Check out ZAM's early look at the new festival coming to Guild Wars 2: Dragon Bash!

Tomorrow ArenaNet continues its quest of delivering new content patches every other week. The update will introduce players to the Dragon Bash festival, a remake of the Dragon Festival familiar to players of the original Guild Wars.

Upon logging into the game after the patch, players will receive mail directing them to Captain Magnus the Bloody-Handed, at Lion’s Arch, where most of the festivities will occur. Talking to him and the seven other members of the Captain’s Council in LA will complete the Meet the Hosts achievement.

While in Lion’s Arch players can also bet on the moa races, enter the Dragon Ball arena, launch new fireworks and bash dragon piñatas. Each of these activities also comes with its own set of achievements.

Players who bash 150 piñatas will be awarded the Paper Dragon achievement. These little dragons can be found not only in LA but throughout the major cities. Each piñata will give the player a single Zhaitaffy.

The moa races take place on the eastern side of LA, at Farshore Ward. In each race there are five moas racing: Meep, Motti, Mortt, Monna and a randomly selected mystery moa. Between each race players can spend 50 silver to bet on one of these five. After a bet is placed all waypoints are locked, to prevent players from straying too far from the event (and forfeiting their bets). During the race players can follow along or wait for the race to end, after which players will be sent a mail with their winnings. First place awards seven Race Track Vouchers, 2^nd place is awarded three vouchers and 3^rd place is awarded a single voucher. Placing either 4^th or 5^th will yield no winnings. In addition, getting first place three times will award players with the Winner’s Circle achievement.

The Race Track Vouchers can be redeemed at a nearby merchant who trades the vouchers for Bags of Race Track Winnings and a new mini-pet modeled after the moa racers. The bags come in 1 voucher, 3 voucher and 7 voucher variants giving 20 silver for each voucher used to purchase it. So the 1 voucher variant contains 20 silver while the 7 voucher variant holds 1 gold 40 silver. The mini-pet costs a whopping 125 vouchers, but players will have all the time needed to collect the mini as moa racing will remain as a permanent addition to the game. After Dragon Bash has ended there is a high possibility that more items will be added to the voucher merchant.

The star of the Dragon Bash festival in my opinion would have to be Dragon Ball. This activity is a 5v5 PvP matchup where players are given a new bar of skills. All players start the match with only the 1 basic skill, but power ups scattered around the map will unlock additional skills, including one that upgrades the 1 skill to do more damage and have an increased range. In addition to upgraded skills, there are also health power-ups available in small, medium and large denoted by the size of the upgrade icon and an invisibility power-up that keeps players invisible for a short time even while attacking.

Dragon Ball was designed to be like a Quake style team death match game. Players move around the arena at speeds much faster than normal and jump pads placed around the map help to quickly get players across or up to higher levels of the map. These jump pads are also directional, so players can line up which directional they want to go before sailing across the map.

Players who are on the winning team will be awarded a Dragon Coffer (or on a very rare occasion the Holographic Dragon Wings) while the losing team receives a single Zhaitaffy. Dragon Ball comes with two achievements: Dragon Ball Devotee for participating in 20 games and Dragon Ball Boss for winning 20 games.

Along the beaches of LA players will find Fireworks Launchers. Using these or any of the new fireworks bundles will advance the Color the Sky achievement, which players will complete after launching 100 fireworks. While the launchers only give one or two uses, some of the new bundles have up to 40 uses from a single item getting players well on their way toward this achievement’s completion. Also of note, the achievement is only progressed by using the newly added fireworks. Don’t bother buying fireworks from the merchant in Rata Sum as they don’t work for this achievement.

A special bundle item called the Dragon’s Fortune Fireworks, in addition to 40 fireworks usages, includes a single use rocket that will buff all nearby players with an hour long magic find boost. Did I mention that this buff stacks duration? It is important to note that the buff is applied when the skill is used and not when players see the fireworks go off. So if you run up in time to see the fireworks go off you were already too late for the buff.

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