vines.

This might also be a good thing to harvest after the patch to take advantage of the high prices before they fall.

Increased the drop rate of exotics in the profession gear boxes sold by laurel vendors.

Another nice change. Might make these boxes worth it. Sounds like we are getting a lot more loot this patch. 

Using stealth no longer resets NPC aggression tables.

If this means what I think it means this will be a really nice update. What I think this means is that when you enter stealth the monster will no longer untether and reset, but will instead wait for you to come out of stealth.   Which will be nice as I have had creatures reset and heal on me before.

Cleaned up hit detection for melee attacks targeting inanimate objects.

I hope this finally fixes the issues we have all been experiencing with this since launch.

Changed the orange swords combat marker [in WvW] to show only if more than 25 people are in combat in the area.

I think it used to show up with five or more people. Changing this to a higher number is excellent and will hopefully break up some zergs.

Fixed an issue that allowed NPCs with Righteous Indignation to still take condition damage.

Was always wondering when they would fix this. Will make choices to take the supply camps much more strategic.

Well my game is patched and those are about all the highlights I wanted to mention. Time to play.