The Same Procedure As Every Time
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| Screenshot of the Mad King's Labyrinth Lobby of Guild Wars 2 (Halloween 2019) |
The festival itself doesn't matter for the procedure. We need to answer two questions: How long does the event go? Which achievements do we need to do, and what does it require us to do? To answer the first question, we can look up the blog post from ArenaNet. According to it, the event goes from the 15th of October to the 5th of November.[1] That's about 22 days. By now, it's already the 19th of October, though. So, from today on, it is 18 days instead. With the frame of time being clarified, let's look at the task. There are ten annual achievements from which nine need to be done. These are:
- Arguably Foodlike - eat 300 candy corn
- Ascent to Madness - defeat the mad king
- Ancient Grudge - kill 100 minions of Joko
- Courtly Service - spend 5 gold at the Labyrinth NPC
- Pumpkin Carving - carve 100 pumpkins
- Mad King's Clock Tower - jump through 3 times
- Lunatic Racer - complete the labyrinth race 3 times
- A Royal Tradition - Play the Mad King Says 3 times
- Raceway Regular - complete 15 race track rounds
- Masters of the Labyrinth - kill all 3 labyrinth bosses
Calculate the Daily ToDo
If this isn't the first procrastination post you've read, you should be able to do it yourself, haha. Basically, we divide the amount we need to do through the number of days we have. This will give us a daily amount, which may need to be rounded correctly. Following this using the Arguably Foodlike achievement, we will calculate 300 / 18 = 16.66... Of course, we can't eat less than one, so we round up to 17 (even if it would've been less than 0.5). Here are the results for all of the annual achievements:
| Achievement | Total amount | Daily amount |
| Arguably Foodlike | 300 | 300 / 18 = 16.67 |
| Ascent to Madness | 1 | 1 / 18 = 0.06 |
| Ancient Grudge | 100 | 100 / 18 = 5.56 |
| Courtly Service | 5 | 5 / 18 = 0.28 |
| Pumpkin Carving | 100 | 100 / 18 = 5.56 |
| Mad King's Clock Tower | 3 | 3 / 18 = 0.17 |
| Lunatic Racer | 3 | 3 / 18 = 0.17 |
| A Royal tradition | 3 | 3 / 18 = 0.17 |
| Raceway Regular | 15 | 15 / 18 = 0.83 |
| Masters of the Labyrinth | 3 | 3 / 18 = 0.17 |
Interpreting the Data
Now we have numbers that need to be interpreted, as given by the example before. This means, every day we would have to eat about 17 candy corn. We need to do the Ascent to Madness at least once (the calculation of this was unnecessary here). About 6 of Joko's subordinates need to be killed each day. We also would spend 28 silver each day, which is not possible as the lowest amount of money that can be spent is 1 gold. If we multiply the amount per day by four, we get 4 * 0.28 = 1.12 gold. This means we should spend 1 gold every 4 days. The pumpkins that need to be carved is equal to the Joko's minions we need to kill, which is ~6. The tower, labyrinth race, and "Mad King Says" need to be done 0.17 times per day, which is about once every 6 days (6 * 0.17 = 1.02). The raceway tracks in the special area require you to do 0.83 rounds every day. It makes much more sense to do three rounds, though. As such, we will do 15 / 3 = 5 runs instead. So, redoing the calculation we get 5 / 18 = 0.28 instead. So, we will be doing this too a little less than every 4th day (4 * 0.28 = 1.12).
Small Tips For Rounding When You Do It Yourself
If you calculate this yourself, make sure to round correctly in your interpretation. The amount you do daily should be rounded up. This is to make sure you get the total before time runs out. You will be done earlier, though, which is fine. However, when you round the frequency, you want to make sure the number decreases. If you do something every two days, you do it more frequently than if you do something every three days. This is important to make sure you will reach the total.
Your Mad King Says...Enjoy the Halloween event!
[1] https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/halloween-2019-is-getting-closer/
