Guild-Wars-2 – What Are the Different Dungeon Modes Available in Guild Wars 2 and How to Master Them?

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The answer to another question I asked points me towards the Guild Wars 2 Wiki article for dungeons, which has this comment at the bottom:

With the implementation of story mode and the subsequent variations available for explorable mode, as well as the different fractal zones, these nine dungeons provide at least forty-three different experiences.

Seeing that there are nine specifically named instances, each with an 'exploration' mode and 'story' mode, what does this actually mean in terms of gameplay?

I am going to assume that the 'story' mode leads on from my personal story, and these are the instances highlighted in my mail with the symbol used on the map for the dungeon entrance (the wooden door), but what is 'exploration' mode, and what are the other game modes that make these nine dungeons provide 'at least' forty-three different experiences?

Best Answer

The story mode is actually a side story, an add-on to the personal story. Explorable mode is usually providing harder quests in the same dungeon.

Most dungeons have 1 path in story mode, and 3 different paths in explore mode. There are exceptions to this rule, however.

  • Twilight Arbor doesn't have 3 clear paths since the beginning to choose from, but has in fact 1 or 2 intersections. The possible paths still sum up to 3, though.
  • The Ruined city of Arah has 4 explore paths, instead of 3.
  • The Fractals of the Mists is particular, and is actually composed of 9 mini-dungeons. A run through the Fractals will pick a combination of 3 of those mini-dungeons, to which will be added a fourth one (fixed one), if the difficulty scale is an even number.

So if we sum it up, it makes seven "regular dungeons" with four paths (1 story + 3 explore) and one with five paths:

7 x (1+3) + (1+4) = 33 different experiences from the regular dungeons.

The fractals can be counted on several ways.
Technically, there are only 9 different zones. However, if you count each possible combination as a different instance, the total goes up to:

  9*8*7 (for uneven numbers)
+ 8*7*6 (for even numbers)
=   840 different dungeons

If you want to be particularly specific on anything which defines a "different" experience, you could account for the difficulty level (80 of them), as well as the order in which the combinations come (and multiply by 6), which would leave you with a total of...

403200 "different" fractal experiences.

But that would be slightly exaggerating.

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