[Update #2]: Right on cue, the Shadow of the Mad King Festival has now been unleashed. Have fun messing around with the labyrinth!

[Update]: The Guild Wars 2 team has now revealed the full update roadmap for Fall and Winter 2022.

In celebration of the spookiest time of year, Guild Wars 2 will be unleashing the highly popular Shadow of the Mad King event this October 18th. Much like its previous iterations, Shadow of the Mad King will bring with it an assortment of Halloween themed cosmetics and decorations to mess around with, the Mad King's Labyrinth to endlessly farm for candy-shaped goodies, a devious jumping puzzle to conquer, as well as a couple of fun races to help spice things up a bit.

What all of this looks like in action, that you can check out through the trailer below. Behold pure nonsense:

Besides messing around with something new and interesting, there are two main reasons you might want to dive into the Shadow of the Mad King event - experience and gold. Doing the usual routes through the Mad King's Labyrinth can net you an absurd amount of experience and easily power level any character. Best of all, since the groups are generally massive, your lack of damage won't negatively impact anyone.

This is also a great way to earn a good chunk of gold as the various consumable items and bags can be sold on the Trading Post for quite a premium, especially early on in the event. So if you have a bit of spare time, I'd highly recommend going in and smashing some skeletons.

Whatever your plans may be, I'll make sure to let you know once the Shadow of the Mad King event returns. Until then, have fun mess around with some of the freshly re-released Living World Season 1 episodes!