Guild Wars 2

Evening all.

Just finishing the updates before I play GW2 for the first time ever. After reading a few guides about professions, races etc it seems very different to other MMO’s.
Just looking for some helpful advice to make lessen my learning curve. Anything you wish you knew when you were starting, were you happy with your initial race/prof choice, things like that.

Also, after reading a bit about the professions I am leaning toward making a Mesmer as my first character, not sure which race yet. If not a Mesmer it will probably be one of the other scholar professions.

Thanks in advance for the help.

So, thanks in advance

You have 5 character slots; try out various classes, races.

Don’t bring bias learned in other games to GW2. It is a new day.

Ask questions here and in map chat (/m) . The communtiy is usually very helpful.

Mesmer really starts to shine about level 40 so be patient. Same with Elementalist.
Necro, personally, is a hoot in PvE, but mesmer or ele in WvW.

Use gw2 wiki for main source of world info aka npcs, events, items, etc.

When you get to 80, that’s when you’ll have access to top of the line armor sets. So don’t worry too much about looking good until then.

When you hit lvl30 (which is the recommended level for the first story dungeon) and lvl35 which is the recommended for the first explorable dungeon, consider using gw2lfg.com to party up with people while anet works on an in-game LFG tool.

Use map chat to ask for help. If you find maps empty, guest into a higher tier server which includes Jade Quary, Blackgate, Sanctum of Rall, Sea of Sorrows, etc. You can probably see the list on the wvw forum thread. Usually the most populated servers are ranked higher in wvw. If you like roleplaying, guest into Tarnished Coast server (unofficial dedicated RP server).

Get gathering equipment from most merchants on maps, this will allow you to gain exp from logging trees, mining ores, and gathering plant stuff. You can also use the materials with other drops to craft items. All crafting areas can be found easily in LA (they are elsewhere but Lion’s Arch—aka main city for people to gather—has all of them in a close location). Maxing crafting professions 1-400 will give you at 10+ levels up to lvl20ish then it’s always 10 levels. So it’s an easy way to speed up leveling.

Level up through story, heart quests and venturing through map. Best way to level other than crafting is doing dungeons, but you normally want to hit the lvl35 benchmark.

If you want to plan ahead and look at armors/weapon skins google dufly + gw2 skins or try gw2armor.com.

Hope that helps.

Make sure you check out this thread too if you haven’t yet, it’s stickied at the top of this subforum: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players/first#post20871

lots of tips there for people starting out.

Rozcinana beat me to it, do check out that thread, it’s full of helpful tips it might take you ages to discover otherwise.

Welcome to the game! My general advice is to go with the flow, haha. Don’t worry too much about what you should be achieving because you’ll get through the levels without too much special effort, just explore and try stuff out. I’d also recommend 100% completing at least your first starter zone; you’ll get a nice bonus and learn how everything works along the way.

Is your endgame goal pvp or pve?