Guild Wars 2: The new Secrets of the Obscure expansion played

The new expansion for Guild Wars 2 will be released next week. During a press event, MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch spent around 100 minutes looking at the new content. Much of it looks putative for a little extension looks really good. But unfortunately he is disappointed by the look of the areas.

Secrets of the Obscure came out of nowhere. The expansion was announced on June 27th and the release will already take place on August 22nd. A lot of players, including myself, were concerned that the content would be a bit poor as a result.

This fear was not confirmed at the press event. Of course, it’s going to be a bit smaller in scope than last year’s End of Dragons, but that’s not a big surprise considering the short timescale and the new update structure.

Importantly, Secrets of the Obscure includes everything that makes a good Guild Wars 2 expansion, including huge world events, cool boss fights, new achievements and skins, new possibilities for your characters, and a fully voiced story.

However, the only bad aftertaste left by the three areas. Because they don’t make such a good impression visually. The wizarding world makes everything seem so disjointed and generic. Also, a lot is recycled.

You can get a first impression of the game world here:

The Skyscale, world events, and a huge boss fight

Our press tour began in the new Skywatch Archipelago area. There we were presented with the first highlight: the revised skyscale. This is one of the best mounts from Guild Wars 2, which you can now unlock through a new collection.

The new collection is said to be a little better structured than the old one, allowing newcomers to get to the mount quickly. However, if you have completed the old collection or will complete it in the future, you will be rewarded with new bonus effects, such as the wall slingshot charging faster and throwing you farther. A win-win situation for everyone.

There’s also a skyscale adventure right at the first waypoint that requires you to complete a course while hitting 30 targets with the new Fireball ability. This attack can also be used while flying and without dismounting, which is a great addition. Only the aiming is a bit tricky at first, because you feel like you are on a stationary cannon in action view, but at the same time you have to control the mount.

Also new is that the skyscale and griffin can now use ley lines. A great addition, even for old areas. You can see more about the new skyscale and its ability in this video clip:

The second positive innovation are the new world events, which made up a large part of the preview. This will teach you a new ability that will enable you to activate the “Rift Hunts”. These come in sizes 1, 2, and 3. The larger the size, the more players are needed to complete it.

This new feature not only eliminates the hassle of traveling to the bounty board, it also gives you more control over which events you want to participate in. The Tier 1 hunts should even be possible solo.

Bounties require you to defeat simple mobs first, then lure out the boss. However, we had a bug that caused no boss to appear twice, so I can’t say much about the difficulty.

However, the events are worthwhile for two reasons. For one thing, there are minipets and skins as rewards. On the other hand, the essences that are available as rewards are needed for the new legendary armor.

The absolute highlight, however, was the big boss fight at the end of the area. We can’t reveal too much about this, but the scale and phase changes are reminiscent of the Temple of Harvest event in End of Dragons. Here dozens of players will have to work closely together at the same time in order to achieve success.

We were also presented with an attack mission, which is probably the second mission next to the open world combat. The boss Cerus is reminiscent of a mixture of the raid bosses Cairn and Sabetha. It takes place on a round platform, you have to run together into green fields and avoid a wall of fire. Our press group couldn’t manage the boss in such a short time.

The coolest Battle Pass ever and the new gear

In order to provide players with long-term content, the Wizard’s Vault will be introduced. This completely replaces the previous daily achievements and login rewards, but also offers a 10 achievement point bonus if you complete three of them daily, so new players aren’t at a disadvantage here.

The vault is a kind of battle pass, but completely free of charge. You get rewards when you complete certain tasks per day, per week or per “cycle”. This includes, for example, mining resources, participating in PvP matches or defeating enemies in WvW – so far, so normal.

However, what is new is that you can declare yourself as a PvE, WvW or PvP player. This should give you more tasks that fit your player type.

Also new is a currency that you can earn through the vault. For these you get items from the real money shop, such as transmutation crystals or revival balls, material bags like the laurels and…. new weapon and mount skins only available through these achievements. At the start there are two mount skins to earn.

The rewards should rotate regularly, but old ones are never lost. They then end up in a “legacy tab” where you can buy them at any time. Rewards will also allow you to purchase Mystic Coins, Laurels, and other Login Rewards content.

Also new are the relics, which are an absolutely great addition to the gear system. The runes are being revised and will give you “only” stats, such as 120 power or 120 precision, as a sixth bonus instead of a special effect.

In the future, you will get the effects from the relics that are located in the interface next to the earrings. These can be easily exchanged with one click, so that you can combine different effects with different runes in the future. This loosens up the rigid meta a bit and increases build variety.

We have screenshots of some of these new effects here:

New weapons, new achievements, new legendary armor

With Secrets of the Obscure, not only the features described here come into play, but also a few other things, which I will briefly summarize here:

Each class will receive a new Gunsmith training, giving them access to all elite specializations’ weapons even if they aren’t equipped. A ranger can always use the druid’s staff, even if he hasn’t selected the elite specialization. This should also provide more build variety.

In addition, each class will get a brand new weapon in a later patch, the ranger, for example, gets the mace for main and off-hand.

The new expansion also features over 70 new achievements complete with scuba goggles, new masteries including one that lets you spawn your own ley lines at specific locations, and legendary armor only obtainable through open-world PvE activities. So you don’t have to run raids anymore.

My big disappointment: the areas

Basically, Secrets of the Obscure brings us three new areas: the Skywatch Archipelago, the Amnytas, and the Wizard’s Spire hub. The tower itself is a huge, round platform that reminds me a lot of Arborstein in terms of structure. However, the sparse walls, tiled floor, and stairs don’t look impressive, nor do they have anything typical of Guild Wars 2. They could exist in any other MMORPG as well.

However, Skywatch Archipelago is my biggest disappointment. With its flying islands, it reminds me more of a fractal thrown together. This also fits in with the fact that they simply took old assets for the islands.

One island is called Ur-Maguuma and has the typical jungle style complete with pocket raptors. In Jade Mech City, on the other hand, everything is reminiscent of Cantha, while the devastated Garrenhof looks very much like Kryta. In addition, Rata Novus plays a role again, but this time in the built-up state. Nevertheless, none of this picks me up. Instead of a world of its own, the archipelago is reminiscent of a hodgepodge of the best places from Guild Wars 2. I was finally looking forward to a new setting.

The third area of ​​Amnytas, on the other hand, is a mystery to me, which may also be due to the fact that the map has not yet fully loaded in the test. There were blue areas everywhere, the textures weren’t right and everything seemed torn apart.

The positive thing is that we’re walking through huge fortresses here, which is at least a new setting. But everything works here as if a lot had been thrown together. Overall, there is no overarching visual theme of the expansion, which my colleague Petra Schmitz drew my attention to and which I can no longer overlook, even if I would like to.

Because overall, Secrets of the Obscure makes a surprisingly good impression for the rather short development time. It is also positive that there will now be a major update every quarter, which will bring new areas, fractals, attack missions and more for the expansion. The concept sounds very good, at least on paper.

Secrets of the Obscure has great potential