ChthonVII

This is an easy way to get the Dunes of Despair mission + bonus with lots of time to spare and without cheesing the mesmer boss. It's likely the way the devs intended the bonus to be done. This method is sort of described on the wiki, but not very clearly, and jumbled in with a bunch of worse alternative methods.

0. Take the low ground in front of the Ghost (Point G).
1. 2x Forgotten Arcanists enter the main fort at Point 1. Let them come to you, then kill them.
2. 2x Forgotten Arcanists enter the main fort at Point 2. Let them come to you, then kill them.
3. 2x Forgotten Arcanists enter the main fort at Point 3. Let them come to you, then kill them.
4. 2x Forgotten Arcanists enter the main fort at Point 1. Go to Point 1 and kill them.
5. You may wish to kill the wurm at Point 1 now. Usually it cannot reach the Ghost, but in some unlucky instances the Ghost will pick a position on the throne that's just close enough the wurm can get him. In this case, you will fail the mission if you don't kill the wurm.
6. 2x Enchanted Bows enter the main fort at Point 3. Go to Point 3 and kill them.
7. 2x Enchanted melee (random mix of Enchanted Hammer and Sword) enter the main fort at Point 2. Go to Point 2 and kill them.
8. (At this point there should be over 7 minutes remaining.)
9. Exit the main fort at Point 2 and go towards Point 4. If you go straight towards Point 4, you will encounter several annoying scarabs, but easily intercept the upcoming boss. You can also hug the outer wall of the main fort, then cut across towards Point 4. This avoids most of the scarabs, but the boss may get away if you cut across too late.
10. A boss group will exit the side fort at Point 4 and seek to enter the main fort at Point 2. Intercept and kill it. Have a longbow ready to aggro it from afar if it starts moving before you're in position. (Longbow is preferred over flatbow here because of the moving target.)
11. Go to Point 5 and kill the scarab pop-ups there.
12. Use a longbow/flatbow to pull the boss group at Point 6 over close enough that you can fight it with your ranged party members standing at Point 5. Kill it.
13. Killing the boss group from Point 6 triggers a spawn of 3x Forgotten Cursebearers at Point 5, who will seek to enter the main fort at Point 2. However, since you are standing at Point 5, they will immediately aggro and you can just kill them.
14. Go to Point 6, cross the bridge into the side fort, and use a longbow/flatbow to pull the boss group at Point 7 as close to the bridge as they will come. Then kill them. As soon as the boss group is dead, run back across the bridge.
15. Killing the boss group at Point 7 triggers a spawn of 3x Forgotten Illusionists at Point 5, who will seek to enter the main fort at Point 3. You should be able to aggro them with a longbow from the bridge near Point 6. (Or flag someone back during the preceding boss fight. Or leave some spirits in their path to delay them.) Be ready to flag heroes/henchmen out of triple Chaos Storm, and kill them. (Again, longbow is preferred over flatbow here because of the moving target.)
16. Go kill the boss group at Point 8.
17. (The bonus is now complete. At this point there should be ~1-3 minutes remaining.)
18. Killing the boss group at Point 8 triggers a spawn of 3x Enchanted melee (random mix of Enchanted Hammer and Sword) at Point 9, who will seek to enter the main fort at Point 1. However, you can get there first by entering the main fort via Point 3. Then either go to Point G to wait for them, or Point 1 to intercept them.

[This is an informational post I made on reddit. I’m reposting it here because it’s useful information.]

For some reason, probably to do with the anniversary event, I've found myself explaining the use case for elemental weapons, and the suckiness of sundering weapons, multiple times in the past week. So I decided to port my martial damage spreadsheet to javascript, with a nice pretty interactive graph that visually illustrates the comparative strength of the weapon prefix options. Please feel free to link to this the next time someone asks about weapon prefixes: https://chthonvii.github.io/guildwarsmartialdamagecalc/

The TLDR for those too lazy to look at a graph:

• When a festival is going on, a decade weapon is the best all-around weapon.
• When a festival is not going on, a vampiric weapon is the best all-around weapon.
• When a monster has an elemental weakness, using the appropriate elemental weapon yields a very large damage boost, often even outperforming decade weapons. There is a very easy DPS boost to be had by simply bringing any elemental weapon on switch and using it when attacking Warrior class foes. Serious players can reap even larger DPS dividends by consulting the wiki to identify the most common elemental weakness(es) in a given zone and putting the appropriate elemental weapon(s) on switch.
• Sundering is utter trash. There exists no achievable set of parameters for which sundering outperforms vampiric.

[This is an informational post I made on reddit. I'm reposting it here because it's useful information.]

This post is intended as a linkable resource for quickly and easily responding to the "can I play GW on a X?" posts that seem to pop up once or twice per week. (There are two in the top six posts right now.)

TLDR Version:

Can I play GW on...

• ...any remotely modern device with an x86 or x86/64 processor and a Windows operating system? YES.
• ...any remotely modern device with an x86 or x86/64 processor and a Linux operating system? YES.
• ...a Steamdeck? YES.
• ...any remotely modern device with an x86 or x86/64 processor and a MacOS operating system prior to Catalina? YES.
• ...any remotely modern device with an x86 or x86/64 processor and a MacOS operating system Catalina or newer? YES, BUT only if using the paid version of Crossover, PlayOnMac, or a custom-built wine.
• ...a Mac with an M1 or M2 processor? NO (and there is no hope it will ever work in the future).
• ...a Mac with an ancient PowerPC processor? HELL NO.
• ...a Chromebook with an x86 processor? YES, BUT it requires some advanced setup.
• ...a Chromebook with an ARM processor? NO, barring very extreme measures.
• ...a device with an ARM32 processor? NO, barring very extreme measures.
• ...a device with an ARM64 processor? NO, barring very extreme measures, and then only if the processor supports the ARM32 instruction set.
• ...a Raspberry Pi? See "device with an ARM64 processor."
• ...a virtual machine on x86 or x86/64 hardware? YES BUT, only if your hardware and host OS support and are configured for PCI passthrough.
• ...a cloud gaming service? YES, BUT only some of them (notably NOT GeForce Now) and the lag will be awful (and there is no hope it will ever not be awful).

Further Details:

• What is a "remotely modern device"? Definitely anything manufactured in the past decade. And probably most things manufactured in the past 15-20 years too. There are two basic requirements:
  • An x86 or x86/64 processor. Pretty much anything from the last 20 years will do.
  • A sufficiently powerful GPU.
    • Integrated graphics from 2011 (Intel HD 3000) or newer should be adequate.
    • A discrete graphics card from ~2005 or newer should be adequate.
• What's the deal with Catalina? Apple removed the 32-bit system libraries in Catalina. Crossover subsequently implemented a "32 in 64" solution for running 32-bit programs using 64-bit libraries. (Which was a truly herculean feat.) This functionality will eventually be incorporated into wine and its derivatives (e.g., PlayOnMac), but it hasn't yet (as of the end of 2022). (Though it appears patches are available on github if you want to try building it yourself.) It doesn't help that the lead developer for wine on Mac died in late 2020. (Someone please let me know when "32 in 64" hits mainline wine so I can update this post.) [Edit: As per u/hazyPixels, it works on PlayOnMac.]
• What's the deal with M1/M2 Macs? These are ARM64 processors that do not support the full ARM32 instruction set. While it's possible to get the game to run using a combination of Crossover and Rosetta2, the performance is beyond abysmal (5-10fps at best). The root of the problem is that Rosetta2 translating x86 to ARM64 is just dreadfully inefficient, and there's nothing that can be done to fix it. [Edit: The Apple Game Porting Toolkit doesn't change this equation. It sorta works for GW2, but GW2 is a 64-bit program.]
• Chromebook? Be very careful that you get a model with an x86 processor and not an ARM processor. You can then switch it to Linux mode and install wine for running GW.
• What are these "extreme measures" for ARM devices? Replace the OS with Linux, install Box86 and dependencies, install x86 wine binaries in Box86. For more details, search the internet for Box86+wine installation tutorials.
• What's PCI passthrough? It's a feature that enables a virtual machine to use the host machine's discrete graphics card. Without it, the virtual machine must use a generic virtual GPU, which results in really awful performance. PCI passthrough requires (a) hardware support in the CPU, motherboard chipset, motherboard BIOS, and discrete graphics card, (b) having two graphics cards installed (or being willing to use integrated graphics for the host OS), (c) software support from the host OS (note that MacOS does NOT support it), and (d) a ton of painful set up. For further details, search the internet for tutorials.
• What's up with GeForce Now? It's nVidia's fault. Supposedly they're working on it, but no ETA as of the end of 2022. (Someone please let me know if/when they get it working so I can update this post.)
• Is the situation with cloud gaming lag really that hopeless? Yes. It's a matter of fundamental physics. It cannot be overcome. Cloud gaming has always been a fatally dumb idea from the outset.