#also ember bay has a special place in my heart except for the cup o salt which i hate with a burning passion

[leafofkudzu]

What's your favorite jumping puzzle? Your favorite map to explore? Your favorite map to use a mount on? What's your favorite renowned heart quest?

Hmmm I am a huge jumping puzzle nerd so I actually have a few favorites based on different criteria! For exploration and general fun I really like Retrospective Runaround aka Drydock Scratch aka the giant one that takes you across literally all of the Silverwastes, and well as Searing Ascent, aka the one at the very top of Draconis Mons that I feel like I might be the only fan of. For uniqueness and also being fun to subject other people to there is nothing quite like Chaos Crystal Cavern, a semi-hidden one in Iron Marches that I used to use a lot for guild jumping puzzle races. And for festival ones the Mad King's Clocktower is a beast all its own that was literally the first major jumping puzzle I ever encountered, to my horror (I loved it the next year and every year since though!).

Favorite map to explore really just boils down to whatever is new! Map completion has always been a big thing for me, but not from a completionist perspective - more that one of the things I love about this game is how many little secrets are tucked away even in seemingly mundane maps. To be a bit more specific though, I like poking around the edges and/or out-of-bounds areas of meta-focused maps like the Silverwastes or Dragon’s Stand to see what’s out there. I used to be really invested in Draconis Mons and its cool upward-spiral layout and tbh I do still really like it, but it’s been overshadowed by shiny new maps lately so I haven’t been back in a while.

Interestingly enough the maps I most enjoy using mounts on are the Central Tyria Shiverpeaks maps (Lornar’s Pass and Timberline Falls specifically). You can get up so high onto the mountain peaks in the middle of the maps and then hop on a griffin and see everything from interesting angles since the maps have such interesting grading and elevation changes from one end to the other. Highly recommended. :D

I had to think for all of about 5 seconds about what my favorite reknown heart is before it slapped me in the face - the magnetic hammer one in Sandswept Isles! I think it’s really fun and enjoy swooshing around in a relatively non-hostile environment, though it’s probably not great one for those with motion sickness now that I think of it. Bonus shoutout to the cute little raptor-chompin firefly one in Crystal Oasis too which is just super cute and has a fun platformy aspect that I really enjoy. :D