Hello to Lion's Arch, and to all my supporters. You're in a league all your own. The Ship's Council has awarded me the seat, and I'm ready to get to the business of making us all a little richer. Here's how.

    I'm going to enact the following changes:

        Discounted Black Lion keys for four weeks.
        I'll work with the Fractals to research the fall of Abaddon.
        I'll dig into the secrets behind the Molten Alliance and Aetherblade pirates!
        I'll sponsor a weekly rotation of more Southsun Survival, Sanctum Sprint, Keg Brawl, and Crab Toss games, just to keep things spicy!

    —Captain Evon Gnashblade

Greetings, Matthew Medina has asked me to pass on some explanations/clarifications:

There’s been some confusion and spirited conversation regarding the Candidate Trials, and I’d like to take a minute to clear up some of the concerns that have been raised about this content. There’s a lot I’d like to cover, so I hope you’ll bear with me. ?

Difficulty – From the beginning, we wanted to create an event that would truly test player’s abilities to survive, whether solo or in groups. That’s when we came up with the concept of the [Challenge Event]. We wanted to create an event where it was easy to get bronze participation, moderately challenging to achieve silver, and difficult to get gold, and to provide an escalating difficulty curve by making use of tiers that got progressively harder, and progressively harder again with groups. We knew that this would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we also know that there are many players who are eager to challenge themselves in this way, and we stand by the decision to include content for those players. We made sure to make the lower tiers as accessible for all players and play styles, and the upper tiers (III and IV) a serious challenge! Now, there’s hard and then there’s impossible. I can assure you that completing Tier IV with a group is absolutely possible, but it’s not in any way easy, or even feasible for an uncoordinated group. It requires the utmost concentration and communication, and so our expectation from the beginning was that only a small number of groups would accept the challenge, and even fewer would succeed. I’ve been impressed by the many different methods players are finding to solo Tier IV (Ii’s a feat even I myself have yet to achieve) but I’m just as eager to see what groups come up with to overcome this challenge!

Rewards – There has been some confusion about the most optimal way to acquire the rewards in this event. We are seeing some players contend that the lowest risk option (staying up near the plunderer spawn points and away from the treasure piles) at the highest tier is the optimal path to acquiring an Aetherized weapon. This is wrong…somewhat. ? Employing this method will get you enough kill credit to earn one or two loot bags, but your chances for getting an Aetherized weapon actually increase with each subsequent loot bag that spawns. So if you really, really want to get your hands on some wicked Aetherblade gear, you actually stand to gain much, much more by taking more risks and defeating as many Aetherblades as possible at the highest tier you can manage. The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

Achievements – There was an initial bug related to how we were tracking player’s progress through the tiers, which did not quite match up with what achievements you had unlocked. We made fixes to that bug, and now player progress for the tiers should be tied to what you’ve unlocked, achievement-wise. There was also an unfortunate bug which was fixed earlier today involving an issue where some of the Aetherblade waves would not spawn. The first bug made the achievements hard to understand, while the second made the achievements easier to attain. I deeply apologize on behalf of our team that these issues led to a less-than-optimal player experience. With these issues fixed, our hope would be that the achievements for the Candidate Trials are clearer and better balanced for their intended difficulty.

I think that covers most of the concerns I’ve read, but the team will continue to monitor feedback on the forums, and if further clarification is needed, rest assured that we will communicate that out to you, our amazing players! Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Matthew Medina
Content Designer