In Guild Wars 1, a weapon was hidden. It came with an event that takes place every year around the release of Guild Wars 2. However, players didn’t notice it for years. Only the tweets of a former developer brought it to their attention.
What happened? On April 11, former developer Metthew Moore, who left ArenaNet in 2014, tweeted about an Easter egg in Guild Wars 1. It was a hidden weapon introduced with an event in 2013.
In this tweet, it says:
There is a hidden weapon in the original Guild Wars that I believe no one has found yet. We’ve hidden some clues in the dialogues of certain Wiki-editor tribute NPCs that only appear during the “Memories of the Traveler” event. But I think we hid them too well.
After this tweet, the Guild Wars community set out to look for the weapon. It took players about 2 days and 3 more tweets from Matthew Moore to finally solve the riddle from 2013 in April 2021.
A special enemy appears when certain conditions are met
How was the riddle solved? After Moore’s first tweet, players discovered a message in Discord from 2020, where a player pointed people to an adjustment in the Wiki.
This adjustment referred to the event “Memories of the Traveler,” which was introduced corresponding to the release of Guild Wars 2. Through this, players got to Xunlai Archivists, who play a role in this event.
Eventually, a location by Drakkar Lake was identified where the weapon should be. However, certain prerequisites must be met, as Moore revealed via Twitter and Reddit.
How to get the weapon? The Reddit user Evaziel was the first to find the weapon and posted a guide (via Reddit):
- You can find the weapon in the Drakkar Lake area
- Go to the spot near Sifhala where the dwarf Kilroy Stonebreaker appears
- You must be completely alone while doing this
- You also need “The Favor of the Gods,” the “Lucky Aura” from the Lunar Fortunes, and you have to drop or eat a birthday cake (he did both)
- After that, you need to use the ability “Light of Deldrimor” at Kilroy
If you have done all this, a special Vaettir will appear that you must defeat. Once you kill it, you get the sword “Silver Edge”:
How long was the weapon undiscovered? As Matthew More confirmed, the Easter egg was introduced to the game in the summer of 2013. It took several years for it to be uncovered, and it likely would have remained undetected for a long time without the developer’s tweet.
The weapon is quite useful, especially for warriors who value adrenaline.
Are there hidden contents like this in other MMOs? Yes, we occasionally report on Easter eggs or hidden contents that have gone undiscovered for years.
Recently, in Tibia Online, an MMORPG from 1997, clues about a boss that has supposedly been in the game for 12 years were found.
Is Guild Wars 1 still worth it? Although Guild Wars 2 celebrates its 9th anniversary this year, the first part of the series is still ongoing and receives at least occasional smaller graphics or “quality of life” updates.
However, it can still be worth starting with the game today. In the summer of 2020, I took another look at it and wrote a special about it: Why Guild Wars 1 is still interesting 15 years after release.
