Guild Wars 2

First of all, sorry for any possible bad english.

I’m a veteran player that came back to the game a few days ago to check out the new expansion features and maps, and once i stepped into verdant brinks, my head almost exploded.

Lots of icons that give me no idea about what they are identifying on the map, monsters on every inch of the map, making skipping almost impossible. This new mastery system that i dont have any idea on how it works…etc etc

Is there any HoT survival guide that i can use? Right now i’ m just zoning into the new area only to behavior like a headless chicken….

So to start everything you need to open up your hero panel (H), pick the expansion’s story, and click to start it. Until you do that you can’t even zone into the HoT zones (unless you sneak in the back way from a guild hall, which lands you way away from the content you need to reach to get going…)

Open up the mastery system and pick an item to “start training” – always make sure you are training one of them, as any ‘XP’ you earn when not training just gets flushed down the drain.

You will need to train gliding first, and then mushroom jumping. After that, I’m not too sure – but it looks like we’re a little locked in before we can start making choices.

You will see an Icon that looks like a grey version of the mastery icon – and yes, that is a challenge that if done will reward a mastery point flat out.

You will come across flag poles – this can start a mini-game that if you get silver gives 1 mastery, and gold gives 2, and can be repeated as many times as you want (but the master points only get earned once).

Otherwise, follow the story and when it tells you to go somewhere, find that somewhere and go there.
- Sometimes that somewhere is a green ‘asterisk icon’ and sometimes it is a green circle around an area (this got me for a bit until I realized the green circle was where I had to go).

After that… its like Guild Wars always has been: open up the portal stones, find the vistas, and find the ‘hero point challenges’ (what used to be called skill points) – their icon has changed, but you can recognize it easy by just looking on your map at an old once from the old zones and then finding that same icon in one of the new spots…

Quick and dirty Verdant brink survival guide:

When you arrive, figure out what time it is, day or night.

Night
If it is night time, look for events near you, as these will either be supply or defense related. Supplies are boxes you can pick up and take to a camp, and using the 2 skill while holding supply will guide you to the nearest camp. Camps are upgraded as more players turn in supplies there, gaining walls and turrets to help defend them. If the event nearest you is a camp, go there! The flow of verdant brink requires camps to be contrlled by players to spawn a helicopter, once you learn gliding, you can use that helicopter to fight bosses in the canopy. The defense events have tons of mobs and award good XP, so hanging around and doing defenses will get you that glider in no time.

Day
In the day time, each outpost (the towers on the maps) spawns an event chain, and this is a feature of the other maps as well. Outposts can be thought of as “quest hubs” Outposts will start with one or more problems, and events will happen to help you solve these problems. The event chains are long, and each tells a specifikittentle story, as well as leads you around the zone. I highly reccommend starting these chains at daybreak, as you’ll find yourself participating in a pretty long narrative almost akin to an open world story mission, and it can be confusing if you start in the middle.

Completing these chains, and progressing the outposts fortifies those positions, similar to supplies, so that they’re better prepared when night falls.

The full cycle
Thus, the full “cycle” of verdant brink (which you will get scaling loot and xp depending on how much you participated in) beings in daytime, with the fleet freshly crashed. You do outpost events to build up bases, and defend them at night until your support helicopters show up. Once they do, some people need to continue to defend the camps while others take the helicopters up to the canopy to kill the bosses there.

The Reward
If the map successfully builds up all the outposts in daytime, defends all the camps at night, and kills all the canopy bosses, the entire map will be rewarded with a bladed armor box. This is an exotic chest that can not be acquired in any other way.

Exploration
It is highly reccommended (in all HoT) maps to explore during the “prep phase” of the zone meta event. In Verdant Brink that means daytime. Since the mordrem mostly come at night, mostly, and come in large numbers, you’ll find it much easier to explore and go after map completion in the day, and easy to get some completion xp at night. because most of the XP in HoT comes from meta participation, this gives you decent amounts of xp during times where exploring the map might be more difficult or hazardous.

Good luck!

Thank you very much to both of you for your explanations, it feels wayyyyyyyy easier and simple now. I really appreciated it

Be ready to dodge.

Oh, and have both a strong CC and a stunbreak with you.

The jungle isn’t nearly as friendly as Orr.

My general advice: take your time.

Although the pacing of events will (by design) tend to make you feel like you have to hurry, you don’t have to. Go easy and give yourself every opportunity to learn all the new things in a manner you feel comfortable with.

Heart of Thorns is best savored slowly, like a fine wine.

To start out I would like to say I feel the exact same way, you just expressed your self in a much healthier way than I did.

My personal recommendation is to grab some toughness armor, my Necro/Reaper is running a mix of Cavalier/Berserker with Trooper Runes for the additional toughness and the Shout cleanse.

Perhaps you should mention what class you’re starting out with so some one can offer you build advice or point you toward a guide.

I’m glad some one is actually helping you, my thread devolved into a fist fight.