Guild Wars 2

Hello there,

I finally made the decision and quit WoW after ten years of devotion, but like a true MMORPG addict, I need another replacement, which brings me to you

GW2 is downloading as I write to you. I would be grateful for some assistance in getting me started based on the following questions or any additional advise you may have for a brand new player:

1) Should I buy the expansions now? It’s not about the money. I’m used to supporting game devs on games I enjoy. I just don’t want to spoil the order of the game experience.

2) Even though I’m watching a lot of YouTube on classes, which top 2 or 3 classes do you recommend for solo-capable farming for dungeons, transmorgs, pets, mounts, or whatever the equivalent of higher-level farming is in this game?

In WoW I usually focused on things that transcended expansions. What I mean by that are things that didn’t necessarily get outdated, such as mounts, pets, transmogs. Because I was never into hardcore raiding, farming for gear was not my priority, because I knew it would be outdated soon anyway. Instead, I focused on lasting items. Though I enjoyed rolling with friends and guilds, I did most of this farming solo, which required a solo-friendly class. My picks were hunter and death knight.

3) Piggy-backing on question 2, what can one do in GW2 that transcends time? Here are some examples from WoW:
a. Achievement completion
b. Mount farming
c. Pet farming
d. Transmogs

4) Any additional tips for a noob?

Thank you much and happy holiday!

Well, first off, Guild Wars 2 isn’t like WoW. No Mounts, no idea what Transmogs are, and pets might be Mini-pets, or the pets that only Rangers have.

No gear treadmill, once you have the top gear it never becomes outdated.

The Players Helping Players sub-forum has some Stickies you might be interested in, and the Wiki (link above) can answer most of your game questions.

If you just purchased the game (unless you found an old copy of the core game), it already includes the expansion. If you do have the latest version of the game (Heart of Thorns), I would suggest saving the L80 Boost until you’ve leveled at least one character up naturally.

Oh, and nothing really gets outdated in this game. All maps are still populated, though some are more popular (gold-farming/recently released, etc.) than others.

Welcome to Tyria, and good luck.

This game has a wardrobe. That’s where your “transmogs” go, if I understand the WoW term correctly. You put skins in the wardrobe by salvaging them or right clicking the gear and selecting add to wardrobe (this normally binds the item to your account). There are 3 weight classes and each profession can only see items in the wardrobe panel that it can use. If you want to see everything you have to go to the wardrobe in the bank panel.

This game is set up to be cooperative in PvE. That means no node stealing or ganking. There is a formal PvP (sPvP) where the game gives you most of your gear and has all skills and traits if you have the expansion. You don’t use your PvE gear in there. There is open map PvP in WvW (World vs World) where you do use your PvE gear and only have access to your PvE skills and traits

Welcome!

1) There is only one expansion just now. It is aimed at level 80 (max) characters, so I would say save your money until you know you like the game. You really should level the regular way first, explore the world, etc, while you unlearn your WoW play habits (I came from 7 years in WoW myself, and trust me there are some fundamental differences that take time to make instinctive).

When a new expansion comes out — not yet announced other than “we are working on one” — the current expansion will be rolled into it. Not that I say wait a year or so so as to save money, and the wave of players will move on from some of this expansion’s maps making it a lot harder to do the meta events there. The content that doesn’t get added is the Living Story. That comes for free in game updates, but if you don’t log fully into game at least once during the time a chapter is active, you will have to buy it later to play it for rewards and achieves; you can always have a friend start the story so you can tag along to see it. If you do log in during that time, even if you were a free account, that story would be unlocked for play once you own the relevant paid account.

Come to think of it if you just now bought the game, likely you -have- the expansion. They haven’t sold the base game alone for a long time. Just don’t use your level 80 boost until you’ve got a handle on the game and taken your time to enjoy the discovery part. What you won’t have is Living Story 2, which you can buy for gems that you buy either with cash or gold, and the parts of LS3 that came out before the current Bitterfrost Frontier one. You can also buy those with gems. But you won’t need them until you’ve worked through the base story once (“Personal Story”) and gotten to 80. Then you’ll want to read the wiki entry on Living Story 1 as it cannot be replayed, THEN go into LS2 and 3.

2) Profession is a very subjective choice. Each of the 9 has those who love them and those who hate them. That said I would stay away from Elementalist and Thief as starter characters, they are super squishy, and Ele takes a lot of stance-dancing to do well. Plus Ele (like Engineer) doesn’t get the weapon-swap ability and you will likely want to play with that. Engineer is another one that takes a lot of keyboard use.

For farming — which will be for exploration, mats, and the like, not for mounts (GW2 does not have those) or pets (minis are mostly gained via purchase), I would suggest Necromancer, and once you are 80 and get the elite spec, Reaper. Light armor doesn’t mean flimsy! Necro’s are very tanky.

Gear won’t go obsolete. Here the end game is to get fashion. Dyes, skins, auras. The underlying gear is all at (approximately) the same power level per tier, just with different arrangements of stats. For most of the game you’ll be fine with exotics at 80, which are fairly cheap to acquire by various means. One part of it needs Ascended; don’t worry about that for a long time, you’ll need to max relevant crafting skills and/or put in a lot of time doing collections etc. Don’t try to craft on your first character during leveling, though. Just gather all the mats you can so when you want to craft you can sail through the skill levels.

3) It will take quite a while for you to exhaust all the things there are to do, even without repeating some of them on alts (eg, world completion is character specific though many things you do will be account wide). In PvE there are collections to work on that have rewards for doing the whole thing, in all three modes there are far more achieves than most people will ever reasonably touch, there’s going through the Personal Story to see all the iterations in the early race-based parts, there’s transmuting your armor into awesome combinations of looks and colors — once you unlock a skin or a dye, it’s in your wardrobe and all your alts can use it forever, freely on dyes, costing one easy-to-get transmutation charge per armor item skin change.

Generally end-game is the same stuff you did leveling up, you can just do it in more areas of the world.

Also if you like PvP, there is Structured (like WoW arenas) and World v World (like Battlegrounds). In sPvP you can jump right in, when in there you have the same gear and abilities as everyone else, you just pick your preferred stats. So it comes down to skill. In WvW while you do (I think) get a different template build from PvE, you’re still using your own gear and upscaled level.

4) Tips: In your inventory the upper right corner has a cog. Click that and select Deposit All. Your crafting materials will vanish. You will find them in any bank or crafting machine bank tab, in the materials storage section, initially stacking up to 250 of each (you can spend gems expanding the stack size of those mats in that section to a current max of 2000). So gather every node you see. It’s instanced to you, 100 people could come mine the same rock you’re digging at and get their own ore from it.

There is no kill stealing unless you manage to kill something so fast someone else can’t get a hit in. Feel free to help someone if you see a fight going on, you’ll get your own xp and loot.

DODGE. Learn to dodge out of enemy attacks. Learn to move all the time as you fight. I had to get a Naga HEX mouse as I don’t do combo key presses well. There are a very few channeled abilities that stop if you move, but most everything can be shot on the run.

Guilds — you can be in up to 5, can see and chat in them all at once but only represent one at a time, which matters mostly for guild missions. -You- are in the guilds, though, it’s not character-by-character like in WoW. You can choose representation character by character, however.

And finally for now, precursors. If you get an exotic weapon drop, before you bind it to yourself, read its tool tip. If it says “This is used in making X other weapon,” you have won the lottery. Mind you, in over 4 years of constant play, I’ve never had one drop, but you might have better RNG. You can right click on it and select Sell on Trading Post to see what it goes for (keep in mind that you have to pay a listing fee just to offer it for sale, and if someone buys it there is more cut out of the amount you get, so you will get 15% less total than your asking price). Then you can either sell it, or keep it so as to make your own legendary weapon later without having to go through building or buying the precursor.

Happy holidays to you too!
And PS go look at Players Helping Players below this forum, you will see advice to others including a Tips section in the stickies at the top.

If you’re downloading the free version of GW2, I guess I’d say wait until you’ve played through some content and tried out a few different classes until you buy the expansion.
For the HoT expansion you need to be level 80 anyhow, so you have time to explore and familiarize yourself with the game before deciding.

As the above poster said, there are no mounts currently in GW2.
Pets…the Ranger class has actual animal companion pets, which are spread all over Tyria and need to be collected, or ‘tamed’, in order to have them all. 5 (I think) are in the HoT expansion.
Mini pets are mostly obtained through the Gem store, are cute and follow you around but aside from pretty useless.
If you’re ultimate goal is NOT going to be Raids (requires a 10 man group) then really any class is viable for solo PvE.
A Hunter sounds a little bit similar to the Ranger, in that it uses ranged weapons (bows) but sadly no rifles. It has swords for melee, and as mentioned, is the one class that collects and uses pets as companions. Might be the one start with for you maybe?
Some classes can be tricky for a new player to get used to straight, for example the Mesmer, or say even the Engineer (mainly because it can take a while to unlock the skills/traits that make the Engineer pretty fun to play).
From what I’ve just briefly read of the Death Night, GW2 does not have anything like that.
We have the Warrior, which is straight out melee, heavy armor, or you have the Necromancer, light armor, focuses on Death and Death type magics. With the HoT expansion it does get the Elite trait of Reaper, which is more of a melee role. Necromancer or Reaper both are, in my opinion, fun to play, easy to solo.

It’s really going to come down to trial and error on your part, but you will need to invest some time into a class before deciding ….unlocking Traits (abilities that supplement your skills and gameplay) has a big impact on how the class plays.

A couple of general tips…accept GW2 for what it is , an MMO set up differently to most others. There’s not quite as much hand holding in the start areas as some other games, but if you pay attention to your mini map it will guide you.
Quests are mostly done by completing Hearts, or an NPC might call you over asking for help which will often lead you to an in game event.
Don’t be scared to help other players, you won’t lose xp, neither will they. As mentioned by another poster, there is no kill stealing, or loot stealing. Each player is rewarded for their part in a fight/event.
Karma is a reward given by completing Hearts and Events….personally I’d advise to not spend it early on, as it is very useful for late game content, for armor or for some materials for crafting Legendary weapons, should you decide to do so.
Dungeons for the most part are not soloable but require a party of five. Generally not too hard to find a part though, using the LFG tool (press N for the friends list, is one of the icons down the side). First dungeon is not available until level 30 for what is called Story Mode (a one off version) and explorable (repeatable paths) at level 35.

Starting to ramble a bit, hope this helps a little.

Good luck, and welcome to GW2. Hope you enjoy your stay

(bah, took too long to type, just read the post above, covers about everything and far better worded)

Thank you all for the awesome comments. Special thanks to Donari and Wildfire

The game doesn’t handhold you to the extent WoW does. No NPCs with exclamation points over their head are out there. You’ll see hearts, which are somewhat similar. You go to a heart area and do what it asks you to do. Afterwards the heart NPC turns into a merchant and you can sell any junk you’ve gotten and maybe buy some gear from it. (Don’t sell any gear to NPCs. ALWAYS salvage and use the gear icon at top right of your inventory to send the mats off to your bank inventory),

But hearts aren’t the heart of gw2. Events are. Look for orange circles on the map to see the location of ongoing nearby events. Speak to NPCs to trigger events. If an NPC runs up to you, they have an event that they want to give you. You can do them or not but events give you a lot of XP, some coin and karma (karma is used to buy items from various NPC vendors).

Right now the Wintersday event is going on the Divinities Reach (the main human city) in the western side of the city. It’s worth going over as there are things you can do that will give achievement points. You will be able to find achievements on your hero panel. This one will be under festivities and under the dailies.

Oh and just thought….whatever class/character you make now, head to Divinity’s Reach (Human city) for some Wintersday fun! No level restrictions (well, must be at least level 2, which you’ll be from doing your Tutorial).
Enjoy

Arrgh…again, too slow with the typing, you beat me to it Just a flesh wound <sigh>

Just remember that this game is not WoW, it’s not even a clone with different names for the same things. Although they’re the same genre they are very different games in a lot of ways.

Don’t assume you know how something works or what to do because it seems similar to something in WoW and you’ll have a much easier time learning the game.

I think you’ve encountered some of this already with the answers you’ve been given but it’s true of everything in the game. The people I see struggling the most are the ones who are determined to treat this game just like the last one they played no matter what.

Also the Wiki is a great resource, it has a lot of useful info. But you can also ask either here or in game any time you’re stuck or confused and other players will help.

Hi! I also came over from WoW, almost a year ago now. If you won’t miss endlessly upgrading your gear for the next challenge, you may enjoy this game. There are lots of wardrobe unlocks and achievements to keep a solo player busy.

As for which class I’d recommend for solo play? It’s a tough call.

Necromancers are probably the easiest/best solo survival class. The downside is that they aren’t the quickest at getting around.

If you want high mobility, thief is your best option. They can cover ground far more quickly than other classes with access to numerous/frequent teleports and easy access to swiftness. However, thief has low health and very little damage mitigation. They can solo quite capably, but it requires better timing than a safer class like necromancer.

The other classes fall everywhere in between. But honestly, you can build a class to do almost anything you want in solo content. The “meta” is only for group content. So if you find you’re dying too often, chances are you can fix that by changing up your traits, gear, weapon set, runes, and sigils.

There’s no rush to buy HoT. It’s mostly only relevant at level 80. On the other hand, if money is no object and you intend to give this game a thorough chance, why not? Not everyone will agree, but I think HoT is great! The open world maps are like nothing you’ve ever seen in WoW (or core GW2 either!).

And now, some more advice:

First, do your dailies. Each day, a list of “tasks” will be given to you, covering PvE, PvP, and WvW. (Some holiday/festival ones may be there too.) Do any three of them, and you’ll get some achievement points, Spirit Shards (don’t worry about those for now), and 2 Gold. Especially as a new player, you want that gold. Any secondary loot you get from doing each task is good, too.

Second, always carry a spare set of harvesting tools. It sucks to suddenly have your pick or axe break when you’re out in the middle of nowhere. Just pay attention to the level of your tools, and carry the best that your character can use.

Along those lines, also carry a salvaging kit or two. Two is better. Salvage what you don’t want to use, and deposit the remains as explained above. This will help with your inventory management. Right click on a salvage kit, and you get access to some bulk salvaging options.

Next: Get an invisible bag. I suggest putting it at the bottom bag slot in your inventory, as it fills top down. Anything you put in there will stay there when you tell it to compact spaces, and will not appear for sale to vendors.

Finally, let’s talk crafting: You can gain EXP by leveling up your crafting skill, and at start every character can actively know two crafting skills at a time. (This can be increased to 4 in the gemstore, and if you want to learn an extra you can “deactivate” one and pay to get it reactiviated later at the old skill level.) As you salvage things, you’ll start getting Essence of Luck. Save those, and when you have a bunch find some crafting stations and learn to be an artificer. You can then use Artificing to upgrade them to higher levels of luck. It’s a small bit of extra EXP for you, and a way to dip your toe into crafting without wasting anything you could have sold. Oh, and consume the exotic level luck, that’s as high as it goes.