As promised last week, ArenaNet has released The Realm of Dreams, the second major free content update for Guild Wars 2’s Secrets of the Obscure expansion.
This new patch for the PC MMORPG adds several content pieces and new features, such as new weapon proficiencies for each profession (class). These are:
- Guardian: Pistol (main and off-hand)
- Revenant: Scepter (main hand)
- Warrior: Staff
- Engineer: Short bow
- Ranger: Mace (main and off-hand)
- Thief: Axe (main hand)
- Elementalist: Pistol (main hand)
- Mesmer: Rifle
- Necromancer: Sword (main and off-hand)
There’s a lot more, though. Two new legendary Convergences bosses are being introduced with The Realm of Dreams: the Hell Sister and the Dreadwing. You can get acquainted with them in the sneak peek video below.
The four available Convergences bosses will be active on a weekly cycle. This week, players will be able to tackle the newly released Hell Sister and the Dreadwing; next week, it’ll go back to Demon Knight and Sorrow, and so forth.
ArenaNet is also adding a new legendary armor set for all three armor types. The Obsidian Legendary Armor is unique in Guild Wars 2 because, unlike the others, it won’t require players to dive into PvP modes or high-end PvE endgame activities like raids.
The Wizard’s Vault now offers refreshed rewards, such as Solar Astrolabe weapon skins, Skysage’s armor skins (gloves, helm, and boots), Leaf Glider, and a Cat Tree Chair.
Endgame Guild Wars 2 players are getting the Challenge Mode for Temple of Febe. ArenaNet said this is meant to be a rather difficult encounter. Compared to the regular mode, it will be a lot less tolerant of any mistakes. Here, the Aspects from the split phases, which usually only appear at 80% and 50% of the boss’s health, will also be there periodically throughout the rest of the fight to make things harder. Moreover, in the Challenge Mode, you can only kill one Aspect for each split phase instead of two. This means players must deal with twice as many of Cerus’s empowered skills. There’s even an extra optional layer of difficulty where killing the same Aspect at 80% and 50% would let Cerus regain that power. Of course, defeating him this way earns players an exclusive achievement.
The Secrets of the Obscure story also moves forward with the sixteenth chapter, where players finally meet General Nephus and join him to assault Eventide’s March and confront Queen Labris along with her loyalist forces.
Last but certainly not least, The Realm of Dreams expands the playable area into Inner Nayos. Here, the corruption of Eparch is strongest and thus most noticeable on the land. The new meta-event finale chain is called The Fangs That Gnash, where players join one of two NPCs (Frode or Major Emund). These group events run simultaneously, with players tasked to escort Frode to the Kryptis camp or Major Emund in an assault on the Fortress of the Founding. The NPCs are also each accompanied by a rebel Kryptis character: the bloodthirsty Reya goes with Major Emund, while Frode is joined by Tharon.
In a preview event for The Realm of Dreams, we joined ArenaNet and a group of fellow press colleagues to check out the assault group event. The first goal here is to defend Major Emund, of course, and capture a few points outside the fortress to get in. Once that’s done, players will need to fight Abraxces the Scorned, a Champion foe who has a couple of mechanics to avoid and hits quite hard.
Afterward, the two group events meet at a rendezvous point to launch the final attack towards Nyedra, a large amphitheater where the epic finale of The Fangs That Gnash takes place. Here, players confront Knaebelag the Terror, Eparch’s wyvern-like pet. This is no cakewalk – successfully completing the event means defeating Knaebelag in less than 13 minutes, and it’s a tall order unless you have both the numbers and the coordination.
Knaebelag uses the full gamut of what you’d expect from such an enemy, including fire breaths, flapping its massive wings to push players off the platform, tail swipe attacks, charging forward, and more. It’s not just about hitting the boss, either, as the group also needs to disrupt two rituals on the left and right sides of the amphitheater while maintaining control of the central area’s capture point. Players are also invited to launch up in the air with their Skyscale mount, which can definitely be useful at those times when almost the entire ground surface is covered with negative area of effect spells.
Following The Realm of Dreams, there will be one more content update for Secrets of the Obscure, featuring the story’s finale, new foes, a new Fractal dungeon and challenge mode, new relics, tier two of the Obsidian Legendary Armor set, another Wizard’s Vault rewards refresh, and more. Then, the announcement for the new Guild Wars 2 expansion will be around the corner.
If you’ve missed our recent interview with ArenaNet on lessons learned from the switch to yearly expansion, it’s available here.
