Loot (items, gear, etc.) is one hot topic in the MMORPG community and Guild Wars is no exception. Loot is the penultimate goal in almost every RPG (the ultimate goal of course being super amazingly awesome) so no wonder it’s such a much discussed topic. ArenaNet has recently taken the time to post up two articles on their blog about armor dyes and the loot system in Guild Wars 2 which may surprise a lot of long term gaming veterans. Let’s take a look.

The End of the Age of Ninjas

Ninjas were the covert agents of feudal Japan but have recently taken up more pressing matters such as stealing items in games exploiting loot rules and ruining everyone’s day. You get to the end of the dungeon with all of your comrades when someone decides that they’re just going to take the most impressive item for themselves and leave. Everyone who wanted a fair chance at it feels that the entire dungeon was a waste, people start arguing, and everything just goes downhill.

Guild Wars 2 is going to take a similar approach that Dungeons and Dragons Online takes by assigning loot individually instead of to the group. So everyone who assists in destroying a boss will have an equal chance at getting a reward instead of having to divvy up the plunder and deal with all of the drama, the out of game loot systems (like DKP), and everything else.

I have mixed feelings about this kind of loot system. On one hand I would love to have my own individual roll and loot table when I go into a dungeon so that I don’t feel unrewarded whenever I spent all night long spelunking deep into the caverns below the world only to come out empty handed (or possibly poorer than I started). On the other hand whenever you do get loot in a group setting it feels extremely rewarding.

Taking what we already know about world events and encounters (and how they scale based on the number of people attempting it) then a lot of things can come into play. If someone joins an encounter then they do not interfere with anyone’s ability to get loot but at the same time they are not necessary most of the time to finish an encounter since the encounter scales based on how many people is attempting it. Therefore no one could have an objection to having more people, even if they’re in a competing class, just because as long as they’re actively playing then it’s a major non-factor.

So, I think that this will be a real positive aspect to GW2 and a really fair way to handle the group encounters, but I can understand how some may want a more traditional way of doing loot. Personally I think that a individual loot system is pretty awesome and can’t wait to experience it myself.

Differing Rewards

We all know what it is like to have leagues of players all in the same armor from the same dungeon. It doesn’t look cool or unique. GW2 will be making sure that each dungeon will have one unique set of gear (at the very least) for each armor class (light, medium, and heavy) and one full set of weapons that all have a unique design to them. That’s a really cool idea because it means that every dungeon will be unique and you won’t get something that looks like it’s from two dungeons ago nor will you look like everyone else since there will be so many different choices of gear available. This also plays into the next two topics.

Differing Looks and Dyes

So, as mentioned earlier, everyone looking the same isn’t a lot of fun. It appears that ArenaNet is going full throttle to make sure everyone can customize their armor the way they want to. The first is with armor dyes. Each piece of armor in the game will have three different colorable areas and there will be over 400 colors of dye to choose from. Each type of armor will respond differently to dye based on what it’s crafted with (so cloth will be very versatile while leather will be less saturated).

The really cool thing I like about this is that hopefully everyone will not aim to dye all of their gear black or some generic color. With 400 dyes, multiple dye areas, and the gear taking the dye differently (in the example we can see how plate will still look metallic no matter what dye is placed on it) then we can hopefully see a lot of amazing variety and great looking avatars.

The other part is transmutation which will allow players to take one piece of gear that they like visually and one piece of gear they like statistically and merge them together to make a piece of gear that looks good visually and statistically. This makes me really excited because I’ve felt bad so many times replacing gear that I thought looked awesome with gear that wasn’t nearly as awesome but had way better stats.

One Set to Rule Them All

Set bonuses have been popular since Diablo 2 but the only problem with set bonuses is that unless it’s the max level set then you’ll probably never get the full set bonus. Guild Wars 2 will be using “crests” that you can place into each gear piece separately to determine what the set bonuses are. This allows you to wear different pieces of gear but still maintain the set bonuses that you want. With everything we’ve learned from the loot and dye reveal then we can only assume GW2 will be all about customization and personalization.

So what do you think? Do you think loot masters should be the ones to hand out loot or should everyone have their own loot tables? Can’t wait to dye your new gear or do you think everyone should look alike? Come to our Ten Ton Hammer community forums and share your opinion!


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Guild Wars 2 Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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