Today marks a thrilling milestone for Guild Wars 2 as Janthir Wilds, the game’s fifth expansion, unleashes its grand finale—Absolution. This highly anticipated update delivers the epic conclusion to the expansion’s storyline, introduces a brand-new map to explore, an intense new fractal, and a slew of quality-of-life upgrades that players are sure to love. I had the chance to dive into all the new content last week—and while I’m bursting to talk about it, don’t worry: this preview is 100% spoiler-free.
New Story and Map
In the last story update, we made it to the entrance to Bava Nisos, but were blocked from entry by a magical barrier. In Absolution, we finally find our way into the city, and I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t what I found there. Running around in Bava Nisos feels less like running around a city and more closely aligned with some of the more wild maps we’ve had in the past. It certainly is a city in ruins, but there’s a lot more to it than that. I highly recommend keeping an eye out for Anthos; his observations will be fascinating for anyone interested in the history of Bava Nisos.
I’m not going to dive into the new storyline too much; it’s impossible to do so without hitting significant spoiler territory. However, it felt like a very fitting ending to the entire Janthir Wilds storyline, and it wraps up nearly all of our outstanding questions. This is particularly true for anyone who has been reading the various journals strewn around Janthir Syntri and Mistburned Barrens. I highly recommend playing through the new story before exploring the map and participating in its meta-event. Everything will make a lot more sense when done in that order.
One thing I need to point out is that the missing VO does slightly disrupt the flow of everything. While it’s completely understandable that, with the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, some missing VO is understandable. There are quite a few sections where characters are talking and saying significant things, but have no VO, so it’s easy to miss. Particularly when conversations occur amid battles. I found myself needing to go back and read through the dialogue in the chat window frequently because I was missing key pieces of information. If this is something that tends to be an issue for you, you may want to wait until all of the VO has been added in before playing through the story.
There is also the dreaded “go do map events before continuing the story,” which I always find a bit frustrating. On the upside, there seem to be plenty of events even when the meta isn’t running, and some credit is given if an event fails, though successful ones appeared to fill the bar more. I was playing on a map all alone, so my options were fairly limited, but it still didn’t take very long to complete. I didn’t count how many events it took, but I think it was about 10, and I failed quite a few of them. On the upside, this is the only blocker I ran into, and the rest of the storyline flowed freely.
As I mentioned earlier, Bava Nisos features a map-wide meta event, which takes us deeper into the city. This meta event happens roughly every two hours and opens some parts of the map that are only available after completing the meta. That said, there is a huge mursaat mirror at base camp, which is usable even if you haven’t trained the mastery for them, and will take you further into the city to explore as you like. We didn’t play through all of the meta event, but we did get to the first of the big bosses. This is the guy who looks a whole lot like Gorseval from the Spirit Vale raid wing. Of course, it isn’t Gorseval but rather a similar creature, and if you don’t take down his breakbar when it’s available, he’ll eat everyone’s soul, and that’s the end of that run. So pack your big interrupts!
Between the new storyline and map, I’m pretty much in heaven with this update. Although Bava Nisos gives big early days of Heart of Thorns vibes with the saturation of things trying to kill you, there’s so much to find and discover everywhere. I made a ton of use of the warclaw and skyscale mounts to traverse my way easily. Though I suspect the exploration will be more leisurely when the map is full of other players running around everywhere.
Kinfall
I also had the opportunity to play through the new fractal Kinfall, which has us taking on the role of a small band of lowland kodan after the rest of their group fell to an icebrood attack. You’re trying to make it through to deliver a warning to the rest of the tribe. This fractal was much shorter and more straightforward than many recent fractals, but it adds a bit more variety to the fractal lineup. My only complaint is that I wish the fractal had started with the events that caused us to be the only ones remaining. There are a bunch of lore discoverables that fill in the gaps, but it would have packed more of a punch if we could have experienced those events.
At the start of the fractal, each player has a protective light surrounding them to help navigate the areas safely. As we progressed through the fractal, we each had to relinquish our protective light to move forward, eventually leaving us with only two lights when fighting the final boss. On higher-tier difficulties, the light will also grow smaller as you progress through the fractal. We were doing it on tier one, so I’m not sure how much the lights will shrink as you progress through the higher tiers.
Another notable aspect of this new fractal is that there’s a ton of jumping. None of the jumps are hard, but as someone who is wildly jumping challenged, I did fall once in there. I fell after I consumed my light, so I had to run back in the dark, taking damage the whole way. On tier one, this wasn’t a big deal, as the damage wasn’t that much. On higher tiers, this might require some coordination, or if someone is weak at jumping, let them keep their light. Overall, not a huge deal, but something to be aware of.
Quality of Life Updates
I was quite surprised when ArenaNet announced that Absolution would come with several quality-of-life improvements. Rift essence converting to a currency and the Wizard’s Portal Tome are two that I am particularly excited for. I’ve begun to look at rift essence the way I look at bloostone dust… which is to say, it’s slowly taking over my bank, but I don’t have anything to use them on because research notes gatekeep all of that. Moving rift essence to a currency resolves this issue and frees up a significant amount of bank space. The Wizard’s Portal Tome will also give me a few shared inventory slots back as well. Both of these are huge wins.
As much as I am excited about both of those changes, I am most excited about the addition of Peer Reviewed Research. Research notes have been a thorn in my side ever since they were added in 2022. I deplore the idea of crafting or buying something for the sole purpose of destroying it. Additionally, there is no way to natively determine how many research notes will be acquired for destroying something, which leaves players relying on outside sources or undergoing extensive trial and error. There have been so many things I’ve been blocked from doing in GW2 because I dislike research notes so much.
When I first read about the Peer Reviewed Research option, I was concerned that the recipe would require some ascended material that’s also difficult to obtain. After checking during the preview event, I am happy to say that not only are the two recipe options simple, but they are also the same for every crafting discipline. The hardest-to-come-by material is the Amalgamated Gemstone, but it isn’t that hard to obtain and can be bought on the trading post. I’m also pleased that one of the recipes calls for thick leather because I have been capped on that for years. Each craft will yield 150 research notes, which helps address my two biggest issues with them.
All in all, this update is a banger and is a great way to send off Janthir Wilds. I’m looking forward to jumping in and experiencing everything later today with my characters (and finally getting a ton of research notes!) What is everyone else looking forward to the most?
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