Shadow of the Mad King: what to do in the three weeks it exists

For about three weeks every October the Mad King comes back, and Lion’s Arch fills with pumpkins. It is the oldest festival in the game and it is still the one veterans clear their calendar for.

The 2025 run went from 7 October to 4 November. The dates move by a few days each year, so treat it as “most of October” rather than a fixed appointment.

What is in it

The Mad King’s Labyrinth, in the Mists, is the heart of it. A maze full of Halloween creatures, Haunted Doors that spawn bosses, pumpkins to carve and candy corn veins to mine. It needs nothing from you: no group, no build, no preparation. You walk in and follow the noise.

The Clock Tower is the famous one. A timed jumping puzzle in rising liquid, and the reason it has a reputation is not the jumps. It is that eight other players are jumping in front of you and their animations cover the platform you need to land on.

Ascent to Madness is a single-boss dungeon against the Mad King himself, and it scales everyone to level 80, so a fresh character can walk in.

Mad King Says is Simon Says with a lich. Lunatic Inquisition starts one player as a Courtier hunting villagers. Reaper’s Rumble is a small MOBA-shaped activity around three mausoleums. There are also four mount races, including Roll into Madness and Pumpkin Paradise.

The currency, and where it comes from

Candy Corn is the festival currency, with Candy Corn Cobs as the stacked version. Almost all of it arrives inside Trick-or-Treat Bags, which drop from nearly everything you kill during the festival, everywhere in the world rather than only in festival zones.

Which produces the thing every returning player forgets: the bags drop while you are doing something else. Three weeks of ordinary play, metas, story, levelling an alt, quietly fills your inventory with festival currency without a single deliberate farm.

If you only have a few evenings

The order that gets a newcomer the most out of it:

1. The Labyrinth, immediately and repeatedly. It is where the population is, it needs nothing, and it pays continuously.
2. Ascent to Madness once, for the fight and the achievement.
3. Mad King Says whenever it announces itself. It costs two minutes and it is the single funniest thing in the game.
4. The Clock Tower last, when you have an hour and no ambitions.

Skip anything you are not enjoying. The festival returns every year, the rewards carry over, and there is no version of this where missing Reaper’s Rumble costs you something.

Why this one stayed the best

Every other festival in Guild Wars 2 is generous. Wintersday hands you presents, Four Winds teaches you to fly, Super Adventure Box is a whole second game.

Halloween is the one that is willing to be unfair to you.

The Clock Tower does not scale down. It does not accommodate your gear, your level or how many players are in the instance. It has been the same puzzle since 2012, it beats most people who try it, and every year a fresh batch of players discovers that a game which spends the other eleven months making sure they never feel stuck has been keeping one tower in reserve.

That contrast is the whole appeal, and it is why people who have not logged in since March come back in October.