ArenaNet finishes up its Feature Pack reveals with changes to Collecting and Trading.

The September 2014 Feature Pack releases for Guild Wars 2 next week on Tuesday, September 9. ArenaNet has slowly been revealing the new features coming with the update in themed blog posts. The first week of reveals was all about the competitive side of GW2 while week two looked at the new player and leveling experiences. This week, ANet looked at how players are Collecting and Trading items in game.

The first of three blog posts was about the changes to the Wardrobe system that was introduced in the first feature pack earlier this year. The wardrobe is now searchable in the Hero Panel, allowing an easy way to find that specific look. Three new sections have been added to the Hero Panel: Outfits (which had previously been under the wardrobe section), Finishers, and Miniatures.

In addition to Finishers now appearing next to the Wardrobe and other sections of the Hero Panel, players will be able to preview the finisher within the Hero Panel. This is available for both unlocked and locked finishers and includes the ability to rotate the animation to see the best view while previewing.

The biggest reveal within this blog post was the changes coming to Miniatures. Currently, miniatures can be deposited to a special collection tab of the bank. To use them you would need to go back to the bank and withdraw them so that they could be used within your inventory. After the feature pack players will still be able to use the mini within their bag, but the collection tab is being phased out in exchange for a new account unlocking system.

When the patch goes live, all of your miniatures will still be in the collections tab of your bank. Once you withdraw them however, the slot for that miniature will disappear and the mini will no longer be able to be deposited there. Players could keep this mini in their bag for the rest of time (or sell them to other players), or they can unlock the miniature for account use through the Wardrobe which will destroy the actual miniature item in the process (so players can't trade the miniatures to other players after account unlocking them).

Once unlocked, players can select a miniature for active use in their Hero Panel and that mini will be automatically summoned to follow the player whenever they change maps. Along with this change are new achievements for account unlocking the series 1, 2 and 3 miniatures, the ability to preview miniatures and the ability to search for miniatures within the wardrobe.

The second blog post of the week was about collections. With miniatures being removed from the collections tab, the tab has been renamed the Materials tab to reflect that it is now the home for all types of crafting materials. This change also opens up the old name for the new Collection Achievements.

These achievements are for, you guessed it, collecting. This could be collecting different skins in your wardrobe, collecting random items or even using consumables. Examples from the blog post included an achievement for collecting all the spoon items in the game, unlocking all the Crafting 400 armor skins in the wardrobe and brief mention of eating a steak.

Collection achievements are broken up into three different unlock types which affect their visibility to players: automatic, discovered and unlocked. Automatic are always and immediately visible in the achievements tab, discovered appear once one item that is part of the achievement is collected and unlocked require obtaining an item to actually unlock the achievement to make progress in it. The spoons was used as an example, as players will need to buy the Collectible Spoon Box before progress can start on the collecting all the spoons of Tyria.

Like the wardrobe, collecting an item requires either using it (in the case of consumables such as food) or binding it to your character or account. So think again if you plan on borrowing a friend's collection. Finishing the Collection Achievements will come with some big positives, as every single achievement will come with a unique reward. This could be things like new pieces of equipment, recipes and functional unlocks. The example given was the Spirit Crafter achievement, presumably unlocked by unlocking all the spirit weapon skins in the wardrobe, will give players the new Spirit Crafter back item!

The third and final blog post was all about upgrades to the Trading Post. The entire UI has been streamlined and will load in faster than ever before. The UI now allows easier browsing of the TP while improving search capabilities with features such as the profession filter which will allow you to show only those items relevant to your current profession.

Check out the reveals from the previous two weeks, then log in to Guild Wars 2 on Tuesday to experience the new features yourself!

Matt Adams aka the Mattsta

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