Blood and Madness - October 15th

[Karizee]

October 15, 2013
A grim specter lurks in the shadows of the Mad King’s past.
The Bloody Prince is coming to Tyria!






Events

THE BLOODY PRINCE EMERGES
Halloween is drawing near, and Magister Tassi’s instruments are picking up some unusual energy readings. The Mad King isn’t the only one breaking through the barrier between realms—prepare to face the son of Oswald Thorn, Bloody Prince Edrick!

MAD REALM DOORS
Haunted doors are appearing all over Kryta, where brave travelers can dare to
trick-or-treat!

MAD KING’S LABYRINTH
The Bloody Prince has taken over part of the Mad King’s Labyrinth! He’s controlling the undead armies in the Mad King’s Realm, while his father retains command of the plastic spiders, candy corn elementals, and other festive frights. The Skeletal Lich, Grand High Viscount of Candy Corn, and the Labyrinthine Horror await interlopers.

MAD KING’S CLOCKTOWER
Race against the rising madness in the Mad King’s Clocktower, Tyria’s most maddening jumping puzzle! Can you make it to the top in time?

LUNATIC INQUISITION
Join in player vs. player madness and mayhem with the Lunatic Inquisition, where you’ll play as either a Villager, desperate to survive, or a maniacal Lunatic Courtier. Discover survival tools and hidden secrets within the Labyrinth, and try to survive the night!

DEVELOPER LIVESTREAM – OCTOBER 14
Take a spooky sneak peek at the Blood and Madness release with ArenaNet devs during the preview livestream on our Twitch channel on Monday, October 14 at 12PM PDT.


Features

Combat Quality of Life Fixes
With new ground targeting options, improvements to targeting, and a new, optional way to display condition damage numbers, we’re bringing in some great improvements to the way our combat works!

Trait and Skill Tooltips
We have improved the tooltip system for traits and skills. Traits now display numbers, and skill tooltips will show how skills are affected by equipped traits.

Balance Updates
We’ve made a balance pass on existing skills and traits with a focus on improving support builds in all parts of the game for all professions.

Introducing the First World vs. World Season
Starting on October 18 and running through December 5, we’ll be hosting the first WvW season! We’ll be splitting up worlds into leagues, and each world within a league will compete against every other world over the course of the season. Not only will you be rewarded for your team’s season-long performance, but you’ll also be rewarded each week that you participate!



Rewards

Sweet Rewards
Get yourself some sweet rewards by participating in Blood and Madness content! Complete the Blood and Madness meta achievement to receive a Mini Candy Corn Elemental , and follow the storyline for a Candy Corn node for your home instance!

Candy Cornucopia
You can trade Candy Corn for new Halloween items like a Mini Bloody Prince, a 20-slot Halloween Pail, and special crafting items needed for Halloween weapons!

Mask of the Night
Participate in rounds of Mad King Says to prove your ability to obey the maniacal monarch’s whimsies and earn yourself a
Mask of the Night!



Sneak previews of the next patch from the fansites - Blood and Madness!

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/feature...g-october-15th
http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/r...ober-15th.html
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/news/blood...-announcement/
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/10...ess-content-u/
http://dulfy.net/2013/10/08/gw2-deta...adness-update/

[LilSaihah]

Ooh, candy corn node for the home instance. Looking forward to the balance pass as well.

Might be worth just copypasting the feature list in the OP.

[Zeek Daniels]

As GW2's first major content patch i really loved the original Halloween event. I spent over 6hrs of game time doing the clock tower. I hope its not much harder because i dont want to spend that much time in there again to beat it. Will be interesting to see what else they have in store for this halloween, and what changes they made to the areas.

[Valeron]

My favorite holiday (well wintersday is pretty good too). I hope they bring back that moba style mini game, that one was a load of fun.

[Karizee]

Might be worth just copypasting the feature list in the OP.

Better to let the fansites get their clicks ;-)

I'll put it up when Official unlocks the preview.

[Arlee]

"Tyria’s most maddening jumping puzzle thrilled players during last year’s Halloween event and returns better than ever."

The "better than ever" part makes me nervous. I hope they didn't change it too much because I REALLY liked it how it was. I will be super sad if this is a case of fixing something until it's broken

[Karizee]

"Tyria’s most maddening jumping puzzle thrilled players during last year’s Halloween event and returns better than ever."

The "better than ever" part makes me nervous. I hope they didn't change it too much because I REALLY liked it how it was. I will be super sad if this is a case of fixing something until it's broken

I'm hoping what they do is equalize everyone's size like it is in Super Adventure Box. That would solve the issue of players with larger characters blocking smaller ones.

[Arlee]

I'm hoping what they do is equalize everyone's size like it is in Super Adventure Box. That would solve the issue of players with larger characters blocking smaller ones.

That would be a positive change Though I did notice on the official release there wasn't anything mentioned about the jumping puzzle being improved, so perhaps there was just something worded oddly in the press release they sent to the sites.

[Lane]

Yay, sounds like GW2's going back to being fun next patch.

[Fencers]

I am not sure if there was a labyrinth last year. That might be new. Or at the least, new to me.

Sounds fun.

[Valeron]

I am not sure if there was a labyrinth last year. That might be new. Or at the least, new to me.

Sounds fun.

you don't remember the open area in which there was mass killing going? it was like the queens pavilion, mass zerg fun

[Fencers]

you don't remember the open area in which there was mass killing going? it was like the queens pavilion, mass zerg fun

No.

Do you mean the trick or treat doors that spawned ghosts? I did a few in QD, HH and BTC.

Edit: Or do you mean all the fighting around the fountain thing in LA?

[Valeron]

you must be going senile Fencers

the labyrinth was where everyone farmed, they had events including the candy corn champion in the center

I'm sure you did it, you just don't remember it

[Fencers]

Don't remember it at all.

I don't "farm" anything. Usually I do every thing once and that's enough till the next update.

Might have some candy corn left over actually. I never figured out what I was suppose to do with it for carving all those pumpkins around the cities.

[Valeron]

Will they have something like the Mad Memories investigative quest chain? I rather liked that.

[Karizee]

No.

Do you mean the trick or treat doors that spawned ghosts? I did a few in QD, HH and BTC.

Edit: Or do you mean all the fighting around the fountain thing in LA?

There were certain doors you could enter that put you into the haunted lobby cliff area, there you could choose to go to the Labyrinth or the Clocktower.

The Labyrinth uses the same map as the Lunatic Inquisition. It's a large loose labyrinth with lots of mausoleum structures.
Lunatic Inquistion is the pvp version where you pick if you will be a villager or a lunatic.
Labyrinth is the pve version where you fight the mobs and champs, dynamic events and candy corn nodes.

No waypoints in either mode.

[Arlee]

There was also an instance last year which it sounds like they have redone some. I hope that is fun, the one last year was hugely entertaining. I couldn't even begin to estimate how many times I did it last year.

I am slightly disappointed the balancing changes are only profession/trait/skills balancing. I had been hoping for some more changes to how WvW works before the season starts.

[Fencers]

There were certain doors you could enter that put you into the haunted lobby cliff area, there you could choose to go to the Labyrinth or the Clocktower.

Ooohhh yea. The spooky zone. I sorta remember now.

[Karizee]

I am slightly disappointed the balancing changes are only profession/trait/skills balancing. I had been hoping for some more changes to how WvW works before the season starts.

Yikes! This probably deserves it's own topic but I don't see them making changes to WvW 3 days before the season starts. Devon is holding a Live Forum Q&A tomorrow on WvW. http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...-WvW-Only.html

[Scyth]

Boys and girls of every age! Wouldn't you like to see something strange? Come with us and you will see, this, our town of Halloween! This is Halloween, this is Halloween!

I can't wait for it, I loved the first Halloween event and if this is as good as that one than I'm sure I'll have a blast