Bring Out Your Dead

Lots of things to celebrate today!

ArenaNet updated the game to include an impressive decoration of Lion’s Arch, Droknar’s Forge, and Tomb of the Primeval Kings for Halloween. Gaile (and the Frog) were hanging out in the International districts of Lion’s Arch talking to people and organizing conga lines and dance parties, and making movies that should appear later for everyone to see. Gaile also dropped some hints that this is just the start, and that more will be coming for the holiday over the weekend with the finale on Monday.

As part of the update, they included the long-overdue ability to turn off the capes everywhere except during PvP matches. The control is located in the Inventory window in the upper left corner. I finally got to see the back of my 15K Pyromancer armor for the first time.

ArenaNet also announced the winners for the Halloween contest, and our very own Seven Seas of Rhye got an Honorable Mention (see near the bottom, on the left). Congratulations Rhye!

Making pretty pages isn’t my strong suit, but manipulating and organizing data is. I’ve put together a completely up-to-date listing of skills, which you can find starting at https://www.boyd.dreamhosters.com/skills. The icon list is a great resource for when you see a screenshot and wonder what that icon is in the skill bar. The full list includes skill availability information right in the list (T indicates Trainer, Q for Quest, and C for Capture location), as well as a graphical respresentation of the skill costs and recharge times. The skill costs and stats are based on the 0-15 attribute range that ArenaNet uses for its listings (and internally, from what I understand – don’t ask me why). If you find any mistakes, please let me know.

I’m going to leave the skill links to GWOnline on the right for now because they have much more detailed information on the skill quests, if the location given in the new list isn’t enough.

Since screenshots have always been popular around here, I’ve added the ability for everyone to upload an album of their own that everyone else can then look at. Guild Wars saves its screen shots in bitmap format, which is painfully large (especially for people on slower connections). In order to share them, please convert them to JPEG images before you upload. If you don’t already have software that can do the conversion, you can pick up Irfanview for free – then all you have to do is open the screenshot you’d like to upload with Irfanview and Save As… and select JPEG as the new file type. If anyone needs more detailed instructions, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help.

You can find the new picture gallery here (and I’m also adding a link to the right for future reference). When you register as a new user, you should see a new album with your user name that you can upload pictures to.