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Jade Bots and You

In the lead up to the release of End of Dragons (EoD), the developers released lots of information to hype the player base. This is naturally normal. The purpose of a business is to make money and for game developers, more money means more resources can be devoted to make the game better.

The normal things were revealed. The music, some artwork, sneak peeks at maps and the story were all expected. But how many of us expected this new contraption called the Jade Bot?

Needless to say, this was indeed a shocker. First off, that ArenaNet was able to keep this a secret for so long is a testament to them. Even Apple, with its notorious reputation for keeping secrets, still has leaks.

More important than the ability to keep a corporate secret is what the Jade Bot can actually do. That is what we are going to discuss - what can this bot do and how can it be most helpful.

The first thing you need to obtain is a Power Core. Each power core gives a +100 bonus to Vitality - with a +15 vitality bonus for each tier. That vitality boost makes it tempting to have a maximum tier 10 power core in each of your characters. But that is quite expensive - requiring over 1,700 research notes if you upgrade one.

Apart from the vitality bonus, there is no reason to go to tier 10. Instead, we are currently recommending that players use tier 6 for any playable character. Why tier 6? That is because you need a tier 6 power core to equip a service chip and have it functional. While the +60 vitality bonus is nice, we think it is simply too expensive for the effect at this time.

The second feature of the Jade Bot is a sensor array. There are several kinds of sensor arrays:
The scavengers will scan corpses for whatever the sensor is tweaked to scan for - a trophy, wood, metal, leather or cloth.

The recycler will take a newly obtained piece of junk - conditionally - and turn this otherwise useless item and turn it into something useful like Jade Slivers, Dragonite, Bloodstone Dust, Empyreal Fragments or Karma.

The Turtle Siege Enhancer improves damage done by the Siege Turtle.

The Mount Energy booster will increase the speed of mount regeneration.

This one is a little difficult to recommend just one. The Scavenger scanning corpses is wonderful and is our default choice. After all, we tend to kill enemies - a lot. Specifically, we recommend the Magic Trophies but also a nod to the Might Trophies and a special mention to the Leather Scavenger.

Naturally, we are using the value of said received items. At the time of this writing, this is the approximate value of each “success”:

Scavenge Leather - 1.37 silver
Wood - 0.67
Metal - 0.98
Cloth - 0.53
Magic Trophies - 2.27
Might Trophies - 1.57

But this does not stop there. We also recommend creating a Mount Booster for those instances where racing is going to be used - be it a map specific race or a festival race like Dragon Bash or Festival of the Four Winds.

We also recommend creating a recycler. While these will take effect the moment a new junk item is obtained, it will recycle ALL junk items of the same type. This is most useful for those annoying Dandelion Blossoms that seem to keep getting. Now if ArenaNet can make these all account-bound instead of character-bound.

For this, we recommend the Jade Slivers. At the moment, each one appears to only give one (1) of the item in question. There are other ways to obtain Karma and the others. Jade Slivers are a new currency so this is what we feel you should stock up on.

We do need to note that at this time - not all junk items are recycled. “Valuable” junk items are not recycled as well as those junk items received from containers. Flavor-wise, we suppose that these are received and not scanned from a corpse.

Finally, the third (3rd) feature of the Jade Bot are the aforementioned Service Chips. These take the following form:

• Gliding Booster
• Skiff Supercharger
• Rescue Protocol
• Treasure Hunter

Gliding Boost sounds nice but is not needed if you have one of the flying mounts. Maybe in the future there will be a vista or jumping puzzle where such a boost will be required; but until then - this is not needed.

The same can be said for the Skiff boost. Our early testing shows that the skimmer - without any boosts - is far faster than the skiffs. Again, maybe in the future there will be skiff races and/or passenger buffs can alleviate things but again, at this time, we can not recommend obtaining this one.

Rescue Protocol is an interesting feature. This feature replaces your downed “4” skill. This skill activates your Jade Bot to revive you - in the same manner as a ranger's pet will - albeit even faster. The default recharge is ten (10) minutes but that can be decreased if this chip is installed.

Then there is the Treasure Hunter. This feature will put on your mini-map any chest within its range. This feature works on non-EoD maps like Dry Top and Silverwastes.

But before you get all excited, the chests must already be exposed. So while this will help players with all those Zephyrite keys for Dry Top, this will not work for Silverwastes - unless the chest has already been unearthed.

Even with that limitation - we are recommending this chip be installed by default. We have noticed that some EoD chests are well-hidden. Unless you specifically look for these chests, you will not find them. This chip will bring those to your attention - making looting more attractive.

So what is the bottom line?

So for those who do not want to read what I wrote, here is the short version:

Power Core
Power Core Tier 6
Module: Sensory Array
Scavenger Protocol: Magic Trophies
Module: Service Chip
Treasure Hunter Protocol 2

Special mention to: (Only need to make one of these)
Mount Energy Booster 2 - For racing
Turtle Siege Enhancer 2 - For those situations where this will be necessary
Recycler: Jade Slivers - All the recyclers could use a boost but this is the best of the bunch.
Scavenger Protocol: Might Trophies
Scavenger Ptotocol: Leather

Post-script:

We have noticed that ArenaNet never ever drops its entire load all at once. Only some of the items have dropped and some of these items appear to be up-gradable. One karma seems a little low for something we feel should be closer to ten (10). The ten (10) minute recharge for the Rescue Protocol should be five (5) minutes. So be on the lookout for Jade Bot upgrades in Season 6.

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