Guild Wars 2

Just wondering if it was possible to “dungeon grind” my way up to 80? I am currently level 57. I am asking because it seems to be (when the group is solid) a very good way to gain levels, loot, etc.

If it is possible, what is the best way to do it? I’ve so far only done AC and CM. CM was a pain in my butt, however it seems like AC is still giving me pretty dang good XP. Does the XP amount drop off a lot after a certain level? In other games it seems like you cannot grind the lower level dungeons when you are higher level, at least not for adequate XP.

I am just trying to figure out the most efficient way to do it. Not that I do not want to see the game in all its glory – there will be much time for that – I just want to see end game.

Veetus

If you have mates to help you; yes it’s entirely possible

Thanks for your input Jay but I am still looking to see which dungeons is the most efficient/fastest way to grind out to 80.

Yes, sure it is possible. Why wouldn’t it be?
It’s the way I traint my alts: do 1-15 in open world, 15-35 with crafting and then start doing AC for exp and help friends in other dungeons until 80.

To answer the rest of your questions:
AC will stay the easiest xp, with a good (and experienced) team CM can be doable as well. Other dungeons that can be run very fast without much experience are CoF 1 and 2. SE path3 isn’t too difficult either, but it takes a bit more time.
And dungeon xp for AC won’t lower because you reach ‘too high’ level, it will always stay ~75% of you current level.

Tweek.3190:

Yes, sure it is possible. Why wouldn’t it be?
It’s the way I traint my alts: do 1-15 in open world, 15-35 with crafting and then start doing AC for exp and help friends in other dungeons until 80.

To answer the rest of your questions:
AC will stay the easiest xp, with a good (and experienced) team CM can be doable as well. Other dungeons that can be run very fast without much experience are CoF 1 and 2. SE path3 isn’t too difficult either, but it takes a bit more time.
And dungeon xp for AC won’t lower because you reach ‘too high’ level, it will always stay ~75% of you current level.

Ah-ha, so since it’s always 75% of my level it seems like with a solid group this WOULD be the quickest way to level up!

Thanks.

Veetus.5813:

Tweek.3190:

Yes, sure it is possible. Why wouldn’t it be?
It’s the way I traint my alts: do 1-15 in open world, 15-35 with crafting and then start doing AC for exp and help friends in other dungeons until 80.

To answer the rest of your questions:
AC will stay the easiest xp, with a good (and experienced) team CM can be doable as well. Other dungeons that can be run very fast without much experience are CoF 1 and 2. SE path3 isn’t too difficult either, but it takes a bit more time.
And dungeon xp for AC won’t lower because you reach ‘too high’ level, it will always stay ~75% of you current level.

Ah-ha, so since it’s always 75% of my level it seems like with a solid group this WOULD be the quickest way to level up!

Thanks.

If you run the same dungeon continuously, after 5-6 runs you will get no xp

Nashaan.3160:

Veetus.5813:

Tweek.3190:

Yes, sure it is possible. Why wouldn’t it be?
It’s the way I traint my alts: do 1-15 in open world, 15-35 with crafting and then start doing AC for exp and help friends in other dungeons until 80.

To answer the rest of your questions:
AC will stay the easiest xp, with a good (and experienced) team CM can be doable as well. Other dungeons that can be run very fast without much experience are CoF 1 and 2. SE path3 isn’t too difficult either, but it takes a bit more time.
And dungeon xp for AC won’t lower because you reach ‘too high’ level, it will always stay ~75% of you current level.

Ah-ha, so since it’s always 75% of my level it seems like with a solid group this WOULD be the quickest way to level up!

Thanks.

If you run the same dungeon continuously, after 5-6 runs you will get no xp

The DR (diminishing return) on the xp resets after 2hours. So lets say you do 1 AC path in 20-30minutes:
path 1, full xp, 30minutes in.
path 2, full xp, 50minutes in.
path 3, full xp, 1hr 20minutes in.
path 1, lowered xp because it has only been 1hour since last completion of path 1. You would need a 1h break so the 2hr DR resets.

I pretty much level my alts through dungeons. A group with 4 of 80ies in mainly exotic gear that knows what they are doing + my alt, but aint running the optimal group setup:
1) full AC run = 1 hour 15-25 mins.
2) full CM run = 1 hour 30-45 mins.
3) CoF path 1+2 = 1 hour.
4) Hotw path 1 = 30-40 mins
Note: killing all sub bosses and “gold/coin” mobs, skipping slivers that aint dropping phat loot.

Result = a bit over 7 levels in 4-5 hours, and we aint the fastest guys around.

Thats pretty much “our” alt XP grind setup. After getting 10+ levels, get 1+2 guys to assist you and go and blast through the story mode of the alt, getting a pretty good XP payoff for easy work.

EDIT:
remember to use XP boosters and food.

Doing dungeons to level up is not efficient even if you switch to your alt when the last boss is about to die.

Sure you will get exp + tokens, but outside a dungeon you can easily beat that exp by doing events + maps, and the higher your level is the faster you’ll level.

Konfuzfanten.6503:

I pretty much level my alts through dungeons. A group with 4 of 80ies in mainly exotic gear that knows what they are doing + my alt, but aint running the optimal group setup:
1) full AC run = 1 hour 15-25 mins.
2) full CM run = 1 hour 30-45 mins.
3) CoF path 1+2 = 1 hour.
4) Hotw path 1 = 30-40 mins
Note: killing all sub bosses and “gold/coin” mobs, skipping slivers that aint dropping phat loot.

Result = a bit over 7 levels in 4-5 hours, and we aint the fastest guys around.

Thats pretty much “our” alt XP grind setup. After getting 10+ levels, get 1+2 guys to assist you and go and blast through the story mode of the alt, getting a pretty good XP payoff for easy work.

EDIT:
remember to use XP boosters and food.

So… why do you include HoTW and CoF in the levelling cycle of an alt? I don’t see my level40 ranger go in there to level up. Or do you get boosted by your friends and stay afk?

You run the dungeon on a level 80 character and switch to your lower level alt at the last minute before the final boss dies to get the experience reward on that alt. Works for any dungeon, so long as your alt can get there. Since Frostgorge and Fireheart are rather easy to run to for lower level characters, HotW and CoF are popular for this. AC is still probably the easiest, however.

Sleepy.2647:

Doing dungeons to level up is not efficient even if you switch to your alt when the last boss is about to die.

Sure you will get exp + tokens, but outside a dungeon you can easily beat that exp by doing events + maps, and the higher your level is the faster you’ll level.

The difference being that dungeons are actually rewarding. If you level your alt in this way with dungeons, not only do you get great experience, you get a lot of gold, karma, and dungeon tokens for exotic armor (or ecto salvaging depending on the dungeon’s level). When all is said and done, dungeons are totally the best way to level an alt.

Ah right, I am too lazy to do that all the time. I just run the full dungeon on my alt, this gives me experience with my new profession, a chance to search for a new build on the way and more laziness for me. :P

Yeah, many people use their 80’s to improve the run times and get faster exp/hour. You don’t have to, though, if you don’t want to. The experience gained from kills in the dungeon, however, is negligible, so you’re not getting much further by doing it that way.

Leveling a character also grants you money without doing a single dungeon… I have a lvl 53 alt and has above 12g and didn’t even sell a single mat…so yeah. Low level gear is worth more on the TP than lvl 80 gear, even some rares.

The exp will be much better doing events/maps, period. And if you switch to your alt when the boss is about to die you will miss 20s+ from that boss which really defeats the purpose of doing the dungeon for money

If you run the dungeon completely from an alt, chances are you’ll spend more time looking for a group that accepts low levels than leveling by yourself.

I strong disagree with that sentiment Sleepy, having done it repeatedly myself. My Guardian, leveling to L80, made me well over 100g without selling a single non-trash item. How, you ask? Make 4-5g per full run of AC, earn 21/10 worth of levels experience. That’s just over 2 levels worth of experience to earn, at a minimum, 4g. Do that 30 or so times to hit max level from whatever level you started doing it at… 120g. That varies slightly because you earn a difference of 10s from the dungeon rewards at end between level 40 and level 80, so let’s say altogether that shaves off 20g. In the worst case assuming everything about the game hates us, we have earned 100g leveling a character to L80 without selling any materials or anything other than trash items. That sounds a far cry better than the alternative.

So let me get this right – just before a final boss dies, you go out of combat and log your alt who’s in front of the dungeon and enter, and by doing so, you get the final reward on that alt?
If that’s the case, it’ll really help me leveling my necro.Cause we all know how well necros do in dungeons like AC….

Yes, Ivanov, that is exactly right. Make sure you load into the dungeon before he dies, or you may not get the reward. So, basically, don’t wait until the last second.

And for the record, I main Necromancer in every dungeon, and I am always of significant importance to the team. It’s all in how you play your class. What you’re probably experiencing is “not max level / gear doing dungeons”, which inherently increases the difficulty and makes you feel less useful altogether.

I’ve leveled my Thief, Mesmer, and Elementalist pretty much by crafting to 35-40, then dungeon running to 80 with dailies sprinkled in. Sometimes I do the “use an 80, then swap in at the last second” method, but more often than not I’ve just taken my lowbie in and done the dungeon.

I call that money tables completely BS. Considering you miss the drop from the last boss by switching to an alt you won’t gain 4-5g per full AC, and even if you loot the last boss AC doesn’t give 4-5g unless you get rare drops and troll on every single path, killing every single mob that gives money.

Even if you level that way, it would be 2 levels and half every day (unless you repeat it every few hours to avoid DR which i don’t know if it’s possible), which means a whole month to reach level 80 assuming you do AC since level 30.
So, a month to get 100g (on the best case scenario since AC doesn’t grant 4-5g on average) doesn’t look that “good” at all because you could level much faster playing normally or earn more gold doing other stuff.

Only if you do it with a very good team that is capable of doing all paths in less than an hour it begins to be “worth it”.
The average team will spend 1h and half to do AC, unless you don’t kill everything that gives silver and therefor cutting the profits even more.

That’s why you don’t switch in at the last moment? Just run it with your alt, the exp from bosses boosts you up to like 90% of a level per run.

edit: his money table and answer to Ivanov are unrelated.

You don’t miss the drops from the last boss. You switch at the last minute, use the WP, smack the boss a few times to tag, hide (or contribute depending on your level), kill, loot. Also, you can do the full run repeatedly multiple times a day to speed level multiple alts a day. Keep in mind that a full run of AC takes an hour, and there are many hours in a day.

Also, keep in mind that I study dungeon DR as a hobby, and am well capable of knowing exactly the conditions to avoid DRing in a dungeon and missing out on experience/silver. You can read more about my research on that here.

If you can find someone willing to carry a level 35 with limited traits and poor gear then go right ahead.

Instead of handicapping dungeons and relying on others to carry me, personally I prefer doing starter zones to get to 20, grinding centaurs until 30, level a craft to 40, grind centaurs to 50, second craft to 60, a mix of Sparkfly and Maelstrom meta events to 70, then Orr to 80. I can get 2 levels an hour this way.

But I guess handicapping pugs and having others carry you to 80 works too.

I run AC for the money not to carry lowbies to level 80.

There’s no carrying involved if you do the entire dungeon path on a L80 and switch when the final boss is at 50% HP—especially when it comes to the bosses in AC. Perhaps it helps that I have a competent guild and they know my plans well in advance. It hurts neither my time nor my pocket (much—there is a slight hit of ~12s per run when you’re around level 35 in AC, and I’ve factored this into my gold earnings explanation above).

So. First you need a full group capable of doing AC full in an hour killing every single silver mob, which is not likely to happen to the majority of groups.
And then, you need to switch to an alt (considering no one else do it) and have your team waiting for you to hit the last boss so you get the silver drop, again this is unlikely since most of the people will tell you to fk off and switch to an alt when boss is at 10-20% HP just so you enter to get the “dungeon completed” reward.

Doing AC full is a good mix of money/exp, but it’s nowhere near the best exp nor money per hour.

The only few times i’ve seen people asking to switch to alts, people told them to switch when the final boss was at 10%, therefor missing the boss loot completely. Which imo, it’s reasonable considering they want to leech the team.

After level 35-40 leveling is completely ridiculous fast doing maps/events, and after level 50-60 it just gets better so dungeons exp becomes less and less worth it.

I’ll be frank, when I do this with public groups, I don’t tell them what my plans are. I switch at 50%, which takes 5 seconds on my computer, take the WP, run to the boss, and continue fighting it. 9 times out of 10 no one notices / cares, I get the loot/exp, and everyone’s happy.

With my guild, three people switch to alts every run and we suffer no time penalties. We finish all three paths in an hour flat. The bosses are so easy in these paths that, with little practice, you can tailor when you switch knowing the dps of the people leftover. Honestly, maybe it’s because my guild is really good, but this is no trouble at all for me; we do it regularly. You assume a lot of “worst case scenarios” that require your team be pretty awful; if you’re doing AC for experience or gold, hopefully your team isn’t totally inept, and if they aren’t, then you can do what I suggest and make a lot of gold/experience with very little effort.

I can understand you harboring philosophical opposition to my suggestions if you really think that ‘every alt should complete the story and events and such’, but it really is a stellar way of leveling alts and making a ton of gold while doing so.

Anyway, it’s really unproductive for you to repeat yourself ad infinitum and me to try to convince you otherwise when you seem so intent on refusing to be convinced, so this will be my last post in this regard. Cheers and maybe one day you’ll give it a try and see what I mean!

I can grind centaurs and get a level every half an hour or craft and get from 30 to 40 and from 50 to 60 in less than the time it takes the crafting booster to wear off and I don’t need anyone to carry me.

Yes, Nonlinear, but you spend money to level when you craft, whereas I make a lot of money to level.

I do it on all my alts, except I don’t actually play my alts. I just switch to them at the end of the dungeon while someone stays in the video.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yes, Nonlinear, but you spend money to level when you craft, whereas I make a lot of money to level.

A lot of money is relative. I also don’t have to have 4 other guildies who are always on when I am on and willing to do nothing but run AC for me.

It’s a personal choice. Personally I don’t like being carried and like to accomplish things on my own. I didn’t even do my first story mode dungeon until I hit 80 and worked out my spec and got a few exotics towards that end because I think being carried is a selfish attitude and I don’t want to punish other people by not even having all of my traits (or even all of my skills) for a proper build.

And none of this really applies to me because I’ll kick any non-80 that joins the group or I’ll leave and find another group of 80s in minutes.

I’m not trying to convince you of anything, i know by myself because i’ve leveled 3 80s doing maps/events (maps = not story quest) is much faster exp than 2 levels and half per “assumed hour”, since it can be 1h or 2h depending on your team. Sure some teams will do full AC in 45 mins, the majority won’t. Not to mention the time spent finding/waiting for people.

My 80 necro for example has 61 hours played, and about 25h were afk or being in LA doing nothing. That’s with the whole story completed except Arah and plenty of maps fully completed, playing completely solo and no crafting. That was playing normally, didn’t even try to rush it.

If anyone focuses on rush leveling not caring about completing maps or doing the story they could probably make a level 80 in under 25h, without crafting. And if you find a whole group to level with or a level 80 rushing you, that would probably turn into less than 20h quite easily.

If you have to hide the fact that you are going to switch to an alt to leech the last boss that proves by itself that you know by yourself something is wrong with that
So no wonder 9/10 players won’t say anything since the dungeon is over anyways.
It would be quite funny if in one of these runs you found every player doing the same thing and when you logged in with your alt you found another 4 players standing next to you probably saying…“WTF”. It will never happen…but it would be very funny.

As i said, AC is a good mix of exp/gold, but it requires a set group to do the alt thing to get the most of it and you can get more gold in other places and better exp playing normally. I do AC/CoF almost everyday, so i know perfectly how it is.

Considering the OP is probably playing his/her first character which means no level 80 to join AC and do the alt swap, it will be quite hard and time consuming to find groups to do AC and the ones found won’t be doing 3 paths in under an hour.
So, the best would be playing the game normally since you will level up way faster and get enough gold on your way to 80…there is enough “gold” grind at 80 so enjoy every tiny place on the game before you get to that point.

Nonlinear.9823:

If you can find someone willing to carry a level 35 with limited traits and poor gear then go right ahead.

Instead of handicapping dungeons and relying on others to carry me, personally I prefer doing starter zones to get to 20, grinding centaurs until 30, level a craft to 40, grind centaurs to 50, second craft to 60, a mix of Sparkfly and Maelstrom meta events to 70, then Orr to 80. I can get 2 levels an hour this way.

But I guess handicapping pugs and having others carry you to 80 works too.

Seriously what a waste of forum space is this post. If you still don’t understand that the player is of value, and barely the gear then maybe this isn’t the right game for you. I am more then capable of being helpful to my team on an alt which I am leveling and can (often easily) manage pugs with 1 or more lower levels. Even when these lower levels run dungeons for the first time the runs are often smooth.

Please take that elitism to some other game where the community is already ruined.