Guild Wars 2

I just dinged 80 on my first toon last night and bought HoT immediately, but have done nothing yet because I wanted to ask the community what’s the best thing for me to do. I’ve completed about 60% world completion, and have 85 hero points toward my Tempest elite spec for my elementalist already.

My initial instinct is to get the HoT story done as quick as possible to unlock the masteries, but here’s the issue. I started playing the game a month after launch for a short while, but took a break until a few weeks ago. I have not completed my basic personal story yet, and am on about the tail end of chapter 7. My character has only about 28 gold, and no exotics. I wasn’t sure if the personal story for HoT would be too tough without getting some better gear or finishing the personal story. But on the flip side, I was worried that if i didn’t get on the mastery track right away, none of the stuff I did would count toward a mastery and would be wasted.

I’d welcome any advice on the following issues.

1. Should I do the HoT personal story right away or get my personal story done first?
2. What’s the fastest way to get exotics taking into account I have only 28 gold?
3. Is there a preferred sequence for masteries, assuming I’d like to do dungeons, fractals/raids? It appears gliding is important.
4. I’ve stockpiled a bunch of materials from salvaging drops i got in the open world/dungeons. Should I concern myself with crafting and save them, or forget crafting and sell them to get gold faster for better gear faster, which will allow me to work on the higher level zones for better gold? I’d like to go for legendary at some point, but it’s not my number 1 priority right now, considering I don’t have good enough gear to do much yet.

Any help from the community would be greatly appreciated. I know it’s a lot of questions, but I’m trying to get off on the right foot, and things are a bit confusing after the long lay off. Thank you!

Do the first two chapters of HoT until Masteries are unlocked. Then go back to your core game and level those masteries, until you’re comfortable, then go to HoT. Alternately you can level basic gliding in HoT first without going through the whole story. You don’t need to do the HoT story to get the rest of the masteries. You only need to do the first two chapters.

What kind of gear are you in now? Only rares? You can get exotics via karma and WvW currency as well, not sure how much of those you have.

I don’t think the mastery track for Central Tyria is game changing important. And you will get gliding and other HoT mastery’s progressively as you go through the story should you choose to play that way but you may still have to do events and kill mobs in HoT because you will need experience points for the mastery’s. You may get a bit of a “grind” feel depending what kind of player you are. I can toss a few exotics your way if you have a stat in mind.

Well, one way of getting exotic gear is by unlocking the second Itzel mastery. There’s a frog vendor at the first WP in VB that sells 5 pieces of exotic gear (the chestpiece is missing). Each costs 500 airship parts + 1g.

In the process of gathering airship parts, you’ll very likely earn several pieces of exotic gear because running events in VB sometimes grants bladed equipment boxes as a reward. Also, if you hit T4 on the VB meta I believe it’s an automatic chest with your choice of bladed gear (level 80 exotic set).

Skyric.9246:

1. Should I do the HoT personal story right away or get my personal story done first?
2. What’s the fastest way to get exotics taking into account I have only 28 gold?
3. Is there a preferred sequence for masteries, assuming I’d like to do dungeons, fractals/raids? It appears gliding is important.
4. I’ve stockpiled a bunch of materials from salvaging drops i got in the open world/dungeons. Should I concern myself with crafting and save them, or forget crafting and sell them to get gold faster for better gear faster, which will allow me to work on the higher level zones for better gold? I’d like to go for legendary at some point, but it’s not my number 1 priority right now, considering I don’t have good enough gear to do much yet.

1) Rewards in the HoT story are a bit better, despite the missions are harder than in the core game due the HoT “fauna”.
2) Use the laurels to get ascended jewlery; for weapons and armor either run dungeons (Citadel, Crucible, Dredge or Honor) or gather iron (from rich nodes) and fir and tukawa wood to trade. Then buy exotics.
3) For HoT the most important masteries are the basic ones: you pretty much want to have a couple of levels or three in every branch, just for basic gliding, bouncing mushrooms, to trade with the vendors, etc. The gliding one is maybe the most usefull, overall. In Tyria the fractal masteries are important if you want to devote time on them, and the legendary ones if you want to track the new legendaries or the new method. Get first the basic stuff for HoT.
4) You will get more gold gathering stuff in mid level Central Tyria maps and selling them than at any other task except high level farming in the Auric Basin meta event. Just salvage every -non exotic or precursor- you get and save the materials for further use.

Once you have one or two sets of exotic gear (start for zerker, you can craft also a celestial exotic armor while rising your tailoring to 500 -you will need scended armor for fractals- ) then focus on the HoT maps.

Don’t worry too much about the gear; really in open world PvE is more about to known how to play your class than to have the right stats. Stats matter only in mid to high level fractals, PvE Raids and WvW.

For your exotic armor, get the karma armours from the Orr temples. You’ll need to find a map where the temple event is complete, but that’s easy during prime time.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor