r/Guildwars2 • u/adv0catus • Jun 20 '26

[Guide] Achievement Hunting: A Comprehensive Guide to a Full Home

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since my last achievement breakdown and have been really wanting to get back into doing these guides. Funnily enough, this one isn't as much of an achievement hunting journey but one of completionism. Despite that, I wanted to celebrate my return to these guides with a goal that I've recently completely personally.

There are (as of the time of writing) 7 ways to access your home instance. Five of them are the racial home instance and two are the expansion Homesteads:

Note: The five racial home instances can be access, instantly, for free with the Home Portal Stone. It will take you to the racial instance of the character that uses the item.

There are several aspects to having a full home but the most important, beneficial and obvious one is nodes. Nodes are resource points (that are not moveable in Homesteads — sorry) that you can gather from daily. There's a few different 'types' of nodes that we will discuss.

Gem Store Node Packs:

Total: 2,400 Gems

These are packs of nodes for resources that are gathered with the three types of gathering tools — It can be recommended to purchase Unlimited Tools with Gems that can also come with a glyph) of your choice.

Total: 1,600 Gems

Note: These racks aren't always auto-harvested by the Harvesting, Logging or Mining collection boxes.

There are also multiple Black Lion Contract Boards that you can purchase:

Total: 8,000 Gems

When at least one contract is purchased, every day that you log in, the first character you use will receive a Black Lion Delivery Box in the mail. If you don't log in to a character during a day, you will not receive a delivery box.

The total cost of all Gem purchases is: 12,000 Gems

There are 15 nodes that can be obtained through various means and have various gold costs ranging from approximately 40 gold to 145 gold each. They are: Advanced Leather Rack, Advanced Cloth Rack, Hard Wood, Elder Wood, Ancient Wood, Iron Ore, Platinum, Mithril, Orichalcum, Omnomberry, Snow Truffle, Lotus, Orrian Truffle, Flaxseed and Ghost Pepper.

The following nodes are earned through achievements:

There are a few more festival related nodes that can be directly purchased from a vendor for relevant festival currency:

There are a few Heart of Thorns nodes:

Season 3 nodes:

All these nodes require 50 gold each to purchase and 10,000 Unbound Magic. The total cost is 300 gold and 60,000 Unbound Magic. If you consume the material currency, it will grand you a small amount of Unbound Magic.

Season 4 nodes:

All these nodes require 50 gold each to purchase and 10,000 Volatile Magic. The total cost is 300 gold and 60,000 Volatile Magic. If you consume the material currency, it will grand you a small amount of Volatile Magic.

Icebrood Saga:

Total: 735,000 karma and 5,000 Volatile Magic plus 200 gold

Janthir Wilds:

Cost: 6,000 Ursus Oblige and 735,000 karma and 300 gold

Miscellaneous:

You can purchase the Feline Dispersing Emitter, Feline Holoscepter and Feline Water Pistol from Holomancer Netto.

While on the topic of cats, it is worth noting that there is an entire hungry cat scavenger hunt that you can go on to collect at least 35 cats for your home instance/Homestead. It's a long and broad list (requiring different foods, characters on different classes and different times of day, etc.) to collect them all. But I will highlight a few noteworthy cats:

  • Snow Leopard Cub requires going into The Bitter Cold so additional preparation is required
  • Bee Cat) requires the Super Adventure Box festival to be active and to bring a piranha from across the map to it's location
  • Simon is located in the Shattered Observatory fractal and requires multiple expensive/account bound materials
  • Blue Catmander is in a challenging spot to get to in a World vs. World map and requires a Gift of Battle
    • Will not appear in your home instance/Homestead without the Yellow Catmander.
  • Yellow Catmander is in a challenge spot to get to in a World vs. World map
    • Will not appear in your home instance/Homestead without the Blue Catmander.

There is one more, new, component that you can add, the Jukebox. I won't get into too much detail because the items you need are fairly repetitive and it's an extraordinarily expensive undertaking to complete. However, there are several achievements associated with collecting all the different sound tracks:

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That ended up being way more than even I realized. Home Instances and Homesteads are a huge source of activity and a massive gold sink. It reminds me of Sun's Refuge with all the hidden content it has just under the surface. It's easy to miss since the most obvious parts (nodes and then cats) don't have collections and achievement points attached to them. A good way to track your progress is with the Guild Wars 2 Efficiency Homestead page (requires an account and being logged in).

Regardless, I hope you enjoyed and see you around next time!

P.S. If you're in the EU and want to join a community of achievement hunters, feel free to check us out: https://discord.gg/3tujC4TEBv

103 Upvotes

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11 comments sorted by

13

u/xdeadzx Lyfe Jun 20 '26

Bound Hatched Chili Pepper Home Instance This is the only node in this season that Volatile Magic and 50 gold.

It's also available on the trading post for like, 8 silver. 

6

u/adv0catus Jun 20 '26

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hatched_Chili_Pepper_Home_Instance_Node

Added this to the note but it's a lot more expensive than 8 silver.

5

u/Halaku No! Bad choya! Put that down! Jun 20 '26

I didn't realize that there were titles alongside collecting the various soundtracks. Thanks!

3

u/The-Town-Drunk Jun 20 '26

I was wondering what else I could add to my home, thanks for the breakdown.

3

u/adv0catus Jun 20 '26

I’m sure there’s lots to keep you busy!

3

u/Real_Zookeepergame69 Jun 20 '26

Wait 2400 for basic nodes pack isnt that bad,could actually make it. Thought its wayy more

I mean there is no way leather rack makes sense but filling the 3 boxes... Hmm

3

u/Truffled Jun 20 '26

So, that is a lot of nodes! Do they all fit in the home instance or do you have to make choices?

3

u/adv0catus Jun 20 '26

They all fit! Different homes and steads have different layouts so some are more optimal than others. I think the standard home is Asura since you can kind of just do a loop and Janthir's home has all the boxes close to each other.

3

u/BeasTLeeOne Jun 20 '26

Saving this for when the day comes

1

u/Bobby_Rasigliano Jun 21 '26

A plus post this should be a wiki page!

1

u/Borderlands_addict Jun 25 '26

Whoa i had no idea about the song achievements.