GW2 Winter Wonderland Wintersday jumping puzzle guide
A comprehensive written and video guide to the Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle introduced as part of the GW2 Wintersday event. Updating for Wintersday 2013.
How to start
Talk to the Festive Youth standing near the Mystic Forge in the north portion of Lion’s Arch
Video Guide
Gingerbread Path
Quaggan Path
Snowman Path
Written guide
This is a timed jumping puzzle with three phases. The length of the jumping puzzle is just under 2 minutes. Players will continually taking frostbite damage through the puzzle and will get kicked of out the puzzle if their health reaches 0. In addition, phase 1 has its own timer on top of the overall timer as the platforms only stay up for a short period of time before disappearing into the thin air.
Phase 1 (Snowflakes)
There are three paths for phase 1, players can pick the Quaggan Path, Snowman Path, or Gingerbread path. The difficulty for all three paths is relatively the same.The most difficult part of each path is probably the horizontal red beams as players will need to make sure that they don’t over or underjump. A lot of players either miss the jumps here or fail to swing their camera quick enough and jump in the wrong direction. A trick I sometimes find helpful if I can’t swing my camera fast enough on rapid turns is to side jump using the A or D keys instead of taking the time to orient my camera and pressing W + jump.
The snowflake platforms only stay up for a short period of time so if you will need to keep moving. Stopping a second or two to plan the next jump can cause the platform to disappear under you, resetting the puzzle.
Once you make paste the snowflake platforms, you will encounter red peppermint discs. While these discs won’t disappear under you, there is still frostbite ticking your health away. You will need to move fast and move onto the part with the exploding presents boxes.
Checkpoint
There is a checkpoint introduced in the 2013 version which you can access by talking to Tixx and forfeiting your present. Your HP will also be healed to full here so you can relax a bit before proceeding.
Phase 2 (Present Boxes)
People have different theories about this part of the puzzle. Some believe that sticking to the right is safer while others believe that going straight is faster than diagonal etc. I tend to stick to the right side (seem to have the better luck there compared to the left) and go diagonal at first. Once I see nearby boxes about to explode, I start jumping straight across. You are jumping over larger gaps when you jump straight across but it is better than having a box exploding under you.
Phase 3 (Rolling snowballs)
Once you make it past the boxes onto the icy ledge on the other side, you can relax a bit. This part is all about timing but it is relatively easy to do so. Avoid the giant snowballs by standing on the peppermint discs on the side (you can dodge past the if you are desperate). Skritts will be firing red circles at you, failure to avoid/dodge them will cause you to get Chilled, which slow you down and cause you to lose precious seconds that can make you fail the jumping puzzle.
First, note the gust of wind coming from the right. This gust usually doesn’t bother me but you will want to watch out and not run head on into it. You can dodge roll through it if you are not certain. Getting hit by it will likely get you knocked off the platform or delay you by a couple seconds. This delay can be fatal as you may need to spend more time waiting on the snowballs to pass and not make it to the puzzle end before dying to frostbite.
If there is a snowball in front of you, wait for it to pass and then immediately jump on the peppermine disc behind it. This is a safe spot to wait for the next snowball to pass.
Once a snowball passes, immediately start running, you will be able to make it to this peppermint disc before the next snowball rolls over.
Wait for that snowball to pass over, then immediately run to this huge peppermint disc.There should be a snowball rolling as you are running across the disc. As soon as that snowball passes, start running towards the next peppermint disc.You will see skritt firing red circles at you but if you move out as soon as the previous snowball passes, the circles won’t affect you.
Wait on this final disc for the 4th snowball to pass, then head to this area on the right and start jumping to the end.This is the home stretch. As long you didn’t take too long to get to here, you should have just a tiny bit of health remaining.
Rewards: You get 1-3 Giant Wintersday Gifts for completing the jumping puzzle each time.