As I mentioned last week, ArenaNet popped up on Thursday with some new stuff, including the ability to declare yourself as a “reforged” character.

This sudden rule change gives you some special benefits, especially in the Prophecies campaign, which I gather is a place where most new players land.  It is certainly the route we chose.  Here is what you get:

• Activate Reforged Mode (Alpha) during character creation.
• For multiplayer parties, all players have to be in Reforged Mode to experience Reforged Mode content and balance changes. Mixed parties will see the standard content.
• This is an alpha feature we are sharing early to gather feedback. It is only presented in English.

Sounds good.  I want all of that.  The key is that you have to CHECK THE BOX on the screen where you name your character.

The checkboxes

And, of course, you cannot go back and check the box once the character is in the world… which means every character created before the Thursday update cannot have the option.  So none of our group had the option.  And we wanted the option.  Lots of people wanted the option.

So I went ahead to test it out, rolling up a new warrior, and I selected Reforged Mode.

I did not select Dhumm’s Covenant, which is a pseudo-lite hardcore mode, where you keep the badge until you die… and then no more badge.  But a lot of people did select both, and when I landed back in pre-searing Ascalon City, the place was overrun by new characters with both badges.

I know, this is actually Ashford Abby

And reforged mode seemed to deliver.  I am not sure I could really spot a 5% increase in gold or xp at these low levels, where the payouts were small enough for 5% to not make a different… you can’t get a percentage of two gold coins, you just get the same two gold coins as before… but the promise of getting far enough along for these things to matter was a draw.

But we ALL had to be reforged for it to work if we were all going to group up.

Fortunately we had not gotten very far along.  Holden had already been talking about trying a new profession and Potshot and I had already made a couple of experimental reforged characters by the time Saturday rolled around and we were all able to get on together.

We all created new characters.  I had already gotten pretty far down the road with my warrior so I rolled up an elementalist in order to try that out.  However, I will probably stick with the warrior, it being the only melee class in Prophecies.   I don’t mind the ranger, but everything else makes you a caster, and outside of a monk as a healer, that doesn’t appeal to me.  I like to go toe to toe.

We ended up with my elementalist, a monk, and two rangers.  Then we got everybody through the first quests to get to the one about joining up with a group.  This was hampered a bit by each profession having its own unique first quest along with Gwen standing there and when I couldn’t remember the name of Lana the Healer people getting the lost flute quest but not having the grouping quest… but we persisted and eventually got everybody in town, in the same instance of Asclalon City, and into a group.

At that point I could just yoink the lot of us into Lakeside County, a sometimes startling but also useful feature of the game.  Have you fallen behind?  Don’t worry, I’ll catch you right up here at the zone line!

Op success!  Not only had we gotten four reforged characters made and in the same point in the quest chain, but thanks to the reforged changes, we were all able to group up.

Our reforged group

There we were, all four of us together, all level one, each of us having had to pick a new name once more.

Then we were off.

We couldn’t stand still long enough for a screen shot!

By that point Potshot and I had done the pre-searing kick-off quests enough times that we had opinions as to order and how to most efficiently get through them.  There are, for example, two Denova quests that you want to hold onto until you get the bear cloak quest so you can bring all three along in one run.

And there are specific checkpoints… like everybody getting enough Skale fins to get the belt pouch for that critical five additional inventory slots.  This was doubly critical with Wintersday having landed on Friday, which means we were all getting eggnog and fruitcake drops… and occasional useful or interesting items… that take up just that much more bag space.

River Skale are a priority target early on… also Gwen

Somebody also had Gwen in follow mode… but I am told that everything she says ends up being relevant post-searing, so we let her babble on.

Being out with four people brought up a few questions… or observations.

First up, Ula was the only one with the lost flute quest still to do.  And we found the lost flute, as we always do, but all of us could see it and Holden actually picked it up, because he couldn’t remember if he had done it or not.  He had, to then trade it to Ula, so we learned how to do trades.

That was actually pretty easy once somebody spotted the trade button.  And it came in handy when we had to balance out the Skale fins so we all had five.

This being an alpha feature, not all aspects of the game were up on the latest changes.

The same tip as before the update

Also on our agenda; get the hunters their pets.  Having done that a few times now… my warriors all have ranger as the second profession… that was not a tough task.  We got that done and then, once the naming command was understood (both “/namepet” and “/petname” work, but you have to have the name in there too) we had a pretty feisty group rolling around pre-searing.

Pets acquired and named

We rolled on for a bit more, got everybody to level 4, then broke up for a while.

There was still the matter of second professions.  Potshot went Monk/Ele and, just to turn that around, I went Ele/Monk.  Holden went Ranger/Necro.  And Ula still has to pick.  But we have some time for that as people will likely be busy for the holidays.

Meanwhile, after tiring a bit of pre-searing, I rolled my warrior through the event to check on the henchman situation.  Sure enough, they do seem better… or at least they are level 6 versus level 3 now.

Henchmen post searing

Well, at least the default henchmen are.  The Wintersday Enchanted Snowman are still level 3.  But I guess that is to be expected.

Anyway, we have reformed our group with reforged characters.  Now to get on to business I guess.  Also, it might be time to strip and delete the characters I rolled up before Thursday.  I am not sure there is any advantage to keeping them.