Guild Wars 2

A free level 80 boost came with the purchase of Heart of Thrones.

I have a couple of characters that I’m more invested in and would rather level them up naturally.

I have one or two others that are cool enough to play, but I don’t play them often. I’m thinking of giving the level 80 boost to one of them.

Is that a typical approach among other GW2 players?

Thanks!

My tactic was very simple. Since I’ve been playing this game since launch and have 16 characters, so I long ago lost the appetite to level any new character the old-fashioned way. I used it on the first character I created after they gave the lvl-80 boost, which is my condi Druid.

I can’t say that I’m typical. I like leveling, maybe using some tomes along the way on a whim. It gives me time to let the character gel in my mind as I see how they respond to various events and views (my best RP characters are the ones that end up writing themselves, but they need seeds to grow from). Plus it’s an occasional source of lower tier mats.

So that 80 boost sat a while until I wanted the slot more than I wanted not to whoosh a character up that fast. Note that I also had 18 80’s already so I didn’t really need yet another for game play purposes. In the end I made a female norn revenant with it just to have an excuse to collect norn heavy cultural armor. She’s my only 80 not (yet) made Elite and she lives at the flax farm in VB. I have a fully made male charr rev and don’t really enjoy the profession enough to make bunches of revs.

In your situation, hmm. Maybe you should take your cool-enough alts to PvP land to test a fully loaded character against the golems. See if you like that enough to want to learn it step by step via natural leveling. Also you can test the 80 boost out as many times as you want, so long as you don’t finalize it.

And, in the end, well. It’s fast enough to get to 80 that if you “waste” it on an alt your others can still get to 80, especially as you don’t hate the natural method.

Got it. Used it immediately on my fully ascended main character to just unbar the slot. Ended up buying 5 character slots a week later because I wanted all 9 classes and a key runner. Absolutely no regrets. Even though I can’t stand leveling, and it would of helped me with the last two since I couldn’t tome until a bit of time passed. Hate leveling because I love end game content so leveling doesn’t help me learn mechanics of builds I don’t have access to yet.

My only advice would be that if you’re new you shouldn’t use it on your first character, because you’ll learn a lot about the game while levelling up, as well as unlocking more waypoints, learning your way around, getting gold, karma and materials etc.

Other than that it’s up to you. There are other ways to level a character without playing them (Tomes of Knowledge being the most widely available) so if you use it and then wish you had it for another character there are alternatives, and all the lower level content is still accessible at level 80 so if you use it and then wish you’d levelled that character normally you can play through everything you would have done with them. Which means it’s not really possible to make a mistake.

I used mine on my warrior. When it came out I’d recently decided I wanted a permanent character of each profession and created a warrior, necromancer and revenant – the only ones I was missing. Normally I’d refuse to even use Tomes on my permanent characters, partially because I like levelling and map completion and partially because I feel like if I’m going to keep them I should like them enough to play for however long it takes me to level up. But from past experience I knew I didn’t like playing a warrior, I get bored with them. So there was a good chance I’d never get to level 80 with him, so I used the boost instead.

Since I’m highly unlikely to need a level 80 temporary character (it’s happened once before and I sincerely hope that situation never comes up again) it was that or use it on one of my existing ones to just get the items. For me this was definitely the better choice.

I already had one of everything so I made a 2nd engineer, this time going glass. While I don’t regret doing so, I find myself running around sub-80 zones with the character more than around the L80 zones. Well, I did before my current enforced hiatus, anyway.

Thank you all for your replies!

i used it on my second char which was going to be painful to lvl (necro) and my first char was a druid which i proceeded to never play again

I am in the same boat. I want a ranged magic user that deals tones of damage, so I know the choice is either Ele or Necro. From what I hear of eles though in late game, I am more leaning to putting the boost to the necro since I don’t want to be support late game.

You can always just try out the profession. As long as you don’t leave the Silverwastes map that it sends you to the boost to 80 is temporary. Try one then the other and decide.

Which is I am doing atm. Just hard to decide.

Doctor Hide.6345:

Which is I am doing atm. Just hard to decide.

necro all the way. incredibly fun in pve.wanted in every aspect atm esp raids.

Chad.6104:

You can always just try out the profession. As long as you don’t leave the Silverwastes map that it sends you to the boost to 80 is temporary. Try one then the other and decide.

This the best reply.

I had one of each at 80 before the HoT launch. So, I used it just to gather gear for my revenant.

The 80 boost adds a lot of pressure to deside NOW. Remember Chad’s reply above.

Thanks again for all your replies. It was great just to learn that you can try it out without committing to it or expending it. Until I learned that I was afraid of accidentally clicking on it in my inventory.

I did give it a try a couple nights ago and now I think I want to take a character or two up to their first specialization the normal way so I can get a better feel of how that aspect of the game works (I only started playing a couple months ago).