Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’m a new player and I’ve been playing GW2 for about almost two weeks now(casually). Is it me or leveling in this game is SO hard and tedious, It feels like I’m just running around aimlessly trying to complete hearts and I know there are a lot of ways of getting xp(WvW, crafting etc…).

So far I’ve managed to level a warrior to lvl 38 and yes dungeons makes it a little easier but since the downscale mechanics, one or two lvl 80s (or high lvls) with good gear are required to clear one AC run and sometimes the party doesn’t work and the run fails.

Anyway this is my first impression of the game so far. And coming from a former WoW player I could have grinded from lvl 1-90 (I quit WoW two years ago) in those two weeks(not showing off but I’m just stating what i’m capable of). Yes, ill give this game a chance and keep playing for few more week.. Any tips and help are appriated

A few leveling tips:

• Harvest mats from gathering nodes as you go. Either save the mats for your own use or sell them for gold. Gathering gives you XP.
• Do map completion (points of interest show up as little unfilled squares that fill when you unlock them; waypoints, vistas and skill challenges round out the completion objectives). Each objective completed gives XP, and completing a zone gives a good chunk more XP.
• Dynamic events, particularly event chains, are a good source of XP.
• World v. World offers XP, as does it second cousin, Edge of the Mists. Following an event chain around in Edge offers both better leveling XP and better WvW XP than WvW does, to be honest — although if you’re on an outnumbered color, Edge can be a pain.
• Do the personal story every ten levels as it unlocks. Iirc, doing the level 10 story got me to level 13 and the L20 one got me to 23.
• Use the Tomes of Knowledge from the daily login rewards. Each tome bumps you up one level.
• Grinding mob kills to level is the worst way to level up.
• Explore areas. Each new map area that you go into gives you XP (in addition to any Points of Interest you may also find). I remember deciding to run through Wayfarer Foothills to get to the skill challenges there (I wanted skill points). Running through the map, I ran into a couple of events, one of which completed a heart. I also unlocked most of the map areas and got a few PoI/waypoints. That and the skill challenge XP got me a full level.

I generally take my time leveling, as I consider leveling to be the best part of this game. In addition, I find the leveling to be too fast. This difference between us may be due to my liking the leveling content and your (apparent) dislike for same. It took me several months to level 1-70 in pre-Wrath days. Maybe that game has changed dramatically since I played it (it’s been six years).

Hello.

You can definitely level a character to 80 in two weeks, just by running around, completing hearts and so on. Even if you don’t “grind” xp. Besides, you get tomes of experience (free levels) for the daily log on chests which makes leveling even more trivial.

If – as you said – you are running around completing hearts, you are also exploring waypoints and points of interest, which are a huge xp boost. If you would not aimlessly run around but do some of the pve dailies, they would provide you with yet another xp boost. Just doing the personal story as high as you can will give you even more levels.

But since you said you know there are a lot of ways of getting xp, i have to wonder why are you not using them?

As for being able to grind from 1-90 in wow, gw2 players can do that in a few days as well (i can level a char to 80 in as much time as it takes to double-click 61 times), but do you want to really grind your first character to 80?

Try enjoying the story, it gives nice boosts of XP after each part is completed.

1-90 in 2 weeks isn’t much of a feat in WoW anymore, they had to super speed it up so you could get to the gear treadmill at 95… or is it at 100 for the max level now?

Basically forget what your years in WoW taught you. GW2 is not about the ends but the journey to reach them and the continued journey- hopefully- that the Living Story will be again after the release of HoT.

Stop to smell the proverbial roses, you’d be surprised at the detail they put into the world if you just pause every now and then between the hearts to get a good look at the scenery. Take some screenshots (some people have tens of thousands of them). Enjoy the world, there’s really no pressure to get to 80 ASAP. But if you feel like you must then you can get to level 80 in less than a day if you have the real cash and/or gold to max all the professions with just a bit of exploring thrown in.

Or spend time in PvP, your character is maxed in gear and level (play around with builds yourself or copy and paste from Meta sites) and earn tomes of knowledge to level up with outside of PvP.

It should take about an hour on average to level up once after level 10. The NPE made level 1-10 really casual, taking about an hour total. If you bother with crafting, it can really speed you up every so often, granting you several levels at a time. If you don’t know what you’re doing however, it can also slow you do.

All you really need to do is explore the map, gather everything and do all non-group events while 100%ing the map. Also kill any out of the way enemies, since they grant bonus experience the longer they’ve been alive, which can make them worth a lot. Alternatively, if you prefer grinding, you can join the farmers in Edge of the Mists.

As for WoW, due the increase in level cap, they made the older levels extremely casual. 1-60 alone used to take at least 4-5 days /played power leveling. For comparison, GW2 should take ~80 hours.

Lastly, “the endgame starts at level 1.” If you’re rushing to find the typical dungeon grinding endgame, you’re playing the wrong game.

I have 2 lvl 80s and won’t level another unless through pvp. Leveling was so easy back then even when I was new it was quick. Now it’s pretty hard I think anet wants to scare away new players. The “buying” traits idea imo was the worst update I’ve ever experienced in any game. They’re reworking traits sooner or later in the xpac I think. Until then I’m not leveling.

Also this living story every 10 levels is dumb. Used to just be able to spam living story without stopping. Now you’re so limited while leveling. As well as being stopped from wvw till level 18, no off hand till level 7, all that, it’s just hurting new players a lot and scaring off a lot of people.

Good luck with leveling!

I am fairly new, and find leveling brand new so easy, and the best part is, the game keeps you at a low level so eveything does not feel easy. I was worried about how fast I was leveling and all I did eas explore around queendale as I started as a human. As i got use to the game, it got a bit easier, that I never understand how it hard to not level really. So much to do, and bam, your up there.a lot of time, you even get replacement gear as you go, so little reason to slow down. I remember when I wanted to play a little solo from my partner, she level quicker between just playing and a little wvw now and then and daily here and there, it just such a nice pace.

For all people:

Levelling is still fast and the drops for personal story and leveling have inproved quite a lot (just to mention it)

1. Do not forget to harvest, and use the materials to craft both give xp, it will provide you with income and materials fro crafting, you will need crafting later on for ascended gear.
   #crafting tough nerfed since launch still give xp each level. , not affected by food or boosters though.
2. Running around unlocking areas, poi’s, waypoints gives very decent xp, not affected by food or boosters though
3. Killing stuf gives xp, returning to an old map, or killing spawns with a long uptime gives bonus Xp up to more then twice the number of original xp. which is used as a base for the boosters.
4. Hearts give xp, events give good xp and karma. bosses give xp, story mode dungeons give good xp, explorable mode dungeons give 0.75 level worth of xp.

Food and utility gives an added 2o % xp from kills when both are used, candy corn icecream even more though it is quite expensive.

But if you do not want to spend laurels/ gem store consumables : just buy some food, -any food- and -any utility consumable- will give +10% exp. some only cost a few copper. and wait for your free celebration booster. Use your first tomes of knowledge and gain some free elevels, without effort, and the last chest can be converted innto 6 free levels, though I’d advise other choices (laurels 20?).

That is a LOT of XP for allmost no cost….

For the ppl with fat wallets:
Then you have (improved xp boosters (100%)(forged from 5! normal xp boosters)), xp boosters (50%),kill-streak boosters (up to 100% as long as you can kill stuf fast ), laureate xp boosters (1 laurel, 30%,) celebration boosters (birthday boosters) (100%, daily reward track, even though they last only an hour they will double xp birthday boosters will run 24 hrs) AND ,most of these stack WITH EACHOTHER AND FOOD as well!

You can get up to 300%+ xp from kills this way 400%+ with full kill streak… which makes levelling a breeze….. but it will cost you, AND you’re commited! even though your boosts will remain when you log out (this is using the menu, not just alt+F4 it) I’d suggest you finish the time remaining.

Luckily Anet has provided plenty of lubrication.

Use boosters in PvE, go for dailies and map completion. Go into PvP to get tomes. Karma train in EoTM or whatver zone that has a pug commander. Do PvE boss runs. Etc and so on.

It may sound crazy but in my experiance in Gw2 the more you try to level faster the slower you’ll generally end up leveling up.

Why you may ask? unless you’re grinding dungeons the biggest source of XP is the personal Story (which you get in batches once you reach 10th levels) and dynamic events. Dynamic events are the key … each dynamic event you do (provided you’re matching you area level with your own level) gives you 7% of your level in XP. ergo 14 events = a level. The problem is Dynamic events are kinda elusive if you go running around looking for stuff to do in order to level quickly you’re going to miss a whole lot of them. further more if you’re busy running chances are you’ll miss gathering, reviving and all the other little stuff that adds up quickly.just keep in mind reviving even a death npc gives 0.25% of the area level. But more then that its about not missing dynamic events. So talk to npcs to find out if events occur in an area. If say an NPC complains about the Grawl for example be sure there will be dynamic event dealing with them. More so when one event finishes dont run off looking for the next instead follow the NPC, see what s/he says and does. There is a good chance the Event will chain one or more times. While waiting for things to happen in an area, gather or kill mobs especially none aggressive ones that people are likely to leave alone. The more a mob has been alive the more bonus XP it will give.

The biggest thing is when it becomes available dont forget to do your personal story (its a whole level for every 4 personal story missions) for the rest just keep an eye on your surroundings follow the map’s story do dynamic events, hang around for chain events, do stuff while you wait and you should be leveling a level every hour more or less.

My girlfriend bought the game 1 weak ago. She already have a lvl80

Last time I leveled a character it took me 35 hours on 5 days. I used a lv20 scroll so I’ll grant you 2 more days :p

I find the leveling phase to be actually awesome in GW2, especially for the first time… You just have to explore !

I find leveling in GW2 less tedious and alot faster than most other mmo’s. And I tried pretty much all of them. In most I didn’t lvl even 1 to max lvl before getting bored despite playing a considerable amount of time. I played wow for years and only had 3 max lvls at any given time. I have 7 here and 8th on the way. Granted I can skip the first 20 levels and I have loads of birthday boosters but still. Just do whatever you enjoy, you get xp for pretty much anything you do

First off this isn’t WoW.

Secondly if you’ve taken two weeks to hit 80, you’re not playing the game as its supposed to be played. Stop running around killing creatures aimlessly and go zone complete, craft and experience the other aspects of the game.

1-80 can be done on a brand new account and character in under 1 week. I’ve had several new guildmates come and complain that leveling feels too easy….All because they took the time to ask the right questions about the game.

I know WoW got the dreadful casual treatment real good, but I doubt reaching GW2 max leveling still does even closely resemble the time there. And what do you mean “you try to complete hearts”? How is there a possibility of failure? All in all, you must be doing something very, very wrong, though I don´t know what that is. Being accustomed to more traditional MMORPG leveling, this here should be a breeze for you.

PS: Which doesn´t mean leveling does not feel stale, the whole game does (though that is of cause a matter of personal taste and preferences), but it is certainly not slow.

Another leveling tip: Stay at your level. XP gain scales, but as a level 40 you still get less XP from completing a level 10 event than you would get from completing a level 40 event – so, as you mapcomplete, after finishing a lower level zone, pick the next one close to your level instead of another one in the same level range as the one you just completed.