My favorite thing about Guild Wars 2’s Shadow of the Mad King Halloween event is the Mad King’s Labyrinth. There’s nothing quite like it, even at the game’s other festivals. It’s just so much fun to switch your brain off and run around, following a commander tag and mowing down multitudinous mobs for masses of money. There is no set start or end, so you can come and go as you please and not feel like you’re leaving anyone in the lurch, and apart from maybe yelling at people to stop opening the doors with the more annoying bosses, there isn’t a lot of strategy involved. Just tag everything in sight and hoover up the rewards. And of course, selling Halloween bags can be quite profitable, especially if you stack lots of magic find and run with a well organized group.
It’s a lot of fun. On the one hand, I wish it were around all year round so I could hop in whenever I wanted. But on the other hand, I know that it wouldn’t be nearly as populated if it weren’t a time-limited event, and the bags it awards probably wouldn’t be worth nearly as much.
If you are likewise feeling a bit let down by the Mad King returning to his realm for another year and are looking for something fun, profitable, and low-effort, try finding a group for these farms instead!
Rift hunts
The newest, currently hottest activity on this list, rift hunts came with the recent Secrets of the Obscure expansion and have a bit of that “Turn your brain off and follow the commander” feeling, as long as you don’t mind a little traversal between rifts. Better yet, you don’t even need to track down a commander, as the Heart of the Obscure points you to your destination as you go!
There are bosses at the end of each rift, but with a sizable group alongside you, tier 1 bosses die so quickly you may miss them if you blink at the wrong time. Higher tiers are a little more tricky and mechanically complex, so make sure you wake up when it’s boss time if you find yourself in a group doing Tier 3s.
The essences rewarded by rifts, when crafted into Kryptis Motivations, are actually quite profitable. I’m sure in a few years this activity will still be somewhat rewarding, but it is probably at its peak profitability and popularity right about now, so it’s best to take advantage of it while you can!
Lake Doric leather farm
This farm train fluctuates a lot depending on the prices of materials. It isn’t particularly profitable at the time of this writing, as the price of leather is fairly low, so you may have trouble finding a commander running this one right now, unless they just happen to really like this particular farm.
But to me, it is the closest thing to the Labyrinth outside of October because it involves simply running around a set circuit, tagging as many centaurs as possible, and raking in the many Bloodstone-Warped Saddlebags and Hides they drop, then turning those into sellable (or craftable) leather. Commanders might also alternate the leather circuit with various events including the meta, which could either be a good way to break the monotony or throw you off your groove, depending on what kind of mood you are in.
Dragonfall
In my experience, this Season 4 meta map is still quite popular and almost always has at least one squad up in the group finder during peak hours. Commanders have down to a science how to get the most rewards out of doing all three lanes sequentially, so just watch chat for them to tell you what to do when. My favorite part is actually after the climactic fight on Kralkatorrik’s back, when various champions spawn all over the map, each doling out three Mistborn Coffers each and giving you a way to spend all of those keys you accumulated during the rest of the meta.
World Boss Trains
World bosses are base game content, and as such they feel a little old-fashioned, given how fast these massive monsters fall before a throng of players whose power has crept steadily upward over the years while the old world bosses’ potency has not. Still, many of these bosses have mechanics that you will never see or interact with, either because they die too fast or players are too good at healing through them when they do.
Despite their advanced age, world boss trains still give a respectable amount of gold per hour, especially given how little effort is involved in downing most of them. If world bosses are your thing, you can even pick up a world boss portal device for fairly cheap from the cash shop, which will teleport you to the site of each currently active world boss and make farming them even more effortless. Just be sure you know which ones are the more complex ones if you are looking for a chill activity; no amount of power creep will make Triple Trouble require less coordination and effort.
Drizzlewood Coast
Drizzlewood, especially the south meta, is probably my favorite meta map in the game. It plays a bit like a PvE version of a WvW map. Players must capture key objectives throughout the map, and complete events to keep enemy forces from taking those objectives back. Generally, you will find a commander calling the shots, so just watch chat when you don’t know what to do and generally roam around and help with events as they pop up.
The rewards for this one are a little different, as the system employs a WvW-style reward track via a repeatable achievement that grants material boxes at intervals based on commendations you receive. This is nice for our list today because you don’t have to mess around with salvage or think about how to optimally convert map currencies to gold; you just get whatever materials you get, and they’re dumped straight into your inventory.
Plus, the deployable Portable United Legions Waystation that you can buy with the war supplies currency here is useful for bosses all over the open world, and people will thank you for dropping one anywhere there is a difficult defiance bar to be broken.
These are just a few ideas for chill and profitable open world events to farm. There is nothing here quite like the Mad King’s Labyrinth, but if there were, Mad King’s Labyrinth wouldn’t be special. I know there are many more choices out there, so be sure to let us know your favorite down in the comments!
Flameseeker Chronicles is one of Massively OP’s longest-running columns, covering the Guild Wars franchise since before there was a Guild Wars 2. Now penned by Tina Lauro and Colin Henry, it arrives on Tuesdays to report everything from GW2 guides and news to opinion pieces and dev diary breakdowns. If there’s a GW2 topic you’d love to see explored, drop ’em a comment!
