New Kaineng City is a hub of innovation, a glowing jewel in the Jade Sea, and an interesting new look for a location that some Guild Wars 2 players might already know. After ArenaNet gave us all a quick look at the lush and utterly sinister Echovald Wilds, we managed a few minutes in New Kaineng City ahead of the launch of End of Dragons.
Among the glistening crystal waves and the elegantly decorated guild halls of Cantha, there isn’t a brighter jewel than New Kaineng. Beautifully merging the traditional Canthan aesthetic with modern Jade Tech, this location rose from the squalor left after the calamitous rise of an Elder Dragon. Zhaitan might have destroyed much of the old Kaineng and left it in ruins, just to the north of this new metropolis, but the power of Jade and ingenuity of the Xunlai Jade Corporation spawned something incredible. During a whistlestop tour of Cantha, the first part of which you can read about in our last preview, our guides brought us up to take a look down on what we’d be exploring when End of Dragons goes live this month, some of which you might have seen in the recent teaser trailer.
Standing on top of a gargantuan monolith, we took in a thriving cityscape, stretching across the landscape and crawling up into the sky. The scale of New Kaineng City is incredible, spiralling off into the sky surrounded by giant holographic displays and tended by Jade Tech machines.
Rendered such intricate detail that it is easy to get lost, New Kaineng City is an inspiring sight that intertwines jade blossom with futuristic holograms, leaving visitors in no illusion that the technology behind this civilization has moved on somewhat over hundreds of years. This jewel puts locations like Divinity’s Reach and The Back Citadel in perspective, presenting a bustling metropolis full of high vistas and dark alleys, where you can head down and explore the local delicacies or jsut grab a Griffon and hang out and watch the busy city go by. Unfortunately, our tour guides weren’t ready to let us loose on the nightlife quite yet. Instead of the bustling back alleys, they took us up to the tip of New Kaineng to reveal a new Mastery Line and some of Kaineng’s best tech.
Mastery Lines
Jade bots are this upcoming expansion’s final unrevealed mastery, the Jade Tech mastery line. This new addition to ArenaNet’s well-established progression system continues to provide players with extra ways to play, without skewing the balance of power in the world. This mastery line provides players with a way to pick up the power of a Jade Mech with the palm of their hand, and slot in incredibly useful abilities. By continuing to play and fully unlocking this mechanized mastery line, explorers in Cantha will earn and upgrade a cute-looking bot that can act as bonuses like an additional vertical boost while gliding, increase skiff speed, and revival after being downed. Even these few examples could prove a huge boon for individuals stepping into the game for the first time, or who simply haven’t had an opportunity to delve into post Path of Fire content and grab a Skyscale. This isn’t the end of this new bot either.
Jade Bots
If the fusion of new and old isn’t intriguing enough, we got a look at some of the incredible Jade technology that makes day-to-day life in New Kaineng so unique. While the expansion advertisements might come plastered with siege turtles and the local Mechanists keep their mechs on show, Jade Bots are available to everybody else. Despite the name, Jade bots look and act nothing like the larger Jade Mechs that Mechanists wield. Bigger and undoubtedly more useful than a pet, these little golden bundles of energy come pieced together in the Hero panel. Once acquired, they can be plugged into a central power core and enhanced using a range of modules. Power cores are crucial to keeping a Jade bot operational, and if our initial peek is anything to go by, Jewelers will have a whole new line of wares to craft and sell with these pieces of Jade. Aside from giving me more reason to get back to the workshop, power cores also provide additional benefits. The core in our ‘tourist’s first bot’ added a solid 100 vitality to our character before we even got to check out what the slottable modules could do. Thankfully, ArenaNet was able to give us a little demonstration of some of those abilities. By first collecting Jade Batteries littered around our tour guide, we started with a little flight demonstration.
After grabbing these batteries, we could activate a remote control function. This incredible ability thrust our point of view into this tiny hovering helper, allowing us to skim around the upper reaches of the environment, taking the bot’s perspective and checking out the view. Aside from taking some incredible snapshots, I can’t imagine how useful these would be when stuck in an underground cavern or trying to check ahead for traps in an unfamiliar Strike mission. While we don’t have any details on whether these will ever buzz their way out of PvE game mode, I’d suggest it is unlikely. Their appearance on the battlefield would so utterly change the game that I wouldn’t hold out for Jade bots in WvW, especially with the way these little robots interact with the world.
Zipping Around
New Kaineng City is a gargantuan example of Canthan ingenuity, but getting around is a little easier thanks to Jade bots. Not only can these tiny flying toolboxes provide an extra pair of eyes, but they can utilize other elements around the world. In this case, we found ourselves grabbing hold of our little golden mascots and zipping across Cantha’s own megalopolis on a range of zip wires. Jade bots do not erect their own zip lines. Instead, bots can engage with pre-determined placements, providing extra options for movement around the vertical maze that is New Kaineng City. Not only does this open up the sort of map traversal I was hoping for when ArenaNet introduced the grappling hook in Draconis Mon for the first time, but tons more abilities can be slotted into the Jade Bot using modules.
Modules
These brand new Jade incarnations aren’t as simple as a Scrapper’s bots. Anybody investing in a Canthan chrome can will rest assured you have room to upgrade and customize your companion using a variety of extra modules. Buried beneath the hood, or more likely the Jade bot menu, players will find these open module slots, allowing owners to wire in useful upgrades. When we spoke, ArenaNet was a little cagey on the specifics of what this will mean but did talk to the ridiculous number of possibilities in the long term, with modules adding bonuses like skiff speed, item collection, resurrection, and more. Essentially this adds the functionality that we’ve been missing since cosmetic pets bounded onto the scene, in the form of miniatures. Now we are just hoping that ArenaNet has added the option to visually mute them as we already are able to with sparkly little raptors and candy cane companions.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get a great deal of time to tinker with these new toys, and yet I can’t overemphasize how much of a gargantuan change Jade Bots could be for Guild Wars 2. Siege Turtles might be immense but until we get Jade Bot mounts, this is probably the most exciting thing I’ve seen to come out of Cantha. For more on the Jade Bots and this wonderful new cityscape, check out more over on the Guild Wars 2 website now.