Now that the End of Dragons expansion preview event has come and gone, Guild Wars 2 is starting to get ready for an old favorite - the Shadow of the Mad King Halloween festival. Once it arrives this October 5th, the Shadow of the Mad King festival will bring with it a whole assortment of cosmetics to collect, the always-busy Mad King's Labyrinth to plunder for goodies, as well as plenty of spooky decorations to help set the Halloween mood.

As an additional little bonus, Shadow of the Mad King will launch alongside a weeklong bonus event. From October 5 to October 12 you'll earn more experience and rewards in the vast majority of content, while simply leveling a character to level 10 will give you a Bloodbound weapon that will scale up in power alongside you.

Speaking of leveling, it's also worth mentioning that doing laps around the Mad King's Labyrinth alongside a group of other players will give you massive quantities of experience. So if you want to simply boost a brand new character before the End of Dragons expansion, or just level up a new alt to check out what other classes have to offer, the labyrinth would be a pretty good place to start.

The Shadow of the Mad King festival itself will last until November 9th, so you should have plenty of time to enjoy all of the activities, regardless of how slow you might take it. Have fun, and for now I'll leave you with a brief trailer showing off some spooky, scary skeletons: