I'm very busy this week trying to finish Campnanowrimo and other activities, so here's some short bullet points:

• I had a great raid night in GW2 yesterday in which we cleared Spirit Vale with little fuss.
• My poem, 'To the Idea of War,' has been accepted in Route 7 Review.
• I'm working on finishing up pieces for my writing classes.
• I should have a painting update this week!
• I'll be sending out the very first round of acceptances and rejections for Hapax shortly.

I hope everyone is having a good week and can get all their to-dos done!

Super Adventure Box, Guild Wars' new/old event, has returned for the month of April and eaten into the economy, raid pugs, other activities, and guildies's time.

It's really fun. It captures all the nostalgia of old-style games and provides an absurd contrast with Guild Wars' art style, while at the same time embodying Guild Wars and making perfect sense.

​It's also really annoying for those of us who are trying to get anything else done. Not only do I feel like I *should* be doing it on top of everything else, but tons of other people are trying for the achievements and cosmetic items associated with this limited time event and can't do other activities.

​In short, it's awesome and awful at the same time. I understand why it's not year round, but it's here for such a small time relative to how long it takes if you're learning it that it's hard to spend only a little bit of time on it.

I'm debating just paying someone to take me through the course before the devs patch some of the LFR/selling aspects away.

And I'm looking forward to May, when I don't have this nagging feeling of guilt for not being able to enjoy or grind an event that impedes almost everything else I'm trying to do.

I've had really good luck with gear from raid kills. I got an ascended dagger this week, and a Ghostly Infusion the first time I killed Gors. So now my list of ascended weapons has grown to the point where I'm making weapons before I have alts that can use them.

On the armor front, it doesn't seem like I'm using my tempest as a dps very much, so I've started using my shards to buy Yassith's gear for my necro. Gearing a condi class is very difficult compared to gearing a power dps, so I've decided to do most of that via shards. After I finish off my mesmer, I'm going to take a break from levelling and trying to gear out alts to make sure that my characters are in order. I'll have the following classes:

• Guardian dps/tank
• Chronomancer dps/tank
• Tempest healer/dps (staff or dagger/warhorn [focus])
• Necromancer condi dps
• Druid healer (magi's gear with zerk weapons and accessories from my other characters)

I'm rounding out my list of weapons by making a shield this week, working on mace and focus, and doing the achievements to get a longbow and warhorn. Thus, the only alt/spec without ascended weapons will be my necromancer.

I've been having fun helping guildies gear and advising them on what to level, but the bottom line is this: if you want to raid and you don't hate on a primal level the heavy armor classes, you should craft an ascended heavy armor set and a few weapons that you can share among them. Warriors, revenants, and guardians are in demand these days in raids, are good 'alt' classes in that you can do average raid dps/performance with them without too much trouble, and don't have any gearing quirks that prevent you from sharing armor.

To the above list, I hope to add warrior and condi engineer eventually. The only reason I'm finishing out my mesmer and then taking a 'break' is because he's level 63, whereas my warrior is only 14. Even though levelling isn't difficult in Guild Wars--and I enjoy it--I'd like to feel a bit less pressure to have everything immediately, and I like to do at least some in-world levelling, which can be tiring.

Also, I've spent about 90% of my raiding time being a guardian, 8% being a tempest healer, and 2% being a tempest dps or condi necro, so you could argue that I don't *need* other alts except from a raid convenience/composition standpoint.