Oh look, October’s vanished into the dust without me even noticing.

If there’s one thing genAI has disrupted my life with, it’s giving me another space to both write and read paragraphs of text. Reams of it.

Less need to both trawl Reddit/blogs and muse into my own public blog, which now feels more like a place where I should only visit when I want to say something meaningful.

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In this case, it’s a record of what the hell I was up to in October… assuming I remember it, which is already evaporating into the ghost of a memory.

GW2 screenshots at least provide somewhat of a dated record. I finished another round of world completion on a very old thief character, set to lazy man’s dual pistol 3 unload autoattack build, on Oct 2.

Which helps me recall that I was -probably- doing about two map explores a day for the last ten days or so of September.

That Gift of Exploration was bottlenecking the Sunrise completion, which has gotten pretty dead simple with Wizard’s Vault, assuming you leave it long enough to score two legendary kits (with choosable Gift of Magic and Gift of Might) and just feed the mystic coins into forge gambles for remaining clovers.

[Yeah, I could buy it weekly with raid/strike/fractal currencies for slightly cheaper too, but a) I don’t have many fractal currencies because of my allergy to fractals, and b) I really like hoarding raid/strike currencies – which might bite me in the ass come 2026 when they unify everything…or help me make out like a bandit. Who knows.

Some days you win with a stack of 250 Sigils of Nullification when they skyrocket; some days you look at the price of poultry now and go, goddammit.]

Anyhow, Sunrise was immediately on the docket, and I got the other shiny gen 1 greatsword on the same night.

Then naturally, if you already have Twilight earlier and just got Sunrise… it is ludicruously cheap to upgrade to THE GREATSWORD of all time.

Yeeeeeesssss… I don’t care that I’m a dozen years late to the party. It’s still a fucking cool greatsword.

Five days later, I’m cashing in on the other legendary I was creeping slowly towards over months of breaking down stacks of green masterwork gear.

Two down, two to go.

But at least this makes it cheaper to swap and replace the most expensive sigil types in various builds.

Three days later, I’m sitting around trying to manage Halloween achievements in GW2, trying to tidy character inventories and trying to work on long put off “maybe I’ll craft these things when I feel richer and don’t have legendaries in the queue list.”

The fog raven mini has been sitting in my necromancer’s inventory for maybe two years now of ignored Halloweens. Finally decided to just spend it and build the thing I was hoarding it for. Just to save one more inventory slot.

Still don’t have the mini unlocked. Guess we’ll have to see when I get around to that.

Now feeling distinctly poor, the next project was giving the power scrapper build a try (not too bad, I quite like it, but definitely needs a longer learning curve) and a bunch of Trick or Treat bags farming. Which went fine for the first week of Halloween, and then I sort of fell off the GW2 wagon in the following weeks while waiting for Visions of Eternity.

[Kudzu’s in the next legendary line up, but that’s gonna cost my last Gift of Exploration and Gift of Battle, which means more map completion and more WvW at some point in the future.]

Ironically, I haven’t even set foot into a single VoE map yet. Trying to figure out when I’m ready for a deeper dive back into the game.

What I DID do however, is trawl Reddit long enough to find out that Ritualist was being a touch of an outlier (along with other builds on classes I’m much less familiar with.)

Ooooooh. Necromancer IS a class I’m quite familiar with.

See, I’ve been trying to solo cap a guild hall (Auric Basin) for one of my old grandfathered solo guilds for FOREVER.

[Yes, I could have posted an LFG or map chatted or guild chatted in some other guild and begged someone to help out. And probably found someone. But but… it’s the principle of the thing.]

I’ve tried all kinds of stupid builds over the past years and just never had the skill and know-how to manage this. Condi daredevil was supposed to be spin-to-win and just bleed to death all the things. (Just spun off cliffs and died instead.)

Tried celestial and sturdier gear variants of my normal builds. Too damn slow to manage the pre-events, which require taking down two vinetenders and a maw within a time limit, while not dying to all the other trash nearby.

Normal build berserker stuff? Either managed to kill in time, and/or died horribly to the other trash. Spend time killing the trash? Run out of time killing the maw…

Then there was the OTHER problem. I could finish the pre-events with the odd failure or two if the event spawned in a bad location. The LEGENDARY axe champion throws lethal as fuck axes, draws lethal as fuck lines on the ground that I can hardly see, and oh, did I mention it’s a goddamn legendary with a ton of hitpoints comparatively?

Elites are nothing. I can solo champions. Legendary mobs now… errr… I’m not -that- exceptional. I screw up dodges and so on. (And it’s on an eight minute timer, so it’s not like I have THAT long to practice, nor the patience to keep doing those pre-events.)

Oh, I tried.

Googled Lord Hizen and aped his solo vindicator build where he absolutely trashed that legendary.

Lemme tell you, when you don’t actually know how to drive the build, it’s not easy at all. I’ve not learned revenant by any means. I don’t know vindicator. I barely figured out 20% of the skill and trait interactions while trying not to get absolutely demolished by Mordrem Cavaliers knocking me around, Bristlebacks shooting me to pieces, and yes, the Legendary Axe Guy flinging five axes at me before I can react with that jump/dodge thing Vindicators have.

Everything was pain.

No go.

Ritualist now… OHHHHH… It’s a teensy bit OP apparently. It generates its own boons. Might, fury, quickness, protection. It has PETS to deflect and absorb aggro – I just need to pace them so that I’m not the target of Legendary Axe Dude as much as possible. It has a SHROUD for a second HP bar.

I might actually be able to drive this.

Guess what.

Yes, yes I can. Still barely knew what I was doing, but the damage was there, the deflected aggro was critical, and the just-enough tankiness was sufficient to outlast 80% of it. Did fall over once when the legendary was at 14% hp, but the jade bot revive rescued me in time.

Ahhhhh… Seeing the guild hall door open and the crystal ready to be “Press F”‘ed has never been so satisfying.

Ok, I’m good now. If they nerf it later, at least I got this off the to-do list.

Great way to cap off October.

Oct 31, 2025 – Golden Guild Hall Finally Got.

[As for when I’ll actually deign to spend the insanity of currencies to upgrade it… solo… check back in another dozen years.]

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As for the late October distraction that took my attention away from GW2, it was basically figuring out how to touch base again with story writing as a manageable hobby / pasttime.

Going all gungho Nanowrimo on the wannabe novel was just unsustainable.

Doing daily goal writing of several hundred words or whatever was a touch too routinely habitual for the way I’m built – clockwork routines drag me down over time (can’t do GW2 event timers daily, weekly static appointments wear me down, unsoweiter.)

Waiting for “when I’m in the mood” days means never actually getting anything done.

No set solutions yet. Just a bunch of experiments. Inching my way back past a mental writer’s block by just doing shorter and smaller scene bursts in a different timeline / story arc, than the main novel for now.

Got to stop obsessing over the product (it’s not like there’s general interest and it’ll require something actually completed before worrying about marketing or sharing) and actually enjoy the process. It’s a hobby. It’s a craft to be honed. It’s meant to be fun and life-enriching.

Working on that, yep.

And I was also playing The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles on the Switch. Love the Phoenix Wright style courtroom games. Finished the first five episodes of Part 1. Now into episode 3 of Part 2. It’s a good palate-cleanser.

As for November? Same deal. No goals. Just see what we manage by the end of it. Maybe more Ace Attorney. Maybe more GW2 – actually visit a Visions of Eternity map? Maybe we can squeeze in the next expedition of No Man’s Sky.

Maybe I’ll actually blog more than once this month? Ha.