Facing a bumpy road
You can get exotic karma armour from the temples over at Orr. However it is 252k (??) karma for a full set.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OPERATION-UNION-Bringing-Players-Together
Ok, first of all, once you reach 80, don’t set your mind straight on exotics. Just buy the cheapest rares you can find on the TP. Then spend some time thinking what exotics you want to get in the end, both as stats, and as looks. You don’t really want to find out mid process that you want gear with other stats.
Also, you might want to take a look here. It could be of help to you.
I’m afraid that the game is not quite as casual friendly as GW1 was. To gear yourself up, you will need to spend some coin or time.
I would suggest considering the following:
-dungeon exotic gear. Try Ascalonian catacombs, groups might take you with them. While difficult, it is probably a reasonably fast way to gear up – two days should get you enough tokens for an item (6 paths with the first time bonus), and money enough to buy another on the TP
-crafting is generally a money sink, so while a good source of items for later characters, you’ll spend a lot getting it up to 400 where exotics lie
Not really encouraging, but really, there’s no way to get really cheap exotics…