Fractals

You have most likely heard people mention fractals at some point. Fractals are level 80 content with a very wide range of difficulty.

Why do I keep hearing about Fractals?

There are a variety of ways you could’ve heard of about fractals. The simple ones are the occasional bonus events; in between festivals ArenaNet has recurring bonus events, one of which is fractal focused. With one of those events the legendary set of gloves Eikasia was introduced, which may be another reason people mention it. The set of gloves is relatively easy to get. Less easy to get but also fractal related is the legendary backpiece Ad Infinitum.

Last but not least people may have just been asking guild chat (or elsewhere) for LFG-ing. Since fractals are a solid way to make gold, but do require a coordinated group on higher difficulties, which is why running with a premade group us usually preferable to a PUG.

What are Fractals?

Fractals have been compared to Mythic Dungeons¹. They are essentially a five-person team activity which requires some degree of cooperation, including puzzles and bosses with mechanics. There are a lot of different fractals², some of them having next to no mechanics like Volcanic, others being practically impossible without a training run like Silent Surf. While the numbers do stay consistent (i.e. Fractal 1 is always Volcanic) it is useful to draw a distinction between maps and levels here. Volcanic as a map is available as levels 1, 19, 28, 52, and 92 at time of writing. The each level of the same map is identical, other than potential tier modifiers, just harder (although some mechanics are not present in Tier 1). In effect fractals are a set of short mini-dungeons with varying degrees of mechanics.

Can I run Fractals?

Gear

Generally speaking fractals 1 through 19 do not require builds or special gear and can usually be done with semi-random exotic gear (although a build does of course help). Starting at level 20 the agony mechanic is introduced and some amount of ascended or legendary gear becomes necessary.

Party

Similarly coordination isn’t strictly required, however on a mechanics level some bits such as the pressure plates of Deepstone require two players to be in the marked spots at the same time. On higher levels (Tier 4 and CMs) it is customary to have 3 DPS players, and complementary boon-heal and boon-dps each³.

Quickplay

In case you are interested in less involved and/or less challenging gameplay, Quickplay Fractals are available from the Tier 1 LFG menu. This will use matchmaking logic to assemble a full party and place you into a random fractal from the quickplay list, all of which have a fractal level of 1. Quickplay fractals have checkpoints and other bonuses, as well as reduced mechanics which reduces friction of running them to a minimum.

Training Runs

If you are new to fractals it is advisable to ask around for a Training Run, in which a veteran player can explain the mechanics to a group of people. This applies to mechanics which seem obvious too; for instance a lot of newer players do not know that the spiders on the right side of Deepstone have to be killed before the pressure plates become active.

Personal Fractal Level

On the game side of things there is one mechanic which limits which fractals you have access to. This is the Personal Fractal Level. The numbers starts at 1, and limits the highest fractal you can select from the fractal list (both the level selection as well as the LFG sections for higher tiers). You can raise the number by running fractals at or above your current number. If you are level 1 and run fractal 1 it will jump to 2. If you are level 5 and run fractal 10 it will jump to 6.

The important part here is that the fractal level is party-wide. The highest personal fractal level of the party determines what is available for selection. If you are in a party with someone whose fractal level is 100, you will be able to select any fractal, regardless of your level.

If you have the required agony resistance for higher fractal tiers you can often find a taxi group for the higher tier so you can get up to speed faster.

Dailies and Recs

Fractals have three types of daily rewards; Dailies, Recommended Fractals, and Challenge Mode rewards.

Dailies are map based; three maps are selected to be the dailies every day (based on a rotation). If the daily is Volcanic for instance you can complete any version of Volcanic and receive the rewards. Rewards for dailies are available per tier, and finishing a higher tier will reward the lower tiers; finishing Volcanic at level 92 (tier 4) will reward you with the rewards for tier 4, 3, 2, and 1. Finishing Volcanic at level 28 will reward you with the rewards for tier 2 and 1. This is why most players are found in tier 1 and 4; new players who do not have much (or any) agony resistance start out in tier 1, and most players try to reach tier 4 as fast as possible to get the full rewards for a single run.

The recommended fractals on the other hand are level based; three levels are selected to be the recommended fractal for the day, one per tier 1, 2, and 3 (tier 4 does not have a recommended fractal). Since these are specific numbers such as 34 or 70 they have to be done at that specific level. Finishing Kinfall at level 95 will not complete the recommended fractal of Kinfall at 70. Check the “daily” section of your achievements if in doubt. Recommended fractals require the first mastery track unlock in the Core Tyria mastery track for fractals.

Challenge Mode (CM)

Challenge mode rewards are for running the fractals with challenge mode (95 through 100 at time of writing) after enabling the challenge mode. These are the hardest challenges in fractals, and have additional mechanics. Attending one or more training runs is highly recommended, especially for the more complex fractals like Shattered Observatory or Sunqua Peak.

Challenge mode is unlocked by completing an achievement collection such as Silent Surf Fractal which itself is composed of other achievements. Each fractal offering a challenge mode has such a collection, and unlocking it will allow you to interact with the challenge mote at the beginning of the levels. Note that similar to the personal fractal level only one person in the party needs to have the challenge mode unlocked for it to be present and ready for interaction.

LFG

Here are a few examples of LFG group names and what they mean:

Similarly, when joining a group on LFG, please do everyone a favour and state your role. Greeting people with a “hi dps” or “hey qheal” is just good manners!

Agony

Starting at fractal level 20 each fractal will have an associated agony level going from 8 agony at fractal № 20 up to 150 at fractal № 100. This agony level determines the amount of damage that the agony effect will deal to you. The agony effect is triggered by many mechanics in the game (such as opening the first door in Kinfall) as well as many attacks by bosses. The difference between your agony resistance and the agony level of the fractal you are running determines the damage you receive in percent of your max HP. If the fractal has an agony level of 50, and you have a resistance of 0, that means you will receive 50% of your max HP in agony damage while the effect is active (read: you will die in 2 seconds flat). As healing is reduced while you are under the effect of agony it is borderline impossible to complete a fractal with an agony level of 30 more than your agony resistance.

You can raise your agony resistance in several ways. The easiest is to drink an Anguished Tear of Alba available at the fractal alchemist. This however will only raise your resistance by 10 (plus 5 more if you have the mastery), so it is merely a stopgap measure if you’re close but not quite where you need to be.

Another is to buy the rather expensive augmentations which will increase your agony resistance for all characters. This is more of a useful side-effect rather than a recommended way of raising your agony resistance.

The most common and viable way is to put infusions into the slots in your ascended and/or legendary gear. Ascended and legendary gear have infusion slots which allow slotting Agony Infusions. Agony infusions are dropped from running fractals (usually +1, rarely +3) and can be upcrafted in powers of two (i.e. 2×+1 make 1×+2, and 2×+5 make 1×+6). Since the number required increases exponentially it is recommended to use the vendors in the Mistlock Observatory for upcrafting. It takes 256 +1 infusions to make a single +9 Agony Infusion using 511 crafting steps. Using +9 infusions is recommended since slotting +9 infusions will get you to 150 AR (agony resistance), thus allowing you to run all fractals without agony getting in the way. Note that this requires using either legendary or attuned and infused ascended rings; attunement and infusion each add an additional infusion slot to a ring, going from 1 slot per ring to 3 slots per ring.

You can buy an Infusion Extraction Device for a small amount of currency from fractal vendors to safely remove infusions from ascended gear.

Loot

Most of the loot from fractals is contained in the chests which you can open from within your inventory. In addition to bags of fractal relics and ascended gear you will also find Fractal Encryptions. These boxes can be unlocked using keys bought from one of several vendors in the Mistlock Observatory. The best value option here is to buy the Deeply Discounted Fractal Encryption Keys from BUY-4373. Only 30 deeply discounted keys can be bought per day (although this should suffice in most cases), with more keys becoming incrementally more expensive. Avoid buying keys which are not deeply discounted. Encryptions can then be unlocked and subsequently opened to yield a lot of junk items which in turn are usually worth half a gold per piece, so make sure to sell those at the closest vendor. You can also sell your fractal encryptions on the Trading Post, however yield will likely be lower than opening since keys are time-gated while the encryptions are not.

Other than the direct drops there are several other materials or currencies such as Fractal Matrices or Pristine Fractal Relics. Similar to other game modes fractals come with one regular currency (Fractal Relics) and a more valued one (Pristine Fractal Relics) which can be converted to the former at a rate of $1:10$. These can be used to buy things including ascended gear from the vendors, however they can also be spent to get Augmentations from the augmentation vendor. Augmentations will increase the rewards you receive from fractals, and are thus highly recommended if you intend to complete them daily (however the augmentations themselves are very expensive). You may also want to consider spending 100 Pristine Fractal Relics for the Fractal Gate Portal Scroll.

Leggies

You can talk to the Asura wearing the Ad Infinitum backpack to your right upon entering the Observatory to kick off the lengthy quest.

For the Eikasia gloves you should visit the Mist Stranger in the instance accessible from an entry point to the right side of the Asura gate (before entering). The Mist Stranger should be inside the building within the instance.

1. Note that the author has never played World of Warcraft and is only repeating this as a half-remembered anecdote, YMMV. ↩

2. The list of fractals, including the dailies, is available via the shorthand redirect fl, as in /wiki fl for the chat command. ↩

3. This is either aheal and qdps or qheal and adps, where the a stands for Alacrity and the q for Quickness. ↩