A guide to the new bandit bounties events added with the May 17 patch.
Getting Started
First you will need to hunt down some bandits so they drop some Encoded Orders for you. If you are unsure of where the bandits are, NW of Brisban Wildlands has several bandit camps that are in close proximity.
Once you have the Encoded Orders, head to Shining Blade Officer Ralan in Divinity’s Reach – [&BCkDAAA=]. Talk to him and he will give you a bounty contract to hunt down one of the five possible Bandits. Double click on that contract and it will point you to the location for the bounty.
Each bounty is a Champion Bandit that spawns with an event every 10 mins so just wait at the spot until the champion spawns. Their spawn location is marked by a Supply Crate so you will know you are at the right spot if you see a supply crate nearby.
Completing the first bounty contract will unlock several achievements to hunt down all 5 Champion bandits as well as a repeatable achievement that takes 3 days to complete.
Champion Bandit Locations
Each Champion Bandit spot is marked by a Supply Crate and they have a 10 minute respawn timer.
Vic the Iron – Eastern Divinity Dam (Queensdale)
- North of [&BIUAAAA=]
Zirh the Venomous – Clayent Falls (Queensdale)
- West of [&BIwGAAA=]
Ruye the Crimson – NW of Fort Salma (Kessex Hills)
- NW of [&BAMAAAA=]
Flyrra the Remorseless – NW of Gnashar’s Hill (Brisban Wildlands)
- West of [&BFEAAAA=]
Aerl the Silent – Highwayman’s Vale (Brisban Wildlands)
- SW of [&BDcDAAA=]
Achievements
There are 3 achievements related to the bandits. They can be found under General –> Current Events.
Tip of the Blade – 5 AP
- Completed immediately after you completed your first bounty order.
Long Arm of the Light – 15 AP
- Kill all 5 Champion Bandits
Bounty Hunter – 5 AP (Repeatable)
- It will take 3 days to complete this achievement as you can only get 1 Encoded Orders per day (hence 1 contract per day). You cannot progress this achievement the first day since you used the Encoded Orders to unlock the achievement.
Archived Disqus comments
Ardenwolfe
Bless you for these guides!
EvilStepQueen
Plus a million more up votes. Dulfy makes my life easier!
fabry92
anothers boring achivements with 0 rewards :/
narg
nah, its fun, even in zerg, its take only few mins to complete and give few AP, not big deal but i take it as celebration of every new patch run 😀
what is sad things, even this MICRO events take 2 hotfixs and client reboot/crash, for gods sake, anet, u have 3!! years of game developing experience
clonedllama
These patches are doing a lot more than just adding tiny events. Software development, and especially game development, is very complicated and involved. You will never find a game or piece of software that is bug free.
ArenaNet was also founded in 2000. They’ve been developing games since then. So, um, a bit more than 3 years of development experience.
narg
i mean 3 years of GW2 development, and still, i cant remember single patch which was without problems, I just suppose, if i have something, what can crash entire game servet i will have it tested first.. :/
Hemmer van Ukzahn
You can never test all eventualities though, that’s the point. If you’ve got a raelly huge QA department, you’ll have maybe a few hundred hardware configurations and a few software configurations you can test and that’s highly optimistic.
When there are millions of people playing your game in several thousands of different setups, you WILL see results you didn’t in testing. That’s just common sense.
And the same goes for every hotfix to fix the problems that come from the last, you’re always almost as likely to create new problems than fix old ones.
Yay software development!
Doublemint Dave
They started developing GW2, so it’s closer to 9 years, although the company has grown considerably since then and a lot of developers have changed.
Doublemint Dave
*started developing GW2 in 2007
Sty
You can’t fully test new events before release and it wouldn’t be in the same conditions than in the real game anyway. Basically, you can test new content all the time you want, there won’t be any guarantee that your new build is bug-free.
So it’s better to test it efficiently but be prepared to do some fixes when problems arise if you want to release new content on a regular basis.
Ivan
explain then, why some developers produce bug-free games, or games that don’t need patching, versus developers like Ubishit and Asshatnet patching day 1, day 365, day 1000+, etc. for stuff that should’ve been (easily) fixed week 1. game development is difficult, but developers are paid to produce a product – nowadays it’s acceptable to produce shit and still get paid for it, and keep getting paid to fix it after the deadline. what fucking profession offers so much breathing room for bullshit??
all I see are excuses. I have been on game development teams before, and no matter how many ways you approach the issue, it’s entirely the developers’ fault (and their owners for pushing deadlines for that matter, even then they should be producing better material than they have been)
pwn-a-troll
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.
1) No developers product bug free code for anything remotely complex.\ 2) You are kidding if you think this is the only profession that people make mistakes and get paid for it.\ 3) If you worked on a game development team before, and that is a big if, then I am sure you were the employee emptying trash cans. (Not that there is anything wrong with an honest days work)
Ivan
you sure put the “troll” in pwn-a-troll lol
I don’t need to prove my credentials to some clown on the internet who knows less about game development than I do, this may not be the only profession that makes mistakes (hell, people make mistakes all the time), but this is the only profession where it’s industry standard to produce shit and get paid to fix it, that is definitely not the case for most professions, if any other. could you imagine? “ok, I’d like our logo in blue, can you design something like that? oh its in red? oh no problem, I’ll pay you more money to make it blue like I originally told you”
you are the kind of person no one should ever hire, there is room for mistakes but there should never be room to lower the industry standard to your level.
pwn-a-troll
You surely are amusing and wrong. I can name endless industries that produce the same level of mistakes as the gaming industry or software industry as a whole. You also can throw out your b.s. about your experience vs. mine or lowering the industry standard to my level and whatever other nonsense that spews from your mouth. However, I know where I work and what I make so your substandard attempt at insulting me matters about as much as the spit that accumulates at the back of my throat when I eat something salty.\ Your comments or nonsense. First of all, you paid for the game once. You aren’t continuing to pay for these patches on the game. You could be buying skins or keys or whatever have you to improve your experience; however, that is your choice. But you certainly aren’t continuing to pay for the game. But hey continue to trash talk from your moms basement since it makes you feel more like a man. Make sure when she yells it is dinner time you take a break to go get your mac n cheese.
RabbitUp
You really have zero clue, don’t you? It’s actually more time and money efficient to release a patch and let the community discover potential bugs (and quite often even the steps to reproduce them) and then fix them, instead of having your team waste hours and hours testing everything to make sure no bugs made it into the code, hours that could be used to develop the upcoming content. They are not paid to be lazy, they are paid to make content, and bug-fixing is not content.
clonedllama
I don’t have an explanation because what you want me to describe does not exist. There is no such thing as a “bug-free game” or a game that “[doesn’t] need patching.” Period. If you believe otherwise, you’re greatly mistaken.
Many developers release a single patch for their games and then leave it at that. Others never bother to patch their games at all. Other games are in such terrible states that fans have made custom patches just to make the games playable (e.g., Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on PC is still broken and requires fan patches just to get it to sort of work, or anything developed by Bethesda).
ArenaNet is nowhere near the worst when it comes to releasing products with bugs in them. ANet is actually doing quite well in that regard if you compare what they’re doing to other developers. Games are incredibly complicated pieces of software and MMOs are by far the most complex type of game that can be developed.
Yes, bugs slip through into releases and it can lead to things not working right. It sucks, I agree. There are so many moving pieces and changes in the code for games like this (especially a game that is constantly adding new content and features — no matter how minor) that bugs will always slip through or be given a low priority over more critical problems. Welcome to MMOs, online gaming, and software development.
EvilStepQueen
Maybe it’s going to add up to a reward in the end. We shall have to wait and see.
Karen
AP is the main reward of most achievements, you fool.
Sagiso 鷺草
Thanks for the guide! Quite the peculiar placement of those champs. A straight line from DR to Fort Vandal. I’m excited :3
Alot
I think the shining blades correspondent has a total-makeover face – which would make him the most interesting development of the current shenanigans.
Mr. Bungle
Thanks Dulfy!
Aerinndis Athyrium
Queensdale right at Vale WP has bandits very nearby in the cave or the event in the farmers field. I got my Encoded Orders on the third bandit.
Raz
Seems like it’s getting popular to just say\ FUCK.
In these discus threads.
Skippy the Chimp
Got two orders the first day. The first off a bandit in Metrica and second dropped off of Vic the Iron. Not sure if that’s supposed to happen, but I’ll take the head start!
Gameguard
You sure you didn’t get one before reset and one after?
Alismora
Same for me, only the first one came from a random bandit I killed and the second from a different champ. It was 2 hours after server reset for me, so I’m not sure what happened.
George Smith
what makes you sure you can only get 1 encoded orders a day?
Gameguard
I farmed 1 hour stright bounty and mobs only got one order each day
Damonwex
Can confirm this.
Whatever
I farmed 2 hours and got none
Answerer
Intended design is 1 EO per day, but as we know, intended design is not always working as intended ingame.\ But since there’s no real profit in having multiple EOs on one day, I doubt anet will bother to fix it, or persecute players who find a second one. At best they might make the Captain unresponsive after he’s given a bounty
nadrian3k
What i don’t like about these is, if you don’t get the info from here or get lucky and are in an area with those specific mobs to kill, the chances of finding out about this event are slim to none, because there are no ingame-indications of them. At least i haven’t seen any of them.
umbriel84
Don’t you get an ingame mail?? At least I did but, cough, haven’t read it… XD
nadrian3k
I didn’t get an email/ingame notification for either the previous one or this one. All i got in mail since the patch for this one was :\ 1. Money back for a PvP tinket thing\ 2. A notification that they fixed some kind of title bug with Closer to the Slums or whatever and that they removed it because i wasn’t eligible to receive it. Didn’t even know it was a thing.
Doublemint Dave
Eh? I mean, yeah, if you’re completely oblivious, then you could potentially miss the whole thing, but anyone who reads the update notes (either on wiki or official forums), in-game mails, twitter, reddit, or whatever other outlet Anet uses to communicate to their players should have noticed their hints about bandits. From there on it’s pretty straightforward. And even if you miss all that, there’s a fair amount of buzz in the player community in general, so it would be somewhat incredible if you managed not to catch wind of what’s happening at all.
nadrian3k
I an not oblivious. I just have real life stuff to do and i use/play a game to relax not to do intensive search for stuff that should be clearly shown INGAME….and not do detective work on third party websites to search for this game’s fucking content. Do you even realize how retarded your suggestion is?
As if this game’s content wasn’t scarce enough..now i have to read and search on god knows what sites instead of appearing as a quest or a message ingame. That’s your idea of “progression” in the gaming industry. G fucking G.
A Niny Mouse
Do you have any idea how ridiculous it is to actually write that out here on the dulfy comment section? The meer fact that you’re even here, on dulfy.com, complaining in the comments, means you’re exactly NOT who he was referring to. So you’re entire rant just now was really “retarded”. Its like you’re complaining for the sake of complaining and you’re offended because someone said something that wasn’t even about you.
You’re literally complaining because you claim its impossible to find info on new content (barely content) on a website where you clearly found info on said new content.
nadrian3k
Yes i am here because this is the place to find out about these things. Does that make it normal? Absolutely not. The fact that i am here as you perfectly said is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. I shouldn’t have to come here looking for info that should be displayed in the game.
I fully agree with you there.
A Niny Mouse
Again, you’re so upset because… well I can’t really figure it out. You’re mad because you found info about 3 small achievements added to the game on a website that you clearly frequent, but that you could have/might have/maybe sorta but 100% didn’t miss out on? So again, complaining for the sake of complaining.
nadrian3k
I am complaining about ANet not giving me a clear message ingame when they add playable content (regardless if it’s small). Instead of finding out there’s a new event going on, from within the game… i have to find out about it from a third party website.
If that seems normal to you and if you think that’s “complaining for the sake of complaining”..i am sorry but i will end this discussion with you here because we have different views on what’s normal and what’s not.
Rydralain
I think that the little side events here aren’t major enough to justify in-game notices. It’s just some extra flavor in the world. You aren’t missing a lot if you never see it, just like you aren’t mission out if you don’t do every even in every zone in the game – it’s a big world, and maybe you miss some stuff.
Julia Oceania
I haven’t been playing this game all that long, 7 or so months, and I see your point. I’ve learned that if there is a patch that is a good sign that there maybe some new content and I should wander over to the GW2 official page and read the developers notes and other news. Often there’s just new gem store stuff, but I find it is worthwhile to look into it. Should you have to? No, but it isn’t like you have to do it every single day, as this stuff comes with patches, get a message that there is a new build for your game available and it takes a long time to download, that means new content.
Ivan
good point, but honestly if anet wasn’t so bent on making events and rewards time-limited, none of us would be here having this discussion. sure they fixed things with living story season 2 being accessible through gems and logins, but that shouldve really been permanent stuff for the game. Idk, just a gripe I have with GW2.
especially since achievement points are now used to discriminate against players and the entire game is supposed to be horizontal progression (which isnt the case anymore since they introduced ascended armor, I still hate the tier even though I have fully geared chars), temporary content is more annoying/chore/grindy than fun
Aruthawolf
Just a query but do you also have a gripe with Exotic armor?\ Because I once tried to go to a cof path 2 in a newly leveled necro to get cof exotics and was kicked for having mostly rares. Maybe rare should have been the top Horizontal tier?
Ivan
Good point, but no, I dont. Consider how easy it is to obtain exotic armour, so the focus becomes on getting one full set, then another set, and so on. The goal by then is to get new skins. I don’t have a problem with legendaries either because they are just that, legendary. I don’t have any intention of getting one but stats wise they are fine the way they are.
necros were in a bad pve state when dungeon running was a thing (not enough dps compared to other professions), so ppl tended to shy away from them and rangers. They only ever saw a few months of viability after a balance patch and then they nerfed dungeons.
At the end of the day you were just unlucky. I have joined groups by showing them my rare gear or even Pvt exotics and we’ve done runs without anyone complaining (admittedly I was holding the group back with lower than optimal DPS).
Alot
I agree. They’ve gone overboard on obscuring in game events. The mail which explained the thing only gets delivered after you complete the stuff.
What happened to good old faithful E?
nadrian3k
I take it you also haven’t received a mail notifying you of “something going on” prior to finishing it?
Alot
No, only afterwards.
Sty
Players are quite good ingame-indications.
Emilee
Everything thats going on in the game is part of the Log in screen is it not? All patch notes, news, events are listed there before you click Log In, and then Play … at least thats what Ive always seen … besides that , guild are always buzzing with the latest news so .. I dont know how more “In Game” you can get? :/
Dennis Norris
The only actual indication from anet was the patch notes which are not displayed on the launcher. 75% of the population does not read the patch notes and “Reports of banditry have increased in Kryta.” isn’t exactly a good clue.\ That said it’s their choice to not read the patch notes to be informed.
Emilee
Fair enough 🙂 I always read them. Not really sure why people skip it. The pathces affect the whole community 🙂
Braghez
They decided to not put info on those events/achievements in the notes and so on to let players discover them on our own and share the infos they find on side like reddit/dulfy/official forum etc. They only leave hints to those. Like in the first part with leylines the patch notes talked about ley line energy leaking and dragon’s minions interested in them. and you had to hunt dragon minions for the lodestone. Now with bandits there was the message “Reports of banditry have increased in Kryta.”. Which is a clear hint to “hunt bandits down and you will find something”.
If you notice even the achievement section was hidden till you bring the lodestone to Ela Makkai…and now it’s the same since the achieves are hidden till you do them.
Sinis
I can definitely confirm that this is a once a day thing for bounties. Once the daily log-in time arrives then you can do out and do it again. Pretty much a daily for the time being.
Julia Oceania
We only get one bandit a day, but unlimited achievement point for doing it every day, like transmuting gear?
Ian noble
Set against that, I can confirm that it’s NOT necessary to wait for the appropriate bounties before killing bosses for the “Long Arm of the Light” achievement.
(I just got fed up of waiting for a bounty on Vic the Iron, so when the bounty I was offered wasn’t for him I went to help kill him anyway. He dult went down, and my “Long Arm” achievement completed. 10 minutes later I killed the boss who my bounty was actually for, and was awarded credit on the repeatable “Bounty Hunter” achievement.)
Alismora
I was able to get 2 Encoded Orders when I started this. I logged on about two hours after server reset to get my dailies and decided I would get started on this.
After I brought the first set of EOs to Ralan, he gave me a bounty to complete. After killing the first bandit, Aerl the Silent, he dropped another set of EOs after I looted his chest. I went back to Ralan, he gave me another bounty for Flyrra the Remorseless.
I completed it and received credit. 1/3 Bounties Completed for the Bounty Hunter Achievement as well as Tip of the Blade within 30mins.
I don’t know if this was a glitch?
Rimpel
this just happened to me too btw
Answerer
The intended design is one EO per day, ‘nevertheless’ Anet does look up to Bethesda and tries to be a glitchy as they are. so finding more than EO isn’t exactly out of the question, and they might not even bother to fix it since its not really breaking the game
Lord
Hi Dulfy, Bounty Hunter Achievement has a cap at 30.\ So it will be reach in 18 days.
Jeffry Suputra
once per day, i feel dumb to waste my time for 1 hour to get another encoded order :/
Answerer
if it takes you an hour to get an encoded order.. you ‘might’ not be fighting bandits. it usually takes me only 2 or 3 kills to get one. IF the very first kill doesn’t outright drop one. drop rates are like 80-90% of the kills or something
Jeffry Suputra
you get me wrong :3 i already finish one and i look for another encoded order because i didn’t know that it only once per day before read this articles :/
Answerer
I’m curious for next round:\ Grawl are gathering, this is never a good sign!
– Find worshipping sites of Grawl\ – Defeat Shadow Thether that the Grawl worship\ – After breaking all 5 shrines > Find the Corrupted Grawl Shaman\ – Kill Grawl Shaman > kill Fallen Margonite Reaper
Larry Martin
Does the repeatable “bounty” achievement go on forever, or is there some ending date it will go away?
who cares
says +xx/30 ap so do it 6 time for ap. dulfy should add that to guide…
katerdid225
I completed this and got 5 mastery points. Isn’t a Tome of Masteries supposed to only grant mastery xp? I’m not complaining, I’m just confused.
nadrian3k
Q: I know some of the “infite” achievements have an AP cap. Is there such a thing for “Bounty Hunter” ?…like…even if you repeat it 100 times, you only get AP until u reach 30 times (just an example)
vladsch
Am I the only one not able to get Ruye? I’ve got several times the same ol same other champs but Ruye, and I can’t complete the achievement. This is annoying…