[Update]: The August 23rd patch will buff up many of the long-forgotten builds and specializations. Additionally, the August 23rd patch will see Guild Wars 2 launch onto Steam alongside a brand new set of achievement-based armor.

If you're looking for something to help pass the time, or just fill up your coffers, you'll be happy to hear that Guild Wars 2's Festival of the Four Winds has now returned. It brings with it the Labyrinthine Cliffs and Crown Pavilion maps to mess around with, both of which have a variety of events and races to participate in, as well as fancy loot to unlock.

Personally, I'd highly recommend heading over to the Crown Pavilion and giving the Queen's Gauntlet a try. It's essentially a series of increasingly more difficult boss fights for you to tackle, and while they haven't exactly kept up with the rise in player power, the bosses are still a really fun set of challenges to overcome, especially the last few!

What all of this looks like in action, that you can get a little bit of a sneak peek at through one of the slightly outdated trailers below. Have a gander:

Besides the festival, the update has also brought in some much-needed balance changes and quality-of-life improvements. Mesmer's Chronomancer specialization has been buffed in order to help counteract the crippling nerfs from the June update, while the Warrior's banners have been reworked yet again in order to make them both more powerful and more interesting to play around with.

Most importantly, at least as far as new players are concerned, you can now access the highly useful raptor mount on level 10 without having to do a random Path of Fire mission first! Additionally, characters on free-to-play accounts will get a 10-hour trial of the raptor mount when they reach level 10, so thankfully nobody will be left chasing hordes of mounted players on foot.

You can check out the full list of changes, as well as keep up with any hotfixes, over at the Guild Wars 2 website. Enjoy!