Guild Wars 2

I’ve not been playing for a while and have finally come back to try this game again. I’m level 12 and I remember before I stopped playing, I tried to do my main quest and died pretty darn quickly.

Has anyone got tips on levelling up/enjoying this game? Not seeing much from it atm

The other thing is, I just joined the Blacktide Server (EU) because it was very populated but I still see absolutely no1 about. Whats up with this? And also, no1 speaks on chat?

Thanks,
Bacon

Leveling is incredibly easy and pretty much everything you do in the game helps.

Clearing out the first five 1-15 areas (Queensdale, the Wayfarer Foothills, Metrica Province, the Caledon Forest, and the Plains of Ashford) , doing events whenever people call them out on the chat or you just happen to pass them by, will get you to at least 30.

You actually should save your personal story for later, because the experience rewards scale and can become really nice boosts at higher levels (doing my level 3 story quest gave me a fourth of a level towards 41).

Also, each crafting profession, from 0-400, gives you the straight equivalent of ten levels. Gather resources as you explore, and at the later, somewhat harder (content-wise) levels, possibly using a guide for maximum efficiency, you can scrape a few levels with little effort.

As for the lack of people, the majority of the population has likely moved on from the areas you’re inhabiting. Wherever there’s a dungeon (Queensdale, Ashford) for the areas around your level, you’ll see constant request for a group, but otherwise, there might not be many around, doing what you’re doing.

EDIT: If you want people to constantly talk to, who you can befriend and ask for help from, join and represent guild.

Hi!

Fighting in GW2 is different from regular MMO fighting – it’s more like action RPG fighting. You need to time dodges, etc. It took me a bit to get used to it since I don’t play action games often, but once I did I died a lot less.

Other thing that tripped me up is gear – because of the way gear scaling works, having gear not near your level is really bad. Make sure your gear is within 5 levels of you at least. I was able to do this with random drops for the most part, but you should also be able to get some level-appropriate karma gear from hearts.

You get XP for everything in every area in GW2. Just leveling through the storyline will leave you a few levels short pretty quickly. I’d try running around your favorite zone and doing whatever until you are a few levels higher than the next story point. You get XP and loot based on your level and not the zone’s level. Wander around and explore.

Try finding a nice casual guild to answer questions. I know that Operation:Union is good for answers and advice at basically any time, and we do NA and EU both: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OPERATION-UNION-Bringing-Players-Together/page/30

Map pop depends on time of day, on what zone you’re in, etc. Also, the server pop in the login page is the number of accounts tied to the server, not the number of people currently logged in at that moment. That’s how ANet avoids login queues. So the server can be full or very high, but if few people are logged in than few people will be around. On the 28th you’ll be able to guest onto more populated servers, so you can do that if no one’s in the zone you’re in on your home server.

Tips that really helped people: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players

Other advice would depend on your class – I can talk about ele, but I’m still leveling other classes.

Best of luck!

Gilosean.3805:

Hi!

Fighting in GW2 is different from regular MMO fighting – it’s more like action RPG fighting. You need to time dodges, etc. It took me a bit to get used to it since I don’t play action games often, but once I did I died a lot less.

Other thing that tripped me up is gear – because of the way gear scaling works, having gear not near your level is really bad. Make sure your gear is within 5 levels of you at least. I was able to do this with random drops for the most part, but you should also be able to get some level-appropriate karma gear from hearts.

You get XP for everything in every area in GW2. Just leveling through the storyline will leave you a few levels short pretty quickly. I’d try running around your favorite zone and doing whatever until you are a few levels higher than the next story point. You get XP and loot based on your level and not the zone’s level. Wander around and explore.

Try finding a nice casual guild to answer questions. I know that Operation:Union is good for answers and advice at basically any time, and we do NA and EU both: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OPERATION-UNION-Bringing-Players-Together/page/30

Map pop depends on time of day, on what zone you’re in, etc. Also, the server pop in the login page is the number of accounts tied to the server, not the number of people currently logged in at that moment. That’s how ANet avoids login queues. So the server can be full or very high, but if few people are logged in than few people will be around. On the 28th you’ll be able to guest onto more populated servers, so you can do that if no one’s in the zone you’re in on your home server.

Tips that really helped people: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players

Other advice would depend on your class – I can talk about ele, but I’m still leveling other classes.

Best of luck!

Thanks a lot for the tips buddy! As a matter of fact, i am elemental, so any tips would be largely appreciated

Well, being an ele means that I understand that you die a lot. I have an ele and it took time to master it.

Tip 1: learn to dodge. just not all the time, but when needed, if you see a gun aimed at you, or an ettin is swinging his club, then dodge away. beside dodging you can also move. Try to always be on the move (tip, the arrow keys left and right make you strive left and right, so you can use them during fights as alternate controls.

with good dodging and moving you can prevent up to 80% of damage taken.

Tip 2: use all your attunements. Ele has some powerfull skills with a long loading time, byswitching attunement you get a fresh set of 5 skills very likely all recharged. Do understand that water focusses on healing and freezing and less on dealing damage.

Tip 3: Wich weapon. Make sure you have all sets available, it’s just a staff, (trident but you can keeep it equiped all the time), 2 daggers, a scepter ands a focus.

understand it is not alway wise to go for e.g. the staff wich use a lot of AoE. This is nice in big dynamic event zergs, but imo very bad for personal story’s. AoE sounds nice, deal a lot of damage to all. But in the end the total amount of damage dealt might be higher, but the amount of damage per foe is lower. So when you are outnumbered 5-1 you might want to even the score a bit by quickly disposing on e.g. 2 off them making it 3-1. 5 foes with 10% health deals the same amount of damage as 5 foes with 100% health.

I hate switching weapons and therefor prefer scepter-dagger, wich is pretty balanced imo.

Hope this helps

mercury ranique.2170:

Well, being an ele means that I understand that you die a lot. I have an ele and it took time to master it.

Tip 1: learn to dodge. just not all the time, but when needed, if you see a gun aimed at you, or an ettin is swinging his club, then dodge away. beside dodging you can also move. Try to always be on the move (tip, the arrow keys left and right make you strive left and right, so you can use them during fights as alternate controls.

with good dodging and moving you can prevent up to 80% of damage taken.

Tip 2: use all your attunements. Ele has some powerfull skills with a long loading time, byswitching attunement you get a fresh set of 5 skills very likely all recharged. Do understand that water focusses on healing and freezing and less on dealing damage.

Tip 3: Wich weapon. Make sure you have all sets available, it’s just a staff, (trident but you can keeep it equiped all the time), 2 daggers, a scepter ands a focus.

understand it is not alway wise to go for e.g. the staff wich use a lot of AoE. This is nice in big dynamic event zergs, but imo very bad for personal story’s. AoE sounds nice, deal a lot of damage to all. But in the end the total amount of damage dealt might be higher, but the amount of damage per foe is lower. So when you are outnumbered 5-1 you might want to even the score a bit by quickly disposing on e.g. 2 off them making it 3-1. 5 foes with 10% health deals the same amount of damage as 5 foes with 100% health.

I hate switching weapons and therefor prefer scepter-dagger, wich is pretty balanced imo.

Hope this helps

I understood most of what you’ve said. Thanks for the tips :P. So what is unique to ele’s that make them good in combat? Healing capabilities?

eles are great at staying alive through active play, you’re mobile, get lots of boons and healing. Choosing one as your first is quite a trial by fire (remember to use all attunements) and most classes require some traits before they get really powerful.

Eles are mobile and versatile. It’s a case of doing everything moderately well and providing decent support to allies. I like it because it’s just much more fun than the other classes I tried, but it is also definitely harder than the other classes I’ve tried.

The problem with eles right now is that ANet hasn’t really balanced any classes besides warrior, so ele’s really only have a few builds that work well. Ele forums will have up-to-date info on effective builds.

I run D/D, D/F or Staff as the situation requires – D/D for general world, D/F sometimes in dungeons or WvW, Staff in dungeons or WvW.

Ele tips:
-Arcane traits are very helpful regardless of what attunement you’re in.
-Dodge makes you invulnerable for a second, this is very useful for large AOE attacks. You don’t need to get out of the AOE, you just need to be in the middle of dodge when the attack hits.
-Get familiar with different weapon sets and when to use them. D/D for situations when you need more quick damage or are on your own. D/F for when you need to reflect lots of projectiles. Staff for when you have a group to tank for you.
-Glyph of Elementals helped a lot when I was leveling, the elementals tanked for me. They’re dumb as a box of rocks, but they do a decent job of having your back when solo.
- Use moves that get you away from enemies (staff fire 4, d/d air 5, etc) a lot, that helps with survivability
-Don’t stand still unless you know it’s safe. The game has high mob density and stopping to chat can be dangerous.
-I died 3x a level until I hit level 50. Just be prepared to die a lot while leveling. It’s much better once you get to 80 and get some decent armor.
-If you’re having trouble with a new area, don’t be afraid to go back to an old one. You will still get XP and drops based on your level.
-Swap attunements as much as possible. This is really key to successful fights. Each attunement is good for a few things, so you need to use them when appropriate. -Conditions are your friend. Fire can burn people, water can chill them so they can’t move, air can stun or blind so their attacks miss.
-Also, once you get the traits for it, you can give frequent buffs to yourself or your entire party. This is awesome.
-Certain moves combine to do more damage than they would separately. Don’t worry too much about this now, but when you get comfortable with the regular moves try checking out ‘combos’. I was clueless about them until recently, and they are helpful.

General tip: Guilds help a lot. They are a big, big help. I didn’t find a guild until I was already nearly 80, and that was a mistake. You can check in the Guild forums for active guilds, or hang out in LA a bit and see if people are recruiting. It’s important to find a guild that’s a good fit for you. Also, you can join multiple guilds at once – I’m in 3 at the moment, each for a different purpose.

Typing /wiki searchterm into chat takes you straight to the wiki. It’s saved my hide more than once.

EDIT: That wound up being a lot longer than I thought.

TL;DR: If you have any specific questions, I’m happy to help, and most of the people I’ve played with are also happy to help new players. Or check the wiki – there’s a ton of info in this game, and the wiki is usually pretty reliable if you can’t find the answer in game.

Wow, let’s see if I can add anything to Gil’s walls o’ text! They’re already very thorough.

• Grab a minor sigil of bloodlust from the Black Lion Trading Co. (BLTC), which is the in-game auction house, as soon as you can, and keep it on your favorite weapon as you change out your weapons. You can use Basic Transmutation Stones (that you get for completing the maps of all the cities) to move the sigil over.
• Buy new equipment (blues or cheap greens) from BLTC every 5-10 levels. While crafting is a good source of XP, it is a goldsink for new players.
• Ele specific: Staff is my favorite, but is lacking when soloing areas. D/D is a lot of fun, but requires a lot of situational awareness. S/D is in between. When leveling, it will be expensive (and a waste of space in your small bags) to keep all the weapons on you, so find a set (or two) that you prefer and stick to those.
• Ele specific: Get the Glyph of Lesser Elementals as soon as you can. Having something to draw aggro away from you is very useful while you’re still leveling and learning your class. It’s available for 3 skill points.
• Scrap white gear, vendor blues, and vendor or BLTC greens while you are still new (under level 60). Only use crude or basic salvage kits – the fine and better kits are useful once you start getting level 72-80 stuff
• If you do not like crafting, still gather crafting materials! Gathers are easy XP and crafting materials have their own space in your bank that you can deposit into while on the road. Then when you get back to town, sell the materials on BLTC for quick and easy gold.
• Dynamic Events are a great way to gain XP and gold. As you explore, don’t hesitate to take a few steps out of the way to participate in them (unless it’s a group event and you’re the only one there – that usually ends poorly).