Guild Wars 2

Hi there! So I’ve decided to make GW2 my first foray into graphic MMORPGdom. My gaming experience since childhood has been consistent but casual and mostly single-player console games. My only multi-player experience has been via text-based MUD RPG’s – I’ve really enjoyed the game play, narrative immersion, and great supportive communities I’ve encountered in that medium so I’m hoping I will find the same in GW2.
But so far, I’ve felt a bit overwhelmed and directionless.
My first problem is very basic and embarrassing – I’m having a really hard time getting the hang of just moving through the world using keyboard and mouse! I’m running around in ridiculously wide circles, running into items and NPC’s, plummeting backwards off cliffs, unable to face the people and items I’m trying to interact with – it’s so different than what I’ve become accustomed to with a console controller, or just typing n, s, e, w, up or down to move! You can imagine how this has affected the little bit of combat I’ve attempted -dodging? hahaha…
Any tips to help me move around like less of a complete spaz? settings I can adjust? more intuitive key bindings?
I chose TC since I’d read it is the unofficial RP world and of it being friendly and engaging, but after 5 hours of gameplay this is the only interaction (not counting npc’s) that I’ve encountered:

- my player is sitting on the ground, and in another window I am reading the GW2 wiki trying to make sense of map icons and the hero panel -
- stranger approaches -
stranger : “who are you?”
me: " just a young, new explorer!"
- short pause -
stranger: “hmm, whatever, you’re not worth my time”
- stranger runs off -

so that was a bit discouraging…

I’ve read a bunch of wikis and watched beginner’s tutorials but I’m still feeling a bit paralyzed. There’s alot of information out there and I’m not sure what to zero in on in my infancy. I don’t want to seek a guild or anything until I’ve got a better handle on game mechanics and some confidence in my character (rolled a Norn ranger).
ANY help or guidance here would be greatly valued. As well as any honest commentary that perhaps this is not the best MMO for me to start with.
Thanks,
Meg

This game is actually relatively good and easy to learn with. Simply run around and… you know what, I’ll just add you and hop over to TC to help you out (it’s easier than trying to explain everything).

EDIT: You logged off (this always happens whenever I offer).

Okay I’ll just edit a lot of stuff in here, prepare yourself (in a moment while I typed it up!)

EDIT 2: Here’s more stuff.

To start off with: Focus on leveling before anything else (you can work on crafting while you level up), but don’t focus too much on your Personal Storyline (it’s like the “main” questline, except that each quest, when fully completed, moves on about 5-10 levels, so if you try to level using that, you’ll be pitifully behind).

To level up, simply run around and explore. If you’re in Queensdale (human starting zone) you might be overwhelmed by the people yelling out what’s “up” in Map Chat. Don’t worry about that for now, just focus on filling up the hearts in the area. Try to aim for Map Completion in your starting zone. If you see an event pop-up, that will give you a good amount of experience, feel free to help out whomever you want, whenever you want and you will be rewarded.

If you enjoy[ed] exploring, feel free to also explore the Main Cities (it’s better to do this at an earlier level). Start with your starting city, then move on to Lion’s Arch and finally all the other starting zones. This will boost you from level 2 to level 6 (IF you started at level 2, otherwise don’t expect that many levels). You also get free loot!

As for Map Completion, there are a few things you’re going to want to look for:
Vista’s: These are usually tied to mini-jumping puzzles (just little niches that you’ll have to find or mini-puzzles you’ll have to go through).
Points of Interest: Just what it sounds like, they’re just names to denote area’s, but they’re also tied to interesting area’s.
Skill Challenges: These will give you skill points upon completion. They are, as they sound, simply challenges of some skill (not too much skill is required).
Renown Hearts: Essentially your “quests” of GW2 but without the running to grab and turn in quests. Upon completion you will be awarded Karma, experience and money (the money is in your mailbox upon completion). You can also talk to the “questgiver” to purchase items with Karma.
Waypoints: Main form of travel. By visiting one, you will unlock it forever on that character.

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From here, you should be around level 13-15ish. If you’re around that level (and not higher), I would suggest going to another starting area. (Don’t worry, you’ll still get nearly full experience for participating in low level zones!)
A list of how to get to each starting area from their respective town is as follows:
Hoelbrak: Right side of the town.
Black Citadel: Right side of the town.
Rata Sum: West side of the town. (I may be wrong on this one.)
The Grove: North side of the town.
Divinity’s Reach: South side of the town.

Try and do your dailies at least 2x a week. Try and do your monthly every month. These will both give you a large amount of experience and also nice rewards.

Also don’t be shy about buying gear with Karma (from those hearts you finished). If your gear is still too low level for you, purchase it from the Trading Post, but never spend more than a gold every 10 levels.

Awesome! thank you! I’m a night owl so I probably won’t be in game for another couple of hours. I’m just browsing the forums at work.
I look forward to your input!
M

Back to before you’ve finished completing your starting zone (one step forward, 2 steps backwards, yay!)

Ahem, you’re going to see that your inventory fills relatively fast. Feel free to purchase Crude Salvage Kits (off any Merchant) for 32c. This will, when used on any equipment or salvageable trophy, give you crafting materials. From there, you can hit that tiny gear at the top of your inventory and click “Deposit All Collectibles” to, well, stick them in your bank. (To access them, go to your bank and use the second tab at the top left. If you’re going to craft with them, the crafting stations will pull from that tab, so don’t worry about putting stuff into your inventory for crafting.)

Also, grab one of each of the gathering tools, for you at the beginning it would be… Copper Harvesting Sickle, Copper Logging Axe and Copper Mining Pick. Don’t worry, you don’t need to learn a gathering profession, just head over to gathering nodes all around the world and start gathering (they give you free exp and items!). Also, you don’t have to worry about sharing with other players, they get their own nodes.

And that leads me to my next point, feel free to “ks” in this game. As long as you aren’t denying someone the chance of hitting any monster, you’re actually helping them because the monster dies faster and you both get experience and loot.

Noteworthy things upon leveling:

Reaching level 5: You will get your first skill point (unless you did a skill challenge earlier). Use these skill points to unlock skills. You can get a[nother] healing skill with that point or grab a utility skill. You have 3 utility skills, and unlock the first one at level 5. (The others are unlocked at level 10/20 and 30 for your Elite skill.) Don’t worry about making a bad pick, simply read the skills and figure out what you like. Eventually, you’ll unlock everything, so there’s not much to worry about in terms of making bad choices. If you do, however, regret your choice, there is no way to undo it.

With that in mind, you can test your skills out in the Heart of the Mist (crossed swords at the top left of your screen). In the Heart of the Mists, you are instantly level 80 with PvP stats/gear. You can fiddle around with stats, skills and setups however you want for free (yes all the gear and reseting is free!)

Back to PvE, upon reaching level 7, you will (unless you’re an Engineer or Elementalist) unlock Weapon Swapping. To utilize this, you’ll have to Press H and equip an item into your other item set area (by dragging, not by double clicking, sadly). To weapon swap, press the tilde key (~) and voila, you have another weapon out. In combat, there is a 9 second cooldown tied to weapon swapping. Out of combat, there is none.

At level 10, you will unlock the ability to get two skills out at the same time (by now, you might even have a tier 2 skill. I’ll explain skill tiers now).

To make it so that players don’t get strong skills too early, skills are divided into tiers. Each tier 1 skill costs 1 skill point to unlock. Upon unlocking 5, you’ll access tier 2 skills. These cost 3 skill points to unlock, and, once unlocking 5 tier 2 skills, unlock the tier 3 skills. Tier 3 skills cost 6 points each. Elite skills have 2 tiers, their costs are 10/30 respectively. You also have 2 healing skills (not including racial skills) that cost 1 and 3 points, there are no tiers tied to these two skills.

At level 11, you will gain your first trait point. To use that, you’ll need to grab an Adept Training Manual from your profession’s trainer back at the starting area (or in major cities!) Traits can make a huge difference, but they can be changed very cheaply (the manuals are expensive, but the resets are chump change). Again, feel free to play around in the Heart of the Mists to see what you’ll want to get. With an Adept Training Manual, you’ll only be able to go down the Adept Line (10 points in), but you can go down multiple paths, so feel free to mix and match.

Upon reaching level 20, you get your final utility slot. (I’d suggest saving for your elite at this point. The cheapest elite costs 10 points unless you have the Digital Deluxe Edition, in which case you start with a Mistfire Wolf, but cannot use it until level 30)

Level 30, you get your first elite slot.

Level 40, you’ll be able to use a Master Training Manual, allowing you to go 20 points down a line. This will also reset your traits.

Level 60, you’ll gain access to a Grandmaster’s Training Manual, allowing you to go all the way down a line. This will also reset your traits.

Any questions?

marvelous! I intend to put some of this to use tonight. Thanks for the advice about not going ham on my main storyline first, cause that’s the direction I tend towards first in most open worlds, just in an effort to grab onto something linear and straight forward. I’m just going to explore – look for hearts, vistas and, skill challenges, like you said. What exactly are the “jumping puzzles”?
And any input on getting a handle on movement and controls?

As to RP, TC has loads and loads of it. Divinity’s Reach taverns are one place, parts of LA and Garrenhoff and so on also tend to have it. Plus you can go to guildwars2roleplayers.com to hook into a very large TC RP community.

Movement: Yes, not ever even having done consoles, it took me a good bit to get used to MMO movement. A couple of things to know: Holding down both your mouse buttons makes you run forward (or walk if you have toggled walk on, that is a keybind you can set). Twitching the mouse left and right while doing that turns you. You can spin your camera by dragging with either right or left mouse button held.

Hint: In options, click off right-click targeting. You’ll hold target in fights a lot better.

I mostly mouse-move with occasional key taps for short corrections. I have a Naga HEX mouse so the thumb buttons give me strafing and backing up. Combat in this game changes your character facing a lot, so I spin my camera manually to compensate.

Dodging can be done either by double tapping a direction key or by tapping your bound dodge key while moving. Keep practicing. Go to a safe area and just run around like crazy, testing the movement. Remember you can’t dodge that often unless you are a thief, it uses up endurance that has recharge time.

Some will tell you to learn WASD movement. I’m sure it is superior once learned, but I’m too right handed and too stiff-handed. I don’t do multi key presses at once; my left hand hits the hotkeys, my right hand moves me around.

Oh, one non-movement hint: They just added AoE looting. It’s at the bottom of the keybinds, in Miscellany. Once you have a comfy key set to that, any time you’re fighting stuff you can tap that to get your loot from everything within 900 units of you. Make sure you have bag space and that you have auto-loot enabled in options so you don’t have to deal with a popup window every time. The things you loot will appear on the right side of your screen.

hey, welcome to the best gaming experience out there, Esplen covered the basics, but regarding movement it isnt that difficult, just visualize the keyboard like a controller with tons of keys, it wont take you more than a couple of days to get the hangs of it, but I suggest you change the keybinds for movement from WASD to the arrow keys, that’s how I got the hang of it many many years back, once you get confy moving around with your three middle fingers you can always switch to the default keys, and just use the mouse to click the skill bar

or you can use a game pad to play the game, lemme do a quick search and find some links for you, its just a matter of practice!

edit:
Ok here are some links, if u have an Xbox controller give it a go
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/How-do-I-use-a-controller-to-play/first#post1829022

and the software
http://www.xpadder.com/

I would just recommend to keep practicing and hone your keyboard skillz instead but hey , whatever makes your experience more friendly!

Jumping puzzles! Go into caves, behind waterfalls, up cliffs and walls. If you can jump up on something, go for it. There are numerous hidden places around the world where if you successfully jump along to the end you get a chest with some rewards in it. Some are bone-simple, some are long, complex, and require split second timing over a series of jumps.

Jump physics: Contrary to your instinct, you can steer in mid-air, and go further if you keep holding down your movement. In fact, if you don’t hold down movement, you plummet in place. Handy to land on a tiny pedestal, terrible if you are attempting a large gap. You can jump around corners. It takes a bit of practice, and is easier the smaller your character is. If you are playing a Norn or Charr you are going to have a much harder time learning.

Practice in places where you won’t die if you miss a jump. This game embraces jumping as a core value, it’s a marvelous skill to have

Dawn Patrol.5708:

marvelous! I intend to put some of this to use tonight. Thanks for the advice about not going ham on my main storyline first, cause that’s the direction I tend towards first in most open worlds, just in an effort to grab onto something linear and straight forward. I’m just going to explore – look for hearts, vistas and, skill challenges, like you said. What exactly are the “jumping puzzles”?
And any input on getting a handle on movement and controls?

Jumping Puzzles are these little areas that are typically in a cave or positioned a little off of the beaten path (at least the entrance). Once you get inside, you start jumping to the top (or end, not necessarily the top). You will be rewarded with a chest that respawns in 24 hours (unlike other rewards that are typically reset at 5PM PST). Think something similar to a Maplestory jumpquest, or something of the sort. Some of them have puzzles tied to them, like the Hidden Garden but others are simply jump to the end. There are also a few “fun” ones, such as running a bomb to the end, but if you get knocked down by a griffin (Griffonrook Run jumping puzzle) you’ll drop the bomb. You need the bomb to open the chest at the end, so it’s a bit of a challenge.

As for mobility, are you left or right handed?

If you’re right handed, you can leave the mobility on WASD (if you’re used to it) and what I would personally do is re-bind (or secondary bind) your 67890 skills to something else. What other people have done is have qertz or something for those skills. What I have done is shift+12345 = 67890, but no shift is just 12345. I also have 67890 as their default so I can heal with 6 or shift+1. It works for me.

Another thing I prefer is, since you’re almost always going to be holding down right click is to swap your QE and AD keys so that AD = strafe left/right and QE = rotate left/right (I actually unbinded them recently which means I can’t play 1 handed anymore)

If you’re left handed, what I’ve seen done (and am slightly jealous) is mouse on left hand, skills on numpad (0123456789), arrow keys for movement and then +.-/* can be other keys you use a lot, such as interact key (default F), auto run (default R), etc, etc.

Included below are a list of options. A picture is provided below them.
GENERAL
AoE Loot on Interact: Allows the player to, once a second, loot all lootable objects within 900 range. Can be bound to a specific key.

Autoloot: When looting, the loot window will not appear (unless you have a full inventory) and all the loot will be looted.

Show All Enemy Names: Shows hostile names.

Show All NPC Names: Shows allied names.

Show All Player Names: Shows player names.

Disable Closing Windows with ESC: When pressing ESC, will close windows one at a time.

Show Skill Recharge: Shows skill recharge (in seconds). Shows 1/10[sup]th[/sup] of a second when at or below 5 seconds.

Simply Party UI: When in a party, will remove clutter from partymates. This also prevents you from seeing nonstandard buffs/debuffs on players, such as food and signets.

CAMERA
Rotation Speed: How fast the camera rotates both with the mouse and with the keyboard.

Position: Moves the camera slightly to the left or right of your character, based on where on the slider you are.

COMBAT/MOVEMENT
Double-Tap to Evade: When moving, if you double tap a direction, you will roll. (While helpful as a beginner, this eventually deteriorates into a bad habit as you will kill yourself on jump puzzles or near-pixel perfect positioning.)

Disable Area of Effect Rings: Self-explanatory. I would opt to keep this off even if you find the rings somewhat ugly. It helps in figuring out the actual positioning of Combos (I can go into this later) and is overall pretty useful. (Remember checked = no rings. Unchecked = rings.)

Double-Click to Attack/Interact: Self-explanatory.

Right-Click to Attack/Interact: Self-explanatory.

Stop Autoattacking on Target Change: Self-explanatory. It really depends on your weapon. If you use a weapon with a bouncing attack, you might want to turn this off.

Autotargeting: If you use a skill, you’ll automatically target a mob. This can be useful, but it can also be useful to have this off, in some cases.

Promote Skill Target: When dealing damage, you’ll automatically target whomever you dealt damage to. This can be useful, but with most weapons (namely melee), you can get by without targeting enemies.

Fast-Cast Ground Targeting: Automatically cast wherever your cursor is. If you’re holding down right click, the center of your screen is where your cursor is considered. This will increase response time by getting rid of excessive clicks, but, in the end, it is a preference.

Melee Attack Assist: This will prevent you from running through enemy mobs. At first, it’s useful, but it can become a problem especially in PvP and WvW.