Summary
- Guild Wars 2 has challenging platforming puzzles like Goemm's Lab, Mad King's Clocktower, and Chalice of Tears.
- Some courses disable gliding and mounts, require precise jumps, and lack checkpoints, testing even experienced players.
- Super Adventure Box festival offers excessively difficult platforming puzzles, including a "tribulation mode" with added spikes.
Given that jumping wasn't even a feature in the previous game, the developers behind Guild Wars 2 went a little overboard, implementing challenges with jump mechanics all across Tyria. As a result, there is no shortage of platforming puzzles to contend with.
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Since Core Tyria's release, flying mounts and gliding masteries have made many of these puzzles a cinch to complete. However, for a few select, hellish jumping routes, the ability to glide and take to a skyscale remains firmly disabled. To this day, these courses continue to challenge even the most seasoned leap lovers.
8 Goemm's Lab
Cuatl Morass, Metrica Provence
Veteran players may laugh at the inclusion of Goemm's Lab, but this long-winded, blowhard challenge is a trial by fire for new players, especially as it sits in one of Guild Wars 2's starting areas. The jumps themselves aren't the slipperiest, but the puzzle's length and confusing completion order can make it very frustrating.
Not only is the player required to cross a daunting series of gusty vines, floating platforms, and awkward crossings, but they also have to do so to tune multiple Asura gates. Worse still, the random lightning bolts and chilling effects put characters into combat mode, slowing their speed and limiting their long jumps, but at least there are a few lifesaving checkpoints.
7 The Mad King's Clocktower
Realm Of The Mad King (Every Halloween)
This spiral jumping puzzle is a doozie not for its tricky taps or navigation but because of the anxiety-inducing time limit and race with other players to reach the top. Because the Mad King's Clocktower is only accessible during Halloween, there isn't much time to learn its hooks and handles.
Thankfully, a non-time-limit instance of the spooky Halloween-themed level has been available to play in Guild Wars 2 for a few Halloweens now. However, it is still shared with other players, meaning that spotting those fragmented platforms can still be difficult while other players around, especially those with light-show cosmetics.
6 Skipping Stones
Southsun Shoals, Southsun Cove
There's hardly a more appropriate name for this sinister puzzle than "skipping stones." Starting from the north-east corner of Southsun Cove, players have to make their way across a series of steam-raised rocks. The steam that shoots from the geysers below the rocks causes burning damage and, if a player isn't careful, instant death should they fumble their landing.
Because of the timing of the shooting geysers, there are few opportunities for players to catch their breath, and waiting for the geysers to reset at the start is a long, tedious wait. After the geyser section, finding a way to the end via slippery rocks with unmarked safe spots is a chore without a guide, and the end, while offering a chest, doesn't even reward players with a pretty view of the map.
5 Searing Ascent
Titan's Throat, Draconis Mons
Unintuitive, slippery, and set on the terrifying gravels clinging to the side of the volcanic structure in Guild Wars 2's "Living World Season 3" map, Draconis Mons, Searing Ascent requires both a mastery of gliding and Oakheart Essence web-slinging finesse. Figuring out what to do and where to go legitimately (without a guide or 3rd-party overlay) would cause anyone to lose their patience.
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More than a few times, the player is required to glide around corners and immediately find a purchase for their Oakheart Essense grapple on a far-away ceiling or wall. Worse, Oakheart Essence grapples don't always work as intended, leaving players plunging to a searing death.
4 Scavenger's Chasm
Valley of Lyss, Malchor's Leap
Oily and porous, Orr can be a heartbreakingly beautiful place. However, Scavenger's Chasm, one of the jumping puzzles found in Malcor's Leap, is likely only to break a person's patience. It is one of the windiest, most confusing, and non-linear courses to complete, requiring the player to find twelve orbs scattered around the hole-infested cave system.
Each orb must be picked up individually by the player, neutralizing the possibility of a team effort, and the puzzle must be done without a single defeat, as there are no checkpoints to help along the way. At least there is a Core Tyrian mastery point to lessen the pain.
3 Not So Secret (Diving Goggles)
Broadhollow Bluffs, Gendarran Fields
This puzzle was designed before the implementation of gliders, and for the most part, gliding and mounts are disabled throughout the run. Much of the puzzle's difficulty involves contending with the janky gear-shot and steam-boost mechanics introduced in the earlier Living World releases scattered throughout this magitek-pirate-themed excursion.
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Of course, if a player manages to reach the top (without a single checkpoint, barring any friendly portal-slinging mesmers), they then have to perform a hit-or-miss, bone-crunchingly tense dive from the very top to the bottom of the area and into a tiny pool of water.
2 Chalice of Tears
Sopor Titanum, Ember Bay
The Chalice of Tears, found in the fiery Ember Bay, isn't just so named for the extremely metal flaming, rocky skulls bleeding lava from their sockets. Many players consider this to be one of the toughest (but not necessarily the most unpleasant) jumping puzzles in Guild Wars 2.
The unforgiving precision jumping, projectile damage pressure from magma elementals, and a series of blind gliding sections make this an overwhelming experience for even the most seasoned jumping puzzle players.
1 Super Adventure Box Tribulation Mode
Super Adventure Box (Every April)
The Super Adventure Box festival only reappears once a year in April, and in the spirit of those bright, colorful, pixelated video games of the past, it offers some excessively difficult platforming puzzles (presumably to pad out the length for a higher review score) for players to jump into.
However, just as SAB offers a condescending easy mode, it also offers a "tribulation mode." This places an absurd set of spikes across every level, making this long jumping puzzle a true trial-and-error nightmare.
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