Talk:Home Portal Stone

Mechanics?

If anyone has a stone, would you be able to answer the following questions:

1. Does using the stone take you to your racial instance or the nearest home instance?
2. What happens if you go to the character selection screen (or swap character or logout) after using the stone? Do you end up in the city of the instance? Or back at your original location?
3. What happens if you exit the instance manually to the main city (via the exit/door icon or via standard portal)? Does using the stone again return you to your original location? Or does it start over and take you to the home instance?

Another way to phrase this would be: can you use the stone to take you to a city for using services (bank, trading post, etc) and then count on it to return you to your previous location? Or is it mostly helpful for daily farming of your instance and/or speeding things up while doing the Personal Story?

Thanks to anyone who can answer this. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:06, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

This has been answered by redditor digitalruse at reddit.com/r/guildwars2/comments/2c4e5h

1. The portal stone will take you to your racial home instance.
2. Using the portal stone, or selecting the "Exit Instance" button above the mini map will return you to where you used the stone.
3. You can exit through the portal to go to the capital city.
4. If you leave the instance through the portal to the capital city, you will lose the ability to jump back to where you were.

– Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 15:21, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Actually, there's one unanswered question: what happens if you go to the character select screen while in the instance: when you restart the toon, do you end up in the home city? or at your original location? Still, it's enough to determine that this "convenience" item only allows you to farm your instance and/or sell to a merchant. Editorial: for 800 gems, you could create a new character, level to 20 (via First Birthday Gift tome), and park it in any racial city. 15:32, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to that, but there is one use for this item...if all of yours alts are already parked at useful places, then this lets you also farm the home instace nodes without having to walk back to wherever they were. For example, if you left all your characters at orichalcum ore nodes or at the end of difficult jump puzzles like Not So Secret. Even with using a low level alt, like level 20, there's the opportunity cost of possibly missing out on Silver Doubloons.

900 gems is equivalent to over 100g though, so it would be very hard to ever turn a "profit" off this item. Vili 点 16:37, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Unless we get the option to buy an outfiter, bank, trading post, etc. (assuming they don't each set us back 800 gems like the worthless low-level nodes), this is pretty useless. » Keneth O'Connor, 13:05, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

If you log out while in your home instance after using this, when you log back in you will be at the place you used it when you log back in. That includes using it from the airship, as well as the pvp lobby. It does not seem to work for me from WvW or edge of the mists.

Its usefulness varies on your need, and somewhat on the using character's race. An extra toon stationed in your home city doesn't even compare. It is not as useful as an airship pass, but it comes close. I can't compare the royal terrace as I have never used it. As far as races go, because rata sum's facilities are so consolidated, it is probably most convenient for an asura; port home, turn around and run through the gate, and its a very quick port to the second floor and all the facilities (minus a forge). For Norn, their home city is not the best layout so its a little less convenient. I do not know how the royal terrace works, but if you have to be in Divinity's Reach to use it then this would pair well with a human and a terrace pass. If the terrace pass works like the airship pass then this is of little help. In the original Lion's Arch, it was often more convenient to sneak there through the pvp lobby to get to everything, but when they destroyed LA this became much more useful. With the new LA rebuild I would say this is still a better way to get around to facilities without needing to go to LA. That is likely player dependent and very subjective though.

One specialized role is if you have the home instance nodes; you can at any time port home, mine your home nodes and return, very quickly. If we ever get home facilities then at some point this will be even better than the airship. Of course, I am only commenting on usefulness without comparing costs or availability. Incidentally I do not recall getting mine in a set, I seem to remember getting it as a single item in the store. That could just be failing memory. Snap E Tom (talk) 06:06, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

You can use it to go to your home instance then go to your guild hall from the guild dialog. When you choose "Leave Guild Hall" you are returned to the place where you used the Home Portal Stone. Separ (talk) 23:43, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Different Home Instances?

My asura has not much in her home instance. When I had a norn she had loads of things. So If you get a portal stone does that mean that some races loose out?

Each character in an account should has the same upgrades in their home instance as any other character. The upgrades are not always grouped together and sometimes change location in an instance. Scout around. Separ (talk) 15:07, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Meta Progress & Full Maps

Does using the stone from a full map instance hold a place for you in that instance if you return in a short time? If you have some progress in a HoT meta map does using the stone and returning preserve your meta progress? Separ (talk) 15:13, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Can you choose which of the 5 home instances to teleport to?

If not, is there any other item which can do that? --138.75.231.164 18:55, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

No choice, just your character's racial home, from the article, "Using the stone the first time takes you to your race's home instance, e.g. Dreamer's Terrace for Sylvari." -Chieftain Alex 19:16, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Use While Dead

Can you use this in combat or while dead? --Slicer5005 (talk) 18:37, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I highly doubt you can. —Ventriloquist 18:47, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Good to know: Storyline instance ignored

Maybe it would be good to complete the page with following input: There is another advantage of this home portal stone, that I found out recently only. For players having gathering nodes at home: If we have a primary of our storyline active at home, this is preventing us from gathering there, because upon using normal entry in town, we are taken to the storyline version of our home, in which the nodes don't appear. The Home Portal Stone is solving this: Even if we have a storyline episode active at home, the stone sends us to the normal version of our home (not to the storyline version) and all nodes are available. Sorry if I don't make sense, I have it a bit hard to explain. Hope it is clear enough! --Tilu (talk) 16:56, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Actually, it makes sense to me. However, the stone can be used to do the storyline steps, in some cases, in addition to bypassing the green story star at the doorway. I just today added a note that the stone will allow you to do this, in at least some of the cases. (Specifically, I'm doing level 20 and 30 storyline missions for Charr, and Rytlock was there waiting for me to continue, despite having used the stone to get there.) Daddicus (talk) 20:20, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Can this bring along party members?

Can it bring along party members as though I were in a city instance with them and I attempted to enter my home instance?