Whoa – I was just done writing about the initial Guild Wars Reforged update and suddenly there’s new content?

Reforged Mode Alpha was released for new characters, which gives a gold and experience bonus in the Prophecies campaign, revises henchmen skillbars (NPC group members), and makes some notable changes to pre-Searing Ascalon, the tutorial of Prophecies, of all places. Read more below if you don’t know why that’s interesting, because it is!

The new Dhuum’s Covenant Beta is a permadeath-lite, and in a way a spiritual successor to the original Legendary Survivor title: As long as your character doesn’t die, you have the green Dhuum badge next to your name. Titles earned while the covenant is active will have that badge, even after death, but as far as I understand only visible to yourself as it stands.

Also, you can now choose in the settings which version of the character selection screen you want to see. It changed with each release and was fixed to the Eye of the North version for a good 18 years now. Cool change to see, very nostalgic!

Changes & Reforged Mode

If you’re not playing a new character with these features enabled, not that much has actually changed. Character selection screen aside, the Prophecies tutorial area now allows for four players instead of two, which may have some minor impact on pre-Searing gameplay, but won’t change it completely.

Reforged Mode – explicitly said to be subject to big changes – makes the start of the Prophecies campaign a little less tedious and faster to level up. This slight increase of experience and gold won’t change that much, but it’ll help. The changed skillbars for henchmen will probably help even more, considering you don’t have access to any heroes until later in the game, and player count in low level areas is likely to taper off again – leaving you stuck with only henchmen to rely on.

But the most interesting changes happened in pre-Searing Ascalon: A new outpost in the Northlands (the “high level” area) some additional higher level enemies, and reduced health and armor for enemies.

Pre-Searing Ascalon’s Microcosm, Disturbed

If you don’t know, the pre-Searing is a small, isolated part of the game. It serves as the tutorial for the Prophecies campaign. You can’t access your account storage and there are just a few skills available to you. If you leave, you can never come back due to the name-giving Searing destroying Ascalon – therefore, some people decide to stay indefinitely. And it’s worth it. Upon reaching level 20, you will get a special title,Legendary Defender of Ascalon, to commemorate your commitment. But there’s more than that: Pre-Searing has it’s own economy, a dedicated playerbase; it’s a simple place, and it offers a unique feeling in the large, complex world of Guild Wars.

Piken Square, the newly added outpost, is rather unremarkable at a glance. There’s little to see here. No merchants, no storage chests, nothing but a few NPCs. It’s not a new area, either: You could always go here and see this place – for Reforged players it’s now simply behind a portal.

The update said “you’ll have to fight your way there,” which made me wonder what foes may await – and made me chuckle when I could simply run there with my freshly created level 1 Warrior.

But it’s an outpost in the Northlands, something that had not existed before. Reaching them previously required you to run a bit further. It saves you maybe a minute, compared to running all the way from Ascalon. While this in turn saves time running to the Charr bosses, farmed for their unique and important drops by pre-Searing players, it’s probably not enough to upend the community. Not even combined with the small gold and XP gain, reduced enemy health and armor, or the additional level 6 to 8 enemies spawning there.

I suppose everything makes the grind for Defender of Ascalon just slightly quicker, as you are closer to quests in the area, and the new enemies provide some additional XP early on. Until level 14, when these lower level enemies stop giving you experience anyways. It’s perhaps a small quality of life improvement in a world where people don’t want to grind an ancient MMO. But then you still have the red badge to differentiate the Reforgers from the Originals, so don’t even worry about your prestigious title!

Bottom Line

Overall, while Dhuum’s Covenant and Reforged Mode are quite interesting, they are relatively minor additions in their current forms.

I don’t think these changes are specifically for us players. New people are getting acquainted with the Guild Wars developer tools, and this is their learning experience: Create some new enemies, set them to spawn here, add a portal over there, copy a map, create an outpost out of it. This is how they can safely try their tools and gauge community response to the changes without affecting the broader game too much. This is why there’s no real exclusive content locked behind Reforged.

I’m here for it, look forward to what they will do, and can’t wait for the next update!