Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing less than a month and I’ve got one character, an almost level 6 Human Warrior. I wondered if it’s a good idea to level him up a bit before I start a craft. Is it better to wait a bit so I perhaps have access to better materials? Or is it good in this game to take up a craft right from the start? Most of the odds and ends of crafting materials I’ve looted I’ve sold so far.

Other MMOs I’ve played seemed to do better if you began crafting at a higher level and just gathered while you were levelling. Is this the way to do it in GW2?

I would start right away w/gathering ore, wood, herb & use the cheapest salvage kit you come across for loot you don’t use.

Perks at low lvl, XP from gathering and plenty from the discovery process. Some things to consider top tier armor/weapons are through crafting or very rare drops.

Crafting experience
Crafting in a non-maxed discipline earns crafting experience (CXP). In addition, characters earn normal experience at the same time. Leveling a crafting discipline to 500 is equivalent to gaining 10 levels, while leveling to 400 gains approximately 7 levels. Due to the accelerated experience gain below level 15, you may have better results if you start crafting at low levels.

To gain the first level of a discipline requires 500 CXP. Each subsequent level requires an additional 1% (rounded down):

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crafting

Gather straight away and don’t sell until you know what you do and don’t want. Personally I would only do refining until you are level 18 or 19 unless you choose cooking as one of your crafting skills.

So say you choose weapon smithing as one of your crafts. Mine ore, chop wood and every time that it is convenient refine these into logs and ingots. Once you are at level 19 look at a crafting guide with an eye to crafting up to 75. Do all that crafting in one hit, making sure that you end up with as many level 20 masterwork items as you can make. You will also have gained enough experience to take you up at least one level.

Never. Crafting will cost you a lot of money and it is only needed for ascended stuff, which in turn is only needed in fractals. But fractals are as boring as any other dungeon and the rewards are not sufficient.
Better harvest and sell all mats and buy what you need. And you can enjoy fractals up to level 20 iirc without the ar from trinkets.

The best way how to get equip: first and foremost, get ascended neck piece from laurel merchant, then go fractals until you are over level 10 and you have all ascended rings you need, then make ascended back at mystic forge and farm laurels for ascended accessories and you are fine.

Well thinking about it, making ascended weapons only makes sense. If you want ascended weapons, farm stuff and start in the moment you have everything and you do no t need to buy anything.

Hmmmmm….. interesting range of opinions. I guess that this crafting thing, like so many others, is something I’m going to have to try out and find out for myself. Thanks, though, for the suggestions.

Level normally until you hit level 20, then the level/time ratio evens out.
This is where you can start crafting, as it will get you quite some levels.
Note: If you want to use crafting for leveling – which I do not recommend with your first character, as Tyria has a lot to offer for your first run and you are well advised to learn the game mechanics before hitting 80 – go with cook. Then follow with artificer. Both very cheap to level. Be careful with tailor and weaponsmithing, as this will cost you quite a lot.

Unless you want to craft specifically to level up, don’t bother until you get to level 80.

But at 80, you’ll want/need to craft for the Ascended gear:

Ascended weapons can be significantly more powerful than exotic if you use certain stat combos that synergize well with each other.

Ascended armor — not so much. However….

Only Ascended gear has infusion slots. They were presumably created just for fractals, but you can also put stats into them — currently the maximum an infusion can give is +5 stats. But Anet loves its grind and you can almost bet that once they feel the need to add more grind, they’ll introduce a higher max. Eventually, the max will be high enough that they will be significant.

Crafting can be challenging for new players, but it doesn’t have to be extremely expensive. With the addition of account magic find, and the demand for T2-T4 crafting materials generated by Ascended crafting, you can craft for very little cost, and sometimes even a profit. Do a Trading Post search on the items you can discover/craft and see what will fetch the highest price (assuming your character doesn’t need it).

I am working on my sixth character now, and every one of them I leveled crafting while I was leveling the character. One profession is always armor, the other varies. I started three characters at once so I could craft all of my own gear. At higher levels you can still craft for profit if your careful.