Guild Wars 2

I just got to level 1 of gliding. Can I now just jump off of cliffs and sail around, or do I need wings of some sort? As much as Anet dumbed down the core game because it was too complicated for new players, they sure had no problem in throwing us to the wolves (mordrem) with this expansion.
- how do I glide?
- do I need a parachute?
- How do we earn favor?
- how do we access the canopy?
- how many mastery points are there and how many do we need to unlock everything?

- thanks Anet for making the mastery system account-wide.
- a manual or some direction would be. nice.
- dunno about the other maps yet, but VB sure the is hard to solo. Only found 1 map with a decent number of folks on it.

- shout-out to my fellow players: I got frustrated several times while xploring, getting lost, dying (a lot). When I expressed my exasperation in chat, many of you were very helpful, offering good advice and tips. Thanks for talking me off the edge and beignsuch a great community!

Hit space bar while falling / in air, to start gliding.

For the other questions: Didn’t play enough because it’s nearly unplayable.

1. As said before, tap [Space] while falling to open the glider and glide. Tap it again to close it and resume falling. Be careful not to glide too long or you’ll fall.
2. No parachute. Just the glider. If you open the glider as you’re nearing the ground, it’s a lot like a parachute. Just don’t wait too long. ;-)
3. It’s the mastery system – just like how you got the glider. Earning favor with groups is a matter of training the appropriate mastery down to the appropriate level.
4. The canopy is usually accessed by helicopters at night, after securing camps. They’ll fly you up to where the bosses are found. Otherwise, you’ll need to train gliding until you can harness updrafts. Those’ll get you higher.
5. Pfft. No idea offhand. A lot. There would have to be for all the masteries and all the points they’ll need. _

Gliding: Spacebar when you fall, but only after investing a mastery point in gliding. You automatically get a glider for every character. Keep an eye out for the “Deploy glider” notification on your screen (looks like the loot notification).

Favour: Guild missions.

Canopy: Updrafts with leveled gliding mastery, or choppers during the meta event. Pay attention to that, you’ll notice when it’s time.

Mastery points: No idea, but if you need to know, you can count how many you need to unlock any given level of any mastery, and then do the math. (Update: I wiki’d this, and the Maguuma masteries come in at 124 mastery points. You get them from map completion, achievements, and adventures, apparently, though I haven’t tried those yet.)

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“Hard to solo”: You’re not supposed to solo the meta event. And if you mean exploration, that you can solo, except for some hero points. It gets even easier when you have the first levels of gliding and itzel lore (for the bouncing mushrooms). I ran through all three maps on the first night for the waypoints, and I’m not particularly gifted when it comes to soloing group content (read: I suck hopelessly at it).